“…Hold on. Would you quit joking around?” was the first thing out of my mouth. “A king? Me?”
“Yes. We want you to be the leader of our kingdom.”
Mizuho’s face was dead serious as she answered, which only served to make me even more confused.
“Look. If you trust someone who just happened to be able to start a fire with an entire nation, you’re going to have a bad time.”
“We’re already having a pretty bad time,” Troach objected irresponsibly. “It can’t get any worse than this.”
I glared at her. “You could starve, you could get sick, you could die… It could be much worse than this.”
“But you’ll do your best to make sure that won’t happen, right?” she countered. “You worked so hard for people you’d never seen before in your life. There’s no point being humble about it now.”
Voices expressing their agreement sounded from all around.
Understanding that this was not a farce, I finally started to panic.
Being in charge of people was something you were either meant for or not. Ineptitude spelled disaster in such a field. Simply put, I wasn’t cut out to be a politician. Most of all because I had no desire for authority. In a leadership position, this was not necessarily a virtue. It would only serve to confuse those under me.
“Wait. Just hang on a second. Any decent person would try and help if they saw civilians in a crisis. That has nothing to do with whether you can have them manage a country.”
“But when you were leading us, giving us instructions and orders, you did wonderfully,” Potesara asserted. “You can’t do something like that without experience managing people.”
“I only could because there are so few of you. The most I’ve ever led was a platoon.”
“And how many people are in a platoon?”
“Depends on the situation, but no more than fifty or sixty.”
When I answered Mizuho’s question, the others began to mutter among themselves.
Clearly, they had misunderstood, assuming I’d been some sort of general.
But that’s all cleared up now. Good thing, I thought just before Troach said something that made me doubt my hearing.
“Oh, well, that’s more than enough.”
“…What?”
People exchanged looks, nodding, convinced.
“Fifty or sixty is quite a bit more than we need.”
“Yep, that’s right. It’s perfect!”
Mizuho and Troach nodded to each other, seeming to have come to a consensus. When did they get to be such good friends? I had a bad feeling about this. As I frowned, Mizuho continued:
“We have thirty people here now. That might not be much, but… Others will start flocking to us once they hear we’ve created a nation.”
That’s when it hit me. I was the one laboring under the wrong impression.
“Just so I know, when you say ‘nation,’ how big of a population are you usually talking about?” I asked.
Mizuho answered immediately. “There are four we call the world powers, and they have thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. The rest are more varied, but most of them are what we call tabletop kingdoms, and the majority only have around thirty people.”
I was dumbfounded.
The “countries” in Million Dungeon were incredibly tiny. Now that I thought about it, this world was sectioned off into all those labyrinthine strata. Forming civilizations like those on Earth was impossible. It seemed likely that Million Dungeon didn’t have a large population to begin with.
“…What about your nation?”
“You mean Support Roman Empire Post Five?”
“Yes, that.”
“It had over a hundred people! I hear there were only fifty when it was founded.”
“…I see.”
I rubbed my hands into my face as I thought. It would have been better had I kept quiet. Unknowingly, I had walked right into this.
“Please?” Troach said. “Say you’ll do it. It’s not like we’ll be making you do all the boring stuff. I’ll be in your Court, if you want.”
“That’s right—me too!” Mizuho added.
“What does that mean?”
“Just what it sounds like!” Troach replied. “It means we’re gonna be Landmakers now!”
Landmakers…?
My face must have betrayed my confusion, because Mizuho and the others launched into a multipronged explanation assault.
According to them, this was how it all worked…
Million Dungeon had not always been an expansive labyrinth of caves and tunnels. Initially, it was a “totally normal” world, one with sprawling lands where humans and other species could thrive.
But at some point, a great disaster called the Dungeon Calamity occurred. The labyrinth began to form on its own, rapidly proliferating until it covered the entire world. It swallowed land, sea, and sky, separating people from one another with layers of stone and piling up many more strata.
It destroyed the world as they knew it, and everyone was left to rot away inside the dungeon.
“However, not all succumbed to despair. Some stood up to create kingdoms in the darkness. They brandished the light of stars to shepherd the wandering people, coming to be called Landmakers.”
As though she’d given this sort of introduction many times before, Mizuho spoke with a flowing smoothness, adding in hand gestures for emphasis.
“They challenged the dark, slew the monsters that preyed on humankind, and established new domains for the dungeon-dwellers—and in so doing became a symbol of hope for the hopeless.”
She suddenly pointed her fingertip at me.
“If you would become our King, Taiga, I will gladly make my decision. I shall undertake the nation’s internal affairs as Minister of your Court.”
“Yeah, me too,” Troach piped in. “I’m actually pretty quick-witted and good with tools. You can use me as the Attendant.”
With the pair looking at me, I threw the conversation over to Potesara and Savakan. “What about you two?”
They regarded me with surprise and shook their heads.
“Ha! I’d never take such an important position. I’m just a regular old innkeeper.”
“And I’m only a smith. I’m good at making swords, but I can’t swing them for beans.”