How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 1

When the news covers disaster areas, they focus on the tragedies of the affected and the hopes of the survivors. However, now that I was actually experiencing it firsthand, it was a hell greater than I had imagined. This reality was too harsh for a general audience. It would break their hearts.

Still, I didn’t have time to be thinking about that.

“Hal! I’ve found two people in need of rescue, in the shadow of a rock 50 meters ahead of us and to the left.”

“On it!”

— For now, I just had to kill my emotions.

We diligently continued with our relief efforts. We managed to dig a great many dark elves from the earth and rubble.

All of them were injured in one way or another, and many had serious injuries that couldn’t be taken lightly even once they had been rescued. Often, by the time we managed to dig them out, they had already expired.

At first, the ratio of living to dead among the rescued was half and half, but now it was leaning more heavily towards the dead. When I considered that, of the close-to-one-hundred casualties Wodan had mentioned when we had first arrived in the village, only two-tenths had been dead, it was clear that things were getting worse as time passed.

The searchers were showing signs of heavy exhaustion, as well. They had been resting in shifts, but it had now been three days since the disaster had occurred.

It had been hard on the dark elves, of course, but also on the soldiers who had come a long way and then spent a full day searching. They had already dug out a fair number of those in need of rescue (some alive, some not).

I thought it would be wise to check in with Wodan to confirm how many people were still missing. If we could narrow down the number of victims, we could focus our manpower on searching the area where we thought they would be.

As I was thinking that…

“O Godbeast! Why have you let this happen?!”

…I heard a desperate cry.

When I looked, I saw a young (?) dark elf man who resembled Wodan wailing as he struck his fists and head against the ground.

Aisha had returned from evacuating the women and children, so I asked her about him. “Aisha, who is that?”

“That’s… my uncle, Robthor Udgard, He’s my father’s younger brother.”

“From the way he’s crying and wailing, I guess that means…”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “His wife and child, in other words my aunt and her daughter, have yet to be found.”

“That must be… difficult. Are you okay, Aisha?”

“Well, you see… If my father is the head of the liberals, my uncle is head of the conservatives. I didn’t have much contact with them… His daughter was still young and cute, though, so it pains me to see this happen to her…”

“I see…”

We were well past the 72 hour deadline. If she hadn’t been found yet, that meant…

Then, Robthor looked in our direction. When he saw us, he walked over towards us, stumbling as he did.

“King… O, king… Why?”

Robthor grabbed me by the lapels, causing Aisha to yell at him, but I motioned for her to stand down. Rather than gripping them tightly and trying to lift me up, he was just grasping at them, as if clinging to me. If I simply brushed him away, he would probably collapse.

“O, king. I have done all I can to protect this forest. So why has it taken my family from me…?”

I was at a loss for words. I looked over to Aisha.

“My uncle opposed the periodic thinning,” she said. “He said it was unthinkable that dark elves, as protectors of the forest, should cut down trees needlessly. The place that collapsed was one where we couldn’t do periodic thinning because of my uncle’s objections,” she explained.

That’s… I don’t know what to say…

“O, king! Tell me why! Why would the forest I protected destroy my family? If I had cut down trees like Wodan and his lot, would my family have been spared?!”

“There’s… no way to know that,” I said.

“No!” he howled.

“True, if you carry out periodic thinning, take care of the undergrowth, and increase the land’s ability to hold water, it’s possible to create conditions that reduce the likelihood of a landslide. However, it only makes it less likely. In a case like this, where heavy rain over a long period was the cause… It could have happened anywhere.”

“No… You’re saying we just had bad luck, then…” he murmured.

“In terms of where the landslide happened, yes. However, periodic thinning means there’s always work going on in the forest. The workers may hear strange noises, see the forest seeming to shift, and notice other warning signs that a landslide is about to occur. If they notice, there are things that can be done. People could have been evacuated.”

This has also been said to be an advantage of using mountains for terraced rice-fields.