Homeward
Rebecca refused to put me down until the very end.
Even after we left the palace, she stubbornly kept me pressed against her, carrying me around in full view of everyone as if showing me off—and heaping enormous humiliation upon me in the process.
I never imagined that at my age I'd end up being piggybacked around by a middle-school girl.
Of course, here Rebecca was the adult and I was the child—but that hardly made the situation any less mortifying.
I wanted nothing more than to flee the scene on the spot, but skipping the postwar cleanup would mean abandoning my duties over nothing more than wounded pride.
Saintess, are you all right?
Yes. Nothing serious. The wounds have already been treated, and any aftereffects should settle soon.
In the end, I had to put on a thick face and pretend I was injured.
I'm fairly sure our Order's scripture lists honesty among its virtues, but with my dignity and reputation on the line, did that really matter?
Besides, the Goddess herself had said I could prioritize the knowledge I possessed over doctrine.
Without a shred of hesitation, I sold my conscience and preserved the image of a noble Saintess.
Ah, right—take these. They belong to you now, Count.
The crown and scepter I'd taken from Claude V's corpse were handed over to Count Montpellier as promised—and I did it in full view of everyone, with a gleaming halo of Divine Power wrapped ostentatiously around me.
It was a verdict that Claude V and his children had lost all legitimacy to the throne—and an open declaration of support for Count Montpellier.
What could make a transfer of power more unmistakable than publicly surrendering the crown and scepter, the very symbols of royal authority?
Thanks to that, Count Montpellier—once a rebel leader of little presence—rose in an instant to become the undisputed next king of France. The way he pretended not to be delighted after essentially freeloading his way onto the throne was thoroughly repulsive to watch.
It wasn't that I hadn't considered holding onto Claude V's relics and trying to negotiate—but my final destination wasn't here. It was the Low Countries in the north.
If I made a fuss over a few treasures and ended up shackled to French politics, it would be a pure loss. Better to hand them over cleanly and win the next king's favor.
But Saintess, the surface of the scepter seems slightly damaged...
Ah, it melted a little during recovery. The amount of metal is the same, so you can just have it reworked.
The surface had melted a bit while I was burning Claude V at the stake, but that was the new owner's problem to fix—not mine.
At any rate, the war was over, and the vacant throne passed to Count Montpellier.
The coronation announcing the founding of the new dynasty was held in Montpellier as intended, and with Elder Pates's help I performed the various rites as Saintess.
It was a remarkably tedious and chaotic coronation. I'll just say that while placing the crown, I got a good look at Count Montpellier's crown—and it was rather sparsely populated up there.
"Hair loss is still incurable even in the twenty-first century..."
I roughly remember the molecular formula for minoxidil, but not how to make it. We don't have the equipment for that anyway.
He can just cover it well with the crown. Isn't that what crowns are for?
"Pardon?"
"Ah, just talking to myself."
At any rate, after all those procedures, the city we returned to had changed to a startling degree.
Not that high-rises had sprung up or paved roads been laid in the short time we'd been gone—but the housing complex under construction on the outskirts had nearly doubled in size.
"I'm going insane."
The expansion was far faster than I'd expected. How on earth had it come to this?
"Heh heh. From what I hear, word that the Saintess was providing shelter to refugees spread, and refugees came flooding in."
Elder Pates, who'd been little more than dead weight for a while, had picked up various rumors in that short span and was laying them out as if they were great intelligence—but unfortunately, to me it was nothing more than unnecessary chatter.
As if I would have planned a housing development without accounting for an influx of war refugees.
Every project I'd been involved with in my previous life had been carried out in third-world basket-case countries lacking even basic infrastructure. Influxes of refugees driven out by war were something I'd dealt with routinely, and of course I'd factored it into the calculations from the start this time as well.
Based on the city's scale and prices I'd assessed while staying in Montpellier, I'd reverse-engineered the population of the surrounding region and left ample space from the beginning.
So what on earth had happened to blow past my estimates and hit double? With civilian support cut off, where had the labor to build houses even come from?
"Whoa! Living spaces so cleanly separated—whoever designed these houses is without a doubt an architect and artist the likes of which the world has never seen!"
"Good heavens. Clean houses with neither moss nor mold?"
"I can't live in this filth anymore! Let's abandon the old house and move into a new one!"
Ah.
Ahhh.
They'd poured out from inside the city itself.
I'd overestimated this era's living conditions. A multi-story wooden house wasn't average for the age—it was cutting-edge.
"What? There's furniture in every room?"
"Look at this front door attached here! So sturdy and heavy, yet it fits the frame perfectly!"
"Sunlight when you wake in the morning! Moonlight when you go to sleep! Truly, the heavens themselves bless this house!"
"Good lord. A hearth and even a rainwater catchment prepared for every single house...!"
I'd built the houses too well.
The various techniques I'd applied when first designing the houses were things that twenty-first-century modern civilization—having achieved industrialization and globalization—had piled up through enormous investments of time and budget. Separation of spaces with daily life in mind, securing intervals between houses to guarantee sunlight rights, effective pillar placement for weight distribution, construction methods maximizing materials' insulation performance, and so on.
I'd drawn up the blueprints by freely applying priceless knowledge that countless experts and residents had acquired through designing, building, and living in them firsthand—so compared to the houses inside the walls, which were the height of haphazard development, the convenience alone was bound to be overwhelming.
And now that Montpellier would become the capital of the kingdom, being outside the walls wasn't such a major drawback either. Factor in the artisans' improved skill from mass-producing a single model and the standardization of the products, and well...
What I'd planned wasn't a refugee camp—it was a new town. Left like this, the population would easily top a hundred thousand.
"...It seems we'll be staying in this city longer than I thought."
And if Montpellier's population blew past a hundred thousand right now, that wouldn't be normal urban development—it would be overpopulation driven by a real estate bubble.
With grain prices rising from the peasant rebellion in Avignon and the war for the throne, and commoners' lives already in ruins, an influx of population would naturally lead to famine next.
"Matilda, Finance Officer—your first assignment. Go investigate the total volume of wheat and rye flowing into Montpellier."
I made the decision with a heavy heart.
We would stay here.
According to plan, I should wrap up the postwar cleanup as fast as possible, race to the Low Countries, and proclaim the founding of the Holy Kingdom of Benelux—but I didn't want to ignore a plainly visible disaster for the sake of my meager plans.
Once this year passed, grain prices would stabilize and refugees would drop off significantly—so thinking of it as a period to establish the Order's structure and expand personnel, it wasn't a major loss.
"Sir Arturo. In Montpellier's back alleys there's a loan shark named Billy. I'll assign you several dozen soldiers—go slit that greedy bastard's belly open and recover every last bit of the wealth he accumulated through foul means."
And since every venture needs funding, I'd decided to slit open the piggy bank I'd left alone until now.
Loan King Billy was only the beginning.
From now on, I intended to round up every last bastard who made a living off money-lending and wreck them.
No need to worry about innocent victims turning up. The financial industry workers of this age were all either Billy's underlings or competitors running the exact same business model.
A thirteenth-century bank was closer to a vault for storing money and valuables than a modern financial institution. Naturally they didn't lend to just anyone, and places that offered loans were rare to begin with—so the circulation of money among the common folk was the exclusive domain of loan sharks.
And in this era, plastering a debtor's house with seizure notices didn't yield much money. In the end, the most valuable item a creditor could collect was the debtor's own body—and with a little force, seizing an entire family was entirely possible.
Which meant today's moneylenders were, nine times out of ten, human-trafficking specialists or connected to them. Beating them all to death would be no problem at all.
"And... Rebecca. Please go to my hometown village and bring my family. Father and Mother, my older brothers and sisters—and even the new sister-in-law who married my eldest brother. All of them."
Of course, I'd decided to evacuate the family to a safe place before starting the operation.
From now on I was going to crush every gangster in the city and film a proper war-on-crime epic—and without advance measures, sparks would inevitably fly in the wrong direction.
Strictly speaking they were Asty's family, not mine—but I'd grown attached in that short time, and I couldn't leave them to get caught in the blast. And since I'd taken Asty's life, it was something I naturally had to look after.
And so I began freely wielding the power I'd seized, preparing against the food shortage that overpopulation would bring—
"Asty! I won't let you go a second time!"
"He claimed to be your fiancé, so I permitted him to accompany us for now... Shall I deal with him?"
A completely forgotten member of the family (to-be) had followed along in a towering rage and started making a nuisance of himself.
Uh, umm.
So what was this guy's name again...?