Victory Celebration Party

The morning sun rose, and an unfamiliar corpse had joined the Great Chieftain's beside his body, yet no one noticed anything strange.

- "Is it perhaps a corpse left over from what the Great Chieftain ate?"

- "Who knows. Still, if we leave it like this it might turn undead, so let's cremate it."

If anything, it was fortunate that they received a far more extravagant funeral than their actions deserved.

In this way, Duke's invisible hand brought things back to normal without anyone realizing it.

The expedition party greeted a peaceful morning like that.

"What should we do about the prisoners?"

At an adventurer's question, Ari (on Rex's behalf) explained the next plan.

"Moving this many people all at once seems difficult, so instead, we noticed a nearby village on the way here — let's have them stay there."

As for the money, that had already been discussed in advance with one of Hana's senior knights, so there was nothing to worry about.

Listening to Rex's plan, Duke got secretly excited, thinking this part matched the original story.

'In the original story, only half the people were saved.'

In the original story, there had been no rescue team or breach team.

Because of that, once the fiends realized the Great Chieftain had been assassinated, they devoured the prisoners in an eat-and-die frenzy, and as a result only half survived.

Since Rex's main objective had always been assassinating the fourth-tier fiend, the operation had technically been a success, but it was also an episode that had left a lingering unease.

As Duke nodded to himself over an operation that, compared to the original, had gone off perfectly, a little girl walked up to him.

"Sir Knight!"

At the small child's call, Duke had to bow his head even lower than usual.

"What is it, child?"

His voice was, as always, deliberately deep and dignified, but his tone was one he normally never used.

'No matter how committed I am to the bit, I can't go scaring a kid.'

Rex, Ari, and even the adventurers accompanying Duke were all stunned by his uncharacteristically gentle tone, but Duke paid it no mind.

The girl, apparently still lacking enough big data on knights in this world, reached out with her eyes shining.

As Duke silently admired her smile, the girl giggled and pulled a red flower ornament from her pocket.

"Sir Knight! This is a flower I made with my mom!"

At those words, Duke lifted his head for a moment.

Fortunately, or so it seemed, there was someone among the prisoners who looked to be the girl's mother.

She looked as though she knew she should stop the child, but was too frightened to know what to do.

But seeing that, Duke felt something a little different.

'Guess I don't need to worry about saying the wrong thing, then.'

If the topic of a keepsake left behind by a deceased mother had come up, wouldn't a careless word have completely blown his cover?

Of course, the risk of blowing his cover still remained even now, but at least it wasn't as high as he'd worried before.

Duke raised a hand slightly, signaling to the mother that it was all right, then turned his attention back to the girl.

The girl, delighted for some reason, smiled bashfully and stood on her tiptoes, lifting the flower up.

"Here! I'll give it to you, Sir Knight!"

Duke silently looked down at the flower the girl had made.

It was a red camellia, knitted(?) together.

Compared to an ornament a craftsman had made stitch by careful stitch, it was quite crude, but that hardly mattered.

Duke, who had kept silent all this while, took a step back from the girl.

And what followed was something no one present could ever have imagined.

Fwip.

Duke knelt before the girl, so deeply that the hem of his cloak touched the mud.

"Gasp."

Duke was curious who had gasped, but he couldn't turn his head in a moment like this, so he focused only on the girl before him.

The girl, too, tilted her head, seemingly still not understanding what Duke was doing.

Duke spoke to her in a voice a little softer than before.

"Little one. Would you pin that medal onto my cloak for me?"

The girl, realizing what he meant,

"Yes!"

pinned the red camellia ornament onto Duke's left chest with a spotless, bright smile.

The girl smiled.

"It's pretty!"

"I shall treasure it."

Duke pulled off his glove and stroked the girl's head with his bare hand, then sent her back to her mother.

When he returned to the group afterward, Ari looked at Duke's cloak with a worried expression.

"It'll probably be a few days before we reach somewhere we can wash it. Will you be all right?"

She was surely referring to the mud on the hem of his cloak.

But Duke paid it no mind.

"Worn boots and a soiled cloak hem are a knight's true medals. Don't concern yourself with it."

Hearing that line, she marveled, thinking, 'As expected···!'

The other adventurers nearby were equally impressed.

"Ugh···!"

A few of the adventurers even clutched their chests and collapsed, hit by a lethal dose of romantic shock.

Basking in the reverent gazes drawn by the camellia ornament, Duke puffed out his chest proudly, as if to show it off.

In his line of sight, he spotted the girl waving brightly from among the prisoners.

"Sir Knight! When I grow up, I'm going to become a knight too!"

Duke returned the pure-hearted girl's words with a salute, thinking to himself,

'Hm. I think I might've gone a little too easy killing those fiend bastards.'

***

On the way back to the domain's capital(?).

Inside the carriage, Duke enhanced his hearing and eavesdropped on the adventurers' conversation.

- "I'm telling you, it was like whoosh! Boom! and he just wiped out the fiends!"

- "You guys really needed to see it!"

The whole time he listened to their chatter, the corners of Duke's mouth, hidden beneath his helmet, refused to come back down.

'Yes. Spread my legend even further.'

This was precisely the reason he had 'deliberately' included a few adventurer parties in the breach team.

After all, someone had to witness his unrivaled feats for his legend to spread, didn't they?

(Of course, to Rex, he had claimed it was purely for combat support and as a just-in-case reserve unit, feigning caution.)

This was how, one piece at a time, the legend needed for the final boss known as the Sword of the Empire was being built.

And so, on the way back to the capital, Duke used tales of his own heroics as a lullaby and took a short nap.

Over the following days, they entrusted the prisoners to the nearby village,

returned to the capital to collect their reward,

and spent several more days catching up with the adventurers.

While Rex was busy handling one thing after another, a letter arrived for him.

[The lord's invited us to a party. Says it's to thank us for rescuing the citizens this time.]

The envelope contained four enclosed invitations.

At Rex's voice ringing in their heads and the message floating before their eyes, Ari and Duke each felt something different.

'At last, Lord Rex is being recognized and rising in the world!'

'Looks like that old geezer's decided to go for broke.'

Duke had no trouble guessing the lord's intentions from that letter.

Now that the fiend he'd so carefully(?) raised had been slain and he hadn't even gotten the heart, the man had probably well and truly lost it.

With little of his lifespan left anyway, he was probably scheming, out of desperation, to do something about Rex.

'The original story's party had been held for that very reason too.'

Since this party had existed in the original story as well, it was an event Duke had already anticipated.

There was, however, one unfortunate fact the count wasn't aware of.

'Rex wasn't a misunderstanding-driven protagonist for nothing.'

In that party, Rex had somehow managed to survive no matter what.

The count, misjudging Rex's combat strength, had planned to weaken him with poison slipped into his wineglass and then assassinate him.

But Rex, claiming he couldn't hold his liquor, hadn't drunk any, and had gone and invited another lord to the party of all things, completely blocking off the plan to have his vassals jump him as well.

'Who's going to believe a superhuman claiming he can't hold his liquor, or that he just happened to run into another domain's lord on the street and invited them to the party?'

Naturally, to any third party, it looked as though the count's scheme had been read and he'd been played like a fiddle in Rex's hands.

Of course, all of this had happened without Rex having the faintest awareness of it.

In the end, the party became an event that gifted the already thinning, balding count with a vicious case of stress-induced hair loss.

'Then I guess there's no need to bother normalizing anything this time — I can just go enjoy the party.'

Especially since Duke would be there this time too, which should put a limit on how underhanded the count could get.

Having finished his thoughts, Duke feigned innocence and made a suggestion to Rex.

"I believe it would be best to have formal attire made before the party."

Naturally, Rex balked at the idea.

For a homebody loner like him, going out to be fitted for clothes was simply too cruel an ordeal.

[Could we maybe go get fitted tomorrow instead?]

Of course, that was not an option.

Ari, already well used to her master's personality, dragged him straight out of his room.

"Let's go get you fitted, Master."

If the sight of her hoisting Rex over her shoulder and hauling him off to the tailor's looked exactly like a bride-kidnapping, that was surely just one's imagination.

And so Duke headed off with the two of them to the tailor's shop that had, by now, become their regular haunt.

Ding-a-ling.

As the doorbell chimed, a warm-faced dwarf lady greeted them from inside the shop.

"Welcome. What brings you in today?"

"We've come to be fitted for clothes."

Duke, as the group's representative, stated their purpose.

At his words, she couldn't quite hide a look of awkwardness.

"Oh dear. If it's ready-made clothing you're after, that's fine, but a proper fitting today might be difficult."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"Someone made a reservation before you today."

"Hm. I see."

Had Duke been an ordinary knight of this world, he might have made a scene, demanding how dare she prioritize someone else over him — but he was different.

"Understood. Then I shall come back tomorrow."

The shop owner, having come to know Duke's temperament well by now, had spoken up precisely because of that.

Duke turned to leave the shop with a disappointed Ari and a relieved Rex in tow.

But before he could even open the door, someone else rang the shop's doorbell and stepped inside.

"We've been expecting you! Welcome!"

The shop owner greeted the customer who had just walked in with a high-pitched, excited voice.

The moment Duke recognized the newcomer's face, the shop owner's excited voice seemed to reach him in slow motion.

Black bobbed hair and eyes like obsidian.

It was her — the very woman Duke had so longed to see.

And as she stepped into the shop, she too seemed to be living inside that same slowed-down time as Duke.

"You are···"

"Sir, you're···"

Duke and her — Hana — parted their lips at exactly the same moment.

The two of them closed their mouths, each yielding the chance to speak to the other.

Then, realizing the other had just yielded to them, they both opened their mouths again at the same time.

"It's been a while."

"I didn't expect to see you here."

The two of them, noticing their words had overlapped yet again, burst into quiet laughter.

At this all-too-human exchange between a knight so exemplary he barely seemed human,

and a queen so perfect she seemed impossible to approach,

each of their respective companions was stunned.

'So he has a side like that too.'

While their companions were busy entertaining roughly that kind of thought, the two of them sank into a world entirely their own.

"What brings you here, Sir?"

"I came to have my companions' clothes made."

Duke stepped aside slightly and introduced his companions.

She immediately recognized the man and woman behind Duke as his liege lord and his maid.

"My apologies. Seeing a familiar face, I got carried away. Though it's a bit late, may I introduce myself?"

Rex nodded.

"I am Lord Sneria, who governs the domain to the east of this one."

Watching her introduce herself to Rex by title rather than by her given name, Duke let out a sigh of relief without even realizing it.

Then, catching himself doing that, he stiffened his cheeks.

'Was that... jealousy?'

Duke was flustered for a moment, but quickly admitted it.

So what if he was jealous?

Meanwhile, having finished introducing herself to the others, Hana turned her gaze toward Duke.

And with a soft smile she never showed her own vassals, she said,

"Sir. If it isn't too much trouble, would you care to have your clothes fitted together with us?"

At her suggestion that they join together, Rex shook his head behind Duke's back at a frantic 250Hz, but Duke calmly ignored it and nodded.

"I shall gratefully accept your kindness."

Gyaaah—

From behind him came the sound of Rex melting like a slime, but Duke couldn't have cared less.

***

In the meeting that had come together at the tailor's shop, the two groups talked as they were fitted for clothes.

- So, how Lord Duke and I first met···

- Hoho. I see.

The conversation revolved mostly around Ari and Hana.

Duke, for the sake of his image, might offer the occasional reaction, but idle chatter didn't suit him,

and Rex was simply someone who couldn't hold a conversation to begin with.

As a result, Hana was quickly able to grow close with Ari.

As they talked, Hana also tried to break the ice with Rex.

As a first step, Hana gave him permission to speak informally.

"There's no need for you to speak so formally with me either, Lord Rex."

If Duke spoke informally to Hana, then it stood to reason that Rex, as Duke's liege, ought to speak informally with her as well.

However,

- No no no no way

With that sort of aura radiating off him as he shook his head with all his might in refusal, her attempt ended in failure.

And so was born an unprecedented, rock-paper-scissors-esque tangle of formality: Rex spoke formally to Hana, Hana spoke formally to Duke, and Duke spoke formally to Rex.

Ari and the vassals were thrown into confusion by this tangled mess, but the people actually involved carried on their conversation without a second thought.

"By the way, might I ask what Lord Rex thinks about the duties of a ruler?"

In the midst of their talk, she brought up a question she had been mulling over for a long time.

Just what sort of philosophy did the lord Duke served hold, anyway?

At her question, Rex, stumbling over his words, somehow managed to answer.

"I... think it means being responsible for as much as the power you've been given."

Hana's face lit up at Rex's philosophy, and she voiced her agreement.

But Duke, listening to their conversation, thought differently.

'Subtly different, though.'

Rex didn't want to sit in that seat precisely because a ruler had to bear responsibility.

Hana, on the other hand, held her seat because she believed she was the only one who could fulfill a ruler's responsibilities.

But···

'Ironically, Rex suited the role of ruler better than Hana did.'

To put it a little coldly, she simply lacked the ability to realize her ideals as a ruler.

Of course, her character was upright, and by this world's standards, her abilities were considerable.

But to achieve her ideals, her abilities remained stuck at a medieval level.

Having to devise welfare and reinvestment policies with no precedent, all on her own, brought friction from every direction,

and on top of that, she'd even had to give up strength as a ruler in order to pursue it.

'Rex, though, could manage both at once.'

By comparison, when it came to domestic governance, Rex operated on a level where even she would have to concede a step.

He ran his domestic administration on a scale that went beyond a single domain, rivaling a kingdom or even an empire — comparing the two was practically nonsensical to begin with.

'Dreams are noble, but reality is this cruel, isn't it.'

Duke watched Hana, delighted to have finally met someone who shared her philosophy, and gave a bitter smile.

*

Before long, once her conversation with Rex had wound down, Duke called out to her.

"Something the matter, Sir?"

Duke looked at her face and hesitated for a moment, but soon made up his mind.

'Well, a little variation like this should be fine, shouldn't it.'

In the original story, the lord of another domain whom Rex had invited to the party had been none other than Hana.

In the original story, Rex had assumed that someone as important as a lord being left uninvited to a neighboring domain's party meant she was practically being ostracized, and so, out of pity, he had handed over his invitation.

But in this world, Duke decided to indulge in a very small whim of his own.

"By any chance, could you clear your schedule for next week?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Lord Karognar has invited my liege and me. I happen to have one invitation left that lets me bring a partner, and you came to mind."

"But why would···"

Duke, recalling a line she had often said in the original story, spoke.

"There's a saying in the East: the first time is chance, the second is inevitability, the third is fate."

At Duke's words, Hana caught her breath.

Duke drew the envelope out from inside his cloak.

"Would you grant me the honor of escorting you?"

At Duke's question, Hana nodded and took the envelope he held out to her.

*

Duke watched her accept the letter with shy hands and turned his own words over in his mind.

The first time, chance.

'We met by chance in this domain,'

The next, inevitability.

'and met again, inevitably, in this tailor's shop,'

The third, fate.

'so I'll have to make it fate at the party. Heheh.'

While he was thinking that, Hana's thoughts ran a little differently.

'The first time was on the battlefield.'

'The second was in this domain.'

'Then this time···!'

If she had been a beastkin, her tail would surely have been spinning like a propeller by now.

And so the two of them smiled at each other, each holding a different thought in their heart.

A subtle misunderstanding lingered between them, but it was the sort of small thing that could turn up in everyday life too.

Still, to the two of them, that subtle difference didn't matter in the least.

'Fate is something I make for myself.'

'That line, and everything else — could this be what they call a match made in heaven?'

In the end, when you looked only at the outcome, it really, truly was nothing more than a trivial difference.