「We don’t have the scope to spare manpower for such a thing!」
「It can’t be helped since the Prince’s Coming of Age ceremony is less than a month from now! Even now, it’s because of these preparations that we’re lacking in manpower!」
「Don’t you want to let His Highness Chennel return to his own country!?」
In the spacious room, the meeting was thrown into a chaos. I, while noncommittally listening, pulled my hood over my eyes and laid face down, stifling a yawn. l was exhausted.
I was always tired of these regular meetings, held once a week to ensure the smooth sailing of life within the royal palace. Why? It was because they were only crunching numbers and nobody expected me to say anything.
I thought, if that was the case, it’d be fine if they just didn’t bother calling me at all, but it seemed that as long as you showed your face, it was tolerated. Our captain-dono said that it was due to the past, that our positions had remained unchanged, but when I thought of how they were all attending the meeting while thinking the same thing, it was all a giant waste of time.
However, if we ended up not even being called to this meeting, the increasingly declining prestige of our Order would become more and more noticeable. I, a single-minded youth, chose the seat prepared in the most inconspicuous corner, trying to stifle my yawns throughout the meeting.
Incidentally, I did not have the position required to attend this meeting. Actually, it was the captain who was supposed to attend, but he, being well past his prime, would be sleeping soundly every time, unfazed by all the eyes on him. As expected, censured by the rest of the attendees, our captain, who felt bothered, ended up pushing it onto me.
Captain told everyone around, 「The second-in-command, Nidel shall attend in my stead from now on.」, but I was not even really the one next-in-charge. It was because even the ones amongst us who were meant to be the next captain, were actually also elderly people who dreaded going out, and thus this burden was pushed onto me. Our Order was filled with a bunch of shut-ins.
Thanks to that, it was mostly up to me to show my face for official matters.
「Certainly, in our views, it’s most welcome for Chennel-sama be returned to his own country, but the travel might be dangerous.」
When the Prime Minister was talking, the King, who until then had a long face in the center of the room, looked over to us and lowered his head.
「This is a request from the King. I’m sorry everyone, but please cooperate.」
When the King said that, even the ones who had been loudly expressing their disapproval, made a sour face and remained silent. As expected, when the King made a request, they wouldn’t dare to say 「Don’t wanna」.
Even though our king was not a talented person full of unique wisdom, his personality was gentle and pleasant, I had always thought of him as a good ruler.
To begin with, our country’s Kings had always been docile, no matter what era. With people around him always being reliable, perhaps it was balanced out.
Incidentally, the ones with power were the three main divisions: the Prime Minister, the Royal Knight Order and the Royal Palace Magic Order . It could easily be said that these three controlled the country.
Even within the meetings, people had always said that.
Today’s meeting topic of discussion was a prince of a foreign country, Prince Chennel. Even if I did address him as a Prince, he was just the third prince, merely seven years old. Prince Chennel’s country was a small rural country (our country too wasn’t a particularly large one), but it had a heartwarmingly good relation with our country in the past, and for the sake of cultural exchange, relatives of the royal family had often stayed here spanning to several months.
This time, under the pretext of our country’s Crown Prince’s Coming of Age ceremony drawing near, they had come to play all the way since last month.
I had also seen him numerous times, with a bright and gentle face (which was indeed countryside-like), he was a cute prince.
Prince Chennel’s homeland was relatively peaceful, but unusually, there had been discord and disputes arising over blood lately. It seemed that they were fighting over the throne. The sparks extended to even Prince Chennel, and for that reason, they were aiming for his life.
He probably judged that it was safer to stay in our country as compared to his homeland, and thus he was to stay in our country as planned till the internal conflict in his homeland had calmed down. Moreover, there had been a request from the other King, who said「I’m sorry, I want you to strengthen the guards around Chennel.」.
Even if we were in peacetime, we were now in the middle of preparing for the Crown Prince’s Coming of Age ceremony or something like that, and we could barely spare more than the bare minimum strength for some foreign country’s Prince. That was the truth, but we couldn’t possibly say that upfront.
Even our country had appearances to maintain.
「Can’t they just send guards from over there?」
Suddenly, the Squad Commander-dono of the Royal Knight Order spoke. From the Knight Order and the Royal Palace Magic Order , three people each were attending. One could easily tell that they had massive strength just from the numbers.
「It seems that the circumstances there, do not allow for people to leave the country as of now. I’ve heard this will last till just before the Coming of Age ceremony. Someone else who has planned to attend will come along, and after the ceremony, will take His Highness Chennel back home.」
「I see…」
After hearing the Prime Minister’s reply, Squad Commander Legato said nothing more, and obediently withdrew. He scowled just a bit and made a complicated expression.
I gazed at that figure from under my hood. The best way for me to kill time during the meeting was to gaze at the Squad Commander of the Royal Knight Order, Legato.
Because I was only stealthily observing from under my hood, the other party wouldn’t notice.
I’ve held a one-sided interest, or should I say, a special affection towards this squad commander. And of course he’s a person that was worthy to look at.
Legato and I had a lot of things in common. First of all, our age was the same. He was the youngest amongst the attendees of this meeting at only twenty seven years old. That meant that he had reached this peak position capable of attending this meeting at this age. I too was attending as well, but it wasn’t as if I had an official post, so our circumstances were different.
The time when we began working at the royal palace was also the same. We both entered the Royal Knight Order and the Technological Magic Order respectively at the age of eighteen.
There were two magic Orders in our kingdom. The Royal Palace Magic Order and the Technological Magic Order .
Of course, it went without saying that the Royal Palace Magic Order were better than us. Our Technological Magic Order got the dropout treatment so to speak. Our numbers only totalled fifteen, and we resided in a dark, narrow, old and tiny tower at the edge of the Royal Palace premises. We were thought of as irresolute and doing work without understanding anything. Thanks to that, we were made fun of, even within the Royal Palace, and our status was exceedingly low.
Well, it wouldn’t be wrong to call us dropouts, being a gathering of people who couldn’t adapt to the Royal Palace Magic Order , magicians who didn’t have any particularly special talents or ones whose usage were difficult, or those with absolutely no social skills.
But, in my opinion, in terms of ability in magic, we definitely wouldn’t lose to them, and in terms of variety, we surely excelled over them. Of course, I possessed the strength to think that I was the best in that field within the kingdom.
In the Technological Magic Order, there were many instances when the work was simple. Repairing a magic tool, and other mediocre things like that.
Because it was filled with people who only had thoughts of magic throughout the day, shut in the tower, we were quite friendly amongst each other, but we had absolutely no social interaction towards outsiders. Thanks to that, even I, who did not particularly possess any social skills was seen as 「Extremely Sociable」by them, and all contacts with the outside was pushed onto me. I thought of pushing that work onto my juniors once they grew up a bit, but for now the reality was that I was left with no choice but to undertook the work assigned by my shut-in senpais.
Because all the members of the Technological Magic Order , wore sultry black robes, pulling the hood over their eyes hiding their faces, and lying face down walked unsteadily, I thought it couldn’t be helped that we were looked down upon.
It was too different from the brilliant white robed figures of the Royal Palace Magic Order, or the imposing figures of the Knight Order .
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