On the 32nd day of the 4th month in the 1546th year of the Continental Calendar.
Elfrieden Kingdom, Parnam.
"My people, I ask you to heed my words closely."
"I, the thirteenth king of Elfrieden, Albert Elfrieden, hereby abdicate my throne to the summoned hero, Souma Kazuya! Further, I hereby announce the engagement of my daughter, Liscia Elfrieden, to Sir Souma."
The throne was ceded to Souma Kazuya, the new king of Elfrieden.
***
"Argh, fuck no!… What the hell is happening!" Inside a virtual world filled with darkness, a figure shrouded in black with a humanoid silhouette that glowed with ethereal light clutched his head as he cursed.
"A fucking time machine? A fucking time machine! We supported that motherfucker!" The figure shouted as he looked at the screen showing the royal castle of Elfrieden, countless light-years away. "We gave him all the resources he wanted, let him indulge in all sorts of techs, and this is how he repays me?"
"Equipping an abandoned theme park with a fucking time machine? If he hadn't already been executed, I would have killed him myself!" The figure screamed, his eyes glowing red with hatred. "Now what should I do? If the military gets hold of this knowledge—that one of our planets holds a time machine and a traveller from the past—we are fucked!"
"We are fucked!" the man repeated, despairing over his fate.
"Oh, come on, you whiny bastard." As the man shouted, an annoyed voice echoed from behind him. He turned and glared at the holographic projections of his partners, who, together with him, owned the planet in question.
"Calm down, Robert… we're all in the same boat. We all know what would happen if the military finds out about that live time machine," another holographic figure said, his voice firm and commanding. "Now is not the time to cry over spilled milk. It's time to act—to think about how we can contain this situation."
"We can't let the military know about this. My men will do what they can to keep them from noticing, but it can't be hidden forever. We need a permanent solution here. Anyone have any ideas?"
The room fell silent as everyone began thinking of ways to escape this mess.
"How about we blow up the planet itself? The machine and the traveller would both be destroyed, and we wouldn't need to worry anymore," one of the members proposed—to the mocking laughter of others.
"Hah. It may be an abandoned experiment site, but it's now registered with the Union. Blowing it up would result in a public investigation I'm not sure I could handle. Anyone else?" the leader said, shaking his head.
'If it was that easy, we wouldn't have to worry about it at all.'
"How about we—" One by one, the ideas came, each rejected or put on hold as they laid out their main objectives:
Objective One: Destroy the time machine, the root of all problems.
Objective Two: Assassinate the traveller, Souma Kazuya, to erase the evidence
Objective three: remove the traces of time fragments that are left behind during time travel and detected by the system.
"I have techs and resources enough to remove the time fragments, though not 100%. I can reduce them to a range that won't be considered evidence," the leader said as he tapped his fingers. "All we need to do now is kill the traveller and destroy the machine as silently and efficiently as we can."
The one whose virtual world the meeting was seen from held his chin, thinking. "Silently and efficiently, huh… then I have an idea."
As the Robert spoke, the rest looked at him in silence. With a wave of his hand, the whole area was surrounded by images of Souma, the king, queen, princess, and the world rejoicing at the announcement of the hero's summoning.
"If that world treats him like a hero, why don't we create the Demon King?"
"Selecting a person of that world itself, we can provide him with a deal. A deal to end the hero and destroy the time machine."
The leader raised his eyebrows in interest and questioned, "Using the people of the world itself… possible. But as we know, the world is backward in education and literally everything. Do you really think a man from that primitive world can fight against someone from the Reiwa era on equal footing?"
"Nah, I don't think so."
"Me neither," everyone nodded at the leader's reasoning as they questioned.
"We don't actually need someone from that world in the truest sense," Robert said with a grin, his red eyes twinkling with excitement. "We can just inject artificial memories of someone from the Reiwa era. Like a ROB and system settings from the anime of that time, we can have the man accept the task to kill the traveller and destroy the machine."
"For this, we would even give him admin access to the old nanomachines from that world," the man's grin almost split his face as he began to laugh. "We'll play the ROB here and make an overpowered Demon King just to kill that traveller… not just that—have the man also equipped with memories of the future as predicted by our top models of what would happen if the world were under Souma's rule, and hang an axe over his head so he has no choice but to follow our goal!"
"Yeah, that's what we will do… Hahaha!" Robert broke into laughter, excited to play a role akin to a god.
"This sounds… interesting," the leader muttered as approval passed.
"Oh, Souma Kazuya… you are so fucked!"