Translator: Kazumi
Editor: Silavin
King Osshian of Airika Kingdom, who had seen the ‘letter of intent’ from King Maxim, let out a sigh at the predictable outcome.
In his own letter sent the other day, he had mentioned his acceptance of Crown’s power in the Central Continent.
The question of when Flores Kingdom would do the same had been slipped in between the text.
The result: Flores Kingdom was as unlikely as ever to reach a consensus. In fact, King Maxim had advised King Osshian that they should proceed on their own without regard to the Flores Kingdom.
Even though he would describe it as a ‘letter of intent’, it was only an exchange of their usual letters. There was no official responsibility tied to these letters.
These letters between the two kings were treated differently from a treaty or backroom deal between two nations. Therefore, just because the ‘letter of intent’ said to proceed at their convenience, it did not mean that there would be no protests from the Flores Kingdom.
[It is common for our personal feelings to differ from the position of the state.] King Osshian was well aware of this.
The reason why the Airika Kingdom was ready to accept Crown before the Flores Kingdom, which was supposed to have strong ties with the Razequa Amamiya Kingdom, was due to the domestic situation in Airika Kingdom.
Airika Kingdom was one of the three largest land masses in the Eastern Continent. However, one-fifth of its land was covered by a mountain range in the North and a large forested area in the West. Those two terrains were danger zones with some of the most powerful monsters in the eastern continent. Therefore, both were not terrains that people could enter deep into. It was unthinkable for anyone to live there.
Because of these geographical conditions and the fact that they were located closest to each other on the eastern continent, they were strongly influenced by adventurers from the Central Continent, where stronger monsters were more likely to appear.
The military that the nation had was primarily active in people-to-people wars. Of course, the military might also go into battle with monsters when there was a lot of damage to the people.
Otherwise, it was basically adventurers who were dealing with monsters.
The Airika Kingdom, which was always at risk of serious damage from monsters, would not be unaware of the Crown Card’s status.
It was, after all, a general view, or a guide, of the approximate level of skill a person possessed.
Crown, where they could get the card could be obtained, had an unbelievably high survival rate for adventurers who were affiliated with them, which was unthinkable in the adventurers guilds, until now.
Make no mistake, it was not the success rate increasing that interested him, but rather the survival rate increasing that interested him.
In some countries, adventurers were considered disposable tools. But in the Airika Kingdom, where monster attacks were more frequent than in any other country, adventurers were a valuable asset.
Even if they failed to defeat a monster, the most important thing was that they come back alive and bring back important information.
With this information, they could send out higher-ranking adventurers, or send an army to the location if there were not enough adventurers.
With such circumstances, it was only natural that they would see the usefulness of Crown Cards.
When Crown Cards were first introduced to the world, there were attempts to steal their technology.
However, the answers from the national research institute for magical tools were all a complete failure. The technology was so thorough that any attempts to steal it would result in the destruction of all the data and technology.
The only technology they managed to analyze was for displaying text on cards, and they had no idea on how it gets the underlying status and how to print it on the cards.
Furthermore, an announcement from Crown made them have no choice but to back down on the analysis of the cards.
The status in the card, which was the main purpose of the Crown Card, was announced to have been created by a living god. In other words, it was as good as announcing that the Crown Cards were a sacred object.
There had been some research on the sacred objects inherited from the past.
However, that aside, the Crown Card itself was made with incomprehensible technology and was something that could not be normally analyzed.
In this situation, it was inevitable that the analysis team would answer, ‘It is impossible to analyze’, at least with the technology they had right now.
As a result, the Airika Kingdom had no choice but to wait and see if Crown Cards would become available to adventurers in the Central Continent.
This situation changed when they heard of the establishment of a Crown branch in the Kingdom of Summit on the southern continent.
The establishment of the Crown branch in the Kingdom of Summit sparked a discussion about the possibility of establishing a Crown branch into the Airika Kingdom.
At the same time, there was talk that Crown people were working to have their branch accepted not only in the Kingdom of Summit but in other countries as well.
Such moves led to a full-fledged movement within the country to prepare the conditions for a bid for Crown to establish a branch here.
The opposition within the country was minimal, with only Flores Kingdom, which had close ties to Razequa Amamiya, being the last to hold out any support for this move.
King Osshian did not write that question to King Maxim out of the blue. He was intent on asking about the progress of acceptance in the Flores Kingdom.
Nevertheless, the Flores Kingdom was not moving fast enough. They took so long that Airika Kingdom had decided to stop trying to ‘save face’ with the Flores Kingdom and move to set up a Crown branch.
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One of his aides, who saw the King sigh, guessed what it was about and called out to him.
“As expected, it seems they can’t come to a consensus to establish a branch there?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
King Osshian replied rather quickly to his aid. He was aware that the situation in his country was unique compared to other countries in the East Continent. It was not only true for the King, but for all the high-ranking officials.
The damage caused by monsters in the Airika Kingdom was just that great. It was a natural role for a politician to take whatever measures they could to mitigate the disasters caused by monsters.
In regards to such matters, there may be some who oppose the measures for their own benefit, but most were aware of the damage caused by monsters.
It was such a massive issue that they wanted to invite the Crown branch as soon as possible, with almost no one being against it.
The King’s aide looked at him with a melancholy expression on his face.
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you think? We will make an offer as soon as possible. We’ll decide at the next meeting.”
“Because you cannot stop it?”
“What else can we do?We have a great need for it. Our country needs them. We don’t need to care about the noise.”
In this case, the noise indicates that there is a backlash coming from the Flores Kingdom.
“It looks like things will be noisy for a while.”
The aide said as he let out a sigh.
“I think there will be more noise in other topics, especially about how Transfer Gate is being treated. It might make it look like we don’t have pride as a country.”
The aide chuckled at King Osshian’s words.
“Well, if that’s the extent of it, it’s easy to understand.”
“That’s right. Besides, what’s ahead is probably more important than that.”
“Yes.”
They wished to have a Crown branch set up in their kingdom.
The most important thing for them right now was to produce tangible results in terms of the survival rate of adventurers. This would be the best way to make a statement to the other countries in the vicinity.
It made no sense for the state or Crown to intervene and restrict the activities of adventurers. It was important for the adventurers themselves to know their own strengths and survive.
King Osshian’s words were filled with such thoughts.