Volume-2: Chapter-21: The Abrupt Declaration
The Country of Eruchea:-
“A plant-based parchment, you say?
We too have something similar, but it’s still of worse quality than animal hide parchments.
If you say that it’s ‘high-quality’, it needs to be the quality of top quality parchment, you understand?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about the quality, ms. Liang!
Currently, it’ll be just as good as some of the best parchments in the market.
But if you give us a year to develop, its quality will far surpass the quality of even the most expensive ones.”
Harry knew that if he managed to get her interested in his country, it would be highly beneficial both for their economy and for their defence.
If the demons from Yuzhi Guo formed good relations with his Erucheans, he might get support from them if cultivators or mana-users were to ever attack them.
And judging by her strength levels, the support they would receive would have a major impact on the battles.
“Oh, is that so!?
Now I’m very, very interested in your claims.
I would have loved to stay and take some of that ‘Paper’ of yours as a sample.
But I have many more important tasks left back home and I just can’t afford to miss out on them.
However, you must keep a large stock of that paper thing for me when I come next month. I can already tell from the time you said it’ll take for production that this will be quite the revolutionary product.
Anyways, it was nice meeting you, Harry.”
Liang started getting up from her chair.
“Ah, miss Liang, it almost slipped out of my mind. I must say that your dress looks very unique!”
“Oh, why thank you for that compliment!
This is made of unicorn mane-hair. You know, those mythical one-horned, virgin-loving horse things that you humans know of.
They exist and are raised by us demons for their hair.
They even look the same as the ones you might know of.
But I must warn you if you want to meet one, go screw someone before that if you haven’t screwed with someone already.
Because they sure do love virgins, but as food! Normally, we just feed them virgin animals but even we do occasionally send a death row prisoner along as dinner or something.
Oh, and before you leave, you might wanna check your maid’s health. She looks kinda pale.”, Liang said with a smirk on her face as she arrived at the door.
Her workers had already gathered up the required ores and left a little while back.
As for Harry’s maid, she looked like she was almost going to faint from fear.
They had to sprinkle some water on her face and wait for a few minutes more as she calmed herself down.
In the meantime, Qing and Harry started talking.
“Elder brother! How could you stay so calm!?
When we looked at her we barely managed to not faint from fear!”
“Yeah! Look at that maid of yours. She almost fainted just by looking at her.
And there you were talking and laughing with her for almost an hour! Just how strong are you!?”
Harry looked at the two.
“Guys, please! She wasn’t all that scary if you think about it!
Sure, she was very strong. So strong that even I wouldn’t be able to stop her if she decided to attack.
But it didn’t look like she wanted to attack, did it?
She was here for conducting business. That’s it.
And judging by her personality, she seemed to be the person who doesn’t like mixing fighting with business too much.
Plus, she was quite friendly and knowledgeable as well.
The only thing that might be a little off-putting about her would be her appearance. But that is something that you must ignore while conducting business, am I right?”
The siblings looked at Harry in shock.
“Elder brother, I knew that you were very strong and very smart. But I didn’t know that you had something wrong with your head as well…”
“Yeah, here we were, barely holding ourselves and the maid together and trying to not get knocked out by the sheer force of her aura and there you were cracking jokes with her…
I really don’t think that a sane person can do that…”
It seemed that the two had declared that Harry had a few screws loose in his head.
This issue would take a long time to solve.
But once the maid got back up, they decided to quickly leave the place.
They had already packed lunch kept in the carriage, which they decided to finish before leaving.
Harry just couldn’t possibly eat food with all that rocking.
By the time they reached back to the palace, it was already four.
And the moment they stepped out of the carriage, Qing and Shin ran like the wind towards the nearby bushes.
It seemed that they had been holding it in for long and decided to empty their bladders now.
Unfortunately, no toilets had been made in this world except for the ones that Harry had got from the system back in the forest.
So, it was quite normal for even the royalty to sometimes run behind the bush to do their business.
After this, the four of them went into their bedrooms, Harry, Qing and Shin towards the royal section of the palace and the maid towards the servant section.
Harry had decided that it was best to take some rest after the two-hour-long and very bumpy carriage ride.
After he woke up, Harry decided to call all of his servants into the main hall.
He had to know the reason why the other servants had chosen to send a complete newbie with him for the meeting with the demons.
As Harry descended from the stairs, he saw that the servants had already assembled themselves on the ground floor while Qing and Shin seemed to be watching from near the first floor’s other stairs.
They were standing near the left staircase while Harry was walking down the right one.
The servants had assembled in the space in between the two staircases. Even the maid from earlier was amongst the ones gathered.
Harry started with Stephen, his butler, who was standing in front of all the other servants.
“So, Stephen, care to tell me why you sent a complete newbie maid with us?”
“My lord, I am very sorry for any inconvenience that I may have caused you.
But even I didn’t know that the maid I sent was a new recruit.
All I did was ask the other servants to send someone to guide you and they sent her.”, said Stephen.
“So, you just sent the person they sent you.
Hmmm.
Okay, in that case, you, come over.”, Harry said while pointing at the maid who accompanied them earlier.
After the maid came up to him, Harry continued talking.
“So, since my butler doesn’t seem to know the reason, I’ll just ask all of you guys.
Anyone care to tell me why she was sent?”
Everyone looked very nervous and kept quiet.
Then one of the somewhat young boys spoke up.
“Y-y-your majesty, if I may!”
Instantly the maid beside him tried to shut him up.
“Yes, you may! And you, the maid beside him, you keep still and keep quiet!”
Now, the boy continued, “Your majesty, these people would probably not want me telling you this. And even you might find it weird or even disgusting, considering how you normally behave.”
“No worries about that. First, you tell me exactly what happened. My reaction will come after that.”
“As you command, your majesty.
The thing is that all maids had this sort of hierarchy system of sorts in place.
But not the usual kind based on their jobs or how long they have worked in the palace.
This was based on who was liked more by the previous king in bed.
Yes, your majesty, the maids used to divide themselves based on who the king chose more for his nightly activities.
And Jeanette over here was very new and not liked too much by the old king. He said that she wasn’t pretty enough.
That’s why everyone else kept her at the bottom ranks since she hadn’t spent a single night with the previous king.”
“So, wait up, you’re saying that the maids decided their superiority based on that!?”
“Yes, your majesty. It didn’t matter what position they were really given.
If any maid was better on the bed, she received more favours and gifts from the king and could easily rise in ranks.
And because no one here, honestly not even me, wanted to go meet the d-de- the other party, the maids decided to dump the job on Jeanette.
But don’t worry, your majesty, this ranking thing was only among the maids. The male servants used to follow their original assigned ranks only!”
The boy finished explaining.
And Harry didn’t know what to make of whatever he heard so far.
“Is what he said true?”, Harry asked while looking at the other servants.
No one spoke a word.
“I am asking, is. What. He. Said. True?”, Harry repeated himself, this time using his killing intent to create tremendous pressure on the servants.
“Y-y-y-ye-yes! Y-your majesty!”
Finally, one of the maids succumbed to the pressure and confessed.
“Is that so?
Fine, then let me ask you another question.
Where are you working currently?”
“T-th-the royal palace, your majesty…”, another maid answered.
“The royal palace, you say?
THEN WHY THE HECK DOES IT FEEL LIKE YOU’RE WORKING IN A GODD*MN BROTHEL!!!???”
Harry finally snapped.
He had had enough of being the nice guy.
Here he was being nice to the servants, who he thought might have been poorly treated by that meatball of a king.
But these guys were not giving him one bit of respect in return.
They didn’t want to do anything aside from their basic jobs.
But instead of simply telling him about it, they chose to dump their work on a newbie.
If Liang wasn’t as nice as she had been, this might have led to Harry’s death when she saw the maid, Jeanette, fainting.
Seeing Harry’s reaction, all the servants were scared silly.
Some had even fainted when exposed to a large amount of killing intent that Harry had released upon them at the end there.
Even Qing and Shin looked scared.
“Your jobs here is to maintain his palace and help your king!
You are paid enough for that.
You neither have the job or the right to go around modifying what your king orders you as per your wishes, do you understand that!?”
“Y-y-yes, your majesty!”
The remaining servants answered back.
“From now on, if I see any such things, even by mistake, it will be off with your heads!
For now, though, I will only be cutting your salary for the next 2 months.
Also, I don’t wish to destroy future work potential, so you all are not going to get whipped or anything.
But, that doesn’t mean that you’ll get off scot-free!
From now on, all of you must attend the training in the military barracks. It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female. All of you must report early in the morning to that place.
You all have sinned against royalty either directly or indirectly by ignoring those who were a part of it.
All of you must go through the training routines for elite soldiers every day before you start work.
And though it is ultimately beneficial for you, the pain and suffering you feel initially will serve as your punishment.
However, if anyone has any objections, you may step forward right now. I will personally behead you right now.
And don’t you dare say that any of you are pregnant or anything! I know that you all have been taking medication to prevent yourselves from getting pregnant!”
Harry felt that it would be good later on if even his servants could stand their ground when facing any intruders in the palace.
“Now, as for this maid here, Jeanette.
From now on, I shouldn’t find anyone saying a thing to her that might harm her.
You do, and your head rolls.
On second thought, you guys said that the previous king didn’t like her and avoided her, so you guys also bullied her, right?
Well, I find that she’s quite a nice person.
She hasn’t said a thing against you all right now. And even when she went with me to meet with the demons, she did her very best to not ruin anything.
It was only when I forced her to talk did she tell about the fact that she was new.
This is how you all should behave!
Even though she was scared sh*tless in front of the demons, she managed to hold on until they left.
And you guys, you just keep bullying her and not doing your assigned jobs properly!
Unlike the previous king, I find that she doesn’t look all that bad actually.
And as a reward for everything that she put all her heart into doing for me, I’m making her my wife.
This sounds very abrupt, but I find that this serves as a great reward for her work along with a great punishment for all of you maids.
You thought that she was useless and you could bully her!?
I dare you to even touch her now!”, Harry declared proudly.
Everyone was both extremely shocked and extremely confused.
Where and why did such a declaration come from!?
Did their king hit his head somewhere?
Why was he suddenly declaring to make one of the maids his first wife?
Nothing that was happening in front of the servants made one bit of sense to anyone in the room.
[The system wonders why the host would take such a weird decision out of the blue like this…]