Outbreak Company: Volume 12 by Ichiro Sakaki

Author:Ichiro Sakaki [Sakaki, Ichiro]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Published: 2019-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Bong.

There was a dull sound from behind us. I whipped around to find Minori-san with her head shoved against the pillar.

Ahhh...

“What is Minori doing?” Petralka asked.

“I—I guess her forehead itched? Maybe?” I said with a forced laugh. The needle must not have been enough. I admired her commitment, but if we didn’t find some way to get her out of here, she was going to break her own skull.

“The culture of one land certainly can seem inexplicable to the people of another,” Hikaru-san said, moving promptly to redirect the conversation. “We don’t have any magic in our world, and we don’t have elves and dwarves either.”

“None at all?”

“Not one. No beast people, no lizardmen. Just humans and animals,” Hikaru-san explained to a sincerely surprised Prince Rubert. “And dragons? They exist in our stories, but nowhere else.”

“Hoh...” Rubert nodded, intrigued. “A society consisting entirely of humans, you say...?” His lips edged upward into a smile. He could have been a painting: The Young Prince Imagines a Land Unknown. Then he said, “Wonderful indeed,” and I found myself caught on that. I felt a prickle, like a thorn. It was—

“Where do you live now?” Rubert asked.

“Pretty close,” I said. “Petralka... uh, an Eldant the Third—Her Majesty—has generously provided us a mansion to live in.” I had been just about to do my normal thing and call Petralka by nothing but her first name, but I managed to save it by appending her entire name and title. I suspected it wouldn’t do to refer to the empress in such familiar terms in front of Prince Rubert. I seemed to remember Prime Minister Zahar saying something about how the only people who could call the empress by her first name were her family, people as close as family—and her betrothed.

“Right now there’s me, Hikaru-san, and our bodyguard Minori-san, and then there’s our half-elf maid, our lizardman gardener and maid, plus—”

Suddenly I stopped. There it was again. That stiffness, passing over Rubert’s face for an instant. That look, along with the weird prickling I’d felt earlier, made me pretty sure: it was contempt. Disgust toward demi-humans.

Zwelberich had very advanced magic, but also what you might call a human supremacist culture. Humans stood at the top of the social hierarchy, and demi-humans like elves and dwarves were subject to discrimination or worse. It’s not like Eldant was completely free of discrimination toward demi-humans, but it sounds like it was way worse in Zwelberich.

I thought back to how shocked Myusel and Brooke had seemed the first time I had explained that I wanted to eat at the same table with them. If that was how things were here, I could only imagine what it was like to be a demi-human in Zwelberich. Maybe it made Prince Rubert’s hair stand on end to think someone would live under the same roof as a half-elf or lizardman. Apparently it was so repugnant to him that it caused his perfect mask to slip for a bare instant.

After the slightest beat, Rubert said, “It sounds very lively.

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