"Heyo, Hidow! Workin' hard?!" "Yeah."
"Oh, if it isn't Hidow. Come eat at our place today? I'll serve you up an extra-big plate!"
"If I feel like it."
"Heh-heh… You Twenty-Nine Officials, you get to have audiences with Her Majesty, don'cha? Gimme the scoop, Hidow, what's Queen Sephite like? Gotta be a real beauty, eh?"
"I'd say so."
"Yooo, Hidow! We're pumped for the Sixways Exhibition, dude!" "'Preciate it."
Languidly moving through the wave of people's voices, he passed through the lunchtime plaza. The spray from the fountain wet the tips of Hidow's hair.
Hidow the Clamp, Twentieth Minister of Aureatia. Wearing his hat at an angle and cloaked in a casual aristocratic outfit, his clothing was of a bohemian second son to a well-known noble family. A description he admitted to himself.
However, to the people of society, he was viewed as the Twentieth Minister, one of the members of the minian world's highest governmental body.
…All a bunch of nonsense.
On a long bench in the park, far enough from the eyes of others, he opened up the package in his hands. During lunchtime, Hidow always ate the same shop's sandwiches.
Hope I'll be able to take it easy tomorrow. Aureatia, the Sixways Exhibition… Alus the Star Runner, too. It's all a bunch of nonsense.
Accompanying his rising social position, Hidow was beleaguered with unwanted anxiety. All of it large-scale trouble that he usually didn't need to think about it.
At what point did he end up going down the wrong path? His political position had long eclipsed his elder brother's, the rightful heir to his family's estate. In the life he had envisioned for himself when he was young, things weren't supposed to turn out this way.
Therein lay the reason why he, with his sociable temperament, preferred to take his lunch alone. He needed at least one time a day where he could be released from his position in society.
The soft slices of bread had a uniformly toasted surface and plenty of warmth left.
Within Aureatia, it wasn't a bakery that enjoyed much business, but the moderation in the shopkeeper's Thermal Arts was sublime. The duck meat wrapped up in the bread also gave a luster to the surrounding greens, with the fat melting from its bright-red flesh, and while simple, it was a wonderful meal…
…which was why the presence appearing on the bench behind his own irritated him.
"…What do you want? I'm having my lunch."
The hands on his food stopped for a moment. The physical safety of the Twenty-Nine Officials was supposed to be watched over closely by a large number of soldiers, but there was always the chance it was an assassin sent by another faction.
A weary, worn-out voice replied from the bench behind him.
"With you, it's hard to get you somewhere without anyone else around, Hidow the Clamp."
"…I don't want to take on any more problems than I've already got. Give me a break."
It was the Sixth General, Harghent the Still. Hidow didn't have any tabs on when exactly this man had returned to Aureatia.
Completely opposite Hidow, who had been promoted to his station using the wits and resourcefulness he was born with, Harghent was a military man from a bygone era who had crawled up the ranks after being born in obscurity in some seaside frontier. The nature of his decline put him in the exact opposite position from Hidow's personal career within the Twenty-Nine Officials.
"Sorry… Sorry, but this is one point that I can't afford to back down on. I have Lucnoca the Winter with me, and you have Alus the Star Runner. Both are unmatched dragonkin known across the world as the 'strongest.' In which case
—"
"Can we get to the point? You're taking forever here. What are you trying to get at? Telling me to set it up so you and I face off, old man? Seriously… What the hell's wrong with you?"
His patience at its end, he took a bite of his bread.
To him, it was far more important than a conversation with an aging general
on the political decline.
"Well, go negotiate with Jelky or Rosclay, then, and try making it happen. If you can anyway. I don't have that sort of authority. This conversation's over."
"Please, I—I…! I need to settle things once and for all with Alus the Star Runner! I swore I'd get my hands on something bigger than him! It's the meaning of my life! I-if it was otherwise, you think a man like me would've been able to bring Lucnoca the Winter back with me?!"
Hidow couldn't care less.
Whatever maudlin sentiments this man had, whatever personal justice, Hidow wasn't interested in the slightest.
He wasn't denying the challenge for any particular reason. He even thought that he'd be fine with it if Harghent went ahead and set things up somewhere behind closed doors. Despite this, anyone and everyone brought their problems Hidow's way, solely under self-serving circumstances. It only worked to expand the range of work he needed to handle.
"Actually, old man? About that Lucnoca… Let me tell you something. Lucnoca the Winter never even had any interest in the minian races to begin with. If she really felt like destroying a settlement, you know what'd happen? Why the hell'd you go and call her here? Unlike you, I have to think about those sorta problems on top of everything else. Now in addition to all that, you're trying to make me go along with your selfish nonsense? What the hell sort of thoughts are bouncing around that empty head of yours?"
"...Nothing I did was wrong at all. This land… The strongest being in this land. This all was supposed to be about finding champions who could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Hero…!"
"Ugh... It's that old, addled brain, I swear… Take a moment to think about things for once in your life. What's the grand idea behind bringing a seriously all-powerful candidate here? Reality is: This candidate crap... As long as they were famous enough to avoid any criticism from the people, become an ally to the minian races, and be bested by Rosclay, that would've been enough. Instead, you idiots went and decided to gather all these assholes together. Every damn one of you, I swear… Giving excuses like, 'I want power,' or 'I want to be the one to introduce the Hero to the world.'"
He crushed the paper wrappings from his bread in his other hand.
Why—why did he want authority and power that would ultimately be too much for him to control? What was there to earn by rising up in the world without any outlook for what's ahead? Hidow couldn't understand any of it at
all.
All he wanted to do was simply live his life freely without having to worry
about anything.
If he could live in blissful ignorance, like the city residents that called out to him in the plaza, that was enough for him.
"…You all are always like that."
The general sitting behind him quietly mumbled, still keeping his eyes dropped down to his lap. The tone of his voice was filled with the resentment and anger that had built up inside of him.
"What?"
"Always, it's always how it goes. You lot have the authority to decide anything and everything. Then you try to make us conform to those rules you all create for yourselves. But whenever it comes the time when we're able to make use of those rules better than you all can…you always start talking like that."
Wing Clipper Harghent. A man completely unable to read the current of the times who continued to claim his wyvern hunts as great achievements, done out of habit at this point more than anything.
An obsolete bureaucrat. He wouldn't be considered necessary at all in the coming age. And the creation of just such a future was, most likely, already set in stone.
"'That wasn't really what we meant.' Or 'You should've stopped to think for a moment and realized.' Or 'There's a new rule now.' We never get praised for anything. That's because the power to decide everything is always resting in people like you all. Before the True Demon King showed up, they told me to hunt goblins and wyverns. They said that they were the real evil for attacking settlements and threatening expansion and pioneering. That's why I believed that if I hunted wyverns, I'd be able to rise up the ladder. That's all I did."
"Your brains get boiled? I didn't say any of that."
"It's all the same. No matter who it is, it's the exact same…! Next is the Demon King. Next is the Hero. You people always cleverly say 'That's not what we meant!' I even changed the definition of evil! I lured Lucnoca the Winter, the dragon no one's ever seen, here!"
Hidow could tell that Harghent had stood up. From the bottom of his heart, he truly felt that Harghent was an insignificant and absurd person. A foolish man amplifying his own anger and misfortune with his own words.
Hidow narrowed his eyes and gazed at the grass spread out in front of him. He imagined himself continuing to ignore all of Harghent's words, cutting across
the plaza, and taking his leave. There was absolutely nothing this powerless general was capable of. Harghent wasn't going to be involved in any of the Twenty-Nine Officials' decisions from here on out.
"I-I'm talking about…Lucnoca the Winter here! Legendary—and unmistakably the strongest in the land! Why won't anyone commend me?! Why isn't anyone shocked?! What does one need to do to satisfy you people?! Are you people going to tell me giving me a single fight with Alus isn't a reasonable reward?!"
His assertion was so extraordinarily inconsistent, logic that simply seemed to be blaming others for his faults.
Although they could understand each other through Word Arts, Harghent was so eccentric, and so attached to honor and social status, it was almost as if he was a completely different species of creature, with values wholly different from Hidow's own.
...
However. While he couldn't understand him, he grew irritated. He threw down the paper wrapping and shot up from the bench. "…Hey, old man. What the hell do you know about me?"
For this Sixways Exhibition, who even understood the true reason why Hidow the Clamp, without any shred of ambition himself, immediately threw his support behind Alus the Star Runner?
He was truly apprehensive about the future of these Royal Games. Although he inwardly opposed him, he knew Alus the Star Runner's power better than anyone in the world.
If he hadn't gotten ahold of Alus of the Star Runner before anyone else—
Then someone else would have sponsored him and could have truly ended up winning the whole thing.
Why was Hidow forced to take over roles he didn't wish for? It was because there were men like Harghent out in the world.
Everyone, the entire world, was filled with nothing but hopeless incompetence. Hidow had wished he could be incompetent.
"You really go and say whatever pops into that pea brain of yours, huh? You're that proud of Lucnoca the Winter, then? You found yourself a legend, and I'm supposed to bow at your feet? Is Lucnoca the Winter really that strong? Listen…"
Simply turning around and glaring at Harghent from underneath his hat was
enough to make the general shrink back.
Both of Hidow's fists were trembling; he vividly understood he was putting on a bold front.
He probably could've made the man cry on the spot. The irritation was enough to bring such thoughts to Hidow's mind.
"..."
"Fine. I'll give you the fight you want. Harghent the Still."
Hidow didn't understand why he was so irritated with a weakling like this. With all the hatred in his heart, he declared:
"I'll send you straight to hell."