by Aneko Yusagi
“C-count me in!” Fohl sounded pretty happy. Was that really all I had to do? I think I was getting the hang of handling those two. If I gave a little praise to Fohl, that pushed Atla to try harder.
“What’s this? A hunting challenge? Then I won’t be left behind!” Sadeena announced.
“You’re doing fine. Including your use of magic, I think you’re hunting the most, Sadeena.” Perhaps due to originating here, Sadeena had defeated the majority of the monsters we faced.
Increasing general safety in the vicinity through hunting like this also purchased the gratitude of the towns and villages we had occupied.
“Thank you so much! The revolutionary Heavenly Emperor and her retinue are doing wonderful things, reducing the damage caused by monsters,” they would say.
“I don’t think we can change the entire ecosystem quite that easily, but you should be okay for a while,” I would offer in return. Turning a blind eye to the havoc caused by monsters and even punishing those humans who fought back? What was this moron thinking? Such actions had definitely given the people plenty to think about.
A few days passed in this fashion, and we were able to take control of a third of Q’ten Lo. It hadn’t even been long since we arrived, so I was surprised at this speed myself. It felt like we were making even better progress than the other plan, to just sneak in and take the head of the enemy Heavenly Emperor.
“It reminds me a bit of our escape journey in Kizuna’s world.” This being a Japan-like nation, there were a lot of similarities. “I mean, give or take the presence of the sakura lumina and whether or not it’s a Japanese-Raphtalia land.”
“Rafu!”
“You’re still going on about that?” Raphtalia grumbled.
“Hey, there are statues that look like Raph-chan everywhere! I can’t help it if this seems like a wild Raphtalia theme park!”
“You like what you like, little Naofumi, I’ll give you that,” Sadeena chimed in. I didn’t just like it. I was seriously thinking about taking at least one of those statues home as a souvenir.
“As we get closer to this old city, though, I’m seeing more that look like Filo.”
“Me too. Statues of this divine bird that the Heavenly Emperor has put up. That look like Filo.”
“They say her coloring doesn’t exist?” Was Filo really such a rare specimen? She’d only cost me 100 pieces of silver!
“She’s not completely unique,” Sadeena replied, looking at Filo, “but the legends and tales passed down in each region actually differ a little from real filolials. For that reason, Filo’s appearance and coloring are absolutely perfect.” She was a filolial raised by a hero, after all.
“Do you think maybe Fitoria came to this country in the past?” Not a bad guess on my part. If they’d been exposed to her in the past, pictures might still remain and were changed to white and pink due to the coloring of the sakura lumina flowers.
“I can’t hear Fitoria’s voice,” Filo chirped up. Sometimes Fitoria was watching us through Filo. It looked like that wasn’t happening at the moment though. Maybe due to the barrier around the country?
In any case, the form and coloring of Filo were definitely causing all sorts of problems for our opponents.
“It looks likely we won’t meet Kizuna and them again. If we do, though, it might be fun to bring them here.” Even Glass might show her face. It would be great to show them all a nation with Raphtalia in charge. Glass’s skill, Reverse Snow Moon Flower, would fit right in.
“The scenery is definitely worth seeing.” I did catch myself, sometimes, wondering if they were all doing okay.
As we were making our way back, feeling pretty good, we happened upon that pervy moron Motoyasu II trying to pick up a girl.
“Ah! My lady, would you like to have some tea with me?” Seriously, just who was this guy?
“Geh!” As we closed in, the girl he was targeting bowed her head at us and made a run for it, and he turned to face us.
“Where’s the old guy?” I asked.
“Hah! You think I can’t shake Erhard off?”
“Look, if you go around wasting money, we’ll have to tie you up!” Motoyasu II just gave a cackle and flashed some Q’ten Lo currency. Showing off his wealth, was he? I snatched it out of his hands.
“Hey, that’s mine!”
“Only because you lifted it from the old guy’s coin purse, right?” This goat looked like he spent money fast and loose, meaning seeing him with such coin was certainly suspicious. He’d apparently worked up quite a series of tabs all across the port town. Indeed, to my comment at how he obtained these riches, he looked askance and started whistling. I knew it. I’d return the coin to the old guy later.
“Anyway—” I checked the party I had with me. He’d only get a kick out of it if I had women handle this. “Fohl, Gaelion, take him away.”
“Kwaa!” Gaelion gave a respectful nod at my orders.
“What!” Fohl sounded somewhat less pleased. As too did Motoyasu II.
“You won’t let me spend any time with one of these pretty faces you’ve got here?” he complained. At that response, however, Fohl realized what was going on and quickly nodded.
“Very well,” he conceded.
“You can go off and have some fun with Atla once you get back,” I said.
“We won’t be long.”
That reminded me, in a shop back there they were selling ornate hairpins, and he’d been eyeing them closely. He was planning on buying one, for sure. I’d given him enough spending money to afford at least one of them.
“Kwaa!”
Gaelion pinned Motoyasu II’s arms behind his back, placed his jaws onto his neck, and they started walking.
“Dammit! You let me go! I thought that even if that shield brat did catch me, at least he’d have some of the cuties he hangs around with dispose of me, but this is a total sausage fest! Don’t tell me, he swings both ways?”
“What are you rambling about!” Man, there was no helping Motoyasu II. Did he really love women that much?
“I’ll stay with you even after my brother comes back, Master Naofumi,” Atla offered.
“No, you go and spend some time with Fohl.”
“I don’t want to.” She was a pain too, to be honest.
“Seriously—”
“Huh?” S’yne was pointing at Motoyasu II while showing off her weapon. Right, of course. She’d had sakura stone of destiny shears he made, right? They had a copy ability. They’d started out as two sakura stone of destiny swords, right? S’yne was looking at the shears, captivated.
“She says that he has real skill,” S’yne’s familiar translated.
“I never said he didn’t.” Just as the old guy had said, Motoyasu II did quality work at remarkable speed. His stock of sakura stones of destiny had been used up, meaning those we were using as shields were now the last of them.
“Rafu?”
“That reminds me—” S’yne began.
S’yne pointed at Raph-chan and said something. Recently the sound skipping had been getting even worse, meaning we couldn’t communicate at all without the stuffed toy. It made me worried that maybe her vassal weapon was breaking down too.
“She’s asking about what’s happening with the giant Raph-chan doll?”
“Hmmm—”
“Excuse me? Are you planning on making something? This is the first I’m hearing about it,” Raphtalia asked. Ah, right. I’d forgotten to say anything to Raphtalia about this.
“I’m hoping that maybe we can make Raph-chan a bit bigger. It came up that maybe S’yne can use one of her special attack skills to create an emergency familiar,” I explained. Apparently she had a skill that allowed for control of giant dolls. I was thinking of allowing it, with the condition of not allowing it to speak.
“I’m vetoing that one!” Raphtalia shouted.
“Rafu? Rafu, rafu!” Raph-chan was watching the conversation and cutely tilted her head.
“Enough hijin
ks, anyway.” I forcibly changed the subject. “Let’s turn to the HQ in town and plan our next move.”
We then returned to the largest building in the town.
“You need to train too, don’t you?” Raphtalia said. Yeah, don’t remind me. I hadn’t exactly mastered the Hengen Muso Style yet. I really wanted to buckle down and get some training done, but with all these problems popping up all the time, I just couldn’t find an opportunity.
“I think battles would go a lot more easily if you could acquire some Liberation-class magic,” she said. The one time I had pulled that off, with Ost, had also proven to be the only time. I felt so close it felt like it was right there, but something—something was still missing. I just needed to get closer to that feeling.
In any case, it was definitely magic that I wanted to obtain before the eventual Phoenix battle.
Chapter Five: Information on the Enemy
Amid this chatter, the heads of the revolutionary forces had all arrived, and so we started our meeting on our future policy.
“The old city is right there for the taking. Once we reach it, the fighting should turn further in our favor,” one of them announced.
“You said that before,” I replied. It was the location where we could perform the rite to officially make Raphtalia the next Heavenly Emperor.
“Once Lady Raphtalia can cast those blessings, each fighter affiliated with our forces will be worth a thousand of the enemy,” he went on.
“Sounds good,” I remarked.
“However, there’s one potential issue. Records from past conflicts suggest that barriers created by different sakura stones of destiny will repel each other. We can assume the enemy is going to be pretty desperate in trying to stop us.”
“It’s still a good move on our part. We can remove something which until now has been a permanent fixture of their defenses. I mean, Raphtalia’s nullification of their blessings is already starting to render them meaningless.” If we were careful about their gear for nullifying the power of the hero weapons, we could probably just strong-arm them now, making things much easier overall. The only annoyance had been that, until now, it had been unique to our enemies.
“Still. Casting aside such an important base and setting up a new capital in the east? What was he thinking?” I guffawed.
“Well, the east also has some geographical advantages and was used in battles to decide the next Heavenly Emperor in the past, so it’s not such a big loss for him,” he explained. Hmmm. Everything was still getting mixed up in my head with Japanese history. I was starting to see the old city as Kyoto. That looked like a pretty good comparison, actually.
What can I say? I kept going back to what I knew, even if the shape of the nations were quite different.
“The fact we’ve proceeded so quickly is because we’re so far from the capital. Once we take the old city, that’s when the real fighting starts,” Raphtalia said.
“In either case, we do the same thing. Carry on, just like this,” I stated.
“S-sure—” Raphtalia nodded, but she had a troubled look on her face. She was worried about all of this fighting happening because of her.
Come on, shake it off! Yes, we were the invaders, but they were the ones starting this insane stream of attacks to take Raphtalia’s life, and they were the ones who were never going to give up!
“They don’t have any intent to negotiate a ceasefire, do they?” I asked.
“No. It seems most of their leaders consider us pretty easy to handle,” the revolutionary said.
“Are they seeing what’s actually happening here?”
“I think it’s because they underestimate Lady Raphtalia, thinking her to be of a diluted Heavenly Emperor bloodline. This is all because of the foolish methods of Makina, that poisoning witch who stands behind the Heavenly Emperor.”
“She’s come up before, hasn’t she? Is she really that inept?” Everyone assembled in command nodded as one at my question. Even those from Siltvelt.
“She was a missionary, coming originally from Siltvelt in order to spread word of her beliefs. The Heavenly Emperor before last—that is, Lady Raphtalia’s grandfather—took a liking to her, and as his concubine she then started to have a say in political matters. Eventually, she came to hold the reins of power.”
“While she came from Siltvelt, she doesn’t have a shred of patriotism and placed a heavy tax on trading.” Uwah. She sounded like a real piece of work. Siltvelt clearly didn’t care for her either.
“There were even mutterings that she was involved in the assassination of the family of the Heavenly Emperor, but there was no proof. She’s now the only remaining one behind the Heavenly Emperor.”
“They say the moving of the Heavenly Emperor’s base of operations to the east was also at the word of Makina. The airs in the old city don’t agree with her, apparently.”
“So what? The current Heavenly Emperor is her child? Her grandchild?” I asked.
“No. Makina’s children were also poisoned, assassinated. So it seems unlikely she was the culprit.”
“I hate to say it, but it sounds like this would never have happened if the family of the Heavenly Emperor hadn’t been wiped out,” I commented.
“Mr. Naofumi.” Raphtalia gave me a solid glare. Still, this vicious old bag would still have had an issue if the royal family came to an end and isolation was abandoned. It would also be obvious to her that she would quickly be ejected if the distantly related Raphtalia ended up sitting on the throne. Hmmm, well, who knew what the current moron of a Heavenly Emperor was thinking.
“She often belittled me. I remember her well. And she’s still in control of the nation?” Sadeena hissed. So Sadeena knew her too?
“The other problem would be the miko priestess of the water dragon.” Ah. Sadeena had been the previous miko, or something like that, right?
“A miko priestess, blessed by the Heavenly Emperor? She’s going to appear as a murderous assassin, you can bet.”
“Oh my.” The former miko to hold that position, Sadeena, spoke up.
“As the previous priestess, then, what do you think? Now the water dragon is on our side, how does that affect things?” I asked.
“She must be pretty mad about it. I guess? Like, she’s been totally betrayed by the god that she believed in. You know, something like that.” She spoke as though this was all someone else’s problem. “If she’s been blessed by the Heavenly Emperor, though, the current miko must be pretty hot stuff. I never got blessed like that.” Wow. That was an interesting tidbit. What might it mean? Considering the way the current Heavenly Emperor was carrying on, anyway, she probably didn’t have anything to be jealous about.
“You must have some information on her,” I said.
“Y-yeah. The current miko priestess to the water dragon is known to be the younger sister of the previous miko,” the revolutionary leader said.
“What was that?” Sadeena tilted her neck, a shocked look on her face. “That’s the first I’m hearing about this. Those two had a sister for me?”
“Those two,” she said. That spoke volumes about how close she was to her parents.
“She was born after the previous miko was cast out. However, there’s not much other information available about the miko village, so that’s about all we’ve got. What testimony we have suggests they raised her pretty harshly, seeking to fill the miko position with an equal to the one who held it previously,” he went on.
“Those two always did try so hard,” Sadeena lamented. Once again, a bit of a sad way of phrasing the birth of a sister. Now I was actually getting interested in her family situation.
Hmmm, this was taking me back. I was feeling something similar to the feelings I had about my own younger brother. He had been better in school than me and bore the burden of our parents’ expectations as a result.
“The sister should always surpass the brother,” Atla chimed in. Gah, just ignore Atla. She’d distracted me. Right now, I needed to prioritiz
e Sadeena’s sister.
“So she’s intended as a replacement for her superior sister?” I said. This was sounding like one twisted family. Still, her star had to be fading, betrayed by the water dragon.
“It’s said she continues to work incredibly hard, pushing herself to match the power of the previous miko.”
“Hmmm.” When I calculated back, she was probably close to Raphtalia in age. I definitely needed to get more details from Sadeena.
“In terms of experience, I’m thinking Sadeena has the edge there?” I remarked.
“In regard to feats of arms and work for the nation, the previous miko is definitely superior. But in regard to divine rites, she has some superior aspects—so it is said, I should say.”
“Oh my.”
“For example?”
“Well, she identified that the oracle miko and priests serving the Heavenly Emperor were trying to trick him and successfully got them removed. Now she’s known as one of the few true oracles in the land.”
“Oh, how wonderful. The miko following me is an oracle?” Sadeena said.
“Which means what, exactly?” I could never be sure of the rules here.
“It’s something miko or priests can be. Like, a special ability, right?” Sadeena explained. Even she didn’t seem quite sure.
“Correct. Here in Q’ten Lo those with the abilities of an oracle are treated with great respect, but it wasn’t among the powers of the previous miko.”
“Apparently it lets you hear the voices of your ancestors, stuff like that. It’s an ability that many miko and priests serving the Heavenly Emperor have. Back then, you know, it did bother me that I didn’t have that ability myself,” Sadeena continued.
“Wow. So it’s like being able to see ghosts?” I asked. I could do that by putting Raph-chan on my head! Hah!
“They can drink alcohol and go into a special type of trance, allowing them to make use of powers they don’t normally have access to. It allows them to invoke exceptionally powerful cooperative magic alone. Apparently,” Sadeena said. That did sound pretty awesome—but it didn’t sound like seeing ghosts.
