Volume 4 Chapter 91 The Berserker
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
Houjou Takachika. Ambassador from the Land of Shura.
His build was solid—lean but packed with wiry muscle. Age? Impossible to tell. And his eyes…
They were wrong.
He stared with them wide open, never blinking. Never looking away. As if even the fraction of a second it takes to blink was a weakness he refused to offer.
When he greeted me, he just… stared. Silent. That terrifying face said nothing.
It gave me the creeps, so I gave him the most quick nod in return.
Then I went to greet Minister Lin of the Luson Kingdom—and that’s when the Land of Shura’s ambassador shot to his feet at the sound of my name.
What now?
Before I could figure it out, Minister Lin used Mind-reading on me. So I hit him back with a telepathic warning: “I’ll kill you.”
That rude, nosy ambassador hurried backward, letting go of me like I was on fire.
Meanwhile, Houjou was untying the cord that held his katana. He never looked at his hands. His eyes stayed locked on me the whole time.
This guy… something is seriously wrong with him.
What if he attacks? The room was way too small. And Akeshino—the Queen’s partner, my translator—was right beside me. If things got violent, she’d be caught in the middle.
There was no way out. The cord came loose.
Then this living, breathing Berserker took the katana by the center of its sheath and pushed it toward me.
What? Is he… giving this to me?
I waited. He pushed it closer again.
”Uh… sure, then.” I took it with both hands.
The Berserker stared at me with those bulging eyes, then jerked his chin in a movement. Take a look inside.
I held the hilt and sheath, pulled them apart—and the blade slid out about ten centimeters.
The mirror-like steel. The evenly spaced patterns of the hamon line. I’d seen this before.
”Nagamitsu.”
The name was carved on the Japanese sword I’d gotten from the Queen of the Amazons of Nyunpai.
The Berserker’s eyes opened even wider when he heard it.
”How… dost thou know this?”
You can talk?! In Japanese, no less!
Akeshino translated his words into Schweilitzian for me. It might have been possible to communicate in short phrases, but my classical Japanese was terrible. I decided to play dumb about his words.
In Schweilitzian, I answered: “The sword I got from Queen Kakuka had the Nagamitsu writing.”
The Berserker listened to my words through Akeshino’s translation. Then he was still for a long moment.
This tension is unbearable.
”Are you… giving me this sword?” I asked.
Through Akeshino, he replied: This blade was not a Nagamitsu. It was a Kunimune—made by a smith who’d been taken from Yoshii.
Yoshii? Kunimune?
I didn’t fully understand, but the core question remained: “So are you giving it to me or not?”
It was a beautiful sword. Fine for display. But as a mage, I had no real use for it.
I slid the blade back into its sheath and looked at the Berserker.
He cleared a space by pushing his chair and the table aside, then sat cross-legged directly before me. His two attendants did the same.
”We wish to build good relations with your nation.”
That’s what I think he said. Then, with his back straight, he bowed.
Build good relations?
He wants to set up diplomatic ties?
From my side, I’d have been happy with a simple trade relationship—selling us food. This was too terrifying.
Then the Berserker began a long speech. I caught pieces: “Tsukushi,” “Hakata,” “Dazaifu.” But strung together, I couldn’t understand the meaning.
One word did stand out, repeated several times: “The Boltechino.”
Wait. Did they get a Mongol invasion here too?
Did The Boltechino cross the sea to attack them?
And now they wanted military support from Schweilitz in exchange for a formal alliance? No, no—the distance was too great. That made no sense.
From the language, it was clear: the Land of Shura was this world’s version of Japan. But the people were so different from what I knew.
”Lord Houjou says he wishes to build a military alliance with the Kingdom of Schweilitz,” Akeshino translated. “His nation is an island, but The Boltechino has crossed the sea to attack them twice. They are still at war with that nation. He wishes to hit The Boltechino from both east and west. He gives you this blade as a payment for the alliance.”
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
”If you want me to sink a few of The Boltechino’s ships, I’d be happy to do that in exchange for food and water. But a military alliance? I can’t promise that.”
I continued: “I have some power here, but not enough to form an alliance. Tell him I’ll have to return to my kingdom and talk with the King.”
If this Berserker was unreasonable and reacted to my words by going crazy, I was ready to fight. But even as Akeshino translated, his expression didn’t change.
Instead, he began speaking to her at length. A long time.
His appearance was so threatening that I couldn’t tell if he’d suddenly snap. How long was he going to talk?
Even as he talked with Akeshino, his eyes never left me. I couldn’t relax.
But in his words, I heard familiar names: “Pugachev.” “Nizar.” Strange, specific names I’d heard before.
No way.
But it was exactly what I thought.
As Akeshino translated: Grand Vizier Nizar of the Turkic Empire was building a surround against The Boltechino. Frontier Count Pugachev was attending as Rus’s representative. Apparently.
How the Turkic Empire had made contact with the Land of Shura in the Far East was unclear. But the Berserker’s nation was already part of this surround. They’d been raiding the coastal provinces together with the Emishi of Karafuto—and had even landed on the peninsula nation that served as The Boltechino’s vanguard, starting a counterattack.
If you’re attacked, you fight back.
That was just common sense in this world.
But…
This surround is weak.
The Empire of Rus had been devastated in the last invasion. Now Grand Vizier Nizar, at the center of the surround, was planning to separate the grain-growing areas near the Turkish Sea.
Frontier Count Pugachev knew this. But to fight The Boltechino, the Empire of Rus had no choice but to follow Nizar’s lead.
When a nation weakens, others take advantage.
That was natural, too.
Naturally, I had questions.
The Turkic Empire and my own Kingdom of Schweilitz, though not touching, kept diplomatic relations. Our intelligence agencies had gotten into each other. During the prisoner trade with the Amazoness of Nyunpai, they’d even given Suez as neutral ground and brought in a Mamluk General.
Surely Nizar must have sent word about the surround to Schweilitz as well.
As Akeshino began translating my questions, the Berserker’s frozen, Noh-mask-like features shifted. The corners of his mouth rose—was he laughing?
”The Land of Shura coming to Schweilitz directly about joining the surround is important,” Akeshino translated. “And the blade is already yours. He says he cannot accept its return.”
The blade aside, coming to ask for joining the surround on their own… that must mean some unhappiness with the Turkic Empire.
I didn’t fully understand the politics, but I was starting to talk with this man.
”Can I ask a question?”
Akeshino translated. The Berserker, still sitting cross-legged, looked up at me and made a sound that meant: Go ahead.
”I heard the Land of Shura makes Red Flame Balls.”
His expression locked up again. Tension filled the room.
Maybe I should have saved that for after we’d broken the ice.
But then he began speaking.
”It was first a weapon used by the people who built the Wan-Yan Empire,” Akeshino translated. “But they say the details can only be talked about in the Land of Shura.”
Military secret, then.
Fine. I was planning to stop by for restock anyway. I could ask then.
Seeing that my talk with the Land of Shura was done, the Luson Kingdom’s ambassador spoke to Akeshino.
”Minister Lin wishes to speak with you,” she said.
I didn’t want to talk to someone who’d just been inside my head, but I couldn’t exactly refuse. Unwillingly, I nodded.
He began talking with great energy.
”He says he wishes to give that boy to you.”
Wait, what? Where did that come from?
”Minister Lin learned that you earlier spent the night with us. He thought that meant you liked boys to women, so he brought a chosen young attendant.”
The kid next to you—that’s not your helper, that’s a… a gift?
I shook my head hard. No, no, no.
What I liked was women. I hadn’t fallen to the dark side yet.
”But when you entered the cabin earlier,” Akeshino translated, “you tried to hug the Queen despite her being an Amazoness in her mating period. That’s what Minister Lin noted.”
So he was reading my mind even back then?
This guy is dangerous.
”I only held the Queen because she and Akeshino are Amazonesses—they’ll eventually have female bodies, so it counts!”
”Larry-sama, watch your words.”
Akeshino whispered in my ear. I turned—and the Queen had a slightly sad expression.
Then the Berserker asked Akeshino something. I didn’t know what they exchanged—but suddenly, he drew a blade from one of his attendants, planted his right foot, and in that stance, cut off Minister Lin’s head with a single stroke.
Before I could process what had happened, the Berserker rose to his feet, raised the katana above his head, and got ready to bring it down on the boy in a diagonal cut—but at that moment, a large black shadow stepped between the boy and the Berserker. A knife caught the falling katana mid-swing.
What an insane bunch of bastards.
It was the Regent who had stopped the blade. In her nearly naked bikini armor, she had held back a katana roughly sixty centimeters long with a black knife whose blade spanned less than twenty centimeters. A contest of raw strength. Neither the Regent nor the Berserker gave an inch. The Regent’s lean, sinewy muscles bulged and shined—an impressive sight.
The corners of the Berserker’s Noh-mask-like mouth curled upward.
Then one of his attendants drove his spear into the chest of the terrified boy, who had fallen, his legs giving way beneath him.
The cabin was covered with blood, thick and coppery. A heavy, foul air hung over the room.
Minister Lin had used Mind-reading on a foreign representative during interstate talks—an unforgivable act. He couldn’t complain about being killed. But the boy was a different matter.
When I said my objection, the Berserker said the boy was likely a mage. Despite being given as a gift, he wore no Slave Crest, meaning he could easily escape with sensitive information.
Apparently, “when in doubt, kill” was the judgment of this world.
For what it was worth, the Regent had thought they should keep the boy alive and question him through magical means—he might have carried interesting information.
But well, once dead, there was no going back. And in this air, though two people had been killed, no one was panicking.
The bodies were thrown into the sea. The Country of the Amazoness would send a report of the result to the Luson Kingdom. If they accepted it, there would be no issue. But if they so much as complained, it meant war.
”The Luson Kingdom was founded by the first Seeding fleet to make landfall. Their mother country, Daqin, is a nation where civil officials rank above military officers—full of officials who think peace can be bought with gold. I’d love for them to say one word of complaint so I could go steal from them right away.”
That was what the Regent had said, according to her daughter Akeshino.
”If anything, if we threaten them together with the report, they’d probably hand over at least a month’s worth of food from Izumo. I’m sure of it.”
Even the Queen was saying things like that. Military power decided nearly everything in interstate talks. If you were weak, you couldn’t complain even if you were drained dry over a single issue.
Not only that—when talking with countries that begged not to be attacked, once the price was set, it was raised by about ten percent. There were rumors that the civil officials who did the talking kept the extra.
It seemed Daqin was the kind of country that would be destroyed by inside rot long before any foreign power could bring it down.
Notes:
• Takachika – Hojo’s family name.
• Ho – Ho is the family name of Oliver, a 17-year-old deck crew member and comrade of the protagonist. As a member of the military unit that defended Garao Village, the young man was ultimately murdered during a night watch, slaughtered alongside Marx-san.
• Akeshino – Queen’s partner. Mentioned only as absent from the bed beside Queen’s.
• Schweilitz – This kingdom, featuring towering academy spires and a full military arsenal of Royal Army troops, forces the protagonist to return. Ruled by a king involved in a hostage exchange, this political power holds a captive feared for execution. It also ordered the confirmation of Princess Rosa’s corpse, driving a scheme that the Queen has caught onto.
• Kakuka – Kakuka, the authoritative and decisive Queen of the Amazoness’s head family, Nyunpai, is known for her short black hair, tan skin, and pragmatic leadership. She maintains a dignified demeanor during strategic negotiations and shares a friendly, trusting relationship with Larry, having previously entrusted him with critical deliveries and readily adopting his proposals to integrate new Dwarven technology.
• The Boltechino – Military force that conquered Takshurgan. The main antagonist faction referenced throughout the chapter.
• Boltechino – An entity that departed from Rus, this explorer traveled to discover a continent that became the birthplace of shipping trade.
• Pugachev – The aging, short, and chubby Frontier Count of Rus is a powerful, politically cunning figure who manages the fortress city of Tsaritsyn with unrefined authority and an oversized crown. Fiercely loyal to the Emperor, he commands a massive military force. He is Igor’s father and grandfather to Ellie’s child, prioritizing imperial protection over independence while masking deep deceitfulness.
• Nizar – Tall, silver‑haired in richly embroidered Turkic robes, he serves as Chancellor of the Turkic Empire and minister‑negotiator, presenting himself as deputy to the Turku Emperor; his sharp geopolitical insight drives regional independence ambitions, while he advises and negotiates with imperial officials and neighboring leaders.
• Frontier Count Pugachev – A count from the Schweilitz frontier who previously received the protagonist, Kenze, and the Old Master’s village master in audience. The meeting established a pattern for three-person delegations.
• Frontier – A local noble who governs a territory in the Empire of Rus, possessing sharp diplomatic instincts and a cautious approach to the magical weaponry of his enemies.
• Rus – A neighboring power deeply involved in regional politics and mediation, best known for annexing the Kingdom of Larland.
• Yan – Once a respected Larland General who dismantled its knighthood, this influential warlord now leads a powerful southern bandit army while besieging Trabius. Balancing a ruthless identity with restoration efforts, they navigate complex relationships with former allies, remaining a key political player.
• Larry – Larry is a dark-haired, weary 16-year-old reincarnated Second Lieutenant, cynical Acting Captain of the Izumo, and Associate Professor. A pragmatic, sardonic narrator and Mana user, he founded the Fee Grand Principality, carries Philip IV’s sword, and seeks to protect his companions. Haunted by past trauma and complicated relationships, he struggles with moral conflicts while awaiting his next assignment.
• Izumo – The iron-hulled primary vessel, named and personified as a character herself, who loyally carries the protagonist and his crew throughout their journey.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
Thanks for reading.
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