It hadn’t been like this before. The castle she remembered had been a place so relaxed that it felt as if time just flowed slower there. The maids, the ministers… everyone would walk slowly, and it was so quiet you could hear the palace guards training in the courtyard from anywhere in the palace. Hadn’t Liscia joined the officers’ academy because she had been sick and tired of that atmosphere?
But what now? No matter where she went in the castle, the sound of footsteps echoed.
Liscia called out to one of the maids who was rushing past. “Can I have a moment?”
“Why, Princess! How may I be of service?” the maid asked, slowing.
“Um… Everyone in the castle seems to be in an awful hurry. Is there something happening?”
“No? Nothing in particular.”
“Are you sure? It felt like everyone was rushing to do something…”
“I am. Ah, but, perhaps it is our new king’s influence. When we see how that man works, it makes us feel bad if we don’t work, too. I couldn’t stand to be slow myself, either… Ah, I’m in the middle of something right now, so I will take my leave!”
“I–I see… Do your best.”
As she watched the maid speed off, Liscia was dumbfounded.
For him to make even the maids feel this way, just how hard does the new king work?! Just what kind of guy have I gotten myself betrothed to?!
Liscia found herself wanting to bury her head in her hands all the more.
At last, she came to the king’s governmental affairs office. When she opened the door, the first thing that she saw was a mountain of paperwork. On a desk large enough that two fully-grown adults could have slept atop it, the papers were piled high and looked ready to spill over. That was not all. When she looked around, she saw a number of bureaucrats sitting at another long table, fighting a losing battle with yet more bundles of paperwork.
As Liscia stood there, dumbfounded, a young man spoke to her from the other side of the mountain of paper.
“You, whoever just came in.”
“…Huh?! What?!” Snapped back to her senses, Liscia had let out a strange cry, but the speaker didn’t seem to care at all.
“Can you read? Can you do math?”
“D-Don’t mock me! I’ve certainly been taught that much!”
“Well, perfect. Get over here and help me with the work.”
“Just who do you think you are, asking me to help…?”
“Just do it. That’s a royal order.”
Saying this, the person behind the paper mountain stood up.
Now, finally, for the first time, the two came face to face. This was the first meeting between the new king, Souma, and his betrothed, Liscia.
Liscia would later describe her first impression of him as “a young man with tired eyes.”
In stories where a hero is summoned to another world, the hero sometimes gains powers as a result of being summoned. It seemed the people in this world all had some ability to use magic, and so where was the harm in hoping I might have gained the ability to use magic, too? Technically, I had been summoned here as a hero.
So, right after I had had the throne ceded to me, some priestly-looking guys carried out an inspection of my abilities.
Apparently there were various types of magic that people could use, and they had devices that could test it. This one looked kind of like a stone slate. When a person touched the slate, that person’s magic type and abilities were displayed in that person’s head. Not even the people of this world understood the principles behind how it worked, but it seemed there were a fair number of these sorts of out-of-place artifacts in this world.
So, I got my diagnosis, and here was the power I’d gained:
[The Power to Transfer Consciousness Into an Object and Manipulate It]
It was an ability that let me transfer my consciousness into objects I touched, and I could manipulate up to three of them simultaneously.
It sounded more like a psychic power than magic, but the lighter the object, the more freely I could control it. I could get an overhead view of whatever I was controlling, as well. What was more, in addition to my own consciousness, I could have that object move under an independent consciousness, as well. Using an object as a medium like this, I could think about multiple things at the same time.
While there was the limitation that I could only move around things close to me, being able to make things move around at will was neat. Like I was triggering a poltergeist effect.
So, that was why I named my ability “[Living Poltergeists].” Sounds like I have a case of middle school syndrome, maybe?
Having gained my [Living Poltergeists], one thing immediately came to mind:
“This is going to be so useful for doing paperwork!”
…Yeah. Copying my consciousness into three pens, I could review multiple documents simultaneously with parallel thinking, and by manipulating those three pens, I could sign off on them. Man, ever since I learned I had this ability, I’ve gotten so much more work done. Actually, without that ability, the giant mountain of paperwork that had piled up in the confusion since I had been given the throne would probably have buried me in an avalanche by now.
…Yeah. I know what you want to say. I get an ability, and it turns out to be mostly good for handling deskwork more smoothly?
While I was getting good use out of it, whenever I thought about it as a hero’s power, I could only think, “How did things turn out like this?” I mean, even if I hadn’t gotten super powerful magic that would let me take on hordes of enemies at the same time, I’d have liked some defensive magic that would at least let me protect myself.
…Well, wishing for things I couldn’t have wasn’t going to get me anywhere. And it was, as a matter of fact, a useful power to me.
Today, as usual, I was fighting the mountain of paperwork with my [Living Poltergeists]. While I was doing so, someone entered the room with a thunderous noise that sounded like they’d tried to kick down a perfectly good door. When I peeked through a gap in the paper mountain, I saw it was a young woman in a military uniform.
With her regular features, skin so pale as to be translucent, and silky platinum blonde hair, she was so gorgeous that at any other time I would have been captivated by her beauty. However, having pulled three consecutive all-nighters, I saw not a beautiful girl but just a new source of labor.
After calling her over and practically forcing her to sit next to me, I pushed two stacks of paper in her direction. “Please compare these two sets of documents and look for places where the values, or the number of items, don’t agree and mark them.”
“Huh? What? What kind of work is this?”
“What, you ask? Digging for buried treasure. That’s what.” I explained to the perplexed girl in uniform. “For ‘unaccounted-for expenditures,’ to be precise. One pile is requests for budgetary appropriations, the other is income and expenditures reports. Even if the amount requested and the amount spent match, if the number of items differs, that can be indicative of either wasteful investment undertaken to fully use up their budget, or embezzlement disguised as investment. We’ll check those, and if any laws have been broken, we’ll make each of the responsible parties pay to make up the loss. If we uncover personal embezzlement, we will mandate repayment, and in the event they cannot pay, we will arrest the offender and seize their assets.”
“U-Understood.”
Perhaps she had been intimidated by the threatening air of a man who had gone without sleep, because the girl nodded along as I talked.