In the beginning, there was chaos… so the myths of this world say.
All things were born from the crucible of chaos. If so, should Chaos not have become the greatest of all gods? And yet, in this world served by countless deities, there is no god by the name of Chaos. Strange, isn't it?
Now I know the truth. That the world began—it means nothing at all.
I wasn't born because I wanted to be. I was simply born. And isn't the world the same? The world itself never chose to be born. It's like a sex partner who accidentally gets pregnant and confesses to her boyfriend, "Oops, it just happened. Hehe." Just came into existence, that's all.
The only difference is that, unlike humans, the world had no access to contraceptives.
If only someone had known beforehand that this bastard child would shower the world with every curse, pain, disease, war, and death—if only the world had had an OB-GYN who could say, "Let's terminate it. I really, truly, and strongly recommend it." If only that OB-GYN could then tell the world, in its role as illegitimate child, "Good!" or "Bad!"—wouldn't that have been something?
But there are no doctors in this mythology.
There is no creator acting as midwife to tell the world whether its birth is welcome or unwelcome. In the beginning, there was only Chaos… and the world was born however it damn well pleased.
And so, whether the world's birth was a good thing or a bad thing remains forever undecided. What an aggressively combat-oriented mythology.
If the gods are healthy and heroes rise up, then the world is "good."
If Demon Lords rage and monsters sweep across the land, then the world is "bad."
Whether the world's birth was good or bad—people cannot decide that from the start. Heroes and Demon Lords must always fight it out to determine that. Whether the present age is good or bad.
"Then, O people, I ask you—"
I raised my voice from atop my horse.
"What would you do if Franc were already steeped in evil this very moment? Plague runs rampant, and in every street, the Grim Reaper laughs with dark glee. People of Franc, did you truly not hear? Did Death not whisper to you in the palest of voices—'The time has come to die, mortal. Nothing remains but suffering.'"
I spoke as though whispering right into their ears. My Acting had already reached its peak. I could feel the six hundred people gathered in the city square—innocent, unassuming citizens—trembling with fear.
One woman let out a short scream and fainted. I was wearing a black robe at the time. I must have looked like the Grim Reaper. Ah, these people of this era truly made it so worthwhile to give speeches.
"Food supplies dwindle and families perish. Every second is agony and suffering. To the west, the Bretagne army closes in, pillaging what little food remains. People of Franc. Franc is steeped in evil like never before. I ask you once more—what must you do?"
"Let's crush those Bretagne bastards!"
A man shouted from the center of the square. Hundreds of people leaped to their feet and roared.
"Kill them all! Don't let them plunder us anymore!"
"We can't pay any more taxes! We don't have a single grain of rye to give!"
"If you want to collect taxes, lift the ban on Black Herb first――!"
Men and women, old and young alike, screamed their fury. They pumped their fists wildly. Forearms hardened by years of rough farmwork gleamed a bronzed brown.
"That's right! You have a duty to save Franc from this evil!"
I raised my voice. It pierced through roars and shouts, and with the aid of magic, it rang thunderously across the square.
"In the beginning, when the first man plowed the fields and the first woman wove cloth, who among them was a noble! Since the dawn of time, all humans were born equal — and so too do you have the power to cast out evil and save Franc! Great citizens of Franc! Take up arms!"
I clenched both fists tight.
"March! Charge! Now, at last, I dare say the hour that the gods have ordained for us has arrived. You shall throw off the yoke of oppression, reclaim your freedom, and upon this sacred land of Franc, build a holy nation with your own hands!"
Hundreds of citizens bellowed like beasts. Just as planned, dwarf mercenaries at the edge of the square began distributing weapons. Spears, longspears, swords — people grabbed whatever they could get their hands on.
What erupted surpassed enthusiasm — it was madness that blazed through the city. Whether you held a weapon in your hand made an enormous difference. After all, a blade's edge can point at something with precision.
"To the lord's manor! Let's reclaim the Black Herb!"
"Storm the armory! Friends, rise up for Franc!"
"Stand for the glory of God!"
As the agitators shouted, five hundred surged forward with wild cheers. They raced through the city's alleys and lanes, rallying comrades and families, and in the blink of an eye the five hundred swelled to a thousand, advancing on the lord's manor on the far side of the city.
I waved to them and joined the dwarf mercenaries.
"Well done, Your Highness."
Zacharie, the mercenary captain, snapped to attention with a crisp salute.
"Yes. Were exactly two hundred weapons distributed?"
"Yes, sir. We distributed them with a focus on spears, axes, and swords."
"If the citizens break into the armory, replenish the reserves."
The plan to create a lawless zone across the entirety of Frank was proceeding apace.
The Demon Lord Leraje invades the territory. The lord, terrified, hires our mercenary company. And then it becomes a completely one-sided game of Go-Stop… We feed all of the lord's military strategies and deployments to Leraje, and the lord's army is wiped out with ease.
And the ones who swoop in to rescue the annihilated lord's army? That would be the mercenary company.
Our Two-Bladed Axe mercenary company 'fiercely' clashes with the Demon Lord's army and 'barely' manages to drive the enemy away. The battle was so intense that the lord himself was killed in action. From the citizens' perspective, they had already resigned themselves to being devoured by monsters, only for the mercenary company to come save them.
Of course, the ones who feel that way aren't limited to just the citizens.
"Wow! Priest! Priest! You're amazing!"
Luke came running up and flashed me a beaming smile. The little boy looked up at me with eyes that could only be described as gazing upon a hero.
"That's right, Luke. Did you study hard again today?"
A warm smile deserves a warm smile in return. I smiled kindly and ruffled Luke's hair. He blushed shyly but still nodded his head.
"Yes! I practiced swordsmanship from dawn until noon again today!"
"You really are a diligent boy, Luke. The Goddess loves diligence. But, Luke. There's something you haven't told me about, isn't there?"
I put on a stern expression.
"Swordsmanship is swordsmanship, and writing practice is writing practice. You surely finished all of today's lessons, right?"
"Ah… about that. Not yet. Hehehe."
"Oh, you incorrigible little rascal."
I lightly tapped Luke's bangs with my fist. It couldn't have hurt at all, but Luke clutched his head and made a show of being in pain. Incidentally, Luke's education was handled by mercenary captain Zacharie for martial arts and assassination squad leader Jeremy for liberal arts.
"Priest! If you're born a man, isn't it enough to just be able to write your own name? I want to become a real soldier and fight for Goddess Artemis and Frank as soon as possible!"
"Good grief. You sure hear a lot of things and get awfully full of yourself."
I grabbed his cheeks and pulled them, stretching them out. Luke made a weird noise and groaned.
"Mmph, ow, ahhhh."
"Listen here. If you only study without thinking, you'll be easy to fool, and if you only think without studying, you'll end up in a dangerous spot. You're saying right now that you'll serve the Goddess, but how would you even know whether serving the Goddess is truly the right thing to do?"
"……."
I let go of his cheeks. Luke rubbed his brow and furrowed his eyebrows.
"Isn't the Goddess always right?"
"Then why is the Goddess always right?"
"Because……she's the Goddess? Huh? ……Wait?"
Luke tilted his head to the right, then to the left.
"Heh heh. So you're saying you'll serve the Goddess without even knowing why the Goddess is right."
"S-something feels off, Priest! I don't know what it is, but something's definitely off!"
"That's exactly why I'm telling you to study, you little runt."
I gave him another knuckle rap on the head. This time a little harder.
"Owwww!"
Luke looked up at me with an indignant expression. He looked exactly like a puppy that needed to take a dump glaring at its owner. Well, don't be too sore about it. Believe it or not, I've been getting by in this world on my silver tongue alone. If I let myself get bested by some naive farmer's brat, I might as well have bitten off my own tongue ages ago.
"Come on now, the sun's going down. Hurry along to Teacher Jeremy and get to learning."
"Ah, but you see……haaah. Fine. I'll learn, I'll learn……"
Luke trudged off with his shoulders slumped like a limp piece of seaweed.
It wasn't that he hated studying or anything. Right before his eyes, battles were breaking out, heroic speeches were being exchanged, uprisings were erupting. Every moment must have felt historically significant to the boy. Having to sit on the sidelines of all that, learning Ancient Imperial language or Ancient Republican language and whatnot — no wonder his body felt restless and itchy, barely able to sit still.
Well, there was another reason too. Jeremy didn't just have him sit quietly and study.
To be more precise, what he had them doing was a very different kind of "studying."
Luke trudged off toward the inn in the distance. The mercenaries filed in one after another. I turned my back and spoke.
"He really is a pure and kind boy, isn't he? Don't you think?"
"……."
Daisy stared at me in silence.
The sharp glare that girl once fixed on me back in the fire-farming village — challenging me word by word, defiant to the last — had grown much duller lately. More and more often, her eyes had gone blank and glazed over.
"Luke must be proud to have you as his little sister. Of course, Luke must be proud to have him as a big brother too. After all, you two spend every evening together — siblings who share that kind of bond aren't exactly ordinary."
I chuckled. Only then did focus return to Daisy's eyes.
"……Father is deceiving Luke. The speech he gave in the square was all lies."
Daisy insisted on using the formal address — *Father*. She was banking on the hope that if the title solidified, it might chip away at my vigilance ever so slightly.
"Hmm. What makes you think that?"
"I can tell when Father is lying. More than anything, when Father speaks from the heart, it never sounds like a speech. Just now in the square — Father was definitely lying the entire time."
"Intuition! Now that's quite the talent."
I hummed a little tune to myself. That was when Daisy's shoulders hitched.
"……Ngh."
It had begun again today, too.
The torture with the slime onahole was still ongoing. The objective was to gnaw away at Daisy's mental fortitude — to make her feel an indelible sense of sin. Right about now, Jeremy was probably spending a pleasant evening with Luke back in his room.
*You two siblings must come to depend on us completely.*
Luke would be mentally bound to me, and physically shackled to Jeremy. In that way, bit by bit, I was ensnaring the future Hero.
Daisy wrapped both arms around herself, barely enduring the pleasure. I watched that sight — purely for my own twisted amusement, since Daisy grew all the more mortified whenever she knew I was watching — and sketched the map of all Bretagne inside my head.
'This was about to reach the tipping point.'
From the direction of the manor house, the voices of enraged citizens could be heard. The servants would resist fiercely, no doubt. But the citizens had weapons of their own. Stabbing someone was child's play.
The west was being torn apart by the Bretagne forces, and the north had descended into lawlessness at the hands of the Demon Lord Leraje and myself. Sooner or later, an explosion was inevitable….