How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 1

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “It makes all the hard work worth it.”

It had been a long road, but now I could finally take a breath and relax. As the person who’d been grappling with this problem all this time, it was an especially emotional moment for me. However…

“Yes. With this, we can now safely move on to the next stage,” Hakuya said, with no regard whatsoever for my emotional moment.

…The next stage, huh.

“We… really have to do it, don’t we?” I asked.

“Does it weigh on you?” he asked.

“Well, yeah. I understand the necessity of it, though…”

Yes. This was necessary.

The political theorist Machiavelli had said this in The Prince.

“If a prince should stain his hands with cruelties, even in peaceful times, he will have difficulty holding the state. However, for some tyrants, even after infinite cruelties, they live long and secure in their countries, defending themselves from external enemies and never being conspired against by their own citizens. I believe that this follows from cruelties being properly or badly used.

“Those which may be called properly used are those applied in one blow at a time when it is necessary for one’s security. If a prince does not persist in them afterward, ruling in a way that advantages the people as best as he is able, he may even be remembered as a great ruler. However, one who fails to strike out the root of trouble from the beginning, dragging things out and inflicting repeated cruelties, uses them badly.”

This passage was one reason that Machiavelli’s The Prince had been, for a long time, criticized by the humanists of the Christian church. However, the cruelties he had spoken of there did not refer to massacres of ordinary people. He was talking about using trickery to permanently dispose of political opponents.

If you can stabilize your hold on power with one act of cruelty, then govern well afterward, it is a happy thing for the people. On the other hand, if you spend all your time worrying about what your political opponents think and don’t advance any worthwhile policies, not striking out the root of trouble in one blow, purging traitors again and again, you will lose the trust of the people.

The prince Machiavelli had held up as his ideal, Cesare Borgia, had massacred the influential nobles who had welcomed him during a feast, securing absolute power for himself.

Nobunaga Oda had used his severity well, taking the Oda Family from rural daimyos to becoming great daimyos in a single leap. However, in the end, because Nobunaga had persisted with his severities, he had shortened his own life, ultimately dying to a betrayal by one of his vassals.

In other words, “cruelty” was like a prince’s treasured sword that could cut through anything, but if he grew addicted to using it, it was also like a cursed sword that would eventually destroy him.

“As I’ve said before,” I said, “I’ve deemed your plan a cruelty.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “You also said, ‘If we are to do it, let it be in one stroke.’”

“You can do it that way, I assume?” I asked.

“The preparations have already been made.”

“…Very well, then.”

I could say it was for this country, but I wasn’t that attached to the place.

I didn’t have a just cause, or a great one. But, when I questioned why I was doing it, suddenly Liscia and the others’ faces came to mind. Those who lived, smiling, in this country: Liscia, Aisha, Juna, and Tomoe’s faces.

I thought of the bonds I had lost in the old world. I thought of the bonds I had formed in this new one.

I already thought of those girls as my family.

“Kazuya, build a family. And, once you have, protect them, come whatever may.”

…I know, Grandpa. I’ll protect my family to the end, no matter what comes our way.

In order to do that, just this once, I will become a cruel king.

“We will now begin the subjugation.”

Extra Story: The Story of a Certain Group of Adventurers

Adventurers.

As the people who challenged and cleared out dungeons and the many mysteries that lay within, theirs was a profession filled with romanticized adventure. However, at the same time, they were also jacks and jills of all trades, taking quests issued by the guild (protecting merchants, slaying dangerous beasts, and more) in exchange for rewards. Now, here is something about these adventurers. Among the newest urban legends spreading in Parnam, the capital of Elfrieden, there is one known as…

“The Adventurer Who Wears a Kigurumi.”