This happened at a town we stopped at on the road heading north.
"Huh? A Commercial Transit Pass?"
When we tried to enter the town, a lookout at what appeared to be a checkpoint demanded we pay the lord's passage tax and commercial tax, so I showed them the Commercial Transit Pass issued by Ryuto Village...
"We don't accept things like that! Pay up, quickly!"
"But..."
Raphtalia tried to negotiate, but the lookout wouldn't budge—only demanding money.
I stepped forward to negotiate as well, but the lookout didn't back down an inch.
"Stubborn bastard!"
The lookout was so hostile toward us it was practically a hair-trigger situation.
Hmm... there had to be a reason he was being this aggressive.
I'd picked up a few things since I started peddling in this world.
One was intimidation—using force or threats to get your way, or exploiting someone's weakness to make them buy at an inflated price. This worked on people you could push around.
The next was negotiation—talking it out, adjusting up and down, keeping relationships in circulation. This worked on people with no real hostility.
When neither of those worked, the likely explanation was...
"The lord here must be one hell of a character," I muttered, glancing toward the town. The lookout's expression shifted slightly.
"Don't you dare speak ill of the lord! That's treason!"
I see. This was a case where management itself was the problem. In situations like this, neither intimidation nor negotiation meant anything.
The other side couldn't afford to back down. If they did, they'd be the ones punished.
The only way to make them yield would be to cause a scene, or keep pushing the issue until the lord himself showed up.
But... there was no benefit to me worth taking that kind of risk.
"I get it. You've got it tough too, huh."
I handed the lookout the amount he'd demanded.
He stood there dumbfounded, as if the wind had been knocked out of his sails.
"Oh... well, in that case, it's fine."
Then the lookout mumbled quietly into my ear.
"Sorry..."
"It can't be helped."
Were we under some trash king's jurisdiction? This country probably had its share of corrupt lords too.
I'd thought about offloading the food loaded on the wagon, but with taxes on sales, I decided against it.
So we checked into an inn. It was far more expensive compared to nearby towns.
This town... taxes seemed to be applied to virtually everything. Daily necessities, food, weapons, armor, trinkets—even the inn rate. Everything was overpriced.
It was hard to live here.
Commerce was in decline too, with the market lacking any vitality.
Heavy taxes must have been imposed.
"I'll go gather information on which villages we can sell that food to."
"Understood."
"Heeey! Master, I'm waiting for my souvenirs!"
"With all that food we already have, you still want more?!"
That Filo—demanding souvenirs despite the inflated prices here...
I left Raphtalia and Filo (in human form) in the inn room and headed to a tavern.
For reference, I swapped the shield to Book Shield and walked in looking like a rough traveler.
That's where I spotted someone familiar—someone I'd rather not have run into.
"..."
Despite being the Bow Hero, he wore a sword at his hip for some reason, dressed plainly in low-quality equipment.
He even carried a small bow that resembled my Book Shield in that it could produce disguises.
If you saw him for the first time, you might mistake it for a gauntlet.
And he'd put flashy armor on one of his companions—someone who seemed to be a lackey—while hiding in their shadow. Something like that.
Yes, the Bow Hero, Itsuki, was sitting in a corner of the tavern having some kind of discussion.
He hadn't noticed me yet.
What were they talking about...? I'd slip closer and listen in.
"The lord here is..."
Apparently, he and his companions were gathering information on the local lord's notorious reputation.
According to them, the lord had raised taxes beyond national policy to line his own pockets, accepted bribes from nearby merchants, and hired enforcers to punish anyone who raised objections.
Yet another run-of-the-mill terrible lord story.
"This one will need to be taught a lesson, I think."
Whoa there!
Itsuki's line almost made me trip and fall.
Where do I even start with the retort...?
Setting aside the question of why he was hiding his identity for no apparent reason—what general do you think you are?
Was he pretending to be on some kind of righteous journey to fix the world?
From what I'd heard, there were no reports of the Bow Hero having done anything notable.
Then again, if we're talking about results alone, I'd been called a "sage of the Divine Bird" or something, so I was in no position to judge. But in my case, I had the infamous title of Shield Hero. My identity still raised alarms when discovered, so lately I'd been relying on being mistaken for that sage.
At least, as far as I knew, I couldn't think of any reason why Itsuki, the Bow Hero, would need to hide his background.
Was this one of those... national commission things?
But there was suspiciously little information about Itsuki.
There wasn't even the usual intel that the Bow Hero had resolved something afterward.
Was he intentionally keeping it hidden...?
"Alright everyone, let's go."
Itsuki and his group finished their discussion and left the tavern, disappearing into the night.
...By tomorrow, this town's lord would be deposed, no doubt.
He'd probably rampage through the lord's mansion first, then one of his "companion" underlings would reveal his identity and deliver a lecture. Something like that.
Word would reach the trash king's ears, and the lord here would quietly be replaced by someone else. You could predict that easy ending from a mile away.
Just like those old farts in period dramas who set off on journeys to reform the world.
...Are these people idiots?
Getting involved would be a hassle.
I casually searched for potential buyers for the food—my original goal—and headed back to the inn for the day.
Souvenirs for Filo? Yeah right, like I'd buy anything in a town with prices this ridiculous.
Of course, Filo complained at me for not bringing souvenirs, but I spent the evening studying my magic book, and that was that.
Thanks to that, I learned a new spell.
Just like the old woman at the Magic Shop had said, the heavy concentration of support and recovery-type spells was probably because I was the Shield Hero...
The next morning.
Just as I'd predicted, word reached the town that adventurers hired by the nation had quietly inspected the area and the lord had been removed from office.
I spotted Itsuki and his group chatting with a beautiful girl right in the middle of the town square.
"Thank you so, so much."
"Oh, no, no. It was nothing. And remember—this is a secret."
Don't give me "this is a secret"!
Yeah.
My suspicions had become certainties.
Now I understood why there were no reports about Itsuki's exploits.
This guy was the type who hid his identity, stayed out of the spotlight, and told himself he was actually amazing in secret.
Finding satisfaction in proving that to yourself in person was... a bit of a weird hobby.
That guy was an idiot.
He was hiding his identity purely to satisfy his ego.
Otherwise, why would he stand around having casual conversations in such a conspicuous spot?
At least I now knew for sure he didn't have the kind of guilty conscience I did.
That woman was probably someone who'd nearly been taken away as payment for taxes—or the daughter of a sick bedridden grandfather. Something like that.
What a joke. We left town in short order.
This happened about half a day later, at a village near the border of a neighboring country.
When I offered up the food that hadn't sold yesterday, it disappeared before my eyes. We'd apparently entered a famine-stricken area.
Though there were a lot of people here who didn't seem to be from this village.
Their clothing and such... it was subtly different from this country's.
"Hey. You lot..."
This was supposed to be a region where they'd heard the tyrannical neighboring king had been defeated.
Were these merchants who'd come from that area?
When they peeked into my wagon, they thrust a deal at me with almost desperate urgency.
For some reason, they wanted to buy through barter rather than money. Herbs were fine, but timber and woodworking crafts—what was I supposed to do with those?
I climbed down from the wagon and asked them what was going on.
"Money would actually be more helpful."
Bundles of straw, rope, charcoal—having those dumped on me when I was already sitting on massive inventory would just create more problems.
I'd buy large quantities of herbs though, since I could turn those into medicine.
"Sorry... There's almost nothing we have to sell, really."
Looking at them, they were painfully gaunt, on the verge of death.
"...Whatever. It was all free stuff anyway. I'll cook up a pot for you—eat your fill."
I borrowed a large pot from the villagers.
The villagers themselves were suffering from hunger too, so they were happy to help.
The perishables were at risk of spoiling—I'd only had them for about four days.
I had a spoilage prevention skill, so they'd last longer than normal, but still.
"Thank you!"
Everyone devoured every last bit from the pot.
While they ate, I asked what had happened.
Apparently, the tyrannical king had been defeated, and that part was fine.
Taxes were reduced, and people's lives became a little easier.
But it had quickly reverted to the old ways.
The resistance, of all people, had raised the taxes.
"How? We finally got rid of the bad king..."
"Well, you see, running the country requires money, and to prevent a decline in military strength, taxes were raised..."
So it wasn't that a tyrannical king was imposing oppression—it was that someone had been trying to maintain minimum military power to protect the country.
People say a nation is nothing without its citizens, but perhaps a nation is nothing if it can't protect its citizens either...
In that kind of situation, if you only collected the worst stories about the king, then yeah, he'd probably end up overthrown.
I couldn't care less about the king's feelings, but hearing about a king condemned as a villain gave me a strange sense of kinship.
Kings probably had to do things they knew were wrong sometimes.
Well, the trash king in this country had been an idiot and a villain from the very start, though.
"Just changing the head doesn't put food on the table. So we've come here to Melromarc, where things are a little more prosperous, to find anything that can be turned into money."
"The king is so pitiful! He was actually thinking about everyone first, you know. I wonder whose fault it is that we're all hungry now~?"
"Shut up, bird! You'll make people question my sanity as your owner!"
"Yes, Master~"
I scolded Filo for that poisonous remark that had rubbed salt in an open wound.
Lately she'd been getting some strange ideas and her tongue had gotten sharper.
"Just who are you like, anyway..." I mumbled.
Raphtalia was looking at me with a complicated expression.
"What?"
"No, it's nothing..."
Filo said all that, but it was Itsuki—the Bow Hero—who'd joined the resistance. Maybe he wasn't a good person through and through after all.
Anyway, were these people crossing the border illegally to buy black-market rice or something?
Come to think of it, food prices had spiked in this area. That was why I'd been able to make money off it.
That's right—Itsuki... the General was supposedly doing reform work around here.
At least provide some after-service, would you?
He was just satisfying his own sense of justice on the spot!
"If this keeps up, some country might attack our weakened nation... but we can't live through a famine."
"I see..."
Could the Waves be causing famines to break out everywhere?
"Fine."
I handed one seed of my modified Bio Plant to their apparent leader.
"What's this?"
"It's a seed from the plant that caused problems in the southern part of the country. I modified it with a special technique so it grows immediately. It should be fine, but manage it carefully—if you mishandle it, it can be dangerous."
"O-okay..."
"I'll be passing through this area again soon. You can thank me then."
Two of my three wagons were completely empty, so I gave them the seeds as a bonus and left.
Next time I came through here, whether I'd get a warm welcome or not was another story.
My identity was fully exposed, and that small neighboring country had apparently shaken off the famine so its people could eat without trouble.
Incidentally, since I'd acquired a ridiculous surplus of herbs, and I'd heard that an epidemic was spreading in the eastern region, we decided to head there to sell.
Silence, you! Can't you see this Bow is in my eye—!