Jeanne sighed. “Sir Julius won’t like it…”
“I have no pity to spare for the root of the problem,” I said. “Have him pay in imperial coinage. Sir Julius isn’t terribly bright when it comes to the economy, after all. He’ll probably think he can just mint low quality coins for the reparations.”
“You’re getting our country involved in this?” Jeanne asked.
“The Empire shares some responsibility for Amidonia’s outrageous behavior,” I replied. “You have to give me this much, at least.”
“…I have no good response to that.” After a shrug of the shoulders and a wry smile, Jeanne suddenly slipped into a more serious expression. “I have a question for you. Why won’t the Elfrieden Kingdom sign on to my sister’s Mankind Declaration? If you were a signatory, I don’t think the kingdom and Empire would have ended up staring one another down over this matter.” Jeanne glanced over to Liscia, and added, “I hesitate to say this in front of Princess Liscia, but when it comes to why the prior king, Sir Albert, didn’t sign the Mankind Declaration… well, I can understand. It’s not so much that he chose not to sign it, as…”
“…he couldn’t decide whether to sign or not,” Liscia finished for her. “He’s so indecisive.”
Liscia came right out and said what Jeanne was hesitant to. Jeanne looked somewhat apologetically to her and said, “That’s exactly it,” with a nod.
She went on, “However, in your case, I think you see the threat posed by the Demon Lord’s Domain, as well as the need for all mankind to unite in the battle against it. At first, I thought it was because you couldn’t trust us, as the ones at fault for your being summoned to this world in the first place. But, earlier, you said you bear no resentment towards us over that. If that’s the case, why won’t you adopt my sister’s Mankind Declaration?”
When she looked me straight in the eye and asked that, it left me with a conundrum.
I couldn’t give her the real answer right now. But if I were to lie, or to completely ignore the question, it would probably hurt relations with the Empire.
After thinking about it for a moment, I began to speak slowly and calmly. “This is… let’s call it a ‘legend’ from my world. Long, long ago, there were two gods, one in the east, and one in the west.”
The God of the East said, “The world should be equal. Thus, I say to you, O humans, you must each till the fields for the same amount of time, and the crops are to be split evenly among all.”
The God of the West, on the other hand, said, “The world should be free. Thus, I say to you, O humans, each of you must till the fields, and those who work the hardest may take an amount of crops equivalent to their efforts.”
The God of the East said to the God of the West, “With your methods, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In a world like that, conflict will arise between the rich and poor.”
The God of the West said, “If those who work the hardest only receive as much as those who work the least, they will lose their motivation to work. If that happens, the total amount to go around will fall, and society as a whole will be poorer for it.”
And so, the two gods glared at one another. The conflict between these gods influenced the countries that worshiped each of them. As the countries of the East and West glared at one another, each thinking, We are right, and they are wrong, the ones most troubled by all this were the countries caught in the middle.
If the countries that believed in the two gods went to war, they would be the first victims. Their houses and fields would be all torn up. When they thought, Well, what are we going to do about this?, the countries near the border had a flash of insight.
“I know! It may be inevitable that they glare at one another, but we just need to lay down some rules that will stop a war from happening!”
And so, the countries that lived near the borders came together with many of the countries of the East and West to establish some rules.
One was: “Let’s not allow borders to be changed by military force.”
One was: “Let’s let the people of each country make decisions for themselves.”
One was: “Let’s arrange cultural exchanges between the East and West and try to get along.”
“What was that story?!” Jeanne burst out.
When I’d suddenly started telling her some old legend, she had looked at me dubiously, but as the story went on, her eyes gradually opened wide with surprise. Jeanne had seemed composed up until until this point, but that was gone now.
Liscia and Hakuya had similar looks on their faces.
Jeanne slammed her hands down on the table, leaning in closer. “Setting the process aside, those rules they decided on are basically the Mankind Declaration! So, how did it turn out?!”
Jeanne was eager for an answer, but I shook my head quietly.
“As for what happened next… I can’t tell you that yet.”
“Sir Souma!” Jeanne burst out.
“But I do know how the story ended,” I said.
“Were those rules… not enough to prevent the war?” Jeanne asked worriedly, but I shook my head.
“No, at least in the time when those two gods were staring each other down, they were able to avert the worst case scenario of a total war between the two gods. Eventually, the God of the East broke apart, and because that god had lost the power to fight, the God of the West was relieved and stopped glaring in that direction.”
“It sounds like a happy ending,” said Jeanne. “Where’s the problem?”
“Well, if this is where it ended, it would have been a ‘they lived happily ever after,’” I said.
“There’s more to the story, then?”
“…That’s all I can tell you for now,” I said. “Sorry, but I can’t reveal any more of my cards.”
I broke off the conversation with a strong tone. Jeanne seemed to want to keep pressing me, but she gave up when she saw the look in my eyes.
I said to Jeanne, “Don’t worry. You’ll know soon enough. I won’t cause trouble for the Empire.”
“…You’re worrying me,” she said.
“I’d like you to trust me; our country would like to walk alongside yours. For as long as Empress Maria holds true to her ideal of uniting mankind against the threat of the Demon Lord’s Realm, I promise you the kingdom will never become the Empire’s enemy.”
Jeanne still looked doubtful. “You’re not going to join the Mankind Declaration, are you? Yet you still ask us to trust you?”
“The Mankind Declaration is not the only possible pact,” I said. “We can’t participate in the Mankind Declaration, but our country would like to form an independent alliance with the Empire. Secretly.”
“A secret alliance… you say?”
I nodded firmly. “We’ve finally managed to stabilize the situation inside our borders. From here, I intend to reform the military, creating a system which allows me to move all of my forces with one unified will. Furthermore, I’ve managed to break Amidonia’s fangs in this war. Our country is finally free to move its forces.”
Jeanne said nothing.
“So, here’s my proposal,” I said. “Right now, the Empire is dispatching troops to aid the Union of Eastern Nations, right?”
“…Yes.” She nodded. “They’re a conglomeration of medium to small states, most of which have signed the Mankind Declaration. As the leader of that agreement, it’s only natural that we would dispatch troops there.”