How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 4

by Dojyomaru

  The first thing to greet us inside was a lineup of armor. These were the suits of armor that had been worn by the past commanders of the Royal Guard. They were no longer used and were gathering dust, so I’d taken this opportunity to drag them out of storage and donate them to the museum.

  They must have drawn Aisha’s interest as a warrior herself, because she was looking at them in admiration. “They are old, but when you have so many lined up, it makes for quite the spectacle, doesn’t it?”

  “Hold on, Darlin’, what is a museum anyway?” Roroa asked.

  “Huh? Even that part wasn’t clear to you?” I asked.

  Come to think of it, when I’d first established the Royal Parnam Museum, Hakuya had said, “I hadn’t heard the idea before, but that is an interesting facility. I’d very much like to go look through it myself,” hadn’t he?

  In other words, this was the first museum to be built in our kingdom, and it was only natural that Roroa and the others wouldn’t know what one was. Were there museums in the Empire, maybe?

  “To put it in the simplest terms, a museum is a facility that gathers various things, has academics study them, and allows the general public to see them in the form of exhibits,” I said. “The goal of the institution is to deepen the understanding of those who come to see their collection, but it’s just fun to see all the novel things on display. People went on dates there in the world I came from.”

  “Hmm... It’s like puttin’ the royal treasury on display for the public, then?” Roroa asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty much exactly it. The collection contains things with literary or artistic value, as well as skeletons and preserved specimens of animals for their value in the field of natural science.”

  Then, while I was explaining, I noticed a familiar set of armor in with the collection.

  “Is this not the armor that the Captain of the Royal Guard was wearing?” Aisha noticed it, too, and asked.

  It was true, though its back was turned to us, that silver armor closely did look like Ludwin’s.

  But, that’s strange, I thought. The only armor that should be on display here is the armor the state provided to the former captains of the Royal Guard. If I recall, Ludwin’s armor was bought with his own money...

  Suddenly, that armor turned to face us.

  “Whoa!” I shouted.

  “Oh, I’m sorry...” Ludwin said. “Wait, huh? Is that you, Your Majesty?”

  Huh? It’s actually him?! While I was still shocked by the unexpected appearance of the man himself, Genia poked her head out from behind him.

  “What’re you doing, Big Brother Luu?” she asked.

  “And Genia’s with you, too,” I said. “Are you two here on a date?”

  Ludwin replied “No,” with an exhausted look on his face. “Because you said that the Royal Guard and the guards would handle security here, we’re here for a meeting on the shift rotations.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “Sorry for the trouble.”

  Because there were a fair number of valuable objects here, I had been forced to buff up security in a big way. The people managing security needed to be trustworthy, too, so I’d decided to leave it to the Royal Guard and the guards whose jobs already included watching and defending.

  “And I’m here to set up the security system Big Brother Luu asked me to install,” Genia put in. “There’re places where I have spells set to go off if you get close to them, so don’t try to go anywhere you shouldn’t.”

  “Now that’s scary...” I said.

  The overscientist Genia’s security system... The scary part was I couldn’t predict what might happen. I was imagining something like one of the complex contraptions you’d see on P*thagoraSwitch. One that ultimately chucked the offenders out the front door.

  “By the way, are you on a date here, sire?” Ludwin asked.

  “We sure are,” Roroa jumped in, wrapping herself around my arm. “It’s the three of us — Darlin’, Big Sister Ai, and me.”

  Ludwin looked confused. “Three of you? But... Ah! I-I see. Well, have fun.”

  With that said, Ludwin took Genia and left immediately.

  It seemed like he almost said something... Was it just my imagination? I wondered.

  “Anyway, shall we go?” I suggested to the other two and we moved on.

  Along the way Aisha stopped and looked back a number of times. Was something bothering her?

  “Aisha?” I asked.

  “...No, it’s nothing.” Aisha rushed over and wrapped herself around my arm.

  It couldn’t have been that one of the suits of armor had actually started to move, and Aisha had noticed and been scared... or anything like that, right? I got worried and was about to ask, when Roroa tugged on my sleeve.

  “Hey, hey, Darlin’. Why’re there nothin’ but bones on display here?”

  When Roroa asked me that in a somewhat bothered tone, I looked in front of me to see a glass case filled with the reassembled skeletons of various creatures. From a modern person’s perspective, this was a common sight at museums of natural history, but for the people of this world, it might seem wrong.

  “It’s like some bizarre ritual’s gonna start up at any moment,” she complained.

  “Ha ha ha! That’s not it,” I said. “This museum collects and exhibits historical items, books, and the skeletons and preserved specimens of living creatures, along with other items of interest to the field of natural science. What we have here are the bones we happened to excavate while trying to build sedimentation pools. The ones they’ve finished researching go on display like this. It’s not just animal skeletons; there are monsters, too.”

  “Monster skeletons... Is that okay? There’re monsters that’re nothin’ but bones, ya know?” Roroa said.

  “Well... from what the researchers tell me, those sort of skeleton monsters need magic in their bones, and once the magic is all gone, they’re just ordinary bones,” I said. “I don’t really get it myself, though.”

  They had been certified as safe by a professional mage, so I figured they were fine.

  ...Probably.

  “Still, there sure are a lot of bones,” Aisha commented. “Is this a giant deer?” She sighed in admiration at the fossil that looked like an even more massive version of the Irish elk. “I have never seen such a massive deer before, not even in the God-protected Forest. It’s surprising to hear a creature like this once lived near the capital.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The way they stir up the imagination like that is one of the best parts about museums.”

  “Yeah, the appeal of that’s not totally lost on me,” Roroa said, staring at the fossilized remains of a massive water buffalo-like creature. “I wonder what the goin’ price for a creature like this’d be. You could get a lot of meat out of it, but it wouldn’t have much flavor... Though, at this size, they ain’t gonna be much use for farming, I’m sure. I guess meat really is the best use for them...”

  “That’s what you’re imagining?! How to sell them off?!”

  “Meat, is it?” Aisha asked with an audible slurp.

  “Oh, shoot,” I muttered. “Now Aisha’s totally imagining them roasted whole.”

  W-Well, it wasn’t like everyone was going to have the same reaction to seeing the same things, and making a fuss while we looked at the exhibits like this was fun, too. Even if we had to do it quietly.

  “Huh?” I muttered.

  When I stood in front of what seemed to be the bones of ancient people, something stood out to me. With a human skeleton and a beastman skeleton on display side by side, I could see quite a few differences. The beastman’s skeleton had bones for the tail, as well as long canine teeth.

  “What is it, sire?” Aisha asked, so I tried to explain it while not really understanding what I meant myself.

  “No, when I see them side by side... It’s a mystery to me, you know.”

  “A mystery, you say?”

  “Yeah. Like, how did they evo
lve to be like this?”

  I’d been studying the humanities, so I was no expert on biology, but I knew about the theory of evolution at least. Humans had evolved from ape-like ancestors, and those ape-like ancestors had evolved from rat-like creatures, or something like that.

  So what had the many diverse beastmen, elves, and other races evolved from? Actually, did the theory of evolution even apply to this world? Though this was partly because there hadn’t been much of a search for them, we hadn’t found fossils from a hundred million years ago like the dinosaurs on Earth, so it was possible things had a different origin here...

  “Darlin’. Darlin’.” Roroa’s voice brought me back to reality from the sea of thoughts I had fallen into.

  “Huh? Ah! What is it, Roroa?”

  “Geez,” she said. “We’re supposed to be on a date here, so you can’t be ignorin’ the girls you’re with and starin’ off with a difficult expression on your face.”

  “Ahh... Sorry, sorry.”

  True, this was no time for me to be getting lost in thought and neglecting Aisha and Roroa. There was too little evidence for me to come to any conclusions anyway.

  “Well, shall we get movin’ on to the next thing?” she asked.

  With Roroa pulling me along me by the arm, Aisha and I followed after her with wry smiles on our faces.

  When we left the floor with the creature exhibit and went up the stairs, next were the various implements of civilization. Tools that people from long ago had used were lined up on display here. Ancient weapons, armor, farming implements, and even yellowed paper that looked every bit as old as it was.

  “What’s this floor all about?” Roroa asked.

  “A while back, in order to find the money for war subsidies to the Empire and to fund my reforms, I reorganized the castle’s treasury,” I said. “At the time, treasures were sorted into three categories: Category A (items with historical or cultural value), Category B (items without historical or cultural value but with monetary value), and Category C (items related to magic, or which otherwise required caution in how they were used). We only sold off the stuff in Category B, and most of the stuff on display here was sorted under Category A. Basically, this is the ‘History Floor.’”

  Roroa furrowed her brow. “Historical or cultural value... Does this yellowed paper have it, too?”

  “Naturally,” I said. “That’s a letter sent by a former king to one of his retainers. Letters are an intimate part of a people’s lives. They’re a valuable resource for information on the time in which the writers lived.”

  “I get that it’s valuable, but I wouldn’t go out of my way just to come see it,” she said.

  “Well, how about this one over here?” I asked. “This one’s a syrupy love letter written by a certain noble from long ago to the object of his affections, along with the reply gently letting him down that the lady sent back.”

  “Sure, that’s interestin’, but... don’t you think that noble’s cryin’ in his grave?” she objected.

  “...You could be right.”

  While it was academically valuable, we were still putting something that the man himself probably wanted to forget on display.

  Roroa crossed her arms and groaned to herself. “But, letters and tools, it’s all a bit plain. Don’t ya have a chief attraction of some sort that could draw a crowd?”

  “I have just the thing to show you.” I led Roroa and Aisha in front of a certain display. When they saw it...

  ““Fwah?!”” they both burst out despite themselves.

  It was a cool yet beautiful suit of armor that was made of silver and ornamented with gold. It had been lit up using lightmoss, like was used in the streetlamps, making it shine almost blindingly. The bracers, the boots, and even the sword and shield were all of the same design, and the breastplate and shield bore the crest of the royal house of Elfrieden in a way that couldn’t possibly have emphasized it more.

  “This is the chief attraction of this museum,” I said, pointing to it like a tour guide might. “‘The Full Equipment of the First Hero King.’”

  It was the equipment of the first hero who was said to have been summoned from another world, just like I had been, and who had built the Elfrieden Kingdom. It was on display right in front of us. Incidentally, this was the genuine artifact. If we’d tried to make replicas, they’d look cheap, and it would be expensive, too.

  Both Aisha and Roroa’s eyes went wide at the majestic sight of it.

  “What beautiful equipment...” Aisha murmured.

  “You said it... Wait, this is a real national treasure, ain’t it?!” Roroa burst out.

  “Well, I guess you could call it that, yes.”

  “Is it really okay for you to be puttin’ it on display in a place like this?” Roroa demanded, holding her temples as she did, but I laughed it off.

  “I looked into it, and the only enchantment on this equipment is one that boosts the wearer’s magic resistance ridiculously high. Something like the armor the Empire’s Magic Armor Corps wears. Since it’s the armor of the Hero King, it’d be problematic to let anyone but me use it, and there’re probably not going to be many chances for me to use it, either. If it was just going to be sitting and gathering dust in the royal treasury, I figured having it on display here was a more effective use for it.”

  If more people came to the museum to see it, it would help cover the cost of running the museum. The problem was keeping it guarded, but that was what I had an elite unit from the Forbidden Army on security detail here for.

  After watching me confidently explain all this, Roroa sighed. “Good grief... Wouldn’t Big Sister Cia pitch a fit if she heard about it?”

  Oh...! Yeah, that was for sure. These items could have been said to be the face of the country.

  “W-Well, it’s not like I’m selling them off or anything,” I said. “I’m putting them to good use here, so I don’t think there’s any need to go out of my way to tell Liscia about it...”

  “Um... I think it’s probably too late for that,” Aisha said apologetically, at which point I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “Huh?”

  “Sooouuuma?”

  When I turned around, Liscia was standing there with a smile on her face. Behind her was Juna, with her hands held together as if to say she was sorry.

  “Wh-What are the two of you doing here?” I stuttered.

  “I said I’d let Roroa have this one, but I never said I wouldn’t secretly be following you,” Liscia said, taking a tone that made it sound like she had done nothing wrong and had the right to be upset with me.

  “I’m sorry,” Juna added apologetically. “We were supposed to just watch over you from the shadows...”

  They’d been following us all this time?!

  Aisha nodded knowingly. “So the presence that I felt really was the two of you.”

  “Aisha?! If you noticed, you could have told me...”

  “Souma!” Liscia barked.

  “Y-Yes?!”

  From the next little while, it was time for Liscia to lecture me. We would be causing trouble for the other visitors if we did it in front of the exhibit, so we relocated to a corner of the garden and she made me kneel in front of her on the lawn while she lectured me.

  What did I think I was doing with national treasures? How dare I, as one who was summoned as a hero, put the hero’s equipment on display like some curiosity? I needed to have more awareness of my role as king! It went on, and on, and on. Liscia was too serious for her own good, so she couldn’t stand it when I didn’t do these things properly.

  “Um... Lady Liscia, it’s not as if His Majesty meant any harm,” Aisha said.

  “He did it for the benefit of this country, so cut him some slack,” Roroa added.

  “This is Lady Roroa’s day to go on a date, so I think you’ve lectured him enough...” Juna murmured.

  Aisha, Roroa, and Juna stepped in, so the lecture was comparatively short. Yes, her lectures were usually long
er.

  “Honestly, I’ll let it slide this time, in deference to you three, but... Listen, Souma,” Liscia snapped. “Some of the nobles that care about authority hate things like this. That’s why you need to consult with me properly before just doing this sort of thing. If I, as someone from the Royal House of Elfrieden, give permission, you won’t needlessly upset the nobles.”

  “...Yes, ma’am,” I said humbly. “I’m very sorry.”

  She was so right that there was nothing I could say in response. The reason Liscia would lecture me for so long was that she truly cared for my well-being. I knew that, so I gladly accepted it.

  Once the lecture was over and done with, Roroa clapped her hands twice. “Now then, let’s get back to that date, shall we?”

  “Ah! Sorry, Roroa,” Liscia said guiltily. “Sorry for coming along after saying I’d let you have it to yourselves.”

  “Hmm, well, it’s not like I don’t understand how you two feel. Ain’t much I can do about it now that you’re here, anyway, so let’s go around together.” Roroa wrapped herself around Liscia’s arm fawningly. “We’ve got quite a crowd here, so how’s about some shopping?”

  “That sounds good,” Liscia nodded. “Why don’t we have Souma carry everyone’s bags as a punishment?”

  “I-I’m starting to get hungry, you know,” Aisha complained.

  “Hee hee! Then why don’t we go to Cafe Lorelei first?” Juna giggled.

  “““Sounds good.”””

  Before I knew it, our plans for the afternoon had been decided without my being able to get a word in edgewise.

  When faced with these powerful girls, even if I was the king or the hero, I was no match for them.

  “Come on, Souma, let’s hurry along,” Liscia announced, taking my hand.

  “There’s more fun to be had yet, Darlin’,” Roroa added, grabbing the other one.

  Somehow, as they pulled me along by the arms, I felt like I was being shown exactly what the future balance of power between us was going to look like.

  By the way, we discussed the matter of the hero’s equipment later, and settled on displaying it just once a year for a limited time only. It meant less security was needed, and the event would feel like something special, so that was good.