Weeb didn’t comment on Kondo’s assumption that Weeb would also be holed up in his room if he had the choice. He was preoccupied with the absurdity of a forest that emitted Holy magic and healed those who rested within it. At last, a broken laugh escaped Weeb’s lips. Not too long ago, this place had been nothing more than a wasteland. Now, an ancient city had materialized, complete with unbelievable wonders, including a mine full of lost treasure. If Weeb could have believed that it was all some illusion, if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, the world might have still made sense to him. “I don’t understand the legends anymore...” he muttered.
In the forest lay a clearly working-class old man next to a noble lying on a red rug. Within the sacred bounds of the forest, even the pettiest of nobles seemed content not to flaunt their titles.
Sure enough, Akira Ono had programmed a sort of aromatherapy into the Healing Forest. No noble in the Madam’s social circle was crass enough to boast about their worldly title or possessions in a space where all stress melted away into the sunlit green.
“I can hardly believe my eyes...” As if the series of miracles had parched him, Weeb reached for a plastic bottle in his pack—the same one that the Demon Lord had tossed at him long ago. Weeb had kept the bottle with the picture of a girl plastered on its wrapper, using it as a refillable waterskin.
“Wait— Is that Scallion Girl?! I knew you had good taste!” Kondo exclaimed.
“What? I-I just thought it was a masterful portrait—”
“You have to come to my room! There’s this rhythm game called Project Negi.”
“Rhythm...game?” Weeb repeated, but his curiosity was overwritten by alarm when a strange screen materialized before Kondo, showing a cutesy girl that somehow seemed to have a sinister gleam in her eyes.
“I thought I was the only one who could help you, Kon Kon,” the girl said. “Why do you always look at other girls? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? I’m going to make that whore swim with—”
“I-It’s not like that!” Kondo protested. “I’m only reaching out to a comrade in arms, who stands at the precipice of—”
“Then who’s this Grand Angel you were talking about?!”
“O-Okay, but you’ll be my Mommy-cakes,” Kondo declared, somehow proud rather than mortified.
“Grand Angel...?” Weeb repeated, the phrase having snagged his attention. Anyone on this continent would have recognized it for what it was—a being of solemn divinity.
Unbeknownst to the Demon Lord, another treacherous situation was being set up right under his nose.
——Holy Castle, Holylight.
Out of all the advisors who put in the work in all departments, Tahara had been particularly impactful: He’d orchestrated the extraction of art and treasure from central Holylight, begun the massive expansion of the travel road infrastructure, and allocated payments to each household... Among these, the travel roads were on the top of his priority list; he knew both people and cargo would furiously crisscross the map as the golden age dawned.
“We gotta get highways running first—nothing’s gonna get off the ground without them,” Tahara said. The travel roads that webbed the continent were unpaved, most of them overgrown and derelict. When it came to the Northern Nations, they liked their roads to be left treacherous for the sake of keeping out enemies. Naturally, that didn’t do much to increase internal traffic of people or goods.
“Let’s slice through the middle, all the way across. That oughta be a good start.” Tahara ran a red pen across the map of Holylight, from west to east. Then, he drew a line from Gatekeeper in the north, through the Holy Castle, and down south. A red cross shone on the map of Holylight.
The two Holy Maidens and Gran blinked as Tahara drew the cross, expecting some sort of ritual to begin. Gran bristled at Tahara’s intention to do...something to Holylight. From her perspective, Tahara had come in like a whirlwind, slaughtering the central nobles in the blink of an eye. Tahara might have looked like a man, Gran thought, but he had to be a demon under the skin.
Queen was in the room with her sisters, but she only gazed up at the ceiling with boredom, feet kicked up on the table.
White was the only one who truly studied the map. “What does that signet mean, Tahara?”
“They’re highways. Can’t move goods on dirt roads.”
“Dirt roads...” White repeated.
“Not just goods either. You can move people fast on highways too.”
The ability to transport people and cargo at high speeds was an invaluable asset to Holylight’s economy—or even its military, if it came to that. Stagnant commerce was as damaging to a country as poor circulation was to the human body. Tahara grabbed a black pen and drew a circle around Holylight before drawing another cross—markings for a future railroad.
White watched black lines grow and multiply with glee. “Will that be another display of Lord Lucifer’s power?”
“Somethin’ like that. The Secretary’s gonna use black stones to power ancient locomotives,” Tahara explained. Steam engine trains were, indeed, ancient to Tahara. Antique, even.
“Locomo... Really?! Blackstones?!” White squealed.
“White!” Gran bellowed. “What do you mean to do about our alliance with the Tzardom?!”
Allowing the Fallen Angel, of all beings, to rule Holylight was akin to throwing a gauntlet in the face of the Tzardom, to say the least—a declaration of war.
“Lord Lucifer is wonderfully kind,” White said dreamily. “In Dona’s castle, the first thing he did was save those children. He is not at all as he has been described in Tzardom legends.”
“Silence, you child! I am talking of war!” Gran had thought this over, again and again since the Civil War had ended. She had no issues with the elimination of the central nobles—she’d celebrated it. Thanked the Demon Lord, even. But when it came to putting the Demon Lord at the helm of the country, she shuddered to imagine how every other nation on the continent would react. It gave them too good of an excuse to invade Holylight in the name of vanquishing the Demon Lord. The Tzardom would certainly lead the charge of such an invasion with their deep coffers and military might.