/
As such, we set off to our honeymoon.
Preparations took around two months. Well, being King is quite troublesome, huh. You can’t even go travelling lightheartedly.
Well, normally, diplomats would be the one going and the king would stay put and wait behind but…
For me to go personally should be much popular. Cretians have high pride after all.
Our objective this time is to obtain human resources for low level bureaucracy and technical agencies.
However, if the two had gotten pregnant, then the trip would have to be postponed for a while.
This is bad.
It’s about time Tetra should be pregnant, if we go by frequency but…
I don’t know which is bad, my seed or Tetra’s flower pot.
Or maybe we’re just not hitting the jackpot.
I need to do my best.
Our escorts this time are Gram and Ron, as well as Bartolo and Yal.
The cavalry corps headed by Roswald is still a little ill mannered, so I had them pass on the assignment.
Bartolo and Yal will act as advisors. I’ll have the two aid me on military and political matters respectively.
“Here, Revolution.”[TLN1]
“Here, Revolution”
“AAAAAH!!! WHY!”
Julia screams out loud.
It was Tetra who called Revolution.
“She probably saw that your current cards are two number twos and one number one.”
Of course, Julia’ll get checkmated with that.
With just three players in Daifugo, there’s a high chance that a revolution would be called. It’s something you need to keep in mind.
By the way, the order is Julia -> Tetra -> Me.
All four kings had already been drawn and played. The same goes for the two Jokers.
Julia plays a number 6 on her turn.
Her plan was probably to play a number 2, end the trick, and then play the other 2 and then empty with the 1.
That’s when Tetra played an eight ender and called a revolution with four number fours.
By the way, with this all the number eights have been played.
Unforetunately, with my current hand, I won’t be able to call a counterrevolution. Sorry, Julia.
“Well then, I’ll play a three of hearts and a three of spades. You’ll pass, yes? Then here’s a five of spades. Finish.”
Tetra jumps up to Daifugo (Great Millionaire) from Daihinmin (Very Poor Citizen).
I was the Daifugo but since we’re playing with few people, the People’s Revolution rule doesn’t apply.
By the way, I have one number one and three queens.
Considering all the cards that have already been played, Tetra’s prediction hit the mark.
Well, it’s because Julia was grinning after all.
She was making a face like “I’ll finish it on this turn!” That’s why she was read.
Once the game reaches the final phase, you’d be able to know who has which cards after all.
“Then, I’ll play two queens and end the trick with a one. Finish.”
“Ah! I lost!!”
Julia throws away her cards.
“Hurry up and deal, Very Poor Citizen.”
“Kuuu, remember this!!”
Julia gathers the cards to reshuffle them while glaring at Tetra.
“Hey, I’m starting to lose interest, how about we play Concentration?”
“Quitting while ahead?? The nerve!”
“Don’t you always win in that game? Let’s just play Old Maid.”
I’m starting to get tired from playing games where you need to think.
“But….Okay fine, but Julia gets to be old maid, okay?”
“Why!?”
“I’m 17. You’re 18.”
By that logic, I’d be an old geezer, you know.
The two are embroiled in a friendly squabble.
“Your Majesties, we shall be entering Lezzad’s territory soon!!”
The coachman shouts to advise us.
The two, remembering his existence, quieted down and fixed their postures.
They were a little red in the face.
“It’s been around a year, huh, Lezzad, since I’ve visited after the war with King Ferrum.”
“Hmm, as for me, I want to try going to Cretia itself.”
Isn’t that stretching it a bit too far?
“It’s my first time here. I’m quite looking forward to it.”
Julia cheerfully declares.
“Well, I’m sorry but what’ll we be doing here is boring diplomacy. So, how about we get some disguises and do some shopping and the like?”
Lezzad definitely has no sightseeing spots. Therefore, there shouldn’t be anything else to do other than do some shopping.
“”Agree!!””
“Then we’ll be imposing on Ains.”
We were received by 5 members of parliament, including Ains, in the Lezzad border.
While being guided by these 5 people, we arrive at the Lezzad capital, Lezzad.
Since it is a gulf city facing the sea, several hundred ships enter Lezzad in a day.
You can find here a great variety of various peoples including Povenians, Adernians, Persis, Gallians, and Germanis in addition to, of course, the Cretians.
“We, Lezzadians, are extremely proactive with Cretian immigration and trade.”
Ains explains for us with a smile.
That there’s no country with this much tolerance towards foreign races than the city-states on Cretia-proper, including Claris, and naturally also including the colonial cities.
Well, it’s that anyway.
It’s their “we want to have good relations with Your Majesty, King Almis” appeal.
We can hear cheers from outside the carriage. It seems the city folk have all come together to welcome us.
I open the door and wave my hand upon which the cheers grew louder. It was a nice feeling.
We were first guided to a huge mansion. It’s not as big as the palace back home but it’s of a comparable scale.
The exterior is treated with a modest grainy texture. It’s of a style you don’t see often, huh. Is it, maybe, Persis-style?
As we alight from the carriage, we are received by many men wearing ceremonial clothing.
All of them are probably members of parliament, huh. Considering their numbers, is this a reception involving all members of parliament?
“This is, with the exception of our nation’s parliament building, the largest building in the land. Please make yourselves comfortable here for the day. Tomorrow, I will be guiding you around our honorable nation. Let us put the difficult political and business talks for later.”
For the meantime, they welcomed us, and are trying to do diplomacy by reading me.
Yeah, not bad. I also want to have fun after all since we’ve come all the way here.
“By the way, Your Majesties, are you fine with fish? Lezzadians prefer fish over pork so if Your Majesties are fine with it, we are thinking of serving fish as the main course.”
“I’m fine with it.”
“Me too.”
“I’m more than happy to have fish. I also prefer it over pork, after all.”
The MP’s give off relieved faces at our responses.
“By the way, do you have a bath?”
“Yes. In any case, there is a hot spring here, so a bath is only natural.”
How splendid.
Each of us got assigned a room each. However, the two immediately went over to my room.
The bed in my room was stupidly big so the three of us were able to sleep together.
Well, they had probably prepared it in anticipation of this.
“Look, it’s the sea!! Wow! It’s so huge!!”
Julia shouts in joy at the sight of the sea from the carriage window.
There are several sailing boats headed here from the sea.
“Hey, is it true that the sea’s salty? It’s salt water, yes? Then why do we have to mine rock salt? Can’t we get them from the sea?”
Hey, one at a time.
“It’s true that it’s salty. I’ve tasted it after all.”
Tetra quips as she stuck out her tongue.
“I’m not that knowledgeable but, isn’t it because mining rock salt is cheaper? Obtaining salt from the sea would require large amounts of firewood, after all.”
Although there exists something called ‘salt farming,’ I’m not that familiar with it. Even if I did, I wouldn’t implement it. Salt mining is one of our chief industries after all.
“I want to go to the library tomorrow.”
“The library, huh. I’m also interested.”
I wonder if the whole collection is in clay tablets.
Or would they be using wood strips or even paper?
“I want to go to a Cretian temple!! I wonder if we can manage to take home a Cretian god?”
By the way, what this “taking home a god” means is what we call in Japan ‘Bunrei’ or sharing and dividing a god to be re-enshrined somewhere else.
By all means, it could or could not have sorcery-related nuances.
However, I wonder if it’s alright to take a foreign country’s god? Won’t Adernian gods get angry?
“The gods are very tolerant so it’s fine.”
Really?
“How about you, Almis? Do you have some place you would like to go?”
“Hmm, let’s see. I guess I want to carefully study the harbor. After that, I’d also want to look at the marketplace and the castle walls’ construction.”
“Who cares about the harbor? Our country doesn’t have access to the sea, right?”
“That’s just for now, you know?”
We won’t lose anything by studying it in advance, after all, so wouldn’t it be fine?
“I want to take home, in large numbers, craftsmen and people of the like as souvenirs.”
“I want plates – Persis Glass Tableware.”
If we invite other Adernians over, they’d probably be surprised if we brought out glass tableware, huh.
Should we stock up on them?
“Books. I’d want books. Let’s duplicate some and bring them home.”
I wonder if it would cost us to duplicate some books?
Or would they oblige if we requested it?
There aren’t copyrights here, after all. However, I don’t know how long would it take if we tried to duplicate all the books in the library.
“Why don’t we ask for duplicate books later? Let’s just have them send it over to us.”
I wonder if we should also build a huge library.
Like maybe the Library of Alexandria or the Royal Library of Nineveh.
It feels as if they’d also burn down, huh.
“Hey, Almis. We still have some time until dinner so…..”
Tetra clings to me.
“Won’t we play some Concentration?”
We played some absurd amount of cardgames after this.
Shrimp, Crab, Shellfish, Fish……
It’s completely seafood galore.
The meal begins at once.
The seasonings are simple, comprising mainly of salt, olive oil, and lemon.
“Hmm? Is this pepper?”
I ask while eating Meunière. The MP eating with me answers.
“That’s correct. We are gathering spices from all over the world, you know.”
Pepper. It’s been a long time since I’ve tasted one, so I can feel its deliciousness.
I want to secure a stable supply.
You can tell from the taste. All the food here had been prepared with spices, even if just a little. They were also prepared with aromatics in little quantities so as to not break the flavor.
That said……
I look at the MPs hands while chatting with them.
As expected, they’re eating with their hands, huh.
Although they do use spoons for soups since they’re hot and are liquids, they’re quite the same with Adernians when it comes to eating.
I stopped minding it after all this time but, I wonder if there are other countries aside from Cretia that use tableware?
I have heard from Qingming, though, that the Scarlet Empire use chopsticks.
How about Persis?
“Hey, Almis.”
Julia clings to me.
This is bad manners, you know?
“I want to eat fish everyday. Fish is better than meat.”
The MPs freeze at Julia’s utterance. What?
Ah, I see.
I want to eat fish –> I want the sea –> I want Lezzad.
Is that how you heard it?
Aren’t you guys overthinking this?
Just in case, I check Julia’s expression. She’s smiling with joy. She doesn’t seem to have said it with a particularly “I want to invade” nuance.
If you calmly thought about it, our country has unconsciously broken through the 200,000 population level and has become the biggest country in the southern part of Southern Adernia.
On the other hand, although Lezzad has a strong navy, their population is only around 60,000 so their army is weak and reliant on mercenaries. Their mother country is far so the shortest time they could expect reinforcements to arrive is one week. As such, we’re quite the threat to them.
That said, being an influential person sure is troublesome. They won’t even let frivolous talk pass.
Now then, I guess I should do a follow-up.
“I wonder how long would it take if we were to haul fish caught from here into our own country?”
“Let’s see….by carriage, it would take maybe around four days? If we crammed them with ice then you should be able to adequately eat them, I think. If they were dried, then they would keep, even without the ice.”
“Isn’t that great, Julia?”
As soon as the MPs heard my conversation with Ains, they felt relief and resumed their meals.
Ains winks at me. This guy, your winks suck.
However, we’d need ice to transport them, huh.
Ice is something cut and taken from the mountains in winter and basically stored in basements.
Because the southern part of South Adernia is warm, water doesn’t freeze easily even in winter.
Securing ice would be a difficult undertaking.
In otherwords, we’d be raking up quite a cost in transporting fish.
Moreover…..
“You’d be taxed a toll in the Belvedere Kingdom on the way to the Rosyth Kingdom, huh….”
An MP states with dissatisfaction.
Ains coughs and the MP withdraws in haste while saying “Ah! It was nothing.”
Politics is not something discussed on the dinner table.
By the way, Lezzad has some border disputes with the Belvedere Kingdom.
Honestly, I had thought about whether going to Lezzad would stimulate the Belvedere Kingdom but, in the end, I decided to go anyway.
I had put precedence on the returns rather than on the risks.
For the finale, we were brought the desserts.
They were mainly fruit – grapes, pomegranates, figs, etc.
All of them were fresh and delicious.
“Oh, this is quite wide, huh.”
“Let’s see, it’s even bigger than the bath in the palace.”
“This is somehow frustrating.”
Our admiration leak upon seeing the bath.
While the bath in the palace uses ordinary hot water, this bath uses hot spring water. With just that point, the bath here in Lezzad already trumps ours.
I wonder if a hot spring will spring forth in the new capital. Well, at the worst, we’ll just have the bring over hot spring water by carriage, if possible.
“That said, we can’t let our guard down around Cretians.”
Tetra murmurs. Hey, don’t you also have Cretian blood in you?
However, I’m of the same opinion as her.
These guys just went and prepared thirty beautiful women to attend to our bathing needs.
Along with Adernians, and naturally in addition to Cretians, they also have Povenians, Gallians, Germanis, Persis…..
They even have Afric and Asiatic women. We’re free to choose.
I was saved thanks to Julia and Tetra clinging to me and clearly saying we don’t need them.
Well, it’s fine even if they didn’t particularly save me.
It’s just a little disappointing. After all, weren’t those thirty women?
Furthermore, they were all beautiful! They’re like a human salad bowl or something.
*Smack*
“Oww!”
“What’s with the grin!?”
I got slapped hard on the back by Julia. Damn……it hurts so bad……
“This is why violent women are…. I’ll wash your back for you, Almis.”
Tetra gives Julia the look. She then makes me sit down with a grin.
She then makes a bewildered expression.
“What’s this?”
“I think it’s a sponge. It’s probably used for washing the body.”
Certainly, I have heard that there’s a living being that could naturally become a bathing sponge.
“Then what about this strange fruit-like thing?”
Julia takes out a black fruit from a container.
I take it and try to crush it.
This is…..
“A soapberry?”
It’s bubbling, huh. It’s a natural soap.
While I’ve heard that it could be used as an eco-detergent, I wonder if it could be used for washing the human body?
Well, it’s not necessarily a soapberry. This is another world, after all.
It’s definitely gentle on the body and soapberry-like.
Let’s ask Ains later.
In any case……
“Hey, you two. Actually, I have something I want you to do for me using this fruit but…..”
What that might be…I’ll leave to your imaginations. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Author’s notes:
Volume three would be 80% about domestic governance and foreign diplomacy so it might be lacking excitement.
Volume four would be mostly about war.
The slow ascent will continue for the meantime so, before the story rises, I’d increase the update speed.
However, my drafts have been decreasing…..