Survival in Another World with My Mistress!, Volume 7, page 4
“We’ll also need Kousuke’s powers to relocate the fortresses and to increase our agricultural production,” Melty said. “It would also be best to have his abilities on hand to increase the number of airboards and strengthen our border defenses.”
“His help driving out the main faction of Adolism would also be appreciated,” Elen chimed in. “It would be possible to get rid of them using my truth-seeing eyes, but it would be best to have a disciple of God present to convince the believers who are blind to the main sect’s lies.”
It sounded like my aid was needed across the land… Hah hah hah. Sorry, everyone, but there’s only one me!
“Can’t you make clones like the slime girls?”
“Are you kidding me?” I groaned. “No way. But I can make stuff as long as I have my workbench, so I can just handle that before bed, no matter where I am. As for fortress relocation and the Adolist faithful… I can destroy any preexisting strongholds, collect the materials, then hit any nearby towns and villages and convert the faithful.”
Realistically speaking, this was our only real option. Normally, it would be best to give the fortress rebuilding job to some citizens as public work, but that’d have to wait until we got the bare minimum infrastructure in place.
“In that case, I should accompany you on your journey,” Elen said nonchalantly. “If we are going to convert those faithful to the main sect, it would be wise to have both myself, the saint, and you, the disciple, together. I will also be able to tell if the local soldiers are trustworthy or not.”
There was no readable expression on Elen’s face, but Melty looked annoyed.
The others almost certainly wanted to come with me, but Sylphy was the next queen—she couldn’t just up and leave Merinesburg. Melty, who was effectively her chancellor, was in the same position. Ira was busy re-establishing the Merinard Order of Mages, developing new magic tools, and putting her all into normalizing alchemical potions and such. Like Sylphy, neither of these women could just take time off for a trip.
Meanwhile, Archbishop Deckard and High Priestess Katalina were here in Merinesburg, which meant that things on the Adolism side would be fine even if Elen accompanied me.
Just for the record, Archbishop Deckard was watching us discuss things from a little ways away while sipping tea. He looked like one of those older Japanese men relaxing in the outer hall of a Japanese house.
As for Sir Leonard, well, he left the city via airboard earlier this morning to meet up with the squad monitoring the retreating members of the Holy Kingdom’s army. It wouldn’t be long before Danan and his forces would arrive in Merinesburg, so Sir Leonard was placing him in charge. That lion bastard was nothing if not quick on his feet.
“All right, then,” I said. “Elen and Madame Zamil will be coming with me, along with…let’s go with two platoons from the rifle squad and a few harpies.”
“That sounds about right. Grande might end up tagging along.”
“She can be pretty impulsive, so…even if she didn’t come with us, she could just fly to see me if the mood struck her.”
I’d be doing the driving, so I wouldn’t be able to give her much of my time, and she’d end up sleeping in the back of the airboard in all likelihood. It’d be easier for her to just eat and sleep in Merinesburg, then fly to see me whenever she wanted to. If I told her the route we were taking, she’d be able to find us no problem.
“Might I have a word?”
As we discussed among ourselves, Archbishop Deckard suddenly cut in. It would be tremendously foolish to ignore the opinion of an archbishop of the Holy Kingdom, especially one with plentiful experience under his belt. Sylphy nodded and encouraged him to speak.
“I believe it would be wise for a few of our clergymen to accompany you as well, not just Elen,” he said. “If the goal is to convert those who have been misguided, it would be best to have personnel appropriate for the job.”
“Hrm… That is true,” said Elen.
“Modifying the rear communications airboards to accommodate personnel transport wouldn’t take much on my end,” I said. “I could even keep the drivers the same.”
Airboards required experienced drivers. Since we had a few of those, it would be a waste not to use them in this scenario.
“These are all good points,” said Sylphy. “Having civil servants there to provide support would also be a boon… In which case, you will need quite a few people. Melty, how have the civil servant appointments been going?”
“Thanks to Lady Eleonora’s support, I have been able to recruit individuals who were civil servants in the old Kingdom of Merinard, guild members, and merchants,” Melty replied. “For now, the base requirement is that they are proficient in reading and writing, as well as some level of arithmetic. As for those who were executives under the Holy Kingdom’s government, we’re currently in the middle of conducting investigations as to whether they should be allowed to continue in their positions.”
“Many of them were well-fed while working for the white pig, so I would prefer that they weren’t kept on board…” Elen shook her head irritably. “How wretched.”
Not all of the clergymen in the main faction were rotten to the core, but it wasn’t terribly surprising that awful people gathered under other awful people. Perhaps those who were decent at first ended up corrupted along the way.
“In any case, our number one priority is maintaining law and order here, so I want everyone to work toward that end,” Sylphy said. “Melty, Elen, I need the both of you to select individuals to accompany Kousuke. Kousuke, ready yourself for the journey and work on agrarian reform on the outskirts of Merinesburg. Ira, get the materials and resources you need to put together our communications and defense networks.”
“’Kaaay.”
“Understood.”
“Roger that.”
“Mm, okay.”
Sylphy rose to her feet. “Then let’s get started. If anything comes up, be sure to report it.”
We all stood up and began handling what we needed to do. First, I needed to enter crafting requests for airboard and communication core parts, check with Melty about production plans, look into city planning and agrarian reform…
There was so much to do!
***
There’s so much to do. So much, and yet it’s all monotonous tasks.
For the various parts I needed to make, all I had to do was input the requests into my workbench, and expanding farmland was something I’d done so many times that I was already bored of it.
As far as the town planning end of things went, my job largely consisted of deconstructing the overpopulated, illegally built housing complexes, then reorganizing them into well-organized housing complexes. Now, what this actually meant was…
“It’s town planning time! Get yer butts moving, boys!”
A chorus of “Yes, sir!” answered my call.
“G-gaaah! Town planning is here! They’re here!!!”
In this particular case, “town planning” referred to a rather inconvenient group of people that barged into your house, regardless of how dirty it was or what naughty things you were getting up to, then used human wave tactics to force you out, destroyed your house, and rebuilt it in one fell swoop.
According to the city’s residents…
“The group is made up of a bunch of frightening demi-humans, so it’s not like we can complain. But my house is so much nicer now, so I guess it’s fine.”
“It was my day off, so me and my partner were getting some private time in. Then all of a sudden, they barged into my house and tossed us out while we were buck naked. I was furious, obviously, but then for some reason, they gifted me a huge, brand-new bed.”
“Those heinous bastards took all of my treasure. It was all garbage? Hmph, one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.”
“How could I not be grateful after they went and cleaned my neighbor’s awful room? That place stunk, especially on nice days. I wish they’d done something about my neighbor too, quite frankly.”
Lo and behold, we were getting great reviews from the city’s citizens! Okay, maybe not quite great. Let’s go with ‘good.’ That’s fine.
In any event, overpopulation stemming from disorderly building expansions could be dangerous, especially in the event of sudden disasters like fires or earthquakes. Additionally, this kind of architecture was a detriment to the overall aesthetic of the city, meaning there was nothing positive to gain from any of it. They also tended to become hotbeds for criminal activity, which was why I was handling this myself.
Needless to say, there were also other reasons why I was out here on the front lines wielding my power in broad daylight.
“There is nothing to fear. This good sir is the Fabled Visitor, the disciple of God. The demi-human soldiers who work under him are our good neighbors.”
“We’re giving away clean clothes and fresh bread in the plaza over there!”
As we executed our tyrannical (?) plan, the Adolist clergymen followed behind us, going around handing out goods and informing people that I was the disciple of God in an attempt to win them over.
Was it really okay to advertise how unique I was, you ask? Well, the jig was up the moment Cuvi slipped out of our fingers. And since Elen and I were going to become the symbols of new Adolism moving forward, it was impossible to hide who I was anymore. And if I couldn’t hide myself, it would be foolish not to advertise myself to the world as loudly as possible. That was the conclusion the new Kingdom of Merinard and new Adolism had both come to. And so, a new task was added to my daily rotation: I had to visit the great cathedral in Merinesburg and perform miracles.
My duties weren’t really a big deal. I put on some resplendent clergyman robes, healed the heavily wounded with the “holy cloth and brace” I pulled out of nowhere, healed the sick with my “holy potions” that I whipped out of nowhere, then generated a bunch of bread and clean clothes to hand out.
This went without saying, but this was all made possible by my inventory; I was using splints and potions where applicable. Thanks to my holy actions, folks on the street were calling me all kinds of things now. To some I was the disciple of God, great healer of any and all. To others I was the magician guy. And to some, I was a literal homewrecker. I decided not to think about it too much.
The engine driving all of this was the medicinal herb garden and plot of emergency farmland I built in the castle’s courtyard. The medicinal herbs and crops I was harvesting from there were what I used to make potions, food, and cloth for my clerical (?) activities.
Outside of that stuff, I was helping to cultivate farmland in the neighborhood, holding airboard driving practice, and just getting up to all kinds of business.
“A special envoy from the Dragonis Mountain Nation?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Sylphy. “They say they are here to have an audience with Grande the Dragon and her partner. They also wish to forge diplomatic relations with the new Kingdom of Merinard. They arrived in Arichburg recently, but once they learned that you, me, and Grande were here, they set off for Merinesburg.”
“Huh… Then they’ll be arriving in a few weeks? I’ll probably have left Merinesburg by then.”
Danan was currently leading the Liberation Army and clergymen of Adolism around the nation, taking care of the remnants of the Holy Kingdom army. That wasn’t nearly as violent as it sounded, though: They were basically just going around telling people to lay down their arms.
Alongside the clergymen, Danan and the rest of our people were informing everyone that the 60,000-strong subjugation army was completely and utterly defeated, and that if they surrendered peacefully, they and their families would be spared and looked after until they went back to the Holy Kingdom.
The Holy Kingdom’s army wasn’t necessarily filled with nothing but main-sect loyalists either. Apparently, among the soldiers who were conscripted in Merinard were folks who were secretly in relationships with demi-humans.
There were actually entire Holy Kingdom-occupied regions that were fairly lenient toward demi-humans. Places like where Merinard’s human troops hid; the same place where we parted ways with the demi-humans heading toward the Black Forest.
Now that we had taken Merinesburg and pushed back the Holy Kingdom’s forces, the people hiding out in those areas were beginning to make moves to join us. Recently, we’d been receiving envoys from such regions. Meeting with them was typically Sylphy or Melty’s job, but depending on who the person was, Doriada sometimes stepped forward instead since she had experience with social gatherings in the old Kingdom of Merinard. As the former queen, Serafeeta was in the same boat.
Ah, but I digress.
Travel by airboard was one thing, but moving via carriage was a slow process. The special envoy from Dragonis would very likely arrive in Merinesburg while Elen and I were smoothing things over in the areas Danan was clearing for us. It was possible that Grande would be around, but I wouldn’t be.
“Well, they showed up in Arichburg riding wyverns, so they should arrive tomorrow at the earliest,” said Sylphy.
“Wyverns, huh? I didn’t even know you could ride those.”
“I’ve never seen it myself, but apparently wyverns grow attached to people when they raise them from the moment they hatch.”
“Neat. So it must be like a form of imprinting, then.” I’d heard that when birds hatched, they immediately recognized the first creature they saw as their parent, though I didn’t know if that was the case for every kind of bird or what. Since wyverns also hatched from eggs, maybe they had the same kind of behavior.
“An audience, huh?” I pondered. “What does that even involve?”
“Good question… Perhaps we should ask my mother,” Sylphy suggested.
“Serafeeta…?”
Sylphy seemed to sense something from my tone, and her expression darkened. “I really want you to have a good relationship with her…”
“H-hey, look. That shouldn’t be a problem.”
What I was worried about was having more than just a good relationship with her. I had the feeling I was a bit too popular with the ladies ever since I’d come to this world, and the other day, I finally figured out why. None of this was intentional on my part, and after figuring out what was going on, I tried everything I could to turn off those achievements, but in the end, there was nothing I could do.
The worst part was that those stacked achievements had an insane effect on Serafeeta in particular, so I wanted to avoid too much contact with her. She was a beautiful woman, certainly, but not only was she Sylphy’s mother—she was also a widow…
She was tremendously beautiful, though.
“Is that so? I’m glad to hear it,” Sylphy said with a relieved smile.
Please, stop. That pure smile hurts. I know I’m not doing anything intentionally, but it still makes me feel guilty.
If anyone was in the wrong, it was the rat bastard who brought me to this world and stacked me with these ridiculous achievements. Sadly, I had no way of filing a direct complaint with them.
“Th-then I guess I’ll go talk to her.”
“Please do. I don’t have the time to spare,” Sylphy sighed.
It was her lunch break, and we were eating together in the cafeteria, but once we finished, she’d be holed up in her office all day. As the next queen, there was much she needed to attend to, and while I wanted to help, when it came to paperwork, Melty was ten times more effective than I was—especially since she was constantly working with Sylphy.
I would just be in the way.
“Once I finish lunch, I’ll go speak to Serafeeta,” I promised.
“All right. I’ll send someone to let her know you’re coming.”
Sylphy called one of her attendants over and told her to inform her mother of my visit. There was no way she could have known that, in doing this, she was cutting off my avenue of retreat.
Hah hah hah! You’re so adorable, Sylphy!
All I could do was pray that nothing would happen.
***
“Thank you so much for coming. Please, right this way.”
Upon arriving at my destination, I was greeted with a beautiful, petal-like smile and rose-red cheeks. Before I could even register what was happening, Serafeeta sat me down on an antique-looking chair in front of a stylish tea table.
The attendant in the room deftly prepared tea for us, then returned to the corner of the room from whence she came. I’d never seen her before, and she looked to be a middle-aged canine beastman.
“Her name is Pieta,” Serafeeta explained, prompting the attendant to silently smile at me. “She served me even before I fell into my deep slumber. When she heard I was awake and living here in the castle, she came rushing back to me.”
There was something about Pieta’s behavior—the way she handled herself, even—that seemed off to me.
On closer inspection, I noticed her attendant clothes were a bit strange. She was wearing something resembling a turtleneck that hid the bottom of her neck. I’d spent a not-insignificant amount of time in the castle, so I was fairly familiar with the uniforms of the attendants. It was clear she was wearing something specially tailored.
A sad expression crossed Serafeeta’s face when she noticed my gaze.
“Because Pieta was my head attendant, when Merinesburg fell, she was the victim of the Holy Kingdom army’s heinous interrogation methods.” A deep sadness lined Serafeeta’s every word. “They wanted to know if she possessed any secrets involving the royal family. She survived the ordeal, but in exchange she had her throat crushed so she could no longer speak…”
Pieta, on the other hand, smiled warmly and shook her head. Even as an outsider, I could tell she harbored no ill will toward Serafeeta. Twenty years after being brutalized, she’d learned that Serafeeta was okay and immediately she came rushing back to her. Her loyalty knew no bounds.
