Malice
A few hours before Khalifa took the bundle of newspapers in hand. Emil's bedchamber.
Crash!
The wineglass struck the wall. Shattered glass sprayed in every direction, and wine bled red across the carpet.
"You son of a bitch!!"
Emil panted, his face flushed a furious crimson. He had only just been dressed down by the king of a neighboring realm.
The banquet he had thrown—desert dancers gathered, the revel climbing toward its height—had been at its very peak when word arrived from the king of the Dilat Kingdom.
"What in the world do you think you're doing? Didn't you say you would send the Hero to the crown prince's coming-of-age? What, exactly, has happened? I boasted to my family and my ministers that the Hero was coming. I have been made a complete fool! You subject me to this humiliation, and then what? You want the rights to the magic-stone trade as payment? Ha! The magic-stone venture is off. From this day on, do not so much as utter the word magic in front of me!"
The pleasant drunken glow that had been rising in him vanished in an instant. The Dilat Kingdom held the greatest mining belt in the east, where high-grade Magic Crystal—the stuff of superior magical tools—was brought up from the ground. Whoever took charge of its distribution could sweep in a truly astronomical fortune.
Set against the concession to be gained, the work itself could not have been easier. All one had to do was attend the banquet held to mark the crown prince's coming of age, loose a few bursts of sword aura, wag one's tail, and come home. That was the whole of it.
And he had cast aside a task with a reward this immense, without so much as talking it over?
"That damned bastard..."
Emil ground his teeth. A mutt he had raised, daring to bite his master.
He did not need to ask the reason for the defiance. It was obvious. The man was throwing a tantrum—I'm angry—because Emil had refused that absurd demand to go and catch the Demon King.
Emil did not like that fact one bit. A worthless commoner, and the moment he held a little power he raised his voice before a king. The sight itself was deeply offensive.
People lifted him up and spoiled him, and so he had grown arrogant, his confidence piercing the sky... and yet he was base from the moment of his birth. Common blood ran in that body. He was not fit to be set beside Emil, born of noble blood.
Who was it that had given him the fame he now enjoyed? Whose doing was it that he had been able to pile up so many achievements? All of it had been possible only because Emil was there to arrange the proper missions.
And still, not knowing his place, he had dared bare his teeth at his master.
Emil clenched his jaw until it creaked.
"...Fine. I'll teach you your place."
From old times, the rod was the medicine for a dog that barked too loud. He would personally make the man understand just how low and wretched a thing he was.
He sent the dancers out and stroked the crystal orb once more. Before long, light gathered in the sphere, and the link connected.
"I told you not to contact me, and it has not even been an hour. What—were you that hungry for the magic-stone trade?"
A sneering voice. Emil barely held his anger down as he answered.
"...Calm yourself. Let me apologize first. It was not intentional. I gave the Hero a clear order, and I did not expect him to disobey. As for the magic stones, I will not so much as raise the subject again. The reason I called is..."
Emil let a brief pause hang, then opened his mouth once more.
"The Hero."
"...The Hero?"
"It was two days ago. He came without so much as a word of warning, and then he made a sudden, outrageous demand. Do you know what he said to me? He told me we should go and subjugate the Demonic Realm!"
"What!?"
From beyond the orb came the sound of a sharp, startled breath. Emil did not bother to mention that he himself had been the one to offer, first, to raise an expedition into the Demonic Realm.
"Mad talk, not worth a moment's thought. So I told him it could not be done, and what does he do? He dares raise his voice in front of me, makes a show of his anger, and then refuses an order like this. They praise him and praise him until his head swells."
"That is... rather ill-mannered of him, yes."
"Think on it. This time we only lost a little face. But what if he does it again? What if some great threat falls upon the kingdom, and he ignores the summons just the same? What becomes of us then?"
"...That is certainly... hmm."
A troubled sound drifted through the orb. The thought of the Hero ignoring a summons while the kingdom was invaded by some unknown enemy was enough to make anyone dizzy.
"Then what are we to do? Should we raise an expedition to the Demonic Realm, even if it is only for show?"
Hmph. Emil snorted.
"Don't talk nonsense. Why would we do that for him? It would only spoil him further."
He set a roll of tobacco between his lips, lit it, and drew a deep breath.
"Hoo..."
Acrid smoke drifted, thin and hazy, through the room. His face gone a shade more languid, he spoke.
"...Won't that simply backfire? What if all you do is harden his resentment?"
"Don't worry over nothing. Where would he go, if he left us?"
The north of the continent was the Demonic Realm, where no human could live, and the south and the west were the lands of the empire he opposed. Every kingdom of the east belonged to the alliance. Even if he wished to leave, could he?
"Give him one thorough scolding and he'll take it quietly. So..."
He drew another deep pull. His vision warped, faint and unsteady, and a lift he could not have put into words spread through every corner of his body.
He shuddered, then went on, slow and languid.
"Put pressure on the newspapers... and contact the other kings as well. When the work is done, as a token of my apology and my thanks, I will grant you the authority to make free use of the Hero. Five times."
"!! Understood. I'll send word at once."
Even an ally, if it wished the Hero's aid, had to hand the Kadema Kingdom vast wealth or some enormous concession. The right to use a continental-class power, the Hero, freely, five times? That value could not be easily reckoned. For the king of Dilat, it was a bargain with nothing but profit in it.
Once the link with Emil was closed, the king rushed to lean on the newspapers within his own realm. He ordered the commoners' associations he sponsored in the royalist name to play the part of shills, and he poured out an impassioned argument to the other kings as well: the Hero's reputation had to be torn down.
"I shall give it favorable consideration."
"Understood. Shall we begin the work at once?"
"The Hero... he has been made a god beyond what is necessary, hasn't he."
After that fervent persuasion, most of the kings joined the plan. They, too, had already begun to nurse a quiet wariness, watching Rian's standing among the common people grow altogether too bright.
And so, in the deep of the night, the heads of each nation personally ordered the work of reputation. When morning came, sensational papers thick with lies and slander poured out into the streets.
The scoops burst out of nowhere, like lightning from a clear sky, and people startled. Add to that every trick of the professional agitators, and public opinion soured in an instant.
"...Is this true? You're saying Sir Hero has been killing innocent people behind our backs?"
"It sounds right to me. This paper—isn't it issued by the kingdom?"
"...I knew it. From the first time I saw him, something felt off."
Wherever one went in the streets, ill talk of the Hero was creeping, slow and spreading.
"This will do. To the palace."
And Emil, who had slipped out on inspection in a carriage, hidden from his own people, did not bother to hide his satisfaction. He burst out laughing.
"Kahahaha..."
The crime of raising a flag without knowing one's place. He would collect the price of it in full.
Drive that stiff neck into the dirt. Make him beg until his hands gave out. And what else was there.
Should he have the man crawl between his legs, as proof of submission?
Emil drew in the smoke and went on with the happy imagining. He was steeped in delusion.
"No, no, no..."
Khalifa's mouth worked, opening and closing. She was struck dumb. It was so absurd that the words would not even come out properly.
Is he actually insane?
When he ought to have been scrambling to arrange some seat of reconciliation, he had turned about and begun attacking Rian instead—and with nonsense so baseless that not even a third-rate rag would print it.
Would the Central Intelligence Bureau, which gathered confidential reports from every corner of the continent, really have failed to look into Rian's past? Rian was a vast wall standing in the way of the empire's grand design. For more than a year they had followed behind him, hoping to chip away at him even a little, and they had watched his every gesture, his every step.
All of it had been useless. Rian's character was noble. They had dug even into his private life, and they had not been able to find a single flaw.
A pleasure-killer? A warmonger? The theft of others' merits?
If any of that had been true, they would have broken it open long ago.
What is this, really?
She could not understand Emil. Once the king's incompetence had been confirmed, surveillance inside the palace had been cut back sharply, and so she had not known that he had gone bad enough to lay hands on drugs.
"Even if I grant Emil a hundred allowances and say he might do such a thing—why are these ones doing it too?"
What she understood even less was that the attack on the Hero had spread past the Kadema Kingdom, into the other kingdoms of the Eastern Alliance.
Most of the kings were spreading malicious, grotesque rumors, as if Rian were some blood enemy of their houses.
"The rumor is swelling at a tremendous pace! This is clearly not newspaper articles alone. Some faction is involved!"
Word from the field was still flying in, one report after another. Covert work was their own specialty. They could not fail to recognize a planned agitation. Professional shills had definitely slipped in among the citizens.
...What are these people thinking?
Khalifa was genuinely curious. Why go this far in attacking the Hero?
If they were militarists with nothing but war in their heads—like the warmongers of the army, now relegated to the back room—she could at least have understood. They might simply dislike that the continent had gone quiet because of a pacifist Hero.
But their armies were not strong enough for them to prefer war, and if anything, the peace that had come with the Hero's existence had brought them enormous gain. It had never brought them harm.
So why were they frantic, itching because they could not sink their teeth into him? What, exactly, had he done wrong?
Perhaps it was only natural that she could not understand the kings.
An imperial society of merit, open to many peoples. So long as one had ability, sex, faith, station, nation—none of it mattered. Even if the species itself was different.
Khalifa, the high elf. She had lingered in the closed Great Forest, then stepped beyond the trees and become a giant of the empire in a single bound.
The queen of the Great Forest. The emperor of the empire.
Having served only outstanding leaders, she had never imagined that men who were kings of nations in name could be this incompetent.
It was absurd. A hero who, alone, surpassed a mighty host—and far from treating him with the utmost courtesy, they were frantic to devour him, as if he were a mortal enemy.
On the other hand, she felt a sting of shame. She did not want to believe that the iron-blooded empire was staggering because it could not deal with wretches like these.
"...Well. It's a good thing."
Her eyes glinted cold. Whether she understood or not did not matter. The enemy's foolishness was something to welcome with both hands raised.
The discord between Emil and Rian could be taken as a private matter between the two of them. But now that the other kings had all piled in, the affair had swollen into a problem between the Eastern Alliance and the Hero.
If one judged that every one of those relationships had soured...
Then the empire, ill-fated with him from the very beginning, would come to stand on the same line.
"The Hero. No further sightings?"
"No, ma'am. The last place he was seen was the north gate of the royal capital, and he has not been found since. This is the second day."
"North of the capital... Good."
Khalifa threw a coat over her uniform. As she made ready to leave, a subordinate asked.
"Where are you going?"
"We don't know where he is, do we? Someone has to go find him."
"...Pardon?"
The subordinate went pale.
"If you're caught inside the kingdom, it will go badly! And even if you meet the Hero—if he turns hostile...!"
"Then what? If not me, who goes? An opportunity like this may never come again. It has to be done properly."
"......"
The subordinate fell silent. Among those who could be sent now, there was no one who matched her in mobility and in the skill of a search. No—search the whole of the empire, and such a person would still be hard to find.
"High risk, high return, isn't it? If we can bring the Hero over, a certain degree of danger is worth taking. And however much he hates the empire, he isn't the sort to swing a sword without so much as exchanging a word, is he?"
Of course, even as she said it, she knew it would never be easy. She would have to comb the entire kingdom to find the Hero, and even if she found him somehow, should the persuasion fail, her life could be in danger in the worst of cases.
Still—wasn't the enormous salary dropped into her account every month paid precisely for times like this?
"That's true, but..."
"Enough. Just stand by. I'll come back having collected several years' salary as a bonus."
Leaving the worried subordinate behind, Khalifa stepped out of the building. Her eyes shone cold.
It was time to pay, in a single sum, for every wage she had drawn as the foremost of the Central Intelligence Bureau.
Deep in the forest.
A soft rustle.
A single leaf drifted down onto a face lost in sound sleep.
"......"
Rian opened his eyes, and woke.