I am the king of Glendale, the land of men.

　I have just turned 20 years old.

　My father, the former king, had fallen ill and I had to take the throne.

　He has since managed to recover, but he can no longer move around without his wheelchair.

　I am still half a man, but I have excellent ministers to support me.

　So I will leave the reign to me and let them spend the rest of their lives at ease.


　My father was a great king.

　He made the country prosperous by not waging war with other countries, but by promoting policies that focused on flood control projects and agriculture.

　Another of the former king's achievements was the blessing of Undine, the water spirit king, who gave the country the blessing of the water spirit king.

　My father was always thinking of his people, and he never failed to pray to the gods and spirits every day.

　As a result, Undine, the Spirit King of Water, was revealed to him.

　My father wished Undine for the well-being of his country.

　The price was faith.

　He built shrines (yashiro) to worship Undine in various parts of the country and encouraged the people to pray to him.

　Even today, the whole nation prays to Undine at the quarterly agricultural festival.

　And thanks to the blessings of Undine, the country has almost no more floods and does not suffer from water shortages.

　Because of the absence of water-related problems, our country's agriculture has developed rapidly.

　Because of this, Glendale is now an agricultural powerhouse like no other country.

　My role is to keep the blessings of Mr. Undine, the protector of this country's agriculture, alive.


　By the way, I have a friend the same age as me, Cain.

　Externally, he's my Obergruppenführer, but I consider him to be a good friend.

　I hope he feels the same way about me.


　When the former king was still in good health, as a prince, I led the Royal Knights to stop the stampede that was occurring in the country.

　A stampede is a phenomenon in which a group of monsters run amok, and if left unchecked, a number of cities could disappear.

　It would occur about once every two or three years.

　Normally, the country would ask the Adventurer's Guild to have the adventurers deal with it, but the stampede was on a different scale at that time.

　The demons that the adventurers couldn't stop were approaching the vicinity of the capital.

　So I was to lead a group of knights to defeat them.

　Cain was already a prominent figure in the Knights at the time, and he was posted as a guard right beside me.

　The battle against the Stampede was extremely fierce.

　It was difficult to deal with the various demons that attacked us all.

　I'm sure you'll be able to see that even though the demons are not biting in the one-on-one, when they gather together they are so troublesome.

　Even in the midst of that, Cain unleashed the most appropriate attack against all the demons and annihilated them in the blink of an eye.

　I found out later that he was using a skill called Super Intuition to instantly judge the weaknesses of the demons and fight them.


　The Stampede was successfully eradicated.
　It was almost a credit to Cain.

　And yet he refused to take any credit, saying it was because I, the commander, was in charge.

　What's with my leadership?

　I just ran behind Cain and occasionally defeated the demons that he let slip through his fingers.

　To be honest, I didn't like Cain back then.
　It's because he was a stiff and inflexible man.

　But I recognized his abilities.

　So I ordered him to become my teacher and teach me swordsmanship if he would not accept the credit.

　He refused many times, but I didn't back down, so Cain began to teach me swordsmanship.

　As I learned swordsmanship from Cain, my strength and skills kept improving.

　I was able to defeat the captains of the knights who used to be unbeatable.

　However, I just couldn't win against Cain.

　After training with Cain all the time, before long, he and Cain were able to eradicate a small-scale stampede together.

　I could rest assured that Cain would have my back.

　Of course, I would be the one to protect Cain's back.

　After annihilating the Stampede's demons, Cain said that the credit should be split in half.

　Although Cain had defeated far more demons than me, I was pleased that he didn't say that the credit should be mine alone.

　I felt recognized as an equal.
　From then on, Cain and I became close friends.


　The first thing I did when I became king was to set up an SS and appoint Cain as its captain.

　My best friend did not turn it down and accepted.


　My best friend's brother, who is such a good friend of mine, is getting married.

　Why don't you go ahead and congratulate him.

　What?　My bodyguard?
　We don't need that right now.
　There's no question in my mind that this country is at peace.
　I'm not the kind of person who's easily assassinated.
　So get the hell out of here.

　But for some reason, Cain has been reluctant to go.

　Fine. Fine.
　Let me go celebrate your brother.
　I don't know him personally, so I suppose there's no harm in that.
　You'll be my bodyguard. You'll be going with me, right?
　By the way, what kind of man would marry your brother?


　What?　Tina, you say?

　What, did you also marry the princess of Alheim?


　I was shocked to hear that my old favorite hero, Tina, had gotten married.

　But she is the brother of my best friend Cain.
　I'm sure he will make Tina happy.

　Come to think of it, I heard that Cain's younger brother Harto had sided with Alheim when the Elven Kingdom of Alheim was attacked by a human nation called Apristos the other day, and had driven back the Apristos army.

　We didn't have diplomatic relations with Apristos, and in the past, when the heroes from our country defeated the Demon King, they had made a connection with the hero Tina.

　So, our country wanted to build a friendship with Alheim.

　That desire was made even stronger when the King of Alheim's King presented us with a super valuable item, the leaves of the World Tree.


　Let's welcome the marriage of Cain's brother and the hero Tina, the princess of Alheim, as a nation.

　With that in mind, I went to the wedding banquet for Hurt and his friends and found our country's marquis holding the princess' hand.

　When I asked him why, he told me that the Marquis' son had fallen in love with the princess, and he was going to steal her away from Halt.


　Don't be silly!

　You want to steal that bride from my best friend's brother?

　I won't allow it, I won't allow it!

　I had my guards escort the marquis out of the hall.

　You'll be punished severely later.
　The charge would be treason.

　As I was thinking about this, I caught sight of Tina in her dress.

　She was beautiful, unchanged from the way I had seen her in the past.
　I couldn't help but ask her to marry me.

　Oh, what am I doing?
　It's the same as the Marquis before.

No, no, no!　Tina is Hurt's wife, you know.

　The girl blamed me.

　Some nobleman's child?
　I know that love is not something that should be taken away from me by others, even though I'm so small.

　I need to reflect on that.


　The girl was Silph-sama, the Spirit King of the Wind.

　And Mr. Undine was also in the hall.

　After all, he had signed a summoning contract with Halt, and he came to celebrate because Halt had gotten married.

　............

　What was I going to do, such as trying to touch that contractor's bride in front of Undine-sama!


''Because if this country were to betray Hurt and the others, all the spirits in the world would become the enemies of this country.

　These words, said by Lady Undine, weigh heavily on me.

　Protecting the Hurt family, minus the protection of this country, is the only way to protect it.

　Thus, our country, Glendale, decided to protect the Hurt family with all our national strength.