Side: Labyris
Yuki is currently sitting seiza-style alone in the banquet hall of the inn.
Surrounding him are all of Yuki's wives.
Including me, of course.
"Yuki, I am exceptionally angry right now."
The moment I voiced my displeasure, the rest of the wives nodded in unified agreement.
"First of all, Onii-san, why did you go to the front lines personally this time of all times?"
"Indeed. When I heard that Danna-sama had done something like that, I thought I was going to miscarry from the shock."
"Ah... well, sorry."
Not only the pregnant group who were on standby, but even the members who were on the battlefield with him hadn't been told anything in advance, so it was truly bad for the heart.
We thought he would just provoke the enemy like usual and come right back, but he suddenly started fighting himself.
"Labyris, climb onto Yuki. Interrogate him thoroughly to extract the exact reasoning behind his behavior. To be completely frank, even I found this entirely outside the boundaries of expectation. My husband, voluntarily standing at the front lines of a battlefield?"
"Understood."
Responding immediately to Seraria's directive, I clambered up onto Yuki's head exactly as I always did.
I made sure to aggressively press my chest right against him. He harbors an absolute weakness for breasts, you see—I know his preferences perfectly. He always tries to clumsily redirect his gaze to conceal it, but he absolutely adores them. I'm going to let him touch me as much as he likes!!
"So, why did you take such action?"
"Well, there are various reasons..."
"Of course there are. If you say you did it without thinking, I'll put a collar on you."
"I'm not a dog."
"Then hurry up and talk."
Mmh, exactly as Seraria says—hurry up and start talking.
Yuki has this vivid mental image of himself being fitted with a collar and bound to a heavy metal chain. I would honestly love to keep him as a pet. I'd spend every single day playing with him.
Ufufufu...
Ah—no, no, focus.
Yuki is a terrifying man! To counter me with such delightful imagery!
"Hmm... Where should I start explaining..."
"What? Is it that complicated?"
"Complicated and simple at the same time. But if I don't explain the situation at the time, you won't understand how I felt, right?""
"Ah, I see. You're referring to the narrative flow of the confrontation?"
"Exactly. It's not like I actively stepped onto the field intending to engage in personal combat, but those sisters happened to strike a very specific chord inside me."
"Ara? Have you finally decided to get another woman pregnant? That's fine. Honestly, you resist temptation far too much. You should indulge yourself once in a while. If they caught your attention, they must be attractive. Why not make those sisters your personal slaves while researching the cause of mana depletion? Keep them naked at your side so they're always available."
"What kind of absurd erotic setup is that!?"
"I think it's just right for Yuki-san, who rarely does anything erotic. Because you barely push us down when we're over there." (Ria)
"That's because I was operating via a doppel bodies! And we were explicitly within foreign territory, remember? I'm not some openly perverted deviant! Besides, I comfortably cater to you guys in bed every single night anyway!"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. A baseline quota like that is nowhere near enough to satisfy us, Onii-san. As you can see, our bodies are still overflowing with youthful vitality."
"Well, I do it every day, but everyone else is on rotation... When you put it that way, sorry. I'll work harder."
Yes. Work hard.
It's okay. Yuki can do it.
"Now then, we've secured a promise that my husband will work hard in bed from now on, so let's get back to the main topic. Those sisters said something strange, didn't they?"
"Yeah."
"Ria, do you remember?"
"Umm... I think it was a standard speech..."
"I remember it."
"Then could you tell us, Jessica?"
"Yes, excuse me..."
Jessica repeated the sisters' speech from the battlefield.
And among those words was a phrase that had clearly shaken Yuki's heart.
"Celaria, there's something Yuki reacted to. That's probably what struck a nerve."
"Which part?"
"Let's see... it was..."
'We swear victory upon these Magic Swords! We carry the future of the 4 million citizens of the Jilva Empire upon our shoulders! There is not a single reason you can possibly win!'
"I see..."
"And then Yuki said... 'If you two are stepping onto this field bearing the weight of 4 million futures, then I stand here representing a mere fraction of 6 billion...' Was that actually true?"
"Hmm? I wasn't lying. Within the boundaries of my home world, Earth, the active population scale comfortably hovers anywhere between six to nearly seven billion living souls."
"A mere fraction, is it? Fufu. That sounds exactly like you."
"Seraria-sama, do you understand what he meant? I don't understand why he didn't say he was 'carrying' or 'protecting' them."
Jessica still didn't know Yuki very well.
Yuki would never say something that binds people together by force.
"My husband was declaring that he wasn't some special existence like a king or a general."
"I'm afraid I don't understand..."
"Fufu. Jessica, you've spent your life fighting for your nation and its people, so perhaps it's difficult to imagine. Let me ask you this — if a ruling monarch happens to perish, does the nation itself cease to exist?"
"Yes. Naturally. If there's no successor, the nation ceases to exist."
"No. Only the name changes. The people don't all die just because the nation disappears. Even if the country disappears, it doesn't mean all the people die. The people will each find their own way to live. To the common people, nobles and royalty are only that important."
"...So you're saying that claiming we carry the people on our shoulders is arrogance?"
"Not entirely wrong, but not entirely right either. Before you're a soldier protecting the people, you're also an individual person. If someone in a high position suddenly told you, 'I am protecting you,' would you really feel it? Especially since you're fighting on the front lines yourself."
"Certainly..."
"It's the same for the people. They fight desperately to protect their own lives and environments. In a family, people don't say the husband alone protects everyone. There's a wife managing the household. There are children who carry the future. Every single person is carrying something. Every single person is protecting something."
"Then... does our existence as a governing body serve no true purpose?"
"No. As long as a nation exists, someone must deal with enemies who come to threaten it. Otherwise the people living there will suffer. But that's not all there is to it. You've seen Weed, haven't you?"
"Yes... The people here live freely."
"Exactly. Perhaps that's what people are truly meant to be. A nation is nothing more than a spontaneous collective formed when individual human beings gather together. A kingdom does not magically manifest purely because a monarch exists. I highly doubt you've ever come across a historical text describing a country populated by only a single person, have you?"
"That's true... I see. So Yuki went out alone against those sisters because of that?"
"Exactly. The sisters probably said that to raise their army's morale and lower ours, but it ended up moving Yuki instead."
Seraria continued.
"They tossed around an incredibly grandiose concept like 'shouldering the future' when their actual, underlying motivation was nothing more than securing a flashy career advancement and expanding their private military assets. Thus, rather than confronting them in the capacity of a supreme military commander, my husband chose to face them as a singular, ordinary individual drawn from his home world's 6 billion. You already know the truth of this reality, don't you, Jessica? You know that when individual human beings assemble together and willingly hold hands, they possess the structural capacity to forge a magnificent society like Weed."
"Yes."
"So from my husband's perspective, they tried to justify a war by invoking the grand number of 4 million people. That's why he wanted a single individual among 6 billion to utterly defeat them."
Dropping her final analytical breakdown, Seraria turned her gaze back toward Yuki.
"Who knows. I had a lot of feelings mixed in too. But what Seraria said isn't wrong."
Yuki scratched his cheek.
"Within that specific window of time, I chose to fight strictly in the capacity of a singular human being drawn from Earth. I wanted to explicitly prove to them that our victory wasn't born from some cheap, underhanded trick or a cowardly fluke; it was the absolute, logical culmination of my world's historical evolution. That's why I made the sisters acknowledge that we were at a disadvantage."
I could finally understand what Yuki had been thinking.
Mmh, yes, it was exactly as he said.
Those sisters had declared that Yuki couldn't possibly win. That his numbers made victory impossible.
So Yuki overturned that assumption. He showed them that they had been defeated by nothing more than the accumulated achievements of ordinary people. And he even neutralized their beloved Magic Swords in the process.
Wonderful.
Truly wonderful.
"Hmm. Did anyone record that battle?"
"Of course I did!"
"As expected of you, Ria. Let's hold a viewing party and admire our husband's wonderful performance."
"""Yaaay!"""
We happily accepted Seraria's suggestion.
After all, opportunities to watch Yuki genuinely show off were extremely rare!
"NO!! Please don't! Not the viewing party! That's way too embarrassing!"
"""We're absolutely watching it."""
"Nooooooooooo!!"
It was unusual to see Yuki resist this much.
Somehow, it was rather charming.
Oh, that reminds me.
"Yuki. What are you going to do with those sisters?"
"Ah... I might have gone a little overboard. Well, it's decided they'll be helping with some experiments. After that, I'll talk with them and figure things out."
"I think Seraria is right. You should make them your personal slaves."
"Why!?"
"Because they're proper noble ladies, aren't they? They're a different type from us, so you'd probably enjoy it."
"Don't increase the number of wives for such a reason..."
As expected, Yuki is still strongly influenced by the customs of his homeland in that area and dislikes it.
He's already laid his hands on us, so I think he can enjoy himself a little more... Well, only if they meet our standards, of course.
In that regard, those sisters are beautiful, have nice breasts, and seem to have good personalities? Well, we'll find out more after talking to them properly.
They're also skilled fighters... How about making them the Four Heavenly Kings who protect Yuki? Just like with the Demon King?
"I feel like 'Four Heavenly Kings' is a flag for defeat."
"Ara? Did I accidentally voice my thoughts out loud?"
But why are the Four Heavenly Kings a flag for defeat, I wonder?
