The Portal to Las Vegas
Night had fallen. After giving the soldiers houses to stay in and a moment to rest, I gathered my subordinates in the square once more. We had taken Las Vegas, but it wasn't fully occupied yet, and we had to prepare to counter a major counterattack from the Barony. "Arthur, go to the forest, cut down some trees, and rebuild the collapsed wooden palisade." Since I had considered a defensive siege, I had fought while keeping the defensive facilities as intact as possible. Only the collapsed sections needed repair to restore their original function, and Arthur led his squad straight toward the nearby forest.
"Percival, gather the residents at the government office. Tell them to bring blankets and pillows from their homes; they’ll be sleeping at the office for the time being. And while they sleep, have them prepare 'that'." I hadn't looted their homes, but it was difficult to let them sleep easily. I wasn't sure if the residents were loyal to me yet, so I herded them into the government office. They performed the tasks I assigned, but they were fearful.
"W-will you perhaps block the entrance to the office and set it on fire...?"
"I'm not that crazy. If I did something like that to you lot, I’d set my own crotch on fire. Satisfied?" Only after I made that promise to the worried residents did they obediently enter the office. I couldn't station troops to guard every single house, and the residents understood that they had to be under our surveillance for now. I called Percival aside separately.
"Percival, don't forget. They haven't sworn loyalty to our Legion yet. They are people who could run away at any moment. If they do, let them go. I don't want the hassle of cleaning up corpses for no reason. But if they try to start a rebellion..."
"At that time, I will beat them to death with my own hands."
"No, Percival. You have a sword now, don't you? Cleanly take their heads off. Strip them of everything except their undergarments."
"As the Legion Commander commands." Percival and his squad members fully armed themselves and surrounded the government office. The interior of the office was equipped with facilities for 30 people to relieve themselves, just like a regular public office, and I raided a portion of the food warehouse in case they complained of hunger.
"The rest of you, first restore the watchtower and gather the equipment. And stand guard. Be wary of enemies coming for a night raid with torches. Eila, you lead the rest." Eila left with the remaining Orc unit. Now, all that remained was the unit of Ryun, who was on constant standby near the only prisoner in the square, the mage. I entered the office with Ryun, carrying the food I'd taken from the warehouse.
"Eek!" The residents were gathered in small groups, whispering about something. The flow of conversation cut off, as if they had been talking about me. I held out the food I had brought in a wooden crate. "I brought enough for everyone, so divide it up yourselves. This is dinner and a late-night snack combined."
"...Dinner? A late-night snack?"
"What, do you guys not eat snacks?"
"W-we eat one meal in the morning and one more meal a bit past the afternoon..."
"People aren't on a diet; you should be eating three meals a day." I called over the old man who was the head of the association, the representative of the residents, and gave him an armband. Given his age and status, he was the representative of the residents, and I granted him the authority to match. "You take responsibility and distribute the food. I brought exactly enough for the number of people, so if you embezzle any in the middle, you'll be caught immediately."
"......Are we doing this for one person?" The association head asked me back with a bewildered face again. I checked the condition of the food I'd brought in the box. Rye bread the size of half a forearm, a handful of jerky and dried fruit. Since water was provided in wooden barrels inside the office, it looked like enough to fill their stomachs for one evening meal.
"Is it too much? I asked Eila, and she said this was enough for one meal."
"Enough... Yes, yes! It is enough!" The association head bowed his head and thanked me repeatedly. Seeing the residents looking this way, already drooling, I realized my mistake. 'Eila, you rascal.' You really showed off your noble sensibilities, as expected of a Baron's daughter. To people who were basically commoners or serfs, this must have been a feast. My instincts were accurate when it came to nothing else but food.
'If I'd even given them milk, I would've maxed out their loyalty today.' I thought about distributing some of the milk stored in the warehouse, but decided against it. I knew better than anyone that human greed is endless; if you treat them too well at first, they'll develop bad feelings the moment you treat them even slightly worse later. So, I declared it clearly.
"I am giving this to you as a special favor for today only. From tomorrow on, you must work to receive food. Think of this as your last supper and eat up." I felt bad for ruining their meal, but I had to say it to avoid any backtalk later. I had the residents stand in a line and instructed Ryun and the association head to distribute the rations. I didn't want to give it out myself, and the residents wouldn't have liked it either. The residents stared at their allotted food for a long time before slowly starting to chew. Then, they burst into cheers.
"Oh, such soft bread!"
"I thought you guys ate bread as a staple?"
"...W-we usually soak very hard bread in thin soup." Hearing the residents' pathetic words, I even felt a sense of pity. I asked the man in the shabbiest clothes to bring any bread he had at home to see what they usually ate, and he brought back what looked like a brick. It was so hard that an Orc's teeth could barely sink into it. It wasn't like they were breaking it with a hammer. *Boom!* I swung the bread they said they ate as a staple. It smelled stale and was so hard that it wouldn't be strange to consider it a blunt weapon. I forcibly tore off the end with my hands and bit into a piece.
"Hmm..." The outside was hard, but the inside was still crumbly. It wasn't quite like chewing a stone, but if you soaked it in water, it looked like it would be at the level of chewing sawdust. "With this level of hardness..." I left the office to test it. Ryun followed behind me, and the door to the office was firmly shut. As soon as I disappeared, the residents' whispering flowed out from outside the door. I ran straight to the square and struck the buttocks of the unconscious mage with the bread.
*Smack!*
"Aaaah!" The mage, who had been unconscious, woke up from my butt-smash. The bread was covered in the semen the Orcs had sprayed, and I threw it in front of the mage. "Eat."
"T-this is...?"
"If you don't want to eat it, throw it away." I offered a bowl containing the bread along with some of the Slime Dragon's bodily fluids. The mage's body was tied to a wooden board, and if he moved his head, he could easily eat the bread and the Slime fluid. "Y-you...!"
"You're not saying 'kill me'? Do you want to live?" The mage bowed his head. I squatted down in front of the mage, whose hair was caked with white powder, and held out the bowl.
"If you wanted to live, you should have kept your mouth shut and stayed quiet. Why did you target the Elves?"
"...Because the Elves were the most threatening."
"Your eyes are pretty bad. Doesn't matter. If you intended to kill people, you deserve to pay a price commensurate with that."
"Pfft." The mage let out a hollow laugh, as if my words were funny. The eyes of the mage, who had lifted his head, were bloodshot. "Look at you talking bullshit, as if you're not a monster yourself. Do you think you're any different?"
"Of course, I'm the same. I know it's human nature that if I try to kill others, they will try to kill me too. That's why..." I grabbed the end of the bread and poked it into the mage's mouth. "If you don't want to die, eat. I don't care if you starve to death."
"Ptooey. Food given by a monster...!"
"Then die." I turned around without hesitation. Ryun followed behind me, glancing back, and asked, "Are you really planning to kill him?"
"If he doesn't eat, he'll starve to death. If he dies, he has his uses even in death." I headed to the main gate of Las Vegas. The Orc subordinate waiting on the watchtower watched the outside as I arrived, and after a short time, he drew a circle above his head. I threw open the main gate. "How do you keep the appointment time so accurately?"
"I just calculated it roughly." A red-haired woman riding a camel with three humps on its back arrived at Las Vegas. On the camel's back was a pile of feathers and magic stones wrapped in a cloth made from the skin of a Slime Dragon.
"Welcome. Gremory's clone. Nothing happened in the meantime, right?"
"You'd have to ask the main body that. Hehe, you suppressed it more cleanly than I thought? Where did you stack the corpses? The sacrifices?"
"This is why demons are a problem. I chased them all away. Except for the 70 or so guards who resisted and died, I chased them all out." Gremory's expression turned fierce.
"Are you crazy? Then those guys will all go back to the main castle and report the situation, won't they? Are you in your right mind?"
"Anyway, demons must have 'massacre' as a passive trait in their genes. Ryun, you must never imitate something like that. Should I explain to Gremory why I let the humans go?"
"Hmm..." Ryun pondered for a moment before clapping his hands. "Come back stronger!"
"No, that's someone else's line."
"Ah, was it? Hmm... I remembered. 'Come back with a Melona'?"
"What kind of bullshit is that? You're the one who shouldn't be teaching the Elf weird things. What's a Melona again?"
"Just bullshit. Hehehe. But it's not wrong, is it?" I pointed to the Orcs holding bows on the watchtower. "The guys who were chased out will bring a subjugation force back now, so shouldn't we eat those guys?" And for that, I had called Gremory, the clone. I took out a medium-grade magic stone from the bundle Gremory had brought. The medium-grade magic stones I had saved and saved for a rainy day. They might be needed to upgrade the summoning facility, but when you need them immediately, you have to use them decisively.
"I trust you. Really, do it well without any mistakes."
"Hmph, the clone is just as smart as the main body. No mistakes. Don't worry. It's only this distance, so it would be strange to make a mistake. So, where should I do it?"
"The square, obviously." I guided Gremory to the square. Gremory took a book out of her pocket, then tore it page by page, smiling lewdly. "As expected, you know your stuff."
"Isn't the village square the golden rule for portals?" Gremory, who had gotten off the camel, stood in front of the fountain and began placing the papers on the ground at regular intervals. The small magic circle drawn on the paper began to emit light, and I waited with a nervous heart for Gremory's magic to be completed.
"Master, then I'll get our guys ready now."
"Yeah. Okay. *Heh*, to think I'd be the one to build this." My heart swelled at the magic circle that was gradually filling with red light. "Master, what are you going to call this?"
"This? *Ahem*. Yeah." I cleared my throat and steadied my voice. "Ah, this is called a *Nydus Canal*." A portal connected between Las Vegas and Las Village.
"...An earth tunnel? It's just magic, though."
"It's a metaphor, a metaphor." In the end, I decided to just call it a portal.
***
Jabyaba was occupied by an Orc horde. A massive number of refugees from Jabyaba had occurred in Spica Castle, and the Baron was on the verge of getting stomach cramps from dealing with it. "......." Should I just quit? But in a situation equivalent to wartime, abandoning a noble title and running away was out of the question. How could a Baron who had lived as a noble abandon his title and run away? "......." All the retainers were just watching the Baron's mood. The vicious fangs of the Demon King's army had finally reached the Barony, which had been far removed from the battles between the Human Alliance and the Demon King's army, and they had no way to deal with this situation at all.
"...Is there still no news from Sir Gei?"
"Yes. They say he is still recuperating at his main house due to what happened in the capital."
"Tsk. Orcs are the problem here and there. How can mere monsters be this strong? *Sigh*." The Baron stood up with a sigh. He picked up a pointer with white feathers and pointed to the map spread out on the table. "First, I will accommodate as many of Jabyaba's residents as possible in temples and temporary barracks. You, request cooperation from the priest. As for the unrest caused by the refugees, the knights and the territorial army will step in to calm it down. I cannot forgive the entire Barony falling into fear over a force of a mere 100 Orcs." The Baron gave orders one by one, then struck the table with his pointer and declared.
"And tomorrow morning! I will lead the entire territorial army, excluding the standing army, and take back Jabyaba. In the vanguard..." The Baron scanned the knights. Everyone was full of confidence, and they were strongly appealing with their eyes to be placed in the vanguard. The Baron pointed his pointer at Ramatio, a mid-level knight. "Sir Ramatio. You shall take back Jabyaba. And we must rebuild our defensive positions centered around Jabyaba."
"I will definitely take back Jabyaba." Ramatio grinned, showing his teeth. "100 Orcs are nothing." The Baron felt relieved by Ramatio's strong confidence.