THE ELF CACKLES
Ever since that day, I have been a very busy man.
But I’ve been busy in a way that I found deeply satisfying.
My plan to engage in a spot of harassment by sending elves to support the rebel demons has ended in spectacular failure.
Ariel somehow caught wind of the rebel army’s movements ahead of time and unfortunately attacked them before we could finish our preparations.
I cannot blame the rebel leader for this, as even I had never imagined we would be so swiftly and suddenly detected, then attacked in short order.
Worse yet, and even more embarrassing, my own teleport gate was used against me for a surprise attack.
I lost no less than twenty-seven of the humanoid Glorias I had been preparing.
Recently, thanks to the irritating presence of the Word of God pontiff and the Hero, it’s been more difficult to acquire the primary parts needed to create these super-soldiers.
To lose so many of them now of all times was a rather significant blow.
On top of that, since the teleport gate was destroyed, I’ve been forced to leave Oka in demon lands for the time being.
The option of giving up on her did cross my mind, but it would be even more troublesome if she was to make contact with Ariel and, in the worst-case scenario, begin colluding with her.
Letting her die in a ditch somewhere would be fine, but she knows the location of the hidden teleport gate that leads directly to the elf village, and of course I cannot let that information fall into Ariel’s hands.
I’m willing to kill her myself if need be, but if I can recover her alive, that would be preferable.
I formed a rescue team led by elves who can use Quick Teleport.
I attempted to dispatch them to the demon territory, but that wound up being a fool’s errand, though not in a bad way.
With Agner’s help, Oka and the other survivors were able to escape from the demon realm into the human realm on their own.
This means I now owe Agner a debt, but that’s not a particularly major issue.
I’ve received information that some of the Demon Lord’s underlings—in other words, Ariel’s pawns—have been causing a fuss at the border between the territory of demons and humans.
That does concern me slightly, but since I was able to recover Oka, I suppose I can let it go.
While Oka was being rescued, I went to inspect the remains of the teleport gate in the human realm that connected to the demon realm.
It had been destroyed without a trace, but I carefully dug up the area.
I just had to see it with my own eyes.
And then I found something.
“Well, now you’ve done it. Thanks a lot.”
Ariel’s voice spoke to me, sounding lower than usual.
I was sometimes able to hear her by way of the head of the body double I used during the G-Fleet incident, which she had collected.
Most of its features had already been disabled, but I left the audio- and video-recording functions on when she took it.
It appeared that Ariel knew that, though, so when she was in the room containing the head, she let it record only information that would be of no use to me. Sometimes she would even feed it fake information with the hope of misleading me.
If I took the bait, that was fine.
And if I didn’t, it was no loss to her.
I suppose the girl has learned to use her brain at least a little.
But now she’s undoubtedly speaking to me directly.
“Don’t think this means you’ve won.”
With that, the audio and video cut out.
She must have crushed the head she was speaking into.
“Heh-heh.”
A small snicker escapes my lips.
“Heh-heh… Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
I am indeed cackling aloud, though not all that loudly.
How long has it been since I laughed like this?
How long has it been since my spirits soared the way they do now?
Ariel’s bitter words of defeat ring pleasantly in my ears.
I gazed happily at the thing I had found in the teleport gate ruins.
“I finally did it.”
It was barely in one piece, but it was undoubtedly White’s corpse.
Twenty-seven humanoid Glorias?
The time and effort spent to retrieve Oka?
All of that was a small price to pay.
I’d gladly have given all that and more to finally destroy this creature who has plagued me these last few years.
Truth be told, I was planning to send ten times that number of humanoid Glorias to aid the rebel army.
I was even prepared to lose them all in the process.
All without knowing what the results of the battle might be.
Compared to that, I’ve now gained a massive victory at minimal cost.
This is a huge blow to Ariel’s strength.
Her remaining underlings are still a problem, but they’re nothing I can’t handle.
And Ariel herself is not my enemy.
Demons? Little more than garbage.
It’s undoubtedly safe to lessen my vigilance of Ariel and her ilk.
Which means all I have to deal with now is the movements of the Word of God pontiff.
He’s been using the Hero to go around destroying branches of my organization.
But even that hardly matters now.
I killed White.
I don’t need to rush to collect more parts anymore.
Besides, I’ve already collected the majority of those precious reincarnations. That means there’s little need to continue using that organization to kidnap children as a cover for my goals.
I can probably reduce the scale of their endeavors now.
My time in the sun has come at last.
It grates on my nerves that the pontiff has interfered with me so persistently, but that is of little consequence now.
If I was to go and slay the Hero who serves him, it would cause trouble for me as well.
Now that the chaotic element known as White is out of the picture, I have nothing to fear from Ariel’s camp.
But it would still be foolish to destroy the Hero—the pawn best suited to destroying the Demon Lord.
Especially since the Hero is still young. As soon as a Hero dies, the living human who is best suited to the role in terms of overall strength and personality automatically becomes the new one.
Since a young human with still-developing abilities and strengths was chosen as the Hero, that means there is no human alive older than the current Hero who is better suited for the role.
So if this Hero dies, the next one could very well be an even younger human.
This one is already too young to go up against Ariel, so a younger one would be even more useless.
Thus, I cannot lay a hand on the current Hero, even if it galls me to act as the pontiff has undoubtedly predicted.
I have many other tasks at hand, so once we’ve collected the remaining reincarnations, I shall withdraw my forces there.
But perhaps I can find another avenue through which to attempt to crush the Word of God religion.
At any rate, the destruction of White, one of the biggest thorns in my side, is a great relief.
As I stand up from my chair to proceed to my next action, my footsteps feel a good deal lighter than usual.
Poor guy thinks he killed the protagonist then he’s going to go into shock