"Jack, political strife is a mud fight in the end."
"I've got no interest in noble games."
Once, the imperial princess, an honorary member of the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company, offered me advice.
It was a subject that didn't much interest me.
But the princess, who knew me as well as my comrades did, saw through me and went on regardless.
"You truly do not wish to hear it. Still, Jack, you must take an interest now. From here on, those you deal with will be kings, or emperors."
Our company's weight class had grown so large that our employers were now on the scale of nations.
Which meant I had to learn even this tongue-play of the political arena.
"Is not all your strength something you built yourselves? On this front you have no preparation whatsoever."
"This front?"
"I mean you have no strength to withstand the venom of those who built their standing in politics with nothing but their tongues."
"I am the preparation."
In truth, in the company's earliest days I was an endlessly ignorant bastard.
But through my comrades, and through meeting the princess, my field of view grew broader and richer.
"Yes, Jack, you were always prepared. Still, while you remain in the Empire it would be well to learn by watching."
The princess's advice in those days was truly timely.
A time when not only I but Mel and Veil as well had no experience of such political strife.
And Yuria, the Mage Corps Commander, a woman mad for research with no social skills whatsoever, went without saying.
"Hm. The war's over, and preparing for a war of tongues is the imperial life? Not very pleasant."
"Haha! Such is the life of those who inherit."
Noble blood is inherited.
My Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company's renown, by contrast, was made through proof in war.
And the ground we stood on differed from that of the noble hereditary lords.
It was mostly blood-reeking battlefields, far removed from politics.
To me, the Empire felt like another world entirely.
"Your Highness, Princess Yupelia. Why do you keep the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company in the imperial capital? The other Highnesses have voiced concern that there may be some seditious intent......."
When a war ends one ought to rejoice, yet they immediately began knifing with their tongues.
"The Branded Demon Mel, her very existence disturbs the Pope. And is there not also Commander Jack, who tore a divine beast apart? At this rate the Papal Court may apply pressure directly!"
And when I saw the faction that seized on our company as a pretext to frame the princess, I could only slap my forehead in admiration.......
And no wonder—.
"The monsters made by the traitors of the Imperial Mage Tower, it was the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company that dealt with them. Are they not honored guests of our Empire? How dare you speak such nonsense!!!"
The mage tower had summoned monsters from another world, and traitors arose in the process of taming them.
The traitors led the monsters and laid waste to an entire county.
It was the forerunner of the 'monsters' later used as strategic weapons in the Empire after the Emperor changed.
In any case, our company cleaned up the shit the Empire had laid.
"They finished the job and received their payment. So why is that perilous mercenary company still being kept in the imperial capital!!!"
It was true the company had gained enormous compensation for it, but naturally it was no losing bargain for the Empire either.
That was plainly so, and yet no sooner was the job done than the Emperor's children colluded, seized on our company as a pretext, and began framing the Second Imperial Princess.
"The political pressure borne by the imperial house grows beyond words!"
Beginning with this about the Pope and that about the Saintess, it reached the point where every imperial save the princess gathered to plead with the Emperor.
"Your Majesty, we beg you, drive out the seditious force within the capital!!!"
Their justification was my image as a violent warmonger and the brand Mel bore.
Fortunately, Veil's identity as the ringleader of the dynastic revolution went undiscovered, so it stopped there.
"Look, Jack. This is what nobles and imperials are."
I couldn't help but concede the princess's point.
It was the very moment the common people had begun to praise me, and yet to the owners of the nation I was this terrifying a being.
Of course, back then I was merely struck dumb by the absurdity.
'It felt like being struck on the back of the head the instant the commission was done.'
The heart of political strife is waging war without drawing a blade.
Its purpose is to drag the other party into the mud.
Mel knew all of this well too, and for us, who had even regressed, the political arena of a petty kingdom like this posed no problem at all.
And so—.
"Duke Robert, did you dare call me a heretic?"
With an elegant bearing, Mel looked at the duke standing at the side of the audience chamber.
The smile drawn on her lips.
Her heterochromatic eyes shining keenly.
And the graceful figure that stepped forward, the corners of her mouth flaunting a subtle curve.
In the faultless image of a noble, Mel came to a stop right before the duke's nose.
And said:
"The man Your Excellency claims was an inquisitor was a follower of an evil god."
The mud that is an evil god.
Before nobles, no word could be as effective, save invoking a king or an emperor.
The surroundings grew noisy and the duke's face flushed crimson.
"H-How dare you utter such rubbish!!!"
Of course, this wasn't something we'd done without thinking.
On the way from the baron's castle to here, we'd prepared a great deal.
The road to the royal castle could be called the only well-opened highway in a petty kingdom like this, but the distance was still considerable, so we had ample time to confer.
And this was only the beginning.
***
WINK—.
Mel gave the prearranged signal.
She wasn't looking at me, but my monstrous strength's detection registered that she'd closed one eye.
'Left.'
Mel had shut her red eyeball.
It meant this whole setting was a board already arranged.
A place where not a single ally could be found.
In that case the board itself must be shaken.
The easiest way is to present a new enemy.
"T-That man plainly bore the token of the Church of Latia, which serves the Goddess of Justice! To call him a follower of an evil god is preposterous—."
The duke, who had been driving Mel toward heresy, flared up when the words evil god suddenly leapt out at him.
But his words could not continue.
Because the king, who had been watching everything from the throne, stepped in himself.
"Mel von Kranel."
The king called Mel by name.
That he deliberately attached the 'von' was a question: could she answer for this as a margrave of this country?
"Can you answer for the words you have just spoken?"
Sufficient weight hung in the king's voice.
Not so much the weight of the throne as the weight of the notoriety that came with followers of evil gods.
Because the appearance of an evil god's follower was a graver problem than the inquisitor's whereabouts.
"I, Mel von Kranel, as the lawful margrave of the Kingdom of Alton, can answer for every word."
Mel demurely folded her hands and bowed her head to the king.
Then she said that she knew the hidden hand that had brought that evil god's follower into the kingdom.
"A noble who cooperates closely with a follower of an evil god is at this moment inside this audience chamber."
Haaah—.
Groans came from nobles of every stripe.
Offering up an entire city as a sacrifice, or summoning demons through human sacrifice and driving countless people to their deaths, and so on.
The followers of evil gods were so notorious that this atmosphere arose.
"I can present evidence as well."
Mel spoke as she looked around at the nobles gathered in the chamber, and those her gaze touched turned their heads away of their own accord.
"Speak—."
The king demanded the truth.
He harbored no doubt.
Possible because she had said she would take responsibility on a noble's honor.
"Jack, come forward."
Mel called me as a witness.
"Your Majesty, this is my knight commander. He is also the monstrously strong knight my father arranged for me long ago."
From our standpoint it was an evil god's church, but the inquisitor Mel killed belonged to what the continent knew as one of the Three Great Churches.
And we had a countermeasure to smooth that death over.
"Jack was raised in the arms of a cleric who served a god. The proof of it is on its way to this kingdom now."
Mel recited my background.
My father had only ever pictured me sweeping through wars; he never expected to see me active in political strife like this.
Father ought to see his son all grown up, shouldn't he?
'Thomson will manage it well enough.'
At present Thomson had arrived at the margraviate and was heading for the royal castle with my father's coffin.
The golden coffin in which my father was laid was the so-called 'Cleric's Coffin,' an object containing divine power.
The moment it arrived, my identity would be proven beyond doubt.
"Your Majesty!!! Would you believe the words of a man who sprang up from nowhere? I have spent my whole life for the kingdom—."
Of course, the duke did not merely stand and watch.
Not that it did much good.
"Jack was born and raised in the Panier Barony, and he swept the monsters from the kingdom's south alongside the late Margrave Kranel."
That was my actual record in this era.
There were many means of proving it, and records even remained of my having served as a mercenary for the baronial house where my mine was.
Mel presented all of this evidence and stopped the duke's mouth.
'The inquisitor's death isn't a problem anymore.'
At this point Mel pushed me to the fore.
"Your Majesty, all these suspicions can be proven at once, so if you would grant my knight commander Jack leave to speak......."
Mel lowered her head slightly and trailed off like a noble young lady.
It was a fairly absurd sight, but—.
'To think that works.'
The king nodded and put a question to me.
"Is it true that the inquisitor said to have been sent by the church of the Goddess of Justice in fact belonged to an evil god's church?"
Of course, if the king verified it with the church directly, it might become rather troublesome.
Because the church of the Goddess of Justice would never admit to being an evil god's.
"It is."
But in a small petty kingdom, how long would confirming such a thing take?
This was the continent's outskirts, without even a proper parish.
By the time the confirmation came back, every problem in this country would already be settled.
"I will show you directly the culprit who disguised a follower of an evil god as an inquisitor and planted corruption in this country."
Up to now it had been no more than a mud fight.
But the political strife I learned in the Empire was no mere mud.
Splashing shit-water was the true dogfight of the political arena.
The political arena is where a perfectly sound noble is made a traitor and a prince of outstanding royal caliber is branded an unfilial degenerate and executed.
Here and now, I thought I might pin a charge of treason on the duke.
And so—.
"Forgive my discourtesy."
I burst the monstrous strength gathered in both legs and shot behind Duke What's-His-Name.
I saw the reactions around me lag a step behind my afterimage-trailing movement.
Even the duke, called this kingdom's strongest, could not follow my movement and reacted half a step late.
But my target wasn't the duke.
BOOM—!!!
The being that responded to my movement.
Standing stalwartly behind the duke.
A giant frame whose presence had been faint, there and yet not there.
"Hah! Since when was there such a knight?"
"......I-Indeed—."
A two-meter-tall knight whose presence had suddenly surfaced.
Clad in full plate, he stood out all the more.
"This man is the evidence."
His identity: the lowest-ranked of the Ten Great Knights of the Continent—the Stalwart Knight.
But if he were introduced as one of the Ten Great Knights, his renown would loom too large in a petty kingdom like this.
"He is a knight created by a wicked necromancer."
A knight of Siegfried, the Magic King.
The Magic King, famous as master of the Floating Castle, likewise carried too great a renown.
Once a powerhouse walking the path of magic, later revealed as the hidden hand cultivating undead.
So calling him a wicked necromancer was no exaggeration.
"......."
Pitch-black eyes visible through the helm looked at me.
His hand had caught my fist.
I slipped my hand free and spoke.
"The stench of rotting corpses hangs thick on you."
This wasn't merely a line thrown out to splash shit-water.
It seemed the Magic King had already been rotten by this point.
Because the reek of a corpse filled the gaps in the Stalwart Knight's dented plate.
***
'......Madness.'
Luke, commander of the Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company.
Present in the audience chamber as the duke's strategist, he had witnessed an unbelievable sight.
Something seen yet impossible to believe.
It was like one of the continent's Mysteries.
'The Stalwart Knight barely reacted.'
Two variables had arisen in this country.
One was Margrave Mel Kranel.
The other was the monstrously strong knight called Jack.
At first he had thought Mel Kranel the greatest variable, but seeing what had just unfolded, he changed his mind.
'There is no way a margrave of some piddling kingdom arranged a monster like that.'
He had struck a surprise blow at a speed most powerhouses could not even perceive.
And only the Stalwart Knight had reacted and blocked that attack.
And what was the result?
'The Stalwart Knight can bolt on his own, but....... this has become a headache.'
The king himself ordered a recess and declared he would decide their treatment after a council.
The royal castle guard swarmed in and took the Stalwart Knight away, and the duke, flustered by the ridiculous situation, could not think of a response.
In that gap, Luke intended to size up the monstrously strong mercenary himself.
"Your Excellency, may I step away for a moment?"
"They are no ordinary sort. Be careful."
"Don't you worry~."
Luke, commander of the Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company.
Wearing a shameless smile, he approached the drawing room where Jack was.
"You're built like a mountain, huh? What country are you from?"
The man called Jack was larger than the Stalwart Knight in full plate.
And for all that, his face looked strangely young.
"Don't pester me. Get lost."
And he was impudent.
'He's a powerhouse who's earned the right, though—.'
The Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company had grown to mid-tier on worldly cunning and quick wits alone.
The lead role in that belonged unquestionably to Luke, its commander.
And so from that one short line and the room's atmosphere he drew a great deal of information about the man Jack.
"Too rough-hewn for a knight. Feels close to a mercenary, but that's not it either. The temperament of the bastards up north, and—."
Luke rambled as he pleased.
Opening his mouth as though sounding him out.
But.......
"Kuk!!! W-What is this—."
Jack had seized Luke's throat and hauled him off the ground.
Closing at a speed hard to perceive, in an instant.
The commander of a mid-tier mercenary company is stronger than most knights.
But such a standard did not apply here.
"Urgh....... You think you'll get away with—."
Luke thrashed and blurted something out.
Jack ignored all of it and spoke.
"It'd be no problem at all if you just died."