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It was now noon on the second day of the celebration, and all the activities had already been arranged. However, I had just woken up.

After having fun all through last night, I had been called by Little Red and Adam to drink alcohol together, and in the end we had spent an all-nighter. Thanks to my hangover, plus the fact that I hadn’t slept the whole night, I currently had a huge headache.

Unfortunately, as the overall planner of this situation, the documents on my desk were piled up into mountains. I was even unable to escape as Elisa caught me red-handed.

The float parade, which had been more like a competition of who could attract the most condescension, had ended. The winner was the Xiluo Empire’s random entry. The combination of a muscular performance and deathly singing blew all competition out of the water, and by the time their float arrived at the finishing point, it had practically become a moving mountain of stones. It was impossible to even see them anymore.

“So many people actually enjoyed my singing! As I expected, true music isn’t separated by species or countries, and my last performance was definitely because of my nervousness before singing. Yep, let’s do another public performance next week in the plaza.”

“Truly—truly—so passionate! I—I—I’m so moved! I’ve decided, every day while I’m in Diffindor, Omar’s workout gyms are all free of cost to use. Anyone who wants to learn bodybuilding or dancing from me can come meet me tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. at the Day of Peace Plaza.”

When news of this spread, it took only one afternoon for all the housing prices near the plaza to lose 33% of their value. It seemed that public dancing and singing was unpopular with the residents in any world.

Afterwards, I received a mountain of complaints. “Hurry up and stop that evil singing! Ahhh! My head!” “Ahhh! My eyes are going blind—blind!” “Burn all damned couples to death, but not true love!” “Ah, to tell the truth, Gria and Omar are such an excellent pairing! Hurry up and make them into a couple, so that they can stop coming out and harming everyone else!” “My hand, I want to chop off my hand!”

...It would seem that some strange messages were mixed in among the complaints. Yep, let’s not think too much into it.

Although there was a huge pile of complaints, there were also some interesting reports. “Those undead were so interesting, they even know how to fly!” (With Omar’s muscular strength, tossing undead up into the air and catching them would be rather easy. It was quite a simple matter for an undead to fly several tens of meters in the air, but according to reports, many children’s parents had been quite scared by the sight). “Not a single note she sang was in tune. This was the first time I was ever ashamed to be an elf, so can we please request an Undead Lord to stop her from ruining the reputation of the elves with her singing” “It was quite interesting, and I hope that next year will have a similar activity. I’m already planning out my float for next year.”

Despite the large number of complaints, there were some benefits as well. This celebration had made the high-level undead seem more humanlike and have a closer relationship to actual humans, as high-level undead typically retained the personality traits and defects that they had during their lives.

But, right now, I didn’t have the free time to worry about such things because there was a new trouble in front of me.

“Because of a certain person’s willfulness in adding an Undead Royal Crown Amusement Park, an eating competition along with twenty similar programs, every activity for this celebration has surpassed our expectations. The number of people surpassed our expectations as well! The result, however, is that although it is only the middle of the second day, our budget has reached the red zone. We’ve gone over budget by one million and two hundred thousand gold coins. Unless you think of something soon, we’ll probably have to use the funds that we had set aside for next year’s spring city construction, or the funds for the government workers’ salaries... I personally recommend that you reduce the number of activities during the celebration! That would be the best way to resolve this issue!”

Ah, that familiar cold glare through those gold-rimmed eyeglasses... she seemed to be as saying, ‘That’s enough; stop making new programs. Your birthday party is already annoying enough. Let’s have some rest.’

Elisa had directly told me her opinion, but although what she said sounded quite reasonable...

“That’s fine and all, but... it’s all meaningless! Don’t even think about it! Nobody can stop me from having my vacation! I’ve already scheduled activities until the end of this month!”

I grit my teeth as I resolutely stood by my opinion and waited for Elisa’s fierce rebuttal. However, this demon girl adjusted her eyeglasses and defrosted as she exited her “demonic scolding” form. And then, she actually nodded.

“Fine, then let’s think together of ideas to balance the budget. At the very least, we need to have a clear idea of the celebration’s recent expenditures.”

“...Why are you suddenly being so nice? Is there a plot behind it all? By the way, I currently have an undying body, so could you not use anything like exploding toilets or needles in my shoes?”

I definitely wouldn’t be fooled again. Every time Elisa got angry to the point of exploding, she would act nicer to me in order to lower my guard. The gentler she was, the worse her revenge would be.

When she heard this, Elisa fell silent. She merely looked at me for quite a while, which scared me significantly. She then began:

“...I think that not all things are your fault. In the past, I may have gone overboard. No, since I was personally taught by you, it’s still your fault; everything is your fault. But this time, relax. I don’t intend to do anything—yep—at least for the time being...”

Elisa shook her head, hesitating.

“I’m sorry. Although I don’t know how I made you angry, it’s all my fault! Please release those children of mine you’re still holding hostage.”

Since she wasn’t directly making trouble for me, she would definitely take revenge upon me in some other fashion. Thinking about how my treasured artworks were still in her demonic possession, I instantly decided to surrender.

“No, it seems like I’m the one who needs to self-reflect... I finally recall now, every year, around this time, you’d always go out by yourself to make mischief and finally return home by yourself in the middle of the night, and even make trouble after you return. Was this all your method to celebrate your own birthday? Making others unhappy for your own temporary happiness—are you that lonely? I ignored your feelings in the past. I’m truly sorry.”

“Ahhh! That’s not it at all, there’s no need to apologize, nor is there any need to look at me with such sympathy! I’m definitely not some lonely old man that people dislike and forgot about his birthday! I definitely wouldn’t eat a birthday cake all by myself, lighting up the candles personally, nor would I ever take it out on others just because everybody forgot my birthday.”

This time, it was Elisa who had an expression filled with surprise. She had just been guessing, but she was actually on the mark.

“So it was true? You’re so childish!”

“You fooled the truth out of me!”

After some chaotic discussion between us, we finally calmed down and began discussing serious matters again. The lack of money was a huge problem.

“How about I try scamming some money out of the Holy Church? No matter what, I’m supposed to be allied with their big boss God, and they even intended to give me the title of Saint of Holy Light. It shouldn’t be that difficult to exchange for some money.”

“...Do you really not know or are you just pretending to not know? Your current reputation amongst all Holy Light job class members is at such a level that you can just randomly go to any Holy Light Church and say ‘Roland’s here,’ and several tens of priests and Holy Knights would come out to beat you up. Besides, the grand event of you rejecting the Saint of Holy Light title from the Holy Church has already spread throughout the entire city, and most people are saying that you don’t know what’s good for yourself, wasting such an excellent opportunity.”

As Elisa spoke that last sentence, she even nodded in satisfaction. It would appear that Elisa agreed with the public opinion. If I had the title of Saint of Holy Knight, many things would become much more convenient for me. However, she was also aware that I was calm, cool and collected most of the time but whenever I crossed paths with the Holy Church, I would overheat. Now, what was done was done, and it was impossible to take it back.

“There’s no point crying over spilled milk, so let’s look to the future, instead.” That was what Elisa said. “However, some people are admiring your bravery in daring to say that right to the Holy Church’s face. You want to turn around and go looking for the Holy Church? Are you intending to lower your head and apologize, or challenge them? If it’s the former, we’ve already gotten used to how shameless you are, so please stop refreshing our lack of knowledge on how few limits you have. If it’s the latter, why don’t you just declare war instead? So, I ask you not to stir up any more trouble.”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. If I could obtain money simply by lowering my head, I definitely wouldn’t mind. Yet due to my own understanding of how easy it was for me to attract ill will, no matter what I originally intended, there was a 99% chance that things would become the latter.

“What about the weapons sales? Wasn’t that very successful?”

“The auction won’t happen for a while, and unless we make them filled with anticipation, how could we possibly sell the weapons for a good price? Everyone’s spies are probably in Diffindor right now, and when they find out that they can only obtain a few clues but no real useful information, that’s when we name our price.”

“You aren’t afraid that they’ll really secretly obtain our technology?”

“That’s basically impossible. I’m having Bastian personally guard the technicians’ area, and all personnel entering and leaving that area needs approval. Outsiders will find it impossible to enter, and if they try to find any real products, well, I can’t find any myself; how could they possibly find any?”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to show off the newest magical engineering products in the military parade, but most of them had been destroyed in the previous battle. All the Roland Titans had been wrecked, although they did have brilliant self-destructions in the end. The Train King had also self-destructed, killing many beastmen with it, and the small combat airships didn’t return intact, either... Since they all seemed to end in explosions, should I say as expected of anything that the gnomes were involved with??

“Next time, let’s not install self-destruct mechanisms. I feel like as long as there’s such a device within them, it’ll be used sooner or later. Just like the last time; saying something like ‘although our opponents are strong, at least we can die together’ sounds too unlucky. Anyone that says this will immediately go from a side character into becoming cannon fodder, and will probably die in an explosion.”

The more I talked, the more I felt it was true. “There’s only one truth... okay, fine; I just wanted to say that out loud. [1] 1 Alright, let’s be more serious and analyze it from a psychological standpoint. There’s a red button sitting in front of you every day, and even though it’s clearly marked with a label to not push it, the more you’re not allowed to do something, the more you’ll want to do it. Finally, when you can’t resist the temptation anymore... you’ll push it, with both your hands, as forcefully as possible.”

“...Please don’t treat your brave warriors as people with the same bad habits as you. If those hard-working engineers and pilots working overtime heard you say something like that, they would all definitely go on strike, together. We’d have to increase their salaries if that happens, which would be quite troublesome. Oh, right, where’s my salary? I feel like I’ve never received any salary from you.”

A good boss needed to know how to act dumb about unimportant matters and at least learn how to ignore their subordinates’ complaints and emotions, which was why I took a sip of my tea and looked elsewhere.

“Elisa, your black tea-making skills have gotten better and better. The weather is quite nice today, isn’t it?”

“Thanks for your praise... but this is green tea that I made for you, not black. Also, the weather isn’t good at all. It’s raining plus snowing right now. Even if you’re just being insincere, there has to be a limit.”

Well, since we were unable to resolve the money problem at the moment, we decided to leave it for later.

“Ohh, I just remembered. Adam said that he was going to go play tennis today. It’s almost time, so I have to get going soon.”

“That doubles tennis competition where you have to find a teammate beforehand? I heard that your partner is a beauty who admires you, and her three sizes are 110, 80, and 100, with large breasts, a large butt, and a nice figure, far surpassing someone like me who’s as flat as a line all over.”

Fine. It was now that I faintly understood why I had been dragged out of my bed so early in the morning. That familiar chilly look in her eyes made it obvious that she was about to explode.

“Cough! Cough! Don’t make stuff up! How could that be? I am a good person, so who could possibly be spreading rumors about me? That person is definitely a lying bastard.”

“Yep, you lying bastard, yesterday you drank too much alcohol and bragged about it to me all night. You don’t remember this at all? Roland, you’re quite lucky with women, aren’t you?”

I widened my mouth, but recalling the description Adam gave me yesterday of the tennis partner he’d helped me find, how could I possibly let go of such a chance? And, so, the very next moment I instantly stood up, finished all my black tea, and ran off. Even if I was going to die, I was going to play as much as I wanted before I died!

“I’m going out, and you don’t need to wait for me for dinner.”

Seeing how Elisa didn’t follow me, I heaved a breath of relief. However, without me realizing it, Elisa was smiling coldly behind me.

“Hmph! Looks like he still hasn’t woken up completely yet. He drank so much yesterday that he was even foolish enough to believe someone like Adam. Just make each other suffer until you both die.”

Soon, at the newly-constructed tennis courts, I met that so-called legendary beauty.

“Adam, this is the beauty that you were talking about?!”

“Of course! Look at that face! Nice and cute, with sweet red lips and a clear appearance. Of course it’s a beauty’s face.”

“What about the large breasts, large butt, and excellent figure?”

“Of course, look at those curves—nice and plump on both the chest and the buttocks. Those three sizes are no lie; just look at those muscles, which are so perfectly firm. See? Those bulging pectorals are basically the most perfect sculpted body.”

Alright, I had now understood what was going on. Adam had laid a pitfall for me again, and Little Red, who was watching, was laughing so hard that she couldn’t stand up straight anymore. Even Margaret seemed to be snickering.

“Just continue lying to my face. What about admiring me?”

“Of course, is there any son that doesn’t admire his dad? Yep, all I forgot to say was that it was a him, not a her.”

Indeed, the “beauty” tennis partner in front of me was Xiluo’s current leader, yet right now, he was wearing a laughable white miniskirt and curiously twirling around his tennis racket.

Seeing that I had arrived, Omar was delighted, but he soon calmed down.

“Father! I was looking for a chance to talk to you one on one. It’s not only about Xiluo, but also the Undead Plane.”

Note:

1. Yet another Detective Conan reference!