“Well, you know, it was assumed it would be operating alongside the navy.” Liscia’s words only made it sadder. Clearly, this thing was a white elephant.
“In that case, if we leave the flagship to the navy, don’t you think that would save us some of the upkeep costs?” I asked.
“B-But… we were able to use it to transport materials, weren’t we?” she asked.
“Well… Yeah, I guess…”
We had used this needlessly big battleship to transport materials for the coastal city. Once we had removed the armaments from inside it, that had freed up a good amount of carrying capacity. With the transportation network not in place yet at this stage, it had allowed us to ship the materials here many times faster than we could have sending them by land.
“But, in that case, it would have been even more effective if we’d built it as a transport ship to begin with,” I said.
“Ugh! Don’t be so negative about everything!” she protested.
“I’m fighting with the budget, so when I see something gobbling up funds, I can’t help myself…”
Then Aisha came along, bringing Ludwin with her.
“Your Majesty, I’ve called Sir Ludwin for you,” she said.
“Your Majesty, Your Highness, I welcome you to the planned site of the new city.” The handsome captain of the Royal Guard, Ludwin Arcs, saluted with a smile. At the castle he always wore silver armor, but here he was dressed more casually. With the white shirt and leather vest he was wearing, he looked like a handsome sailor who might show up in a pirate movie.
I was using the Forbidden Army to work on constructing the city. Of course, I was hiring a large number of craftsmen from the civil engineering and construction guild, too, but with the scale of the project, they couldn’t handle everything.
That’s why I was using the Forbidden Army, thinking I would wrap this up quickly with human-wave tactics. After I’d gone to the trouble of teaching the soldiers combat engineering skills, it would have been a waste not to use them. I had two-tenths of the Forbidden Army’s standing forces here, with the remaining eight-tenths building the transport network that would connect all of the cities.
“So, how is progress on the construction?” I asked.
“We’ve already finished roping off the site. Work is going steady… or was…” Ludwin said hesitantly, a bitter smile on his face.
“I keep telling you, you need to stop construction!” one person shouted.
“Listen, old man. We’re building this city on the king’s orders, get it?” another answered.
I heard voices arguing inside the tent that served as the construction office.
“I’m telling you this for the king’s sake! You mustn’t build a city here!”
“You just don’t get it, do you, old man? It’s not like we’re trying to evict you or anything.”
“You’re the ones who don’t get it!”
…No, it wasn’t an argument, it was more like this old man was one-sidedly yelling at them.
I spoke to Ludwin. “So, basically, an old man who lives in the area is vehemently opposed to us building the new city?”
“Yes. A local fisherman. Mr. Urup.”
“…I did tell you not to aggressively buy up land or anything like that, didn’t I?” I asked.
“Of course. We’re looking for residents to apply anyway, so the prior residents can stay right where they are. We won’t charge them for the land, either. When we work on the landscaping, we plan to rebuild their houses at no cost.”
“Hmm… Those sound like good conditions to me,” I said.
As far as I could see, there were nothing but deserted-looking fishing villages around here. It had to be hard just to eke out a living in a place as rural as this. If a city were built, with the influx of people, many of the inconveniences of living here would go away. Not only were they not being chased out of a place that would offer them a better future, they were even having their houses rebuilt for free, so what was there to be opposed to?
“Why is that old man opposed to it?” I asked.
“Well…”
“I’m telling you, you’ll incur the wrath of the sea god!” I heard shouting from inside the tent again.
The sea god?
“You see, he says this is the sea god’s domain and building houses will anger him, or something like that.”
“What, you even have sea gods in this world?” I asked.
Liscia and the others all shook their heads vigorously.
“I’ve never heard of one before,” Liscia said.
“I, too, am unaware of one,” Aisha agreed.
“It’s probably just an old man’s nonsense…” Ludwin added.
It seemed nobody had heard of one.
A sea god, huh? I wondered.
“I’ve never heard of this sea god in my life,” a voice said from inside. “Would you please not interrupt construction with your strange religion?”
“It’s no religion! The sea god is real! If you violate the sanctity of his holy land, eventually you will anger him and be destroyed! In fact, the sea god goes on a rampage once every hundred years or so!” the man shouted.
Hm?
“When I was a boy, the sea god went on a rampage once. At the time, all of the people who had built homes in the sea god’s holy land were swallowed up by him!” he added.
Could he be talking about what I think he is…?
I entered the tent. Inside were a young Forbidden Army soldier and a tanned old man wearing a towel twisted into a headband.
“I’m sorry, sir. Could you tell me in detail about what you’re talking about?” I asked politely.
“Who’re you?” he demanded. “I’m busy talking to this fellow…”
“Wh-Why, Your Majesty!” the soldier stuttered.
“His Majesty?!” When he saw the soldier stand and salute me, the old man let out a bizarre cry.
“Hey there,” I said. “I’m the (provisional) King of Elfrieden, Souma Kazuya.”
I went to shake his hand.
“…The name’s Urup,” the old man responded with a tense look on his face.
Once we had finished greeting each other, I immediately dove to the heart of the matter. “Now then, Urup. Back to what you were talking about before.”
“Hm?! R-Right! Your Majesty, please, reconsider building this city!”
“Old man, are you really going to trouble His Majesty himself with your nonsense…?” the soldier demanded.
“No, I want to hear him out.” I gestured for the soldier who was trying to stop him to stand down. “Can you tell me more about it?”
“B-But of course.” And so, Urup explained the local legend to me.
Apparently this land had originally belonged to the sea god, but he had lost it after being defeated by the land god in battle. However, the sea god still believed this land was his, and when people built houses on it, he would destroy the people who lived in them.
This was why there was a rule in the nearby fishing village that no one should build houses here.
Once they had heard Urup’s story, Liscia said, “It’s too vague. I don’t really get it.”
“Listening to him was a waste of time,” Aisha added.
Both of them seemed exasperated, but I felt differently.
Partway through his tale, I’d had Ludwin bring a map, asking just how far the sea god’s holy land stretched. Then, once I had narrowed down the range of “the sea god’s holy land” enough, I looked at the map and told Ludwin, “We need to make major changes to the city plan.”