Prologue – It Seems to Be a Return to Klinge

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“What a pain in the ass…,” Renya whined while prostrating on the desk in his personal office located in the Earl Kunugi castle of Klinge.

In front of him lay a mountain of documents.

If one had to categorize the man called Kunugi Renya, they’d definitely describe him as an intuitive person who belonged to the musclehead faction. Work that required logic or brains could clearly be counted as one of his shortcomings, albeit it wasn’t so bad that he was completely unable to do this kind of work, of course.

On top of that, Renya wasn’t a normal earl who had received education as a noble, and if you went even further, you’d also need to add that he originally wasn’t an inhabitant of this world to begin with.

Even if you tried to tell such a person to carry out his duties as a noble, it was hard to imagine that it’d lead to any decent results. Anyone would be able to predict that he was bound to make mistakes all over the place, let alone perform his role as a noble efficiently. And that was only natural, too.

The reason why the Kunugi Earldom, which was reigned by such a man, kept running without any problems was largely owed to Mayria, whom Renya had temporarily recruited from the archduchess’s place, and Frau, who not only single-handedly performed several duties at once but also supervised the work of entire divisions.

As far as Frau was concerned, she was Renya’s attendant, and since she served as the head of the maids working in Klinge in addition to being in charge of coordinating various other troublesome tasks, Renya prayed that she’d continue to strive in her work for a long time to come. However, when it came to Mayria, she was slated to become the next ruler of the country – the Trident Principality – boasting the strongest and largest scale among the countries existing on the human continent, so it was pretty much set in stone that she’d need to go back to her previous place at some point.

At present, they were pooling all efforts into quickly bringing up civil officials in Klinge, but so far no one who could fill the hole that Mayria’s departure would rip open, had been found. Considering what might happen to Klinge whenever the time of her return would come, Renya felt a chill that was completely different from the one he’d feel on the battlefield.

But, leaving that aside.

Currently, the huge amount of documents that had piled up in his office was giving Renya a lot more of a headache. And yet, even that amount, which Renya would describe as ridiculous from his point of view, had been carefully selected and narrowed down by Mayria to only those documents requiring Renya’s personal attention as lord of the land.

When Renya complained about it being too much despite all this, Mayria stopped with the heavy and thorough application of face lotion on her face’s skin, which had started to deteriorate after she had gone without sleep for longer periods of time due to the strenuous workload, and stared at him with the eyes of a dead fish.

Immediately following, she indifferently informed him with a voice that lacked all emotion and which was accompanied by a smile which would freeze anyone’s blood, “Okay, so how about you handle everything as you like since I’m going to resign from my post?”

Renya instantly perceived that he was in seriously deep shit as she wasn’t joking around, and thus immediately begged while prostrating himself without giving so much as a care about being in public. This managed to improve her mood somewhat, although she remained sulky for a bit.

“I really envy Shion-ane-sama who’s older than me… Her skin is bouncy and healthy, the parts that ought to stick out for a woman are properly sticking out, and moreover, her body is so lean that you won’t find any fat on her… God is truly unfair.”

“How about you file your complaints directly? I can contact god for you, if you like?”

“Please do. And please take responsibility as well, Renya-san. Mainly in the sense of accepting me.”

“No, that’s…”

“If you worry about the order, it’s no problem at all. Shion-ane-sama still has every right to inherit as archduchess of the Trident Principality, so everything will be fine as long as we install that girl as archduchess.”

“Do you plan to ruin the country?” Renya retorted with a dead serious face in no time.

This beamed an ambiguous expression on Mayria’s face.

“I believe that to be a valid assessment, but the speed of you reaching that conclusion is way too saddening. But well, I don’t have any intention to cause the country’s downfall either, so even if we installed Shion-ane-sama as archduchess, I’d take the position of prime minister and keep her away from any statecraft, so I think it should pose no problem.”

“But, look. Wouldn’t a marriage of the older and younger sister to the same guy be legally and morally reprehensible? Or is that okay in this country?”

Once Renya probed the common sense inside himself, which he possessed as simple knowledge, he assessed bigamy as a crime. He also knew about such marriages having been accepted in the distant past, but if he was asked whether he wanted to go ahead with this solution, he’d find it hard to nod his head.

“At the very least the Trident Principality has no law regulating the number of marriage partners. But, if you say you’re interested in this, how about we introduce a law that endorses the marriage of one guy to sisters? It might sound difficult, but if I feel like it, it’s something I can implement as early as tomorrow, you see?”

“Let’s not… I wouldn’t know what people are going to say about me after my death.”

If things went wrong, it was quite likely that later generations would brand him as a lustful man who forced the adoption of such a law to sate his own desires. Of course, Renya was well aware that his evaluation by future generations probably wouldn’t be all that good thanks to all his actions thus far anyway, but that didn’t mean he had to personally add any more slander to his already-bad reputation.

The reason why Mayria and Renya talked about such a silly topic was to be found in the documents that were laying on his desk in such huge quantities. And if one asked what triggered all these documents to come into existence in the first place, one of the causes was to be found in Renya having vacated Klinge to secure Albert. But, there existed another explanation – a more direct reason: At the same time as Renya secured Albert, he also returned to Klinge with dragonoids reaching three digits in numbers.

Their appearance in Klinge caused a light panic. After all, a blinding flash of light suddenly occurred on the city’s square, just to leave behind armed dragonoid soldiers and exhausted as well as dirty dragonoid civilians after dissipating.

The people, who panicked as they didn’t understand just what was going on, were still the better ones. Worse were the soldiers of Klinge who immediately started to get ready to intercept the dragonoids which they assumed to be invaders, believing that the dragonoids might have snapped at Renya’s treatment thus far and decided to launch a suicide attack on his home city.

What avoided an escalation of the whole situation and calmed all of Klinge’s residents down was the appearance of Shion, who was acting awfully brazen as she followed the dragonoids, and Renya who was carrying a limp Kilie on his back.

In Renya’s eyes, it was only natural for the people to be thrown into chaos, if armed soldiers suddenly appeared in the dead center of the city, and moreover, in considerable numbers. He felt like complaining to Kilie that she should choose the destination a bit more wisely if she was going to use her powers anyway, but probably because she had transferred a fairly big group of people all at once and over a long distance, Kilie had used up all her strength and couldn’t move her body anymore. As such, it’d be cruel to hurl such bickering at her. Above all, Renya couldn’t deny that Kilie had been a huge help this time around, so he swallowed all his complaints and strove to defuse the situation.

The dragonoids were taken along to Klinge in such a manner, but even if Klinge might have been designed by such outstanding engineers as Frau and Emil, and even if it might be supported by an outstanding bureaucrat like Mayria, it was impossible for the city to have facilities that could take in such a huge number of people all of a sudden, nor could anyone expect the city to prepare a sufficient amount of food and clothing for all these dragonoids on the fly.

As such, it became necessary to procure materials to build temporary housing for the dragonoids outside Klinge’s walls, get permission to use that land, secure personnel to build all the stuff, provide clothing and food not only for the dragonoids but also to the workers, open up the emergency storages, handle the purchase and lease of materials from other cities and fiefs, etc.

For all of these steps, procedures and orders to work, documents needed to be written, and coupled with the amount of work, it was only natural for this to result in a mountain of documents. These piles of documents became terrifying, formidable adversaries for Renya. After all, none of these could be solved by simply cutting them down. And no matter how much military prowess or inhuman mana capacity he might possess, it bore no meaning in front of this mountain of paper.

Because of that, Mayria now looked like a corpse while Renya was gripping his head in desperation as he stared up at the stacks of documents in front of his nose.

“Earl-sama, I brought a new batch of documents.”

The one opening the office’s door and entering was a man whom Renya suspected to be one of the civil officials. That official briskly approached Renya’s desk and put down a stack of documents, which he had held with both hands because of its weight, with a thud.

When Renya directed a reproachful look at the official through a small gap between the stacks, the man flinched away for a second, but seemingly remembering his own professional duties in no time, he directly took on Renya’s glare and snorted lightly.

“Even if you glare at me like that, it won’t do you any good, Earl-sama. We’re continuing to process several-fold the amount of documents. Furthermore, the number of documents is growing by the minute, so please give up and do your work.”

While getting all weary from the news that he’d need to deal with even more documents from now on, Renya attempted to field at least some resistance, “We’re in the middle of a war, so can’t you further simplify the procedures?”

“You have to know that we’re already skipping several steps that would usually be required,” the official explained without an ounce of apology in his voice.

His words didn’t allow Renya any option to talk back. He had no choice but to silently strive at processing the documents as he was told.

“Won’t I be killed by all these documents before I get to fight the demon king or whatever…”

In the case of the demon king, the problem would at least get resolved once he killed him, even if it might be a harsh battle, and as such the documents were a much tougher hurdle than any demon king in Renya’s eyes.

On top of that, the heroes were of no use whatsoever when it came to tackling documents.

As I thought, documents are tougher enemies than some demon king, was the misguided idea that filled Renya’s head so strongly that he blurted it out unintentionally.

The official could only spare a feeble laugh at that, “The only person capable of putting it like that is you, Earl-sama.”

“Well, that makes sense since it doesn’t look like any earls other than me are considering fighting the demon king.”

From the viewpoint of the inhabitants of this world, it was the duty of the heroes to fight the demon king with common soldiers only having the role of paving the road for the heroes so that they’d be able to reach the demon king. In other words, even if the whole world raised in arms and fought the demons, the entire meaning behind their battle was limited to bringing the heroes to the demon king’s place.

In addition, existences such as the demon king or the heroes had little to no relation to the common people. At most they were part of some gossiping, which also meant that almost no commoner would spare any deeper thoughts about them. For this very reason, you could say that the number of people, who thought that things might work out one way or the other if only they cut down the demon king like Renya did, was infinitely close to zero.

“Maybe I should quit being a noble and run away…”

That short whisper of a comment caused the official, who had placed additional documents on Renya’s desk, to stop moving. At once a cramped smile formed on the man’s face. But, as if not taking any notice of the official staring at him, Renya continued with his mumbling, “In the first place, it’s not like I became a noble because I wanted to be one. Even if I throw the towel here and give up, it won’t cause me any problems…I’m not suited to be nobility to begin with, so it was asking too much from the outset.”

“Earl-sama…?”

“They gathered five heroes too, so they’ll be able to somehow handle the demon king, won’t they? So, no one would complain or blame me even if I secretly escaped to some place on the beastman continent to spend a hidden retirement over there, would they?”

“Earl-sama? Do you mean any of these words seriously?”

“I was relatively serious about all of it,” Renya answered nonchalantly.

After staring at Renya’s face with his smile still cramped, the official suddenly rushed towards the office’s door, jumped outside, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “His Excellency has gone mad!!”

“Hey, wait a sec! Who’s gone mad…!?”

Those were words that left his mouth since he lost his way a bit over the ridiculous amount of documents he had to process, so even Renya would feel offended if he was being called mad because of that.

However, the official’s yell didn’t finish at that.

“Call the soldiers! Get the heroes ready to sortie!”

“Whoa, why are you suddenly bringing up the heroes?”

“Contact Frau-sama! His Excellency is planning to escape!”

Unrelated to Renya’s confusion as to why Frau’s name was mentioned there, he could sense how the castle abruptly started to thrive with activity. While sighing, Renya’s slapped his forehead.

<Emergency announcement, emergency announcement! All soldiers stationed inside the castle are to shift into First Grade Combat Deployment. You are permitted to use all weapons located inside the castle. Moreover, damage to adjacent facilities will be waived. All heroes, please arm up and move to the office at full speed. Shion, Croire, please head to the final defense line>

Due to Mayria’s voice echoing through the castle, Renya fell prostrate on his desk, forehead-first, with a dull slam as he had lost all will to complain at this point.

“Oi, you over there…I won’t run away, so make them stop that horseplay…”

Renya ordered the official, who was the cause of this whole uproar, with a stifled voice while grimacing at the shrill alarm bell sounding all over the castle – though he didn’t even know where it came from.

The official checked Renya’s state with doubt coloring his eyes somewhat, but once he grasped that Renya truly didn’t seem intend on leaving his desk, he shouted once more towards outside the office, “His Excellency has resigned himself!”

<Announcement. The emergency condition has been rescinded. All hands, disarm yourself and return to your original posts while following standard procedures. Please shift back to normal condition>

It was unclear to Renya from where Mayria’s announcement came and what method she used to pass it on, but the castle regained its calm after she quickly announced the cancellation of the emergency state. While listening to the disturbance in the castle slowly dying down, Renya picked up the umpteenth document and started to scan its contents while having mentally given up on a lot of things.

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