Ch.939Hashar-Style Problem Solving

======[ Haschal ]======

Imprisoning a dragon in the empty space left by freeing the unicorn wasn’t particularly difficult.

It would have been impossible under normal circumstances.

The Ring of Returning Seal was originally a sacred object created to imprison ego beasts—creatures known as spiritual beings. It wasn’t a tool designed to contain dragons.

However, Kudsedra expressed willingness to be imprisoned within it and serve for fifteen hundred years to save his life. Thanks to this voluntary consent, he could be safely placed in the subspace.

The commotion caused by the three dragons that attacked Hestella was thus concluded.

Though to call it “concluded” was an understatement, given the sheer number of issues that needed cleaning up.

—-

Afterward, all kinds of work came flooding in like a tidal wave.

“Your Majesty, regarding the restoration of the destroyed walls and residences…”

First, there was the matter of repairing facilities destroyed during the battle with the dragons.

This was quite the headache.

Recently, we had spent enormous resources and funds building underground shelters in every city, leaving us short on resources to restore the capital.

“Report such matters to the regent, to the regent.”

So I just dumped it all on Eleonora. I had appointed a regent and prime minister to handle such affairs, so the two of them would manage somehow.

If money was truly lacking, we could always sell one of the dragon corpses.

Then the next day:

“Your Majesty! The Regent has collapsed! It appears to be from overwork…!”

Eleonora, who had been burdened with additional administrative duties, conveyed her silent protest to me through the very dignified method of fainting.

She was saying the workload was too much to handle. It was essentially a strike, with her health as collateral.

“Overwork? Hmm… Tell her to rest well today with some healing, then return to her duties tomorrow. Also, give her some tonic made from refined dragon blood.”

I felt sorry for her… but I couldn’t just give in. As regent of a nation, she naturally had to devote all her strength to serving the country.

Brosna and Ismenios, who had fearlessly targeted my country and my knights, met a miserable end.

Every bit of their bodies—every piece of flesh and drop of blood—was being used as compensation for their sins.

Scales, bones, and tendons were made into weapons, meat was roasted and distributed as rations.

And their blood, after magical refinement, was being used as a kind of elixir.

Unlike the dragon core, drinking it wouldn’t increase one’s mana, but it did have the effect of removing bodily waste and making the body healthier.

Even that would extend an ordinary person’s lifespan by about 10 years, and knights would see their physical abilities increase by roughly 20-30%. They would also be able to wield the power of Karma more precisely.

In life, they had been threatening disasters, but in death, they had become like giving trees that provided endlessly.

Who would have thought even their blood would be so useful? I almost regretted the blood that had soaked into the ground or evaporated in the heat.

It was also somewhat disappointing that it had no particular benefit for me.

After drinking nearly a liter to confirm, I found that dragon blood elixir had no effect on me whatsoever. Meaning I had no waste to remove.

I wasn’t sure if it was because I had a body that didn’t accumulate waste in the first place, or if my entire body had evolved through Astraea’s divinity.

Ah, by the way, the dragon core that only Ismenios possessed was split in half—I devoured one half and gave the other to Demian.

Initially, I had intended to give it to Ophelia, but she said she didn’t need it as she hadn’t fully digested the previous core yet.

So Demian and I split it between us.

Though I hadn’t seen him use it since obtaining the holy sword, Demian was a magic swordsman who had dabbled in magic, and I too wielded magical power through runes.

In fact, Demian, after swallowing half of the dragon core, grew even stronger than before. He converted his increased mana into Karma through the holy sword’s power.

I too experienced some improvement in my rune output.

Only “some” improvement after consuming half a dragon core. It made me uncomfortably wonder just how many people had been sacrificed to create these runes.

“…Ah, and tell her that if she doesn’t show improvement by tomorrow, I’ll visit her personally. That should be enough.”

I added one more comment to the administrator who was about to leave to deliver my message to Eleonora. It was advice for her.

If she didn’t return to work by tomorrow, she would see my face. Upon hearing this, she would surely jump up and return to her duties.

Harsh treatment, you say?

Not at all.

Health deterioration from overwork could be completely reversed with priests’ healing and dragon blood elixir. If she continued to lie in bed after that, it would simply be negligence of duty.

Even I was working this hard despite being so busy, so how could the regent be slacking off? Such behavior was unacceptable.

—-

“Lady Astika, the Church is asking what exactly ‘Gram’ is…”

The Church of Astraea was inquiring about Gram, the sword Demian possessed.

Thanks to that yellow lizard Ismenios who had been shouting at the top of his lungs, everyone in the country had long known about Demian’s holy sword.

Even if they didn’t know its exact identity, the fact that Gram was a sacred object powerful enough to drive three dragons into a frenzy was already widely known.

In truth, since the sword’s power hadn’t been fully released yet, it should be called Joyeuse rather than Gram…

But if I mentioned that fact, my country, the Empire, and even the Holy State would be turned upside down.

Already, there were cautious opinions suggesting that such a powerful sword-shaped sacred object might be Carlos the Great’s holy sword. I couldn’t personally step in to turn their suspicions into certainty.

If the fact that Carlos’s sword was in Demian’s hands reached the Empire, Leopold would send a pile of protest letters with not just his hair but even his eyebrows completely fallen out.

Asking why it was there, or rather, why he hadn’t been informed of this fact in the first place.

Hestella, being a new nation, was not yet economically self-sufficient and was filling holes in the treasury with subsidies from the Empire. It would be troublesome to antagonize the Empire over this issue.

And that wasn’t all. The Holy State and the Church wouldn’t stand by idly either.

Being the owner of Joyeuse meant being Carlos the Great’s legitimate successor and Elpinel’s chosen representative of God.

Even Lacy, the representative and saint of the Church of Elpinel, would have to defer to such a person. Yet this figure was serving under Astraea’s saint.

I wasn’t sure how Lacy would feel about this, but at the very least, the fundamentalists in her church would inevitably protest that this wasn’t right.

After all, the reason I had become independent as the ruler of a kingdom in the first place was because of concerns about whether it was appropriate for someone who was a church saint to remain a subject of the emperor.

The same logic could be applied to the relationship between Demian and me.

In my case, it was an issue between secular imperial authority and the saint’s ecclesiastical authority; this time it was between the Church of Elpinel and the Church of Astraea, but the essence was similar.

Of course, given how many times I had helped their church, unless someone had surrendered their brain to Elpinel and become a hardcore fanatic, they wouldn’t openly criticize me…

But still, voices of discontent would grow louder. Those fanatics might not stop at complaints and could take action.

“A sacred object better than my sword. Got lucky and obtained it.”

Therefore, I kept my explanation as minimal as possible, claiming it was just a sacred object that he had fortunately acquired.

Am I lying?

Of course not. How could this be considered a lie?

Is it a better sacred object than Durandal?

Yes, it is.

Gram and Durandal are on completely different levels in terms of performance.

Was it lucky?

That’s also true.

With bad luck, we might not have found it immediately and had to return once, or Demian might have been defeated by the star whale monster.

So, I hadn’t uttered a single lie.

I didn’t think the Church of Elpinel would be satisfied with this one statement… but at least I had bought some time to come up with a more convincing excuse.

“Your Majesty. The families of the fallen knights and the affected capital residents are protesting that one of the culprits is not being punished…”

Anyway, while some issues could be handled with such vague answers, there were others that were difficult even for me to address.

Issues concerning Kudsedra, whom I had accepted as my subordinate.

Since imprisoning him in the ring, I hadn’t even properly summoned him yet, but voices of opposition were already circulating.

They questioned whether it was right to accept such a destroyer as a subordinate instead of executing him.

Considering the advantages of having a dragon as a subordinate, it was truly an irrational argument… but hatred is inherently irrational, isn’t it?

I could fully understand why the bereaved families were desperate to see the dragon’s head cut off.

The true culprit was Ismenios, not Kudsedra, but Kudsedra had come with him as part of the same group.

Of course, while I understood their sentiment, I couldn’t accommodate their demand.

I had sworn in Astraea’s name to release him after fifteen hundred years—I couldn’t now change my mind and cut him in half.

…It would be too wasteful anyway.

“I’ll summon him to the square so people can throw stones at him. That alone won’t satisfy their resentment… but I can’t do anything more than that.”

In the end, all I could offer the bereaved families was a grand funeral, sufficient compensation, and permission to throw stones at the dragon to express their anger.

Kudsedra wouldn’t suffer a single injury from it, but having to endure a stoning from those he once called “insects” would be a tremendous blow to his pride.

Given our pact, and his desire to preserve his life, he couldn’t rage or rampage over being hit with stones.

That punishment was the best choice I could make at present.