It was an easy way of handling things. But that was only if you turned a
blind eye to the power struggle between the ruler and church that would occur
afterwards.
Right now, we were trying to move forward into a new era. I didn't want to go
imitating something people had done in olden times. "If I may say a word," Hakuya,
who had been silently watching things unfold up until now, spoke up. "I'm sorry to
do this to Madam Saint, but I would like to speak with His Majesty for a short while."
"Please do."
With the saint's permission, Hakuya walked up close to me. Then, leaning in and
bringing his mouth to my ear as I sat on the throne, he whispered to me, "You seem
out of sorts, sire."
"Yeah..." I whispered back. "For some reason, I can't get into the right mindset. I
feel like there's something weirdly off about her."
"In regards to that, I think we need to think of her as separate from them," he
whispered.
"We do?"
Hakuya nodded. "I've been observing all this time, and I believe she's been
exhibiting a lack of emotion."
"Yeah, I noticed that, too."
"I'm sure that the Orthodox Papal State had some reason for sending her here,
but perhaps Madam Mary herself has no idea what that is? Could she have come
here as just a saint, only to communicate the will of the upper echelons of the
Orthodox Papal State, like a sort of messenger kui?"
"Huh?! She's just a messenger, then?"
Mary wasn't a negotiator, then?! That made a lot of sense... It had never felt like I
was negotiating while I was talking with her.
I'd assumed she'd been given model questions and told what to answer if I asked
certain things, and she had been negotiating with me based on that. That would
explain why, when I'd given her questions they wouldn't expect, like about that spy's
mindset, she'd given me frank and honest answers.
Either that, or it was possible she had been told to answer questions like that
honestly. Even if her negotiation partner tried to extract vital information from her,
if she hadn't been told anything, she would just honestly answer, "I don't know,"
after all.
This wasn't even a negotiation anymore. It was like having a text reader read out
my e-mail for me.
I glanced over to Mary. When she noticed my gaze, she cocked her head to the
side a little with no expression.
...I see, I realized. In a way, she is like a Diva.
In my world, there was an anthropomorphized text reading program called a
Divaloid. It had gotten famous because you could use the synthesized female voice to
read passages, or to sing songs, and it had caused a big boom, especially on video
sharing sites. They'd added illustrations of a cute girl to it, and she'd even held live
concerts as a virtual idol.
When I was talking to Mary, I felt like I was talking to one of those.
"Hakuya... How do you think we should negotiate from here on?" I whispered.
"I believe it would be good to ask for an answer to your second question from
earlier," he whispered back. "However, what you should weigh is not her own
reaction, but the intentions of the Orthodox Papal State."
"...Got it."
Once Hakuya was back in his earlier position, I spoke to Mary.
"Sorry for the wait. By the way, I never did get an answer to my second question
from earlier. Why is Lunarian Orthodoxy seeking to become our state religion?"
"For the sake of all mankind," Mary said without hesitation. "The north of the
continent has now become the Demon Lord's Domain. Though its expansion has
stopped for the time being, for as long as the Demon Lord's Domain exists, mankind
will never have peace. In order to attain peace, it will be necessary to invade the
Demon Lord's Domain and exterminate the root of the problem. However, the
demons of the Domain are powerful, and it is impossible for any one country to face
them alone. All of the nations of mankind must cooperate."
It stood out as a hard-line position, but... that was understandable, I suppose.
Mary continued, "That is why we want you to become a holy king. With your
power and our authority combined, it will be possible to unite all of the different
nations, I'm sure. If you request their cooperation after you have unified the other
countries, even that empire will follow your commands. Two out of five of their
citizens follow Lunarian Orthodoxy, so they won't be able to afford to ignore you. In
that way, all of mankind will be united, and we will invade the Demon Lord's
Domain. Then, with the Demon Lord who is the root of all evil slain, we will liberate
the north of the continent."
Mary spoke all that without hesitation. It sounded like she was talking about the
Crusades. In order to reclaim our lost land, we would be uniting countries through
the power of religion. And so, they wanted me to become a holy king and wave the
flag for that cause.
But... I'm sure that's just the public face of it.
Only once I saw the people behind Mary would I be able to get the full picture of
what their intentions were. Mary probably honestly believed this was to retake the
north, but the people behind her probably thought differently.
The bit about uniting the nations of mankind caught my attention. There was
already a system in this world trying to unite all of mankind: the one that Maria was
leading, the Mankind Declaration. It was a flawed treaty, but, for the moment, it
seemed to be serving its function.
For the Orthodox Papal State, they couldn't be happy about a situation where
Maria, who was (from their perspective) a "false" saint, was the leader of that pact
and winning respect for it. The more Maria did to distinguish herself, the weaker the
influence of their own saint would be, after all. A theocracy ruled through its
religious authority. In other words, the loss of authority was a matter of life and
death for the state.
That was why the Orthodox Papal State probably wanted to set up another body
for international cooperation separate from the Mankind Declaration. They needed
to create a new system where they could assert their authority. And they had picked
me to do it.
I looked over at Hakuya. When Hakuya noticed me looking, he closed his eyes and
nodded once, then shook his head. He'd likely reached the same conclusion I had.
In light of that, he was hinting to me that, "We shouldn't accept this offer."
...Well, of course not. That being the case, there was something I should ask.
"By the way, what will happen if I refuse to adopt you as our state religion?"
"It would be disappointing, but we would have no choice but to accept," said
Mary. "We can't force you into accepting."
They were backing down surprisingly easy. I thought they'd say something like, If
you don't accept our demands, we'll have all of our followers in your country riot, or
something like that.
While I was thinking that, Mary continued, "However, I suspect," her expression
still not changing. "I suspect that we would end up waiting."
"Waiting?" I asked.
"Yes. We could only wait until either you have a change of heart, or a new
candidate to become the holy king appears."
I inhaled sharply in surprise.
Urkh... So that was how they're going to play it, huh. Basically, if any country
started to get stronger, or a ruler began to become famous, she was saying, "We'll
take this exact same offer right to them." If they did, her earlier comment that "Two
in five of the Empire's citizens are followers, so if we feel like it, we can split their
country" would be something that might happen to our country, too.
Mary might not have intended it that way herself, but it was one heck of a threat.
This is... I shouldn't decide on this right here and now.
I didn't want to accept it, but if I was going to refuse, I needed to tell them that
only after carefully considering the countermeasures available to me. At the very
least, I wanted to have a lengthy discussion with Hakuya about it.
I rose from my seat and said to Mary, "I understand your request, Madam Mary.
However, I cannot give an immediate answer due to the gravity of the request. I
would like time to think it over. We will continue this discussion at a later date."
"But of course," she said. "I will be praying that you make a good decision."
Mary meekly took her leave. The negotiations hadn't been concluded, but she
didn't look disappointed at all to me.
I looked closely at Mary's face. I had been looking at it the entire time we had
been negotiating, but it felt to me like her expression had hardly ever changed. She
was like a doll.
A doll... Artificial...?!
That was when I realized it. What exactly it was that felt "off" about her.
◇ ◇ ◇
By the time my meeting with Mary came to an end, it was already late at night.
When we returned to the governmental affairs office, Roroa and Juna greeted us
there. I spotted Carla with the maids standing by in the center of the room, too.
"Welcome back, darlin'... Wait, what's wrong?!" Roroa cried.
"Um, is something the matter, Your Majesty?" Juna ventured.
The two had been smiling at first, but once they saw my face they instantly took
on looks of concern.
Ha ha... Was the look on my face right now that bad? It might well have been.
Juna touched her fingers, soft and cold like little white fish, to my forehead. "You
don't seem to have a fever, but... are you not feeling well? Would you like to take a
little rest?"
"Hey, Big Sister Cia! What happened to darlin'?!" Roroa burst out, rounding on
Liscia.
"Don't ask me! I don't know!"
I said, "Oh... It's okay, I'm fine," weakly brushing Juna's hand away, then sat down
at the governmental affairs office's desk. Then: "Sorry. Liscia, Aisha, Juna, Roroa...
could you come over here?" Then: The four of them looked to each other, and slowly
came over to me. When they got close enough, I spread my arms wide and gave all
four of them one big hug.
"Eek?!" Liscia yelped.
"My word!" cried Aisha.
"Oof..." said Juna.
"Wait! Darlin'?!" Roroa shouted.
They all let out weird little cries of surprise, but I ignored that and hugged them
tight.