Pledge of Allegiance

East End, ―― Neo City-Ket Guy

Three months after the event involving Wind Cat.

When I asked the Wind Cat's folks for their opinion on name of the village, I decided to use Felis' cat-shaped spirit pet, Ket's name. 『Guy』 was the name of cat-shaped guardian deity in the eastern region.

「Yup, the village turned out great. 」

Stone paved road, uniquely-shaped buildings (for this world) lined up along the road. Not bad at all.

I gained a lot of knowledge about construction from the numerous construction manuals I found in the dungeon; so, along with subjugation picture book members whose forte laid in construction, I drafted the blueprints of the city. Thus, under the supervision of the construction master, Alice and co from [Lost Forest], the buildings were erected.

They managed to finish the construction of this village quite early. Well, the scale was rather small since there was no need to build excessive buildings for the time being.

And although the members of three kings of underworld became legal citizen in this city governed by Rose, not every one of them lived in here. Since they had many branch organizations, it was easy to imagine the kind of chaos could erupt if all upper echelons suddenly vanished. That's why, to prevent the ensuing chaos, I decided to let the Tao Family handle that job, who were also entrusted with the transaction of the potion in black market. One of the reasons for this decision for mine was because Tao Family had the most members amongst the three kings of underworld, their members made up the most of the thousand weak villagers in this village.

The scale of this village was slightly bigger than a village, but smaller than a town. Nevertheless, the village was developed with the technology found in the dungeon, such as heating installations for using stoves and chimneys in each house, or using the power of watermills to draw water from the river located in the nearby plain.

Though I had a lot of plans to implement new technologies, the progress was currently stumped due to the lack of manpower, which happened to be our prime concern for now.

""

「Fufufufufu~n♫」

Alice, the little girl who wore a pointy hat and green robe, hummed in high spirits as she did her job in the plaza, accompanied by a kitten who sat proudly on top of a wooden crate.

Aah, come to think of it, there was something that came up when I had a discussion with Girimekhala about the defense system of this village. We'll install stone statues at the entrance of the village. That would zap any intruder who had yet to gain the permit to enter the village or arrived with malicious intentions. This safety measure was necessary since we lived in this dangerous world filled with crouching tiger and hidden dragon(TL: This is a huge misunderstanding of our MC). That's why this plan got instant approval.

The problematic part was, Girimekhala and the fanatics said that the statue must be modeled after me. But I stepped in before things went out of control, and to prevent such disasters. Thus, I decided to sacrifice Ket, Felis' pet spirit who also happened to be the origin of this village name, [Ket Guy].

That's how I forced Ket to become the model for the statue instead of me. And now, the fella works as a model.

『A~h, Supreme Ruler!』

Ket noticed me and jumped into my chest, rubbing their cheek on me. This fluffing really couldn't be helped since this kind of job was really taxing for this kitten; thus, they would start whenever they saw me.

「Yup, your fur is as good as usual, Ket.」

I patted the kitten on head,

『Hehehe~」

I watched as Ket, who closed their eyes, enjoyed the moment as I brushed their head with a wry smile on my face,

「Thanks for the hard work, Alice. Is that, water magic?」

I greeted Alice after fluffing Ket.

In contrast to the sleepy look on her face, Alice was the kind of girl who fired water magic at tremendous speed to carve the stone statue.

「Yeah! Water magic is so easy to use! Even if it was just this needle, as long as the water is fired at high speed, wood aside, it was even possible to carve metal and stone! In addition――」

After I covered Alice mouth with my right hand before she ruined the mood with her rapid speech about magic,

「I understand. In short, you want a new grimoire.」

「Not yet. After I delve even further into this magic――」

Alice made a smile unsuited for a little girl and(ED: Being greedy, eh)

ran in a strange direction. Well, not that it was bad or hurting anyone.

「Y-Yeah, do your best.」

『Yes! Ket will do their best!』

Ket raised his small paw,

「Leave it to me!」

Alice also raised her right-hand cheerfully, returning to her job.

I entered the four-story, the most conspicuous, and biggest building in the village center. This is the lord's mansion, the central government of this village.

I participated in designing the building and put a heavy emphasis on functionality. Since my sense of aesthetic was below those fellas from subjugation picture book, I only gave my opinion, on functionality in the interior, and left the rest of the design work for them.

Entering the four storied building, I found that everyone-including Rose- had already been occupied with office work.

By the way, Faf, Myu and Fen were running around in the forest outside of the village around this time, thus not present here. They still couldn't stand the complicated talk during meetings, which was natural considering their age.

The villagers stood at once, and saluted like the fanatics. Yeah, this was normal. If there was something different,

「WE PLEDGE OUR ABSOLUTE LOYALTY TO SUPREME LORD!」

Led by the leader of [Crimson Raven], Oboro, the rest of the members placed their right-hand on their left-chest.

Are you kidding me, these fellas too?… I'm sure that I wasn't the only one in this place who felt that way. Rather, Rose! What's with that shocked look on your face! I never expected these guys to turn into fanatics either! I mean, the reason why I left their training to Nemea instead of Girimekhala was to prevent something like this!

「Well, just as expected.」

Asta nodded in silence hearing Zack's remark.

Rose heaved a deep sigh.

「Well then, since Kai has come, let's begin our regular meeting.」

She declared the start of the meeting.

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