Chapter 145 — Just Bad Luck (5)
Roan withdrew his skills.
Gradually, as if waking from a dream, the people emerged from the influence of Charisma.
Their faces, marked by confusion, regret, shame, and fear, looked close to tears.
The expressions surfaced as their bodies belatedly struggled to catch up with the emotions and message imprinted on their minds through Charisma and Attentive Hearing.
Maybe once they returned to their quarters and had time alone, they would spend it digesting Roan's words, turning them over and over in their heads.
Judging that everyone had recovered enough sense, Roan now looked at the old man.
"Akerman. You are far too fearless."
Then he looked at the humans.
"And you all are far too fearful."
This was not Basel.
And going forward, these humans would have to keep dealing with demons and with those who thought differently from them.
Roan also warned the old man.
"I understand your frustration. Even I, watching from the side, have felt my blood boil. Yet for a person without the capability for damage control to act without thought for consequence is arrogance. They are not the only ones. You are every bit as arrogant yourself."
The old man's mouth opened and closed a few times, as if startled, and then he bowed his head deeply, as if left with nothing to say.
"Perhaps you have taught in that manner to everyone for many long years. But watch your back. Humans are weak. So weak a blind demon's fist can kill you. So mind how you conduct yourself."
"This old man has acted foolishly and caused a scene... I am mortified... Your Majesty. I will mind my words and actions going forward..."
The old man's lined face flushed red.
Roan spoke gently.
"I am not telling you to hold back necessary words. We came here to learn. So you must teach. You must clearly convey what we need to know. We know nothing. We are ignorant to the point of not even knowing what we are doing wrong or what we should know."
Roan looked around at the humans.
"The responsibility to teach properly lies with you. It is the teacher's job to wrestle with how to make a student follow willingly. Now that you have all become my teachers, I would like you all to do that properly."
"I... understood, Your Majesty."
The old man answered hesitantly, and the humans, just like the demons, sank into their own thoughts, trying to accept the emperor's actions.
The emperor might side with the nobles,
but at least he understood the meaning of their work.
**
"Your Majesty. I am repeatedly mortified. They are like children left beside the water, and sure enough, they cause trouble."
After hearing about the day's events, the Lord of the East Yellow Territory apologized to Roan once more.
Roan leaned back deep into his chair and let out a sigh. Seeing the emperor's deep sigh, the Lord of the East Yellow Territory gave an awkward laugh.
"They're all precious-raised youngsters who have no idea how to take harsh words. I will instruct them to pay more attention to human safety."
In truth, on top of emotionally receiving Roan's worries through Appeal, they had been persuaded by Charisma.
Appeal's conveyance of emotion was close to forcibly transmitting empathy—normally hard to achieve—through the power of a skill.
Appeal could resolve the very situations that ordinary people find intellectually comprehensible through conversation but hard to accept emotionally.
Empathy—literally a skill that lets one share feelings—so if the logic was sound, words delivered through Appeal were nearly invincible.
And Charisma, moreover, was a power that made people follow even poorly constructed words. When the words were already convincing, the effect naturally doubled.
Right about then, demon and human alike were probably back in their quarters, mulling over Roan's words again and again.
Still, there was no need to offer the duke this long explanation. Roan simply nodded.
"Mm."
Seeing the emperor seemed not particularly angry, the Lord of the East Yellow Territory brought up another subject.
"That manager, though—she is remarkable. Even against a civilian, a human woman subduing a demon male cannot have been easy."
"Mm. She is remarkable."
The duke seemed to have received various reports about Diobe.
"I heard she came to the castle herself and demanded measures from the managers to ensure the humans in the quarters weren't inconvenienced. She also discussed security with the knights without a trace of fear."
"She is a woman bold enough to ask you for a sword. And she has long worked with demons. There is not much that frightens her."
The duke appeared intrigued by Roan's reply. His upper body inclined slightly toward the emperor.
"What was her original line of work? I was amazed a human could rise to manager in demon society, but upon seeing her in person, I could well imagine why."
Strong curiosity and interest were palpable through Attentive Hearing.
The emotion was most favorable.
Roan was a touch surprised.
"Before becoming a manager, she was my personal lady-in-waiting, and before that, a knight of Merde."
"Ah... As I thought. She was a knight."
However corrupt Merde's politics, martial strength revealed by the sword was honest.
The duke, who had crossed blades with human knights for so long on the battlefield, nodded as though he at last understood Diobe's conduct.
Stroking his chin, the duke allowed a faint smile.
"She is that strong a woman..."
Martial prowess counted for a great deal to demons.
It was a central factor determining one's standing,
and a yardstick gauging another's appeal.
She was a woman who faced demons without fear and whose features, moreover, were fine.
She was one who also possessed superb skill.
Any male demon of humanoid form would feel drawn to Diobe.
Sipping his hot tea, Roan muttered.
"In any case, I am concerned—sooner or later, we must dispatch humans out of the city like this."
"Surely beyond Basel poses danger for humans."
The feelings demons held toward the emperor's edicts and toward humans would differ greatly between those living where the emperor personally resided and those dwelling in the outlying regions.
Clashes between human and demon like today's could certainly happen in other cities.
"Yet humans possess knowledge we lack. They have use value and many skills to learn. If we fail to adopt humans' superior technologies merely because Merde is our enemy nation, the loss is ours. And humans as a whole are not our enemies."
"Yours are just words. However, the war has only just halted. Many still consider humans the enemy. I ask you grant a little more reprieve."
"Hmm."
Roan sank into thought.
The duke's point was correct.
Suddenly, living intermingled would not be easy for demons and humans. It had been possible in Basel only because it was the capital. Had humans not been so much more adept at agriculture, there would have been no need to risk such danger.
'For the time being, is the only option to dispatch small numbers who can be protected at the great lords' castles?'
Yet he earnestly wished to rush the transfer of human-dominated skills—accounting, commerce, farming, and the like—to the demons.
This was also Roan's wish to better Evirgio's circumstances as fast as possible.
'In the end, it comes down to how to protect the weak.'
Human-demon clashes were fueled by the war with Merde, yes, but also heavily by the demon culture of the strong preying on the weak, the belief that those without power were fair targets to kill.
One could not outright call it lawlessness, but that culture of might-makes-right was itself one reason Evirgio's public order was unstable.
Ultimately,
that culture had to change.
It would not happen overnight, but at least by overhauling the law, he could create a foundation to alter it.
Because it would protect not only humans,
but also the skilled yet scorned demons, the wrongly killed demons.
Roan's thought expanded from there,
reaching even to whether there was a way to officially, physically protect dispatched humans.
'Should I form something like a demon mercenary band? A direct mercenary or protection force...'
Suddenly, Roan shot up from his seat.
The duke, startled, called to the emperor.
"...Your Majesty? Why suddenly..."
Roan rushed out of the tent.
The Lord of the East Yellow Territory immediately followed the emperor outside.
Roan flung himself toward somewhere.
It was toward the human quarters.
As they neared the quarters, the duke's brows knit.
He did not possess Detection,
and his Ki Sense was not as superb as Roan's,
but in its place, his sense of smell rivaled a beast's.
The scent of blood wafted from the human quarters.
And it came from the direction the emperor was charging toward.
"Your Majesty, the scent of blood...!"
"Pursue him."
The duke understood Roan's terse command at once. The duke began to run alongside the emperor, orienting them like a compass.
He could guess the fleeing figure's location with Detection, but it was not so precise as the duke's sense of smell.
In the duke's yellow eyes, gleaming in the deep darkness, a shadowy form racing across the fields cleared by human and demon was faintly visible.
And then the duke doubted his own nose.
That body odor, mingled with the scent of blood,
was deeply familiar.
The wounded fugitive was soon overtaken by Roan and the duke.
"Who are you?"
Roan blocked the front, and the duke cut off retreat.
Cornered, the fugitive let out a low, growling sound—a sound not human, but bestial.
Roan, who had until now pursued the fugitive only through Detection and Ki Sense, widened his eyes in apparent shock upon grasping the fugitive's identity.
And it was as if he was determined not to let that instant slip.
The fugitive lunged toward the emperor in a flash.
"You dare!"
Roan drawing his sword and the duke charging the fugitive happened nearly at once.
With a flowing motion, Roan deflected the fugitive's swinging blade without even drawing his own sword. The fugitive staggered and lost balance.
And the duke, not missing the opening, launched a tackle.
Seeing the fugitive toppled, Roan appeared to hesitate for an instant.
But the hesitation was exceedingly brief.
With lightning speed, Roan drew his sword and drove it into the ankle of the figure writhing on the dirt ground.
"Kwaaaaah—!"
A bestial scream rang out.
A small torch was visible, bobbing as it raced toward them from a distance.
Already wounded in the side, the knight was bleeding through his clothes. With his ankle slashed on top of that, he could only thrash, unable to rise.
"...Vice-Commander!?"
One of the knights who had arrived panting with a torch shouted.
The sound of the duke grinding his teeth was audible.
It was the vice-commander of the East Yellow Territory Knight Order.
That demon had a face that was a mass of scars.
He was the same man who had led the knights that guided Roan to the east of Birektum.
In his state writhing on the ground and shrieking, no trace of his reason as vice-commander could be seen.
"Yurus..."
Roan himself, who had cut his ankle and brought him down, looked down at the knight with an equally bewildered face.
He had believed the man would be capable of responding to others' words because he could not resist, yet he had done nothing but flail and scream quite literally like a beast.
But the expressions on the gathered people of the East Yellow Territory were quite different from Roan's.
Grief was palpable,
yet it was not an expression of confusion like Roan's.
The calmest of them all was the duke.
"Did Yurus cough?"
None of the knights answered.
Roan was baffled.
Because ever since accompanying him, the man had occasionally given shallow, dry coughs.
But before Roan could even open his mouth to speak,
the duke, as if needing no answer, took one more step toward the fallen knight and spoke.
"Of course, he must have strained to hide it... ...Your Majesty. Stand back."
"Duke, why..."
"He is corrupted."
"...What?"
Roan's face twisted.