I CRUSHED A RECALCITRANT NOBLE
“—And that concludes my report as minister of agriculture,” I said with a triumphant look, then sat down.
I was right in the middle of a ministers’ meeting in the presence of Her Majesty. You could call this the very heart of demon politics.
The other ministers were whispering among themselves.
“What an admirable response.”
“You’d never think she was self-made now.”
Good, good, gimme more of that.
I’d been minister of agriculture for several years at that point, and it felt like I was completely used to my rank.
“Thank you, Miss Beelzebub. I wouldn’t be ashamed to introduce you as my minister anywhere now.” Beaming, the demon king complimented me as well.
“No, no, it’s all because your virtues cover the whole of the demon world, Your Majesty.”
It was a standard expression, but I praised the demon king right back.
Right now, I was shining more brightly than I ever had in my life. I was performing my duties brilliantly, and I’d been blessed with good subordinates.
Vania bungled things pretty frequently, but we handled it.
I was actually even interviewed by a girls’ magazine the other day for a feature titled “Five Demon Women Who Are Flying High.”
They sent me a sample copy, but I personally bought about ten of ’em and gave copies to Fatla and Vania, too. Fatla told me, “It’s far too obvious that you’re boasting,” but I don’t think that’s really a problem.
The demon king was in that same magazine, in fact. She’s still young, and she’s governing demonkind with a steady hand. Of course she’d get into print.
“My virtues, hmm? Unfortunately, there’s one place where that isn’t necessarily the case.” The demon king gave an affected-sounding sigh.
On the whole, she tended to ham it up, but the demon kings have had a penchant for drama for generations. Maybe it ran in her blood.
“You know, when I engage in politics, people and factions gain my support, which means that no matter what I do, someone’s rights, interests, and power must suffer. Inevitably, there are complaints from those quarters.”
“Outrageous! We cannot let them get away with opposing you, Your Majesty.”
I could give socially acceptable responses quickly now, too. I was not nervous like I was back when I first took up my post.
The other ministers followed suit.
“Precisely.”
“Let us show those demons hell.”
“Thank you, all of you. As it happens, I’m having difficulties with a certain area that has fallen behind on its tax payments. The lord of that territory says this is unavoidable due to a poor harvest, but I strongly suspect it may be a gesture of defiance against me.”
Saying you couldn’t pay your taxes because your harvest was bad, and that you just wouldn’t be able to manage unless you got a discount, was the oldest trick in the book.
“What do you think, Miss Beelzebub?”
“They must pay! If they say the harvest was poor, then I’d recommend dispatching a supervisor and seeing what things are actually like over there.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
Then the demon king smiled.
For some reason, a chill ran through me.
“The area that hasn’t paid its taxes is the domain of Lord Nastoya the alraune.”
Hmm? I feel like I’ve heard that name somewhere before…
“He once held power in the Ministry of Agriculture and was favored to be its next minister, but he lost his position due to graft.”
Curses! This had everything to do with me!
“Since it just happens to be an issue with a formerly influential person in the Ministry of Agriculture, Miss Beelzebub, can I ask you to go?”
At this point, I suppose I can’t refuse.
“Yes, ma’am, Your Majesty…”
All I could do was nod my head.
“Lady Beelzebub, this is a terribly alarming situation.”
When I returned to my minister’s chamber, I was met by Fatla’s reproachful eyes.
“Lord Nastoya the alraune is the great noble who was expected to become minister of agriculture upon the ascension of the new demon king, but he was instead cross-examined regarding corruption and ended up retreating into his domain. And now the new minister of agriculture will walk in. He will take it as spite… Sigh.”
“Oh, so this really is headed in an unpleasant direction?”
“You may not come back alive. I mean it. Even if he is an alraune, Lord Nastoya is an ultra-high-level demon.”
If you were wondering what an alraune is, they are a sort of plant spirit. Strictly speaking, you can’t call them demons, but demons are extremely lax when it comes to drawing lines like that. We may have wings, or horns, or tails, or one eye, or maybe three—there are too many differences when it comes to those things, so we don’t sweat the small stuff.
Vania was shaking harder than I was. “No! I don’t want to! The food in alraune territory isn’t even good! It’s all just weeds!”
“Why are you worried about that?!”
“People who live in territories with bad food are peculiarly stoic and narrow-minded! Lord Nastoya and his hangers-on were so unpleasant to be around. They were extremely picky about little things, too!”
*The views expressed here are those of the characters. Well, just Vania, really.
“Still, if an executive from the Ministry of Agriculture is causing trouble back in his territory, as the current head of the ministry, I expect I’m the one who should go and resolve it.”
“There are tax collectors, aren’t there?” Vania protested. “I’m pretty sure the group was made up of top necromancers and things. Let’s ask them to handle it, okay?”
“Apparently, the tax collectors all oh-so-conveniently caught the flu, and they can’t go.”
“In other words, a conspiracy. They’re trying to shove an unpleasant job off onto you!”
“Now, calm down; just settle down. Even alraunes won’t grab you and eat you. They’re demons, too.”
“That’s why I’m worried! If they were humans and they attacked, we’d be able to take them out instead, but demons are scary! I mean it!”
She’s a leviathan; why is she this jumpy?
“Anyway, we’re going. It’s a simple job. We’ll just tell him to pay his taxes, and that’ll be the end of it. We’ll leave next week.”
“You know, that just happens to be the day my stomach always hurts, so I won’t be able to g—”
“Do you take me for a fool?” I hit the side of Vania’s head with a noogie attack.
“Hey! This is assault! This is blatant workplace violence!”
“So says Vania. What say you, Fatla?”
“I see nothing. It just happens to be the day when I can’t see my little sister.” Fatla summarily took my side.
Apparently, my loyal secretary would choose to side with her boss rather than her sister.
“I’ll go… I’ll go, so please stopppp!”
And so we ended up going to see Lord Nastoya the alraune.
Vania assumed her true, enormous leviathan shape, and we rode on her back to alraune territory.
In a way, it was a job that showed off her abilities as a leviathan, something that could boost her reputation.
However, there was a rather sizable problem.
“There’s too much rocking going on…”
The cup I’d been about to drink from flew toward the wall of the room, along with the table, as Vania tilted again.
“I’m sorry. My sister is a bad pilot.”
Fatla was standing there as if it was nothing. She must be used to this, I thought, until I saw that she was holding on to a ring that hung from the ceiling.
“What’s that thing you’ve got there?”
“This is a strap for stability. If you grab it quickly when she leans or rocks, you can maintain your balance.”
“Riding leviathans sure is rough…”
“I’m sorry! Every time I remember we’re going to alraune territory, the stress interferes with my piloting.”
An announcement from Vania echoed through the room. She had the same sort of method for that as her sister, Fatla.
“Just deal with it. You are a leviathan, so even if they do pick a fight, you can certainly win it,” I said.
“Alraunes are treacherous. They might use some sort of cheap trick…”
“You never know; they might welcome us warmly, the way that farm did several years back.”
“You say that because you don’t really know alraunes, boss. They’d never be generous.”
How much does she hate alraunes anyway? If she said things like that in public, they’d call her a racist and run her right out of town.
“On that point, my sister’s view may be the correct one,” Fatla said. She was still hanging on to the strap. “Alraunes are vicious at heart. You really mustn’t let your guard down. And family lineage is extremely important to them, so I expect their hatred of you is murderous, Lady Beelzebub.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t threaten me too much.”
“It isn’t a threat. That said, you’re far stronger now than you were when you first became minister of agriculture, so I doubt it’s anything you can’t handle.”
She just takes it for granted that we’ll be fighting, huh? I thought, grabbing one of the ceiling straps myself as Vania rolled to the side again.
Hell’s bells, I’d fare better flying with my own wings…
And so we went to see Lord Nastoya.
We told the alraune gatekeeper why we were there. His feet looked like plant roots, which was typical for an alraune.
“Understood. My master will be here before long, so if you’d be so kind as to wait…”
As we’d been told, we waited outside the gate.
Let us in first, would you? I thought, but it wouldn’t do to get hostile right off the bat. We’d wait.
Fifteen minutes went by.
“Excuse me, is he going to be much longer?” Fatla asked the gatekeeper.
They’d kept us standing there the whole time, so I could understand why she was irritated. Fatla always looked irritated, but I was positive she was genuinely annoyed now.
“Ah, my apologies. I’m sure he’s having trouble deciding what to wear.”
After that, we had no choice but to wait.
Thirty minutes went by.
“Really, what is the meaning of this? Hurry and summon your master, if you would,” Fatla pressed the gatekeeper.
However, the gatekeeper only said, “I don’t understand it myself.”
Fatla turned my way with a really scary expression on her face. I thought she was going to yell at me for a second, and I flinched.
“He already got us. He’s harassing us by making us wait forever.”
“That…seems extremely likely.” Something was obviously amiss.
Vania had sat down in front of the mansion and was taking a nap.
“That’s disgraceful! Wake up!” Fatla scolded and promptly shook her, but…
One hour later.
“Thank you for coming, plebian Minister of Agriculture.”
Finally, Lord Nastoya turned up, walking on root feet that looked like octopus tentacles. One look at his face was enough to tell he was of noble blood.
“Plebian? I am a proper noble now, mind you. Well, that doesn’t matter. I’m tired after all this standing. Show us to a room with chairs.”
My rank was currently higher than his, so I went with the arrogant approach. I was getting used to acting more pompous, too.
“Yes, of course, do follow me. Plebian Minister of Agriculture.”
They did have chairs waiting for us—ratty, rickety chairs that looked ready to collapse the moment we sat on them. They were warped and leaning; a stiff breeze might knock them apart. Saying they were collections of boards in the shape of chairs would have been more accurate.
“Oh-ho, is this an attempt at living green or something…?” My temples were starting to twitch.
Fatla was glaring steadily at the man.
“These are the only chairs I can provide you with. I’m terribly sorry.”
He really did have a nasty personality. I hadn’t expected him to be such a lowlife.
Vania whispered in my ear. “Boss, please don’t take a swing at him, okay? He’s trying to get you to start a fight. He’s planning to make it so that we attacked them, and then they can thrash us in self-defense.”
I couldn’t entirely write that off as Vania’s delusion. They were out for blood.
“Let’s get down to business, Lord Nastoya. I’m told your territory hasn’t sent in even the slightest bit of tax money, so I came to look into it. Would you show us to your farmland?”
“Before we get to that, I imagine you’re tired. Please have a drink.”
They brought us a purple mystery beverage that was very obviously sinister. No matter how careless you were, nobody would just gulp this down without asking questions.
Or so I thought, but Vania was about to drink it until I covered her mouth with my hand.
“Mrgl, mrgl…!”
“You make it too easy.” Fatla slowly took something that looked like pink stationery labels out of her jacket. “This paper tests for poisons. If mild poison is present, the pink paper will turn brown; for strong poison, it will turn black.”
She put some on.
It turned jet black.
“Yes, that’s lethal poison. We must not drink this under any circumstances.” Fatla turned a menacing glare on Lord Nastoya.
We couldn’t start that fight, so she was threatening him with her eyes.
“My, my, I’m sorry about that. I must have added poison completely by accident.”
Nothing was beneath this guy when it came to mocking us… That was a crime, not an accident. Couldn’t we put together a case?
“Now then, I’ll show you to the farmland. Be sure to check the harvest numbers.”
This time, they took us to a farm that was a short distance from the manor.
They grew wheat here, and we were going to take a look at how well it was growing.
While we were on the move, we never let our guard down and kept an eye on the situation at all times.
Lord Nastoya was in the carriage with us until we were close to the farmland, and the man might very well attack us himself. Everyone here except us was the enemy.
In the end, we got to the wheat field without incident.
“To be perfectly frank, it’s an excellent crop.” Fatla sounded annoyed.
I nodded.
“It looks delicious, doesn’t it? The ears are hanging low. I bet you could bake good bread with this.” Vania’s impression was missing the point a little, but it meant the same thing.
This was not a poor crop. As a matter of fact, it was a bumper crop.
So his failure to pay taxes really had been a kind of sabotage.
“Lord Nastoya, I really don’t think you could ever consider this a bad crop—”
I turned to look at the lord—
And he was gone! Even though we’d gotten out of the carriage together!
Instead, alraunes armed with bows and arrows were bearing down on us!
They were most definitely planning to kill us.
“Why you little…! You tricked us!”
“I knew it! Alraunes are the worst! We should never have come here!”
We ran for it. If we didn’t run, we’d get shot!
Aah, if this is how it’s going to be, should I have followed my instincts and just kept pushing my pencil as a bottom-tier bureaucrat? At the very least, there wouldn’t have been any attempts on my life…
I considered striking back with magic, but there were mage types stealthily lurking in the field, too. They were probably there to get in the way if we tried to cast spells. Since casting spells would make us more vulnerable, it would actually be a fatal error…
However, it wasn’t as if we’d made no plans of our own. We weren’t grunt-level demons.
“Lady Beelzebub, distance yourself from me a little, please,” Fatla said, moving to stand in front of me. “This is a field, so I have room. Leave it to me.”
“All right. Don’t you dare get hurt, though.”
I took Vania’s hand and put some distance between us and Fatla. We appeared to be abandoning her, but that wasn’t the case at all.
As Fatla stood there by herself, they prepared to launch their arrows at her. Just then, she transformed into her enormous leviathan shape!
The arrows bounced off her hard skin like little toys.
“Sh-she’s way too huge!”
“We can’t fight that!”
At the sight of the leviathan, the alraunes ran away with their tails between their legs.
…Not that alraunes have tails.
“We seem to have made it out alive…”
For the moment, Vania and I decided to hole up in a building on top of Fatla.
“Honestly, what they’re doing is beyond unacceptable. Let’s go back to the demon king immediately and report them!” Vania was already on the verge of tears, and I completely sympathized. However—
“If we go home when things are like this, it will cause trouble for them, too. Their boss will probably come out to explain it.”
Sure enough, from our vantage point up on top of Fatla, we spotted Lord Nastoya emerge.
I had Fatla turn back into her human shape, then confronted the lord.
“I’m terribly sorry, plebian Minister of Agriculture. The fact that there was hunting here today slipped my mind. That was a bit of a blunder. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
I see. So he’s going to keep playing innocent, huh?
“Well, everybody makes mistakes. I’ll forgive you,” I told him, smiling proudly.
Lord Nastoya’s smirk crumbled, probably because I was being excessively nonchalant.
“You see, I don’t trouble myself with trivial matters. As you well know, I’m the minister of agriculture. If I got caught up in the details and neglected the big picture, I’d never make it as the minister of agriculture. Indeed, I am from common stock, but the minister of agriculture is the minister of agriculture. Because she is, after all, the minister of agriculture… ”
Lord Nastoya’s expression froze over.
I knew it.
This man had one heck of a complex over not getting to be the minister of agriculture.
“And so, Lord Nastoya, I’d like to ensure the big picture is clear. From the looks of it, there are no problems at all with your harvest, and I want you to pay your taxes properly. Understand? That’s all I came to accomplish as the minister of agriculture, so you do your job as a backcountry lord, would you?”
“S-silence, whelp!” Lord Nastoya roared, finally showing his true colors. “What ‘minister of agriculture’?! A nobody from nowhere becoming a minister—the world’s gone mad! By all rights, I should have been minister of agriculture!”
“What you think doesn’t matter. The fact is, right now, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture is me, and you are just a retired noble has-been. Pay your taxes, would you? You can talk nasty about me all you want, just pay your taxes! Pay up, pay up, pay up!”
“Hmph! Making a pathetic wench like this the minister of agriculture… That little girl of a demon king is a benighted fool!”
That was crossing a line.
“Hey! Insulting the demon king is an inexcusable crime—one you might pay for in blood!”
I couldn’t care less what people said about me. I’m sure if I listened to every uninformed opinion about me, my whole life wouldn’t be enough time to hear all of it.
I was a minister who made an unprecedented rise to power from the bottom of the heap. I must have blackmailed somebody, right? I was some high-ranking official’s lover, right? I’m sure somebody was saying it. If I let that get under my skin, I’d never survive.
But I couldn’t let insults directed at the demon king slide.
“The leviathans who serve you are just as foolish. They must be completely devoid of pride to obey such a low-class demon!”
Why, that little—! Fatla and Vania, even!
“Lord Nastoya, I challenge you to a duel. If I win, first you will apologize to both my secretaries, and then you will present yourself to the demon king and apolo— Bwuff!”
Fatla had come up behind me and caught me in a nelson hold.
“What are you saying?! You were coolly backing him into a corner, so why bring up dueling?!”
“Lemme go, Fatla! Insulting me is one thing, but I cannot let him get away with insults to the demon king and my subordinates! Otherwise, I am a failure as minister of agriculture!”
Vania came to help Fatla out. She was almost crying. “Boss, in a duel, you might get killed, you know?! Please take it back!”
Right. Depending on the situation, people sometimes die in duels.
Lord Nastoya was licking his chops. He probably expected this to go his way.
“In that case, if I win the duel, may I respectfully request your resignation as minister of agriculture? Can we agree to those terms?”
“Yeah! I’d be happy to! And your attempts at politeness now are completely pointless.” I didn’t back down one little bit.
“I am of noble birth, after all, and my family’s status reaches back for generations. Low-level demon though you may be, I acknowledge the fire that makes you stand your ground so firmly.”
We chose to duel in the mansion’s garden.
Lord Nastoya had a sword. Alraunes could attack with vines that extended from their bodies, too, so that blade was probably a weapon meant to take my life.
I was empty-handed. As a rule, I didn’t carry weapons around with me.
The spectators all had ties to my opponent’s house, so this was an “away” game for our team.
That said, I didn’t intend to excuse myself by saying, I lost because our cheering sections were different sizes.
“Lady Beelzebub… If you feel you’re in danger, please forfeit…”
“Boss, even if you get fired, we’ll support you at the leviathan house for life!”
My two secretaries were cheering for me, and that was enough… Wait, is that cheering? They might actually be worrying…
“Hrrmmm. Siiiigh… My blood’s begun running rather hot over these past few years.”
It was almost hard to believe I’d ever plugged away processing accounts.
I wonder what sort of rank-and-file bureaucrat is doing my job at this point. I made a manual and left it for my replacement, so if they read it properly, they should be able to do the work by now…
“I’ll crush this low-born demon and make my return to the Ministry of Agriculture! Your resignation should change the winds of fate!”
Yeah, sure, talk all you want. The only way to drain the pus with this type is to crush it completely.
I understood why I’d been sent here, too. It was to fan the flames of jealousy for someone I’d personally bumped off the ladder of success.
In that case, let’s have him burn himself to ashes.
I drew a deep breath. Always take deep breaths before the important things.
That wasn’t something anyone had taught me. Actually, it was something I’d said to Fatla back when Vania had burned some important documents. Even calm Fatla had turned so red in the face, I’d had to remind her to breathe.
“After all, if this were another era, I’d be an executive of the demon king, blocking the humans’ advance. If I can’t put down one country-bumpkin noble, I’ll never get anywhere.”
“Hold your tongue, lowly commoner!” Lord Nastoya ran at me on those root legs of his.
I spread my wings and charged at the enemy.
Don’t underestimate the Lord of the Flies!
I slipped through the enemy’s vine whips, and—
“Who are you calling a commoner?! I’m a proud noble!”
—I decked him in the face.
Whuddd!
“You insolent oaf!” I cried.
I’d knocked the enemy off balance, so I hit him again.
Krakk!
“And you even insulted the demon king! That’s a grave crime!”
This time, I kicked up from the lower left.
Whomp!
Then I clasped both hands and brought them down on his head like a hammer.
Boooooooom!
Okay, now for the next attack, I started to think, but Lord Nastoya had already blacked out.
“Hmm…? Is it over? Was that good enough?”
I’d expected the fighting to get fiercer, but my opponent didn’t even look like he was going to move, and not even a noble as rotten as this one would play dead and watch for an opportunity.
I kicked him one more time just in case, but he only dribbled something like drool from his mouth. Sap, I guess?
When I looked at my secretaries, they weren’t jumping around and cheering at all. They just looked stunned.
“What…? Did I break the rules somehow? I’m rather concerned by your reactions…”
“Boss! You’re so strong, it’s almost creepy! Actually, it is creepy! It’s creepy!”
“Hey, Vania! If you say any more than that, I’ll dock your pay!”
You could hardly even call that a compliment!
“Lady Beelzebub, you did keep diligently working all that time to get stronger… However, I never dreamed it would be so… You’re top class, even for a demon…” Apparently, Fatla couldn’t believe it, either, but before long, a smile bloomed on her face. “Congratulations, Lady Beelzebub.”
That brief comment made even my eyes get a little moist.
“I feel as if I’m your boss for real now.”
I walked over to the sisters and pulled them both into a hug.
“—And that concludes my explanation of the plan to distribute the territory under Lord Nastoya’s control.”
I wrapped up my report in the demon king’s chambers.
There was no point in telling the other executives about this, so it was just the two of us.
For a variety of reasons, including his crime of neglecting to pay his taxes without a legitimate reason and the crime of insulting the demon king, Lord Nastoya had been exiled.
“Yes, Miss Beelzebub, well done.” The demon king came up to me and patted me on the shoulder. “You’re rapidly growing into a demon after my own heart. It makes me happy.”
“Your Majesty, you sent me because you knew it would turn out this way, didn’t you?”
Send in the person most likely to irritate a fallen noble and goad him into picking a fight—both Lord Nastoya and yours truly had been neatly manipulated by our king.
“Oh, that’s so complicated; I’m not sure I understand.” The demon king feigned ignorance with a smile.
After that reaction, I can’t even pursue the issue.
“However, I do have an ideal—an image of an ideal elder sister.”
“H-huh…”
What the heck is she talking about?
“Somebody everyone loves, even idolizes—who exudes an atmosphere of nobility despite her common birth, who has earned all of it with hard work. Splendid, don’t you think?”
One thing’s for sure—she’s talking about me.
“And that big sister’s sworn little sister is a girl born into the most noble of noble families. Don’t you think that’s a marvelous gap?”
This time, the demon king put her hands on my shoulders.
Her eyes look dead serious…
“I feel as if I’ve finally managed to mold you into my ideal elder sister, Miss Beelzebub. Hee-hee-hee-hee…”
I sensed that I was in danger.
Yes, it was true I couldn’t come close to matching the demon king’s true power, but this fear was based in something else entirely.
“W-well, I still have work to do as the minister of agriculture, so I’ll be going!”
I backed away from the demon king, then got out of the room fast.
From behind me, I heard a voice say, “Wait! Please don’t run away, my elder sister candidate!” but I ignored it.
I thought I’d crushed an enemy and finally managed to act as a minister of agriculture should—
But I got the feeling another awkward problem had reared its head.
The End
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