“So King Beastin truly is missing.”
“Yes, sir. The direct blood relatives are likewise completely unaccounted for. There are collateral lines, well, but...”
“...It is regrettable, but it cannot be helped. Bloodline is bloodline. We truly cannot recognize them.”
Near the border between the Edea Beastin United Kingdom and the Franka Republic.
There, the surviving nobles had gathered.
Duke Edea, the man with the greatest power after the king, came from the ducal bloodline that held territory in the Edea region.
Meanwhile, among the nobles of the Beastin region, most of the family heads had either died in battle or gone missing.
They had stood directly in the path of the Prava Divine Kingdom’s invasion war, and most of their territories had been seized, so that outcome was probably inevitable.
The only ones who had escaped were lords located comparatively far to the east, or blood relatives who had evacuated in advance.
And even then, most were women or small children, and there was almost nothing they would be needed for besides their bloodlines.
There were a small number of women who had been involved in politics, but their numbers were meager at best.
“Then I believe everyone who has participated here now shares the same understanding. From this moment [N O V E L I G H T] onward, Raydarl Edea shall ascend the throne. Given the circumstances, this will be an abbreviated formality, but once the recovery of the homeland has been achieved, we shall hold a proper coronation anew.”
“To our king!”
“To our king!!”
And so, the Edea Beastin United Kingdom, which had long suffered a political vacuum amid the chaos of war, was finally beginning to regain cohesion.
Of course, how wonderful it would have been if the domestic powers had cooperated with one another and convened this assembly by unanimous agreement.
“It is truly joyous that all of you have thus gathered in one place and that the royal succession has concluded without delay!”
Once the applause had settled down, the one who stood and spoke in a ringing voice was the representative of the nation that had hosted this royal council.
He was Baridan Revidal, dispatched from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Lepuitari as the officer in charge of the Edea Beastin United Kingdom.
He had run all over the united kingdom, persuading, assisting, and at times threatening the relevant parties, finally arranging matters to the point that they could function as an assembly. He was, in every sense, the person who had made it happen.
For that reason, he had many enemies.
In fact, several nobles were glaring at him with loathing.
That said.
It was also true that he had done everything possible and worked for the sake of the united kingdom.
No matter how unpleasant they found him, if they said so aloud, they would be ostracized as though everyone had been waiting for the chance.
“What all of you must do from here is first stabilize your territories. Only after that will you finally be able to speak of recovering the homeland.”
“...You say that, Lord Baridan, but we have a duty to return the people driven from their homes to their native lands. It is easy to tell them to build houses in new lands, but...”
The one who immediately objected was the lord of a certain territory who had actually led his people and succeeded in retreating. At present, they had taken shelter as refugees in someone else’s territory, but that too was only temporary.
“Of course. However, under present circumstances, gathering soldiers, organizing an army, and then maintaining it over a long period... I will say this deliberately: none of you have the margin left to begin any further fighting.”
Because he came from a great power outside the country.
And because, even if he invited hostility, he had the power to repel it.
The diplomat of the Kingdom of Lepuitari spoke a painful reality aloud.
“You must also consider public order within the country. If you cannot even produce food properly, will that not simply give birth to new bandits one after another?”
“...”
At that uncompromising statement, the nobles fell silent.
They likely had many things they wanted to say, but a poor rebuttal would bring ruin down on them.
Every one of them understood that.
Of course, another part of the reason was that Baridan Revidal had gone around persuading them beforehand so that matters would turn out this way.
“Furthermore, we cannot continue offering aid free of charge forever. ...As we have already informed all of you, we also have the will to engage in trade. Let us use that to first aim for domestic stability. Even so, recovering the homeland will require a great many efforts from every one of you... But not now.”
Then the demands from the Kingdom of Lepuitari, and the contents of the accompanying support, were announced.
Public-order maintenance and recovery of national strength were to be given top priority, and the standing army was to be dismantled at the same time as patrol units were established.
The supply of arms, including ammunition, would be kept to a minimum, and support would shift toward daily necessities, including food.
The reason for restricting weapons and ammunition was to prevent precious male labor from being consumed as soldiers before national strength had recovered.
If the working population was lost, then even recovering the homeland would only produce empty fields and mountains.
At the very least, unless they could prepare enough personnel to till and reclaim the land, taking it back would be pointless.
In that way, each noble was admonished, or else threatened with force, and ended up nodding to the demands from the Kingdom of Lepuitari.
But among them were a small number of people who had been secretly promised a supply of arms.
They were lords who were particularly ambitious and whose territories had been located on the eastern side, leaving them relatively undamaged.
Secret treaties had been concluded with each of them.
They were to wait for a certain period, then launch a military coup.
After seizing control of the domestic powers, they were to organize a homeland recovery army anew.
The Kingdom of Lepuitari had skillfully stimulated their ambitions.
The current method, in which each lord assembled an independent army, could never stand against the Prava Divine Kingdom. They needed to form a single army under powerful leadership.
Furthermore, the present royal house could not exercise that kind of authority, and would inevitably fail.
That was in fact a sufficiently foreseeable future, and there was no question that the army’s command system needed to be unified.
That said, when asked whether a lord of one region could actually accomplish such a thing, well, anyone would immediately think it impossible.
The only ones who did not know were the people themselves.
The seeds sown by the Kingdom of Lepuitari would now begin sprouting in various places.
◇◇◇◇
A certain city near the blockade line laid by the Prava Divine Kingdom.
This was a rare city that had avoided falling because refugees from the surrounding area had taken shelter there, while soldiers who had somehow managed to retreat defended it.
“We have prepared enough food to reach everyone! Line up in order!”
“Those with family members must declare so when receiving supplies! Anyone found to have lied will be arrested and punished!”
“Food will be distributed again in seven days! There is no need to receive more than necessary!”
It had been around two months since regular supplies had begun arriving in that desperate city.
At first, it had been the national army, but their numbers had gradually declined, and now entirely different people were carrying out these distributions and, depending on the situation, public-order maintenance actions.
For the past three weeks or so, every group that arrived had been people far from ordinary.
Beautiful girls with beast ears attached to their heads, the likes of which no one had ever seen before.
Contrary to their appearance, however, they possessed extremely high combat power.
The girls themselves were only about as tall as children aged ten to fifteen, but the large armor they wore made them more than two meters tall.
On top of that, their physical strength was outrageous.
After scenes repeated themselves of notorious villains who underestimated them and picked fights being sent flying with one swing of an arm, or easily pinned down, eventually no one resisted them anymore.
The sight of rough men who normally behaved violently lining up silently for rations was no longer unusual.
“We will now begin examining the sick and injured! Those who can move, line up here! If there are people who cannot move, we will make house calls! Inform us!”
And the greatest reason the people of this city obeyed them was that they treated the injured and sick.
They possessed military force, supplied goods, and even prepared doctors.
There were almost no people who would choose not to obey such new rulers.
