Trip around town

A few hours after their arrival, all four friends gathered in one room to come up with something they could call a plan. They chose Ayumu's room, as it was the first one along the palace corridor.
Ayumu put his military jacket on the bed and sat backward on a chair, resting his arms on the backrest.
"Looks like you've gained some muscle. Changed your diet?" Michi joked.
"Kind of. I felt like I wasn't training enough. Hopefully, those catgirls love big men!" Ayumu smiled and struck a bodybuilder's pose, showing off his muscles.
"Man, fuck your catgirls! We have more important things to worry about!" Isao said, visibly disappointed.
"God forbid a man have a hobby... But I suppose you're right." The general sat down.
No one wanted to start the conversation. They felt as though they had just survived the worst hangover of their lives.
Except Ayumu.
He was still thinking about meeting the woman of his dreams... or rather, the catgirl of his dreams.
"All that anime and manga have really deprived your brain of anything remotely human." Noboru lay down on Ayumu's bed.
"You've watched and read at least twice as much as I have. Besides, you asked for an elf seconds after I asked for a catgirl, so you're in no position to criticize me."
"Point taken, but I asked for an elf so I could perform experiments on one, not for the reason you wanted a catgirl."
"What kind of experiments? Seeing if an elf can have a baby with a human?"
Noboru looked at Ayumu, not even trying to hide how disgusted he was by the idea.
"Shut up, idiot." Sugawara turned his head toward the wall.
"The main question is: do we actually want to go along with the king's request? Noboru, did you find anything useful in the library?" Isao asked.
"You could say that. I read a little about their magic and how it works. I'm no master yet, but I understand the basics," he replied, adjusting the lab coat he was wearing.
Noboru raised his hand, and a glowing magical orb appeared above his palm. After a few seconds, the orb disappeared, and the scientist lowered his hand.
"Anything about their history, laws, economics, or something like that?" Michi asked.
"Did I find anything? Yeah. Did I read any of it? Nope. I don't care about that stuff. None of it's important right now."
"Wrong. To understand the basics of this world, we need to know its history and laws. The rest can wait. Even Ayumu knows that if you want to carry out a mission in enemy territory, you need to know the terrain."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious. I figured that out halfway through my own sentence." Noboru sat up on the bed.
Isao shook his head as he looked at the two of them.
"And you still wonder why I've been calling you socially hopeless all these years," he said, looking at Sugawara.
"Mister Kurosawa? Are you there?"
A woman's voice came from the other side of the door.
"Quick! Hide him! It's a woman!" Michi laughed as Ayumu stood up.
"Ye-Yes! This is Kurosawa Ayumu! Can I come in?" Ayumu blurted out before his brain had time to catch up.
"You can what?" Michi sighed and buried his face in his hands, trying to hide his disbelief, disappointment, and complete loss of hope.
"I mean, yes! You can come in, ma'am!"
"A brick."
Isao couldn't even find the words to describe his friend.
"What?"
"Socially. You're a brick."
"Erm... okay! I'm coming in!"
The door slowly opened, and a young maid walked in. She wore a black-and-white maid's uniform, its skirt reaching her knees. Her long blue hair was tied in a high ponytail.
"Oh, you're all here. That means I don't need to visit each of you personally. His Majesty wishes to speak with you."
"Noted, soldier. You're dismissed." Ayumu was still standing in the middle of the room.
"I'm—"
"Don't bother. He's having... trouble talking to women. Please tell His Majesty we'll be with him shortly." Isao decided to save his friend from further humiliation.
"Of course." The maid bowed and left the room, closing the door behind her.
"Can I come in?" Noboru repeated, turning to Ayumu.
"I panicked. Can we... not talk about it?"
"And you want to go on a date with the woman of your dreams..." Michi stood up.
"Come on, guys. We have a meeting to attend," he said as he walked out of the room.

"You see, this is the youngest kingdom on the continent. These lands once belonged to the elven and human kingdoms."
The king began his story as they walked down the street toward the city walls. Each of them, including the king, had been given a hooded robe to conceal their faces. As they walked beside him outside the palace, they realized for the first time that the king was more than a head taller than any of them.
"Many wars were fought, and many powerful kingdoms collapsed. Cat-people, fox-people, lizard-people... They all used to have kingdoms of their own. After years of warfare, they were exhausted. The same happened to many other races. Some no longer even exist. Civilians began fleeing their kingdoms, while others attempted to overthrow their own rulers. Kingdoms collapsed, and those who survived fled to the victors. But there was one problem. Most of them ended up enslaved or faced discrimination. The hatred was mutual. No one wanted to live beside members of a race that had killed their kin."
"Can we get to the point?" Ayumu asked, visibly bored.
"Silence, idiot. I'm actually interested." Michi smacked Ayumu and smiled at the king.
"Long story short, some people didn't want to fight. Some even fell in love with members of other races. My grandfather was one of them. He gathered those people and came here, founding a new kingdom while the main armies were busy fighting in the center of the continent. When those armies finally arrived, it was too late. By then, my grandfather had already been crowned and secured a large territory."
"And now that the war is over, they want to reclaim what he took," Ayumu said.
"Yes. You see, I'm half-elf and half-human myself, so both sides have already tried to persuade me to become their vassal."
"What about the dwarves?" Michi asked, genuinely interested in the story.
"They refuse to speak with us. Around three thousand years ago, elves were little more than wild people living in the forests, while dwarves had already begun building their own fortresses. The dwarves took them under their wing and taught them much of what they knew. After a few years, the elven leader turned against the dwarves and forced them to retreat into the mountains. Now, the dwarves remain in their underground mountain cities and execute any elf on sight."
"They must have had a reason," Noboru interjected. Meanwhile, Isao began looking around, more interested in the city's architecture than in the conversation.
"No one knows what that reason was. The elves quickly killed their leader and tried to negotiate with the dwarves, but too many lives had been lost that day for the dwarves to forgive such treachery. Some of those dwarves are still alive today, which I believe is the main reason peace remains impossible."
Isao took a closer look at the buildings they passed. Most of them reminded him of European tenement houses he had seen during a trip.
"Are they immortal?" Michi asked.
"They don't age the way we do. Unless they're killed, they live until they decide their time has come."
After hearing the story of the kingdom, they arrived in the poorest district of the capital. The buildings were on the verge of collapse, some with holes instead of windows. The streets were littered with trash, and people lay on the ground. Occasionally, a rat would run across the street. Most people in the district wore ragged clothes, making for a rather unpleasant sight. Both children and adults stared at them with curiosity. People from other districts almost never wandered there without a good reason.
"You see, even here in the capital, some of our citizens are forced to live in conditions like these. Funds keep disappearing, and with the threat of war, I can't handle everything alone. Can I count on you, great heroes?"
Some children began running away, while adults shut their doors and windows, frightened by the hooded strangers. The king turned toward the young men. His eyes were filled with anxiety.
"There's no need to address us so formally. You don't need to call us 'great heroes.' Would you call one of your subjects 'great citizen' every time you spoke to them?" Ayumu asked.
As stupid as he sometimes seemed, Kurosawa was highly intelligent and an expert in the fields that interested him.
"Well, of course not," the king replied.
"We may be heroes now, and we may have been successful back home, but we didn't start that way. The four of us grew up together in an orphanage in a poor village far from the capital. We had nothing except each other... and somehow, here we are."
Kurosawa looked up at the sky, remembering their days in the orphanage.

"How old are you, actually, Your Majesty?" Noboru asked as they walked back to the palace.
The king didn't look a day over forty.
"I'll be ninety-eight this winter," he replied.
That confirmed Noboru's suspicion that elven longevity could be inherited, even by someone who was only half-elven.

"I suppose you'd like to get to know our kingdom from the inside as well. I should assign each of you a guide who can show you around the areas you specialize in," the king suggested once they arrived back at the castle.
"If possible, I'd like to go back into town and study the architecture of your capital, Your Majesty," Isao replied.
"If that is your wish, I'll have someone accompany you shortly. What about the rest of you?"
"Take me to the barracks. I'd like to see your army and its instructors. If you're really preparing for war, I want to see whether you stand any chance of surviving it." Ayumu crossed his arms.
"Isao, how good were you with languages?" Noboru suddenly asked.
"Depends. What do you need?"
"During my last visit to the library, I found something you might find interesting."
"Do you mean the Ancient Tongue?" the king asked.
"Yes."
"That's a language considered long lost. Only a handful of people have ever been able to read it, let alone use it. Experiments involving this language have almost always ended in catastrophe. Some scholars have even begun to consider it forbidden."
The king looked worried.
"Half the foundations of your so-called magic are considered forbidden, as far as I can tell. After something has been forbidden for long enough, people forget why it was forbidden in the first place. Then someone inevitably starts studying it in secret without understanding the original danger. Forbidden fruit is the sweetest, as we used to say back home. What you consider forbidden, I consider interesting."
Noboru pushed his glasses up.
"You see, I'm well aware that this knowledge is only forbidden to ordinary mages. Your highest-ranking scholars experiment with it every day. I'm no ordinary mage, so I've studied the basics and know what I'm dealing with."
"What? You've studied forbidden knowledge?"
"Using something without understanding its origins, foundations, and principles is nothing more than imitating the last person brave enough to fumble through the dark."
The king scratched his head and turned around, heading back toward his throne.
"Eh, I suppose you're right, but this violates nearly every law we have on the subject. I'll let it slide only because you're one of the heroes."
The king sat on his throne and took some documents from one of his guards.
"You may return to your rooms. I'll send for you once I'm done with these reports."

"Soldiers! This is the great hero Kurosawa Ayumu! He was an elite general in his own world, and he's here to inspect our army! Show him that we're the best!"
The instructor shouted at his soldiers.
"General will suffice. I'm no hero yet. Soldier! Name!"
Ayumu pointed at one of the soldiers.
They carried nothing but small shields and short swords. Their armor looked too light to withstand more than a few solid blows before bending or breaking.
"Name's Kevin, sir!" the soldier shouted back.
"I asked for your full name, not just your given name! What's your family name?"
Ayumu slipped effortlessly back into the role he knew best.
"I have no family name, sir! Those are reserved for the nobility, sir!"
Ayumu paused for a moment.
This would make things a little more difficult.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
"How many of you are nobles?" he asked.
"Only I am, General," the instructor replied.
"And what's your name, soldier?"
The instructor gasped, visibly offended at being called a soldier despite his noble status.
"I am Edmund Ravencroft! And I'm no soldier! I'm the son of Erik Ravencroft and the commander of this unit!"
"Commander, general, major—it doesn't matter. We're all soldiers. If you're so upset about it, then fight me and show me what you're worth."
Ayumu had never liked people who considered themselves superior to others.
The instructor hesitated for a moment before raising his sword.
"To make this fair, the use of magic is strictly forbidden," Edmund said, looking Ayumu in the eyes.
"Fair enough. Soldiers! Fetch me a greatsword!" Kurosawa replied.
Both men faced each other, ready for the duel.
"Start!" Kevin shouted.
Both wielded greatswords, but Ayumu's years of kendo had given him a clear advantage in timing, distance, and footwork.
He held his sword ready, waiting for his opponent to make the first move.
Edmund charged, determined to strike first. He expected Ayumu to react, but he trusted his own speed. He was a nobleman, trained to be an instructor. He couldn't imagine losing.
A moment before Edmund's blade could strike him, Ayumu parried the blow, knocking his opponent's sword aside.
Taking advantage of the opening, the general stepped forward and brought the edge of his greatsword to Edmund's throat, stopping less than an inch away.
Ayumu straightened up and lowered his weapon. The duel had felt more like a kendo sparring match against a beginner. He dropped his weapon in disbelief, certain that if he left the army in its current state, the war the king had warned them about would already be lost. He had always despised giving people command solely because of their lineage.
"You're in no position to train these kids. That was no duel. In a real fight, it would've been an execution. If your soldiers are worse than you, then the war is already lost."
In the shadows of the training grounds, a woman had been observing the entire scene, judging Ayumu.
"Oh, look. Another Ravencroft losing a duel. How nostalgic..." she joked, walking toward the new general.
"Kaia..." Edmund put his hand on his sword again.
"Don't worry, General. He won't do anything to me." She glanced at Edmund's weapon.
"I figured that much."
Kurosawa's disappointment was stronger than his fear of women.
He turned around to see who was speaking to him—and saw the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes on. Her tail swayed and her ears twitched with curiosity as she watched Ayumu closely.
"You're a catgirl!" he shouted in panic, almost jumping backward.
Kaia looked at him in surprise, feeling a little embarrassed by his reaction. She walked closer, stopping less than an inch away from him. Her eyes shone with genuine curiosity and innocence. She leaned forward, bringing her face as close to his chest as possible, and sniffed him. She tried to recall the exact words Mira had taught her to say when she met her new general.
A thousand thoughts raced through Ayumu's mind at once as he tried to figure out how he should react. What should he say to her? He didn't want to look like an idiot during his first encounter with the woman of his dreams.
After a moment of silence, his brain gave up and let instinct take over.
"I swear my loyalty to you!"
They both shouted and bowed to each other.
They slowly raised their heads and stared at each other.
"...What?"