Buhard

About
The Underground Empire of Buhard (地下帝国ブハード, chika teikoku buhādo) was a nation controlled by a criminal organization that secretly operated beneath the surface of the Free Cities Alliance. While it has never appeared in the Rance Series, it played a major role in Rance's adventures across The Continent during the "missing" year of LP0003, which has never been adapted into a game.

While much about the country is unknown, it was roughly equal in size to the Free Cities Alliance. By the end of its existence, it had seized control over both the Anja Gas Kingdom and the Allergy Nation, the two major nations of the Poppins race, meaning that it had total authority over the diminutive subterranean dwellers. Despite its great size, Buhard had somehow managed to keep its existence completely unknown to the rest of the Continent, allowing it to slowly increase its power without fear of foreign intervention. The criminal organization at the center of the nation was highly ambitious, and planned to eventually conquer the entirety of the Human Realm's territory, beginning with the Free Cities Alliance.

During the year LP0003, the Keith Guild received a special request from an anonymous source to have the warrior Rance infiltrate and destroy Buhard from the inside. Rance accepted the request and successfully managed to discover the country's location. Once in Buhard, Rance joined the criminal organization that controlled it and quickly rose through its ranks, eventually becoming one of its top executives. Seeing the perfect opportunity to take advantage of a chaotic situation and have his way with the women of the Free Cities, Rance pressured the leader of Buhard into rushing its global conquest to an earlier date than they had initially intended.

Shortly into Buhard's war with the Free Cities, Rance decided to turn against it, and proceeded to kill each of his fellow executives. Without anyone around to maintain control over it, the underground nation steadily collapsed, causing it to disappear from the public's consciousness just as suddenly as it had entered into it.

Notably, it was during the war between Buhard and the Free Cities that Rance encountered and clashed with the then-Hero of the System Arios Theoman, who was leading a portion of the Free Cities' defense forces. While the fight ended in a draw, it left Rance severely injured, whereas Arios emerged from it relatively unscathed. Unused to losing even slightly, Rance was left incredibly humiliated by the incident, causing him to develop an intense grudge against the young hero that still persists to this day.

Trivia

 * Aspects of Rance's adventure in Buhard, namely his taking advantage of multiple sides of a national conflict for his own benefit, were reworked into the plot of Rance VI.
 * It is widely speculated that Rance's adventure in Buhard would have made up the plot of the scrapped game Rance 5A, which was intended to be a large scale RPG.
 * Information about the scenario of Rance 5A reveals that the Holy Gal Monster Bezeleye was to have played some sort of role in its plot. Despite this, as Bezeleye is not mentioned as having been a part of Rance's adventure in Buhard, it is assumed that she was not canonically connected to it in any way.