The Volunteer Guy

Interim Translation*This article uses an interim translation converted on the Japanese source material.* Once the official licensed English name is available, the article should be renamed. Until then please use the talk page to discuss alternate interim naming.

## The Volunteer Guy

### Aliases

Lord Volunteer, Lord von Lanteero, Lord Black

## Debut

### Web Novel

Web Novel Chapter 796

**The Volunteer Guy**, aka *Lord von Lanteero* and *Lord Black*, is a former thief who was granted nobility in the Kingdom. His original name was not mentioned in the story.

He rose to the rank of Marquess, became engaged to the heiress of the Dukedom of Rondanull, became the chancellor of the Kingdom and later the entire Eastern Alliance.

Haruka called him the Volunteer Guy, characterizing his past actions not as thievery but as efficient redistribution of resources, which he *volunteered* to help with. The name of his noble house, *von Lanteero*, is a play on words for *Volunteer* (the auto-translation skill between Otherworld and Earth languages is quite amazing).

## Background

He was born as the son of a merchant, but became orphaned when some noble killed his parents and took everything his family owned. He stayed in the orphanage in the Kingdom Capital, in the slums district. Corrupt nobles had been pocketing funds for the orphanage, leaving while many orphans starved to death, his hatred for nobles deepened.

He became a thief, stealing from the rich and giving to the orphans and the poor people of the slums. However, eventually his face became known in the Capital, and he left to avoid capture. While journeying through the rest of the Kingdom, he came upon many other impoverished towns and villages. He became filled with a sense of powerlessness, because no matter how much he steal from the rich and give out to the poor, he could only provide temporary relief, and only to a limited number of people.

When news of the Kingdom Civil War broke out, he was worried about the orphans back home, because the weak gets brutalized first in a war. Ignoring the price on his head, he rushed back to the capital. To his surprise, he found a remodeled orphanage, with orphans in clean clothing energetically running around. Somebody had saved the orphans in a way his thievery could not. He felt relieved, thinking the Kingdom doesn't need a thief to steal from the rich anymore, and turned himself in to the authorities.

## "Punishment"

His case was handled by Haruka. Haruka heard him out, and called him a volunteer who helped with redistribution of unused wealth, implying the volunteer guy is guiltless. The civil war had cleaned up a lot of corrupt nobles and officials, making the Kingdom very short on capable hands, and the Volunteer Guy was given a job as an official in charge of a village, which the Volunteer Guy mistakenly thought was his sentence (kind of like community service).

> This country is definitely screwed up. What do they think a convict is?
>
> -Lord von Lanteero

He worked hard to atone for his past crimes, long hours and little sleep is the norm. He made extra care ensuring orphans and the sick are well cared for. As a former thief, he know the ways merchants and officials dodge taxes and hide money from the government, and was able to reclaim those money to help fund public projects.

He was granted a noble title, and kept getting promoted, each advancement adding more lands and responsibilities to his job.

He was under the constant misunderstanding that all these work are part of his sentence, that the "fake" noble titles he received are just bureaucratic necessity to be assigned those work, and that the stipend he receive as a noble is not his money but rather additional flexible budget to be spent on his domain. His subordinates avoided clearing up the misunderstanding, worried that if he ever found out the truth he would run away from the black working conditions.

## Trivia

* The following web novel parts were written from his perspective
	+ Web Novel Part 796
	+ Web Novel Part 829
	+ Web Novel Part 900
	+ Web Novel Part 913
	+ Web Novel Part 1111
	+ first half of Web Novel Part 1318
	+ Web Novel Part 1414
	+ Web Novel Part 2137

1. ↑ Web Novel Part 1318
2. ↑ Web Novel Part 2200