Damn Reincarnation

anned to use as our route into Helmuth, the place where Lady Kristina originally resided?”

Her reasoning was impossible to refute.
As such, Eugene flicked Mer on the forehead once more.

The Alcarte Parish in the Devildom of Helmuth was where the borders of Yuras and Helmuth met.
Originally, Kristina had served as the Assistant Bishop of the Alcarte Parish, where she had been in charge of spreading the faith and enlightening the immigrants of Helmuth and the occasional freak demonfolk.

As a place that lay on the border with Yuras, it was possible to enter Helmuth through the Alcarte Parish.
They would still have to go through immigration, but Kristina should be able to make things more convenient by relying on old connections.

“The world really has changed a lot,” Eugene sighed.

The Bishop of Alcarte — Eugene frowned as he thought of what to expect from that person.

* * *

Although he could use his fake ID when leaving Kiehl, Eugene couldn’t use it to secretly enter Yuras, as it was sure to be discovered.

The Vatican had been the ones to issue his fake ID, and the immigration inspector was a Bishop who belonged to the Vatican.
Since he was fully aware that his fraudulent use of the fake ID card would be discovered, Eugene took a stand close to the inspection checkpoint.

Upon noticing the forgery, the bishop called out to him, “Excuse me…!”

The fake ID was discovered, but ultimately there weren ’t any issues.
When he was dragged into the interrogation room to be questioned about the ID, Eugene subtly released the spell that had been concealing his original appearance, handed them an identity card with the name Eugene Lionheart on it, and showed them the Holy Sword.
That was all that Eugene needed to do to solve any problems he might face within the Holy Empire.

He proceeded to make use of a few more warp gates.
The place where he had arranged to meet with Kristina was Neran, a city at the northern end of Yuras.

Once they departed from there, they would need to cross several days ’ worth of plains to arrive at the Alcarte Parish.

“It has been a while,” Kristina said in greeting.

She had already arrived in Neran the day before and had been waiting for Eugene.
Thanks to that, Eugene immediately reunited with Kristina upon arriving through Neran’s warp gate.

“It hasn’t really been that long,” Eugene argued.

It had been about a month and a half since they had parted ways at Fort Lehain.
It had already been four days since Eugene had secretly left the Lionheart estate in the middle of the night.

Eugene complained, “Although this is only my second time visiting this country, I’ve really come to dislike it.
The warp gates are so sparsely distributed between the cities that moving around is so cumbersome and time-consuming—”

Kristina interrupted him, “Lady Anise says there weren’t any warp gates around three hundred years ago, so did you still think it was frustrating back then?”

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Eugene grumbled, “Hey, do you really need to ask that? We didn’t even know how convenient warp gates were back then because they didn’t exist three hundred years ago.
But now that I’ve become used to warp gates—”

Kristina interjected once more, “Lady Anise says to stop complaining and just shut up?”

“You’re actually Anise, who’s only impersonating Kristina, aren’t you?” Eugene said suspiciously.
“Or perhaps you’re Kristina, who’s only pretending to be Anise and telling me to shut up.”

Kristina covered her mouth as she giggled.
Then, with a cough to clear her throat, she started leading them away.

“I’ve already been in touch with the priest of this parish,” Kristina said once her giggles had subsided.

“To be honest, I don’t like that we’re relying on the Bishop of Alcarte in the first place,” Eugene confessed.

“Fortunately, the Bishop has promised us her cooperation,” Kristina reported.

Eugene asked suspiciously, “Can she be trusted?”

Kristina nodded, “As far as I can tell, yes, she can; she’s an honest and faithful person.”

There was an unavoidable difference in the common sense of Eugene, Kristina, and Anise.

Eugene and Anise were people from three hundred years ago.
Anise did have the experience of having lived in the era of peace that rapidly followed the swearing of the Oath.
However, Eugene or Hamel had no such experience.
According to Hamel’s common sense, demonfolks were enemies who had to be killed no matter what.

Such an unwavering hatred had only been tempered slightly after he had reincarnated and lived the life of Eugene Lionheart.
Though, very slightly.
Although he believed black wizards should definitely be killed, Eugene had come to feel that, according to the situation, it should be okay to let them live.
But in the case of demonfolks… Eugene honestly wasn’t too sure.

The Queen of the Night Demons, the Blade of Incarceration, and the Rakshasa Princess — these notorious names who had run rampant through the world three hundred years ago definitely needed to be killed.

But what about the other demonfolks? The demonfolks who had been born in a peaceful world and knew nothing about war? Should even those who had never known war nor wished for it be defined as enemies and summarily executed just because they were born as demonfolks?

Eugene didn’t know the answer to that.
Nor did he want to seriously consider the question.
He just felt that, as long as there was a reason to kill someone, it was fine to kill them.
Eugene wasn’t a saint or a sage, so he didn’t have a set moral compass on whether to kill someone.

Eugene voiced his suspicions, “She’s not human, is she?”

Apart from the question of whether or not demonfolks should be killed no matter what, there was another matter that caused Eugene to question his common sense, whether or not demonfolks could have faith? Could they really believe in and worship the God of Light, whose mission was to purify all demonfolks?

Eugene accepted that since the world had changed, there were bound to be differences in what passed for common sense, but let alone accepting it, he couldn’t even understand this.

“…She’s half-human,” Kristina replied with a wry smile.

If two people’s races were different, they usually couldn ’t have children.
But it wasn’t like offspring were never born.
Very rarely, two different races could join to create a child.
The least common occurrence of this was the half-elf, born between a human and an elf.
Besides them, there were a few cases where children were born between demi-humans belonging to different races.

Alcarte Parish was founded for the purpose of converting both the humans and demonfolks of Helmuth.
Eileen Flora, who served as the vicar here, was born from a union between a demonfolk and a human, and so was the rarest of all mixed races, a half-human half-demonfolk.

This fact wasn’t widely known to the public.
The Bishop of Alcarte always wore a pure white robe that went up to her head and covered her face with a mask.
So her parishioners didn’t know what their vicar’s appearance actually looked like.

However, Kristina, who had served as the Assistant Bishop of Alcarte, knew the Bishop’s secret.
She was born with the mixed blood of a demonfolk and a human.
But because she had such a special bloodline, Bishop Eileen’s faith was all the more sincere, earnest, and faithful.

“It’s only natural for Sir Eugene to be suspicious of her, but Vicar Eileen is the right person for this.
I have never once had cause to doubt her faith,” Kristina stated confidently.

[It seems you feel a sense of kinship with her.
The more pitiful and terrible your fates were, the more you relied on faith,] Anise said with a smirk.

“As both the Vicar and a Bishop, she is a prominent figure in Alcarte and holds a diplomatically important position.
In particular, she helps to maintain a close relationship with the demonfolk nobles of Alcarte,” Kristina defended her.

“A close relationship?” Eugene repeated.

Kristina nodded, “Yes, to the extent where they even come to observe the services officiated by the Vicar.”

So when they didn’t have even a single speck of faith, they still came to watch the church service solely out of affection.

Kristina continued speaking, “While she said that she wouldn’t be able to help us with attempting to forge our identities or smuggling us in, she would be able to provide assistance by helping us get a visa immediately, ignoring the waiting line.”

“A visa?” Eugene said as he blinked, not knowing what that word meant.

Kristina began to explain, “Helmuth is also extremely famous as a tourist destination.
To the extent where, if you’re rich, you hope to see Helmuth at least once before you die.
Have you heard about Helmuth’s Demonic World[1], Sir Eugene?”

“What is that?” Eugene asked hesitantly.

“It’s a huge amusement park in Helmuth,” Kristina replied.
“They say that it’s full of rides that will drive children crazy.
Apart from that, Helmuth also has numerous resorts with tourist attractions, so countless people visit Helmuth every day for sightseeing.
However, Helmuth strictly manages the number of humans within the empire.
They restrict entry to keep the tourists from overflowing so that they can keep things under control.”

To think that a country ruled by the Demon Kings would become a famous tourist destination….
Eugene suddenly realized the gap between his common sense and the present day.

Kristina got to the point, “A visa is the proof of permission to enter that all foreigners must have.
We can apply to the immigration office in Helmuth to obtain tourist visas, but… according to the message from the Bishop, there are too many tourists currently visiting the empire, so we would have to wait at least a year.”

Eugene silently processed these facts.

Kristina added, “A tourist visa also needs to be renewed once a month by paying a large amount of money.
The citizens of the Helmuth Empire with permanent residency regularly pay their taxes in life-force, but tourists are not allowed to pay in life-force.”

While originally, the Demon Kings already had a wastefully large amount of gold, Eugene had been wondering where the financial power needed to provide welfare for the enormous number of imperial citizens had come from.
The tourism business seemed to be making them enough money to break their banks[2].

“However, Bishop Eileen has said that she would be able to lend a hand so that we can obtain a residency visa without any costs.
She can bypass the years-long waiting line and get them to us by today,” Kristina informed him.

“Wouldn’t we still be rejected at the immigration screening stage? What if they don’t allow the Hero and the Saint to enter the country?” Eugene asked.

“I was also worried about that fact, but Bishop Eileen has said that won’t be a problem.
I don’t know if she did anything to persuade them personally, but…,” Kristina’s words trailed off absentmindedly as she opened the door to a waiting carriage.

The continent’s greatest tourist destination? A Demonic World that drives kids crazy? Resorts?

Was this still the evil empire ruled by the Demon Kings?

“The world has gone insane,” Eugene sighed as he shook his head.

1.
The original text uses the English for Demonic, making it an obvious reference to Disney World ☜

2.
The original Korean idiom uses ‘to make their guts explode.’ ☜