Kanzaki Demon Lord, Retry! Volume 8

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7183-6312-0
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 8, 250 Seiten

Reihe: Demon Lord, Retry!

The Demon Lord and his party had little time to enjoy themselves in Euritheis. Scarcely have they defeated the Jack of All Trades before the Gorgon company approaches with an offer: twenty-one holy coins for Jack's head. The Demon Lord pursues Jack only to find him sitting on the throne half-dead, accompanied by the high-rank devil Utopia, leader of the Satanists.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kanzaki, Kurone

Weitere Mitwirkende

Iino, Makoto

Seacord, Adam

Leseproben

Changes and Decisions

——The village of Rabbi, Holylight.

Even with Holylight’s internal power struggle intensifying, the village remained incredibly peaceful. Each day in Rabbi was bustling with energy, and the mornings began early with the Imperial Morning Stretch. This practice had become public routine ever since Kondo had taken to broadcasting the accompanying music over a loudspeaker system throughout the village.

In the numerous plazas around Rabbi, villagers who had memorized the routine led groups of others. With a bonus of five bronze coins added to their daily salary for anyone leading the Stretch, this morning ritual had become a serious matter, serious enough to justify the ordeal of doing full-body activity right after getting out of bed. The Stretch had also proven greatly effective at its intended purpose of reducing accidents and injuries.

“Grah... I gotta stretch farther...! With better posture...!”

“Notice me, Grand Foreman!”

Five bronze coins were the equivalent of a mere five dollars, but this was no trivial amount to the residents of this world. Naturally, most everyone in the village took the Stretch very seriously.

The introduction of a morning routine was beginning to revolutionize the mindset of the day laborers in the village. Said mindset might have come easily to most, but these laborers—who had previously failed to hold down a job or save up so much as a single silver coin—had never understood the meaning of work ethic. They were now learning to make an honest living.

Tahara had implemented various schemes to alter the laborers’ worldview: the daily cash bonus, for example. The numerous foremen that oversaw each work site in Rabbi were instructed by Tahara to choose the best worker under them to receive a cash bonus of five bronze medallions. At the end of the work day, the chosen employees would step out of the crowd and receive their reward to great applause and envy from their fellow workers. Of course, this sparked the determination in all of Rabbi’s day laborers to remain in the village to perform the next day’s labor as well, with them performing noticeably better since the introduction of the bonuses.

Food stands that lined the Common District were bursting with food, with the smell of cooked chicken, pork, and vegetables filling the air above the morning rush. Laborers were wolfing down their breakfasts, trading reviews of today’s food stands and comparing them to yesterday’s. Each and every stall earned its place in the village by maintaining its popularity.

Cake, the princess of a fallen kingdom, watched the commotion of the village from afar, completely astounded. she thought. It was cold hard cash that drew people here and motivated them to work to the best of their abilities. This deliberate reframing of the villagers’ outlook would give rise to an incredible force once it became normalized that hard work actually paid off. Currently, any amount of hard work in Holylight—and most other nations, for that matter—simply lined the pockets of nobles.

sane As a former royal, Cake saw the danger in empowering the commoners—a viewpoint backed up by numerous stories of revolution in history. Of course, she meant the Demon Lord. Much to his outrage, the Demon Lord would not have had any retort to this assessment, since Cake was working for Yu, someone demonic beyond description.

Cake was currently taking an elderly noble by the hand towards the Healing Forest.

“You’re always so kind, little Cake...”

“Oh, it’s the least I can do!” she said in a very genuine-sounding, almost angelic manner. Under the surface, however, she was silently groaning at the crowd forming nearby, where a Firebrand was handing out packets of salt, much to Cake’s amazement.

“Today’s the day, Tron! I’m getting that bonus.”

“Here’s your ration. Go away, please.”

“Ooh, sweet salty!”

“Gross.”

Handing out salt to every laborer morning after morning made for a bizarre ritual to behold. This went way beyond simply taking care of employees, and the involvement of a Firebrand only made matters more staggering. If a member of the Tzardom of Light were to witness such a scene, they might have fainted from the shock.

“Tron, I need some salt too!”

“I want to taste your salt, Tron!”

“I want to taste it all over my face!”

“Your thoughts are impure,” Tron replied. “Guilty.”

Despite the ridiculous nature of the commotion, Cake was shaken by the fact that the village had perfectly accepted a Firebrand as one of their own. Cake’s eyes narrowed upon finding the humans who were previously enslaved in Hellion territory now happily chowing down on their breakfasts. Their initial fear of the village was nowhere to be found, mostly thanks to their wages being paid out daily. Among them sat Hummer, hurriedly taking bites from his loaf of bread. All prisoners rescued from Hellion territory were to receive rations of rye, lentils, chicken stew, eggs, and ale until they could settle down in the village.

Now, the usual bitchlet butted in. “How fast are you eating that bread, Hobo?! If you only had the same appetite to get some work done!”

“S-Sorry! I’m too big, so I—”

“You don’t do anything to deserve this hard-boiled egg. Mine!”

“I was saving that!”

“Huh? I just took a bite out of it. You want it back? You want my scraps, you pathetic, jobless bum? Pervert! Fap monster! Blank resume!”

Hummer endured her degradation (as always) while his fellow workers watched with mixed emotions. Bitchlet or not, the girl at least had stellar looks, and she always followed Hummer like a shadow.

Cake seized an opportunity to pour gasoline onto the fire. “Mister Hummer! I hope you have a wonderful day! I’ll always be cheering you on!” she called with a perfectly innocent smile. Immediately, the men shot daggers at Hummer with their eyes, bewildered that a guy like him was receiving so much attention from the girls. Hummer began apologizing, completely forgetting his breakfast.

Cackling inside, Cake turned towards the ever-changing village. Gendered temporary housing had been built outside of the village, where all refugees could find shelter. While they slept in one large space without privacy, it was still heaven compared to the Hellion slave market.

On her way to the Healing Forest, she glimpsed another crowd out of the corner of her eye, in which Aku, Kyon, and Momo were selling something.

“Get your carrot bread here!” A highly nutritious bread that used plenty of Rabbi’s highly treasured carrots. If such a thing were to be sold anywhere else in the world, only the wealthiest of nobles could afford it. In the village, however, even the workers could afford a slice for breakfast. As one of the most valuable commodities on the continent, Tahara had strictly regulated the prices of carrots the village. Inside the village perimeter, however, Tahara allowed the Bunnies to sell them as they saw fit. At the same time, he was ready to fully leverage their monopoly over this product as a bargaining chip once Holylight’s civil unrest calmed down.

“Start your day with a little carrot, hoppity!”

“Buy it, hippity. Eat it, hippity. Give us your money, hippity.”

“I want one!”

“Me too! Hey, don’t push me!”

“I’ll buy two if you throw in a smile!”

“The outfits on those Bunnies are enough to wake you right up...!”

Carrot bread slices were practically flying out of the girls’ hands despite the steep price of a bronze medallion per slice. Most of the customers just wanted to get a taste of a carrot, something which most commoners would never experience in their lives.

Watching the bread sell out, as it always did, Cake smoldered behind her pasted-on smile. Human, Firebrand, slave, refugee, demi-human, or orphan... Everyone lived their lives to the fullest in this village, which was a reality Cake found difficult to accept. She doubted that any king would have ever managed to rule such a chaotic melting pot.

Having successfully guided the old noble to the forest, Cake hastily made her way to her office. She walked past the long line that had formed outside of the Field Hospital and situated herself in one of the exam rooms, where she quickly diagnosed patient after patient. Cake had memorized the medicine in the cabinets here in no time: painkillers, ointments, antiseptics, eye drops, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, antacids, and even vitamin supplements, prescribing them per Yu’s instruction. Her background of caring for the slaves in Hellion territory helped her absorb medical knowledge like a sponge.

“I-I don’t believe it... I’ve had that back pain for years, and it just took a little piece of fabric...”

“I’m going to prescribe another pain patch,...