The Bardi Empire’s capital was probably the oldest city among all the mega-empires. It was the origin of this country, and even the empire itself was named after it. That’s right—the Bardi Empire’s capital city was also named Bardi.
In order to differentiate it from the country, the people of Bardi typically addressed the Bardi capital as just the capital. Outsiders would call it the Bardi capital.
The Bardi capital encompassed an area that was approximately one thousand square kilometers in size, which included several dozen smaller satellite cities and even rivers and mountains. If a person intended to walk from the very outskirts of the capital city all the way to meet Emperor Orloss in his palace, they would need to prepare at least two weeks’ worth of food and travel equipment.
The Dilo District housed the royal palace, even though it wasn’t the largest district. The royal palace was very well guarded. Since Orloss had far too many enemies, he made the royal palace into the single most secure area in the entire country. Plus, all the princes who formed factions and were always at each other’s throats resided here as well. No politically sensitive person would ever choose to visit the royal palace if they didn’t have to.
During daytime, just about every horse-drawn carriage in the Dilo District had a noble or government official’s emblem. Anyone who idled on the streets for a short period of time would cause a patrolling knight to come question them.
Despite all of this, the Dilo District was still ranked number one in the Bardi Empire for rate of occurrence of serious crimes. As Emperor Orloss, who was “quite elderly” and “really wanted to see who was worthy of inheriting his throne,” tacitly permitted the princes to fight and kill each other, this place was, suffice to say, a chaotic one.
Every prince had gangs, major merchants, and nobles supporting him. None of them would personally take action. This made assassins and spies into the two most common jobs here. And people in these jobs were accustomed to killing off bystander witnesses, so it was an unstated piece of common sense known to everybody in the Bardi Capital that no one should enter the Dilo Royal Palace District after nightfall.
The end result was something that seemed rather abnormal. On the wide streets of Dilo District, people came and went in a jam-packed manner. Yet, at nighttime, the streets were completely empty, while black-clothed or caped individuals could be seen jumping about the rooftops. In fact, it was even common for them to greet each other.”
“Oh, isn’t this the Fourth Prince’s Great Knight Cam? Fancy meeting you here—where are you headed today?”
“I’m here because Thirteenth Prince recently hired an archmage. It’s said that the archmage is so powerful that the balance between the factions has been affected. My boss wants me to go test that archmage’s mettle and simply kill the archmage if he’s actually weak. And if he really is that strong, I’m supposed to teach him the rules of how we work around here.”
“What a coincidence—that’s my task as well. Let’s go together, together.”
“Of course. The reward will be the same even if I team up, so why should I go alone? Wouldn’t that be foolish? Right, I heard that this archmage is really quite something. Do you have any special information about him? Share it with me, no?”
One black-clad man started chatting with a gray-caped man. These two seemed as if they were teaming up against a boss monster, making it seem like they were good friends.
But no outsider would be able to guess that the black-clad man’s left eye had been previously blinded by the gray-caped man. And in that fight, the gray-caped man had lost his left hand’s little finger and middle finger. Not only were they not friends, they had fought each other to the death just yesterday night.
“Let’s go together!”
“Together!”
“Let’s all gang up!”
The two of them turned around to see a black-caped man, a red-caped man, and a man with a purple mask. It would seem that their team now consisted of five—it was almost as if they were teaming up to fight against a boss monster in a cave.
Yet these members, who were now happily organizing together and talking as if they had become brothers-in-arms, had been fighting each other the previous night. Perhaps half of their bodies would be found in the gutters tomorrow, most likely because of these temporary teammates. That was because all of these somewhat “famous” fighters had sizable bounties on their heads.
Third-rate assassins, mafia enforcers, rich merchants’ bodyguards, disobedient deserter soldiers, and even local hoodlums and gangsters. Every underside faction of society could be seen here.
As Emperor Orloss'”expected death of old age” got closer and closer, he seemed to care less and less about the fights that broke out here in the Dilo District. In fact, he even stopped sending knights to patrol out in the evenings. The result of this was that the princes’ infighting got even fiercer—now, it basically out in the open. They spent large amounts of money attempting to kill each other. They didn’t care about their assassins’ backgrounds or even power levels. As long as an assassin could complete the task and survive, the assassin would naturally be a loyal dog worth the money spent.
That’s right—dog. Everyone else in the royal capital addressed this worsening infighting among the princes as “dogfighting.” The princes stood up high on a platform, tossing gold coins down below to have others fight and die for them. Wasn’t this similar to how illegal underground dogfighting rings did things?
And it just so happened to be that this “dogfighting” was getting worse and worse every day, to the point where it seemed like it would soon swallow up the entire capital.
“…No sense of life left in him at all. Holy Light healing is completely ineffective on him. He’s likely to die at any moment.”
A certain head doctor at a certain royal medical academy secretly leaked this information. And on the same afternoon he received a large payment for this information, he was arrested by the royal knights and executed.
Holy Light’s healing effects, foundationally speaking, worked to return the living to its “normal” status. So Holy Light healing was incredibly effective against external injuries as well as poisons. However, it was basically useless on something akin to fixing a broken limb or reconstructing a body part. That was because the Holy Light would judge that the broken limb was already in a “normal” state—why would it change that for you?
The undead were filled with negative energy, and to the Holy Light, whose purpose was to return the living to a “normal” status, they naturally became mortal enemies.
By the same logic, if a person was at the end of their life because of old age, their “normal” status would be equal to almost dead—they lived only due to medication. The Holy Light would be powerless to do anything in such a situation. Blindly using the power of Holy Light to stimulate the last throes of one’s life would only make that person die faster.
From a certain standpoint, the fact that the Holy Light was ineffective on an elderly person’s illness or condition was a notice that death would soon come for this person. Although the Bardi royal knights acted swiftly and immediately executed the doctor who leaked this information and used all their means to prevent any further spread of information, this in a way confirmed the veracity of the doctor’s leaked information.
And so, all the princes went crazy with delight. Simultaneously, the major domain lords and the biggest personages in the empire were no longer content with just watching the princes fight from a distance.
After all, it seemed quite obvious that a new emperor would soon be chosen. It was now the last opportunity to choose a side, or even personally try to become emperor. The rate of return if the person you helped became emperor would be astronomical. Any merchant would be willing to gamble their entire fortune and even their very life on it. This was a huge gamble to the nobles as well. If they won, their noble ranking and status would multiply exponentially, perhaps giving them great authority under the new emperor. If they lost… actually, that wouldn’t matter much to the major nobles. There were always more major nobles loathed by an emperor than loved in any generation. As long as there was no incredibly deep grudge, all a major noble would have to do was speedily retreat back to their domain and not antagonize the emperor any further. They would be spared as long as they kept a low profile.
Since the major nobles, merchants, and even the major officials in the military and government started taking action, its internal order fell into utter chaos even though Emperor Orloss wasn’t dead yet. Everything was only calm on the surface, but trouble brewed underneath.
The only fortunate part was that Emperor Orloss still had his authority and was as vicious as always—nobody dared to bring the infighting out in the open, so only the royal palace district was chaotic… you’d be so naïve if you thought that was real! If Chaos was really possible to control, then the Chaos Faction would have long made peace with the Order Faction.
On the surface, everyone kept promising to not affect the ordinary citizens. Yet major merchants used their merchant groups to attack their competitors with full force, making the market wildly unstable. All the nobles’ underworld factions were acting as well. A single hoodlum would be more than capable of causing a huge commotion in an alley, not to mention every military movement would make an entire city district of people unable to sleep well at night.
The citizens were no fools. Considering the fact that murders were happening almost every day, and nobles who seemed to be doing well kept popping up dead, the rumors naturally started spreading by themselves.
Since some unknown time, it had no longer been a secret that Emperor Orloss'”impending death” would be soon. Even if it was understood that Emperor Orloss wished to use this special method to find an appropriate successor, ordinary citizens only wanted to have a peaceful life. How would they possibly enjoy this chaos? Especially since they were still currently at war?
That’s right—war. Not to mention, war with several other countries.
That so-called Holy Light army had lost almost half its troops to the rampaging dragons. However, they were still currently within Bardi borders, although most people seemed to have forgotten about them.
However, there was at least good news from the defense line at Nightrain City. Thanks to my ridiculous actions, Undead Lord Davey and all the Undead Lords under him, together with their armies, had perished. Until a new high-ranked undead arrived to take overall command and the remaining Undead Lords who didn’t participate previously finished blaming each other, the defense line at Nightrain City would be under much less pressure.
Since the Contract Heroes on the western front were now free and had no restrictions upon them, it was only natural for some of them to choose to go east and help defend against the undead there. This helped make Nightrain City even safer for the time being. Only now would Dragon Knight Archduke Halent dare to make time for his own affairs.
As for Bardi’s last enemy… they were still at war with the Mage Country!
That’s right. They were still technically at war, at least on the surface. The Mage Country had supposedly used a forbidden spell to destroy one of Bardi’s fortresses, and the Dragon Knights were currently fighting on the frontlines against the archmages. Since no agreement had been made yet, the two countries were still of course at war.
In fact, since the local battles had ended victoriously for the Bardi Empire, plenty of citizens who had lost relatives at the destroyed fortress demanded their lords to attack the Mage Country in revenge. Also, those with nefarious intentions spread propaganda about the Mage Country in order to make the citizens uneasy and spread fear. With all this, the citizens held a very high degree of enmity towards the Mage Country right now.
As for truly warring against the Mage Country? The major nobles didn’t know the truth of the matter. Yet because the issue of the new successor to the throne hadn’t been decided yet, not a single major personage had any intentions of focusing on this useless external affair when more important internal ones were at stake. It was amid such a tumultuous time that Cher arrived in Bardi as the Mage Country’s official ambassador, naturally drawing lots of attention.
Only having political personages in a city would be insufficient. The biggest district in the Bardi capital, the Kasoen District, was the business and education center of capital. This district was three times the size of the Dilo Royal Palace District. In the thirtyish years of Orloss’s reign, the Kasoen District had only become ever more prosperous. Every year, merchants from all sorts of countries would gather. This was also the most extravagant district. All foreign embassies in the Bardi Empire were located here, a move designed to help them avoid getting caught up in the princes’ internal infighting, such as getting accused of being foreign spies under the pay of one of the princes.
Considering the current situation, Cher kept a low profile when she entered the Bardi capital. She had secretly slipped into an ambassadors’ hotel at nighttime. However, her status made it certain that she would be unable to lay low for long.
Since a horse-drawn carriage with the Mage Country’s emblem kept visiting between the royal palace and the Kasoen District multiple times per day, in addition to the fact that this carriage always parked at a hotel where only ambassadors from other countries were allowed to reside, of course even the ordinary citizens learned that their enemy country’s ambassador had arrived.
And then, rotten apples and eggs suddenly started selling out…
From the Bardi Empire citizens’ angle, this was quite easy to understand. They just happened to need a target to vent their discontent at right now. And so, a game of Whack-a-Mole would be played every time the horse-drawn carriage passed through the streets. All the young people who hadn’t yet had enough would chase the carriage all the way to the ambassadors’ hotel. Although the Bardi soldiers guarding the hotel wouldn’t allow these people to enter, they would simply pretend not to see anything as long as they were tossing rotten apples and other non-dangerous items. The result was that a constant bombardment of rotten apples and eggs rained upon the hotel, making it so that not a single person dared to show up at a window.
Yet everyone in the envoy group was quite calm about the current situation—well, mostly everyone. Only the ambassador herself, Cher, couldn’t understand.
“Why are you all so calm?”
“Because we’ve gotten used to suffering” was the answer said to her in unison.
Roland’s old subordinates may be used to suffering, but Cher was filled with frustrations.
“I’m only an ordinary mage who works in the public order department. I haven’t even passed the exam to become an archmage. Forget about the fact that for some reason the higher-ups suddenly forced me into becoming the ambassador. Forget about the fact that even though we already have a secret agreement with Orloss, we can’t publicize it. Forget about the fact that I’m now in a country filled with people that hate me. Forget about the fact that I haven’t gotten a single night’s sleep because of those constant projectiles attacking the windows even at night. Forget about the fact that Emperor Orloss always summons me over for supposed official discussions but instead forces me to play chess with him. Not only that, he’s so bad at chess, and he always takes back his moves and even cheats by putting his dead pieces back on the board… ”
If it wasn’t for the sake of their two countries’ relationships, and that a war might truly break out if she acted out on her frustrations, she would have gone on a rampage long ago.
“How am I supposed to bear all this!? I’ve had enough! I want to quit!”
Alright then. Cher never had a good temper to begin with, and she was in a thunderous mood. But the single worst part that she absolutely couldn’t stand was that…
“Even though it was agreed that I was supposed to only be a puppet ambassador on the surface, with the main work being done by the real ambassador Roland, why did he disappear the moment we set out!? Now I’m the one forced to do all the work! I already have so many frustrations and also so much work on top of that. How can someone be so irresponsible as he is!?”
“…Ahh, such familiar roaring and complaining.”
Krose sympathetically looked over at Cher, who was in a mode of full frustration. It would seem that anyone who stayed together long enough with Roland would always have a couple days of the month like this.
“…I feel like I’m seeing the past me.”
Lilith sank into contemplation as she looked at the chaos outside the window. Which “past me” was she referring to? The former Bardi royal princess who was now viewed as an enemy by the Bardi citizens? Or that pitifully busy internal manager who had useless coworkers and so much work piled on her by her bosses in Sulfur Mountain City?
“Relax, Sister Cher. Teacher will probably come back very soon. He won’t forget about something so important… I think.”
As Roland’s disciple, Cohen wanted to protect his teacher’s honor. But as he was speaking, he recalled how unreliable Roland typically was, and his last sentence exposed his own lack of confidence.
“What a chaotic place. I…”
“Miss Yawen, His Highness Roland told me that this is one of the oldest empires in Eich. So they react slowly to change and view themselves as above all others. They still have plenty of discrimination against Dark Elves. And the typical customs here are to burn any Dark Elves first and ask questions only later. From this, it can be seen that they’re basically no different from uncultured barbarians who have no empathy at all…”
Eaglestorm was quite chatty once he started talking. Since there weren’t enough people to help out, Momo had been sent here to assist Yawen, and was currently looking at Eaglestorm while filled with expectations.
“Did he expect this situation? Did he mention me? Did he mention what I should do here?”
“…Alright then. I’ll speak directly about the important points. ‘If they want to enforce the concept of Law here, tell them that this isn’t their territory and that imitating law enforcers from other territories is a felony. They should understand how serious it is for a law enforcer to commit a crime.”
“Roland even thought of that? But he didn’t think of our current situation?”
The Law personnel had been wanting to move out but calmed down upon hearing these orders left behind by Roland. But the biggest trouble for everyone right now was Ambassador Cher, who was going crazy from the pressure of everything on her. She had just played three hours of chess against Orloss, who constantly cheated, took back his moves, and was just really weak chess. On her way back here, she had “enjoyed” a shower of rotten eggs. Her current sense of logic and reason was about to collapse. Now, upon hearing Roland’s name, she went into a frenzy.
“I’ve had enough! I’m going to quit being this ambassador! I’m going to return to the Mage Country right now!”
Cohen, who was probably one of the nicer people here, hesitated for a moment before attempting to convince her otherwise.
“…Sister Cher, then you should first say goodbye to Emperor Orloss, which means that the carriage still needs to pass through town one more time. I wonder if they still have any ammunition? The fruits around here are sold out every day. Oh, right, it’s almost nighttime, so those strange people who run around on the rooftops every night should be out and about soon. The carriage might be ambushed by them. Sister Cher, do you intend to join their ranks and disguise yourself? Actually, I have some black cloth left over from last time…”
“Little Cohen! Has anyone ever told you that you’re just as annoying as your teacher!?”
Alright then. Ambassador Cher was fully raging. But…
*Cough, cough.* Eaglestorm, acting as the elder in-charge, cleared his throat and looked sympathetically in Cher’s direction.
“To quote His Highness Roland’s original words, ‘If Cher wants to quit, tell her that she won’t receive any research funds for the next fifty years. Every single review or test she has will result in failure. Also, she’ll be looking at mandatory daily toilet-cleaning duties. That’s right, this is abuse of power. You’re more than welcome to file a complaint once you return to the Mage Country. Yep, file your complaint to Roland, who just took over the job of head of the public order department. He’s now your boss’ boss’ boss.”
“Damned Roland! I can’t believe my first impression of you was that you were a good person!”
Alright then. The familiar, furious roars caused so many people present to recall their own memories.
“…If only Roland was the God of Hatred. With his abilities in making others hate him, he’d surely be a Main God by now.”