When I was talking to Mary, I felt like I was talking to one of those.
“Hakuya… How do you think we should negotiate from here on?” I whispered.
“I believe it would be good to ask for an answer to your second question from earlier,” he whispered back. “However, what you should weigh is not her own reaction, but the intentions of the Orthodox Papal State.”
“…Got it.”
Once Hakuya was back in his earlier position, I spoke to Mary.
“Sorry for the wait. By the way, I never did get an answer to my second question from earlier. Why is Lunarian Orthodoxy seeking to become our state religion?”
“For the sake of all mankind,” Mary said without hesitation. “The north of the continent has now become the Demon Lord’s Domain. Though its expansion has stopped for the time being, for as long as the Demon Lord’s Domain exists, mankind will never have peace. In order to attain peace, it will be necessary to invade the Demon Lord’s Domain and exterminate the root of the problem. However, the demons of the Domain are powerful, and it is impossible for any one country to face them alone. All of the nations of mankind must cooperate.”
It stood out as a hard-line position, but… that was understandable, I suppose.
Mary continued, “That is why we want you to become a holy king. With your power and our authority combined, it will be possible to unite all of the different nations, I’m sure. If you request their cooperation after you have unified the other countries, even that empire will follow your commands. Two out of five of their citizens follow Lunarian Orthodoxy, so they won’t be able to afford to ignore you. In that way, all of mankind will be united, and we will invade the Demon Lord’s Domain. Then, with the Demon Lord who is the root of all evil slain, we will liberate the north of the continent.”
Mary spoke all that without hesitation. It sounded like she was talking about the Crusades. In order to reclaim our lost land, we would be uniting countries through the power of religion. And so, they wanted me to become a holy king and wave the flag for that cause.
But… I’m sure that’s just the public face of it.
Only once I saw the people behind Mary would I be able to get the full picture of what their intentions were. Mary probably honestly believed this was to retake the north, but the people behind her probably thought differently.
The bit about uniting the nations of mankind caught my attention. There was already a system in this world trying to unite all of mankind: the one that Maria was leading, the Mankind Declaration. It was a flawed treaty, but, for the moment, it seemed to be serving its function.
For the Orthodox Papal State, they couldn’t be happy about a situation where Maria, who was (from their perspective) a “false” saint, was the leader of that pact and winning respect for it. The more Maria did to distinguish herself, the weaker the influence of their own saint would be, after all. A theocracy ruled through its religious authority. In other words, the loss of authority was a matter of life and death for the state.
That was why the Orthodox Papal State probably wanted to set up another body for international cooperation separate from the Mankind Declaration. They needed to create a new system where they could assert their authority. And they had picked me to do it.
I looked over at Hakuya. When Hakuya noticed me looking, he closed his eyes and nodded once, then shook his head. He’d likely reached the same conclusion I had.
In light of that, he was hinting to me that, “We shouldn’t accept this offer.”
…Well, of course not. That being the case, there was something I should ask.
“By the way, what will happen if I refuse to adopt you as our state religion?”
“It would be disappointing, but we would have no choice but to accept,” said Mary. “We can’t force you into accepting.”
They were backing down surprisingly easy. I thought they’d say something like, If you don’t accept our demands, we’ll have all of our followers in your country riot, or something like that.
While I was thinking that, Mary continued, “However, I suspect,” her expression still not changing. “I suspect that we would end up waiting.”
“Waiting?” I asked.
“Yes. We could only wait until either you have a change of heart, or a new candidate to become the holy king appears.”
I inhaled sharply in surprise.
Urkh… So that was how they’re going to play it, huh. Basically, if any country started to get stronger, or a ruler began to become famous, she was saying, “We’ll take this exact same offer right to them.” If they did, her earlier comment that “Two in five of the Empire’s citizens are followers, so if we feel like it, we can split their country” would be something that might happen to our country, too.
Mary might not have intended it that way herself, but it was one heck of a threat.
This is… I shouldn’t decide on this right here and now.
I didn’t want to accept it, but if I was going to refuse, I needed to tell them that only after carefully considering the countermeasures available to me. At the very least, I wanted to have a lengthy discussion with Hakuya about it.
I rose from my seat and said to Mary, “I understand your request, Madam Mary. However, I cannot give an immediate answer due to the gravity of the request. I would like time to think it over. We will continue this discussion at a later date.”
“But of course,” she said. “I will be praying that you make a good decision.”
Mary meekly took her leave. The negotiations hadn’t been concluded, but she didn’t look disappointed at all to me.
I looked closely at Mary’s face. I had been looking at it the entire time we had been negotiating, but it felt to me like her expression had hardly ever changed. She was like a doll.
A doll… Artificial…?!
That was when I realized it. What exactly it was that felt “off” about her.
By the time my meeting with Mary came to an end, it was already late at night.
When we returned to the governmental affairs office, Roroa and Juna greeted us there. I spotted Carla with the maids standing by in the center of the room, too.
“Welcome back, darlin’… Wait, what’s wrong?!” Roroa cried.
“Um, is something the matter, Your Majesty?” Juna ventured.
The two had been smiling at first, but once they saw my face they instantly took on looks of concern.
Ha ha… Was the look on my face right now that bad? It might well have been.
Juna touched her fingers, soft and cold like little white fish, to my forehead. “You don’t seem to have a fever, but… are you not feeling well? Would you like to take a little rest?”
“Hey, Big Sister Cia! What happened to darlin’?!” Roroa burst out, rounding on Liscia.
“Don’t ask me! I don’t know!”
I said, “Oh… It’s okay, I’m fine,” weakly brushing Juna’s hand away, then sat down at the governmental affairs office’s desk. Then: “Sorry. Liscia, Aisha, Juna, Roroa… could you come over here?” Then: The four of them looked to each other, and slowly came over to me. When they got close enough, I spread my arms wide and gave all four of them one big hug.
“Eek?!” Liscia yelped.
“My word!” cried Aisha.
“Oof…” said Juna.
“Wait! Darlin’?!” Roroa shouted.
They all let out weird little cries of surprise, but I ignored that and hugged them tight.