How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 4

by Dojyomaru

  “For weapons, yes. But there are a lot of other uses for sharp blades, aren’t there?”

  If we mass-produced knives with a good, sharp edge, I was sure the chefs would be able to produce more delicate and tasty dishes. If we had sharper tools, we might be able to use them to produce even better tools. Then there were medical applications, like scalpels. I thought that might be the most urgent. In surgery, the sharper the tools used, the less stress would be put on the patient’s body.

  It was a technique with all these applications. I wanted it badly.

  “Technically, I have people researching it here, too, but... it seems like that’s gonna take a while,” I said.

  When it came to Japanese swords, I knew that they heated and folded the iron and hit it. That was the sort of rough general knowledge I had. Tamahagane or hihi’irokane; which was the one that actually existed again? With this level of knowledge, there was no way I was going to be able to recreate the Japanese sword.

  “If we just had diplomatic relations with them, I’d pay a good amount for them to transfer knowledge of those techniques to us...” I pondered.

  “Which is why you’re wondering what the Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago Union is thinking?” she asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “It sounds like a hard problem to solve,” Liscia said.

  She could say that again. Amidonia had had a clear intent to invade, and I had made the decision to fight them because we’d been in a situation that forced us to, but I couldn’t keep this country intact if we were fighting wars with our neighbors year in and year out. I wanted to open diplomatic relations if only to avoid an unnecessary confrontation.

  “Well, anyway,” I said at last, “we need to develop techniques of our own that other countries won’t have. Technology and scholarship will build an unshakable base for the country.”

  “That sounds reasonable, but do you have any specific ideas?” Liscia asked.

  “Techniques are created by people,” I said. “That’s why we have no choice but to go after anyone who might have those techniques. I have just the person in mind, too.”

  “Just the right person?” Liscia asked, looking at me dubiously.

  I nodded. “Ludwin was telling us about it a while back, remember? He said there’s a mad scientist in the Forbidden Army. I think I’ll have him follow through with his promise to introduce us sometime.”

  Then, just as we were talking about that, there was a knock and the office door opened, with Ludwin himself rushing through the door.

  He suddenly got down on the floor, lowering his head to the point it was almost touching the ground. It wasn’t quite a formal kowtow, but it was pretty close.

  “Your Majesty! I am so sorry!” he suddenly burst out.

  In response, Liscia and I opened our eyes wide and spoke simultaneously.

  “What are you suddenly apologizing for?” I demanded.

  “Did something happen, Sir Ludwin?” she asked.

  Ludwin raised his face and spoke, carefully choosing his words. “Well, you see... an acquaintance of mine has gone and done something outrageous...”

  “Something outrageous?” I asked cautiously.

  Had something bad happened? Now, when I had finally sorted out the mountain of things that I had to do after being given the throne, was something going to happen again? I was starting to feel a little fed up with it all.

  Ludwin hesitantly asked, “Um... sire. Do you perhaps remember that I said there was a person I wanted you to meet?”

  “Hm? Ohh. Liscia and I were just talking about that,” I said. “The mad scientist you know, right? I’ve been wanting to meet them, but things have been so busy lately. Sorry I haven’t been able to find time.”

  “No, I completely understand that. It’s just...”

  Ludwin looked hesitant to speak at first, but he seemed to find his resolve and continued.

  “That acquaintance of mine happens to be the one responsible.”

  ◇　◇　◇

  The Arcs fiefdom lay between the royal capital Parnam and the new coastal city Venetinova.

  This was the land ruled over by the Captain of the Royal Guard, Ludwin Arcs, who was head of the House of Arcs. Because Ludwin lived in the castle, he normally had a magistrate here who acted in his stead.

  When compared to the fiefs held by other members of the nobility and knighthood in this country, it was around medium-sized. Ludwin had distinguished himself in the recent war, so I had wanted to transfer him to a larger fief, but Ludwin had been very particular about his own domain, and had stubbornly refused. I didn’t see any reason to force the transfer, so I opted to expand the boundaries of his current fief to suit his preferences.

  Liscia, Ludwin, and I had come to the Arcs fiefdom in a gondola carried by one of the royal house’s wyverns. We had come to verify the facts of what Ludwin had told us some days earlier.

  “Was it okay to leave Aisha behind like that?” Liscia asked.

  “Well, we’ve got Ludwin here, after all,” I said.

  I hadn’t brought a bodyguard on this outing. Aisha had been concerned and made a fuss about it, but with the Captain of the Royal Guard around, I figured it would be fine. Besides... I wanted to keep this quiet, so the fewer people involved, the better.

  From the air, the Arcs fiefdom had been stained in fall colors by the leaves that had fallen from the trees. There were a lot of fields and pastures, too, so the scenery that spread out before us had a feeling of tranquility to it.

  This was just based on my own senses, but this continent, which was a bit larger than China had been in the Three Kingdoms Period, had a considerable difference in its climate between the north and the south.

  The further north you went, the hotter, and the further south you went, the colder it became. That was true even within this country, and in the southernmost reaches, the snow had already begun to fly. The Arcs fiefdom, being more to the north, was still experiencing a temperate autumn climate.

  “Wish we could just take it easy and have a picnic or something,” I grumbled.

  “I know the feeling, really I do, but we’ll do it another time, okay?” Liscia gently rebuked me. “We came here today for a reason, didn’t we?”

  “I know that, but, hey, it’s such a nice day out...”

  “Ah, this is it, sire,” Ludwin interrupted. “Please, take us down here.”

  Following Ludwin’s directions, we landed the gondola and disembarked at the edge of a little forest. Even once I was out of the gondola, all I could see was trees. Nothing looked out of the ordinary about this forest.

  I ordered the gondola’s driver to wait for us here, then asked Ludwin, “Is it really in the forest?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Though, to be precise, it’s not ‘in,’ but ‘under.’”

  “Under?” I asked.

  “I think it would be faster to just show you.” With that said, Ludwin set off toward the forest. “Now, sire, princess, please follow me.”

  Trailing after Ludwin, Liscia and I walked through the forest side by side. As a precaution against wild creatures, I had the mouse dolls that I used while providing relief to the dark elf village scouting the area, but there didn’t seem to be any wild animals that were a threat. It was a small forest, and I could tell that people entered it often. With the leaves having fallen from the trees, it was bright inside the forest, which provided good visibility, too.

  If it came down to it, I figured Ludwin and Liscia could handle any problems that arose.

  Ludwin was ahead of us, clearing any branches that would be in our way with his sword and shield, so all we had to do was walk behind him. While walking on the fallen leaves, I started to get into the mood for a picnic again. I naturally started singing a song that matched the atmosphere.

  “That’s a nice song. What is it?” Liscia asked me.

  “The theme to the first movie of a monster anime that every person in my country would know,” I said.

 
“...The one thing I do know is that what you just said made no sense to me.” Liscia just sort of rolled her eyes, but then she suddenly took on a more thoughtful look. I wondered what was up, but the next moment, she wrapped her arm around mine. “How’s that? Does it feel a bit more like a picnic now?”

  Seeing Liscia’s shy smile, I said...

  “...I’m getting weirdly sweaty now.”

  “Why?!” she exclaimed.

  “Because you’re too cute, and it’s making my heart race.”

  “Huh?! O-Oh... My heart is, too,” she flirted back.

  Ludwin came to a stop. “This is the place, sire, princess.”

  Ludwin turned around, so I quickly backed up. Then I noticed something I hadn’t up until now. There was something big right in front of us. It was...

  “...A garage?” I asked. That seemed like the only way to describe the rectangular object.

  It was moss-covered, but it seemed to be made of something like concrete, and had a shutter on one side. It was big enough for an average car to fit into. While they sometimes had technologies that seemed far ahead of their time, this world was at a pre-industrial revolution level on average, so this design seemed out of place.

  While I was reacting with confusion, Ludwin shook his head. “It’s not a garage. This isn’t tall enough for a horse-drawn carriage to enter, after all.”

  In this world, the common assumption would be that a garage was for holding carriages. In my world, a van might not have fit inside, but an ordinary car would have easily fit. Not that there was any point in trying to explain... but, come to think of it, that made the design of this building all the harder to understand.

  “Well, what is it?” I asked, and Ludwin responded with all seriousness.

  “The entrance to a dungeon, sire.”

  Dungeons.

  These labyrinthine places had their own unique and mysterious ecology.

  They were also the one place where monsters had been confirmed to exist before the coming of the Demon Lord.

  When I had been using my Little Musashibos to play at being an adventurer, I had heard about them from Dece, Juno, and the other members of their party. But the one they had told me about had been a cave, like you would imagine. I hadn’t heard anything about this sort of clearly artificial entrance.

  I presented my doubts, but apparently dungeons came in many forms.

  “There are all sorts of different dungeons,” Liscia explained. “They appear everywhere from the plains to the forest to the mountains, and even to the depths of the sea. They can be like caves inside, or paved with stone like the basement of a castle, or even a bizarre space with metal walls.”

  I vaguely recalled that the jewels we used for the Jewel Voice Broadcast had come from inside a dungeon. I’d heard of other such pieces of over-technology coming out of dungeons, too, so it wasn’t strange to find a dungeon itself was made out of over-technology... maybe?

  “Hey, wait. How did people even discover undersea dungeons?” I asked.

  Liscia said, “There are races that work underwater, and some of the undersea dungeons have air inside, so in those cases, people go down to them inside these big bell-like things.”

  Oh, a diving bell, huh? That was a sort of diving machine shaped like a bell that you continuously pumped air into as it sank. I only knew them from manga, but... I kind of wanted to try riding in one.

  “Well, are there any monsters in this dungeon, then?” I asked.

  Ludwin shook his head. “No. You could call this a ruined dungeon. The monsters and creatures inside have long since been exterminated.”

  “It’s already been cleared, you mean?” I asked.

  “Yes. And now, this is where a person from the House of Maxwell, a family of eccentrics that were given the rights to this ruined dungeon and turned it into a laboratory, currently lives.”

  Ludwin turned and spoke into a metal tube next to the entrance.

  “Genia! It’s me! Ludwin Arcs! You rarely go outside, so I doubt you’re not there, so respond if you are!”

  It must have been a speaking tube he was shouting into. They’d had them on the battleship Albert, too. And wait, was this person he was calling a shut-in, I wondered? This person called Genia (based on that name, was she a girl, maybe?).

  Coming from the speaking tube...

  Bang, crash! ...there was a sound of something falling over, followed by a young woman’s voice.

  “Ow... Hey, Big Brother Luu. What’s up?”

  “No, not ‘What’s up?’” Ludwin shot back. “There was a pretty loud crash just now. Are you okay?”

  “I was surprised when you suddenly called out to me, so I accidentally knocked some stuff over,” Genia said. “Well, it wasn’t dangerous chemicals, so it’s all good.”

  “It’s not good at all,” Ludwin said. “You’re always doing this...”

  “Ahaha, getting lectured through a speaking tube is kind of a fresh experience.”

  Faced with a voice that showed no sign of regret whatsoever, Ludwin’s shoulders slumped. I felt like I could tell how their relationship worked just from what I’d seen here. One did crazy things and the other chased after her.

  Ludwin shook his head and tried to get back on track. “Anyway, I’ve brought some important guests to see the place today. Let us in.”

  “Important?” Genia asked. “Okay. I’m opening it up now.”

  The closed shutter began to rise on its own. Was it switch-operated, maybe? It felt more and more out of place in this world.

  When the shutter had opened fully, there was a set of stairs leading down underground. It seemed this garage really was just the entrance. With no regard for my surprise, this Genia person said in a cheery, singsong voice, “Okay, Luu, and my guests, too, come on in.”

  We descended the stairs into the underground and soon came to an open space.

  From what Ludwin had told me, this wasn’t a particularly huge dungeon. It was like a large six or seven floor building, only buried underground. What was more, the House of Maxwell who owned this dungeon had taken out all the walls and floors between levels to secure more space, so it was just one big rectangular space now.

  The massive staircase that stretched out along the walls of that massive space felt like being at the edge of a sheer cliff face, and it was pretty scary. I wished they had at least put in railings.

  The walls also seemed to be made of metal. Liscia had described dungeons like this as “bizarre spaces with metal walls,” but to me, it was like being inside a futuristic spaceship. The metal walls seemed to give off a faint light. The way that it wasn’t dark, even though we were underground, felt futuristic, too.

  Internally, I was shocked to see this incongruously advanced technology, but Liscia and Ludwin didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Apparently the two of them thought the walls were shining because of magic or something like that. Because magic could do anything, perhaps the people of this world didn’t have much of a sense of wonder.

  As we descended the stairs, I asked about the House of Maxwell.

  “The Maxwells were the noble house that originally ruled over this area,” Liscia explained. “It must be in their blood, because the House of Maxwell has produced many great researchers, and it’s said that they have greatly raised the level of this country’s civilization. They’re particularly well recognized for their analysis of technologies discovered in dungeons. It was the Maxwells who discovered how to use simple receivers for the Jewel Voice Broadcast.”

  Wow... I thought. So it was the Maxwells who discovered how to use those simple receivers, huh?

  “Wait, huh?” I burst out. “I think they’re using them in the Empire, too, aren’t they?”

  “It was a fairly long time ago, after all,” Liscia said. “One king a number of generations ago sold the knowledge to various foreign powers.”

  “Hmm... Well, it’s hard for me to say that was a bad move, I guess,” I said.

  It was scary to see c
utting edge technology leak out, but if the technology would have little effect and someone else was going to discover it eventually, selling the knowledge while it was still worth something might be okay, maybe. That, or exchanging it for knowledge of something else.

  “For that achievement, they were given this ruined dungeon and the land around it to rule,” Ludwin said. “However, the Maxwells, passionate as they were about their research, showed no interest in managing the land. With the understanding of the royal family, they delegated management of the land to us, their neighbors in the House of Arcs. Half of what they earn from the land is given to the House of Arcs, while the other half goes to supporting their lifestyle and funding their research. That’s the system that we adopted.”

  “That’s... pretty amazing, in a way,” I said. Managing the lands of their fief was a noble’s duty. To think they were neglecting that to spend their days on nothing but research... “But, wait, isn’t the House of Arcs losing out on that deal?”

  “Because the House of Maxwell’s contributions were so great, it was allowed,” Ludwin said. “Besides, if their research brings us new knowledge, the country will prosper even more. Though, that said, as the times have gone by, the Maxwells’ lands have been incorporated into the Arcs fiefdom, and now we’re treated as their patrons.”

  Basically, while their house had been allowed to continue, their lands had been reduced to just this dungeon. And the House of Maxwell was being supported financially by the House of Arcs.

  “...Huh? You’re the head of the House of Arcs, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “And this Genia person is the only one here?” I asked.

  “Yes. Genia Maxwell. At present, she is the last of the Maxwells.”

  “In other words, right now, you’re paying to support this Genia, right?”

  “Urkh...”

  When I asked him that, Ludwin was at a loss for words. That was when I remembered those rumors that maybe Ludwin was facing financial difficulties.

  “Don’t tell me, the reason you eat the cheapest bun the cafeteria has to offer is...” I said slowly.