“Grand Duke, are you the one who spread that rumor?”
“No, it’s not me. Your father is the one who did it.”
Huh!? The rumor was Father’s doing!? Why?
“Well, some flies will without a doubt start to gather around you, especially after your recent achievements in war.” (Seyfart)
“Not having a fiancee does mean you’re free, but at the same time in the noble community, not having a fiancee can also be seen as a weakness, after all.” (Falkenstein)
That was what the Prime Minister said. Honestly, it was still a mystery for me what someone like the Prime Minister was doing here, but anyway…
“It’s not like I don’t have a fiancee because I am picky.” (Welner)
“Regardless of your own reason or intention, people, especially the nobles, will still make use of the fact that you don’t have a fiancee.” (Falkenstein)
Mazell seemed to be in deep thought after the Prime Minister said that and the Grand Duke showed a somewhat proud expression. Was I… being used for Mazell’s noble training?
“Have you had any talk about taking a fiancee, Mazell-dono?” (Falkenstein)
“Fortunately, not yet.” (Mazell)
Of course not. Mazell was accompanied by the one and only second princess and the saintess, Laura. If anyone else wanted to offer an engagement to Mazell, they needed to have a pawn comparable to the second princess.
That meant… the church was selling a favor to the Bain Kingdom by having their saintess, Laura, accompanying Mazell… then… that would also mean…
“Sigh… Does that mean the reason the kingdom has me remain in the capital is also because the kingdom needs an insect repellant?” (Welner)
“That’s right. You’re sharp as always.” (Seyfart)
The Prime Minister also nodded, while Mazell was tilting his head in confusion. If possible, I didn’t want to talk about her with Mazell like this, but… I guess I had no choice.
“The church is aiming for Lily.” (Welner)
“To make her train as a priestess to help her brother, the hero. At least the logic is sound.” (Seyfart)
“But that’s just a pretext, isn’t it?” (Welner)
Honestly, don’t use Lily as an excuse!
Mazell finally opened his mouth. “It might be rude to my sister to say this, but to be honest, I don’t think my sister will become strong enough to accompany me even if she started training right now.”
“Accompanying you is just a pretext. What the church wants is to use Lily to bring you to their side.” (Welner)
After Mazell eventually defeated the demon king, which side Mazell belonged to, the church, the royal family, or others became important, but the church couldn’t use Laura to pull Mazell to their side because Laura was the member of the royal family.
In short, the church wanted to claim that ‘the demon king was defeated by the holy warrior!’, so they needed to pull Mazell to their side, but since they couldn’t use Laura for that, they wanted to use Lily.
“I feel… very unpleasant” (Mazell)
“I know what you’re trying to say.” (Welner)
In a way, it was rare to see Mazell with that kind of expression. Still, for the church to move with this kind of timing…
“Did something happen in the church?” (Welner)
“One of the church’s High Priests resigned because of health reasons.” (Falkenstein)
When I heard the Prime Minister’s reply, I let out a sigh inside.
In this world, the highest ranked priest in the church was the Supreme Priest and below him were seven High Priests, then Cardinal, Priest, Templar, and lastly the Apprentice. I think you could become the Church Head as a Cardinal…. But since I wasn’t that interested in the priesthood system here, I didn’t know the details.
If something happened to the Supreme Priest, the next Supreme Priest would be chosen from the High Priests, so it was an open secret that there was a constant battle between the Supreme Priest’s faction and the faction of the High Priests that didn’t get chosen as a Supreme Priest.
There was a time in the past where a Supreme Priest abruptly resigned only after two years and then a High Priest, who was not even a Supreme Priest candidate, was suddenly chosen to become the new Supreme Priest. There was definitely something going on behind the scene.
Even among High Priests, there was also fighting between different factions, especially between the faction of commoner High Priests who climbed the rank because of their talent and the faction of High Priests who came from influential noble families.
Since the religion in this world was a monotheistic religion, the power that a priest had was directly influenced by how much power the priest had in the church internally. But well, this religion system was kinda strange though.
Anyway, regardless of whether the resigned High Priest really gave up his post because of his health condition or not, the current problem was what kind of person the new High Priest would be.
If the new High Priest was a type of person who thought of the church first and foremost, then he would be satisfied with just pulling Mazell to the church’s side. But if the new High Priest was an ambitious person who wanted to become the next Supreme Priest… then he might aim for the position of the hero’s brother in law in order to garner support. Well, the other ambitious High Priests might also aim for this.
No, not only the High Priests. Anyone with ambitions would without a doubt try to get the position of the hero’s brother-in-law so they could get the acclaimed hero, Mazell, as their backer. Then, for some reason, the position of High Priest becomes empty in this kind of circumstance. Was everything really a coincidence?
In any case, now the church wanted both Mazell and Lily. Argh… stuff got complicated and my head hurt.
Then there was also the matter with Laura.
In the first place, one of the reasons I was sent to the Anheim was because I had gotten a tad bit too close to Laura in the eyes of the nobles who wanted Laura’s hand in marriage. For those nobles, Mazell was also a nuisance.
But on the other hand, Mazell was also a valuable asset. For the nobles, getting Mazell as your subordinate or in-law was definitely profitable. Hence, even the noble houses that had no interest in getting Laura’s hand in marriage, they should still want to form a good relationship with Mazell.
On the other hand, the church wanted to get Mazell on their side. One of the reasons for that was because they wanted to ‘share’ Mazell’s achievement of defeating the demon king in the future, but some members of the church might also think of getting Mazell to their side in order to retain the balance of power between the church and the royal family if one day Laura returned to the royal family.
Of course, there would definitely also be people in the church who didn’t want Mazell to join the church for various reasons.
Why must everything be this damned complicated?
For the time being, I didn’t have enough information, so I would stop my thoughts here.
“…So, are you Sirs planning to somehow solve this confusing mess?” (Welner)
“For now, no. Our current priority is defeating the demon king. As for this matter, it’s best if we can solve it all at once, but currently there is no workable solution.” (Seyfart)
“Our current plan is to maintain the current status-quo, and when the time is ripe, we will handle at least half of the matter. That is why we want to ask the Zeavert house to buy us some time.” (Falkenstein)
Buying some time, huh? It seemed like the situation was on a very fragile balance. Still, for things to become like this in this timing, I couldn’t help but suspect there was someone who was pulling the string.
Since it was the Prime Minister that spoke, there was no doubt it was also the country’s request and the country must have talked to Father before telling me all of these. So what was left was only my verbal agreement, huh.
“I understand. I will do my best.”
Although the situation had become really complicated, what I needed to do was still the same. One, I would handle anything that tried to get in the way of Mazell defeating the demon king. Two, I would prevent the destruction of the capital. I was willing to do anything to achieve these two things.
Since I had agreed to help the country, the country should not complain if I moved independently for these two things.
