Nidoume no Jinsei wo Isekai de - Chapter 190

The news that Margrave Kunugi of the Trident Principality took possession of all four heroes spread throughout the world at an astonishing rate.

There were various reactions. The ones with the weakest reaction were the beastmen, although the opinions were divided on whether it was because they were being relatively estranged to such information or because it was a race-typical trait. For better or worse, it was about Lepard, a prince of one of the four tribes. Moreover it was directly related to the fact that Kaede, who held a considerably high position among the priestesses and who attended to Lepard, had been seized as well, but the beastmen merely reacted by saying, “Well if they want to come back, they will just do so, right?”

However, since a strong request to take care of Lepard and Kaede as well as the two priestesses attached to Kurz by any means had been delivered to Renya’s castle although he hadn’t informed his surroundings, it meant that the beastmen weren’t completely indifferent to this whole affair, but you could still say that they at least didn’t show any outward reaction that could be called as such.

The ones with the second weakest reaction were the elves. Their side seemed to be only preoccupied with Croire’s attitude, who ended up sticking to Renya, rather than their hero, Grün. As for their inquiries about her welfare, it went as far as them coming over for a courtesy visit through the transfer gate every three days. But then again, because Croire herself was wandering around while sticking to Renya, she loitered around her and there, not staying in Klinge all that much. However, given that the elves would obtain quite a bit of information whenever she came to Klinge, the elven emperor seemed to have approved of the current situation.

But, because they extensively only investigated Croire, Renya had been worried whether Grün would feel offended by that, but as a matter of fact, the elves, who came for Croire’s courtesy visit, checked up on Grün’s safety as well, albeit secretly, before returning to their home country. Given that Grün had a very difficult standing, or rather, personal history, it was apparently complicated to worry or check up on him too openly. Due to the elven emissaries gathering information on Grün without fail despite this, Renya’s opinion of the elven emperor improved, although just a wee bit.

The humans’ reaction could be called extremely divergent. Most of the countries didn’t show almost any reaction to this information. Or rather, they tacitly took it for granted without speaking up or making any moves as they were apparently reluctant to attract Renya’s attention by showing a reaction.

The Trident Principality didn’t announce any official statement, but there was a plausible rumor going around that the archduchess always brushed the nobles aside with nothing but the same old response each time they demanded the archduchess to give her opinion on the matter.

At the beginning the nobles apparently pressed the archduchess for answers with a fairly threatening attitude, but they gradually lost momentum due to the pressure coming from the archduchess’ smile, and before long they no longer raised their voices, finally returning to their own territories as if running away while murmuring apologies.

Renya admired her for sticking to her ways.

The ones raising their voices without having learned their lesson were the church’s authorities.They kicked up a fuss that the human hero originally belonged to the church, and that it was treason against all humanity for a single noble like Renya to monopolize the human hero.

Upon hearing that the church was demanding that Margrave Kunugi ought to swiftly return the human hero to the church if he really had any intention of obeying the human laws and that he should fight against the evil together with all humanity in accordance with the church’s ideology, Renya got a light headache and some dizziness, reflexively cursing the gods. It resulted in him immediately being told to stop by the little goddess via a hotline.

Renya couldn’t check whether it was true or false, but the beings equal to gods in the world, where Renya and the others currently resided, were apparently afflicted by Renya’s curses and fainted.

Although the incidents in the Holy Kingdom caused considerable traumas to a part of the humans, it looks like those people, who haven’t seen it in person, didn’t perceive it as that much of a threat, Renya sighed. Renya, who wondered whether he should do as told by the other party for a change, requested Emil to head together with Kurz towards the Holy Kingdom, where the headquarters of the church was located, as the driver for the car.

Seeing the car off as it raced away with a roar towards the Holy Kingdom, Renya’s group held a meeting with all of Klinge to make bets on how many days it would actually take for the two to come back. By dragging the residents into it as well, it turned into a festival merrymaking. His own bet was on approximately four to five days, opposed to bets ranging from one week to ten days.

When Emil and Kurz returned to Klinge in the evening of the next day, they were greeted by great booing from all the residents as there hadn’t been a big winner among them.

“Margrave-sama!? Did I do something bad!?” Kurz asked in panic.

“No…ah, well, probably you did something bad to a part of the people, I think. Whether you like it or not…” Renya answered.

It wasn’t as though they directed terrible ill will at him, but Kurz, who had never experienced such a situation, leaped onto Renya’s lap as he was sitting in a chair after returning to his castle, grabbed Renya’s collar, and became teary eyed while shaking Renya back and forth.

As he was shaken while not knowing what to tell Kurz, Renya rocked his upper body back and forth, but froze upon hearing Emil’s comment who had just entered Renya’s room, following after Kurz.

“Slandered for no reason…a storm of angry insults…being blamed…how truly nice…” Emil raved about the booing.

“”There’s a pervert here!?”” Kurz, who clung to Renya with a pale face, and Renya, who reflexively restrained Kurz, insulted Emil, who stood stock still with her hands pressed against her cheeks while having an entranced expression for some reason.

Emil turned an even more entranced gaze at Renya and Kurz after being insulted by them.

“Gimme more.” Emil whispered.

“Margrave-sama!? Margrave-sama!? That, what’s that!?” Kurz yelled.

“Don’t look at it, Kurz. That’s an existence bad for your mental health. You will be contaminated.” Renya replied with a serious look.

“Aww, jeez, you two. I’m just enjoying the difficult situation after having experienced being blamed from all sides, okaaay? Haauu.” Emil said as she leaked a coquettish sigh.

While caressing Kurz’s back, who was clinging to Renya while trembling as if scared of something, Renya thought,This one is also up to her usual gimmicks1, and asked Emil, “Well, I have no desire to comment on your tastes anyway. What about the actual issue?”

“Perfect. We gave them a proper education. Well, to the extent that they probably won’t ask us to hand Kurz over a second time. I will give you a written report later, okay?” Emil answered.

The written report with the details about what happened in the time between Emil’s and Kurz’ departure from Klinge and their return, which was created for the sake of explaining the circumstances to Renya, later on went down in history as a written record of the Holy Church’s destruction, and was left behind as a prohibited document in the Trident Principality’s archive as the most important document pertaining to that incident.

Because of the gruesomeness of its contents and the detailed depictions, it was handed down for a long time as a piece of evil said to induce a mental disorder in its reader, but that’s another story.

Due to this incident, the church lost its authority, and the big organization, which held influence across the entire human continent until then, easily collapsed to become just one of the assorted local religious groups. In exchange, it resulted in a religious group of a new doctrine that originated from the Trident Principality rising to power, but this is also a story of a distant future, and nothing Renya knew of at this time.

The ones showing the most extreme reaction among the four races were the dragonoids. This was only understandable. Although Renya’s group was certainly the one who rendered the most distinguished service of repelling the invading demon forces, they were at the same time great criminals for having abducted the dragonoids’ hero.

They immediately sent out a directive for Renya to personally report to the Witenagemot and to immediately return the hero Albert in the name of the dragonoids’ Witenagemot, but Renya ignored this.

On the contrary, he demanded the dissolution of the Witenagemot as compensation for the food and material support he had provided the war stricken dragonoids.

The Witenagemot flew into a rage in response, and promptly discussed invading the Kunugi Margraviate, but as it was almost impossible to come and go between the continents without using the transfer devices, and given that the dragonoids themselves hadn’t actively connected that many transfer gates to other continents, they had no way to send troops even if they wanted to.

Moreover, no one saw any value in trying to pick a fight with Renya’s party, which took on the demon army that drove the dragonoid army to destruction, won, and recaptured the dragonoids’ capital, while the dragonoids’s army itself was weakened after having suffered heavy losses in the war against the demon army.

In addition, with Renya, who supplied plenty of food and materials to the common dragonoids who had become impoverished after getting burned by the fires of war, as an opponent, neither the soldiers nor the citizens had any intention to force a battle. Thus, the members of the Witenagemot, who were getting heated up, were arrested by soldiers with fed-up faces, put under house arrest, and removed from power. The recently elected members of the newly inaugurated dragonoid government, officially entrusted hero Albert to Renya.

“Isn’t this…what you would normally call a revolution or something similar?” Albert felt dumbfounded by how quickly the state of affairs changed.

The Witenagemot until now was a hereditary organization and there hadn’t been any changes to the families ruling it for a long time, but since it suddenly turned into a democratic state that would choose the people’s representative through elections, it wasn’t unreasonable for him to be surprised either.

“Complete strangers that can protect and feed the people being more popular than statesmen who can’t is always the same everywhere.” Renya lightly shrugged his shoulders while saying so.

It was unlikely for the dragonoid citizens, who had been living under the complete control of the Witenagemot until now, to suddenly wake up to democracy and elections. It was the opinion of future historians that someone pulled the strings behind the scenes, but no written documents about who might have been the mastermind existed anywhere. It was one of those historic events where only the ones involved knew the truth.

Renya taking all the hero’s was a situation that didn’t lack uproars and reforms taking place all over the world because of it, but in contrast to that, the demons suddenly stopped moving no sooner had they failed to invade the dragonoid continent.

Even the movements of the monsters inside the Miasma Forest, which had become more active lately, had quieted down, and it didn’t look as if they had been mobilized as organized troops, as far as one could tell from the outside. The incidents of a few monsters sporadically attacking villages close to the boundary lines between the Miasma Forest and the continents was the same as ever, but it returned to the same frequency as before the increase in activity.

This resulted in various theories circulating, wondering whether some kind of problem had occurred on the demon’s side, and specifically the demon king’s side, but as there was no way to find out the truth, all of it just stayed as speculation and assumptions. Since there were no means of obtaining information about the demon territory in the first place, nothing could be done about this either.

Extremely optimistic theories about the demon king’s death were popular, but everyone regarded them as nothing but wishful thinking, and the people spent their days driven by the unexpressed anxiety that’s similar to the calm before the storm.

“Since we just have to think about the situation when the demons come, I think it’s a waste of time to worry what to do when they come.” Renya voiced out such a carefree opinion.

Only Klinge with Renya at its helm continued working normally2at all times as the rest of the world felt worried, albeit faintly and vaguely.

This status quo continued for a short while.