After cleaning off our sweat and dirt, Neurath, Schünzel, Sir Behnke, and Sir Holzdeppe and I entered the meeting room to find it full of middle-aged men staring at us. Most seemed to be simply sizing us up, but there were also a few whose glares made it clear they saw me as a brat to be brought to heel. Unfortunately for them, their glowering was nothing compared to what I’d endured when the head of the military demanded an explanation for ignoring my orders to pursue my own defense plans at Finoy. Besides, being in front of the crown prince alone was much scarier than being in front of the lot of them. Their attempts at intimidation couldn’t hold a candle to it.
“Lord Viscount, congratulations on your new appointment.” The old man at the end of the table spoke for all of them. He lowered his head, and the others followed suit. Clearly, he was the one in charge here. I first finished introductions and then hit him with a jab. I gestured at my officials, and they took out the wanted posters we had prepared, each one featuring the portrait of a certain man.
“What is this?”
“I am sure you have seen this man before. His name is Mangold.” Their reactions were mixed. Having heard that name, some looked once again at the portrait, while others kept their eyes on me. While it was doubtful they would forget the face of the lord of their fiefdom, there may have been some who would forget the face of his eldest son, or maybe even some who had never seen him before. There’s no TV in this world, after all. For now, I ignored their reactions and continued on.
By the way, these wanted posters had been prepared by someone in the Ministry of Justice. It must have been tough work, given these were all drawn by hand, but that’s their job after all. I certainly couldn’t draw these myself.
“I am sure you all know the troubles the Kneipps’ erstwhile scion caused in the capital.”
“Do you mean to suggest that…Mangold is here in this town?” He appeared to choke on his words attempting to address Mangold without a title. Objectively, there was no merit in showing him deference. Still, he had been a member of the house that had ruled these lands for generations. The people here wouldn’t be used to calling him by name alone. These customs and precedents could be surprisingly tricky.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. His whereabouts are unknown, but we can’t overlook that if he tried to escape somewhere, a former Kneipp territory would be a likely choice.”
“Just to be safe, I want the town to be searched to make sure he’s not hiding here. If anybody is judged to be sheltering him, they shall be punished under the kingdom’s laws as well,” I said, emphasizing the word “kingdom.”
There was an idiom here: “Let out only your voice from behind the flag.” It was similar to my old world’s saying of “a fox that borrows the authority of a tiger.” I didn’t care if that was the impression I left on them. I just wanted to emphasize that I had the kingdom backing me.
As I watched a man begin to whisper with the person by his side, I decided to review the situation myself, if only in my own mind.
✦ ✦ ✦
My orders from the kingdom—to confront Demon Commander Gezarius, who hadn’t even appeared in the game, near the border with Triot—was something that had to be prioritized. I still had the same doubts about this world that I did before being appointed here, but I didn’t even know where to begin my investigations. It wasn’t something I could talk over with anyone else, nor could I find my answers relying on the documents of a count’s manor alone.
For one, I couldn’t just shirk my appointment to Anheim just because I had a few doubts I wanted to put to rest. Working for the court sure was tough.
But I was also interested in Demon Commander Gezarius. Obviously, hindsight was twenty-twenty but if he was able to disguise himself as Pückler shortly after the Demon Stampede, he should have had quite a long time to move freely throughout the capital. It seemed strange that given all the time he had, he only used Mangold to let in the Demons.
I already asked my father to once again track Pückler’s footsteps just in case, but I couldn’t help but feel things would take a nosedive if we didn’t deal with Gezarius quickly. For now, I decided to shelve my other doubts and prioritize dealing with the Demon Commander. We had plenty of time before Mazel would face the Demon Lord—or rather, the attack on the capital would come first. The looming threat of it left a yawning pit in my stomach.
On the other hand, the problems here in Anheim were quite complicated as well, and there was a possibility that they endangered more than this domain alone. It’d be nice if we could just cut through this Gordian Knot, but that would be impossible. Before I dealt with the problems that faced the whole fiefdom, I had to start with the town.
Anheim’s economic prosperity was on the decline, and the reason laid in salt. The Kingdom of Wein was the largest on the continent, but it still had its weaknesses, one being its geography. To the east, south, and west, it bordered the lands of other states with nary a coastline to be found. While there was ocean at the northern border, it was a long way away from there to southern Wein. Even the royal capital, located in the kingdom’s center, was far from saltwater. There were also strong monsters that only appeared around the sea and the coast, making the creation of any saltpans a dangerous endeavor.
Additionally, there was strangely little rock salt in this world. I had no idea why. It was possible it was all in the vast areas that remained undeveloped due to monsters, or maybe it had all been used up during the days of the ancient kingdom.
Despite all this, what saved Wein from wanting for salt were the materials gathered from monsters. Salt Snails were larger than motorbikes and big enough to swallow a human whole. They were quite tame by monster standards and rarely attacked humans, but for some reason, there were large crystals of salt inside their shells. In certain regions, slaying them provided regular work for adventurers. Not that it really mattered, but I guessed monsters really were the only thing in this world that never went extinct no matter how much you hunted them.
It wasn’t like these monsters were everywhere on the continent, but every government kept tabs on where in their territory these creatures could be found. Salt, after all, was a necessity. In Wein’s case, Anheim had been one of those regions, and salt had been a major source of income for the Kneipps. Their stock hadn’t just stayed in domestic markets but was shipped as far as Triot and Salzanach.
Now, the reason this was all in past tense was because the distribution of monsters had changed drastically after the return of the Demon Lord. Not only were there more monsters that were hostile toward humans, Salt Snails stayed deep in the mountains. Finding them had become more difficult, and so had hunting them. Consequently, obtaining salt became more difficult as well.
On top of that, one of their main importers, Triot, had fallen to ruin, and while Salzanach in the west had been fortifying the area around their capital, the roads and towns near the border had not been so protected. As a result, House Kneipp could no longer source its main export and had no one to sell to either. Not to mention that with shipping supplies currently being such a hassle, the economy of the town of Anheim had stagnated as well. What a headache.