Chapter 90
Once I finally obtained an audience with His Majesty the King, I was suddenly forced into battle—a completely unreasonable demand.
The princess apparently wants a present from my Item Box unlike anything anyone has ever seen.
It seemed like a childish wish—but even though she was royalty, she was actually a child, so perhaps it was appropriate for her age.
The things I possessed weren't actually in my Item Box; I'd bought them from Shangri-La...
When I showed the princess the present I'd bought from Shangri-La, she froze with an astonished expression.
"W-what is this?!"
"You don't recognize it? This is called a 'pearl,' and—"
"Of course I know that! Pearls have been passed down through the royal family as well! But you say this is a pearl? This necklace, made of such enormous, perfectly matched beads... It cannot exist in this world... It should not exist!"
"Are you surprised?"
The nobles around us began murmuring at our conversation.
"Pearls?" "Those are pearls?" "Those enormous, perfectly matched beads?" "Impossible!"
The nobles seemed to know what pearls were. But these had been produced using the cultured-pearl technology of my original world.
That was why they did not exist in this world, which had no such cultivation technology.
The princess stared intently at the pearl necklace, then handed it to me, turned around, and lifted her golden hair.
"Yes, yes."
Once the clasp had been fastened behind the princess's neck, she ran over to His Majesty.
Then she climbed onto her father's lap, hugged him around the neck, and began talking to him about something. The king apparently doted on her, so this might work.
While I waited, Bell came over and rubbed herself against me.
"Thanks, Bell. Are you all right?"
I stroked Bell's body, which had deflected the magic, and checked her over, but I couldn't find anything wrong.
They said Forest Cat fur could repel magic too, so perhaps that was what she had used.
I looked around. All my family members were safe. Besides the mage Bell had killed, there were many other casualties among the knights and the others.
Losing one's life after being dragged into some royal and noble game like this hardly seemed worth it.
The female mage who had faced us stood there dejectedly.
So that was old lady Snowflake's granddaughter. Perhaps that old woman had been just as spirited when she was young.
After the princess and His Majesty spoke for a while, a board bearing paper and a quill was brought to the king.
But the queen, who had watched from beside him, was glaring at me. It was as though the red eyes of a black grim reaper were glowing...
Damn, she's terrifying! Wasn't she even more dangerous than that lesser dragon from earlier?
Once the king had finished signing the parchment, the princess brought it over to me.
"Here, it's yours. As long as you have this, you'll be untouchable, you know?"
"Thank you, Your Highness. I am deeply grateful."
Being forced to play along with this farce had irritated me considerably, but if this would settle everything peacefully, it was probably wiser to put away my weapon.
I didn't want anything more to do with them, and the best thing would be to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.
It would also keep everyone else from being dragged into this. Besides, with this in hand, I could shut down any interference or harassment from other nobles.
For example, any harassment directed at Primula's store could be stopped in the king's name.
It also meant I wouldn't have to keep running away whenever someone caused trouble.
"Still, the price of this necklace is almost too low, you know?"
"Um, Lilith-sama... The queen is glaring at us..."
"Yes, Father's writ won't work on Mother either, so do your best to get through this."
"Is that all?"
"There's nothing I can do!"
While I was having that conversation with the princess, the queen had somehow approached me without making a sound.
I dropped to my knees and prostrated myself on the floor, but the pressure was incredible. My back was drenched in cold sweat.
"You are Kenichi, are you not?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. I am honored beyond words that you know my name."
I froze under the tremendous pressure, like a frog staring down a snake.
I had received a writ of immunity from the king, so I thought all that remained was to go home—but once one crisis passed, another appeared.
The queen stood before me.
She wore a white dress with a large opening at the chest and a silver tiara. Her long braided hair was tied back with gold and silver ornaments.
I hadn't been able to tell while she was sitting on the throne, but she was quite tall, with long legs and broad shoulders.
She looked more like an athlete than a model...
I hadn't noticed from a distance, but she had a beauty mark beneath one eye.
Even so, that inexplicable pressure... Perhaps she possessed some special power, like magic.
"I have a question for you... You gave my daughter a necklace like that. Surely you are not about to say that you have nothing for me?"
Apparently, she was displeased that her daughter had obtained this impossible pearl necklace first.
The royal family had put my own family in danger, but my instincts were screaming that this woman was dangerous.
The princess had told me not to anger the queen, and she had been absolutely right. Defying her here would not be wise.
"Perish the thought. Of course, I have prepared a gift for Your Majesty as well."
I frantically searched Shangri-La. I found a necklace with more beads than the one I'd given the princess, priced at 5.5 million yen, and bought it.
I'd made a little money by selling various things to the princess, but now I had to hand most of it right back.
I hurriedly caught the pearl necklace as it fell, then offered it to the queen.
"Here it is."
The queen's eyes lit up when she saw the necklace I offered her, and the pressure vanished at the same time.
Then the queen turned around.
"In that case, excuse me."
I wrapped the necklace, which literally shimmered in rainbow colors, around the queen's white nape and fastened it behind her neck.
What a seductive nape. I suppressed the impulse to sink my teeth into it—and realized something.
If she faced me, I would be subjected to that terrifying gaze, like a gorgon's or Medusa's. But if I made her face away from me, she wasn't frightening.
Perhaps she would be fine if I put a blindfold on her? Of course, there was no way I could do that.
While thinking about that, I bought a full-length mirror with a pinewood frame from Shangri-La—for 6,500 yen.
In front of the mirror I had brought out, the queen began striking pose after pose.
Her face seemed somewhat flushed, and she even looked excited. I'd thought she was a terrifying, grim-reaper-like woman, but she could make expressions like that too.
The nobles watching the queen also began murmuring.
"Pearls that enormous..." "How much would something like that cost...?" "If my wife demanded something like that, it would bankrupt my territory..."
The nobles were worrying about things that were none of their concern—but this pearl necklace I'd bought from Shangri-La was the only one of its kind.
That made it impossible to put a price on. If I had to, it would be a national-treasure-class item, worth an astronomical sum.
"Your Majesty, it suits you perfectly. The noblewomen who see you wearing it will surely die of jealousy."
"Ho-ho-ho! You are absolutely right. However—"
"Is something wrong?"
"I have no idea what price to put on a gift that even His Majesty the King could not buy..."
"Not at all. If it allows me to grow closer to the royal family, its value is incalculable."
"Oh...?"
"Besides, if it is a national-treasure-class treasure, it is only fitting that it should belong to the royal family."
"I see... However, I cannot accept a treasure of this value without giving you something in return."
As she said that, the queen produced a golden object from somewhere and held it out to me.
"A key?"
The object shining gold was an intricately crafted key. It must have been worth a considerable amount all by itself.
"Indeed."
"What does it open? Or is it perhaps the key to the entrance of some dungeon...?"
"Ho-ho-ho—a dungeon? It is the key to my bedroom."
"What?!"
That was more dangerous than an unexplored dungeon. The nobles who had been listening to our conversation all began murmuring at once.
"Mother, perhaps you should stop teasing him."
The princess interrupted, but the queen completely ignored her and continued the conversation.
"Are you dissatisfied with my body?"
"No matter how you look at it, wouldn't that be going too far?"
"Since I have no objection, what problem could there be? Besides, if it cannot be exchanged for money, I cannot think of anything else."
What on earth was she suddenly talking about? Come to think of it, the Viscountess Eupatorium had said something similar.
The royalty and nobility of this world seemed to believe that anything money could not buy was equivalent to their own bodies.
If I were a knight, sharing a bed with my liege might be the greatest honor imaginable—but unfortunately, I was neither a knight nor sworn to their service.
No, before that, what about His Majesty the King...? When I looked toward him, he was staring pointedly in another direction and pretending not to notice.
This is hopeless!!
It seemed His Majesty didn't know what to do with the queen.
He even looked as though he was trying to foist his troublesome wife onto me.
Was this country really all right? I couldn't help worrying—but perhaps this was also why the queen had never had any children.
The queen struck another pose in front of the full-length mirror I had brought out.
Of course she was beautiful and had a great figure. Any man would dream of doing unspeakable things with such a beautiful royal woman.
But even if a woman that terrifying came at me naked, my little soldier would be as limp as a wilted flower—a phrase from a bygone era.
I had to change the subject and somehow distract her... Then a phrase flashed into my mind.
"Your Majesty, speaking of your bedroom, have you been sleeping better?"
"Oh! I had forgotten about that! I had been meaning to thank you for it as well. Thanks to you, I have been enjoying deep, restful sleep."
"I am delighted to hear that. In that case, the vase was definitely the cause, then?"
"Indeed."
The queen produced a folding fan from somewhere and snapped it open.
A folding fan? So they had those in this world too—or had someone from the Empire spread the idea here?
"In that case, you should dispose of that vase. Have you determined where it came from?"
"That is precisely the problem! When I interrogated the count who sent me the vase, he confessed that he had given it to me knowing it was cursed."
Interrogated—though that probably meant tortured, or perhaps they had some kind of magic for it...
"Then..."
"Indeed—the count's household will be placed under confinement. All the men will be beheaded, and the women expelled from the royal capital."
The nobles around us began murmuring.
The queen was terrifying for saying such things so calmly. She was the royal family made flesh.
"So the family will be stripped of its title and property?"
"Indeed."
They had knowingly done it, after all, so it amounted to an attempted assassination of the queen.
"But even if the women are expelled, what kind of life can noblewomen with no means of supporting themselves lead outside the city walls...?"
If a noble tried to protect the criminals' families, they would be suspected of being members of the opposition.
They might be sold to an upscale brothel for their value as former nobles, or kept by a wealthy merchant... Either way, they would hardly be able to live respectable lives.
"That is none of my concern. Thanks to you, I can purge the opposition nobles one after another. That achievement alone is more than worthy of a reward."
"Then perhaps something else would be better..."
"Hmm? Did you say something?"
The queen's eyes gleamed as she smiled pleasantly, and tremendous pressure descended on me once more.
Bell, who stood beside me, was bristling, so I held her back.
"Hey, Bell, don't attack her."
But what on earth was I supposed to do...?
As I held my head in my hands, a voice came from far away to save me.
"It's an emergency!!"
An official in light armor came running toward us, drenched in sweat.
His clothing differed from that of the castle officials, so he might have come from outside.
"Your Majesty, it's an emergency!!"
"What is all this commotion?!"
The queen raised her voice at the approaching official.
"Your Majesty—"
The official knelt before the queen and began explaining what had happened.
"A massive landslide has blocked fifty kan—approximately one hundred meters—of the Veronica Gorge road leading to the border city of Sobana! The highway has been completely buried!"
"What?!"
The queen struck her palm with the folding fan in her hand.
Even the king, who had been sitting on the throne at the back of the hall, stood up.
"The Veronica Gorge?!" "I heard the bridge to Iberis has collapsed too!" "This is a serious problem..." "If it's Sobana, our salt supply will be cut off!" "What about the sea salt coming from the south?" "The bridge to Iberis has collapsed, hasn't it?" "We must prioritize repairing that..."
The nobles and knights surrounding us began shouting, and the castle erupted into chaos.
The torrential rain from that time had washed away the bridge, but it seemed it had caused landslides as well.
But this was my chance to escape.
"Um, it looks like everyone is about to get very busy, so we'll take our leave now."
But just as I tried to leave, the princess wrapped both arms around me and clung tightly.
"You! Surely you are not planning to return to your home territory just like this?"
"A frontier mage like me doesn't seem likely to be of much use..."
"The kingdom is in crisis, and you feel nothing? Are you truly one of its subjects?"
"Well, we received such an overwhelming welcome from the royalty and nobility..."
"You! Are you trying to get revenge on us?!"
"Of course not. Besides, you have a splendid knight corps and army in the royal capital. Why not deploy them?"
"If the army leaves the royal capital, the Republic will invade us at the first opportunity!"
The nobles began murmuring again when they heard that.
"That's right..." "If the Empire learns that the Veronica Gorge is blocked, they could cross the border and invade Sobana..." "It would be disastrous if Sobana fell..."
The nobles were right. If that gorge was blocked, the royal capital couldn't send reinforcements to the city of Sobana.
"In that case, we'll be going now."
"Wait! The roads to Iberis and Sobana have now been cut off! The royal capital imports enormous quantities of supplies from every direction to feed its people! Losing two routes is the same as having both arms and legs torn off!"
The princess was hanging onto me and being dragged along.
"If repairs took a year or more, the royal capital would be overflowing with people starving to death, and the whole place would collapse."
"And you feel nothing about that?"
"Even so..."
"This is already a crisis for the kingdom itself!"
"But Lilith-sama, you called us subjects a moment ago. For ordinary people in the provinces like us, it makes no difference to our lives if the heads of the exalted people here are replaced. The only difference would be that the person sitting on that throne became—um, who was it again? Right! The Imperial Emperor Brünnhilde-sama, wouldn't it?"
"You insolent man!"
The princess suddenly bit down on my arm.
"Ow ow ow ow! What are you doing, Lilith-sama?!"
"Mmph, mmph, mmph!"
As I struggled with the princess, His Majesty the King descended from the throne and came over to me.
"I beg you as well! I apologize for summoning you here and turning you into a spectacle, as well as for placing your life in danger! I beg you, please! Save the kingdom!"
The nobles murmured when the king bowed his head to a commoner.
"Your Majesty should not bow your head to a commoner like me..."
"If it saves my people, I will bow this head as many times as necessary! Sitting on a throne as king, there is still nothing I can do. But the iron summoned beast you control will surely be of use!"
That was true. The thing he called a summoned beast was originally a machine designed for exactly that purpose.
However, if I rejected the king after he had bowed his head, I would become the villain this time.
There would probably be backlash from the nobles too. But although the king had bowed his head, the queen was pretending not to notice.
"Kenichi—I beg you as well..."
The princess looked genuinely apologetic. It seemed she hadn't been involved in this match.
Even so, I was glad I hadn't lost my temper and made an enemy of the royal family.
If I could no longer return to Dahlia or Astrantia and had to flee to the Empire, I might have been caught at the blocked gorge while trying to reach the border...
Though perhaps I could have completely collapsed the gorge with the heavy machinery and Anemone's magic, held off my pursuers long enough, and then escaped their pursuit...
But if that happened, restoring the gorge would require enormous amounts of time and resources, the border city of Sobana would be lost, and this country would truly collapse.
I would have been driven out of the country as a great criminal and hated by the people of the Kingdom of Kadan as well.
The king's decision to bow his head had been a masterstroke. A masterstroke deserved praise.
This whole affair irritated me, but as a man, I wanted to preserve the king's dignity.
"...Phew... I suppose it can't be helped. Hey, everyone! It'll be a bit of a detour, but is that all right?"
"If that's what you want, Kenichi, it's fine."
"I do not mind..."
"It's a detour, nya!"
"Nyaa."
No one seemed to object, but Nyamena was still sprawled out unconscious, which worried me a little.
"Ohhhh!"
The nobles cheered, formed a circle, and began discussing their plans.
If they organized a unit quickly and arrived first, they could make a good impression on His Majesty and the people.
It was the perfect event for winning popularity. The fact that they were thinking about their own popularity before the country itself was very typical of nobles.
But something bothered me—the nobles' associates and the knight corps had also suffered casualties, yet their reaction to that was strangely subdued.
Had they anticipated all of this?
As I pondered that, the queen walked over to the mage sitting on the floor. The mage who seemed to be the old woman's granddaughter.
"Melissa Rana Nasturtium."
"Yes, Your Majesty!"
The mage knelt and bowed respectfully before the queen.
"You seem to have grown arrogant lately, but I expect you have learned your lesson. I will give you an opportunity to erase the disgrace of today's performance. Accompany that man and assist with the work. Your golem should be able to help with the civil engineering, should it not?"
"Yes, Your Majesty! I shall engrave Your Majesty's mercy upon my heart and devote myself to the task!"
"Indeed. Apply yourself diligently."
Even if it was a royal command—going on a journey with someone who had tried to kill me and my family? This truly was a case of enemies forced to work together.
Could this disturbance have been arranged by the queen to test the strength of the suspicious mage who had suddenly appeared on the frontier with a strange summoned beast?
She had also used it to humble the mage who had grown conceited. Was that why she had allowed the princess to do whatever she pleased at my place?
But if the princess hadn't intervened, I really would have half-destroyed the castle and fled.
The risk was far too great.
The king looked like an ordinary, kindhearted middle-aged man, so did the queen hold the real power?
If the queen always caused trouble and the king bowed his head to clean up afterward, I couldn't help feeling sorry for His Majesty.
Still, with the kingdom in crisis, at least a provisional response had been devised, and the nobles looked relieved.
Or so I thought—but when I looked closely at the nobles crowding around, I saw that they were holding slips of paper.
"Primula, the nobles are holding something. They look like scraps of paper..."
"Ah, those are probably betting slips."
"What? Betting?!"
Come on! So we hadn't just been turned into a spectacle—we'd been made into pieces in a gambling game too?
I confronted the princess about it.
"Lilith-sama! Did you treat us like pieces in a bet?!"
"Don't be so angry. This is perfectly normal, you know?"
"Then which side did you bet on, Lilith-sama?"
"Naturally, I bet on you! All the nobles bet on 'Elegant Melissa,' but nobody knew that you could use such incredible magic! I won a fortune! Ha-ha-ha!"
How shameless... But she certainly was calculating.
According to Primula, mages and knights fought matches before nobles fairly often.
Put simply, it was job hunting—a sales pitch. They showed nobles that they possessed magnificent magic or sword skills in the hope of being hired.
Apparently, many people also challenged famous mages and knights to matches as a way of making a name for themselves.
They usually got beaten in return, but matches like this one apparently weren't unusual.
If the nobles saw it as a sales pitch by wandering mages and knights, perhaps they felt no guilt about watching it or turning it into a subject for betting.
From their perspective, the casualties were probably just unfortunate accidents—like getting caught in a crash at a racetrack.
Even Primula, who knew about these events, had never imagined that we would end up fighting.
I mean, I'd thought it was just going to be an audience with the king... Seriously.
The audience and the match were over, and the nobles hurriedly began leaving.
They now had to gather supplies and personnel on short notice. The country itself would have to mobilize too.
Just as with the irrigation canal construction in the viscount's territory, sending several hundred workers from each domain would require supplies to support them.
Securing and transporting those supplies was an urgent matter. But this time, His Majesty the King would be handling it.
I would merely be cooperating with him.
Since delaying action could destabilize the country, things would probably proceed as quickly as possible—probably.
One man approached from among the nobles preparing to leave.
He was an older man with long, graying hair tied back, wearing a blue outfit decorated with gold thread.
"Excuse me, but I am Count Euphorbia."
"Yes, I am the mage Kenichi. Pleased to meet you—and thank you for introducing yourself."
He seemed mild-mannered and like a respectable noble. But I still couldn't trust him.
After what had happened, it would have been foolish to expect me to trust nobles.