Ch.7272. Free City of Lachburg (1)

About three hours after parting with the Holy Army of the War God Chronima.

“…We’ve finally arrived.”

“Indeed, it was a long journey even for a prophet……”

At the end of that long and distant journey, the Tarasque carrying us finally reached the border between the Frankish Kingdom and the Holy Empire—right in front of the Lien River, a naturally formed boundary.

The Lien River, a natural border separating the two nations, was about 400 meters wide. Thanks to its size, it harbored numerous aquatic beasts and monsters, making it essentially a no-man’s land.

As someone familiar with the K-border, constantly manned by soldiers and lined with barbed wire to prevent unauthorized crossings, I felt somewhat uncomfortable seeing a border left virtually unattended like this.

But originally, borders in this era were never as clearly defined as in modern times.

In this world, borders were only strictly observed when there was a clear demarcation line like the Lien River. Most border regions operated quite loosely.

While nominally human territory, there were otherworld pockets scattered throughout where humans couldn’t exert actual influence. Additionally, with nations generally lacking administrative capacity, control over frontier regions was inevitably weak.

Perhaps if the border ran through arable farmland it would be different, but in the Western Continent, still overflowing with unexplored territories, the concept of borders hadn’t fully taken root.

To put it bluntly, more than half of the Frankish Kingdom’s territory remained unexplored by humans, and even in developed areas, the danger increased dramatically as one moved toward the outskirts.

Anyway, thanks to this vague concept of borders, crossing a boundary with no soldiers or even border guards stationed was an extremely simple matter.

The amphibious mobile fortress, Tarasque, crossed the Lien River with remarkable ease, setting foot on the opposite side—the territory of the Holy Empire.

“…The prophet is curious. What’s wrong, Gregory? Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s just my first time going abroad. It feels a bit strange.”

I felt a mix of complex and novel emotions at leaving the Frankish Kingdom for the first time, but Sophia, for whom the concepts of domestic and foreign were already blurry, didn’t seem particularly impressed.

“…Is that so?”

“Yes. The Frankish Kingdom and the Holy Empire must be different in many ways.”

Judging by how she seemed to wonder if she might be misunderstanding something, it was clear that I, with memories of my past life, was showing an unusually strong reaction.

Anyway, after crossing the border, we first recalled the Tarasque into the demon essence storage container to avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings during our entry.

Approaching their territory while dragging a mobile otherworld carrying a fairy army would be seen as nothing short of a blatant provocation, no matter how one tried to explain or justify it.

After completing our preparations to enter the country.

“Robo, Astra. Let’s go.”

[Yes!]

[Okay!]

The two of us summoned our swift animal friends, Astra and Robo, then mounted them and headed toward the nearest city in the Empire.

※ ※ ※

The Frankish Kingdom, where I’ve lived for 16 years, is a feudal kingdom. According to feudal contracts, the components of society form a pyramid structure.

At the bottom of the kingdom’s social structure are the serfs, directly above them are the lords of relatively small domains, above these lords are the high lords, and at the very top of the entire system sits the king of the Frankish Kingdom.

Of course, this pyramid structure is merely the social structure when viewed from a flat perspective. In reality, the social structure of the Frankish Kingdom maintained through the feudal system is extremely complex.

Even the high lords and the king above the lords have their own domains and serfs bound to those domains. When you add freemen not bound to specific domains and certain cities granted self-governance rights, this feudal structure becomes incredibly complicated.

Lord A might be Lord B’s vassal, while Lord B also serves as the lord of Domain C, and since Domain C was originally under Lord A’s vassalage before coming under Lord B’s ownership, they end up being each other’s vassals—and that’s a relatively simple case.

The lord of Domains X and Y might merge territories with the lord of Domain Z through marriage, but then inheritance issues arise, causing the child who inherits Domain Z to somehow also inherit Domain Y, leading the lord of Domain X to become disgruntled and declare a domain war…

This is manageable only because neighboring countries don’t maintain feudal systems; otherwise, we might see mind-boggling cases like dual vassalage to Countries F and G.

In contrast, the Holy Empire maintains an even simpler structure.

The Empire is essentially a union of nine elector states maintained through an elective monarchy.

The nine elector states, governed by electors who hold the right to vote for and be elected as the Holy Emperor, consist of two components: directly ruled territories governed by the electors and their officials, and “free cities.”

The free cities of the Holy Empire are special cities whose autonomy is recognized by the emperor or electors. Based on their economic power, they establish their own unique governance systems.

Communes—that is, self-governing councils and mayoral elections—form their basic political system, and they typically swear allegiance to the electors, bearing the burden of taxes and military service.

Among these free cities, those of particularly large scale or excellent location possess such powerful influence that they recognize no authority above them except the emperor…

The free city of “Lachburg,” located in the border region between the two countries, was one such large-scale free city.

“…Indeed, even to the prophet’s eyes, it feels different from the kingdom.”

“That’s right, the Empire is more expansive.”

As Sophia said, the free city of Lachburg strongly gave the impression of a Holy Empire city infused with the atmosphere of the Frankish Kingdom.

The architectural style was distinctly this world’s unique form—a mix of Gothic and Renaissance with Baroque decorations added—and the exotic street atmosphere with its distinctive character was enough to surprise Sophia.

Especially noteworthy were the buildings painted in all sorts of colors, suggesting dyes were quite readily available, giving the city a quaint, clustered feeling.

Moreover, the people wandering the city were incredibly diverse.

Unlike the kingdom, where the population was predominantly human except for some elves and half-elves in coastal regions, about 10-20% of the people visible on the Empire’s streets were non-human.

Halflings, with their small stature averaging about 1 meter in height, possessed courage and boldness that overcame their physical limitations. The halflings visible on the streets appeared as merchants, minstrels, adventurers (scouts), and wanderers.

Also catching the eye were dwarves, the born blacksmith race, small (140cm) but sturdy and robust. Most ran shops (blacksmiths) in the city, while some wandered the streets equipped as adventurers.

In addition, though fewer than the above two races, beastkin and elves were also visible on the streets. Sophia, in particular, revealed her bewilderment upon seeing “this race.”

[Oh, ogres? There are ogres in the city…?]

For someone from the Frankish Kingdom, where ogres were merely forest-dwelling monsters who ate humans, seeing them properly dressed and mingling with humans in the city must have been jarring.

While this might be difficult for a Frankish Kingdom person like Sophia to adapt to, I, having learned about “common knowledge” from my mother, could identify what these ogres actually were.

They were city ogres—a subspecies of giants who had shrunk to about 3 meters tall while adapting to the urban environment, yet still possessed formidable physical capabilities classified as intermediate at the racial level.

Moreover, not only had their once-ferocious temperament and attitude been reasonably corrected, but even their endless appetite had become somewhat controllable—truly a miracle of nature.

[To think such ogres existed in this world…]

“Well, the world is vast after all.”

So while I conveyed several facts about these city ogres to Sophia, I slowly moved forward, intending to find the adventurer’s guild branch located in the free city.

But then…

—DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG!!!

Suddenly, bell sounds began to ring throughout the city from the temple bell tower.

“…Sophia!”

“Yes, Gregory!”

Although we were first-time visitors to this city, those rapidly ringing bells undoubtedly signaled some kind of emergency situation in the city.

Therefore, we decided to observe the situation from a relatively secluded spot to determine whether to get involved…

“”…?””

However, we couldn’t hide our surprise at the unexpected reaction of the city’s citizens.