Recovering My Energy

“Luminaa, I’m tired…”

The moment I returned to my room, I picked up Lumina, who came running over at once, and rubbed my face into her fluff as if nuzzling her.

Lumina, meanwhile, single-mindedly licked all over my face.

The maids who usually took turns caring for her had also been busy today with the audience and the banquet, so I had made Lumina feel lonely.

Still holding Lumina in my arms, I moved over and sat down on the sofa.

Even during that, Lumina kept licking all over my face… it was extremely ticklish having my face licked over and over by a tongue only about the size of my thumb, but I had hardly been able to give her any attention today, so I would accept it willingly.

In return, I thoroughly scruffled Lumina’s body.

Even so, I was really tired today… I had thought it would just be a light audience involving little more than greetings, and before I knew it, I had been made to listen to an incredibly heavy matter.

Protecting Efaria here for the time being was fine, but apparently there was also the regent and a body double in the Lufelon Holy Kingdom, so it would be necessary to secure their safety as well.

If the body double got killed in the current situation in particular, things would become pretty bad.

I had ordered Ururu to tell the diplomats active in the Lufelon Holy Kingdom to protect those two, so for now their safety should not be a problem.

Still, it was rather unreasonable for one person to both gather information and act as a guard, so I would really like to dispatch another diplomat… but I also wanted to gather information in the Kingdom of Sorakil.

Each expeditionary army also had diplomats attached to it, and our own domestic counterintelligence was important too… yeah, we were really starting to come up short on diplomats as well.

Use a new employment contract to replenish the maids… and strengthen the existing maids into diplomats… no, that would be difficult.

Unlike when I had previously taught them “mana collection device installation,” diplomats required many necessary abilities, and it would be dangerous if their stats were not raised fairly high as well.

Most of the maids had no abilities and only base stats, but even so, they seemed absurdly strong by the standards of the people of this world, so maybe the stats could stay at a moderate level… but even then, unless I raised them somewhat, I would not be able to teach them the abilities required for diplomats.

Quite a few abilities had stat requirements that had to be met in order to learn them… low-level abilities were one thing, but if they were going to work as diplomats, high-rank abilities were indispensable.

Well… in other words, what I was trying to say was that we were completely short on mana stones… that was the whole point.

Back in the game era, training a diplomat felt like it cost over a hundred million, but less than two hundred million.

But when training them in this world, it went beyond a billion.

No, that was way too expensive… our current income had gone up a bit thanks to the invasion armies and was just under fifteen million… no good… if I started working on training, there was no way at all we would have enough mana stones… at the current rate, it would take close to ten years to train a diplomat.

Well, once the invasion armies took down the three countries, and we also got the country Kiriku was working on… and if we obtained the Lufelon Holy Kingdom too… then that would make five countries on the scale of the Kingdom of Lumoria… and the total population would probably be around seven million.

At that point, we would have seventy million a month… which meant that in three years or so, we would be able to train one diplomat.

Come to think of it, I had completely forgotten, but if we used the training grounds, we should be able to raise stats to some extent, though it would take time. If I remembered right, each stat could be raised to around 75… 75 was not enough to save that many mana stones, but every little bit added up… and the maids probably had enough trouble managing the castle as it was, so maybe I should have them train their stats at the training grounds as much as they reasonably could without overdoing it.

Well, as for replenishing personnel, I would think about it once mana stones became more abundant. For now, the question was what to do about the Lufelon Holy Kingdom… and on that matter, I needed to talk with Kiriku and Ilmitt.

As far as I was concerned, I did not care whether it became a vassal state, an allied state, or was annexed entirely.

Once a mana collection device was installed… I did not care if they governed it however they liked after that, and if they wanted to adopt a system like Einheria’s, it would not be a problem to review their tax system or introduce a governor system.

They probably could not do the same sort of brute-force strategy with mana stones in the Lufelon Holy Kingdom the way we did, so being exactly like us might be impossible… but honestly, we could just take care of their national defense too.

That would let them reduce military spending, after all… though in that case, it would probably take the form of becoming a vassal state… because leaving national defense to another country was not something that normally happened.

If we were going to preserve Efaria—or rather, the Holy Kingdom’s royal house… then outright annexation would also be difficult.

Efaria had said she would offer everything, but the people of the country… whether from the regent’s faction or the chancellor’s faction, would not accept either becoming a vassal state or being annexed.

Well, it would be possible to lightly show them our strength and silence them that way, but that would absolutely leave resentment behind.

Once the mana collection device was installed, the rest would be none of our concern… that was not something I could really say.

No matter the conditions, once they joined under Einheria’s umbrella, we would have a duty to protect the people living there, and we could not just leave alone those who went around causing trouble.

No matter how good the governance was, dissatisfaction would always arise… but the nature of that dissatisfaction would surely change greatly depending on whether they joined after agreeing to it or after being forced down by power.

I wondered whether Efaria had some kind of plan for how to make all that go smoothly.

No, even if she had turned out to be more capable than expected, she was still only ten. It would be too much to expect so much from her….

View of Efaria-Falk-Lufelon, Holy King of the Lufelon Holy Kingdom

“I was so nervous…”

Rolling around on the bed in the room assigned to me, I muttered that without thinking.

After finishing my meeting with the King of Einheria, I had returned to my room utterly exhausted, and the moment I did, I fell asleep still wearing my clothes.

I felt sorry for Faran and the other members of the envoy, but they had probably attended the welcome party as they were.

Naturally, since I was here incognito, there was no way I could show my face at the party… and I was glad to be able to rest quietly, as the fatigue from the long journey had not yet faded, but my clothes were all wrinkled… and Faran would probably scold me later.

Even while thinking that, my body still seemed to crave rest, and I could not summon the motivation to get up from the bed.

No sunlight was coming in through the window… so apparently I had been asleep for quite a long time.

I wondered whether the banquet was already over.

I still wanted to rest, but… it would not be strange for Faran to return soon.

I forced my heavy body to move and got up from the bed.

“The light… huh?”

The moment I looked around the dark room, wondering where the lamp was, the room lit up.

“Who’s there…?”

I looked for whoever had turned on the light, but there was no one else in the room besides me.

It was probably some kind of magic tool… but who had activated it? Remotely…? Which meant someone was monitoring this room?

No, if they were monitoring me, there would be no reason to intentionally turn on the light and make me wary.

Then how…

As I stood there beside the bed in confusion, there came a timely knock on the door.

“May I have a moment? This is Faran-Heldio.”

Faran came!

“Please come in!”

I answered almost as if clinging to the voice of someone I knew.

“Excuse me.”

Seeing Faran enter the room with her usual composed manner made me feel my heart settle.

However, Faran herself did not seem calm, and when she saw me standing there looking at a loss, she took on a puzzled expression.

“Effi, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

I returned a smile to Faran, who called me by my usual nickname in a worried voice.

“No, I was just a little tired and resting, and I happened to wake up just now.”

“Well, it was a long journey and then the meeting, so it’s only natural that you’d be tired… but did you sleep in those clothes?”

She had spoken with a gentle face in the first half, but in the second half Faran spoke with an expression that seemed to scold me.

Faran was the daughter of my wet nurse, and Faran herself had looked after me often since before I could even remember, so to me she was like an older sister… but she was also the sort of person who seemed as though seriousness itself had put on clothes, which made her troublesome at times like this when she got so fussy.

“…Since I came here incognito, I did not bring any ladies-in-waiting with me. I did intend to change, but I did not know my way around here.”

Of course, that was a lie.

What I was wearing now was not a dress, but formal clothing prepared to an extent that would not be disrespectful for meeting the King of Einheria. Naturally, I could change out of at least this much by myself.

“…There are other formal outfits prepared, but we do not know how long we will be staying here. I did consult with the people of Einheria earlier, but it takes time to make clothing, so please take better care of them. This is not our royal palace.”

“I know that. If you keep nitpicking every little thing, gentlemen will avoid you, you know?”

“…Effi, that was quite a grown-up thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“Oh my, on that matter, we are both maidens, so there is no superiority between us.”

When I laughed with a hohoho, Faran smiled with a fufufu while a vein stood out at her temple.

I turned my gaze away from Faran and looked out the window, already wrapped in the darkness of night, as I spoke.

It was absolutely not because Faran’s expression, as someone teased for being past marriage age, looked frightening. I had merely felt a bit nostalgic and let my gaze wander.

“I feel as though it has been a very long time since we spoke like this.”

“…That’s true. When we left the country, we were prepared to throw away our lives, so I never thought there would be time to speak with you like this, Effi.”

Faran smiled softly, said she would prepare tea, and walked toward the tea set placed in the corner of the room.

“…Is that a magic tool?”

I asked Faran as she poured hot water from the pot that had been left there into another pot containing tea leaves.

“Yes. When we were shown to the room, they explained it to us. Apparently it produces endless hot water….”

“Endless!?”

I had never heard of such a magic tool!

“Hehe… when I was given that explanation, I cried out with the exact same word. It seems that in Einheria, they are free from disasters such as water shortages and droughts.”

“That is an outrageous thing… just how many people could be saved by a single magic tool like that….”

Many people lived even in lands where water was not plentiful.

It surely was not a matter limited to the Lufelon Holy Kingdom that a village could vanish merely because it failed to rain a little.

“I wanted to ask how it worked, but no one particularly knowledgeable came to the banquet earlier… however, I was promised that I would have a chance to speak with them about it another time.”

“I have been astonished by one thing after another since coming to this country… but after arriving at this castle… no, from the point when it was decided that I would come to this castle, no number of hearts would have been enough.”

Understanding what I meant to say, Faran carried the tea things over with a wry smile.

“There were even people among the envoys who fainted when they saw that teleportation technology. Fortunately, it did not cause an uproar.”

“…I too felt as though my senses were slipping away, but it convinced me that if we were to make anyone our ally, it could only be this country.”

Faran set the tea down on the table, so I moved over to the sofa as well.

The sofa caught me with just the right softness… it seemed the fatigue still had not completely left me… moving my body felt terribly bothersome.

“Come to think of it, the room suddenly lit up earlier. Was that some kind of magic tool too?”

“Yes. Apparently when it gets dark and there is someone in the room, the light turns on by itself.”

“That makes no sense… is the lighting magic tool alive?”

“It surely is not alive, but… apparently that is just how it works.”

“…But when I was asleep, it was pitch-black. Why would that be?”

“…Perhaps it keeps things dark while you are sleeping?”

“That makes even less sense.”

How could a magic tool possibly judge whether it was dark, whether there was a person there, or even whether that person was asleep? It really could only seem alive….

“…The best thing is simply to accept that this is the way such things are. The party earlier was wonderful as well.”

“A party held in Einheria… I am deeply interested, but I regret that I am here incognito.”

“There was food I had never seen before, and music I had never heard before. I was told there are no nobles in Einheria, yet their manners and bearing were in no way inferior to those of high-ranking nobles. And also… how should I put it…”

Faran suddenly trailed off.

Has something else happened?

“…What is it?”

“N-no… well… the people attending the party. Every single one of those belonging to Einheria, regardless of whether they were men or women, was extraordinarily beautiful, or rather…”

“I see…?”

Why would that matter?

“It is only natural for the servers to be beautiful, because those are the sort of people gathered for such roles… but the attendees are not like that. They are chosen based on their position and status, after all. Embarrassing though it is to admit, there were not a few among our own envoys who were left staring.”

Ahh, so that was it.

Certainly, the servers were one thing, but as for the attendees, they were selected by position and standing, so aside from clothing, whether they were beautiful or not… would depend on the person.

“You too, Faran?”

“No, of course not… I was… busy… negotiating.”

And yet, judging by how you hesitated, that sounded suspicious.

“So there was no one who caught your eye…?”

“…No… well… the person I was negotiating with, Kiriku-dono… I mean, it’s not as if I was captivated by him, you know?”

Faran said that with an unusually flushed face.

Right now, this was an important matter for the country, but this was also an important matter for a maiden… if the opportunity arose, I should ask the King of Einheria about Kiriku-dono.

If I remember right, he had also been present at the meeting… likely someone close to the king… perhaps the other party’s standing was a bit too high, but… this was for the sake of my older sister. I should try a little.

“S-setting that aside, Effi. Would you like something to eat? They said they could prepare it right away if needed.”

…Perhaps because of my fatigue, I did not seem very hungry.

“Um… I just woke up, so I don’t need anything yet.”

“In that case, I heard there is a bath hall, so how would that sound?”

If I bathed, would this heavy body of mine feel a little more refreshed?

“That sounds nice… could I use it?”

“Certainly. I shall inform them at once.”

“Faran. Once I wake myself properly in the bath hall, I wish to speak about what happened today.”

At my words, Faran’s expression turned serious.

What happened today… needless to say, the meeting with the King of Einheria. My head was still a little heavy, but… surely I would feel clearer once I bathed.

Urging my body, which could not yet be called fully recovered, I stood up with more force than usual.

“As you wish. Since there are no ladies-in-waiting with us, I shall attend to you in the bath hall myself. After that, here in this room.”

I smiled and nodded to Faran, who spoke while showing an expression of concern for me.