Queen of the Mad Dog Knights - Chapter 17
Chapter 17 – Master, Even Medic Dogs Can’t Cure Love Sickness (by St. Bernard)
We are currently on the east coast of the Kennel Kingdom.
It isn’t too far from the beach where I sent Dashiba off to his diet course.
I miss Dashiba… right now, he’s probably slimmed down and became a healthier Mame-Shiba.
There are troops around me, the elite of the First Division, the Royal Guard, the combatants of the Second Division, and the medics of the Eighth Division.
To avoid intimidating the Archbishop, we only deployed a minimum number of tanks and most of the troops were in their dog forms.
When I noticed the dogs’ strong-looking limbs and healthy fur, I couldn’t help but think that they were well-trained dogs.
Anyway, we sent a telegram to the Wakens and their reply was, ‘We will immediately withdraw and return to the kingdom’, but since the timing of our departure was right after we received that reply, we haven’t been able to meet them.
We probably missed each other.
On the beach, we are surrounded by white sand and blue sea.
Though, before I could immerse myself in the scenery while leaning out of the tank and looking around with binoculars, I heard a shout.
[The Archbishop has arrived!]
I turned my binoculars to the direction of the Greyhound messenger and saw the Archbishop’s party coming in the distance in a carriage.
Because using transceivers carried a risk to be wiretapped like last time, the Greyhound took the role of the messenger this time. Yoch-sama didn’t seem to care either way, but the Greyhound family’s head seemed overjoyed.
Tanks, weapons, communication devices, and other technology.
Because of the tremendous achievements from the Fourth Division, the technology of the Kingdom was one step ahead of the rest of the countries in the continent.
For that reason, the Kennel Kingdom is second to none in regards to technology.
Overall, we only lost to the neighboring empire, which is the most powerful force on the continent.
However, at the same time, the Fourth Division isn’t all that perfect. There is a fatal flaw, the number of ‘careless’ people in it.
They are easily tempted by sweets and food.
Even though their wage should be really high, many of them would get caught for ‘accidentally’ leaking technology every single day.
Though by the time they were caught, it’s already too late and some of our technology had found its way to the empire’s hands.
The transceiver is one of them.
* * *
“Any pursuers from the empire?”
I asked Darius-sama who gave me a shoulder for me to lean out of the tank
“Apparently, none. It seems like they didn’t think of the situation where the Archbishop would go out of his way to see you, my queen.”
“What about the sabotage?”
“Great success. I heard that currently the emperor and the duke are starting a big fight because of the sabotage. The only thing left on our agenda is this, now, let’s go.”
Mars-sama, in his small white dog form, went ahead, followed by me after Darius-sama pushed me by the butt to get me out of the tank.
As I landed on the ground, the white rings around my waist swayed.
On the waist of my black military uniform, there are eight white leather rings.
These are the handles of a dog lead.
The lines leading from them are invisible to the eye, but they are connected to the commanders who had started their previously assigned work.
The line looks like a normal leather string, but if you leave it after a while, the string part will turn invisible.
Apparently, it has a function similar to a transceiver’s radio wave…
A sacred object is a curious thing.
Oh yeah, speaking of which, my guard dog, Mars-sama, begged me for one of these too, but sadly there were only eight of them. Though, when I told him ‘You’re always with me anyway, you don’t really need it, right?’, he quickly gave up, it was surprising.
Darius-sama looked at one of the rings with a satisfied expression before turning into a huge dog.
Then he made a request to me.
[Then, my queen, please get on me, the image of a brave queen riding her huge dog will definitely make the archbishop bow down in awe.]
“No.”
[Am I not cool enough for that?]
I refused, I told them I would be embarrassed to be seen by people if I were to ride a huge dog, but of course, they didn’t understand my reasoning.
Apparently, in the history of this country, there were some dogs that were jealous of the horses ridden by the royal family.
Because of that, the royal children would ride huge Dog-Kins instead of horses.
Anyway, the huge dog’s appearance made Grey von Mastiff-sama, who was also in his huge dog form, explode in anger.
[Wolfhound! That’s not fair! Me too, I wish that my queen would ride me while wielding a tomahawk, just like the first king!]
“Please, no…”
That was even more embarrassing, so I refused him.
But my refusal didn’t stop them from starting a heated argument of who’s more compatible with being the queen’s ride.
Darius-sama was supposed to be the leader of the dogs, but, apparently, he still had troubles controlling the veteran dogs’ whims.
Mars-sama, who was nearby, bent his belly while saying ‘I’m just a small dog..’
Small and medium-sized dogs had long been frustrated over this advantage the larger dogs have regarding this matter.
This whole size issue might become a problem that the Dog-Kins need to solve one day.
Now, should I pull the rings and scold them?
As I was struggling with the lead, I felt a big black nose pressed against my back.
There was another huge dog, Josee von St. Bernard-sama.
Because she was a member of the Eighth Division, she had a small bag of medical supplies tied around her neck. She told me that it was for emergencies where she couldn’t afford to turn into her human form.
[Now my queen, don’t bother yourself with those guys, we women should take care of each other. You can ride on my back. While I’m not as fluffy as Theresa-san, my fur should be fluffy enough for you.]
Josee-sama stared at me with gentle eyes. I shifted my gaze toward her fur… and indeed, it looked fluffy.
My hands reached out to it and before I knew it, I climbed and sat on her.
T-this fur… feels fluffy.
The two huge dogs that were fighting noticed what was going on with me and Josee-sama and protested.
[St. Bernard-sama, that’s not fair!]
[Ugh, I’m envious… St. Bernard-sama, I’m the commander of the Mad Dogs, you know?!]
[Shut up! Liselotte-sama is a delicate girl and I don’t want her to ride any of you petty men! From now on, I’ll be the one to take care of her! Any more quarrels, I’ll report this to Theresa-san, and let’s see how you handle being blown up by her.]
[T-that’s…]
[E-even though I wanted Master to ride me before it comes to that…]
Her thunderous yell made the two dogs shrivel up.
…I thought Josee-sama wasn’t taking part in the dogfight because was a woman, but perhaps it was because she was stronger than the two of them? And what is this about Theresa-san…?
As I rode on her back, a question popped out in my head.
….later on, I found out from Mars-sama that Theresa-san’s punches were so deadly that if she put a little bit of effort into it, it could rupture your internal organs.
But anyway, this doesn’t feel similar to riding a horse. With this, I won’t be mentally exhausted.
Because of that, I said to Josee-sama ‘I’m fine doing this, so from now on, I’ll be in your care.” while grabbing the fur on her back.
* * *
…Terrorist eradication operation.
To put it simply, it’s an operation to push every terrorist who loves violence and bullying to the island where their headquarters were located, corner them down both socially and mentally, and make them ‘reflect’ on their actions.
There are two important objectives in the strategy.
By not killing them, our goals are to ‘destroy their beloved beliefs and prevent any potential helpers from appearing.’
This is a difficult task mostly because I have to control the dogs who would rashly act to quickly accomplish the objectives.
Next, around the same time the assault on the terrorists’ headquarters started, we would also assault the center part of the Lumania Dragonia Empire.
The objective of the assault is to keep other Purists Sect factions in check and investigate the rumor that the Imperial Family was involved in the creation of the Truly Pure Humanism Sect.
There is simply no way that a group of hoodlums could easily attack our kingdom’s castle that had high military power.
This indicated that they had a large backer behind them.
The stolen transceiver technology in particular was definitely the empire’s doing.
‘The mastermind behind this is almost certainly the empire’ was the conclusion everyone drew.
In response to that, Leonhardt-sama sent out the Fifth Division that specialized in covert operations and the Sixth Division that specialized in sabotage towards the empire.
Their objective was to confirm the connection between the Truly Pure Humanism Sect and the empire and divide the empire into two factions.
Anyway, we will make the emperor regret their decision to support those terrorists.
I’ll spare you the details of the plan as they were written on the ‘Dirty Diplomatic
Strategy for Good Boys & Girls 2’ by Dr. Schnauzer.
My role is to give out orders.
Before we left, I gave out my orders while we were in the throne room.
There are two people that would be the center of this plan.
A short young man with a dependable aura, Commander Lyric von Corgi.
And a delicate-looking young man whose beauty outshone even the moon, Commander Mazo von Borzoi.
“Sir Corgi, Sir Borzoi, we are looking forward to your achievements.”
“Y-yes!”
The young man with light brown fluffy hair and big round eyes, Lyric-sama replied with a stutter.
His anxiousness showed on his face.
He served as second-in-command under Mars-sama for a while, but apparently, he has an anxiety problem and still hasn’t gotten rid of it. He’s concerned about being seen by other people, so much that he didn’t even show up in the castle regularly.
Though, he’s really good at his job, according to Mars-sama. But, according to the same person, watching him is still a frustrating thing to do.
Anyway, his mission is to work together with the Fourth and Seventh Division inside the Kingdom and to gather and process information in real-time.
On the other hand—-
“I appreciate the order, Master, but what about the rewards? If possible…”
“I won’t give it to you that easily! First of all, behave properly and listen to the Prime Minister’s instructions!”
I mustn’t let my guard down around Mazo-sama.
He thought I would willingly step on him? Of course not!
This man has a beautiful and delicate appearance on the outside, it was as if a wind blew on him, it could easily make him fall over, but on the inside, calling him thick-skinned isn’t even enough to describe him. As if to prove this, he smiled at me while muttering ‘that’s too bad’ in response to my refusal.
Also, his specialty is manipulation, mainly manipulating courts.
He would infiltrate glamorous balls, gatherings, and secret meetings in various countries to grasp the inner workings of their upper society.
From there, he identified the people he needed to take care of and made them betray the people that trusted them, whether if it was between husband and wife or master and servant, he would mess their relationship when it came to it.
[In war, my work usually would include destroying the enemy’s weapons and equipment. But my specialty is still in destroying relationships.]
He’s scary.
Also, he doesn’t have any friends.
—-a scary loner.
I don’t want to be lumped together with him.
Then again, I’m not a loner, not a loner, I have friends, I’m not going to admit that I’m a loner.
* * *
Here’s the overall plan for the operation.
Originally, my plan to get the terrorists to ‘reflect’ was as follows:
- Cut them off from the empire’s sponsors.
- Hunt them down and drive them away to their headquarters.
- Make the Archbishop excommunicate them, or at least tell them off as ‘your belief is completely different from the Purists belief, if anything it’s not even the Purists belief anymore.
- Isolate them at their headquarters and limit their food supply. If they won’t accept our charities and opt to become martyrs, so be it. If they do accept it, we’ll take pictures of them, copy them and distribute them to the rest of the purists in the world. If they were to continue their racist acts later on the line, they would lose their credibility with this.
- Reach out to those who have nowhere else to go to make them think that race and compassion have nothing to do with each other.
I asked Dr. Schnauzer to make some minor adjustments to my plan, he rewrote it with a red pen and submitted it to the meeting.
- Make a small crack in the relationship between the brothers of the empire (the Emperor and the Duke of Hainuwele). It would be better if the crack could make them stop messing with the Kennel Kingdom. However, civil war would be unfavorable to us, so be moderate when doing it.
- Track every believer of the Truly Pure Humanism Sect, drive them to their headquarters and isolate them.
- Threaten the Archbishop with a story about the mongrel and make sure the word ‘excommunication’ is out of his mouth. If possible make him take the mongrel away.
- Isolate them both physically and socially, then fire on their headquarters along with the mongrel. The whole island should be wiped out. Let none of them escape.
- Good purists are dead purists. No need for mercy.
The meeting was lively.
Mostly because the queen was motivated!
“Excellent! What a perfect strategy! We’ll follow the queen’s ideas! Especially the ones written in red, they motivated me!”
“NO! You’ve got that wrong! Mine was written in black, black!”
I desperately disagreed with the overly excited kingdom’s higher-ups.
In the end, my version of plan 3 and 4 were the only parts of my plan that were accepted by them.
For the rest of the plans, I accepted both plan 1 and 2 that were written with the red pen and completely rejected plan 5.
In the end, the result is as follows:
- Disrupt the empire so they couldn’t afford to mess with us.
- Drive the terrorists to their headquarters.
- Make the Archbishop declare that they are a separate religion from the Purist Sect, not a branch of the religion.
- The isolated terrorists will be made to reflect on their actions.
The last part was a bit vague.
…it couldn’t be helped since we didn’t have much time to make a concrete plan, so we decided to play it by the ear.
The biggest hurdle we had to pass was ‘can we get the cooperation of that Archbishop?’
High Priest Apso gave us advice that ‘there are only a few things that could make a religious man like Archbishop Gorton make a move.’
However, that man had a really unique way of thinking.
How could we persuade him to move?
The High Priest furrowed his white eyebrows before giving us— me, Dr. Schnauzer, and Leonhardt-sama— a lecture.
“Please listen to me. I’ve been a man of the cloth for many years and I can tell you that every one of them has a special sense of duty. ‘Teaching and guiding the lost sheep’ they would always try to fulfill that duty. Because of that, they could be more bothersome to deal with at times.”
So, how could we get the cooperation of the Archbishop?
That was what the lecture was supposed to be about, right?
* * *
What can I say… it’s the world of adults… everyone is so dirty…
After the meeting and the lecture ended, I sat in my chair with my head resting in my hands.
I wanted to make the terrorists regret their actions.
Killing them to make an example was easy to do, but that would eventually give a new reason for a second or even third group to attempt on doing the same thing.
That was why I chose not to kill them.
This is hard…
But if I refuse to take part in this…
The Dog-Kin will start another bloody conflict on their own for my sake and the other Dog-Kin’s.
—perhaps if this country were to fight with all its strength we could just conquer this whole continent.
There were people who always craved battle like Barbarian-sama, they would gladly offer the continent to me.
No no, they shouldn’t do that!
I don’t want to live in a blood-soaked continent with only a few surviving Dog-Kins.
I want a world where I can live comfortably with a lot of Dog-Kins. The harshness of the world or whatnot doesn’t matter.
That’s why I will take part in this.
I will take charge of their leashes and fulfill my responsibilities as their master.
With that determination, I decided to take on the challenge. Ryoma von Tosa, the vice commander of the First Division, spoke out to me.
“Don’t worry, it’s our duty to make sure that the Queen’s wishes will be fulfilled. Those terrorists will properly reflect their actions (in hell).”
…right.
The sincere waken said so, so I’m going to believe in him.
Even though Ryoma-sama received advice from Barbarian-sama about plan 2, I’m still going to believe in him.
While I was reminiscing about the meeting, the Archbishop arrived.
He got off his carriage. He was dressed in black. He turned his similarly black-colored eyes toward me.
“I think it’s a little early for a reunion, o future queen, your coronation is not today, is it not?”
“Me, too, I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.”
He approached the huge dog I was riding on and treated me without any sense of discomfort on his face.
He seemed to be indifferent to the Dog-Kins.
Well, he used to look at all the Alters as if they were filth… I guess his attitude towards them has gotten a lot better since then.
That reminded me of the day when I and Teresa-san were reading a novel together.
She said to me ‘When you love someone so much, everything else looks like dust to you, even dislike and hatred would become as important as dust in the face of love.’
I wonder if it’s the case with him.
If that’s the case, then everything was because of my dog, Dashiba.
He was dead set on being a martyr for his religion, but Dashiba’s behavior made him change his mind about it.
‘That’s what a pure dog looks like, I’ll be fine being around the owner that rules such a dog.’ was what he said to me.
In his letters, he would write something like ‘I met Dashiba-sama in my dreams’, ‘Anyone other than Dashiba-sama, I care not’ and ‘Oh, Dashiba-sama, why are you such a mongrel?’
In one of his recent letters he even said ‘What do you think about the idea of turning the Purist Sect into Dashibaism? A great idea, no?’
What do you mean ‘great idea’?!
What are you, a maiden in love?!
This is the lovesickness comparable to people I previously saw in the mental facility, they tattooed the name of the person they love all over their body.
With a calm tone, he asked me about Dashiba.
“By the way, where would Dashiba-sama be?”
“On that island.”
I pointed to the island where the terrorists were.
“Because you failed to educate your believers properly, Dashiba was drugged and taken away by them.”
“What?!”
The previously expressionless face of the Archbishop turned into astonishment in an instant.
Well, that was a lie.
I’m sure Dashiba’s already gone back to the palace.
But this is a negotiation
I need him to clearly state that he hates the Truly Pure Humanism Sect and cut all his ties with them.
I put on a gloomy face (even though my expression doesn’t change much) and pleaded with him in earnest.
“They took him away while saying ‘This dog is boring, he’s too cool and smart for the likes of us, we’ll slowly torment and kill him!’”
“What the hell are you doing?! You are an incompetent future queen! I will not forgive them, I will not forgive them!! Dashiba-sama was the holy dog of the Purist! The Holy Beast! They couldn’t see his greatness, they are not the Purists!”
I sent a signal to Josee-sama below me.
I previously prepared a device that could record pictures and sounds inside a barrel.
Everything’s fine?
Get a good shot, okay?
In the meantime, fanned him even more than that.
“That’s right, we have to make them regret their actions! So, first of all, we must declare to the world that they are not part of the Sect, then—”
“UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!!!!’
Archbishop Gorton suddenly ran out to the sea.
The soldiers around him all stared at him dumbfounded.
“P-please wait!!”
“Dashiba-sama, I will come and rescue you now!!”
The Archbishop suddenly did something unexpected.
He jumped straight into the sea.
With an amazing swimming technique, he headed towards the island with a surprisingly fast pace.
The amazing swimmers of the Water Spaniel and Newfoundland family were chasing after him under the orders of Darius-sama and Grey-sama, but they still couldn’t catch up to him.
We even had a tank chasing him but it still couldn’t catch up to him.
[What a splendid way of showing your love… Gorton-sama, you’ve really done it, this lowly me is impressed.]
Josee-sama said, impressed… but that’s not the thing we should worry about!!
If the Archbishop were to die after being summoned by me, the whole holy war debacle will start again!!
With a slight panic, I screamed at him.
“I’m sorry! Dashiba is not there! Dashiba is currently at the castle!!”
[Kyuuuun!]
“…huh?”
The cry of my dog that was familiar to me echoed from the island.
Josee-sama hurriedly took her human form and confirmed something with her transceiver.
With a pale face, she started her report.
“It’s bad! The mongrel…
On the way back, he escaped from the isolated island and was caught by a giant condor. The condor was taken down eventually from tank bombardments, after some chasing, but he took the opportunity to escape again. They lost sight of him in the jungle.”
And now the terrorists found him, she said
She quietly lowered her transceiver.
“All of our lies became the truth… because of the mongrel…”
“Da-Dashiba… that dog…”
DA-ME-SHI-BAAAA…!!!
TL: Iyo