How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 4

by Dojyomaru

  Prologue: The Running King

  —20th Day, 11th month, 1546th year, Continental Calendar — Royal Capital Parnam

  The temperature had gotten just a little chilly on this clear day in a temperate autumn.

  Fall is said to be the season for eating, for reading, and for art; but for me, right now, fall was the season for sports.

  “Come on, three more laps! Lift those legs more! Focus on your leg biceps!” Owen bellowed.

  “Urgh...” I groaned.

  I had been running laps around the castle guards’ training grounds for more than half an hour while my advisor and educator, Owen Jabana, shouted at me with his throaty voice. For some people that might not seem like much, but for an indoorsy guy like me, it was pretty tough. If I had been taking it at my own gentle pace, it would have been easy, but as I stumbled along, I was subjected to Owen’s overbearing encouragement.

  “Gahaha! Muscles will never betray your hard work!” he hollered. “They say a healthy mind resides in a healthy body! Surely healthy politics reside in the body of a healthy ruler, too! Now, test your limits! Torment your calf muscles!”

  “I-I’m not into... tormenting myself...” I managed.

  Ever since I had put Owen in charge of my education, he had taken to dragging me out to the training grounds whenever there was time. Then I would be subjected to a training menu of running, practice swings, mock battles with Owen, and more. The goal was to train me up to the same level as a lance corporal, apparently.

  With the running finished, I collapsed and lay with my back on the ground.

  “A-Are you all right? Sire?” Aisha sounded concerned as she offered me a towel.

  “I-I seriously think... I’m gonna die.” When I said that as I accepted the towel and wiped the sweat off, Owen laughed it off.

  “I have a firm grasp of when it would become dangerous, so you’ll be fine. I’ve learned how to work off your excess energy these past few days. You should be good to run another ten minutes.”

  “Have some mercy already... I’ve got duties to attend to after this,” I muttered.

  “You won’t be moving then, so how about you rest your body while you do your administrative work?”

  “I’m asking you to give me a break because I’ll get sleepy if I do that!” I snapped.

  Admittedly, even if my main body fell asleep, the portions of my consciousness that were partitioned into my living poltergeists would remain awake, so it would only be a loss of one man’s worth of work power; but this still really wore me out.

  “Um, sire? If this is so hard on you, perhaps you shouldn’t push yourself...” Aisha said, concerned.

  However...

  “Physical training is important,” Liscia said flatly. She had arrived at some point. “We need Souma to stay healthy. Besides, Souma doesn’t mind it as much as he lets on.”

  “What? Is that true?” Aisha asked.

  “Souma lived with his grandfather in his old world, right?” Liscia asked. “I’d say the reason he doesn’t give up, even with all his whining, is that Sir Owen reminds him of his grandfather, don’t you think?”

  “...Well, that may be part of it,” I admitted.

  When I saw the cheerful old man, I couldn’t help myself... you know. My grandpa wasn’t a muscle-bound macho man like Owen, but it was true that this reminded me of old times.

  “So, did you come here to see me about something, Liscia?” I asked.

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Hakuya was looking for you. He said something about an important report.”

  “I see...” I said. “You heard her, Owen. You’ll have to let me off now.”

  Owen shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “Very well, then we’ll continue once you’ve finished listening to that important report.”

  “You’re planning to keep going, huh...?” I found the energetic old man’s eagerness a little exhausting.

  When I went back to the governmental affairs office, Hakuya was waiting for me with a composed look on his face.

  “Is the report about the clandestine operation we discussed?” I asked.

  Hakuya bowed politely. “Yes. The work is proceeding apace. It’s going smoothly... I suppose you could say.”

  “Hm? Is there something bothering you about it?” I asked. I felt like there was something off about the way he’d said that.

  Hakuya took on a pensive look. “I find it has been going a little too smoothly. I feel as though there’s a hand other than ours at work. If there is, it’s possible to imagine a situation where the result turns into something we didn’t expect.”

  “I’d like to avoid any surprises, but... it’s too late to stop now,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  No matter how much my clever vassal and I schemed, the situation never went quite as we envisioned. In the earlier war, unforeseen happenings had been guaranteed to come up. That was why we always had to be prepared. So that, no matter what result awaited us, we could react.

  “We can’t make changes to the plan,” I said. “Move forward cautiously while keeping a careful eye on the situation.”

  “Understood.” Hakuya bowed.

  I stretched my arms wide. “Well, then... guess I’ll get back to the training grounds. If I take too long, Owen won’t let me hear the end of it.”

  “For all your complaining, you’re still going back for more, I see.” Hakuya rolled his eyes.

  I laughed wryly and said, “Well, I guess you could say I’m preparing for any unforeseen happenings.”

  Chapter 1: Preparing for Innovation

  The Captain of the Royal Guard, Ludwin Arcs.

  Though only in his late twenties, this excellent man was the captain of the Royal Guard, charged with leading the 40,000-strong Forbidden Army in times of crisis.

  Ever since the Kingdom’s Forbidden Army and Army, Navy, and Air Force had been dismantled and reorganized as the National Defense Force, he’d been seen as the next in line to become Supreme Commander. He was currently training under the current Supreme Commander, Excel, as her second-in-command.

  He was a handsome man with straight blond hair who came from a good family. He was also highly popular with the maids who worked in the castle. However, despite all that, there were never any rumors of him becoming involved with a woman, and he had once become troubled when weird rumors started to spread that he might swing the other way.

  Speaking of weird rumors about Ludwin, there was one more: the rumor that his family finances were difficult.

  That came from the fact that Ludwin, for some reason, was always eating at the cafeteria for the maids and guards who worked at the castle, as if he were trying to keep his expenses to a minimum. He came from a good family, held an important position, and received a good salary, so it was hard to imagine; but from time to time Ludwin was spotted eating the cheapest bun that the cafeteria offered.

  In response to this, many theories were offered.

  “He wants to share his men’s joys and sorrows by eating the same things they eat,” or “By being frugal, he is preparing himself for a time of crisis” were some of the more positive interpretations. But...

  “Actually, maybe he’s a penny-pinching miser,” said some, and “Perhaps he has a lover and a secret child, and all his money goes to them,” gossiped others.

  However, while there was no talk of Ludwin making ostentatious displays of spending money, there was no sign of him saving it, either. So where was Ludwin’s salary going?

  The answer to that question was something we would eventually find out.

  ◇　◇　◇

  —Early in the 11th month, 1546th y
ear, Continental Calendar — Royal Capital Parnam

  With autumn growing deeper, the days grew gradually colder.

  With the post-war arrangements with the Principality of Amidonia concluded and the corrupt nobles that had been working behind the scenes to hinder me domestically swept aside, Elfrieden was enjoying a fleeting peace.

  Because the internal threat of the corrupt nobles and the external threat of Amidonia had both been taken care of at the same time, the people’s opinion of myself as king and Hakuya as the prime minister had improved. With the nobles who had chosen not to take a side in the conflict with the three dukes now swearing loyalty to me, I was able to quickly centralize power.

  It was that sort of autumn afternoon where I could imagine my political reforms would be moving forward in leaps and bounds.

  Currently, I was in the governmental affairs office in Parnam, showing Liscia a certain something. “Take a look at this. What do you think?”

  “It’s very... long, thin, and curved.” With a curious look on her face, Liscia stared intently at the thing I was showing her.

  “Do you want to try it?” I asked.

  “Can I? Well, then...”

  Liscia’s thin, white fingers reached for the rapier at her waist. Then, narrowing her eyes, she drew her blade and swung it at the thing. In the next instant, there was the screech of metal on metal and the tip of her rapier was cut off and fell to the ground.

  Liscia looked back and forth from the severed tip to her rapier, then cried out in surprise, “M-My sword?!”

  As Liscia lost her mind over what had happened, I let out a big sigh. “What’re you suddenly taking a swing at it for...?”

  “Well, you asked if I wanted to test it!” she exclaimed.

  “I meant for you to hold it, maybe take a few practice swings,” I said. “I have no idea why you suddenly tried slashing it...”

  Liscia could be a bit of a meat head sometimes. Was it her teacher Georg’s influence?

  “Besides, you must know what would happen when you swing two blades at each other, right?” I asked.

  Liscia’s eyes wandered around the room awkwardly. “W-Well, you know... That’s a Nine-Headed Dragon katana, right? I was interested in its cutting edge, you could say...”

  “Honestly...”

  The blade that had chopped Liscia’s sword in two was a type of katana, specifically a Nine-Headed Dragon katana, forged in the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago Union, a maritime state that ruled the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago to the east of Elfrieden.

  It was single-edged, with a thin, narrow, curved blade. There was a blood groove running between the blade ridge and back. That’s enough detail to make it clear that, for those in the know, it should have been apparent that the Nine-Headed Dragon katana closely resembled a Japanese katana.

  Unlike this country’s swords, which were meant to chop through things (the Western style), it was specially designed to cut by pushing or pulling. Exactly the same as a Japanese katana. Maybe the manufacturing process was the same, too.

  That Nine-Headed Dragon katana was out of its sheath and its blade was exposed, sitting on top of a sword rack with its blade facing upwards. That was how it had been when Liscia had taken a swing at it and lost.

  Liscia was now staring intently at the Nine-Headed Dragon katana’s blade. “It’s got an incredible cutting edge, huh.”

  “We had swords like these in the country I came from, and when it came to cutting power, they were top class,” I said.

  In one program I’d watched, I had even seen a katana cut through the stream of a water cutter (a machine that used high pressure water to cut through things), after all. They had to have some pretty impressive cutting power.

  Liscia let out an impressed grunt. “That’s really something. But what’s a Nine-Headed Dragon katana doing here?”

  “It was a gift from Excel,” I said. “It apparently came from a fishing ship from the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago that they seized.”

  “A fishing ship?”

  “There’ve been a lot of them lately, I hear. Ships from the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago that come into our waters to fish illegally.”

  In this world, there were large creatures called sea dragons (they looked like monstrous plesiosauruses with goat horns) used to tug iron ships. Sea dragons were relatively docile, but among the large sea creatures of this world, there were also vicious and dangerous ones like the super-massive sharks called megalodons. Because those sorts of dangerous sea creatures mainly lived in the deep sea, fishing was, by necessity, restricted to the coastal waters of the continent and islands.

  There were still enough fish to catch, so it wasn’t much of a problem, but in recent years, the number of ships from the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago coming to fish in our waters had increased.

  In this world, it was commonly accepted that fishing should be done in one’s own country’s coastal waters or on the open sea (though that was, of course, dangerous), and fishing in another country’s coastal waters was considered illegal. Illegal fishing ships could be seized or sunk without recourse. And yet, the number of illegal fishing vessels entering our waters was on the rise.

  Correlating with that, there had been an increase in the number of clashes between fishermen.

  “We’ve submitted a formal complaint to the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago Union, but... there’s been no reply,” I said. “I have Excel’s fleet out patrolling our waters, but it doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect.”

  “It’s a maritime state you’re dealing with, after all,” said Liscia. “They have the best shipbuilders and helmsmen in the world.”

  She was right. In the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago, they trained other creatures that could draw their ships in addition to the usual sea dragons. I had heard they were incredibly fast. That, and because fishing ships were made of wood and not loaded with cannons, they could move quickly. If they focused on trying to escape, a military ship couldn’t catch up to them.

  “Even this ship they seized recently was only caught when they had the bad luck to run aground,” I added.

  “Then why don’t we chase after them with fast wooden ships of our own?” Liscia asked.

  “If we did that and they were armed, we’d take heavy losses, you know?”

  “...You’re right.”

  It hurt that, as the ones guarding, there was a bare minimum of equipment we would need to get ready.

  Liscia crossed her arms and thought deeply about it. “Still, it’s a bit strange. It’s true that, if they make it to our coastal waters, they can fish here easily, but to get here, they have to travel over the open sea where there are large sea creatures, right? Why would they go through that risk to fish here illegally when there’s the chance they’ll be caught?”

  “Who knows...” I said. “There might be something going on in the archipelago, and there’s no way for us to find out what it is. We get barely any information on the island countries.”

  Even if I had my clandestine operations unit, the Black Cats, infiltrate the country to collect intelligence, the country was surrounded by the sea, making it hard to get information out. Messenger kuis couldn’t travel over large stretches of sea when there was no place to rest, and a jewel for the Jewel Voice Broadcast would be large enough that it would be difficult to sneak in. That, and there was the risk we’d lose it.

  In the end, we’d have to resort to sending people over the sea to deliver the information, but that would take days to arrive. Intel had to be fresh. Even if our spies got their hands on important intel, it would be meaningless if there was no way to communicate it back home immediately.

  I had asked those who, like one of our top loreleis Nanna, had drifted here from the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago, but it turned out that, while all islands swore loyalty to the Nine-Headed Dragon King, the living situation on each was different. While I could gather fragmented pieces of information, it was hard to put together any larger picture.r />
  “I’ve gotta say, it’s harder to deal with a country when you don’t know what they’re thinking than it is to deal with one that’s clearly hostile,” I said. “I don’t even know if we should be getting ready to defend ourselves.”

  “That’s true...”

  Liscia and I both wracked our brains, but we came to no conclusion.

  “Well, there’s not much point in us thinking about it here,” I said at last. “Getting back to the topic of the Nine-Headed Dragon katana, the katanas from my world were incredibly sharp, but they had the drawback that they couldn’t stand up to impacts and would break or warp easily,” I said. “But in this world, there’s enchantment magic, right? That’s how this katana is sturdy enough to stand up to trading blows for a while.”

  “That would make it the best in its class as a sword blade, yeah,” said Liscia. “But, well... that’s only for the blade itself.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We don’t fight on the strength of our weapons alone. Everyone in this world can use magic to a greater or lesser degree, and most of us use fire, water, earth, or wind elemental magic. When it comes to a fight, we can wreathe our blades with those elements, too.”

  Oh, I’ve seen that, I thought. I recalled Aisha having used wind magic to increase the cutting power and attack range of her greatsword, while Hal had used fire magic to make his weapon explode when thrown at the enemy.

  “That’s why the cutting ability of the weapon itself isn’t so important,” said Liscia. “Though, that said, I’m sure that in a battle on the seas, where everything but water elemental magic is harder to use, these would be the strongest. The main way people from the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago fight at sea is to close in quickly and board their enemies, like pirates.”

  “Hmm... It’s a weapon suited to a maritime nation, huh...” While listening to Liscia’s explanation, I looked closely at the blade of the katana. “But... I would like to get my hands on these smithing techniques.”

  “Huh? Didn’t I just tell you it’s largely meaningless?” she asked.