Chapter 107
Volunteering with Roselin.
Well... to be honest.
“Thank youuu!”
“Goodness, how can I ever repay you...?”
“Waaah... bread...”
“M-my legs don't hurt...! What a miracle...!”
It was rewarding.
Watching Roselin pour divine power without restraint into treating all sorts of illnesses in children who had been suffering because they couldn't afford medical care.
I found myself thinking that she really was a saintess.
I was able to experience the truth of the world all over again.
I love children.
But what is better than children?
Healthy children.
I was free to make such leisurely observations.
I wasn't actually doing anything.
Whenever there was something heavy to carry, Roselin would lift it all with a single finger, saying, ‘The author must be getting tired!’
All I did was trail along behind Roselin, acting as the face of the operation.
Of course, being allowed to tag along with the volunteering was a good thing, but at this rate, the reason I'd come along──
“Kim Yul, did you know?”
“That saintesses don't eat apples?”
“……? I like apples. Um, that's not the joke I meant. Actually...”
As we walked down a quiet, empty street, Roselin whispered into my ear.
The voice that flowed in alongside her sweet scent was.
“They say black mages have been gathering in the capital recently, as though summoned by someone.”
It didn't contain anything sweet at all.
No wonder I'd noticed the number of strange red dots slowly increasing whenever I zoomed out the map lately.
The black mages? Those guys.
Those unlucky idiots who got saddled with the blame while smuggling during that Trojan Horse business.
But the fact that someone seemed to have summoned them......
“Bertus, is it that old man again?”
After botching a coup once.
And if the emperor hushed it up and let him off, shouldn't he just live quietly? Is he seriously insane?
But as if to refute my deduction, the saintess shook her head.
“Duke Bertus has nothing to do with it. Ah! Neither the Holy Kingdom nor the High Priest, of course.”
So this wasn't it.
A petty thief becomes a cattle thief, and once you start buying monthly subscriptions, before long you're buying trucks too.
“Then you don't know who's behind it, either?”
Roselin gently shook her head.
“Actually, that's one reason this kind of volunteer work is necessary. Poor and starving people are easily swept up in such temptations, and they're often offered as living sacrifices as well.”
“Huh...”
I had thought this was a fantasy land closer to a trashy romance-fantasy world, but it even had elements of dark fantasy.
Swallowing down the slight bitterness, I asked about something I'd been curious about all along.
“What on earth do these black-mage fellows want, that they go around causing trouble everywhere?”
Roselin gave me the answer.
“I'm not certain, but they claim that this world is a flawed, false world, and therefore needs to be merged with the true world, the Demon Realm. In other words...... it seems they want the Demon Realm to devour the entire continent.”
That sounded like an apocalypse cultist's idea layered on top of a conspiracy theory.
If Roselin's deduction was correct.
I could fully understand why they were hostile toward me.
Of course.
At present, my identity was that of a hero who would conquer the Demon Realm.
Ultimately, I was a hero who would close the Demon Realm.
“But why are you only telling me this now?”
I asked again about the one question that still hadn't been answered, but by then we'd passed through the alley, where there had been no sign of anyone, and stepped back into the sunlight.
That was why.
Instead of answering my question, Roselin merely raised a finger and lightly pressed it against my lips.
It was a remarkably soft and warm sensation.
* * *
A few days later.
“Hmm, good.”
Kim Yul praised himself as he reread the manuscript he'd written.
## ====== ##
Listening to the sound of the cold late-autumn rain striking the window.
A key figure in the current Directory government.
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès was anxiously waiting for someone.
The wait wasn't long.
A moment later, a brief commotion arose at the mansion's entrance, and then the butler announced that a guest had arrived in his study.
Skin darkened by the sun of Egypt.
Disheveled hair.
Gray eyes that seemed to see straight into the human soul.
It was Napoleon Bonaparte.
After exchanging formal greetings, sharing a glass of wine each, and briefly discussing soulless Egypt.
“General, let me be frank. France is rotting.”
Sieyès broached the subject directly.
Napoleon, too, answered in a heavy voice without a hint of fluster, remaining perfectly still.
“There is no bread in the streets, the treasury is empty, and enemies seeking to invade France are gathering once again.”
Though the phrasing was somewhat rough.
It was an accurate diagnosis of the current situation.
“The fools in the Council of Five Hundred do nothing but spout armchair theories, while greedy men like Barras are concerned only with lining their own pockets. The Revolution has lost its way. If this continues, the House of Bourbon will return, or the Jacobins' guillotine will once again scatter blood.”
Napoleon leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.
“So you called me for that?”
Sieyès quietly nodded.
“Because the people worship you as a hero, and the army would leap into the fires of Hell at your command.”
At those words, Napoleon's brow furrowed slightly.
Sieyès's words were not wrong.
If anything, that was precisely why the proposal did not feel particularly appealing.
No matter how he thought about it.
It looked as if the old man intended to use him to seize power, then turn him into a military puppet and wield him this way and that.
‘This old fox thinks he's the master of the chessboard.’
Napoleon scoffed inwardly.
But outwardly, he was nothing more than a sturdy soldier.
“Do you want a coup?”
“Let us call it a revolution to save the Revolution.”
The gazes of the two men collided in midair.
(To be continued.)
## ====== ##
In novels, particularly serialized novels, the most important thing is to capture the readers' interest.
That is why placing a passage capable of focusing the reader's attention at the end of a serialized novel—the so-called ‘hook’ or ‘cliffhanger’—can be an effective serialization strategy.
In the rough draft Kim Yul had just written, the mention of the coup served exactly that purpose.
This also stemmed from his personal experience: if he ended a novel with a bland sentence like, ‘People ought to live good lives......,’ the comments dropped by half.
After checking for typos with a spellchecker, Kim Yul immediately printed the manuscript.
Lately, besides writing his novel, there had been many other things requiring his attention, and the serialization had already fallen a little behind.
He needed to take it straight to Chloe if it was to be published without a hitch.
.
.
.
“Agyagyak! Please come back quickly, desuwa...!”
After finally getting his fill of gently fiddling with Chloe's unbandaged ears and satisfying the longing that had built up during that time.
Kim Yul walked slowly with the minimap floating before him, keeping his eyes on it.
Red.
When he subtly turned his head so the other party wouldn't notice, he saw a slender man with a robe pulled over his head.
In fact.
That was also why Kim Yul had begun falling behind on his manuscript deadline.
After hearing Roselin's warning.
In life, whoever strikes first wins.
He had set out with one thought: before they could screw him over, he would screw them over first.
If possible, it would be best to dig out whoever was behind them as well.
That was why.
Kim Yul deliberately stepped into a damp, gloomy back alley.
Then he quietly summoned Hector, letting it envelop his body.
Soon after.
“Heh-heh, heh......!”
No matter how badly he had underestimated Kim Yul, the owner of the dot that had been blinking bright red on Kim Yul's minimap since earlier drew a knife and swung it at him.
The dagger rushed in along an exquisite trajectory and lodged in his chest, piercing his flimsy scrap of cloth.
Kaaang──!
A fierce metallic clang rang out.
“──?!”
Before the attacker could recover from his shock.
Kim Yul's fist smoothly flattened the bridge of his nose.
Blood burst from both of the staggering attacker's nostrils, but Kim Yul gave him no time to regain his footing and rammed into him with his shoulder.
Along with the sharp pain of his ribs breaking.
The attacker's consciousness went dark.
“Phew.”
What lingered at the scene was Kim Yul's sigh.
The imperial capital was far too dangerous a place for a good-natured novelist to live. It wasn't for nothing that he had ordered Tin Can to refrain from going outside.
With hands now completely accustomed to the task, he searched through the attacker's clothes.
He found several cursed ritual implements.
And a small booklet called the ‘Book of the End,’ practically a scripture that black mages always carried with them.
“This one's small fry too.”
Unfortunately, the minimap had no function for assessing combat power, so Kim Yul had no choice but to eliminate dangerous elements one at a time whenever he got the chance.
He ought to confiscate them as evidence, he thought, and reached for the ritual implements and booklet.
Flutter──
A sheet of paper fluttered down from between the pages of the Book of the End.
Before it could land on the dirty ground, Kim Yul successfully snatched it with Hector's physical prowess.
His gaze slowly slid over the words written on the paper.
[皇子曰 晦卽時 殺水拏]
Though it was written in a demonic tongue said to be used by almost no one on the continent outside the Empire, as if to emphasize security.
Unfortunately, the man reading it happened to have an exceptional grasp of the demonic language... Classical Chinese.
“Hwangjawa, hoejeuksi, sal-suna.”
He could read it immediately.
Of course, he couldn't grasp the meaning at a glance and had no choice but to ponder it for a moment.
Taken literally.
“The prince says, ‘When the moon wanes, now is the time. Kill. Seize the water.’”
But that didn't make a proper sentence.
However, Kim Yul's homeland was the Land of Eastern Courtesy, a place that loved playing games with Chinese characters.
Then he remembered the grace of Seol Chong.
Setting aside the portions whose meanings were clear, and reconsidering the utterly inscrutable ‘sal-su-na (殺水拏)’ part......
“Kill Suna. Suna, Suna, Shuna......”
Within Kim Yul's narrow circle of acquaintances, there was only one person whose name had a similar sound to Suna.
Duke Shunaisen.
The terrifying man who had brought Chloe into the world.
He raised his head and looked up at the moon, which was shyly revealing itself in the sunlight.
It was nearly gone.