“Sir!”

  That shout from an aide caught the attention of an aged, pale man. One of his eyes was dead, white, and the other was sickly blue. The only way he practically saw anything was through his monocle.

  He was Defense Minister Helmuth Hindenburg. Already at the age of 72, he had seen everything that could be seen in this war, and now that an Archdemon had been apparently slain.

  Well…

  He could only laugh at heaven's comedy.

  “Enter,” Helmuth stiffly said, and the officer outside entered.

  Helmuth then picked up the papers handed to him by the officer, before dismissing him. The Defense Minister’s hands played with his overgrown white mustache, as he finished reading everything detailed in the report.

  “I see…”

  Helmuth didn’t believe in divine intervention. Such a farce was something only peddled who believed in salvation, like those who still worshipped the Goddess. To him, this world was purely temporary, and cruel. Those behind them only lived in bliss because the worst misery known to man was burdened by Helmuth and the millions of men he sent to their deaths.

  Indeed, he has held this post for four decades now. Just like his predecessor, Helmuth had only tasted defeat after defeat. Not in the sense that they didn’t win any battles, hell, they won so many of those, but in the sense that they had lost every single campaign they fought to defend mankind.

  Never had any defense line stood for more than two years. Never had any of their great spring or summer counter-offensives ever succeeded. Even the fact that one of his young commanders, Wilhelm von Eisen, managed to strike, harm, and horrify some of the enemy Archdemons, didn’t change anything in the calculus.

  Even in times when they maintained a casualty ratio of 3:1 or 4:1 in favor of the Defense Forces, none of it mattered in the end. They were losing. That was a fact, pure and simple. Thus, Helmuth knew his job in this post wasn’t to ‘defend mankind’.

  It was only to buy time to maintain the illusion of peace those behind them enjoyed, until they were all turned into demon food. And in that goal, his job was to sacrifice the dregs of society into a bloodied altar that gave borrowed time to mankind for every dead soldier.

  “Yet the prophecy really is true,” Helmuth silently muttered. “Not only that, but the next Empress might be a good, competent young lady too.”

  A saintess and a crown princess who seemed to care more about the world and its people than her worldly riches, both of them somehow appeared. Now that was something Helmuth found ridiculous. The fact that both scenarios even happened at the same time was truly a farce.

  Maybe luck did exist, who knew? But he doubtrd that.

  His subordinates had already acted quite zealously. Not just Wilhelm, but the clique of officers close to him. They were moving in a way that kept nudging the Empress to the path of bending to the Defense Forces’ whims. The fact that they kept herbs away from her was an indication of that.

  He had ignored it, for his mind was already way too deeply occupied by his true job, but now that the news of Alexa Theresa running around the Empire with the saintess in tow to save people, he couldn’t do that anymore.

  A decision had to be made.

  How would they deal with this?

  He didn’t like what he was feeling in his heart as he closed the letter. For a withered old man like him, who had seen the worst this world had to offer, he felt a tinge of annoying flicker of hope in his heart, and it was done by two damned brats playing the heroine.

  Maybe divine intervention did exist.

  +++

  They had just finished purifying the last dungeon in the Schengen Region earlier that morning when Alexa received that report.

  Right now, they were in a small city named Konstanz, inspecting the arrival of foodstuffs meant for the people of Perlenstadt. A lot of aid that Alexa bought with the Royal Family’s personal funds, alongside donations from noble houses peer pressured by her actions, were flowing into the Schengen Region.

  A lot of the starving people were not really from the surrounding cities. Instead, they came from the refugees coming out of Perlenstadt. Many of them lost their property, livelihood, and even the means to work, so they were now stuck in many nearby cities desperate for aid.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Unfortunately, due to the monster attacks and the dungeon instability crisis, the local governments of the Schengen Region struggled to provide for these people, so Alexa got outside help in advance, anticipating this.

  Now that they had stopped the monster crisis, food was flowing in, and it was their job to make sure everyone got their fair share.

  “No need to push each other to get ahead!” Alexa shouted while holding a sign in front of a warehouse where food was being dropped. “There will be one crate for each family! No one shall starve under my watch! So please be orderly!”

  Now why would she be here? It was simple, she didn’t want to do the smelly and sweaty job of distributing the actual food herself, which she threw to her underlings. Instead, Alexa greedily wanted to be the face of this distribution effort.

  She paid for this, she therefore wanted all the opinion points she could squeeze out of the peasantry.

  “Her Highness is personally looking out for us.”

  “Goddess, this day indeed must be blessed.”

  “It’s unbelievable, it makes me want to go to church again.”

  Mwahahaha, fall in love with me, my peasants. No reason to chop my head now, no?

  As Alexa felt her ego ballooning again as she watched her opinion ratings improve, the peasants on the line only continued to praise her.

  “I can’t believe she looks this beautiful up close.”

  “Of course, she is. She must be an angel incarnate.”

  “With the saintess and her together, I feel like the future of the Empire is bright.”

  “Indeed, indeed!”

  Yes, yes, keep feeding me with your praises. Next time, I’ll distribute cake too, maybe that’ll give me more positive opinion points!

  Suddenly, someone pulled her from the back. It was Wilhelm, and he dragged Alexa into a deserted corner of the warehouse.

  “Hey! What is it with you? I was farming a good reputation over there!”

  “What? Forget that question. Anyway—I need to inform you, right now, that we have to speed things up a bit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Things are bad up north, and I think it’d be best if we could wrap up dealing with the food and refugee problem fast, so that the deadlock in the government can be resolved faster.”

  “I’m already doing that—”

  “My point is, we can leave the groundwork of distributing aid to the bureaucrats down here.”

  “But I can’t even trust them.”

  “But you will have to make do with what you have.”

  Alexa pouted. The reason why she wanted to keep a close watch of the efforts around here, and to inspect everything was that she wasn’t very trusty of her local officials. She couldn’t exactly replace any of them, so she’d just have to work with them, but they were shady.

  What if they stole the aid for themselves, and her peasants starved? Now, that would reflect on Alexa. Or, what if they took the food, plastered their name on the aid crates, and took credit?

  She remembered that kind of tactic in her world, and Alexa found that distressing because she paid for those reputation points!

  “Alright,” Alexa crossed her arms, looking away with a huff. “But at least give me a day or two extra. I merely wish that the aid distribution would go smoothly.”

  She remembered earlier those poor children who looked thin. Granted, their thinness might not have been caused by the Battle of Perlenstadt crisis earlier, because a lot of people in the slums of the Imperial Capital were poor, but still, so many people were vulnerable to severe starvation, that every hour wasted would mean some might die.

  If Alexa’s presence, even if brief, would cause a flurry of effort from her officials as they attempted to please her, Alexa wanted that. She couldn’t exactly accept in her heart that poor children could starve under her watch.

  That, and once they grow up, I don’t want them to think ‘Oh, I remember starving when I saw her’. Grr, I want them to think ‘I saw her, then suddenly my stomach is full’.

  “Alright,” Wilhelm pulled away, looking to the side. “I guess Phoebe needs rest anyway.”

  “Yeah…we did abuse her.”

  “It’s her job.”

  “This is why you’ll never have a woman in your life.”

  “Low blow, but I understand. It is what it is.”

  “I refuse to believe you quickly embraced misfortune as if it’s nothing!”

  Alexa glared at Wilhelm again. He was simply way too inconsiderate about everything, so that he didn’t even care if they’d leave starving people alone if it meant speeding up his agenda, and he didn’t even care about himself.

  It was why Alexa was glad she managed to snatch this man under her wing. Without her, who knew what schemes this guy would cook up again. Alexa was the voice of reason to moderate his unhingeness, that was how she viewed things.

  The rest of the day continued onward, without much incident. Alexa and her team continued to help the locals distribute food, then they moved on to the next town to do the same, then to the next, then to the next.

  By the time they were done, Alexa had mostly finished her expeditions throughout the Schengen Region, and they stopped again at the city of Arlen. It seemed that thousands of refugees without a home to return to were in the city, and they had no way to help them.

  Alexa wanted to see them first before moving on to the next phase of her plan—to relocate them to a safer place while Perlenstadt is being rebuilt.