Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: General Commander 

I was thinking that we could probably move our stock faster. So we went to a village in the southwest and purchased cheaper materials. 

You see, I’d heard that there was a famine in the north, which meant I could sell my stock for more money and make a good profit. 

The village in the southwest was the very same village we’d already visited, where the BioPlant monster had caused a big ruckus. 

We cleaned up their mess for them the last time we were there, but before we left we gave them the improved BioPlant seed. 

That’s why I figured they’d be willing to sell us some food at a cheap price. And, just like I’d expected, the villagers were happy to see us. They sold us food at a huge discount. 

From the look of things, the improved BioPlant seed I’d given them had been planted. The fields of that southwestern village were covered in vines that hung with plump, red, tomato-like fruit. 

We loaded up the carriage and headed north. Then something happened in a little town on the way there: 

“Huh? Some kind of traveling merchant certificate?” 

We were stopped on our way into town by a guard on duty who demanded a tariff and taxes for his governor. 

So I showed him the certificate from Riyute, but… 

“That means nothing here! Pay your dues!” 

“But…” 

The guard ignored Raphtalia’s protest and continued to demand money. 

I stepped forward to start negotiating with him, but he wouldn’t back down. 

“You brute!” 

Hm… For them to get so angry, something must have been going on. 

Since I started this whole traveling merchant gig I’d learned a thing or two about how to get your way. 

The first of which was threats. If you had power you could use it to force people to agree to things they normally wouldn’t. You had to identify their weakness and use it to sell things at a higher price. This strategy worked the best on haughty customers. But looking at the way this guard was acting, he was taking us seriously. The next was negotiation. We form our relationships with people based on the ebb and flow of conversation. It works the best on people who aren’t antagonistic. This guy was not exactly antagonistic. He was in a hurry. 

If neither of these methods would work on him, it must mean that… 

“Sounds like your governor is a pretty crazy guy.” 

I looked around the town and muttered to myself. The guard noticed and his expression changed slightly. 

“Do not speak ill of our governor! You’ll have charges brought against you!” 

Things were starting to make sense. The guard apparently had bigger problems that just dealing with us—in which case, neither of my strategies would work. 

If I pushed too hard, we’d end up paying for it. 

If I wanted him to budge, I’d have to create a big stink and get him flustered, or cause enough of a fuss to get the governor to come talk to me. But I had no way of knowing if the merits of the outcome would compensate for the risk of the undertaking. 

“Fine then. I can see you have your own problems to deal with.” 

I gave him the amount of money that he asked for. When I did, the guard suddenly looked very disappointed. 

“Here you go.” 

He leaned forward and whispered. 

“Sorry…” 

“No problem.” 

He must have been under orders from the Trash. There was obviously some kind of problem with the governor here. 

We entered the town to find taxes levied on nearly everything. From food and equipment to handicrafts and rooms at the inn. And the tax rate was invariably high. 

It looked like the town had plunged into some sort of depression. The markets were nearly empty. The businesses must have been under the burden of heavy taxes. 

“I’m going to go look for some food and try and figure out what’s going on.” 

“Okay.” 

“Yay! Bring me back a souvenir!” 

“You have enough already. Don’t tell me you still want more!?” 

Didn’t Filo realize how overpriced everything was here? 

I left Raphtalia and Filo, who was in human form, in the inn and went out to a bar to figure out what was going on. 

Also, I turned my shield into the Book Shield and roughed up my appearance a little before I entered the bar. 

And there was someone I knew there. Someone I didn’t want to run into. 

Or so it seemed. 

He carried a bow, but for some reason also had a sword at his waist. He was dressed simply, and carried shabby equipment. And he was holding a small bow that could change shapes, like my Book Shield. If it were my first time meeting him, I could be forgiven for thinking he was a vagabond. 

He had some people with him, one of whom was wearing brightly colored armor—the guy with the bow hid in the shadows. 

That’s right, Itsuki, the Bow Hero, was hiding out in the corner of a bar, deeply involved in conversation. 

Like Motoyasu, this one had also arrived from some alternate Japan. 

He was 17-years-old, and had the face of a quiet piano player. He kind of looked mild-tempered. 

He hadn’t noticed me yet. 

I wondered what he was talking about, so I slunk over without letting him see me and tried to eavesdrop. 

“The governor is…” 

It sounded like he and his party were gathering information on the local governor. 

From what I could gather it sounded like the guy had set his taxes higher than what the Crown demanded, and accepted bribes from some merchants in the area. He used the money to hire a bodyguard and would severely punish anyone who spoke out against him. Everything he did, he did to line his own pockets. All in all, he sounded like your standard corrupt official. 

“Sounds like we’ll have to teach him a lesson.” 

Whoa! I was so surprised by Itsuki’s words that I nearly lost my footing. 

But how should I go about joining the conversation? 

Here he was hiding out for no reason, and, putting aside whatever his plan was—just what kind of a General Commander did he think he was? 

Did he think he was traveling the world to save it? 

Even accounting for lies and elaboration, I still hadn’t heard a peep about what the Bow Hero was up to. 

Although, to be fair, I was traveling around as a holy man with a bird-god, so I couldn’t exactly deride him for hiding his identity. 

But in my case I had a good reason—people had been lied to about the Shield Hero, and there was a terrible reputation I had to escape. Even now, if people found out who I was they would be on guard, so it was in my interests to let them think I was a saint. People still whispered about the Shield Demon! 

Anyway, as far as I knew there was no compelling reason for Itsuki the Bow Hero to keep his identity secret. 

Was it some kind of order from the Crown? Even if it was, I never heard anything about the Bow Hero. So he was purposely lying about who he was… 

“Very well then. Everyone, let’s go.” 

They finished their conversation, and Itsuki led his party out of the bar. 

My best guess was that they were planning on heading over to the governor’s mansion and causing a ruckus before revealing Itsuki’s identity and telling the corrupt guy off. There were similar storylines in my own world in period dramas on TV. They always feature the archetypal traveling warrior who rights the wrongs of the world. 

It was easy enough to picture. The king would find out that the corrupt politician had been deposed, and he’d appoint someone new. It all made sense. 

Was he an idiot? Why go out of your way to get further involved? 

I carried out what I’d come there to do: look for information on where I could buy foodstuffs for a reasonable price. Then I went back to the inn for the night. 

Filo’s souvenir? Like I would buy souvenirs in a town where the cost of living is through the roof? 

Of course Filo had some choice words to say about that, but I didn’t bother listening. 

The next morning the whole town was talking. Adventurers had infiltrated the town in the night and had removed the governor from office. 

Among the throngs of pedestrians moving up and down the street, Itsuki was standing around chatting up a beautiful girl. 

“Oh woooow! No, really, thank you so muuuuuch!” 

“Oh, it’s really no trouble at all. But it is a secret, all right?” 

A secret? I don’t think so! My suspicions had been confirmed. I figured out why I hadn’t heard anything about Itsuki this whole time. 

He was the kind of guy that liked to hide his real abilities so that he could pull them out when necessary and drive everyone wild. 

If he really was able to enjoy that kind of game, he had pretty poor taste as far as I could tell. 

He was going out of his way to hide his identity just so he could revel in the joy of exposing himself. If that’s not what he was after, why would he be standing there in the middle of the street? Or at the very least I’d figured out that he didn’t have to run from anything like I did, so he wasn’t doing it to protect himself. 

I could picture it all now. The evil governor demanded taxes they couldn’t pay, so he took this girl away from her poor geriatric father as payment. I’d seen a period drama like that on TV once. 

Give me a break. I got out of town as fast as I could. 

We travelled for half a day or so before we came to a town near the border with a neighboring country. 

We were able to sell all the food that we hadn’t sold off the day before, and it sold out very quickly. I guessed we were getting into areas affected by the famine. 

But there were a lot of people around that didn’t seem to be locals. 

Maybe it was the way they dressed. I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I could tell they were from somewhere far away. 

“Hey, you guys…” 

I’d heard rumors of a nearby country ruled by a despot, but the tyrant had recently been ousted from power. I felt like I was probably getting close. Were these people citizens of that country, here for business? 

Some of them walked by, and a passing glance into my carriage excited them so much that they immediately ran over and started talking business with me. 

But they didn’t want to use money. They wanted to barter with me. I could use medicinal herbs and stuff, sure—but I didn’t have much use for lumber or wooden handicrafts. I climbed down from the carriage and started talking with them. 

“I’d really prefer money.” 

If they foisted their bundles of straw and twine and stacks of charcoal on me, I’d have no way to get rid of it. On the other hand, I could take a lot of medicinal herbs and process it all into medicine. 

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have money…” 

The person speaking was all skin and bones. He looked like he might keel over at any moment. 

“I’ll get some food for you all. Eat it and be on your way.” 

There was no getting around it, so I borrowed a large pot from some villagers. It looked like the villagers were also on the verge of starvation, so they were more than willing to help. 

“Thank you so much!” 

Everyone gathered around the giant pot and ravenously scarfed the food down. 

While everyone was eating, I took the opportunity to ask just what was going on in these parts. 

They said that everything was fine until the despot was ousted. The tax burden was eased, and everyone’s lives started getting better. 

But soon enough things went back to how they had been. 

The worst part was the leaders of the resistance had started raising taxes again as soon as they were in power. 

“But why? After all they went through to oust the bad king?” 

“Well, they needed funds to manage the country, and to secure enough money for the military, they had to raise taxes.” 

I was starting to understand. It wasn’t just that the king was a bad guy. It was that he needed to raise funds to secure their military strength in order to protect the country. 

If your country lost its citizens then you wouldn’t have a country—so you would lose your country if you didn’t protect its citizens. 

In the midst of all that, if you only listened to the negative rumors about the king, well, of course you’d want to oust him from power. 

I didn’t know anything about that king, but I couldn’t help feeling an affinity for him—to be hated and ousted by your own people. 

Certainly there were times in life when you had to do things because you had no choice, whether or not your actions would be viewed in a positive light or not. 

But that doesn’t apply to the Trash king. That guy was an evil idiot from day one. 

“Even if the leadership changes, we still can’t support ourselves. So we’ve brought all our valuables across the border, here to Melromarc, to see if we won’t have better luck in this more prosperous land.” 

“The poor king! He really was thinking of his citizens first! Whose fault is it that I’m this hungry?!” 

“Shut up! You would doubt me?” 

“Yeah!” 

Filo knew just what to say to piss him off, so I had to control her. 

She’d started to learn a little bit about how the world works, and she’d developed a dirty mouth in the process. 

“I thought he looked…” 

Raphtalia was whispering to herself and looking over at us with a strange look on her face. 

“Maybe… Mr. Naofumi?” 

“Huh?” 

“Oh, it’s nothing.” 

Filo was running her mouth off, but if I had to make a guess from the rumors I’d heard, it sounded like Itsuki had been assisting the resistance. Maybe his heart wasn’t as pure as he wanted everyone to think it was. As for these refugees, were they sneaking across the border to buy stuff on the black market? 

By the way, it looked like market prices in the area were soaring. That was good for me. Itsuki, the little General that he thought he was, traveling around righting the world’s wrongs, you’d think he would stick around to give some support. He was only using these people to satisfy his own little sense of personal justice! 

“With how things are now, our country is at great risk of invasion! Anyone could rush in and take over, but we can’t even afford to eat.” 

“Really.” 

Maybe it was due to the waves, but it seemed like famines were breaking out everywhere. 

“Oh well.” 

I found the leader of the ragged group and gave him one of my improved BioPlant seeds. 

“What’s this?” 

“If you plant it, it grows food very quickly. It actually caused a big problem down in the south, but I was able to fix it with a special technique of mine. It should be fine now, but you should still keep a close eye on it. If you don’t manage it well, it could turn into a real headache.” 

“Oh, Wow!” 

“I’ll come back through here in a while. I’ll accept your gratitude then.” 

The next time I came through the area, I was sure to get a warm greeting. 

They all obviously knew who I really was. Later, I heard that the citizens of that small country, suffering from famine, finally had some food to fill in their bellies.