The Three Kingdoms in Between

In the centre of the eastern continent sat the Kingdom of Mūzeg. To the south, somewhat further down, sat the Kingdom of Lemuse. Sandwiched between them lay three countries — collectively called the 〈Three Kingdoms〉.

From west to east: the 〈Kingdom of Kushana〉, the 〈Kingdom of Zuria〉, the 〈Kingdom of Filarfia〉.

These three were unusual. Despite sharing borders with the powerful Mūzeg, they had bound themselves together in a tight alliance — the 〈Alliance of Three Kings〉 — and had so far managed to repel Mūzeg's aggression by leaning on each other.

Lately, however, they were beginning to feel the pressure: Mūzeg's appetite reaching out to the north and west, swallowing whatever it touched. For the moment Mūzeg's attention was occupied with the northern and western states, and the Three Kingdoms could afford not yet to sit braced — but the lapse of that borrowed peace was a matter of time.

The 〈Alliance of Three Kings〉 was a hard alliance. None of the three were as undisciplined about the gathering of power as Mūzeg, but in their own measured ways, all three had been quietly amassing strength to defend themselves. Following the deaths — almost choreographed — of all three previous kings within five years of each other, and the subsequent succession of three young kings, the three states had tilted further into the practice of power-collection.

With the Three Kingdoms, Lemuse held a non-aggression treaty — technically. The technicality was the point: the treaty had no real weight. Even on its own, under the present king's incompetence, Lemuse was sliding steadily toward collapse; no state with anything better to do was going to spend the strength to attack it.

The Three Kingdoms had, separately, agreed amongst themselves on how to divide Lemuse's territory once it fell. There was no contention over that.

Lemuse's land carried, in modest measure, natural resources of its own. By Mūzeg standards it was nothing; for the Three Kingdoms — clutching at every straw — it was, equally, not nothing.

Not worth the cost of conquering. But worth claiming once it falls. It will fall on its own — let's only make sure of orderly distribution after.

That was the Three Kingdoms' read.

Incidentally, when the King of Lemuse had himself put forward the non-aggression treaty, he had attached the following, with great care:

Lemuse has lately discovered a substantial deposit of underground ore. We will mine and supply rare minerals to the Three Kingdoms in exchange for a non-aggression guarantee.

— Cards, voluntarily revealed.

The man was, frankly, an idiot. Who lays the entire hand on the table at the start? What can you offer in exchange? — no one had even asked him before he'd walked the answer in himself.

At their summit, the young kings of the Three Kingdoms received the letter with wry smiles and dismissive laughs.

What the King of Lemuse had proposed was not a deal. It was fealty. Not the political negotiation of a state to a state — the please of the weak to the strong. Not a thread of royal dignity in it.

True, the Lemuse of today could not have stood up to the Three Kingdoms in a fair contest. But the young kings of the Three Kingdoms remembered the old Lemuse. And so their wry smiles carried, beneath them, a real edge of irritation.

Where did that famously idiotic Lemuse — the one that tried to save Demon Lords single-handedly — go?

Back at the turning point, when Demon Lord Hunting was just beginning to take hold across the continent, there had been an ugly affair. And in the middle of it, the only voice that had risen, cleanly, to declare this is wrong had been the voice of Lemuse — the idiotic Lemuse.

An idiot, yes. But —

— Noble.

Everyone had thought the same thing the young kings now thought — but, with a power-backed counterpart in front of them, none of them had said it. Mūzeg back then was not yet what it had become — and even then, Mūzeg had been large. The Three Kingdoms, at that time, had been small countries shrinking back into themselves between Mūzeg and Lemuse, paralysed.

In the end, the conflict between Mūzeg and Lemuse had not turned into a full war. But the chain of incidents around the death of the 〈Technique God〉 Flander Crow had cost the world two heroes. After that, opinion had divided: states that turned a blind eye to Mūzeg's Demon Lord Hunting, and states that resisted.

The torrent of the age had been cruel to the small. By now, blind eye was, near-uniformly, where the continent had landed. Lemuse, meanwhile, had been spiralling steadily downward under the weight of its idiot king. Which left—

— Just us, the Three Kingdoms.

Of all the states neighbouring Mūzeg on the eastern continent, only the Three Kingdoms were still — barely — resisting.

But, in truth —

— In the end, we were after Demon Lord power as well. We're not so different from Mūzeg.

Their hands were dirty. They had needed power, badly, to push back against Mūzeg's expansion — and they had taken it. They had no real moral standing to condemn Mūzeg.

What kept them resisting at all was the small, scattered states out in the regions: countries the Three Kingdoms had quietly resolved to protect, as atonement for what they themselves had done.

Above all — we cannot let the hunting continue. Having committed the same sin ourselves… we, of all people, understand the grief that follows.

The age was more knotted than most observers gave it credit for. Mūzeg, openly waving its strength and openly spilling blood, was — perhaps — actually the simpler problem. The Three Kingdoms, hoarding their own slowly-rotting flesh inside their own walls, may in fact have been the trickier complication.

---

That day, in the royal castle of one of the Three Kingdoms — the 〈Kingdom of Kushana〉, known across the continent for its formula-machinery industry — there were two figures.

One was the present King of Kushana, 〈Muran Kiel Kushana〉.

The other was, from another of the Three Kingdoms — the 〈Kingdom of Filarfia〉, famed for its hard iron-armoured cavalry — its present King, 〈Fasalis Filarfia〉.

Muran of Kushana — slight build, hair tied back, an air of casual ease about him. Fasalis — short hair, large frame, a solemn weight to him. The two were walking down the corridor of Kushana castle, talking.

"— Hey, Fasalis. What do you reckon?"

"What about what. You always leave too much off your sentences."

"It's me and you, Fasalis. Can't you tell?"

"…"

Fasalis carried a gaze sharp enough to drop a man on its own, but the look he turned on the easy-going Muran was warm.

He took the question and sat with it for a moment, low beast-like growl underneath as he thought it over — and then, as if catching what Muran was getting at, he answered.

"You're asking about the Three Kingdoms' next move."

"Ohhh, you got it. I was barely thinking it through myself."

"Oi."

Muran, unbothered by the rebuke, laughed and went on sauntering down the corridor, hands behind his head.

"— Things are going to get tight, soon. I had a chance to look in on Mūzeg's army recently. Got close — disguised, of course — and there at the head was 〈Serius Brad Mūzeg〉."

"That genius child."

"That one. — Honestly. Confirmed: impossible. I trained myself plenty before I took the throne. Even so, I look at him and think no. Maybe because I had something to compare with, I can see how impossible he is. Anyway — I'd rather not be on the front line opposite him. Doesn't read as the same species."

"Then I'm out, too."

"You'd survive, probably. — But we're kings now. Out of practice. Not the bodies we had back at Aios."

"Quite."

Muran came to a stop in front of a particular door, turned, and gave Fasalis a deeply theatrical bow.

"This way, King of Filarfia. The conference room is just here."

"Cut it out. You're a king too."

"Don't get mad. You'll line your forehead."

The room — labelled the conference room — was, in fact, Muran's private chamber. The Kushana king's bedroom-and-study.

Muran followed Fasalis in, skidded a chair across the floor toward him, then dropped into his own work chair. The sun was throwing in too much through the window; he pulled the curtain.

"Hey, Fasalis. You remember?"

"Remember what, now."

"That guy. That guy."

The trademark word-deficit. Fasalis, peeling off a heavy grey cloak, growled again — nnh. The growl came up from somewhere truly beast-like in him.

"You growl like an animal, you know that," Muran said, laughing.

"— Ah. You mean that Kudo."

"Got it. I didn't even have an answer ready. The moment you said it I went yeah, that's the one."

"Oi."

The usual short retort. Fasalis, inside, let out a small breath of satisfaction at having read Muran cleanly.

"What house do you suppose he was actually from?"

"Maybe he wasn't from a great house at all? That's why the academy threw him out, no? Sat through lectures bold as anyone else and turned out not to even be enrolled. — Outrageous gall. And a tactical genius."

"He was the one who beat Serius Brad Mūzeg at a board game, too."

"— Yes."

Aios Academy was the foremost academic institution on the continent. Talented students gathered from every region. Muran and Fasalis had spent time enrolled there.

Aios's policy of excluding outside political pressures meant the academy attracted plenty of royals from various states — they could receive top-tier instruction without dragging their political baggage into class with them.

"The ones with vanity issues used to attach the family name to their alias in some mock-clever way, just so people would notice. Kudo and Brad, though, gave you nothing on that front."

That said, royals could not easily attend the academy after they had grown notorious; the convention was to enrol before they had really come to anything publicly. And aliases, for that crowd, were standard practice.

"Brad is everywhere. Kudo is a touch less common, but it doesn't gesture at any country in particular. And he was kicked out, in the end. So presumably he wasn't formal royalty."

As part of their elite education — before they had stepped formally onto the political stage — Muran and Fasalis had each spent only a few months at the academy. As had, around the same window, Mūzeg's prince Serius Brad Mūzeg.

They hadn't become close friends of his. But the two of them, spotting an unusually capable student, had been pulled in by the kind of curiosity that hits the young, and had ended up around Serius for a while.

"After we found out who he actually was, I was, no kidding, scared. Wait — that's basically an enemy."

"It happened because it was Aios. That our short stays even overlapped was, frankly, miraculous."

"Damn it. Knowing what I know now, I'd have got at least one punch onto that handsome face."

"You wouldn't have grazed him."

"Shut up."

"Look — you held your own on that score, on the face. The young ladies of the academy liked you well enough, didn't they? — You can't compete with him on combat. Live with it."

"D-damn it…!"

Muran puffed out his cheeks like a child. Fasalis let out a small laugh.

"— Anyway. Back on topic."

"— Mm."

Fasalis squared his collar; Muran put the casual note away and reseated himself.

"If Mūzeg, with all current attention on north and west, turns full-strength back to us — can we hold?"

"…No. Not that there's no method at all — but the sheer volume goes against us."

"And the Magic-stone Cannon you commissioned?"

"The weapon itself is finished. The fuel is the problem — magic stones. The deposits in our territory ran shallower than I'd projected. My miscalculation. — Honestly, a part of me wants to flatten Lemuse first and seize their deposits."

"Kill Lemuse and there's no point resisting Mūzeg any more, really."

"— True."

Muran and Fasalis were standing on a certain line.

Once, they had truly fought against Mūzeg's Demon Lord designations and the Hunting that followed — because in old Lemuse's nobility, they had seen the virtue-rule humans should aim at. After that affair, Lemuse had begun its slow decline; it had held on, somehow, but the present idiot king was, all at once, finishing the job. The Three Kingdoms — almost in step with Lemuse's collapse — were yielding to Mūzeg in spirit.

Maybe there was no point in continuing to resist. Above all, they themselves had long since stained their own hands with the same kind of work.

Carrying that contradiction another mile felt heavier than simply preserving the internal cohesion of the Three Kingdoms and entering an alliance with Mūzeg.

Their pride would crack.

But peace would come.

Virtue-rule never existed, one could simply tell the world, mockingly, and live on.

"— Tch. We were young, weren't we."

"You regret it?"

"Not a bit. Becoming king — no regret there. We've actually contributed to the country, both of us. Better than my old man, certainly. — It's just, Mūzeg is growing faster than us. Faster than we can really see. That's the part that grates."

"It might be."

A heavy silence settled between them.

"— Next. Next time, we decide. The path we take. Looking after the people is part of being king. The pride of the kingdom, the nobility of the people — yes, all of that. But — there's also the truth that pride is a thing of the living. I think so."

"An age of war presses these contradictions on you without mercy."

"An ugly age. — Not that the two of us have grounds to say it."

"Quite. — Then. Next 〈Summit of Three Kings〉, we add Zuria's princess and decide policy."

"Oi, Fasalis. Call her princess in front of her face now and she'll murder you."

"I'll save it for behind her back, then."

A small laugh again from Fasalis.

The smile lingered as he turned toward the window, a touch of longing in his eye.

"If Kudo were still here, the way he was at the academy — would he, do you think, have shown us a better path?"

"…Those days were good, weren't they."

"…Mm."

Muran also turned toward the window and looked out at the sky.

The two of them seemed, for the moment, to be seeing the same view inside the same transparent blue.