How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 1

You would think cutting down the trees to make room for rice paddies would make landslides more likely, but it actually reduces the odds of landslides that result in human casualties. Because people have to go into the fields all the time, they quickly notice the warning signs, and that makes it easy to respond. The strongest countermeasure against landslides is to watch the forest at all times. The elves didn’t have debris flow detection systems like in modern day Japan, so that made having people on watch all the more important.

“I’ve protected the forest all this time… was I wrong to do that?” he moaned.

“Your belief that you were protecting the forest was wrong,” I said. “Nature’s not so fragile that it needs people to protect it.”

Aisha had told me before that the trees in the God-Protected Forest were long-lived. That was why they hadn’t noticed it had turned into a beansprout forest and the ground had been weakened. Even though they had simply been lucky that nothing had happened yet, they’d convinced themselves they were protecting the forest.

“If it’s egotistical for man to destroy the forest, so, too, is it egotistical to try to protect it,” I said. “Nature is meant to go through cycles of death and rebirth, yet we’re trying to keep it in a state that’s convenient for us. All people can do is manage things through periodic thinning, keeping the forest in a state where we can co-exist with it. Trying our best not to wake it from its slumber.”

He seemed speechless.

At that moment, one of my wooden mice discovered something.

“There! I found a parent and child!” I cried.

“Wh-Where?!” he stammered.

“Hold on… They’re in a collapsed house ahead and to the left of us, two meters from the mountain ridge!”

We rushed to the spot, moving the sand and dirt aside. When we did, we found a little girl and a woman I assumed was her mother in a gap between the collapsed lumber. The mother was holding her girl tightly, trying to protect her. When Robthor saw them, he let out a breathless sigh. Clearly, they were his wife and daughter.

When we pulled them out, the woman had already expired.

Just as I was thinking all hope was lost… Aisha raised her voice. “Sire! The child is still breathing!”

“Get her to the relief team, immediately!” I shouted. “Don’t let her die!”

“Understood!”

After wrapping the child in a blanket and seeing her and Aisha off, I looked to Robthor, who was crying beside his wife’s body. I thought maybe I should let him be, but this man still had things he needed to protect. I couldn’t have him stopping here on me.

Placing a hand on his shoulder, I said quietly, “She protected your daughter to the very end.”

“…Yes…”

“Pull yourself together! It’s your turn to do it now!”

He seemed startled. “Yes… Yes…!”

Speaking through sobs, Robthor nodded again and again.

Some time after that, the second relief team that Liscia had gone back to call for arrived. With the search for all missing persons completed, the advance team was relieved of their duties.

For the reconstruction work, the more numerous and better-equipped second team would take over.

After offering one last silent prayer for the fallen, the advance team returned to the capital. The mud-covered and exhausted members of the advance team were packed into the container cars like frozen tuna about to be shipped out. Right about now, Hal was probably resting his head in Kaede’s lap and taking a good rest.

I was in a similar state myself, riding in the carriage with Liscia who had come to pick me up.

We had left Aisha behind in the village. With her homeland in that awful shape, there was no way she would have been able to focus on her duties. For the time being, I had told her to wait in the God-Protected Forest.

As I leaned against the window, dozing off…

“I wasn’t able to do anything this time,” Liscia said sadly.

“You went to call a relief party, didn’t you?” I asked. “Everyone worked their very hardest. Actually… if there’s anyone who was unable to do anything, it was me.”

“Hardly. I hear you were a great help out there,” Liscia tried to reassure me, but I shook my head.

“I’m the king. In times of crisis, giving commands in the field isn’t the king’s duty. A king’s duty is to prepare for a crisis before it happens. I… didn’t do enough of that.”

“That’s not…”

“I think the Forbidden Army worked well as a relief unit. Still, there were more places where I came up short. Means of communication, long-distance shipping, accumulation of aid supplies in each area, medical teams attached to the relief party, psychiatrists to treat patients with PTSD… I came up short on all of those things. Because I was so focused on the food crisis and the issue of the three dukes, I was lax in my preparations.”

I looked at my reflection in the window, covered in mud and wearing an expression of exhaustion.

Liscia was looking at me with concern, but I pretended not to notice.

Epilogue

The central city of the Carmine Duchy, Landel.