History I Didn't Know
After I finished my conversation with Vir of the Talikal Kingdom, the kingdom's representatives who had been waiting in the wings came flooding in.
One kingdom offered thousands of gold coins and asked me to become their knight. Another dangled territory and a baronial title.
Worst of all—though I have no idea what rumor had reached their ears—one kingdom even promised to provide me with as many pretty children as I desired.
I sighed and sent them packing immediately, but they'd seemed utterly earnest. That particular kingdom, apparently, had been dead serious.
The chat window was flooded wall-to-wall with 'LOLOLOLOL', and I let out another sigh.
My fondness for children comes purely from their untainted hearts and their cuteness, not from some preference for children, thank you very much.
And honestly—bribing people with what, now? It was absurd.
Even having been through everything I've been through, this was an offer I'd never once encountered, which somehow made it all the more ridiculous.
Beyond that, proposals came pouring in with every manner of compensation attached.
Of course, with the exception of Talikal, I turned every single one of them down.
The reason was simple. Either their demands were far too large for what they offered, or the demands themselves were feasible but the payment wasn't nearly enough.
I have no particular need to go running around for a few dozen or a few hundred gold coins, or even Legendary-tier weapons.
I'm running a stream, after all, so my time isn't exactly abundant. I had lectures to prepare, Constellations to meet, and hunting and dungeons to run.
Granted, helping a kingdom could net me rewards beyond what ordinary hunting or dungeon runs would yield—but unlike a dungeon, a kingdom doesn't 'reset'.
In other words, once I acted, that history would be carved into the world exactly as it happened. Just like when Leo annihilated the kingdom of Proton and won the Empire's recognition.
"When you watch the footage of Lady Leo's battle back then, it was honestly a spectacle unlike anything else. This was a year and a half ago, when everyone's gear was complete garbage, and she was the only one unleashing skills like some kind of world boss, just nonstop—"
Yena spread her hands wide in exaggerated fashion as she described the scene.
By the time I'd fielded so many offers I couldn't tell whether I'd come here for the after-party or for a business meeting, I'd quietly slipped out using a perception-dulling spell. I'd also told my viewers I was taking the day off and ended the stream.
And so I found myself at Yena's team's table. Or rather, Chukachip's team's table.
I'd originally meant to head to my own team's table, but Vlack was off networking with the kingdom's representatives, Devil wasn't attending, and so I'd brought Redberry over here instead.
Not that Chukachip and Truck Shield were missing from this side of the room too.
"...Anyway, the moment her penalty lifted, Lady Leo declared it. 'All who defy the Empire shall meet their deaths.'"
"Lady Leo said that?"
Munch munch. Yena, who had been eating something that looked like pudding, nodded her head up and down vigorously.
"That's right, nyaa. Maybe she was pretty drunk on the atmosphere at the time, or maybe that line itself was part of the quest—I can't say for sure since she never explained. But the aura she gave off was no joke. There was a huge uproar for a while after that."
"Oh! I saw that on the internet too! Her eyes completely changed, and then a blade of wind just bisected all the knights in one stroke and—"
Redberry picked up the thread, as if reminiscing about that day herself.
Leo, with that kind of demeanor and those kinds of words...
...I honestly can't picture it.
The Leo I know is a nymph with the mind of a young child who loves sweets. One who occasionally snaps back to her senses and gets embarrassed about it.
Yena must have read the thought on my face, because she gave a knowing nod.
"She's pretty different from the usual Lady Leo, right?"
"No kidding. All I ever heard was that she'd toppled a kingdom once."
"Well, she hasn't really made a showing in world quests since then, so quite a few people probably don't know. She's genuinely terrifying when she gets serious."
"Is that why Lady Leo didn't come tonight?"
"Yep."
Since that incident, Leo hadn't been actively helping the Empire, but both in name and in substance, she stood on the Empire's side.
No matter how gracious the invitation, it was a given that attending a banquet of the kingdoms would not be a pleasant experience for her.
Though, of course, the ones who'd end up having a bad time would be the kingdoms.
"From the kingdoms' perspective, Lady Leo and Sword God are quite the headaches. They're users who won't die, and there's no dealing with them by force."
Even if the kingdoms pooled all their strength and killed them, they'd simply revive. The kingdoms certainly weren't weak enough to crumble at a touch, but from their standpoint, these were enemies they must never antagonize.
It would be better if the immortals were a third faction aligned with no one at all—but they had already thrown in their lot with the Empire.
"That's why they're showing even more interest in you, Lily. You beat Lady Leo—the absolute worst-case risk—without breaking a sweat, didn't you?"
"You'd be plenty worth recruiting yourself, Yena."
It wasn't just Yena—every person at this table was someone the kingdoms would kill to have.
Immortals who would not die even if killed, each capable of effortlessly pressing down the elite knights of an entire kingdom.
Even leaving me out of the equation, there would be no shortage of parties eager to recruit them.
When I said as much, Redberry waved her hands in denial.
"I-I'm already exclusive to one kingdom. I even hold a title there."
"...The Angel Guild is contracted with the Eden Federation. It's a kingdom alliance up in the north—different from the kingdoms here, so they don't really make approaches."
"Ah...? So it's all already settled."
So it wasn't that they chose not to recruit—they couldn't. I nodded along.
Hm?
"What about you, Yena?"
"...This is tasty~ Wow, where'd they even get this pudding? Why is it so sweet, nyaa?"
"......"
"......"
Let's just drop the subject, then.
"W-well, it's not that they don't come to me, it's that they do come, but... hmm, how do I put this..."
"'How do I put this'?"
Yena agonized over whether she should actually say it or not. Then she screwed her eyes shut and let out a long breath.
"Something happened back when I was really on a hot streak. Around the same time as Lady Leo's thing. I, ah... kind of earned the kingdoms' hostility back then, nyaa."
Yena's explanation went something like this.
Having climbed all the way to Rank 3, Yena had been flaunting her strength to the world. Her guild—-Ye-—had thrown itself into progressing the world quests, signing a contract with one kingdom and launching their operations.
The duties: hunting down the monsters infesting that kingdom's lands, defending it against hostile nations, launching offensives into enemy territory, and the like.
-Ye- ran through the quests without the slightest hitch, and everything seemed to be flowing along smoothly.
"And then it happened. The incident where Lady Leo single-handedly annihilated an entire kingdom."
An immortal aligned with the Empire had wiped a perfectly healthy kingdom off the map.
Granted, a single kingdom had indeed fallen, but compared to the Empire's fearsome reputation, the scale of the war itself hadn't been all that great.
And yet the peoples who had dreaded war and the Empire for centuries already were seized by a fresh terror: that this might be the opening move of yet another 'war of conquest'.
The kingdoms panicked and began recruiting immortal users left and right. Everything from the strongest immortals down to anyone of middling ability—they were signing them all.
"I hated it. We didn't work ourselves to the bone helping the kingdom's affairs just so contracts could get handed out that easily, nyaa."
So she lodged a protest.
'Why are you recruiting others instead of us?'
'Our fighting power is several times theirs. No—dozens of times.'
'Rather than squandering resources on something so useless, pay us more.'
Raguel and Redberry nodded along too, as if remembering that day.
Yena gulped down her drink and slammed the wine glass down with a clack!
"But they wouldn't give me the time of day, would they? They probably knew already—that once users are contracted to someone, they almost never betray them."
"Because of the world quests?"
"Right. If you act contrary to your existing quest, its progress gets voided and it converts into a whole new quest."
As a guild that had been in the leading pack, -Ye- had already racked up substantial progress.
From their standpoint, abandoning all of it and turning against the kingdoms meant shouldering an enormous risk.
A shackle disguised as a quest.
And Yena, having just swallowed several dozen boxes' worth of sweet potato frustration, did not hold back.
"I got so fed up I flattened their royal palace. I didn't kill anyone, but I disarmed every last one of them and took everything they owed us."
Ah, the king's face back then was truly something to behold.
Kikik. Yena let out a snort of laughter and shook her head.
"But pulling the stunt tanked my affinity rating straight into the negatives, and I was completely finished. The Empire won't even take you unless you're some special case like Lady Leo. See, this is why you can't court the cameras too hard, nyaa."
"F-for the record, this didn't just happen to the -Ye- Guild—something similar went down with all the top-ranked guilds at the time. Not to the point of flattening a palace like Yena did, but... well, more like a strike, I suppose?"
Redberry said her piece and nibbled at her food.
"So in the end, even the kingdoms had to concede, and they started treating immortals as business partners rather than useful tools. Since then, three world bosses have shown up, and we've teamed up with the kingdoms to take them down."
"...That's actually entertaining."
History I never knew was unfolding before me, and it was genuinely fun to hear.
So things like that had happened, huh.
Ahem. Yena leaned back in her chair and wore a rueful smile.
"Anyway, ever since then, they don't come. Ah—they do come, but it's all either insultingly low compensation or offers that make absolutely no sense."
"Are you not doing anything separate these days?"
"Eh, everyone's got their own things going on... but as far as kingdom-related quests go, there's basically nothing. The thing about affinity is, it's scary stuff—your progress itself gets blocked by it."
There were two ways to move forward. One was to restore the affinity through other missions or quests.
Or just commit fully to the hostile route.
"Honestly, back then there was a bounty on my head and all hell broke loose. So yeah, making an enemy out of a kingdom is a real problem, nyaa—"
"And what would happen if one made an enemy of the Empire instead?"
Yena froze.
Not just Yena—everyone in the room.
Turning against the Empire. Turning against the 'typhoon'.
It went without saying that no one would dare—not that the typhoon would deign to acknowledge them anyway.
But if the one doing the challenging could slice through even the typhoon, the story changed entirely.
"Well, if it came to that..."
You'd become the enemy of the continent, wouldn't you.
"Half the continent gunning for your head, Lily. Something like that, I guess?"
"......"
Huh. So it's not that big a deal after all.