Chapter 162: The start of the second event

(Eren’s PoV)

It was a mostly peaceful day. I was drinking coffee at my desk with nothing particularly troublesome happening. There was some noise outside, but after getting up and looking through the windows, I found out that it was mostly caused by children playing around.

My subordinates were also training properly at the courtyard, and I could see them slowly improving each day.

It was truly looking like a bright peaceful day. I thought as much at first… Until I turned around that is, because I then saw that hellspawn of a woman sitting on my chair.

“Hey Eren, how are you today?” She said.

“Bloody hell!” I shouted as I threw my coffee cup on the ground. The person in charge of cleaning seemed to be annoyed, but I couldn’t be bothered with that right now… She just had to come and ruin everything… Can’t she at least not steal my chair!?

“I have some news for you.” She told me.

“And what trouble will you bring me this time around!?” I replied. We still haven’t finished repairing all the damage that she caused, merchants have a hard time trading with us, our security is looking horrible, and we don’t even have a priest at the temple because she killed the last one! What will come now!?

“My my, what are you so angry about?” She asked me.

“Why don’t you just look into your heart and find out!?” I exclaimed… No, calm down, Eren. It’s this woman that I’m dealing with, I can be offed if I get her too angry… Let’s take a deep breath, get a new coffee cup, and relax… “No, never mind that… What did you want to tell me? I assume it’s related to our last talk?”

“We’re now an independent country, and I declared war on all the neighboring nations.” She said.

“Bloody hell!” I threw the cup at the ground, breaking it again… Seriously, what the hell!? “You can’t be serious…”

“No no, I absolutely am.” She said.

“I know that much! I’m just wondering why!” I replied. And why is she looking confused right now? Did she really think I believed for a second that she wasn’t serious about that last statement!?

“Oh well. I’ve made a deal with Belzenstock, so we actually have free access to the sea.” She told me, ignoring my question, “Also, you’re king now.”

“Bloody hell!” And another cup was broken. My subordinates weren’t even angry at me anymore, they were just pitying me. Seriously… Me!? King!?

“How about Wallace Kingdom as our name? We’re no longer just a small frontier city anymore after all.” She then said.

“Wait! No! Stop! I don’t want to be king! I hate that idea!” I tried to stop her. Maybe a miracle would occur and she would give up on this crazy plan.

“Is that so? Well, there is a good chance we’ll start swallowing the nearby countries pretty soon, so we could be the Wallace Empire then. Would Emperor be fine?” She replied…

“Bloody hell!” One more cup was broken… We might run out of coffee at this rhythm.

“Is everything okay with Eren?” The person that was cleaning the floor said.

“Well… The boss is just tired.” One of my subordinates replied… Yeah, I’m very tired alright.

And just as I thought things couldn’t get any worse, that woman said, “Oh, there’s another topic I still need to tell you about, by the way.” She’s not done yet!?

I took a deep breath and said, “Alright… Just… Please explain to me in detail what’s going on, then.”

“You see, there’s an event… A festival. The migrants are going to hold a festival of sorts.” She said.

“Alright…” I replied. It didn’t seem to be that bad so far…

“And in this festival, we’ll be kidnapping the important people of other countries and bringing them to ours.” She explained.

… That’s a festival? This is their definition of a festival!? I could feel my hair falling out of my head from stress…

“So you’ll be kidnapping people and bringing them here…?” I asked her in disbelief.

“Pretty much.” She replied.

The kidnapping could end up leading to us earning funds alright, but… What about the security? How are we going to fend off attackers that might try rescuing them…? This whole plan is crazy. I can’t even muster the strength to get angry anymore…

I really miss the time I just worked on the Moonlight Family. Things really were a lot simpler back then…

“Also…” Please no more… “You’re also one of the targets for kidnapping.” She told me, “There might be quite a few migrants coming after you, so try keeping yourself safe, okay?”

… No matter how much trouble I might have caused during my time in the Moonlight Family, I definitely did not accumulate enough bad karma to deserve this. This is no divine retribution, this is just me being unlucky with a hellspawn that keeps coming to my doorstep.

I couldn’t even muster a reply… All I could do was watch as she said, “Oh, seems like the festival is about to start.” and then she hurriedly left my room.

… I wonder if I should worry about growing bald early from stress.