“This is getting pretty bad,” I muttered to myself as I sat in my office in the former Thorsdale palace, which was now the second palace of the Grand Duchy of Sevensworth.
There’d been various uprisings across the country now that it was under new management, and I knew that even the nobles who weren’t participating yet were still only waiting for their chance, plotting behind my back. It was hard to know when exactly they’d strike. Ultimately, it seemed that Hans had been right: If the former royal family members had been allowed to live, the scale of these rebellions would’ve been much worse.
“It’s because the ones who were taking advantage of the system until now are trying to continue doing that. It’s inevitable for them to rebel if they see the system changing. It’s not your fault, Sir Ginorious,” Matthew said, consoling me.
I guess it really was only inevitable for there to be rebellions. Whether it’s a coup d’état or a revolution, there’s always someone behind it trying to advance their position. Even so, I couldn’t help but think there were better ways to go about this. Since we didn’t have many covert operatives spread around the duchy, information was coming in later than we’d like, which was a big reason these issues weren’t being nipped in the bud. But even knowing that, there weren’t any more covert operatives to spare since my mother- and father-in-law were using a large number of them themselves. If only I were better at accurately grasping a situation from these scraps of information.
“Sir Gino!”
“Ana?! What are you doing here?!”
The doors to my office opened, and to my surprise, Ana was there. As far as I knew, she should have still been on the road. Before she got here, a messenger should have come in advance to announce her arrival, but despite that, here she was.
“I came with the messenger,” Ana explained.
“Why would you do something so dangerous?”
“I’m terribly sorry. I’ve been so worried this entire time about if anything had happened to you, and the closer I got, the more desperately I wanted to see you. I couldn’t hold myself back.”
What?! Ana wanted to see me that badly?!
“Ana! I’ve missed you so much too!”
“That’s close enough, Sir Ginorious!”
“Gah!”
As my love for Ana overflowed, sending me into a singular thought of wanting to hold her tight in my arms since I was finally able to see her again, Bridgette’s fist reunited first with my solar plexus.
“Sir Ginorious! Please restrain yourself from committing such indecent acts in your office!” Bridgette said, beginning to lecture me while Ana cast her gaze to the ground, her face becoming red.
“Sir Ginorious, where are you going?” Matthew asked as I began to leave with Ana.
“We’re going to have tea since we’ve been able to reunite after all this time.”
I hadn’t been able to see Ana for a whole two months. There was a lot I wanted to talk with her about. I wanted to hear all about her amazing work in defending the fort and about how she spent time with Lady Ekatarina and the others. At any rate, I wanted to spend some time with just us. I was going to be so busy with that, in fact, I didn’t have time for work.
“There are rebellions happening. Might it not be best to keep working until at least late afternoon first?”
“Huh?! R-Rebellions?! Sir Gino. You should prioritize your work! I’ll lend a hand!” Ana exclaimed.
“I guess I’ll work, then...”
My disappointment was probably clear on my face. The beautiful dream of my time alone with Ana vanished like a fog. Though I was happy to work with her, she’d just come off a long trip and I didn’t want her to overwork herself, so I sent her to rest first.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ana had brought the forces from the fort with her, which solved a lot of our current problems. Fixing up the new territory went a lot faster, and we had more troops to deal with the rebellions. But despite all that, we still needed more.
The new land we’d annexed was much more vast than the original Sevensworth territory, and it had a great many more citizens too. It was impossible to manage all of it solely using our usual trusted network from House Sevensworth. This was another one of the reasons rebellions kept breaking out. There were many who thought it’d be impossible to keep them in line indefinitely with our comparatively small forces.
This was where the golems came in handy. After seeing how fearsome they were, the insurgents immediately understood why they lost the war against us. However, I didn’t have that many of them to spare. Since I’d sent all my backup golems to protect Ana during the battle, there were none left in the basement of my private mansion back in the royal capital, and now I was having those golems protect the fort since there was a possibility of the rebel forces trying to attack. I couldn’t neglect our defenses, so I needed them there.
That being said, I wasn’t sure how long I could reasonably defend the fort. If it went on for too long, the cost to keep paying our allies would become a real burden. I also needed their armies to help keep the various territories in this kingdom in check. That was why I’d left the majority of the fort’s defense to the golems, and had our allies leave the fort and come here.
My ring could currently only summon golems from the basement of my private mansion. In order to summon an object, the destination and starting point needed to be written into the magic circuit, and I’d inscribed these to be my basement and the location of my ring respectively. This meant I could summon golems wherever I wanted so long as I was there with my ring, but I could only pull them from the basement. And though I could send them back to the basement, I couldn’t just summon them from wherever they were in the world, so if I wanted to move my golems, I needed to go to them directly to send them back so I could resummon them in the next location. It would be best if I could go to the fort and get them, but the country border was too far away, so I decided to go to nearby towns and get the ones there instead. Good grief. I was finally able to reunite with Ana, but now we’re gonna be apart from each other again.