Water Magician

Vol 4. Chapter 722: Pishkan

“Chief! That ship is back!”

“The huge one?”

The man who rushed into the chief’s office of Pishkan was Nonta, Minister of Ports.

His report dragged Chief Matar’s nightmares back to the surface.

Yes, that ship had last come here one month ago.

They had finally managed to calm the chaos it had left among the people after arriving and then sailing away, yet now, shamelessly, it had returned.

Matar himself had endured plenty of chaos as well.

“Are they claiming they went to some kingdom or other beyond the eastern sea and then came back? There are limits to how much nonsense a man can spew.”

“To begin with, they came from the western sea...”

“At first I thought they might be connected to the Banban Kingdom to the west, but... there is no way those people could build «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» a ship like that.”

“They did say they had come from somewhere even farther west, a place called the Western Countries.”

“As if anyone could believe that!”

Minister Nonta spoke while thinking back, and Chief Matar answered with a bitter scowl.

Matar did not need to think back.

Ever since then, nightmares had tormented him again and again.

“Last time, we were overwhelmed by the sheer size of that ship. I will admit that. But it will not happen this time! Aside from the crew, there were only three people aboard who called themselves adventurers. I will never suffer such a wretched humiliation again!”

“Exactly, Chief!”

“Good. Nonta, gather the Chief’s Guard at once. And that ‘Strange Man’ Mottzare we summoned. Have him stand behind me. Line him up with the guards. When that woman captain comes ashore, we will intimidate her!”

Pishkan was a country that occupied a single island in its entirety.

Its population was one hundred thousand, which was by no means small for a single island.

The person at its head was called the chief, and the current chief was Matar, a man in his early forties.

Recognized as Matar’s right hand was Nonta, Minister of Ports.

He was also Matar’s childhood friend and the same age.

Pishkan, led by those two men, had suffered no particular failures of governance, and the chief was fairly popular with the people.

One month earlier, a huge ship from the west had put into port in that country.

It called itself Skidbladnir, and supposedly it was registered to the Knightley Kingdom in the Central Countries.

Naturally, neither Matar nor Nonta had ever heard of it.

No one in the government had ever heard of it.

When asked why they had entered port, they said there was no particular reason.

They had seen a port, so they had stopped.

From the perspective of Pishkan’s government, nothing about it made sense.

To begin with, the ship had come from the western sea.

In that sea lay the Banban Kingdom, Pishkan’s long-standing rival.

For that reason, they had first suspected the visitors were connected to the Banban Kingdom, but that had not seemed to be the case.

They had still been suspicious, but... the moment Chief Matar met the person called Skidbladnir’s captain, he understood.

There was no woman that beautiful in the Banban Kingdom.

The next instant, he had said,

“Become my wife.”

When she immediately replied, “I must refuse,” he had not understood it very well.

In the past ten years, he had never experienced anyone refusing a demand from Matar, the chief.

But that woman captain had promptly returned to her ship, and the vessel called Skidbladnir had left port.

They said they were headed for the Knightley Kingdom, which lay somewhere to the east.

After that, Matar, steeped in humiliation, had suffered nightmare after nightmare.

He would settle that grudge.

With that resolve in his heart, Chief Matar stood at the port.

Behind him stood the muscular warrior, “Strange Man” Mottzare, with the guards lined up as well, ready to receive the woman captain and the others who would come down from the ship.

A gangway was lowered from the ship.

The first to descend those steps was...

A tall, imposing man dressed in formal red and white.

He was not doing anything.

He was merely walking down the gangway.

And yet no one could look away.

“What... is that...?”

The murmur reached Matar’s ears.

It had come from Minister of Ports Nonta, standing at his side.

Matar said nothing.

If anything, Matar was the one who wanted to ask what that was.

No—he understood vaguely.

Matar had led this country for more than ten years.

He had led one hundred thousand people.

That was why he knew.

The person coming down was someone who led a country, or something of that sort.

Someone of extremely high position.

But that was not what he was questioning.

An abnormal... presence.

A presence that seemed as if it might crush them.

Something... overwhelming.

At last, the man in red and white set foot on the ground.

Was there anyone who noticed the white-robed figure following behind him, holding a sword as if in offering?

Matar swallowed once.

Nonta’s body was trembling.

The guards stood rigidly upright, unable to move at all.

However... there was one person here unlike them, someone who moved more faithfully according to instinct.

The “Strange Man” Mottzare, whom Matar had summoned to intimidate Captain Paulina.

The giant Mottzare’s face was deathly pale. Cold sweat would not stop pouring from him, and his eyes were stretched wide open.

If anyone had possessed even the slightest composure to look around, they would have noticed that Mottzare was acting completely abnormal.

They would have moved him away from this place before anything else.

Unfortunately, no one among Pishkan’s leadership had that much composure.

“WOOOOOO!”

With a sudden roar, the muscular man, “Strange Man” Mottzare, began to run.

In his arms, he held a huge metal “rod.”

The place he charged toward was the man in formal red and white who had descended from the ship.

“Stop!”

The only one who managed to react was Chief Matar.

He managed to shout, but his body did not move.

Mottzare rushed in all at once and swung the raised “rod” down toward the formally dressed man.

The man evaded with a single step and struck Mottzare’s jaw from the side with the heel of his palm.

Mottzare was rendered immobile with one blow.

A voice rang out without the slightest pause.

“.”

The next instant, Mottzare was trapped inside a coffin of ice.

Then the voice rang out again.

“Stand down! Do you not know who stands before you? This is His Majesty Abel the First, the current king of the Knightley Kingdom!”

Those words, spoken by the white-robed figure, struck everyone present as if accompanied by physical pressure.

Minister Nonta and the guards dropped to both knees without thinking.

Only Chief Matar barely remained standing.

Even so, his body was trembling.

Abel walked up to the one person who remained standing and spoke.

“You are the chief of Pishkan, I presume?”

It was a gentle voice.

It was nothing like the person who had struck down “Strange Man” Mottzare in a single blow, nor the person whose presence had captured every eye merely by coming down from the ship.

It was gentle, and it made one feel, unconditionally, that he could be trusted.

“Y-yes. I am Matar, chief of Pishkan. As for what my subordinate just did, I offer my deepest apologies for such outrageous discourtesy...”

As he said so, Matar bowed his head.

Considering what “Strange Man” Mottzare had done, an apology was only natural.

Of course, he also understood that an apology alone would not be enough.

Had the white-robed figure not said it?

The person before him was a “king.”

The highest-ranking person who led a nation.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Chief Matar. I am Abel the First, king of the Knightley Kingdom of the Central Countries.”

After introducing himself, Abel extended his right hand.

Matar hesitated for an instant, but then extended his right hand in the same way.

The two of them shook hands.

After a certain amount of confusion, King Abel and his party were shown to a conference room in the Ministry of Ports, located near the harbor.

Incidentally, “Strange Man” Mottzare, who had been frozen once, was thawed immediately and taken away by Pishkan’s guards.

Chief Matar had asked them to wait for a while, so the people in the conference room were Abel, Ryo, ten escorting knights of the Kingdom’s knight orders, and Captain Paulina, for a total of thirteen.

Naturally, Ryo and Abel began whispering to confirm the situation.

“That muscular gentleman from earlier must have been affected by the vicious aura pouring out of you, Abel, and lost control.”

“Vicious aura?”

“He got scared and decided to strike before he was struck.”

“Ah... so that’s what you mean. In that case, I understand how he felt.”

Abel had been an adventurer for a long time. That meant he did understand the feeling.

That said, the fact remained that the man had suddenly attacked the king of a country.

Under the laws of most countries, that would generally be a capital offense—in other words, punishable by death.

However, Abel was soft.

“I cannot simply pretend it never happened, but if it was not intentional, there is no need to charge the man himself with a crime. We can have the chief take responsibility.”

“Failure to supervise his subordinate...”

Those were the most terrifying words for anyone who led subordinates.

Abel was not soft at all.

“You mean to make him take responsibility for his subordinate’s actions and use that to advance the negotiations in our favor.”

“It can’t be helped. They handed us a negotiating card on their own.”

Abel shrugged at Ryo’s words.

“To think you would demand that this country become a vassal state of the Knightley Kingdom in exchange for forgiveness. Abel, you are a terrifying king.”

“Yes, well, I have no intention of making that demand.”

“Could this have been your goal from the beginning? Did you descend the gangway while intimidating them for that purpose...? I knew it. I shall call you Abel the Scheming King from now on.”

“You know, you really should listen when people talk. I have no intention of making them a vassal state, and I did not intend to intimidate them. Besides, no one would become a vassal state over something like that.”

Ryo deliberately looked at Abel as if seeing something terrifying, and Abel stared back in exasperation.

Of course, the two of them were merely playing around.

However, a voice came from a completely unexpected direction.

“I am very sorry, Your Majesty.”

The voice belonged to Captain Paulina.

She was bowing her head.

“Captain? Why are you apologizing?”

Abel asked.

Ryo did not understand either and tilted his head.

“As I told you, when we came from the Western Countries, we put into port here in Pishkan. In fact, at that time, Chief Matar proposed marriage to me.”

“What?”

Paulina reported it calmly, without changing her expression at all, and Abel and Ryo reacted in perfect unison.

“I refused and we departed immediately, so there was no particular problem, but... I never imagined something like this would happen. I regret not reporting it beforehand.”

“Ah. No, yes... well, I suppose that could not be helped.”

It was true that Abel was surprised, since that matter had not been reported to him, but... from Paulina’s position, he could understand why it would have been difficult to report.

This time, one could say she should have reported it because a problem had occurred during their second port call, but... if nothing like this had happened, it could also have been considered an entirely private matter.

The difficulty of drawing a line between work and private life.

Apparently, that did not change in any age or any world.

Ryo silently shook his head.

“When that man attacked earlier, you deliberately did not protect me, didn’t you, Ryo?”

“Yes. I could tell you had perfectly grasped the muscular gentleman’s movements, so I thought it would be more effective for you to counterattack.”

“I still had to make a choice, you know. Whether I should draw my sword or stay barehanded.”

“Even if you failed, I could have frozen both of you before you took a fatal wound, so it was a situation that could be handled either way.”

“You mean I would be frozen too, don’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“That does not count as being fine.”

Abel shook his head.

Even so, Abel did not particularly reject Ryo’s judgment.

However, there was someone present who was dissatisfied.

“Please do not do things like that.”

It was Scotty Cobuck, company commander of the Kingdom’s knight orders.

Incidentally, the other company commander, Zack Cooler, had remained aboard the ship to defend it.

“His Majesty King Abel is a swordsman of the highest caliber, but there is always the chance of something unexpected.”

“Y-yes, that’s true.”

“Indeed. Next time I will protect him.”

At Scotty’s rebuke, Abel faltered, and Ryo lowered his head a little.

From the perspective of the Kingdom’s knight orders serving as guards, the one they naturally had to protect even at the cost of their own lives was King Abel.

When the muscular man attacked, the only ones standing at the harbor were Abel and Ryo, while the Kingdom’s knight orders who served as his guards were still aboard the ship.

This had been arranged for the ceremonial appearance of King Abel, but... from next time onward, it seemed the defenses around him would be made extremely tight.

Imagining that, Abel gave a wry smile.