How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 1

“So, in the end, we’re just cheap labor, is that it…?” I asked.

“If you understand that, then get to work, on the double,” she said.

“You’re an earth mage. Can’t you do this faster with magic?”

“I can’t afford to expend my magic here, you know,” she said. “Hal, are you going to dig tunnels through the mountains in my place?”

I said nothing.

I went back to my work of digging up dirt and piling it up.

It’s better than being forced to dig a tunnel without magic, at least, I thought. What kind of old-fashioned hard labor sentence is this…?

Noon came. We went back to the camp and were given a two-hour break.

Inside the tent we ate, chatted, or used the simple beds (they were no more than stretchers that had grown a little fur) to take an afternoon nap. Apparently that king strongly encouraged naps after eating. It was something about how it improved work efficiency.

So work in the Forbidden Army literally came with “three meals and a nap,” but… once people found out what kind of work was involved, there was no way they would be jealous of us.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to make it through the afternoon if I didn’t eat, so I wolfed down the lunchbox I had been supplied.

Today’s lunchbox was meat and vegetables between bread. Delicious.

The meat was lightly spiced, which felt like it helped relieve my exhaustion. It was apparently a dish called shogayaki which that king had come up with. It was a menu he was experimenting with now that the production of the seasonings the king was having the mystic wolves make for him — “miso,” “soy sauce,” and “mirin” — had gotten on track.

In the Forbidden Army, we were often served the king’s experimental menus like this. The meals were one of the few things that made me happy that I had been forced to transfer to the Forbidden Army. The meals we’d gotten in the land forces had prioritized quantity over quality. The kind of thing you’d picture from the words “A Man’s Meal.” Honestly, eating here even once had been enough to convince me I didn’t want to go back.

“That king… If nothing else, I’ve got to recognize his gift for cooking,” I admitted.

“They really are delicious, you know,” Kaede agreed. “The dishes our king comes up with.”

At some point, Kaede had sat down next to me, and she was eating the same menu.

“Also, it’s incredible that we can eat fresh veggies every day, you know,” she continued. “They come in from the closest village to here that’s hooked up to the castle by road. The reason roads are great is that they make it easy to maintain supply lines, you know.”

“The roads we’re building are being useful right away, huh?” I asked.

“With this transportation capacity, you can almost call the food crisis solved already, you know. We can bring food from the areas with a surplus to the areas where there are shortages. We’ll be able to transport foods that we couldn’t before because they didn’t keep long enough.”

“…Is he doing this because he knows all that stuff?” I asked. “That king, I mean.”

“He’s an incredible man, you know. His foresight is almost frightening.”

Well, I thought Kaede was pretty amazing for being able to understand all of that, too. She could be a bit silly in some ways, but Kaede had some pretty high base specs. She could use magic, and she was sharp, too. That was probably why she had been chosen by the king himself.

…As her childhood friend, it did frustrate me a little, though.

…I need to do my best, too.

“Well, now that you’ve eaten, will you be taking a nap, Hal?” she asked me.

“Well… I am tired. Guess I will.”

“In that case, you can rest your head in my lap, you know,” she said.

“Bwuh!” I spewed my tea.

Everyone was suddenly looking our way. More than half of those glances were from men who clearly wanted to kill me.

Now, even though I’m biased as her childhood friend, Kaede is cute. It’s nothing to write home about, but her figure’s not bad, and those fox ears and tail really work in her favor. It wasn’t surprising that she was treated like an idol in the Forbidden Army.

The king had told me to serve under her so that the men wouldn’t look down on Kaede, but, honestly, I think that with one request from Kaede, these guys would gladly have gone to their deaths. That was why their murderous rage was directed at me, for being so close to her.

I coughed desperately. “What are you saying?!”

“People were talking about how the princess did it for the king in the park in the capital a little while back, you know,” she said.

“I’m amazed they could do that in a place where so many people could see…”

Well, they’re engaged and all, so maybe it’s not that odd, I added to myself. It’s far better than not getting along at all.