Chapter 2: Meeting on a Street Corner in Van (part 4)

News about typhoons can be a matter of life and death, so I'd like to figure out

something... I thought.

As I was thinking about that, I heard a sudden sigh.

"To think they'd use the Jewel Voice Broadcast like this..."

In front of me, a girl dressed like an adventurer stood with her back facing me.

She stood with her back straight, her airy golden ponytail swaying behind her. For a

moment, I thought she looked a lot like Liscia, but this girl had her hair tied back in a

higher position, and Liscia's hair was medium-short now. The girl turned to show

me her pretty face in profile.

"We absolutely must implement this system in our country," she said. "When I

return, I'll draw up a proposal for it. Still, just how would you come up with such an

advanced idea?"

She asked me that with a straight face.

What's this, out of nowhere? I was thinking, when Juna stood up beside me. Then

she placed herself between the girl and me.

"Juna?" I asked.

"Be careful," Juna cautioned as she stood there to protect me. She had a grim look

on her face, and it was apparent from her tone of voice that she was worried. "This

girl is an accomplished warrior. It's regrettable that Aisha isn't here. Even if I were

ready to die taking her down, I don't know that I could stop her..."

"Is she that strong?" I asked.

Seeing the cautious reaction from Juna, the girl with the ponytail grinned. "You

needn't worry, I have no hostile intent, Lorelei Juna Doma."

Juna inhaled sharply. "You know me..."

"Of course," she said. "I approached you because I'm aware of who you are. We

have agents of our own, after all."

That means she knows who I am, too, huh, I thought.

She must have planned to make contact here knowing that I would be coming in

disguise. This had happened because the establishment of an intelligence corps for

the kingdom had been delayed by my doubts in the personnel I had to run it.

But, if she says she has no hostile intent...

"You're with the Empire?" I asked.

"Yes," the girl said, bringing a hand to her chest and bowing her head. "It's a

pleasure to meet you, Sir Souma Kazuya. I am the younger sister of Empress Maria

Euphoria of the Gran Chaos Empire, and the one who handles military affairs in her

stead, Jeanne Euphoria."

I whispered to Juna, "What happened to our guards?"

"It seems she has guards of her own, so they can't move," answered Juna.

"That would be why she came alone, huh," I said. "...Take care of Tomoe for me."

I left Tomoe, who was groggy from being suddenly shaken awake, with Juna and

stood facing Jeanne Euphoria. She had been in the reports I'd received. There was a

princess who handled military affairs under the Saint of the Empire, Empress Maria

Euphoria; and, as Maria was currently unwed, she was also the first in the line of

succession. This must be her sister, I reasoned.

"Does Madam Maria's younger sister have some business in our country?" I

asked.

I made a point of talking down to her. Because our country hadn't signed the

Mankind Declaration, I didn't have to pay respects to Empress Maria as my leader. In

other words, as both of us were leaders of independent nations, my rank was equal

to Maria's. And seeing as Jeanne was the younger sister of the empress, her rank was

that of a vassal, and so I was above her. I had no desire to put on airs with my own

vassals, but when dealing with foreigners, it was important that our positions be

made clear.

Jeanne responded as if that were perfectly natural. "No particular business. I

simply wished to see how the person I'll be negotiating with rules for myself, but my

agents received information that you would be sneaking into the castle town today,

so I thought I might as well come introduce myself."

So she hadn't originally planned to meet me. She'd just happened to learn I was

taking a day off while she was here, so she'd attempted to make contact.

"Still, it was quite bold of you to come into Van while we're occupying it," I said.

"I'm the type that only believes what she's seen with her own two eyes, after all,"

Jeanne replied. "The rumors about you have reached as far as the Empire, many of

them unsubstantiated, so I wanted to find out for myself."

Rumors? There are rumors about me in the Empire? I thought.

"What sort of rumors would those be?" I asked.

"They say things like: you're 'the brilliant ruler who rescued an economy on the

brink of collapse,' or that you 'invented ways of preparing foods that there had been

no custom of eating before and saved the country from a food crisis,' or that you

'demonstrated unparalleled strength in battle, mowing down swarms of enemies

one after another'... and more."

"There's been a lot of embellishment along the way, huh," I commented.

Not one of those things had been accomplished by my strength alone. The

economic restructuring had been the bureaucrats' hard work, and gathering the

ingredients and teaching us how to prepare them had been Poncho's

accomplishment. As for the war, I'd only set the armies in motion, then left the

fighting to stronger people. In the end, if you were to name one thing I'd done, "I

delegated tasks to people who could handle them" would be it.

"Oh, and there were rumors that you were an 'insatiable sex fiend,' too," Jeanne

added.

"Wait, hold on!"

Who're you calling a sex fiend?!

"Where did those rumors come from?!" I exclaimed.

"The rumor says: 'Despite being betrothed to the beautiful daughter of the

former king, he gathered beauties from around the kingdom to select a concubine,'

or something like that. Is Madam Juna here not the one chosen to be your

concubine?"

What a horrible misunderstanding! They must have been talking about the

Elfrieden Pretty Girl Grand Prix I'd run as part of my search for talented personnel.

When I'd said I was searching for people with any gift, there had been a lot of

applications in the fields of martial arts, beauty, and arts. All I'd done was create a

tournament format for them to compete in.

I hadn't even come up with the plan for Project Lorelei at that point. Come to

think of it, at the time there had been rumors that "The beauty tournament might be

for the king to find mistresses," and the nobles had all tried to send their relatives to

participate. Had other countries seen it the same way?

"A-A concubine, am I...? Well, yes, I did know there were rumors to that effect,"

Juna said, her face turning red.

Was she serious?

I hadn't known there were rumors like that... and it was kind of hard to accept it.

Ever since I had taken the throne, I had been struggling under such a murderous

workload that even my relations with Liscia had stayed completely chaste. Actually,

it was a bit late to say this now, but my relationship with Liscia had skipped over a

lot of important steps, hadn't it? We were betrothed to be married, and yet we

hadn't even been on a proper date, let alone kissed.

While I was thinking about all that, Jeanne looked at me pensively. "Hm... If that

rumor was false, I suppose I can't use that method."

"What method?" I asked.

"Well, if you were a lecherous king, I thought if I had my gorgeous sister welcome

you and ask really nicely, you might accept our requests quite easily."

"What were you planning to make the Saint of the Empire do?!" I yelped.

"It seems my sister is not overly fond of that 'saint' title, but... maybe men find her

being a 'saint' quite appealing?" she asked.

"Well... I can sort of see that," I said. "The Saint of the Empire, Maria"... The words

themselves had an incredible impact. For one thing, if a woman is being called a

saint, it makes you want to see her. It raises the expectation that she's beautiful and

noble.

...Wait, I had that title of "hero," too, now that I thought about it. Even though I'd

been summoned as a hero from another world, I hadn't done anything particularly

heroic, so I'd totally forgotten.

"Titles, hm?" Juna asked. "Do you think they find 'lorelei' appealing, too?"

"Why are you getting in on this, Juna?!" I cried.

"Oh, no... I just wondered..."

Jeanne giggled. "Hee hee! You're more fun than I thought you'd be."

Jeanne was watching us banter with a smile.

"We're not doing it because we want to amuse you, though," I said.

"No, no, the closeness between you and your vassals is a mark of the stability in

your country, I'm sure," she said. "We couldn't get away with that back home."

"...It's different in the Empire?" I asked.

"Our territory is needlessly large, and the empress's power is great," said Jeanne.

"They call her a saint and half-worship her, so everyone is very reserved around her.

About the only people she has that she can talk with casually are our family. On top

of that, my sister takes being an empress entirely too seriously, so she tries to treat

everyone equally, which leaves her in a position where she can't open up to anyone."

Jeanne shrugged her shoulders and looked at the crowd in the plaza.

"It was the same with this. Even though there's no benefit to us in helping

Amidonia after they ignored the Mankind Declaration..."

"For the younger sister of Madam Maria, with all the ideals she tries to uphold,

you take an awfully realistic perspective," I said.

"If the elder sister is a dreamer, the younger needs to be firmly grounded," Jeanne

said with a wry smile.

Hm... It felt like Jeanne was closer to my way of thinking than Maria. Instead of

embracing lofty ideals, she was the sort who could come up with pragmatic

solutions.

When you hold up ideals, people gather around you. However, if you hold up

those ideals for too long, sooner or later, you lose your path. Someone has to be

there to keep an eye on the ground in front of you. Having the more realistic Jeanne

by her side must have been what let Maria keep holding up her ideals.

The Empire had the largest population on the continent. I didn't know how many

extremely talented people they had there, but in terms of relative numbers, they

must have had far more than my country.

Jeanne pointed to image of Chris projected in the air above us. "By the way, that's

an incredible way of using the Jewel Voice Broadcast. By releasing information

regularly, you use it to help alleviate the fears of your people. Do you mind if we do

the same back home?"

"...Do as you please," I said.

I mean, it wasn't like it would be hard to imitate. It wasn't something I could

forbid her from doing, either.

"Thank you," said Jeanne. "How do you come up with such advanced ideas?"

"This is advanced?" I asked. "It was pretty normal in the world I came from."

"The world you came from... Of course." Jeanne's smile suddenly vanished.

As I was wondering what was up, Jeanne straightened her posture and bowed

deeply. She bent over until her hips were at a right angle. It was a deep enough bow

that, if the custom existed in this world, she might have done a formal kowtow

instead.

I was befuddled by her suddenly lower profile. "Wh-What's wrong? This is so

sudden."

"You've been horribly inconvenienced because of us," said Jeanne. "In my absent

sister's place, I apologize."

"You're apologizing?" I asked, startled.

When Jeanne raised her face, she bore a pained expression. "This is about the

hero summoning. It was our request that caused the Elfrieden Kingdom to summon

you to this world. My sister Maria deeply regrets that you, who had done us no

wrong, were cut off from your homeland and called to this world. Please, forgive us."

With those words, Jeanne lowered her head once more.

...Oh, is that all? I thought.

"Raise your head. It's all in the past."

"But..." she said.

"Yeah, at first, I was mad, and I worked my hardest not to get turned over to the

Empire," I said. "Now, though... when I think about it more calmly, the Empire has no

reason to want a hero."

At first, I thought they'd wanted a hero to fight back against the threat of the

Demon Lord's Domain, but the more I came to understand this world, the more I

realized that probably hadn't been it.

Right now, the Demon Lord's Domain had stopped expanding. The expansion of

the border meant that the monsters that came south were spread further, and the

various countries could handle them. It was a stalemate; with neither side able to

push forward, the situation was more or less stable.

In other words, the Empire wasn't in a situation where it would want a hero. A

superpower like the Empire had had no need to cling to a summoning ritual that the

kingdom itself wouldn't have been sure they could pull off in the first place.

Besides, when they'd summoned a hero, they'd gotten me.