Chronicle of the Knight Kingdom's Founding (1)
Before the imperial palace of Adrian.
A massive throng of people packed the grand plaza, every neck craned eagerly toward the front. Today was the day the fate of the Crown Prince would be sealed.
[Meme: Peasant giving a thumbs up]
Tune in, folks!
Upon a wooden scaffold stood Lloyd, who had somehow ended up serving as the representative of Adrian. Before him, bound tightly from head to toe in thick coils of rope, Crown Prince Frederick held his chin stiff and haughty.
"We shall now commence the execution of the criminal."
"WAAAGH!"
Cheers erupted simultaneously across both the Gallery and the physical square. With venom pooling in his bloodshot eyes, Frederick hurled curses at the spectators gathered to witness his downfall.
"Betraying the imperial house to grovel before outside powers, you leeches! You subhuman parasites! Every last one of you will starve to death!"
Yet his rancor burned hottest and fiercest against one target in particular: Judddak.
"I curse you, Judddak! Even in death, I will wait and thirst for the day you die!!"
Stripped of his crown and branded a common felon, Frederick retained none of his former imperial dignity. Lloyd gave a subtle nod to the guards standing beneath the scaffold, and they dragged the former prince away.
Yet the direction they were hauling him was decidedly strange.
"Wait, that's not toward the guillotine, is it?"
"What's going on? Aren't they going to execute him?"
It looked less like an execution and more like ordinary punitive custody. Just as the volatile crowd began to rumble with suspicion, Lloyd raised his voice.
"At the hour of the empire's greatest peril, the criminal was found guilty of corruption, gross misjudgment, the total incineration of food reserves, and fifty-six additional counts of severe misconduct."
If he had merely been inept at statecraft, one might have looked the other way. After all, incompetent rulers were a dime a dozen. But in the midst of an apocalyptic world, he had relentlessly trolled his own realm. Backed into a corner, he had set fire to the imperial granaries. A man styling himself Crown Prince had actively tried to starve every single one of his subjects to death.
"Had it not been for Judddak, this catastrophe would have ended in mass starvation." Lloyd lifted his gaze from the parchment, his voice ringing out with cool finality. "Therefore, deeming the guillotine an insufficient penalty, exile has been decreed."
A fresh swell of discontent rippled across the assembly.
"What, exile?"
"We're letting a bastard like that off with mere exile?!"
Just as the indignation threatened to boil over, the crowd suddenly realized the truth: compared to the exile he was about to suffer, parting with his head beneath the guillotine's blade would have been the gentlest of mercies.
"...Holy shit. No, you can't do this."
A stream of curses spilled past Frederick's trembling lips. For right before his eyes opened a Rift.
A conduit to The Outside, spilling straight into the feeding grounds of monstrous beasts. Though its interior was blacked out by Gallery censorship, it was the very passage Judddak had verified through countless top posts.
"Kill me instead! Just kill me!" Frederick shrieked, drenched in cold sweat.
The guards showed not a shred of mercy. With one coordinated heave, Frederick was flung headlong into the maw of the Rift.
"Aaaargh!! Judddak, I curse you! I swear I'll—!"
Before he could even finish the sentence, the abyss swallowed his voice. Crown Prince Frederick vanished beyond the dimensional fissure, erased from the world entirely.
"...Did they take him down?"
As the stunned crowd fell into an eerie silence, horrified by a punishment far more ghastly than any executioner's axe, Lloyd slowly turned his back. With an expression carved from grim resolve, he brought up his Gallery interface and began to type.
Clack... Tap, clack...
[Emoticon: Knight roaring "Onward! Beyond that horizon!"]
As previously announced, we intend to depart Adrian and establish our new home within the Kelton Kingdom.
Whether you volunteered previously or wish to join us now, you are welcome to fall in with the procession at any time.
Departure: in 30 minutes
Destination: The (Former) Kelton Kingdom
Come along, everyone~ Let's march forth~
The instant the new pinned post went live, eyes widened across the entire square as citizens frantically checked their feeds.
"Let us depart for the Kelton Kingdom!" Lloyd bellowed, thrusting his arm toward the open sky.
"WAAAHHH!"
"To the land of freedom!"
With Adrian's deep-rooted corruption cast into the void, the populace split down the middle. One half chose to remain behind and rebuild their ancestral home from the ashes; the other half resolved to set out for the ruins of Kelton to forge a new beginning.
"They're coming my way? Even better."
From my perspective, this couldn't have worked out more conveniently.
The Kelton Kingdom was no more.
Yet it lived on in their hearts! Yes, the refugees of Adrian were marching over to build an entirely new dynasty upon the old kingdom's ruins. Its official title: the Kingdom of Kellierton. It was a proclamation of a fresh sovereign state while explicitly inheriting the legacy of Kelton.
And as for me...
"Guess I'll lend them a hand."
I fully intended to dip my spoon into this kingdom-building pot. Just think about how many threats my personal safety had endured recently. There was the assassination Frederick had commissioned, the rabbit beastfolk trying to drain me dry of life, and the endless line of magical beasts sniffing around for a quick snack.
"This is getting ridiculous."
Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but three times is a certified crisis. While I was already fortifying my bunker warehouse, having an external defensive buffer wouldn't hurt. A sturdy, fortified Kingdom of Kellierton right on my doorstep—rather than empty ruins—fit that strategy perfectly.
"Besides, they're reliable."
For starters, their de facto leader was Lloyd, the very same 'good kid at heart' knight who had once tried to treat open sword wounds by pouring milk and flour over them. The sole reason the populace accepted him as their commander was simply because I called on him so often on the Gallery. An accidental war correspondent who happened to be tight with the Head Moderator? That was a pedigree no one could argue with.
"Well, looks like they're making steady progress, but..."
Lloyd's vanguard was trekking vigorously toward Kelton. They had sufficient military strength to cut down ordinary magical beasts along the highway, but the real issue was something else entirely.
They lacked legitimacy.
Even though Kelton lay in ruins, numerous survivors remained scattered about, and its ancestral structures still stood. While they had declared they would inherit the fallen kingdom's mantle, Lloyd was born and bred an imperial citizen of Adrian. That created a fatal flaw in their claim to the throne.
"Well, I'm sure they've got some kind of plan."
Still, I wasn't overly concerned. Surely they wouldn't shout about founding a nation without considering something as fundamental as that. Lloyd's marching host alone easily numbered over a hundred thousand people. There was simply no way a colossal host like that had set out without a shred of common sense—
...Or maybe they really hadn't thought it through at all.
Right before my eyes, the migrating host began to descend into collective hysteria across the board.
The real issue was that Lloyd was right there in the comments, panicking alongside them.
"Is it really a good idea to let these clowns settle near me?"
A sudden wave of dread washed over me, wondering if throwing my weight behind the Kingdom of Kellierton was a massive mistake. Still, the kid had a decent heart. At the very least, he wasn't the type to stab me in the back after receiving my aid. Even if he tried, I doubted any of them could breach my 21st-century reinforced bunker to do me in anyway.
Right on cue, I logged in to make my divine intervention.
Mm, mm.
Perhaps because I had pulled them out of the fire a few times before, an astronomical number of upvotes slammed into the thread the instant it went live. Lloyd answered the summons almost instantaneously.
Of course, it wasn't as if I had some stroke of celestial genius up my sleeve.
"As long as they aren't insane and reasonably capable, anyone will do."
So long as they weren't a lunatic, I didn't care. And in that regard, I happened to know a high-ranking noble belonging to the Kelton Kingdom—someone gentle, docile, and completely incapable of malice.
Catching my breath, I entered the username.
She was a beloved (no cap) registered user who had bartered an antique bed for a stash of canned tuna with me back then.
Evelyn Ophelia.
The only daughter of the sole ducal house of the Kelton Kingdom. She had long since lost track of how many weeks had passed while confined within her chamber. Today, as usual, she was whittling away meaningless hours counting the whorls in the floorboards and the stucco patterns on the ceiling.
"Pfft!"
Her savior had just unleashed a grade-A troll on the board.
"Judddak, what on earth do you mean by that...?"
Trapped in her room for months with nothing to do but browse the Gallery, she had degenerated into a complete shut-in recluse. If she had any virtue left, it was an unfussy palate that happily subsisted on canned tuna day after day without complaint. And now he was casually telling someone like her to become the queen?!
"I don't even know if my father is still alive..."
What kind of thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky was this?
Evelyn harbored zero aristocratic pride, and even less ambition to claw her way up the greasy pole of political power. All she needed to be content was scrolling through the Gallery, giggling at funny memes, and savoring savory flakes of canned tuna.
"I don't have that kind of ambition, I really don't..."
She attempted a timid protest, but the forum community was merciless.
Before she even realized what had happened, Evelyn had been coronated queen by popular acclaim.
Knock, knock, knock.
"Mommy!"
At that exact moment, a sharp rap echoed against the wooden door.
Startled out of her skin, Evelyn pulled her shoulders in tight as voices drifted through the panels.
"Aigoo, we've come bearing good tidings."
"Would our future human queen care to open the door?"
"Hiiieek!"
In that terrifying instant, Evelyn felt a primal horror far eclipsing anything she had ever felt when facing a horde of magical beasts.