No, no, even food poisoning can be a matter of life and death, I’ll have you know, I thought. Once, my grandfather had eaten some raw eggs that were past their expiration date. He got salmonella, and was hospitalized for days. Fortunately, it wasn’t too serious, but his refusal to throw out a few eggs that were ten yen apiece had cost him tens of thousands of yen in hospital fees. Grandma had teased him about that for a good long time.
Well, setting that aside for now, we bought our skewers from a place Juna suggested, along with some mixed juice from a fruit seller, and sat down on a simple bench to eat.
Tomoe chomped right down on her skewer. “Yeah, this is delicious, big brother.”
“Yeah. This meat is pretty good,” I agreed.
“The juice is delicious, too, Master Kazuya,” said Juna.
The meat was nice and juicy. It wasn’t that far off from the beef skewers that were sold at festivals, so I asked what meat it was. It turned out it was from a bigbull, a big, buffalo-like animal.
The juice wasn’t chilled, but it was getting to be late in autumn now, so it didn’t feel too warm. It was a bit sour, but that was refreshing after eating the greasy meat skewer. With our stomachs now full, we took a breather and relaxed for a bit.
Tomoe started nodding off next to me, so I decided to let her have a nap. Tomoe rested her head in my lap, she curled into a ball, and her breathing became shallow. When I petted her head, it was silky smooth, like a real dog’s fur.
“Hee hee, isn’t she just the cutest?” Juna said as she peered at Tomoe’s sleeping face. Then, moving in close enough that our shoulders touched, she quietly whispered with a sad look on her face, “I hope these peaceful days last forever…”
“Please don’t go saying things that trip event flags like that,” I said. “You know that can’t happen, right?”
Juna nodded. “The Imperial Army is almost here. They number nearly 50,000.”
“50,000? That’s fewer than I thought,” I said.
We had a force of 45,000 troops from the Elfrieden Royal Army gathered in Van now, so our forces were more or less equal. Of course, once Amidonia’s troops were added into the equation, they’d no doubt had the superior force, but I had expected them to come with three times our number.
For the Gran Chaos Empire, which had called for mankind to unite against the threat of the Demon Lord’s Domain, I highly doubted that they wanted to open a new front against us, but if they’d brought enough troops to make it possible for them to take Van, it would have worked to intimidate us.
And yet, Juna shook her head. “Most likely, the Amidonians were hesitant to allow that. They must have been worried that if the Empire came with a huge army, there was a risk they’d take this country for themselves.”
“As the country that issued the Mankind Declaration, I somehow doubt the Empire would do that, though, you know?” I said.
If they said they wouldn’t recognize any changes in borders on one hand, and then launched a war of invasion on the other, the Mankind Declaration wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on. If that happened, they would lose the trust of the countries in their alliance, and the Empire’s strategy of uniting mankind in the face of the Demon Lord’s Domain would collapse.
“I mean, that’s exactly why the Empire offered to mediate,” I added.
“Amidonia has already circumvented the Mankind Declaration,” said Juna. “Having betrayed the trust of the Empire themselves, they may be nervous about being betrayed in turn.”
“…Like being caught in their own web of lies, huh.”
They had been caught in their own trap. The principality had acted against the wishes of the Empire, but they had to cling to its authority now that they had found themselves in a crisis. They must have felt somewhat guilty about that.
On top of that, nobody respects opportunists, so they had lost the trust of other countries. They had to be trembling with fear that the Empire would abandon them.
“It makes you want to roll your eyes a bit… but it’s convenient for us,” I said. “If there’s a rift between the principality and the Empire, there may be room for us to act.”
“Hee hee hee, it’s time for our king to show off his skills,” said Juna.
“…I wish you wouldn’t put so much pressure on me, you know?” I asked.
“Oh, my, and here I thought you were Master Kazuya right now?” she responded playfully.
She probably wanted to get back at me for earlier. That was Juna for you — just when you thought you had a leg up on her, she’d turn things back around.
“Good day, everyone. It’s time for News Elfrieden.”
Then, suddenly, we heard Chris Tachyon’s voice.
It looked like it was time for the afternoon news broadcast. When I looked up, the image of Chris reading out the news was displayed on the mist in the air.
Wow… So this is what our broadcasts look like to the people in town, I thought. This was my first time seeing it on one of the fountain receivers. With the screen being as big as a movie theater’s, it made quite an impact.
“Now, our first story of the day. The new coastal city under construction in Eastern Elfrieden, Venetinova, is currently nearing completion. With Venetinova in place, shipping by land and sea will become more efficient, allow for the faster delivery of commodities to…”
This news would had been gathered from all around the Elfrieden Kingdom (which included Van), using messenger kuis like the one Aisha used to stay in contact with the God-Protected Forest. (Messenger kuis were birds, like messenger pigeons. Using their homing instinct and their ability to detect the waves emitted by their master at long distances, they allowed a specific individual and location to contact each other.) Their strength was that even mountain villages that didn’t receive Jewel Voice Broadcasts could still receive information. However, unlike the Jewel Voice Broadcast, which could communicate information in real time, that information would come a day or two late.
For instance, if an incident occurred in Lagoon City in the far northeast of Elfrieden, the information wouldn’t be directly delivered to Van. Instead, it would wait for the kuis that carried news to each city at regular intervals. Then, when the kui carried the news to another city, other kuis would leave that city to bring the news to other cities. The kuis had to fly long distances, so this was to protect against communication being cut off if a kui was attacked by a predator en route. By the way, urgent news would be delivered not by messenger kui, but by wyvern riders.
Because of that, it wasn’t possible to deliver all the news that happened in a day on that same day.
“Now, onto our next story. In the early hours of yesterday morning, a minor fire broke out in Van…”
From there, Chris reported the various accidents and incidents that had occurred in the kingdom, followed by information on how to cook lily root dumplings and other useful information for people’s daily lives.
As for myself, I thought it would be convenient if we could incorporate a weather forecast into the program, but that seemed like it would be quite difficult. There was a certain amount of weather lore in this world, and there were people who could predict the weather by reading the clouds based off many long years of experience. However, as I just mentioned, without a high-speed means of communication, we couldn’t transmit that information in real time.
News about typhoons can be a matter of life and death, so I’d like to figure out something… I thought.
As I was thinking about that, I heard a sudden sigh.