Episode 177: Direction and Calculation

In the middle district of the royal capital Kircherion, there stands a building that was once used as a government office. A plain three-story stone structure with no unnecessary ornamentation. Now one of its rooms serves as Siegfried’s office. Inside, he and his butler Evan were having a conversation.

Suddenly, the sound of knocking echoed through the room. Without pause, the door opened.

“So you became a king, but you’re still working in a boring room like this?”

The one who entered was a beastfolk girl with grey hair—Fen. Evan looked at her and responded politely.

“Well, well, Fen-sama. It’s been quite some time.”

“Mm… it has been… a while, yeah. Evan-dono… Evan-san…?”

Fen hesitated slightly, her words trailing off. As the chief of the Grey Wolf clan who bears the responsibility of her entire tribe, she rarely uses honorific language. However, when someone old enough to be her grandfather shows such a humble attitude toward her, she can’t help but become conscious of proper etiquette.

Moreover, Evan is the most virtuous person in Siegfried’s camp. She wants to show him respect as well.

“Haha, you may call me whatever you like. Honorifics are unnecessary as well. However… if I may be so bold, please allow this old man to offer one piece of advice. Knocking is originally meant to confirm whether entry is permitted. If you open the door immediately after knocking, it defeats the purpose.”

“Ah, right. But hey, that guy does similar things too, doesn’t he?”

Fen directed her gaze toward Siegfried. He responded quietly.

“I understand such manners and choose to ignore them. Only in scenes where it’s effective for playing the villain. That’s the crucial difference between you doing it unconsciously and me.”

“…No, I think knowingly doing it is actually worse.”

“Do you think so? I rather thought that in such aspects, you’re the closest to me among my executives. Especially in this recent battle—the direction you took when you killed Karlheinz was magnificent. A man who prided himself on elegance meeting such a miserable end… As a director of evil, you surpass Beatrice, Leon, and Evan.”

“I’m not particularly happy about being praised for something like that.”

Even as she said this, Fen turned away while twitching her ears slightly. To hide her faint joy from being detected, she changed the subject.

“Um, well… about that direction thing. This time, deliberately prolonging the battle for the sake of theatrics… honestly, wasn’t that a mistake? You know, when thinking about the future and all.”

“Hoh… making observations with the future in mind—you’ve grown as well. Very well, let me hear it.”

“Yeah. So like, because you let Lugdura and… what was that giant monster called? Filgreia? Because you let them run wild, both the royal palace and the noble mansions got completely destroyed, right? If they’d remained, you could’ve worked there too. You became king, but there was no need to work in such a humble room like this. Well, I think fancy rooms are wasteful anyway so it’s fine by me. But if you’re gonna be an evil king, shouldn’t you be in a more flashy place?”

“I have no particular interest in rooms decorated with luxury. However, I don’t consider them completely worthless either. They are crystallizations of human skill and aesthetic sense. The endeavors humans create in pursuit of beauty—certainly, they have value. Because they’re useful for evil theatrics.”

“Then after all, wasn’t letting them destroy it a mistake…?”

“Wrong. Having the noble district destroyed was certainly theatrics to highlight Lugdura and the others’ evil—but at the same time, it’s also a foundation stone laid with the future in mind. Since their mansions have collapsed, the nobles have no choice but to rebuild. Moreover, they’re creatures who care about appearances. They can’t make their mansions more shabby than before, and leaving them broken indefinitely would damage their prestige. As a result, they’ll throw enormous amounts of money at carpenters and merchants, rushing to rebuild. In other words, it’s to make them spit out money. That’s precisely why I had them kill no people—only destroy the mansions.”

“Ah…”

Fen’s eyes widened in understanding. But she immediately furrowed her brow.

“But hey, if you just want to take money… couldn’t you just make a law for that? Like, nobles must offer money to the king. Then you could distribute that money to the people for the same effect, right?”

“Certainly that would be possible too. I have the power to execute such a plan. But if I used such methods, the people would think this—‘Even if we save money, the king will eventually take it away.’ If that happens, in the long term their motivation would be crushed, and neither the desire to earn money nor new innovation would be born. That’s precisely why I make them spit out money through legal means only—pushing all responsibility onto Lugdura. In doing so, I keep the economy moving and raise the people’s motivation.”

Having said that much, Siegfried smiled lightly.

“If they resort to illegal means to raise that money, or threaten carpenters to make them work for unfairly cheap wages—under the law, those are crimes. At that time, I’ll punish them without mercy and gain justification to strip them of their titles and territories. I intend to destroy Kirchhen’s corrupt nobility system as well—but I’ll proceed through legal means only. That draws out many people’s motivation and ultimately benefits me. An evil kingdom cannot be sustained by merely taking. In the first place, relying solely on brute force is monotonous and boring.”

“I see, through legal means only… huh.”

That wasn’t a bad thing for Fen either. Even if Siegfried’s ultimate goal was an evil empire—as long as she and her precious companions could live happily there.

“But still, when I think about it like that, I start not understanding what exactly is ‘evil’…”

When she muttered that, Fen suddenly remembered something.

“—Come to think of it, I heard this after the battle ended.”

The conversation she had with Leon after the battle flashed through her mind. She’d been warned ‘Don’t tell anyone about this,’ but surely it would be fine to tell Siegfried himself.

“That big princess said, ‘Lugdura’s descent was probably Siegfried’s doing.’”

“Hoh… she said such a thing, did she?”

“Well, I don’t think even you would do something like that…”

“No, that’s exactly right.”

“…”

After several seconds of silence, Fen let out an exasperated voice.

“You really are a villain after all.”