Published: September 4, 2025
Satou here. When watching movies about the Three Kingdoms, there’s a famous scene where several gigantic ships are linked together, moving down a river. It’s something you’d rarely see in real life, but I’d love to witness it at least once.
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About 100 meters off the road where our carriage is traveling, a large river flows. Right now, a small hill blocks the view, but in less than ten minutes, we’ll be able to see it. There’s a large ship moving in the same direction, so we might catch a glimpse.
This territory is home to a massive river nearly 800 kilometers long. It stretches from Daregan City—which we passed recently—through four cities including the Duke’s Capital, and then flows into the sea.
According to travel records, this canal was built during the era of a great nation that existed before the current Shiga Kingdom. I wonder if it was constructed using magic? The idea of giants or golems doing civil engineering work has a certain romantic appeal.
I did some quick calculations. Using earth magic like we did recently, it seems possible to build 2 to 3 kilometers of canal per day. So, with a year of hard work, it could be completed. That’s the charm of fantasy—big projects can surprisingly be easy.
Just from the fact that such a long river exists, it’s clear that Duke Oyugok’s territory is vast. It could probably fit about ten small countries inside it.
Baron Muno’s domain, though oddly shaped, was about the size of Hokkaido, but the duke’s territory we’re in now, though only half as long, seems to span an area comparable to mainland Japan. Like the barony, most of it is untamed forest and mountains. I wonder why they don’t cultivate it?
Despite this immense size, there are only seven cities. The Duke’s Capital has an exceptional population of 210,000. Even the city at the river’s mouth facing the sea is a major city with 130,000 people. Besides villages with fewer than a thousand residents, there are about ten towns with populations around 5,000. The total population is 720,000. About 80% are from the human tribe, with the remaining 20% made up of various demi-humans. Most of the demi-humans are apparently slaves from the rat tribe.
The travel records said there were no demi-humans in this territory, so I wonder what’s going on. Now that I think about it, Baron Muno mentioned that when he lived in the duke’s territory, he rarely saw beastmen.
The travel records I always refer to had the Baron Muno’s domain listed as the Marquis Muno’s domain, so the info might be over twenty years old. I’d like to get a more recent book.
Another special note: inside the duke’s territory, there are about ten enclaves of blank land like autonomous areas for dwarves. Each seems about the size of the Dwarf Autonomous Territory or even larger. There are many more smaller enclaves just a few kilometers across, but marking all of them would be tedious, so I’ve only marked those that might overlap with our route.
The records also mention monster habitats and protected areas for the bird tribe and beast-headed tribes. There should be one more, but it wasn’t recorded. Since our path won’t cross there, we can leave it for now. We might visit once we run out of tourist spots.
Finally, I checked via the map’s refined search if there were any demons, reincarnators, or transferees here. Luckily, none were found.
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Today, I was the coachman for the first time in a while. On either side of me, Pochi and Tama were blowing what sounded like grass whistles with all their might. They had been learning from Mia this morning, but it didn’t seem to be going well.
Then Liza guided her horse closer. She seemed to have noticed something.
“Master, look over there. There’s something beyond the forest.”
I looked where Liza pointed, but all I could see between the trees was the sail of a ship. That must be the “something” she meant. Because the trees are growing on lower ground, the ship’s sail is visible between the forest. Unfortunately, the river itself is still out of sight.