“Yeah… I plan to do everything I can to,” I said as the elder ground his forehead against the floor and beseeched me.
“How about you more clearly say, ‘Leave it to me’?” Liscia said, but that seemed like it would be taking the task on lightly.
“I’ll try to persuade them, but… the one who’ll make the final decision isn’t me,” I explained. “They are the ones who should decide their own futures. Once I receive that decision, that will decide how I’m going to deal with them. Even if that means forcing them to see the harshness of reality.”
“Souma…” Liscia had a worried look on her face, but there was no avoiding this.
Hopefully… they would look to their reality, not an ideal, when they made their decision.
Heading outside the castle walls that surrounded Parnam, the refugee camp was in a field about a hundred meters away. The tents and hovels were scattered around haphazardly, and there were crude vegetable fields in some areas. This was where the roughly eight hundred refugees were living.
There were various races here. Humans, elves, beastmen, and dwarves, too. That was just how many countries had been laid waste by the Demon Lord’s Domain and how many peoples had been forced to flee.
They had set up camp here, and had been living a nearly primitive lifestyle, sharing the resources and supplies the kingdom provided to them, then hunting and gathering to make up for what they didn’t have.
Normally, hunting and foraging required permission from the country, but the former king, Albert, had left them to their own devices. I had continued that approach after assuming the throne myself. I’d had a mountain of problems to deal with other than the refugees, so my only choice had been to give them a bare minimum of support while leaving them alone.
I couldn’t, by any means, call what they had proper living conditions, but they were at least receiving some support, which was better than nothing.
The situation for refugees on this continent was harsh. The only nations that could afford to leave the refugees alone were countries like ours or the Empire, which had some national power to spare. I’d heard that in countries bordering the Demon Lord’s Domain they were forcibly conscripted and sent to the front lines, while other countries worked them like slaves as cheap labor in the mines under the guise of sheltering the refugees.
That refugees were drifting to a country as far from the Demon Lord’s Domain as ours only showed that there was no safe haven for them anywhere else on this continent.
I walked through that refugee camp, following after the young man the mystic wolf elder had sent as my guide.
The scenery here reminded me of the slums from not too long ago. One look at the state people were in was enough to make it clear how bad the sanitary conditions were. Their clothing was tattered and their bodies were caked with dirt and dust.
And yet, none of them had eyes that looked dead inside. Each and every one of them had eyes filled with vitality.
“It’s squalid, but… they all have this strange strength in their eyes,” said Hilde, who had been covering her nose and mouth with a cloth ever since we entered the village. It wasn’t an easy scene for a clean freak to look at.
Liscia and the others all had pained looks on their faces.
“They came here from far to the north with only the will to live,” I said. “I’m sure the people here are probably far hardier than we imagine.”
The people who face hardship they can do nothing about in times of war or natural disasters, yet still refuse to give in to despair, have a unique strength. Still, that strength… can also be a danger. While it strengthens their will to pull together and overcome the situation, the group consciousness can become too strong and weaken their sense of individuality.
If a strange leader figure appeared at times like this, the group as a whole could easily be swayed by that person’s opinions. I absolutely would not want anyone connected to the Papal State of Lunaria to come in contact with them.
While I was thinking about that, Liscia spoke up.
“By the way… Kazuya. You said you gave them support, but what did you do?”
She’d nearly called me Souma just now, but this being the sort of place it was, I had asked her to refrain from using my name (well, it was my family name, to be precise) as much as possible.
“It wasn’t much, but we provided foodstuffs and firewood, among other basic necessities, and we also commissioned the adventurers’ guild to guard this place as a quest,” I said.
“I understand providing food, but why hire the adventurers as guards?”
“These people aren’t citizens of this country. What’s more, they’ve lost their own countries, which would usually stand behind them and defend them. For instance, if civilians from our country were slaughtered without cause in a foreign land, and then the culprits went unpunished, I would submit a complaint to that country as king, and would place sanctions on them if the situation merited it. It works the other way around, too. In other words, it would create an international incident. The potential for something to cause an international incident is a restraining force that keeps our own citizens from suffering from crimes in another country. But…”
I paused and looked at the people in the camp.
I went on, “There is no such restraining force when it comes to people with no country of their own. You’ll have people who falsely think, ‘If it won’t cause an international incident, then it’s okay.’ Just because it won’t cause an international incident doesn’t mean they won’t be judged under the laws of this country, but it can still lower the psychological hurdles for committing a crime enough for some people to do it. That’s precisely why I want the refugees to hurry up and naturalize as citizens of this country.”
If they did that, I could offer them shelter and treat them as my own people. However, I was well aware that that wouldn’t be as simple as it sounded. Not everything in this world could be approached with reason.
“When people’s hearts are involved, things get really difficult,” I said.
“They do…” Liscia nodded.
We suddenly heard screams from inside the village. At the same time, there was the sound of metal on metal.
Liscia furrowed her brow. “It sounds like someone’s fighting. Multiple someones, at that.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
Everyone rushed toward the sound of the commotion.
When we reached the center of the commotion, there was a group of men and women that seemed to be an adventuring party who, alongside a handful of people from the village, were fighting against more than ten men who seemed to be mercenaries. The adventurers included a young swordsman, a macho brawler, a woman wielding a short sword who looked like a thief, and a beautiful mage.
…Hold on, those were a lot of familiar faces.
So, Juno and her group took on this quest, huh?
Dece the swordsman, Augus the brawler, Juno the thief, and Julia the mage. They were the members of the party I often worked with when I sent Little Musashibo out adventuring.
“What is all the commotion about, pray tell?” Owen asked a man who was quivering nearby.
“Th-Those men suddenly came, and they were trying to abduct the children! They even cut down the adults who tried to stop them! After that, they got into a battle with the adventurers who heard the noise and rushed over here!”
The adults had been cut down? When I looked off into the corner, I could see a bleeding man being treated by the priest, Febral.
I quickly gave orders. “Carla, Owen, back up the adventurers.”