Taking Refuge with the Brans Army (3)
I rose slowly from my seat, pushing the haze from my mind, and spoke.
"I just had a nightmare. That's all."
"Is that so? Well, that's a relief… You were making such agonized sounds, I was worried you might have fallen ill."
Irene let out a long breath, then offered a faint smile.
Her manner of speech still took some getting used to, but she seemed, in her own way, a rather warm-hearted person.
"More importantly—hasn't something rather significant happened on your end, Lady Irene?"
"What are you talking about?"
I looked at her as she tilted her head in confusion, and asked,
"Or do you normally walk around the house in nothing but your undergarments?"
"…Ah."
Only then did she grasp the meaning of my words. Her face flushed a deep red—and she quickly retreated three full steps, covering her chest and hips with her hands as she spoke.
Of course, covering them didn't actually cover much of anything.
"Th-this is… that is, I was… changing into my training clothes when I heard your pained voice, Swen, and I simply…!"
"I understand. Please just put something on. This is awkward for me as well."
"…I-I-I'm sorry… If… if it was unpleasant, please forgive me. I didn't mean to…!"
"It's fine."
It wasn't particularly unpleasant.
To be honest, there was plenty worth looking at.
Her ample chest alone hardly needed mentioning—and yet it was so impressively large that not mentioning it felt almost impossible. Her waist, meanwhile, showed the firm residual muscle of a woman who had trained as a knight, clearly defined. Her thighs were thick and solid, built to support a body that had clashed blades with enemies time and again.
And over that beautiful figure she wore black lace lingerie and a garter belt.
In short: it was more than enough scenery to blast the fog from my mind and jolt me fully awake.
Once the whole commotion had passed—
"…Ahem. Ahem. You've seen me in a rather undignified state. Allow me to apologize once more."
She reappeared before me, now dressed in her training clothes.
…The problem was those training clothes.
Compared to the underwear from moments before, only the degree of exposure had changed. She wore something like a tank top and a pair of shorts. Something resembling stockings, attached to the garter belt, clung tightly around her thighs in a way that was distinctly flattering.
"Is there a difference between the underwear and this?"
"Hm? Of course there is. These are training clothes. Just now, that was… u-underwear…"
She flushed, looking embarrassed.
So once she had something that counted as clothing on, she no longer felt ashamed?
Well—in fantasy games, female knights' armor often left the midriff bare even when it was supposedly armor, so I supposed it tracked.
"So what do you plan to do today? Attend to your assigned duties, I assume?"
"Duties, is it…"
She gave a bitter smile.
"If I had been given any duties, I would attend to them… but my lord has assigned me nothing in particular."
Well, for heaven's sake.
Irene was an S-Class General with high Martial strength. Put her on training, conscription, wall repairs—anything influenced by Martial power—and she would produce extraordinary results.
Of course… by now I understood well enough why Lin refused to use her.
She's truly hated to an astonishing degree.
Starting with deliberately sending a man to live in a woman's house…
Her sovereign was openly snubbing and tormenting her like this, and still her loyalty didn't waver.
It was impossible not to feel sorry for her.
What had been nothing more than a compatibility value set to −100 in the game now felt, made real, vividly cruel.
"Then what will you do?"
"You ask the strangest things. Why do you think I put on these clothes?"
With that, Irene slowly picked up a sword resting in the corner of the room.
"When I have time to spare, I train. If I waste the hours simply because no work has been given to me, the one who rusts will be me. If my lord ever calls upon me, I must be ready to distinguish myself. Of course I train."
"That's remarkable resolve."
"Well? Will you join me? I have wooden practice swords suitable for beginners."
She seemed to have seen at a glance that I was a novice—or more precisely, that my Martial strength was nothing special.
I considered it briefly, then declined.
"I'm fine. I have something else I need to do."
"Is that so? Well, if you have work of your own."
"Before that, there's something I'd like to ask."
I pointed to the paper and the quill resting in its ink on the desk.
"Would it be all right if I used those?"
"The paper? You're free to use it."
"Then I'll take the liberty."
"Mm."
Having answered, she took up her sword and approached the straw dummy.
She drew a short breath, exhaled—
"…Hah!"
—and with a sharp kiai began swinging her blade at the dummy.
A simple motion, but repeated often enough it would surely produce some effect.
Was this how an S-Class General's stats were built—from the ground up, step by careful step?
In any case, permission granted, I went to the desk and spread out the paper.
The most important task before me right now.
Drawing a map.
In this game, the continent itself always looked the same, but the positions of the various nations were never fixed at the start of a playthrough.
Having put ten thousand hours into the game, I had every country's name memorized—but I couldn't draw precisely which castles or territories each one currently held.
Still, at the very least, mapping out the area around Brans was more than necessary.
My ability only told me what conclusion would be reached.
It never told me why.
Which meant that drawing a map and organizing the information in my head would almost certainly give me good leads as to why those conclusions emerged.
With that thought, I picked up the pen.
"Hah!"
It would be tedious work that needed time—but Irene's kiai made for a surprisingly pleasant white noise in the background.
*
And so the day drew to a close.
With no duties assigned to her, Irene lived a routine that bordered on the superhuman.
She rose, washed lightly, and began training.
Then she ate lunch.
She prepared it herself—a modest meal of plain rye bread and a little butter to spread on it. She always served tea alongside, though I couldn't say exactly what kind it was. Black tea, green tea… or simply water steeped with some kind of leaves. It wasn't bad. The fragrance was rather pleasant.
After the meal, training resumed.
Then dinner.
The evening meal was dried fish, bread, and a simple salad of mixed vegetables.
Only after dinner did her training finally end.
She was the very image of an ascetic walking the path of the sword in silence.
After finishing dinner myself and bathing, I came out and addressed her—water still dripping from the ends of her hair.
"Are you resting now?"
"Hm? I am."
"Do you train like this every single day?"
"As a rule, when I have no duties, I always follow this routine."
"That's impressive."
Irene didn't particularly respond to my admiration. She tore off a piece of bread and asked,
"Come to think of it, you seemed to be drawing a map."
"Yes. I wanted to get a grasp of the situation around Brans."
"The map was remarkably well made. Have you done cartography work before?"
Of course the quality was high.
It was a map I had seen dozens, hundreds—no, thousands of times while playing the game.
How many mouse clicks had I spent staring at that map?
Still, I could hardly say that outright.
"A little, yes."
"I see. An unexpected history you have."
Seizing the opening, I put a question to her.
"Speaking of which, Lady Irene."
"Hm?"
"I'm familiar with the continent's geography… but I still haven't mapped which nations sit around Brans. If you know anything, would you be willing to help?"
She nodded at my words.
"You're asking me to help you make it?"
"I am."
"Hmm. I'm not sure how much use I'll be."
"You'll be more than useful. You're a woman of many talents, after all."
My true thoughts slipped out before I could stop them, but she seemed to take it as flattery. A subtle smile touched her lips.
"Flatter me all you like—nothing will come of it. Still, it doesn't feel bad."
Hm?
For someone saying that, she looked rather pleased.
Was she hungrier for recognition than I'd thought?
Well—no matter how hard she worked, if the one person whose acknowledgment she most wanted, her own lord, kept persecuting her… of course she would be.
"Why wouldn't something come of it? Something you like, Lady Irene."
"…Do you go around saying that to just anyone?"
"Of course not."
I grinned as I said it.
Irene looked at me, offered a faint smile of her own, and slowly came closer.
We had known each other only a day—and yet I had the sense that conversation with her flowed surprisingly well.
She didn't seem to be keeping me at much of a distance either.
"Very well. If I can be of help, I will."
She drew near to my side.
Inevitably, her more-than-ample chest brushed against me.
Not a bad sensation at all.
"First—to the west lie various minor states… though you've already filled those in."
"I mapped them while I was working for the Lunarien forces."
"Then let's move east. There are three powers here. The one sharing a border with us is the Acesius Army. They're the only nation one really needs to watch. Beyond them, the Charam Army and the Alefel Army rule small territories as minor states."
Charam and Alefel.
Names I knew well.
Both were thoroughly unremarkable minor powers. Their talent pools were mediocre, and their lords' abilities sat a notch below even ordinary men. Unless a player took them over, they left no footprint on history whatsoever—pure extra nations.
In the world I'd been possessed into, they had apparently respawned near the Acesius Army.
Far better than spawning next to the Serpina Army, certainly… but even so, they would have little means of defeating Acesius.
And yet.
Hm?
Two minor states… and both still alive?
Even allowing for that, their survival this far was a little unexpected.
In a standoff like this, the normal flow of events would have seen at least one of them already crushed under Acesius's boot and erased from the map.
From Acesius's perspective, if they could have swallowed them, they would have done so long ago.
Just as the Serpina Army had rapidly cleaned up the minor states around it, Acesius, once it weathered the first three months or so of the extreme early game, would use its overwhelming talent pool to nibble away at its neighbors one by one.
Had the two minor states formed an alliance, establishing some delicate balance with Acesius?
If so, one question remained.
If that were true, Acesius would be fighting on two fronts—and Brans would have had every reason to invade an Acesius Army whose attention was necessarily split and sluggish. Yet they hadn't.
…There's something here.
I didn't know exactly what it was, and I wasn't sure it was even that important—
But something was clearly happening that never happened under ordinary circumstances.
On the off chance, I put the question to her.
"Lady Irene. Do the Charam Army and the Alefel Army still exist on the continent?"
"They do. Not long ago, the Charam Army even presented gold to our forces."
"???"
They gave money?
Of course, there was a diplomatic command for gifting gold to improve relations—but no one ever used it.
In this game, no matter how high you raised affinity, it meant almost nothing unless you were already allied.
More to the point, when gold was given under the pretext of improving relations, it was always for something else.
Raise affinity, secure a promise of a joint assault… and then—
Stab us in the back. Every time.