Published: September 9, 2025
Satou here. I’ve heard there’s a genre in manga called "misunderstanding" stories. They often feature a powerless protagonist mistaken for a famous, powerful person, getting pampered and dragged into all sorts of trouble.
◇
That night, after encountering monsters in the Royal Capital, I had an audience with Your Majesty.
The king exaggeratedly praised me for defeating the dog-headed Demon King and tried to bestow upon me the Duke Mitsukuni title, which felt like a burden.
The Duke Mitsukuni family was founded after King Ancestor Yamato passed the throne to the second generation. They're apparently famous for traveling around fixing injustices, much like a famous magistrate.
Until the fourth king of the Shiga Kingdom, they would retire and take on the Duke Mitsukuni title, but something happened back then, and since then no one has inherited it.
It was interesting to hear the anecdotes, but I wasn’t interested in the noble title, so I politely declined.
Thinking that just a title might be insufficient, Your Majesty then offered me the territory of "Jade Domain" in the kingdom’s southwest.
The Jade Domain refers to seven cities that the golden boar king used as sacrifices to destroy the Furu Empire.
These cities lie deep in the sea of trees that spreads west of the trade cities and south of the labyrinth city. Nowadays, it’s a nest of monsters.
They had sent troops several times to secure these cities, but couldn’t contain the overflow of monsters from the surrounding forest and had to abandon the cities.
For Nameless, exterminating the monsters in those cities would be easy, but maintaining that control permanently would be troublesome.
I’m not very interested in managing territories or internal affairs.
I’ve played many city-building games, but reality involves too many hassles, so I declined lightly.
However, Your Majesty and the Prime Minister were obviously disappointed.
They probably hoped someone with enough power to defeat a Demon King could reclaim the cities from monsters.
◇
After some small talk, we got down to business.
“Your Majesty, I received a report from Echigoya people about monster sightings in the Royal Capital.”
Though I had personally encountered them, I relayed it as secondhand information.
“As expected of Lord Nameless. Your information is quick. Prime Minister?”
“Yes. I will explain from here. Over the past few days, there have been reports of large monsters appearing in the Royal Capital. Each appears suddenly from underground, destroys nearby people and buildings, then disappears underground.”
So, they really are coming from underground.
“There have been seven reports so far, but only two were defeated before escaping—one where Ryuona of the eight swords of shiga arrived just in time, and another where the Mithril Explorers happened to encounter one.”
Ryuona is that tough lady with the six-pack abs. The other group is us.
I checked the map; there were no monsters visible in the underground paths.
As an additional note, all seven monsters had red rope-like markings, and they included not only insect-like but also rat-like monsters.
“Did you pursue the monsters after they fled?”
“Yes. We sent the city soldiers to explore the underground paths and found the corpses of the monsters. Three were weakened to death, one was decayed, and one was killed by some blade and magic.”
“Decayed and weakened?”
Apart from the one killed, the others probably died on their own?
Previously, Ga Hao the Orc said some of his kind were in the Royal Capital’s underground, so maybe the orcs exterminated the monsters there.
“The Royal Research Institute is investigating, but there have been no promising reports.”
“Then here’s some information. A friend in the Royal Capital with the appraisal skill saw the monster and confirmed it was in a state called ‘demonic body empowerment’.”
“‘Demonic body empowerment’? — No way!”
The Prime Minister, recalling the demonic enhancement potion case, was silent with a bitter expression.