Chapter 1 – It Seems to Be a Walk Through Klinge at Night

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“But look, aren’t the documents piling up way too fast, no matter how you look at it?”

Renya couldn’t help but to complain in such a manner when he saw how the mountains of documents stacked in front of his nose didn’t seem to decrease even the slightest bit.

In response, a figure jumped up in panic after having laid prostrate on a temporary workplace which had been set up right next to Renya’s desk, and yelled, “I wasn’t sleeping! Definitely not!”

“Don’t shout so much…no one minds you napping for a bit anyway.”

The one drowsily rubbing her eyes while appearing somewhat relieved after looking around herself and hearing Renya’s apathetic voice was the demon girl and fifth hero, Emil. As always, she wore nothing but a tube bra and hotpants, making anyone wonder whether she didn’t feel cold in these clothes. Her long, violet hair had been bundled up into a side tail.

Renya, who had experienced firsthand how all of Klinge would mobilize to hinder him from escaping when he tried to get away after getting totally fed up with all the paperwork, had given up on all kinds of things, resigned himself, and was obediently working through his share of documents. However, believing that it was far too harsh a punishment to burden one guy with all this workload, he had opted for the relief option of dragging someone suitable into this whole mess.

The one being excluded as a potential target from the get-go was unexpectedly Frau. Even if Mayria was out of the question since she was kind of involved in this anyway, excluding Frau, who was known for her extremely high intelligence stemmed solely from Frau’s excellence. In short, if Renya had obstructed Frau’s work by dragging her into his paperwork, Klinge as a city would be liable to stop working altogether. Faced with this reality, something minor like paperwork wasn’t even worth consideration. Or in other words, Frau was already so busy with work that her workload didn’t fall short when compared to Renya or Mayria in any way.

Going by order, the next one would be Shion, but she was excluded as a candidate as well. If Renya called out to her, Shion would likely follow him anywhere through thick and thin, but paperwork was a problem that required brains, and if limited to only the problem Renya was facing right now, Shion wouldn’t just be completely useless, but she’d be quite capable of worsening the whole situation by adding unnecessary problems. In short, it was easy to predict that she’d likely plunge everything into disaster before becoming any sort of assistance.

Of course Renya was well aware that this was a terrible and heartless assessment of Shion, but since he called out to her just in case and received the very same answer out of her mouth, there was no problem with making that evaluation.

As for other people: the beastmen were completely ill-suited for office work such as working on documents as a racial trait; the elves had no flaws when it came to intelligence, but their stamina was lacking, making them ill-fit for something like a crunch time; the dragonoids didn’t have any of the aforementioned issues like lacking intelligence or stamina, but since they had just recently suffered heavy attacks by the demon king army, they were exhausted.

As a result of excluding one candidate after the other like this, the last possible option remaining was the demon Emil who didn’t seem like she wouldn’t add any problems to the situation, even if asked (albeit somewhat forcefully) to accompany Renya in this endeavor. The runner-up was Saint Rona, but after mentioning that she had another task from Kilie, the mysterious peddler, she was taken away alongside Croire, Kaede, and the dragonoid Charlotte. Unable to call out to those girls, they successfully managed to escape a forced requisition as a workforce.

“So, what were you talking about?” Emil asked while blinking her eyes repeatedly.

Now that she had woken up once, she apparently couldn’t re-enter her sleep state right away. As such she decided to continue the paperwork until she’d become sleepy again and drew several documents to herself from a nearby pile of documents.

While letting the tip of his quill fly across a document’s surface, one of the countless many he had processed so far, Renya pondered what he had been talking about earlier, before eventually recalling it.

“I was speaking about the speed of the documents piling up. Say what you like, but isn’t this rate too abnormal?”

If he believed in Mayria’s words, the documents brought to Renya and Emil should be limited to those Mayria and her officials had screened beforehand. However, in spite of their supposed sorting, the documents appeared to grow instead of decreasing in number, despite them working on them with two people now. Not only could Renya not understand just how many documents were flowing into Mayria’s office, but he also started to seriously wonder whether they had to build a warehouse just for the sake of all this paperwork.

“That’s well, you see…Klinge is simply weird.”

While saying that, Emil tossed the document she had worked on moments ago into a box with the label 「Processed」. One of the civil officials would regularly visit their office to pick up the documents inside that box, but no matter how often they emptied it, the amount of documents showed no wane since the box would quickly fill up again.

“Could you not call other people’s homes weird?”

Renya wouldn’t be able to name a single part of the earldom he loved, but when it came to assessing the land under his rule as weird, he felt somewhat offended as its highest authority. Apparently sensing the degradation of Renya’s mood, Emil dipped the tip of her quill in the inkwell while skillfully shrugging her shoulders.

“I guess I shortened my remark a bit too much, huh? To be more precise, currently Klinge, or rather, the Kunugi Earldom’s situation is weird.”

“And what does that mean?”

Emil thought for a moment after being asked, and then answered, “First off, the earldom is extremely wealthy, isn’t it? And as one effect of that, many things leave this place, just as many things enter it. Personally, I wonder whether the food-related import and export isn’t going way too far, though.”

Implicitly Emil was asking him to reduce this part of the trade a bit, but although Renya noticed her intent, he pretended not to and ignored it. Being able to eat delicious food was a hobby for Renya which couldn’t be replaced by anything. And making lots of food circulate on the market to avoid his population starving was something he even regarded as his duty as lord. Given that it’d naturally be wrong to let the citizens of other fiefs starve instead, Renya also kept in mind to adjust that side properly.

“Well, I won’t tell you to force yourself, though. Just, if the import and export of goods increases, it’s only natural for the number of documents related to permits or tax collection to grow in proportion, right?”

“Ugh…”

“Next, the population is far too big.”

Even while talking, Emil’s hands didn’t rest. She smoothly filled documents with letters at a rate that didn’t lose out against the civil officials working at Mayria’s office, but unexpectedly Emil herself would describe this sort of paperwork as one of her weak points, if you actually asked. The biggest reason was her lacking interest in this sort of work. For this reason she was doing it very reluctantly, even if it might not seem so on the surface. As a logical outcome of that, her work efficiency fell and she tired out faster without being able to concentrate for extended periods of time.

“So far as it goes, that’s not the fault of the Kunugi Earldom, but even so, it’s a territory at the borderlands and despite its size, most of its land hasn’t been reclaimed yet. If a huge surge of people flows into such a place and starts to reclaim land all over the place, it’s only reasonable for swarms of documents to flow in from that direction, too.”

“Yeah…”

“On top of that.”

“There’s still more?” Renya asked, looking fed-up.

But Emil continued explaining as if treating this as a great side-show to divert herself from the boring paperwork, “This one is, umm…not quite unrelated to me, I s’pose.”

All of sudden Emil’s way of speaking changed into being somewhat evasive. As Renya wondered just what was making it so hard for her to speak up, Emil flapped her mouth open and shut several times, clearly swallowing down something she was about to say, but eventually she stopped writing with her quill, and spoke up with an apologetic tone.

“It’s because races other than humans have gathered in Klinge as well.”

The first ones on the list meant by Emil were the demons who had taken up residence right next to Klinge after relocating to the Kunugi Earldom with their entire town in tow. Following that, the dragonoid civilians and soldiers, whom Renya had evacuated, had built temporary housings near Klinge and were living over there right now.

All kinds of goods such as food, building materials, or daily necessities were passed on to them through Klinge, and the number of documents stemming from that sort of distribution work had grown towards astronomical figures.

In addition the complexity of the documents had increased as they were about providing aid to other races instead of dealing with human-to-human interactions. Moreover, the fact of all the funds for these transactions being provided out of Earl Kunugi’s coffers invited a situation where even more documents were required.

Considering things up to that point, Renya suddenly realized and understood the reason why Emil behaved, doing work she didn’t like at all, according to her own words. In short, she felt obliged since a part of the many documents giving Renya such a headache was stemming from her little brother and his people. Following that feeling of obligation, she still remained in the office without trying to escape from work she would usually avoid at all costs.

“I don’t really think you need to mind it so much, though.”

Be it demons or dragonoids, it was Renya’s own decision to offer them the option of coming along to his fief. As such Renya believed that they didn’t have to worry so much about having taken him up on his offer, but apparently that argument didn’t fly in Emil’s eyes as she shook her head while resuming the paperwork.

“You see, demons tend to be regarded as something like the root of all evil in this world. But, even among demons you’ll find people who possess a strong sense of duty, you know?”

“Well, you should know that I was always under the impression that you’ve helped us out a lot until now, Emil.”

“That’s…well, I’m truly happy to hear that, of course,” Emil said with a laugh, but her response didn’t end there. “Also, there exists yet another reason why the amount of documents has grown.”

“What else could it be…? I totally feel like I’ve heard more than enough reasons for a lifetime by now.”

“You might have forgotten about it, Renya, but ‘that’ is being built near Klinge. Remember?”

Having it pointed out to him, Renya recalled that one area close to Klinge was seeing confidential work being carried out, hidden from sight by lots of fences and curtains. Although he didn’t know what they were building over there, they had started that project soon after the demons relocated into the outskirts of Klinge alongside their whole town. That work had been going on until the very day without Renya receiving any further updates, but Emil identified the work being done over there as one of the reasons for the increase in paperwork.

“So what are they doing over there anyway?”

“That’s…who knows, I wonder what it could be.”

Renya felt somewhat pissed that they were doing whatever they wanted in someone’s territory without bothering to tell the one in charge about the concrete details of the endeavor, but as the one leading that project was the archduchess, a person holding a higher position in the country’s hierarchy than Renya, and since the elven emperor and the beastman queen were in on this as well, Renya didn’t have much room to complain about it. Even so, it was understandable for Renya to be quite offended since they were routing just the documents pertaining to that project to Renya’s place, despite keeping him in the dark.

“I mean, if you look at the bills, it’s probably obvious what they might be building in there anyway.”

Renya pulled a document out of a nearby stack, and lowered his eyes on the paper to look for the content related to the work being performed near Klinge. Most of the documents were about budget approvals for the wages and necessities of the workers. Those funds were provided by the Trident Principality, the elven empire, and the beastman kingdom, but although they provided the money, they still outsourced the whole distribution and its formalities to the Kunugi Earldom. In addition, some documents also related to the purchase and provision of huge amounts of iron ore. While others were about the purchase of smaller quantities of precious metals, oil, and painting material. For some reason, applications to use a large quantity of magic stones had also been flowing in continuously, although it remained unclear to Renya what they needed those for anyway.

“Whatever they might be building there, don’t you think it’d be fine for them to give me at least a short explanation?”

“Maybe it’s hard for them to talk about it? Or maybe the three rulers are still debating about who among them should be the one to break it to you?”

“Are you telling me they’re building something so dangerous over there that it’d be hard for them to actually tell me…?”

When he heard that the highest authorities of the three races were possibly creating something like that near a city inhabited by common people, Renya started to think that it might be a smart move to grab one of those rulers and interrogate them about what they were up to over there, even if he had to use a somewhat more forceful method to get his point across.

“No, I don’t think that it’s anything so dangerous. It’s nothing bad either, I suppose. It’s just that they probably find it hard to speak about it since it’s very likely that it’ll put you on the spot to some degree.”

“If you know what’s going on, you can secretly tell me about it.”

“Nah, I don’t have a clue. And even if I did know that, I’d have likely been forbidden to speak about it by our sponsors.”

Speaking of the demons’ sponsors, she’s probably referring to the three rulers. And assuming that to be true, it means that it’ll be almost impossible to make any of them confess something through a use of authority.

“No choice, I guess I’ll sneak in then.”

“Eh!?”

“If no one tells me anything, I have no choice but to go check myself, right? Come on, I must free up some time to go there, so let’s hurry up and get the paperwork done,” Renya nonchalantly declared, before returning to his work.

Emil’s face became pale as she suspected that things might go in a slightly bad direction at this rate, but now that Renya had made up his mind, Emil couldn’t think of any way to change his decision.

◆◇◆

And then night visited Klinge. From time immemorial night had often been chosen as time to sneak into places, even though Renya didn’t know the precise reason for why it was so. People not being able to take decisive actions at night or people’s alertness being lowered because many were sleeping at night were just two of several plausible reasons, but Renya didn’t believe either of them to be the true cause.

Certainly, those reasons might play a role for the time span of night when all ordinary people would normally sleep. But, this is also the reason why people lit fires during the night and why guards are patrolling all over the place. Rather, I think night is actually ill-suited to infiltrate a place as even the slightest sounds will draw the attention of those present in the area during a time frame where other noise doesn’t play much of a role.

“Even though it’s my own, goddamn territory…” Renya spat out his very reasonable annoyance as lord while soundlessly moving through the darkness in black clothes.

Emil, who had been forced to tag along after being made to help out with the paperwork, likewise wore pitch-black clothes as she reluctantly followed Renya’s back while looking extremely unhappy with the whole situation.

“Wouldn’t all be just fine if you requested a disclosure of the information based on your authority as lord?”

“Did you think that I haven’t thought of that much myself by now?”

Emil almost shook her head in response to Renya’s reply, but barely managed to stop herself by holding her head with a hand in a hurry.

Renya noticed that as he shortly looked back over his shoulder, but he immediately returned his attention to the front, and continued, “If we’re just talking about authority, you got to remember that this place is being hidden by a human archduchess, the elven emperor, and the beastman queen. Together they field more than enough authority to easily overrule the authority of some local, human lord.”

It probably sounded unbelievable from Emil’s point of view, or rather, anyone knowing Renya for that matter, but the authority owned by Renya was limited to that of an earl of the Trident Principality. Of course, that sort of authority fell short in comparison to the archduchess’s authority, who could be labeled as his boss. Moreover, his authority couldn’t even begin to hold a candle when compared to that of the elven emperor or beastman queen.

“I really wonder what’s going to happen if we disclose a secret that has been kept so confidential. It’d be great if things ended with just a reprimand afterwards…”

“Even if they revoked my peerage and took the territory from me, it wouldn’t give me any trouble whatsoever, so what about it?”

In such a case, Renya would officially become a free man. And as that would result in releasing a being, which couldn’t be tied down by any laws, into the wild, it was fairly obvious to anyone that this was no option the archduchess could choose. Of course, she might choose some other means to punish Renya, but Emil couldn’t even fathom what method that was supposed to be.

“How about preparing hordes of girls and boys before sending them at you to keep whining to you?”

“Stop it. That’s plainly painful on the ears.”

“Lydia-san sure got it tough as well, huh?”

From her position as a demon, she didn’t matter at all, but from her viewpoint as an individual, Emil regarded Lydia, the highest authority of the Trident Principality who took care of her and her people and the mother of her partner Shion, as a very troublesome existence, but Renya stopped walking, looked back at Emil with a flabbergasted expression, and asked,

“Who’s that?”

“You should at least remember the name of the archduchess ruling over your own country, man…,” Emil spat out in resignation.

In response, Renya tried to search his memories whether he had heard any such name before, but although he recalled having heard it at some point, he unfortunately couldn’t remember whether it was her name.

“I guess it’s nothing that important anyway…”

“No! It’s something you should memorize, right!? I Mean, look, she’s the mother of my partner, okay!? She might become your mother-in-law at some point, no!? Or rather, she herself is flaunting her assets to you like she knows no tomorrow, isn’t she?!?

“How noisy. Keep it down a bit, will you?” Renya chided Emil whose voice had become somewhat loud.

Being told that, Emil seemed rather unwilling to obey, but she didn’t know what Renya would do to her if someone were to find them because of her kicking up a fuss, so she held her tongue.

Currently the two were moving through the center of the city, or to be precise, above it. Since their black outfits would be way too shady for walking the streets normally, the two were using the roofs to head outside the city.

Emil had tried to suggest that they could simply use normal clothes and travel normally until they’d leave the city, but Renya had rejected that idea. After all, it wasn’t as though Emil and Renya had already finished processing the mountains of documents. They had simply slipped out of the office after having worked down a certain extent of the paperwork.

Of course, they’d inevitably be arrested as soon as Mayria or one of her bureaucrats found out about this, and even if they managed to get away, the bells alarming the people of their escape would doubtlessly toll across all of Klinge.

Moreover, their destination was currently off-limits to normal people and Renya. So, if his leaving of the office to investigate were to be spotted, guards and others would naturally make a move in order to hinder Renya from reaching his goal.

In the end, Renya had no other option but to sneak around so as to not be discovered by anyone.

“Even though it’s my own, damn city…”

“I can totally relate to that.”

Although his discontent that he had to hide himself from his own subordinates, and on top of that, sneak through his own city certainly stung, his only option was to use this method since he couldn’t actually do anything about this situation. Renya forcefully persuaded himself like that while dashing across a roof.

His movements were so silent that even Emil, as a demon with extremely good hearing, couldn’t pick up a single of his footsteps. It actually caused her, who was following him, to worry that someone might notice her footsteps because Renya’s basically didn’t take place.

“Say Renya, don’t you think we wouldn’t be able to move even quieter if we flew?”

“Out of the question. It’s possible that we’d be detected due to the movement of our mana.”

“Okay, that does make sense. After all, it’s Frau who’s in charge of the defenses over here…”

It wasn’t clear whether Frau would be on Renya’s side, seeing how he was her master, or the archduchess’s side, seeing how she was basically Renya’s boss. Although it was possible to predict that she’d usually side with Renya in most situations, the possibility of her allying with the archduchess under the slogan of it being for the sake of Klinge wasn’t entirely negligible, Renya had assessed.

“It’s not unthinkable that she’d side with the archduchess for the sole reason of it appearing to be more fun.”

“Yeah, that’s an option too.”

“Moreover, there’s my partner…Shion, eh?”

“We don’t have to worry about her. She’s already asleep.”

In Emil’s eyes, the idea of Shion joining up with the archduchess because they were both humans didn’t even enter the scope of possibility. Emil simply recognized Shion as an outstanding, powerful being even among those she knew.

It was something that had happened quite a while ago by now, but back when Emil used a fake, male body, she happened to run across Renya, Shion, and Rona. At that time, her overall impression of Shion was mostly limited to that of a tough woman, but at some point, Shion grew into a being that could rival a demon like Emil.

Although it wasn’t as though she couldn’t think of it being a result of her inherently existing talent, the difference between demons and humans shouldn’t usually be anything a human could overcome, even if they wanted to. The fact that a human girl, who wasn’t even a hero, had easily covered that gap plentifully justified for Shion to receive Emil’s deep respect.

Emil had believed that it’d be quite a problem if Shion had joined the opposing side, but just when she was about to curtly confirm Renya’s comment, she suddenly noticed something else from his words, and broke into a broad grin.

“Hey Renya, does that mean…you peeked into her bedroom to make sure?”

“Of course. Or do you know of any other method to confirm that?”

Emil’s grin widened due to Renya answering her as if he didn’t understand what she was talking about.

“For you to go into the bedroom of an unmarried woman in the dead of night…you sure are a smooth operator, Renya.”

“At this point, talking about something like that makes no sense. I mean, be it Shion or Rona, the three of us have already slept in the same tent next to each other, you know? Something like checking whether one of them is sleeping from outside their room’s window isn’t noteworthy anymore.”

Renya waved it off as insignificant. Hearing that, Emil dropped her head in disappointment.

“What a lackluster story…or rather, partner, aren’t you a lost case for not closing the shutter of your own window…? For your bedroom to be clearly visible from outside…I wonder what to think about that when it comes to an unmarried woman.”

Then again, the bedrooms for women of high status like Shion were located at heights which would make it difficult to simply peek in, so Emil suspected that Shion could have let her guard down because of that. By the way, Emil was a woman with a reasonably high standing among demons, but given that she had been taught to immediately erase anyone who peeked at her, Emil herself understood best that she wasn’t much of a reference when it came to what was commonly regarded as a woman’s discretion.

“The others must be mostly sleeping as well, huh?”

“I mean, no one would be eager to move at such a late hour by choice, right?”

This answer by Renya woke an urge in Emil to ask what she should think about them doing just that right now and here, but since she didn’t expect to get a decent reply anyway, she tightly suppressed that impulse.

“So, who would be the one posing the biggest threat at the moment?”

“That’s…”

Just as he was about to answer, Renya’s attention shifted away from Emil for an instant. Noticing that, Emil looked in the direction of Renya’s eyes, just to meet eyes with Klinge’s guards who were moving in two-man cells across the same roof as Renya and Emil.

“Haaah!?”

Emil couldn’t help but to reflexively cry out like a dolt, but one could claim that to be only understandable. After all, she had encountered the absurd and unthinkable event of running into soldiers, who were obviously wearing the equipment of guards, on top of a roof which wouldn’t be visited by ordinary people under normal circumstances.

In contrast to Emil who couldn’t react on the spot due to the absurdity of the whole situation, Renya acted very quickly. One of the guards tried to retrieve something like a flute while another breathed in deeply to loudly alert the vicinity by shouting. However, Renya closed the distance to both in an instant and caused them to flop down powerlessly with the whites of their eyes showing by chopping their necks with the side of his hand.

This whole chain of actions leading to him incapacitating both guards without allowing them to make the slightest peeps took less than a blink of an eye.

“Eh? Ah? Why guards? Wait, Renya…what is this about?”

“What are you asking…they were obviously on patrol, right? What’s so weird about this?” Renya answered while putting the two guards down on the flat part of the roof so that their bodies wouldn’t roll off.

For a moment there, Emil was about to agree with that explanation since it sounded reasonable, but she immediately noticed the problem with his remark and quickly questioned him further.

“No, wait a sec…we’re on a roof, aren’t we?”

“If this looks like the stage of a ball to you, it’d be better for Frau to check up on you. Though I think it should be pretty much an issue with either your head or mind.”

“That’s not the issue here! I’m asking why soldiers are patrolling on top of a roof!?”

Emil’s experience included having visited various cities of various races. But she’d never heard of guards including roofs in their patrol protocol in any of the places she had visited in the past.

“I mean, guards are soldiers who protect the safety of a city. It makes only sense for them to patrol roofs, no?”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that, though!”

“Emil, now listen closely to me. Burglars, thieves, and other crooks won’t use the normal routes to get around inside a city. For the most part, they’ll use underground waterways or roofs.”

“Just like us, eh?”

“How are guards supposed to carry out their duty of catching such criminals if they don’t even check the routes which those criminals would likely use?”

Emil found no words to rebut Renya’s claim as it sounded somehow feasible in a way. And certainly, it was a truth that crooks and other criminals would often take those kinds of routes to move around, which made it only logical for those, who were in charge of catching those people, to patrol such routes.

But, in the end, if you considered it based on common sense, the idea of guards choosing roofs as normal patrol routes couldn’t be called proper at all.

“Our guards patrol atop roofs without any complaints so as to not trouble the city’s residents, okay?”

“And I’m damn sure that this whole idea stems from you, Renya.”

“I suggested it and had Keith put it into practice.”

“Keith-kun is definitely an unlucky guy.”

Emil closed her eyes and silently prayed for Keith’s fortunes as the face of that overly serious captain crossed her mind. Although you could say that the world was a huge place, Emil was convinced that he would be around the only person on this planet to include the patrol of roofs in his guard protocol and have his men train to make it possible.

“Then again, I wonder now whether I might have gone too far with this,” Renya reflected while starting to dash again after dealing with the unconscious soldiers.

Emil nodded while thinking that Renya admitting a miscalculation was an occurrence happening only once in a blue moon.

“Well…”

“If I hadn’t made them do this, our current trip would be even smoother.”

Him feeling something akin to regret was clearly Emil’s imagination as the real reason went beyond Emil’s expectations.

Unable to even feel flabbergasted at this point, Emil responded with a hollow voice, “That’s the rationale of a crook, you know?”

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s hurry since more will soon show up.”

“Just how many teams are running around on the roofs of other people’s homes at night in this frigging city!?”

“The teams consist of two people. Three teams form one shift in a system of four alternating shifts, so it’d be 24 soldiers in total, I’d say.”

“That was a fast answer.”

Even though Emil admired Renya for clearly grasping the organizational structure of the guards, she couldn’t quite praise the fact of him having the soldiers patrol the roofs.

“For this reason, the soldiers of Klinge led by Keith are currently our biggest threat.”

“Why can’t the lord of the land afford to be found by his own soldiers?”

“Well, let’s just describe it as complicated circumstances, okay? Anyway, let us hurry.”

Maintaining the silence of his movement, Renya only raised his speed while lowering his stance so that he wouldn’t be found by the remaining two teams of guards patrolling the roofs. Being left in the dust, Emil utilized the full extent of her abilities as a demon while moving across the roofs, frantically following Renya.

◆◇◆

Renya’s destination was the construction site located right next to the city of Klinge. They’d built a scaffold around it and covered the whole thing with awning so as to make sure that no one would be able to see what they were doing inside. On top of that, soldiers were constantly patrolling the area, keep a close, watchful eye, but they had been deployed here with the idea of them fending off monsters or normal, suspicious people, but sure not some earl who could incapacitate several trained soldiers at once in the blink of an eye without even hurting them.

“You sure made quick work out of them,” Emil muttered in admiration while watching how Renya was robbing the consciousness of the umpteenth guard on their way in such a quick manner that his opponent didn’t even have a chance to make a peep.

Renya shrugged his shoulders while shaking his head, “No, this is a failure. We’ve been discovered way too often. As I thought, I’m quite bad at sneaking around.”

“But, not one of them managed to raise an alarm, right?”

Renya’s performance appeared to be extremely skilled in Emil’s eyes. Emil herself was a powerful demon, and on top of that, holder of the hero title, so she felt like she she’d be able to pull off something similar, if asked whether she could imitate Renya, but when it came to silently dispatching enemies without killing or injuring any of them like Renya was doing, the level of difficulty would go up by leaps and bounds.

Given that Renya was pulling this off so indifferently and easily, Emil thought that it’d be impossible for them to be noticed by anyone, but Renya’s thoughts on this were different.

“The number of defeated guards is too big. If so many people don’t return from their patrols, the others will realize that trespassers are afoot.”

The duty of patrols wasn’t just to watch an area with their own eyes and ears. Several checkpoints would usually exist on a patrol route, and the soldiers would be trained to pass most of those predetermined checkpoints in a set period of time. So the fact of the soldiers on patrol not showing up at those checkpoints would turn into a warning that something had happened to them between their previous and next checkpoint.

Furthermore, that net of patrol routes was divided into many checkpoints, so the guards would quickly determine the route of invasion when trespassers kept incapacitating the guards they encountered. But, when Emil scowled at Renya, asking him with her eyes why he’d choose this way of handling things if he knew all that, Renya admitted while scratching his head, “I knew about that, but I couldn’t do anything about us being spotted anyway.”

“You couldn’t shut them up with your authority as Earl-sama or something like that?”

“You think they’d assign soldiers, who would allow themselves to be shut up in such a manner, to guard this area?”

At a glance, Renya’s response sounded very reasonable, but the guards originally were Renya’s subordinates, so it’d be a question of whether the advantages or disadvantages of them going against their superior’s wishes outweighed in this case.

Just as Emil began to wrack her head which side would apply in this particular case, a question that likely wouldn’t yield any answer through pondering, Renya smoothly declared, “Anyway, let’s press on. Since we’ll be able to take a look inside as long as we remove the cover, it shouldn’t take that much time either way. It won’t pose any problem if we run away before anyone can notice the abnormality and adopt countermeasures.”

“Renya, is it still alright for me to regard this place as your fief?”

“Don’t bother delving into that question any further. A similar doubt has been gnawing at me from a corner of my mind for some time now,” answered Renya when Emil asked him while looking uncertain.

At the same time, he flipped up a part of the awning hiding the construction site, and tried to peek inside, but immediately froze.

While sensing that Renya’s behavior was odd since he’d stopped without saying anything, although he should have already seen what was going on inside after flipping the cover over, Emil quietly peeked inside across Renya’s shoulder, just to spontaneously gasp at the sight in front of her.

“Inside…there’s another cover?”

“They definitely aren’t pulling any stops when it comes to hiding what they’re doing here.”

Renya and Emil had believed that only one layer of awning would conceal the actual site, but on the other side of that cover, a space similar to a pathway existed, and on the other side of that pathway existed another scaffold and awning, hiding the inner area from sight. In addition, two soldiers, who were in the middle of patrolling, were just about to pass by the area with Renya and Emil. Logically, Renya’s eyes had met with theirs the instant he turned over the outer cover.

“Earl-sama?”

“Sorry, please take a nap.”

With a faint sound of air being sliced apart, Renya’s chops struck the necks of the two soldiers. Renya’s chops were followed by a quiet thud, before the soldiers, who had quickly lost consciousness, sat down on the ground as if their knees had buckled in.

After straightening their bodies up so that they’d be sitting while leaning their backs against the inner cover’s scaffolding, Renya flipped over the inner awning with a sigh. And sure enough, the same sort of setup of inner corridor and awning awaited him on the other side as well. Renya looked at Emil, who was checking the situation from behind his back, while feeling somewhat dejected.

“What’s the idea here?”

“If you consider it properly, the content would be easy to see if you covered the site with just one awning, no matter how many soldiers patrolled the area.”

“So that’s the reason why they’d cover it with who-knows-how-many layers of awning?”

“I’d guess they’re doing something they really don’t want others to see.”

If they have several layers of those awnings with patrolling soldiers deployed between each layer, the number of soldiers mobilized to hide this site must be quite big, Emil estimated. In other words, they don’t want others to see what’s going inside to such an extent that they have employed such a number of soldiers. Moreover, seeing how the ones responsible for this whole charade should be the highest authorities of the humans, elves, and beastmen, the reason why they go out of their way so much to hide it must be to conceal things from Renya. At least, I can’t think of any other logical reason to do this.

Only now Emil felt how her curiosity in regards to what they were doing inside got suddenly ignited.

“Are they performing experiments on live people together with all three races? Kinda like creating the perfect anti-demon king army soldier.”

“Are you saying they used the materials for the construction of an institution that would research such things? If they’re really doing anything like that, I’ll eradicate the whole thing from the surface of this world without leaving any traces behind.”

Renya announced something quite dangerous, but because he had actually voiced it out, Emil knew that he wasn’t kidding about it. However, even though Emil was the one to bring this up, she didn’t quite believe that they’d be running such experiments in a place that was hidden in such a manner.

The reason for her skepticism was to be found in the materials used in this facility. In case of live experiments, it’d refer to some sort of living creatures, but as far as Emil had seen, they didn’t transport any such creatures inside the cover. And even if they wanted to research super soldiers, it’d remain impossible without any research material. That was a fact which didn’t change, no matter the race performing it.

“I think the possibility of this is rather weak.”

“So, what do you think they’re doing then?”

Once Renya flipped over the next inner awning, he was greeted by the same setup from before, and this continued with each passing layer. It actually went so far that Renya felt like wanting to question the creator of this setup just how many of those walls they had prepared. As such Renya asked Emil about the purpose of this whole setup while feeling completely fed up by it.

Emil pondered for a bit while walking after him, and then answered, “In the end, I can’t think of anything but some sort of structure. At least, if you base it on the materials they brought in.”

“There’d be no reason for them to hide a structure from me, right?”

“Maybe it’s unexpectedly a huge statue of you? In such a case, I’d totally get their feeling of not wanting to show it to you.”

It was something that didn’t make much sense to Emil, but she knew that humans somehow had a tendency of wanting to erect statues for their heroes or great men. She suspected that act in itself to have some sort of meaning, but as far as Emil was concerned, she had trouble understanding what value it would have to build statues and expose those to the public, possibly embarrassing the depicted person.

Still, the various actions by Renya thus far all had a fairly high impact on the overall situation so that it wouldn’t be any problem to extol him as a hero, granted you disregarded the issues with his usual behavior. As such, Emil believed that it wouldn’t be overly strange for some people to come up with the idea of building a statue of Renya for the sake of rallying the citizens or some other reason.

Even the point of this project being spearheaded by the leaders of the various races could be called appropriate when it came to building a statue for Renya.

“If they’re building anything like that, we’ll destroy it at once, okay? You’ll help me, right Emil?”

“It’d be a waste of the materials they used for building it, don’t you think?”

Emil thought that setting it on fire would be an efficient way, but a part of her also felt like wanting to see a statue of Renya to its completion. She ended up feeling gleeful by just imagining what face Renya would pull at the time of the statue’s reveal.

“We’re in the middle of a war, you know? Quite forgetful, aren’t they?”

“No doubt. That’s why I think that my guess will likely be wrong anyway.”

You could say this or that, but it was a fact that this world was in the middle of a war against the demon king. It was hard to imagine that the highest authorities of the other races would carefreely build a statue of Renya while forgetting all about the current situation.

But, what are they building here instead?

Just as Emil tilted her head in wonder about that, Renya flipped over the umpteenth cover, just to stop all of a sudden. Emil looked across his shoulder, suspecting that they had possibly reached the last cover. What jumped into her eyes was a somewhat larger, isolated brick-house standing ahead of them.

She furrowed her eyebrows. Currently it was night, so the building itself was deserted as the work around it had apparently stopped, and no lights could be seen inside either. Quite a few soldiers sat around campfires which illuminated the building’s vicinity.

Probably because the place they used to enter this space was shrouded in darkness, the guards hadn’t noticed the two yet, but seeing how the soldiers were attentively surveying the surroundings, Emil had no doubt that they’d be spotted sooner or later.

“A building, is it?”

Emil fixed her eyes on the structure in response to Renya’s confirmation-seeking question. Going by its appearance, it looked like a bungalow, and although the building itself was fairly big, it seemed to have been constructed in a rather half-assed manner as far as Emil could tell. Even so, it didn’t look like anything you’d need to hide from view. Seeing how they were hiding it nonetheless, Emil could only come up with two possible explanations: either the masterminds behind this were quite dumb, or there was more to this building than met the eyes.

“Yep, sure is. Renya, do you think we can sneak past those soldiers and enter the building?”

Upon Emil’s question, Renya observed the building’s vicinity for a while while lurking in the darkness, before answering, “As it is now, it’ll prove impossible. Even if we attack one team from one direction, the other teams will immediately notice. Moreover, they’ve been stationed in a way that prevents all of them from getting defeated in one swoop while making sure that they can see each other at all times. That bloody Keith has made things difficult.”

“Wait, he’s the guy in charge of your own city’s security, so shouldn’t you actually praise him?” Emil quickly backed up Keith when Renya cursed at his own subordinate in annoyance.

Even Emil felt that it was too pitiful for Keith to be reprimanded for being too capable, but Renya seemed to have a different view on that.

“I wouldn’t mind praising him at all, if I wasn’t on the receiving end of his measures.”

“No one likes selfish superiors, you know?”

“I cannot argue with that, but still…,” Renya easily folded when chided by Emil. “We’ll need to distract the guards for a few moments to break through this defensive ring.”

“Do you have an idea on how to do that?”

“Well, if you could strip in front of them…”

In the middle of his reply, Renya was interrupted by Emil’s hand which was placed on Renya’s neck from behind. As soon as he looked back, he was met with Emil looking very terrifying for some reason despite smiling all over her face.

“You see, Renya, I don’t particularly mind doing that, but…”

“You’re not acting like someone who wouldn’t mind this, Emil.”

“…before I do it, I’d like to vent some of my inexpressible anger, so it would be okay for me to strangle you, right?”

“Wait, I didn’t actually tell you to do it. So, could you please let go of my neck. Stop it and don’t start strangling me.”

Renya tried to somehow tear off Emil who had begun to put strength into her hand. But, on top of her strangling his neck from behind, Emil belonged to a race with extremely high abilities, so even a superman like Renya couldn’t free himself from her as he intended in a situation where they couldn’t afford to draw the attention of the guards by kicking up a fuss.

“Wait. Calm down. It was my fault. I just made a joke. A joke, okay? You’ll understand if we talk it over.”

“Renya, I truly believe that you should seriously consider the meaning of the word delicacy,” Emil hissed at Renya with a sullen expression.

Seeing how she apparently had no plans to argue further about this, Renya apologized honestly, “Sorry. You’re right. Thinking about it properly, you’re a noble, a princess, and a hero. I can understand why you would dislike such a dirty joke.”

“Somehow…I feel conflicted when having it told to me like that…should I strip after all?”

“No need. I didn’t intend to force you into it from the get-go. There exists an easier method when it’s only about drawing the attention of the guards.”

“Is it okay for me to ask what sort of method that might be? Just for caution’s sake.”

Emil had a rather bad feeling about this. On the one hand, she didn’t feel like wanting to know about it. On the other hand, she was kinda curious. As such she had asked while harboring such contradicting feelings in her heart.

Renya readily answered, “They’re using cloths to cover this, right? So we just need to set it on fire at some random place. Pretty simple, isn’t it?”

“Won’t it spread into a huge fire?”

Just as Renya said, the covers around them were made out of cloth. However, if they set a part of those on fire, they couldn’t definitely state that it was impossible for the fire to spread across all the cloths, turning the whole construct into a blazing fireball in the worst case.

But, Renya quickly shot down Emil’s worry.

“Our soldiers are superb. They might get slightly flustered, but I’m sure they’ll extinguish the fire right away. We’ll use that opportunity to enter the building over there.”

“For some reason, I feel like it’d be better for me to strip.”

“If you had agreed to it outright, I might have included it in my considerations, but now it’s too late.”

Renya insisted that it’d be alright, but Emil couldn’t quite agree with that line of thinking. Somehow she didn’t feel confident about this whole plan, and the suspicion that this might develop into an outrageous incident was gnawing at her.

Even so, Renya didn’t wait for Emil’s response and started to move in order to find a good spot to ignite, so Emil had no choice but to follow him without further debates.

“Somehow I’ve got a feeling like I failed in some way…but, stripping, well…,” Emil continued to mumble under her breath, but Renya had already started to act.

Taking the standpoint that she didn’t have any means to stop him at this point, Emil looked up to the sky and prayed that they’d at least be spared from bigger damages and many casualties.

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