“…you are?”
Lith asked the man who just interrupted his chat with his friends.
The Half Saint tigerman replied, “I am Mo from the tiger tribe, one of the many tribes present within the beastkins.”
The beastkins were a race consisting of demi-humans, semi-humans, and various other species. It was the only race in the world which had so many different species together under one umbrella.
Lith didn’t get much information from this guy when he introduced himself. But whatever, it wouldn’t hurt to just talk to them. They were also very polite, so that worked in their favor.
“What do you want to talk about?” Lith asked.
The tigerman answered, “please, let’s go somewhere private.”
Lith agreed and he and his friends left with the beastkin group.
Finally reaching a secluded area, the beastkins took out chairs and tables and made Lith and his friends comfortable. They served them tea and then the beastkin also took a seat.
The tigerman then asked, “how may I address you, youngster?”
“Ray.” Lith said simply.
Mo nodded his head and said, “Then Mr. Ray it is.”
Lith then asked, “so, what was it that you wanted to talk about?”
Mo took out a chart from his pockets and put it on the table. He pointed towards an area and said, “You see, Mr. Ray, this place here is the Elven Continent. “
On the scroll, there was a drawing of a big tree and at the west of the big tree, there were drawings of three faces. One face looked like an orc, another looked like a goblin, and the last one looked like a beastman.
Mo pointed towards the three faces on the crudely drawn map and said, “Mr. Ray, as you can see on the map, the orcs, goblins, beastkin, and elves share a border here. The orcs and goblins dare not cause troubles for the elves but they keep causing problems for us, beastkin. The border dispute has been going on for thousands of years and all three races have been at war constantly.”
“What I seek is your help in solving these disputes. The beastkin have never once slept peacefully near the border areas as there’s always an impending danger present. A lot of our brothers and sisters have been killed there and even though we once let go of those territories, the orcs and goblins simply took over them and continued to attack our nation.”
“The conditions at the border are very bad. So, I and a few other survivors from the border villages left the Elven Continent in hopes of getting help. Trade and business was an excuse while we searched for someone who could help us. Now, after many years, we finally found someone.”
“And that someone… is you, Mr. Ray.”
Lith’s expression didn’t change despite the many flowery words used by the beastman. The people in front acted with humility and asked for help with humbleness. Yet, Lith had no intentions to help them.
Why should he? He did not even know these people. They were complete strangers and there were no benefits to helping them out.
Lith did not voice his thoughts and reject them outright. He knew that one shouldn’t act arrogant and prideful as it would only result in their downfall in the long run.
Lith took a sip of tea and asked the man, “why would you look for someone else to help you? You can just go to the elves and wouldn’t they solve your problems?”<> panda-n( 0 ve)l.com
Mo nodded. “We did that. But they had no intention of helping. They simply asked us to resolve the disputes by ourselves.”
‘Kind of weird. But it also makes sense at the same time.’ Lith thought to himself.
The elves were the main race on the continent. It wasn’t a surprise that they did not care about any other race except for their own. They had already shown magnanimity by letting these other races live on their continent.
They probably wouldn’t do anything more even if it is within their power unless they could get some benefits out of it.
Lith sipped the tea again and asked, “did you not try anything else?”
Mo sighed and answered, “trust me, Mr. Ray. We tried everything we could. We ended up leaving the continent only because we had no other choice. We had to search for people who could help us. Also, We didn’t do things of our own accord. It was the Emperor who gave us this mission.”
Something caught Lith’s attention. “Emperor?”
Ralph from the side replied, “The beastkin follows the hierarchy of nobility. The one at the top is the Beast Emperor, going by the name of Yamamoto Sakaguchi.”
“Ah, Sakaguchi…” Hearing that name triggered some memories in Lith’s mind.
One fine morning, he was eating ramen and then remembered that Sakaguchi was the one who introduced Japanese culture to this world. Anime, manga, ramen, sushi, you name it; Sakaguchi had brought it to this world and spread it.
Lith also remembered being thankful for him for doing such things. And also…
‘He’s a reincarnator…’ Lith thought to himself. He might not know anything about other people from Earth here, but he remembered Sakaguchi. This guy was still alive and managing the beastkin. Plus, he was a famous Emperor Rank, so Lith was bound to remember him.
‘Maybe I should pay him a visit. But then, I don’t want to have anything to do with my past life in this world or meet with people from there. It would only mess things up.’ Lith became conscious and thought.
‘Yeah, I think I am not going to the Elven Continent.’
Lith turned to look at Mo and said, “I understand your concerns. But I don’t think I can help you with this.”
Mo didn’t become dejected. He instead said, “Mr. Ray, please think more about things. The orcs and goblins attacking us has caused many economic problems as well. But if you help us solve it, not only will our economy grow, you’ll also benefit a lot from it.”
“Just to give you an estimate, the anime market alone generated a profit of a thousand low-grade magic stones last year despite the various problems that occurred.”
“Hmm?” Lith’s interest piqued as he heard that. A thousand low-grade magic stones? It was almost a trillion dollars!
? The Beastkin were earning lots of profits from the industry and Lith was starting to see the benefits here.
But… This was still nowhere near enough to make Lith go out of his way to help them. What about the amount of wealth they generated with the help of Anime? Lith was pretty sure that his own clan made that much in just an hour or something.
Lith was once again starting to lose interest in this proposal when he heard a suggestion from one of his friends.
“Your Highness, I think we should help them.”
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