Isekai Nonbiri Nouka - Chapter 915

—Country Introduction—

● Gozlan Kingdom

Destroyed.

Though its internal affairs were upheld by civil officials led by the Third Princess, they are currently on the run.

● Jidoen Kingdom

The expanding realm of the so-called Conquering King.

It conquered the Gozlan Kingdom.

● Iji Kingdom

A powerful nation appealed to by the desperate Gozlan Kingdom.

● Yunodenna Kingdom

A great kingdom ruled by yours truly—this story’s narrator.

-0-

I am the king of the Yunodenna Kingdom, ruled by humans.

Allow me to share a few words.

-0-

Our Yunodenna Kingdom is a major power, but just beyond our borders lies a chaotic region teeming with around forty small nations.

To be frank, even calling them “nations” is generous. These countries are so small you could walk across one before breakfast. Still, as long as there’s a king, it’s considered a country—no matter how tiny the land is.

Now, these nations? They don’t get along.

They’ve been at each other’s throats for generations.

If they were proper human nations, you’d think they’d unite to face the threat of the Demon King’s Kingdom.

But no. Not even a hint of unity.

It sounds like the kind of place ripe for invasion, right?

Easy pickings?

Wrong.

The surrounding countries don’t dare touch that region.

Why?

Because if you strike one, they all strike back.

Even if you only pick a fight with one, the rest come swinging too—some just for the thrill of it. It’s like the moment you step on one toe, the whole foot stomps back.

Crush one or two, and it doesn’t end there.

They keep coming.

They will attack regardless of gain or loss.

They’re constantly fighting, so their soldiers are hardened, experienced, and aggressive.

In the end, any nation foolish enough to intervene usually ends up abandoning the conquered land and limping back home with nothing to show for it.

And once the foreign invader leaves, the locals?

They go right back to fighting each other again.

What is this place?

Terrifying.

Not touching it. No way.

This chaotic region has been seen as dangerous for generations.

And despite all the fighting, no one ever managed to unite it.

Why?

Because nobody in that region has the ability to govern.

Their nations are too small.

There’s no chance to develop administrative skills.

So even when one country gains territory, it doesn’t take long before things fall apart again and everything splits back into pieces.

It’s a mess.

But not everyone there wants it to stay that way.

Some wish for stability—like the old king of a small nation called Gozlan, about thirty years ago.

He reached out beyond the region, pleading for help from a major nation—the Iji Kingdom.

“Please,” he said, “send us someone who can govern”.

Normally, that sort of request would just be a nuisance.

But Iji happened to be dealing with a succession crisis at the time.

They had a mediocre First Prince and a brilliant Second Prince.

Tensions were high, and if left unchecked, civil war might’ve erupted.

So the then-king of Iji made a choice:

He named the Second Prince as heir and sent the First Prince away.

It wasn’t called exile—nothing so dramatic.

It was officially a military dispatch, or maybe a diplomatic mission.

And his faction of retainers went with him.

As for the prince himself?

No one really knows what he was thinking.

Maybe he planned to take over Gozlan, maybe he was just a decent guy.

But he helped.

He helped govern the country alongside Gozlan’s leadership.

His retainers helped too.

Some records say he looked more alive there than he ever did back in Iji.

And under his influence, the Gozlan Kingdom began to grow.

It studied and learned how to govern.

Over thirty years, it grew to nearly three times its original size.

People began to think—

Give it another hundred years, and Gozlan just might unify that chaotic region.

-0-

The truth was... quite different.

Gozlan hadn’t learned how to govern.

They had dumped everything on the First Prince of Iji and his retainers the moment they arrived.

Worried about being taken over?

Apparently not.

Their attitude was more like: “Be our guest!”

So why didn’t the First Prince actually take over?

Maybe he figured it wasn’t worth it.

Or maybe he just wanted to avoid conflict.

Instead of conquering, the First Prince of Iji ended up marrying a commoner girl from Gozlan and having a daughter with her.

That daughter later married the son of the king who had originally begged for help from Iji.

As his second wife.

And that second wife gave birth to Gozlan’s famed Third Princess.

She was helping manage the kingdom by the time she was five.

Of course, she wasn’t doing it alone.

Many of the retainers who had followed the First Prince from Iji—or their children—were still there, supporting her.

Even so, the fact that her name reached our ears speaks volumes about her talent.

...

I’ll be honest.

Until recently, I had no idea.

For the past few years, Gozlan had essentially been ruled by that Third Princess and her inherited support network.

In a way, she had taken over.

What would the First Prince of Iji have thought about that?

Sadly, both he and his daughter have passed away.

We’ll never know.

-0-

Now then.

This has gone on a bit, but this is where the real story begins.

In that chaotic patchwork of petty kingdoms, one country began expanding its borders at an alarming rate:

The Jidoen Kingdom.

Its ruler calls himself the Conquering King, and in just ten years, he’s made his territory more than four times its original size.

Impressive.

Honestly, I mean that.

Just managing to hold that together is something else.

He must’ve been lucky enough to have someone good at domestic affairs.

Or maybe he went out and found someone.

But... his luck was running out.

Everyone assumed he’d collapse like all the others before him.

Expand too much, too fast — and boom.

No one can manage it. That’s how this region works.

That’s what we all expected.

But then, some idiot decided to tip him off.

They whispered in his ear:

“You know, the Third Princess of Gozlan is really good at governing.”

Lucky for Gozlan.

Unlucky for Jidoen.

The two nations had recently become neighbors, thanks to all that expansion.

So the Conquering King made his move.

Tried to negotiate for the princess.

Naturally, Gozlan refused.

Accepting would’ve meant handing over everything they’d built in the past thirty years.

And more importantly — to the king of Gozlan, she was his daughter.

Born late in his life.

Precious beyond measure.

No way he’d let her go.

In fact, rather than stand his ground... he attacked first.

Full-scale war broke out.

And in the end, the Gozlan Kingdom was destroyed.

Swallowed whole by the ever-growing Jidoen.

Now, if that had been the end of it — if Jidoen had successfully taken the Third Princess — I wouldn’t be telling you all this.

Jidoen would either go on to unify the region...

or crumble somewhere down the line.

I would’ve just sat back and watched.

But unfortunately for all of us, Jidoen failed.

They didn’t get the princess.

The King of Gozlan — smartly — had her escape before the war started.

Maybe she fled to Iji, where her bloodline runs.

Or somewhere else.

We don’t know yet.

Only that she escaped with a significant number of retainers.

And that changes everything.

Now, the Conquering King of Jidoen finds himself in a kingdom too large to govern...

With too many moving pieces...

Too few capable hands...

And no princess.

He has strength.

He has territory.

He has charisma.

But no administrative power.

No one to actually run the thing.

It’s going to collapse.

It has to.

No one can keep a kingdom like that afloat.

If it just toppled over quietly, we could ignore it.

But that’s not how collapse works —

especially not for the people who live under its roof.

They’ll fight it.

Which brings us to this letter.

「To the Yunodenna Kingdom,

The Jidoen Kingdom surrenders to your nation.

If that is not acceptable, please send someone who can help us govern. 」

—That was the entire letter.

No summary here.

That’s all it said.

For a message between nations, it’s absurdly brief.

Personally, I appreciate the simplicity, but the content?

It’s a nightmare.

Surrender?

No matter the circumstances, it means our country is now involved in that region.

And not just involved—we’ve taken a side.

We’ve sided with Jidoen, and in doing so, we’ve offended everyone else.

Please don’t.

No—wait. We’re a great nation.

We could win a war.

We could swallow up that whole region.

Forty-some small kingdoms? No problem.

But that’s it. That’s all we’d get.

A mess.

That region—if you add up all the territories—it’s over twice the size of our own lands.

No way we could govern it.

It’s impossible.

Even if we conquered them, they’d never listen to us.

It would be our kingdom that would collapse next.

Territories are meant to be expanded gradually, over decades.

You can’t just gulp them down all at once.

That’s why Jidoen is asking—

“Send us people who can help govern.”

How vile.

Are they angels or something?

Just because we’re a large kingdom doesn’t mean we’re overflowing with talent!

Quite the opposite.

It’s because we’re a major power that we’re suffering from a shortage of skilled people!

We’re trying our best—building academies, developing talent...

And still, it’s not enough!

On top of that, under the banner of preparing for war with the Demon King’s Kingdom, we’ve been sending our best minds and warriors to the front-line nations.

We’re the ones who need help!

Ugh, seriously... What are we supposed to do?

Massacre?

Just wipe Jidoen off the map?

No.

If we do that, we become the enemy of all humans.

We’re currently part of a Grand Alliance—formed to protect humanity and wage war against the Demon King’s Kingdom.

If we annihilate another human kingdom?

We lose our moral authority.

Damn it.

As if things weren’t messy enough with this new, bizarre “Six Dragon God Kingdom” stirring up trouble lately...

What the hell do we do?

And the worst part is—I know what’s coming.

If we stall too long, Jidoen will go through with their surrender.

They’re serious.

“Someone who can help govern”...

No. We can’t give them anyone like that.

The people who handle our internal balance of power—

if we send even one of them away, we risk civil war.

So maybe... maybe we send someone who can just read, write, and do math?

Would that be enough to placate them?

...

Am I underestimating them too much?

-0-

I sent twenty people.

People who could read, write, and do basic arithmetic.

They thanked us profusely.

Overwhelmingly, even.

...So that’s all it takes, huh.

......

The leaders of past great nations were right.

They didn’t get involved in that region.

Don’t try to use it.

Absolutely not.

I engraved that lesson deep into my heart, and turned back to today’s government work.

-0-

Minister: If that region gets unified... wouldn’t it be dangerous having a superpower as our neighbor?

King: If they actually manage to unify it, they’ll be stuck for the next fifty years. We’ll be fine.

Minister: And what about fifty years from now, when they’re not stuck anymore?

King: By then, I won’t be the king anymore.

Minister: ......

King: Don’t glare. Of course we’ll take countermeasures during those fifty years.

-0-

AN: And once again, not a VC story.

Apologies.

Next time, the story will shift to either Big Tree or Village Five.