TL/Editor: raei
Schedule: 5/week
Illustrations: Posted in discord
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There's an old saying that goes like this:
Why do so many air accidents happen in the Bermuda Triangle?
Simply because a lot of planes fly through there.
There are plenty of similar examples. Only a tiny fraction of Muslims act extremely, but their sheer numbers turn that 'minority' into millions of terrorists. China may have many heroes and kind neighbors worthy of being called 'big brother', but the rest number in the billions, earning the country that reputation.
Empires have far more people and land than kingdoms, so all sorts of strange things happen there. Just as incidents and accidents in China and India vastly outnumber those in Korea.
"...You bought this as a bug repellent potion?""Y-yes..."
I opened the water container and brought it to my nose. A familiar scent invaded my nostrils. Though I'd only smelled it a few times when I was with the Rebecca Mercenaries, the sweetness was so distinct it remained vivid in my memory.
So this F-rank mercenary couldn't tell the difference between insect repellent and hunting bait. Made sense. I didn't know if the general store knew what they were selling, but it was even more surprising that a mercenary couldn't recognize this sickeningly sweet smell.
Was this just some dimwitted newbie and not one of the Demon King's pawns advancing the main story?
"Um, Sir Roland?"
"...What is it now?"
As the journey continued, I felt like I'd instantly become biased against the Empire.
I wondered if the Heroes Chronicle developers had set the average intelligence of imperial citizens lower than that of the kingdom when creating their A.I. Like, if the average human IQ was set at 100, maybe the empire's average was 80.
"Uh, for some reason, there's a rockslide blocking the road. It's a narrow path, and there are lots of shrubs on both sides, so it's hard to go around..."
No, since morality was also intelligence, the empire's average might be more like 75...
Third day: a mercenary who drank while on night watch and couldn't get up until morning.
Fourth day: a staff member who miscalculated rations after a rock bear ate some, leading to improper distribution.
And on the fifth day, today, we found that a well-maintained highway was blocked by rockslides and landslides.
This wasn't a dirt path naturally formed by frequent foot traffic. This was a highway, a perfect road built by the empire mobilizing its army, compacting the ground, layering clay, and paving it with precisely fitted stones - now shattered and blocked by mere rockslides.
'The empire is the setting sun, the kingdom the rising sun. That kind of feeling?'
"I'll make sure to secure the deposit for you this time too. Is there any chance you could break or clear away that boulder...? Hehe."
I thought "as expected of the empire" when I saw they'd built a perfect road for carriages, but seeing how poorly maintained it was after less than half a day's travel made me think "as expected of the empire..." in a different way.
The fact that such solid roads extended to rural territories in the southernmost part of the empire suggested that the empire once had a much more impressive golden age than the kingdom. And if that road was now in shambles with weeds growing from the rubble that destroyed it, it meant things had gone to sh*t just as much.
There was no way a rural lord built such a massive road; the imperial royal family must have led the overall construction. To leave it so neglected... The empire must have been in quite a mess - I thought as I pulled out my warhammer.
"Wow, is the empire this bad? I didn't know since I only traveled by gate between magic towers."
-Poor teacher doing group projects alone ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-Wow how does something happen every single day as expected of the protagonist
-Ah lol if there was one Han Se-ah here she'd clear the path right away kkkkk
-The road-paving bastards are lounging in magic towers so the teacher has to suffer
-Hey at this rate won't it take over a week for Teacher to get there?
Han Se-ah's camera tirelessly filmed me. Abusing her player privileges, she'd been flitting between magic towers using prototype gates, hovering around me.
While some poor sap had become a babysitter for F-rank mercenaries, cleaning up their messes and even sharing mercenary life hacks out of frustration, Han Se-ah got to lounge in magic towers, gorging on chicken and beer just because she was a player.
Honestly, I was used to F-rank mercenaries, but I couldn't stand the awful food.
An S-rank warrior who'd drive off bandits, fend off monsters, and clear blocked roads. What ballsy bastard would dare stop such an S-rank warrior from cooking his own meals because the food tasted like sh*t?
The problem was that the only food ingredients were jerky, grain flour, and biscuits. Even if you brought in a restaurant chef instead of an ordinary military veteran college student, it'd be impossible to make a delicious meal using only jerky, biscuits, and a pot.
"By the way, why is the empire's food like this? Is it because it's a rural merchant group? There's not even ingredients to make soup. Without butter or milk, isn't that just flour paste instead of soup?"
-Fact: Poor people in the kingdom also just eat boiled flour
-Oatmeal is just roughly boiled grain flour Han Se-ah ya
-lol The bourgeois b*tch sucks gold coins from teacher's pockets so she doesn't know kingdom common sense?
-Why are these f*ckers all testifying so realistically as if they're logged into the game experiencing the life of fantasy peasants?
At this point, I just wanted to arrive in the city quickly.
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Raei Translations
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The fortunate thing was that the Grand Temple wasn't located in the center of the empire.
This game was made fairly realistically, so how could the capital and Grand Temple be in the exact center of the country? In the end, I heard from the female staff members who pounced on me in the dead of night that the capital was slightly north of the center, while the Grand Temple was in the south.
Eating this slop - to be precise, coarse flour porridge seasoned with salty jerky bits and biscuits - I felt my temper souring, but it was truly fortunate. Of course, the land was so vast that it still took just over a week to move from the southernmost part to the south, but still.
Thinking this, I walked through the well-ordered streets of the city.
"Come, come! New goods have arrived! They're cheapest right now!"
"Hand mirrors from the south! Hairpins even people from the kingdom love!"
"What? You want skewers on credit?!"
A city of the empire built around the Grand Temple, not a rural town in the far south. As expected of an empire that paved carriage roads all the way to the countryside, the city interior was also very clean.
How should I put it? Comparing it to the kingdom, I'd say the baseline was higher. It wasn't that they had amazing technology or that all citizens lived in wealth. The scene of self-employed workers shouting and beggars pleading for a single skewer was common in the kingdom too.
But when I turned my gaze to the alleys, 'baseline' seemed the best analogy my brain could come up with. While back alleys in adventurers' cities were full of dirt and filth, even the back alleys in the Grand Temple's city were paved with fitted stones.
It was like the difference between a slum and a poor hillside neighborhood.
"Excuse me, are you Sir Roland?"
"...Yes, that's me."
As I was gawking at the city like a country bumpkin from the kingdom, slowly approaching the temple, someone suddenly addressed me.
A monk from the temple, neatly dressed in black priestly robes.
...Black?
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