At the capital of the Holy Empire of Lubelius, where Shion and Adalmann had been sent, I was sitting on a sofa, relaxing. Next to me, Shion was defiantly demanding another cup of tea. Luminus’s servants answered the request, and Shion accepted their service like she deserved every bit of it, eating a bowl of chazuke right there on the table. Nothing made her nervous, did it?
…And hang on a minute. Wasn’t I supposed to be superior to her on the org chart? This difference in treatment’s a little weird, isn’t it? Why was I, the king, sitting there twiddling my thumbs while my (alleged) secretary Shion acted like she owned the place?
Ahh, I guess thinking about it would make me a petty loser, wouldn’t it? Oh well.
“These snacks are delicious, Sir Rimuru,” Shion said, offering the plate to me. “I’ve tested them for poison for you, so please dig in!”
I popped one of the snacks into my mouth without thinking. The idea of someone as terrible in the kitchen as Shion tasting anything for poison was kind of a joke, but whatever. Poison didn’t work on me in the first place, so I didn’t really need that testing anyway.
And yeah, these were good. Shion had a disastrous hand in the kitchen, but her palate wasn’t so bad. But that just made this even more ridiculous. It suggested she didn’t even bother tasting anything she cooked before foisting it on us. Her newfound skills had improved the taste of her food to perfection, but the look and the texture of her stuff were still garbage.
“What do you think? Do you like it?”
“Yeah, I do. It’s light, not too sweet, and I like how it comes apart in my mouth.”
It kind of reminded me of a financier, those little rectangular almond cakes you see in French bakeries. It had a slight fragrance to it that served as a nice accent, and overall, it was seriously tasty.
Shion, hearing my praise, beamed at me. “Wonderful! I had a lot of confidence about this recipe, Sir Rimuru, but I’m glad you liked it!”
“Uh?”
I froze and looked at Shion. There she was, smiling as usual. I looked back at the baked treat in my hand, then at Shion again.
“Are you saying…?”
“Yes! I made those.”
“Dude, you’re kidding!”
It was a truly unbelievable statement, but I guess it was fact. It’d been a very long time since I last saw Shion look that smug, but I couldn’t blame her for acting so proud. Shion—that Shion—had finally figured out how to make food look and feel delicious, not just taste that way.
Plus…
“Did you use your inner skills to shape the taste and texture, or what?”
“No, I made it with my own hands!”
Clearly, she was showing tremendous progress. I guess a change in environment really can lead to great strides. Her cooking had never improved, no matter how many times Shuna and Benimaru tried to steer her in the right direction…but after her little study abroad trip, something had awakened inside her.
What triggered this, though?
As soon as the question occurred to me, I heard a voice answering it:
“It’s been a lot of hard work.”
Luminus blurted that out as she stepped into the reception room.
“Sorry to keep you,” she added.
I rose to greet her, but she just plopped down on her own seat, not bothering with formality.
“What is the matter with her anyway?” she continued unprompted. “She comes in here brimming with confidence about all the great dishes she can make…and then she comes up with all these unconventional-looking things that barely seem like food!”
She was using strong words to describe it. Her use of the term unconventional even gave me pause.
“And that’s not all!” Luminus went on. “The texture of her work couldn’t possibly be worse, but it all tastes so good, I don’t even know what to think. Some are even trying to reproduce her dishes for fun. I’ve had to personally step in. Just think about the negative impact this might have on our food culture here!”
She must’ve been bottling up her anger for a while. I couldn’t say much back to her apart from the occasional grunt.
“W-well,” I stammered, “I’m glad you managed to correct Shion, though. All of us had long since given up on it, so great job!”
I tried to downplay my role in this. Luminus just stared back at me. Even Shion was giving me a look, cheeks puffed out in protest. I pretended not to notice as I awaited Luminus’s answer.
“I can only imagine how much you and your associates have coddled Shion, but that is none of my business,” she said. “I intended to leave her be at first, but once she began to cause real damage, I could no longer remain silent. So I told her.”
“Oh?”
“Coddling” wasn’t the way I would put it, but I suppose I couldn’t blame people on the outside for seeing it that way. Shuna was one thing, but neither me nor Benimaru could cook at all, so we were in no position to take a really strong stance against Shion. It’s pretty rude, after all, to go up to someone and whine to their face about stuff you can’t even do.
So I was hoping Shuna and Chef Gobichi would give her a talking-to sooner or later. But Shuna was way too kind and gave up much too soon on Shion. Gobichi, meanwhile, wasn’t nearly pushy enough for Shion’s mind to be moved. So there we were, after all this time.
Her food tasted better anyway, and it wasn’t exacting a death toll anymore. That was how I thought about it, but maybe that was just me trying to escape reality. I had a long life ahead of me as a slime, so I really should’ve tried my own hand at cooking, if only to develop more of a kitchen kinship with Shion. Maybe then we could’ve found ways for her to improve, and this whole problem would’ve been solved sooner.
This was really my and Benimaru’s fault for turning away from what we didn’t like doing. I was reflecting on that as Luminus finally continued:
“I told her that before she served anything to our guests, she needed to taste it first. Who knows, after all, whether someone laced it with poison!”
Oh… I see. Hence Shion bringing that topic up earlier. It wasn’t that Shion’s palate was a train wreck. She was just more the “never tasted her own stuff” type of bad cook. Once she got in the habit, the problems with her cuisine would become much more obvious to her.
“I gotta hand it to ya, Luminus. You’re a brilliant woman.”
I thanked her from the bottom of my heart. Luminus replied with a “hmph!” as she turned away from me, her cheeks a little red with embarrassment.
These improvements to Shion’s kitchen efforts made for some unexpectedly good news, but they had nothing to do with why I was there.
Ramiris reported to me that Milim and Zeranus the Insect Lord were deadlocked in combat. At the same time, Lubelius—the heart of the territory Luminus ruled over—was reportedly being attacked from the sky by angelic forces.
Since Gobta and his team had been sent over to Milim as reinforcements, it seemed safe to assume things would be okay there for the time being. Milim was around, too, so unless something really crazy happened, things should work out. On the other hand, we had sent people like Shion and Adalmann to support Luminus, and I can’t say I had zero concerns about the strength of our army.
The Crusaders, the main fighting force in Lubelius, had been deployed to the Kingdom of Englesia, with their leader Hinata guiding them. Lubelius also had the Bloody Knights, a group composed of vampires numbering just under four hundred. They were quality fighters; each of them was over-A in rank. A handful of the overcomers among them could be equivalent to the low end of demon lord seeds.
Even so, though, when I heard Jahil was on the scene, I saw fit to take further action. So I left the cleanup effort in Englesia to Hinata and Masayuki, and zoomed over in a great hurry. Despite my concern, though, there was no sign of battle at all, and instead of a war room update, I was sampling Shion’s baking as I waited for Luminus to show up. I only had to wait around ten minutes at most, though; I was so surprised about Shion’s progress that we wound up talking for even longer about her.
Now that everyone was relaxed, it was time to attend to business.
“So how did your battle with the angels go?” I asked Luminus.
“They have withdrawn, and the damage is not very great. I don’t think attacking here was part of their plan in the first place.”
Luminus gave me a detailed account. What she told me was that the attack was really nothing more than Jahil getting out of control, or maybe just harassing her.
“He and I have some history, you know,” she said. “We’ve never exactly gotten along well.”
She didn’t elaborate when I asked, but when I told her Sylvia had given me part of the story, she went ahead and told the rest, a slightly disgusted look on her face.
First off, there was someone in Luminus’s life who was kind of like her father. He was the demigod Twilight Valentine—the “King of the Twilight,” the kind of figure who showed up in myths and such. This demigod apparently created a lot of different intelligent life-forms, and the founding figures of several of these species came to be known as the Disciples of the Demigod. The first of these Disciples was Jahil and the second was Luminus, just like Sylvia told me.
Each of these Disciples established their own country. In Sylvia’s case, she merely served a support role to the high elves, but in the end, her daughter Ellie—the Emperor Elmesia—united the elves and established the Sorcerous Dynasty of Thalion.
Luminus and Sylvia, by the way, were still close. This wasn’t through Ellie at all; Luminus just happened to know a lot about her.
“As a rule,” Luminus said, “I thought it best not to personally meddle with Thalion. I did help out in the beginning, however.”
Thalion was founded over two thousand years ago, so I didn’t know if Luminus was telling me the truth. But as long-lived as their species was, Luminus and Sylvia were kind of like walking dictionaries on their races, and I saw no reason why they’d lie to me.
Convinced this was true, I continued listening to the story.
Out of the original Disciples of the Demigod, only Luminus and Sylvia were still alive—or at least the others had fallen out of contact. King Gazel’s ancestor, the founder of the high dwarves, had reportedly died, and the leaders of the enki and siren races—the fire- and water-based species, respectively—had also likely lived out their lifespans. The high elves, being closest to the elementals, were always going to outlive them.
Speaking of long-lived races, there were also the High Humans. This species was created solely by reversing the elemental attributes of the demigod himself.
“I’m not fond to admit it, but I am a sort of copy of the demigod,” said Luminus. “This makes me technically not a vampire at all, but a highblood. I was created from the blood of the demigod, you see, and Jahil from a culture of the demigod’s body. I don’t think he inherited the power to absorb force from others the way I can, but he was fairly close to immortal, too.”
The demigod didn’t need to eat; instead, he survived by seizing the life force of other people. With no particular weaknesses to speak of, he was the living embodiment of immortality. Thus the demigod created two species by duplicating his own traits—the High Humans who lived by day, and the vampires who ruled the night. (“Living by day” here is a metaphor.)
Think of it this way: Plants gain energy through photosynthesis. Animals consume them in order to sustain life. Predators prey upon those animals to accumulate more energy, and microorganisms feast upon their corpses to nourish the earth. In this scenario, it was the High Humans who stood at the top of the food chain. They were a full part of this chain, and thus they had finite lifespans—and Jahil was no exception.
The average lifespan of a normal urban dweller in this world was around seventy years old, and that was without any magic-based extensions. Medicine wasn’t too well developed at all, but despite that, humans actually lived for a decently long time around here. Those in rural areas or adjacent to monster-laden forests had a shorter average life expectancy, and I should also add this average didn’t count deaths caused by natural and man-made disasters.
High Humans, meanwhile, could live between several centuries and a whole millennium, about the same as elves. Their physical strength seemed to be on another level from modern humans, too, and they had high magicule resistance, so they could take them in and harness them for spells. But despite these skills, they were not immortal—there was no escaping their ultimate fate.
So in response, Jahil devised a method to indefinitely extend his own life. It was called the Secret Art of Spiritualization. His reasoning, I suppose, was that if you could not maintain the three elements making up a physical body—the material body, the spiritual body, and the astral body—at the same time, maybe it could be enough only to pass on the minimum amount needed to maintain your sense of self.
In other words, Jahil succeeded in transforming his material body into a spiritual body. That way, he’d only need to keep his mental and astral bodies protected. That meant Jahil was voluntarily reborn as a spiritual life-form.
The Mysterious Art of Reincarnation that Gadora developed was a way to reincarnate one’s soul while it was still protected by its astral body. If it sounds risky, that’s because it was. The physical body that resulted, though, belonged completely to that soul, and all its experiences and knowledge were passed along as well.
Meanwhile, the Secret Art of Possession that Razen invented simply transplanted the spiritual and astral body into someone else’s physical body, without passing on any of the skills attached. It was much safer, but since things like magic force are dependent on the physical body, you might wind up becoming weaker in your new incarnation.
By contrast, Jahil’s Secret Art of Spiritualization was a perfect, surefire method of reincarnation. Since Jahil himself was now a spiritual life-form, he was able to safely and surely inherit all the knowledge, experience, and skills he had gained in life.
“It required preparing a body to serve as his new vessel,” Luminus bitterly said, “but he could procure one from any number of his blood relatives. That was the way Jahil solved the problem of his finite lifespan.”
Okay, then. If he was a spiritual life-form, his near-immortality made sense. That also explained why he was able to take over Footman’s body so easily.
“Of course, his arrogance caused him to make one serious mistake.”
As Luminus put it, while Jahil was absorbed in his spiritualization research, his staff, whom he left in charge of government politics, began competing with each other for supremacy. Over time, it divided up the country…and once he mistakenly summoned Guy, the most uncontrollable of demons, his downfall was complete.
“He resented me, after all, for destroying the demigod. He was always hostile toward me. I had assumed he had died on me long ago—oh, what a happy thought that was! But I didn’t think he’d be stubbornly surviving until now, much less resurrecting himself with all his force.”
Yes, it was true. Luminus had killed the demigod, her own father—which was why Jahil had it out for her. And it sounded like this was the last guy we wanted breathing down our necks.
“Yeah… Even my Benimaru had trouble with him,” I said. “He must be a real force to be reckoned with.”
“Huh? Benimaru lost?”
Shion chose that moment to butt in. And yes, Benimaru had lost—that was the story we went with. I think I explained all that to my cabinet officials. Maybe it slipped Shion’s memory. Not terribly surprising.
“No he didn’t,” I told her, trying to defend Benimaru’s good name.
My philosophy was that you won any fight you walked away from, and by that definition, he won for sure…but the truth was he basically ran out the clock. If the fight had continued as it did, Benimaru’s defeat would have been inevitable. So yeah, Jahil was a threat.
“Ah, I see. And if you defeated an opponent like him, Lady Luminus, that means you must be stronger than Benimaru!”
Right? Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. Because if you stacked Luminus up against Benimaru, I doubt you’d see that huge of a difference in strength. That’s why I thought Luminus and her force were in big trouble—and why I rushed over like this. That and I also wanted to know how Luminus had fought Jahil off.
“Oh, that?” Luminus casually said. “Well, I’ve experienced a certain evil dragon destroying my city in the past…”
Ulp. I thought I’d heard about this somewhere before…or received a lot of complaints about it, at least…
“…so when I’ve built subsequent cities, I’ve tried to make security my first priority.”
“Um, right. Yes. A very good idea, yes…”
I sounded all uptight. But it was best to play the yes-man for now.
Luminus responded with a cold look in my direction, then continued, looking a bit gratified.
“So I set up several layers’ worth of barriers to ward off dragons…and they worked very well, as it turned out.”
She had told me about this, as I just remembered. I did notice a multilayered defensive barrier over the holy city before. We were allowed to pass through, but no suspicious strangers ever received entry.
“I didn’t think it’d be that strong,” I said. “Jahil had enough power to dominate Benimaru, and he seemed to have control over an ultimate skill, too. I don’t think he could outclass Veldora, but I didn’t expect some garden-variety barrier would ever work on him.”
I meant that, too. But Luminus just sniffed at me.
“Don’t be so sure, you! You outsiders wouldn’t realize it, but this is a holy land, one where those who worship me gather. If a barrier runs on the unlimited faith that springs from all their hearts, of course it could repel someone like Jahil.”
Her words were full of confidence—and they were backed by results, I guess. But was it really that easy?
Theoretically, yes, if one were to apply the “secret skills of faith and favor” correctly. Therefore…
And Luminus had honed and polished that theory until she made it work? Wow. I’m kind of amazed. I couldn’t even guess how hard that’d be.
It is not a feat achievable by a single person. It requires a deep understanding of one’s believers, along with a mutual appreciation. This cannot happen overnight, Master, but would you like me to research it as well?
Ooooh, I dunno… I’d rather keep things to myself, so… Nah, we can put that on hold for now.
Ciel seemed to agree with me, too. Besides, while it seemed useful, we already had enough projects we hadn’t gotten around to tackling yet. Plus we were in the middle of a war; I didn’t have the luxury of getting close with my citizens at the moment. So I decided to put that on the back burner for the moment. I would wanna tackle it someday, though.
So I knew how Luminus had escaped her latest crisis, but that didn’t solve the full problem. In fact, I hadn’t gotten to my main question yet.
“…So yeah, Daggrull’s turned on us. He’s on the march even as we speak, so I think we’ll make contact within a week at the latest.”
I needed to drop the truth on her: Fenn, Daggrull’s brother, had done something or other to him, and it made him do a total one-eighty in personality. I didn’t see any of this; I only learned about it from Ultima’s report…but I had witnessed Daggrull from a distance, and he certainly seemed to have a new, evil sort of aura around him. The army of giants following him all looked just as ominous, so when it came time for a fight, I expected it to be pretty intense. That’d be the real battle—Jahil was just an appetizer.
These giants were marching on foot, but looking at the way they advanced through the Deadly Desert without suffering from it one bit, I didn’t think it’d take them long to reach here. If I could be brutally honest for a second, having Daggrull defect on us was a serious blow. The possibility was on my mind, but now that it was reality, it was beyond a headache to deal with.
“Yes, well, Daggrull and I were never on good terms to start with,” Luminus said. “We had some conflicts of interest, but more than that, Daggrull was rather fond of the demigod, so…”
“Wait. So the demigod’s behind Daggrull’s beef with you, too? Not just Jahil?”
“Mmm, well, it’s all in the past now,” said Luminus, sounding less than bothered. Apparently this all happened back when Daggrull was still called an evil god. Maybe it was no skin off Luminus’s nose, but if they had that kind of past, I really felt like Daggrull was trying to settle a score with her…
“So yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up in a head-on war with him.”
Great. And Daggrull was pretty strong, too, right? Even I would have trouble with him, probably…
Pfft. Impossible.
…But then again, Ciel seems to disagree with that. Well, fine. I’m not going to debate the issue. I don’t want to underestimate the enemy only to look like a fool after he kicks my ass. We need to assume, for planning purposes, he’s enough of a threat that I’d have trouble with him.
Roger that.
Glad we’re on the same page. Now let’s figure out what we should do.
From a geopolitical point of view, the Holy Empire of Lubelius was the keystone of our western defenses. If it fell, our enemy would gain a foothold in the Western Nations, and the situation would shift quickly after that.
The angel army was capable of flight, so it wasn’t like we could intercept them at some point. The giants, on the other hand, were on foot, although they were going much faster than a human’s walking speed—about nineteen miles an hour. I sensed some legion magic at work, because this was unthinkable for a normal army. Still beat any kind of aerial attack, though.
Daggrull’s base, the Holy Void of Damargania, was about 1,250 miles as the crow flies to Lune, the holy city we were in. Even assuming they didn’t detour around the Barren Lands and Deadly Desert, we were talking a trek of some 1,900 miles by foot. Simple math told me they’d require over four full days of walking, and I was sure they’d need breaks at some point, so that figure should likely be tripled…but judging by the glimpse I had of their march, this could very well have been a constant thing, with no rest involved.
Either way, we had our Argos system keeping watch over them. If anything new happens, I should know right away—
The Argos surveillance magic is easily fooled. If the enemy is cautious, I cannot discount the possibility they are taking countermeasures against it.
They are, huh?
Argos allowed me to see what was going on somewhere in real time, but there was no real way to confirm the video feed I was getting hadn’t been tampered with. I, too, was taking measures based on the assumption we were being watched ourselves. If the enemy had some similar kind of magic, it was fair to assume they’d take some equivalent measures, too. Of course, maybe I was just worrying too much…but either way, we clearly couldn’t let our guards down.
But we had other things to be concerned about. Luminus told me they’d managed to fend off Jahil, but I wasn’t sure I should take that at face value. Making Daggrull turn traitor was part of the enemy’s operation, after all. If they wanted to defeat Luminus, too, I thought they’d use him to stage a pincer attack on Lubelius. But they didn’t do that, probably because Jahil was beyond anyone’s control. Maybe Jahil had his own agenda, given the bad blood between him and Luminus, but from what I’d heard, this was probably just Jahil going rogue—in other words, a breakdown in the chain of command.
Luminus was certainly powerful, but if she was caught between an army of giants from the west and a flying angel force from above, I could see her being pretty helpless to stop that. If the enemy didn’t attack with that strategy, it showed inconsistency within their ranks.
Anyway, since I had clearly arrived on time, I wanted to make sure we were in perfect position to intercept our foes before Daggrull arrived. So how much wiggle room did we have?
“Assuming they maintained their current marching speed, I believe it will take at least four days for Daggrull’s army to arrive,” I told Luminus. “Hinata and her Crusaders will be back soon, I guess, and if we’re lucky, they may just be in time for this.”
“Hmm. I’d like to call them back right now, in case things get bad…”
“Yeah, I came here alone after leaving them to help clean up Englesia’s capital. They need to guard all the VIPs there at the moment, too, so I don’t think they can leave until they hand all that over to other people.”
I wasn’t so sure about calling back Hinata and the rest of the paladins. Masayuki was still in Englesia, so it was still not entirely secure over there. Feldway had reportedly been repelled, but maybe all that was the prelude for a more concentrated attack to come.
Of course, Masayuki had Velgrynd with him, and Testarossa was still there, too. Those ex-imperial officers seemed surprisingly dependable, actually. Besides, things had to be better there than over here, so I was pretty sure they could deal with whatever came their way.
“Hmm, yes,” Luminus mused. “Hinata was sent to represent the Western Holy Church, so I suppose we can’t ask too much of her.”
So Luminus reluctantly agreed. If we selfishly called Hinata back, it might be perceived as the Holy Church abandoning the Western Nations. All the trust we had built up could be lost in one fell swoop. If things really got awful, we might not have much of a choice—but then, I was there to keep that from happening.
“Well, I have my man Gadora here with me, and I think he’s discussing your defenses with Adalmann right now. He’s not on the same level as Hinata, but he’s reliable in a pinch, so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
Luminus greeted my assurance with an indignant glare. “You are being far too thoughtless! You can be that carefree about this only because you don’t understand just how terrifying Daggrull is.”
No, lady, I thought he was bad news, too. But Ciel suggested it’d be an easy win for me, so I couldn’t help but be a bit relaxed about him. I didn’t think I’d be called “thoughtless” for it, but if I talked back to her, I’d just be kicking the hornet’s nest. So, maturely swallowing my complaints, I moved on to the next topic before she berated me any further.
“Anyway, why don’t we check on our war strength?” I suggested.
I didn’t expect her to be honest with me about every bit of it—we were talking about the military of another nation, after all. But if I didn’t ask, we couldn’t really come up with a proper strategy. So I broke out my most important question.
“First off, I’ll just go ahead and ask—how many overcomers do you have?”
I knew I was being rude, but this question really did matter a lot. We couldn’t rely on the captains of the Crusaders for this job, so I wanted a grasp of just how much useful personnel we had on hand. In the battle ahead, we were better off not counting anyone below the rank of A. There was no point bringing along the kind of people who’d get immediately wiped out by a single shot of wide-range magic, a fact Carrera demonstrated all too well for us.
In terms of what the Holy Empire of Lubelius had publicly announced, their main force was the Temple Knights, composed of knights faithful to the Luminist religion. They numbered ten thousand, and since they were charged with protecting their nation’s holiest of lands, they were stronger than the guys they sent out to other nations. The knights who belonged to it each merited at least a B-plus in rank.
But—and not to be rude—it was really six of one, half a dozen of the other to me. They were strong as far as humans were concerned, but facing Daggrull, one kick would send them into outer space. It’d depend on how we used them, of course, but I couldn’t really see soldiers like these as mere numbers. I wasn’t playing a video game, so I really wanted to stick to my no-deaths policy.
That meant fighting only with my main force, with everyone else strictly handling a support role. For these guys, that meant maintaining the barrier and making sure the holy lands remained well guarded.
Luminus seemed to understand this line of thinking.
“I can name seven who would be the most useful for this. The demon lord’s army has established a system of rule where my stand-in Roy—er, Louis—is king, and the Seven Great Nobles rule under him.”
Hoh. More impressive than I thought. And surprisingly enough, one of these nobles was an overcomer conducting research as part of Vester’s team.
Interestingly, this group of seven did not include Luminus’s butler Gunther. “He is also one of the Disciples of the Demigod,” Luminus explained. “We are something like sister and brother, you could say.”
“I am truly honored to hear you say that, my lady,” Gunther said. “I would never be able to hold a candle to you.”
Luminus introduced me to Gunther, who was just setting up another round of tea. We had met before, and I thought he had a fair bit of muscle, but now I fully understood why.
She went on to tell me Louis was also a work of the demigod. I wasn’t sure if work was the best word for it, but anyway, he escaped soon after he was made, turning wild and rampaging across the countryside. Until Luminus defeated him and brought him under her control, he apparently caused quite a bit of damage. It was all a long time ago, so I wasn’t about to judge him…but if anything, that was one of the more heartwarming demigod-related tales I’d heard. Luminus had sure been through a lot. She told me the Seven Great Nobles were all derived from Louis, making them all more than qualified to serve in the army of a demon lord.
At any rate, I now knew what Luminus was working with. It was my turn, so I informed her about a report I had only just received.
“According to info from Ultima, Daggrull’s force is called the Bound Titans, a group of thirty thousand warrior giants. Each ranks a B on average, but the best are all over-A—we’re talking nearly a thousand of those elites.”
“Quite a piece of work,” noted Luminus.
She wasn’t talking about the size difference between thirty thousand Bound Titans and ten thousand Temple Knights, but rather the number of over-A warriors. We didn’t know why Daggrull was dragging lower-ranked giants with him, but the quality was more noteworthy than the quantity. We’d been vastly outnumbered before and turned the tables on that, so we knew this was the valid approach.
So let’s compare the quality.
Luminus’s force originally consisted of under four hundred Bloody Knights plus about three hundred Crusaders, meaning she commanded almost seven hundred over-As. Given the nearly one thousand Daggrull had, these numbers weren’t all that astonishing…but since the Crusaders weren’t there, it was clear Luminus was at a major disadvantage.
If she was defeated and her holy land fell, there was no doubt the Western Nations would collapse. Not only would the object of their faith be gone, but their literal guardian would disappear as well, and I was sure they’d be fully overrun in under a month. If Daggrull was just looking to conquer land, he might temper the destruction along the way…but the people living there would suffer either way, and we had no idea how they’d be treated.
Having someone butt in like this—just when we were getting recognized and about to join hand-in-hand to create an affluent, civilized society—was beyond ridiculous. Anyone who messed with my gloriously self-indulgent lifestyle had to pay the price—and so I had to keep Luminus’s forces from losing by any means possible.
So the big question was: Did we have enough firepower? Daggrull’s strength was still unknown. Apparently, he was iron-fisted enough to have had a go at Veldora in the past, so we underestimated him at our peril. According to Ciel, I’d definitely come out on top against Daggrull…but as long as the next moves remained unknown, there was no telling whether I’d actually need to enter the fight myself.
We had to be ready for any kind of situation. If it came down to a duel between him and Luminus, I couldn’t tell you who’d win. Luminus possessed a sin-based ultimate skill, so there was no way she’d go down that easy…but it was better to avoid any fight between two leaders if we could help it. Maybe it didn’t really matter if I was there, but I still felt safer knowing the strength of all our second-tier guys.
Luminus and Daggrull together arguably controlled the largest faction among all demon lords, but their overall strength was thought to be around even. That was likely why Daggrull hadn’t made any untoward moves, but with war on the horizon, the strength of each side’s second-tier generals and officers could decide the winner.
On Luminus’s side we had Gunther, Louis, and those Seven Great Nobles. Daggrull, too, had a packed roster. His brothers, for one—Fenn and Glasord. They lagged a step behind the Million Class, but I was told they had other warriors comparable to a demon lord seed. These were the so-called Five Great Warlords, the best of the Bound Titans’ best fighters.
Their chief member was already known to me.
“Seeing Fenn back is truly bad news,” I said. “It means Daggrull is back to his evil-god ways, and I’m sure old Four-Armed Basara is back, too.”
Yes, this “Four-Armed Basara” was second-in-command of the Bound Titans. He was supposed to be just as strong as Glasord, the other vice-leader, which undoubtedly made him part of the Million Class.
Really, there were just too many menaces hidden away in both these guys’ camps. They were each housing dudes so ferocious, they made Carillon and Frey look like neighborhood kids. I was really starting to wonder about the balance of power between demon lords.
“Well,” Luminus said when I whined to her about it, “why wouldn’t it be this way? We’ve both been demon lords for a long, long while, taking in the strong and expanding our power the whole time. If anything, I respect Carillon and Frey for the job they’ve done, despite being so new to this.”
She clearly looked down on them. But “a long, long time” must have been the truth. Luminus and Daggrull had been alive for more than just a millennium or two. Way more than that. Maybe even ten, for all I knew. Apparently one or two hundred years weren’t usually enough for a demon lord seed to reach Million Class status, a statistic I wasn’t really sure how to respond to.
“Yes, along those lines, you are beyond exceptional!” Luminus said. “How many Million Class members do you even have under your command? I would love to ask how you managed to grab so many of them in the blink of an eye!”
“Ah…?!”
I couldn’t help but gasp. I didn’t really know how this happened, either, and it wasn’t like asking me would help find an answer. I began to sense continuing this topic wouldn’t help me very much, so I attempted to steer away from it by asking another question I had on my mind.
“Speaking of that, you sure seem to know a lot about Daggrull’s force. Did you personally know Fenn or something?”
Luminus gave me another “are you kidding me?” look. “Hmm? Of course I do. He had already been sealed away before I was born, but there was still evidence of the damage he exacted all over the place. The demigod used to love telling me stories about his heyday. It was thanks to Fenn, after all, that the siblings Kisara and Basara were born.”
As she explained to me, Kisara and Basara were the first of the giant species, crafted by the demigod using the “true giant” Daggrull as a reference. They were twins, which led to quarrels over who was older—and when they fought, it always took on epic proportions. Luminus claimed all the disasters of the past could be traced back to the demigod, and I think she was right. Things only settled down once Kisara and Basara lost to Daggrull in a fight; he then made them his personal underlings.
“It takes a thief to catch one, you could say, but the end result was an expansion of Daggrull’s power, which I didn’t much appreciate,” she said,
That was apparently when the real power struggle between Daggrull and Luminus began. Things only changed for the better once Daggrull and Kisara got married. It’s often said having a family helps wild men settle down, and that was exactly what happened.
This period of peace lasted for a while, but it was really only a preparation period for the next war…and so on. According to Luminus, they cycled between war and peace every hundred years or so.
I wasn’t too interested in this history, though, so I had her give me the digest version.
Kisara had become Daggrull’s queen, but she wound up dying in childbirth. The death was a struggle for her brother, Basara, to deal with—I’m sure the more you fight, the more you love, or something.
His behavior grew erratic enough that he was put under house arrest by Daggrull. Basara was forced to fall into a deep sleep, but as Luminus put it, he had almost certainly been woken up for this new conquest.
This came up in Ultima’s report, too: “They used to have this wild child named Four-Arms a long time ago, so I asked what was up with him these days. Apparently he’s been kept confined this whole time. The guy I talked to said they’d let him out when the times called for it.”
So we could definitely expect him on the enemy’s side that day, yeah. If someone like Ultima called him a wild child, I was sure he was gonna be a handful.
Anyway, the group led by Basara was called the Five Great Warlords, with their roster chosen through an annual skills competition. It was an established custom in Damargania, one way they encouraged national unity and pride. However, the giants had an average lifespan of around five hundred years, so only the senior giants—those who had lasted at least a millennium—got to participate. (You’d occasionally see a younger giant pick up some genes from their older ancestors and get in early, though.)
These Five Great Warlords were the best among their race, but none of them were as threatening as Basara, their leader. The rank-and-file warlords were probably below the Three Lycanthropeers, or the Twin Wings who served Frey, and that meant Luminus’s Seven Great Nobles outclassed them, too.
Let’s take a moment to summarize the forces on both sides again. First, Luminus. Gunther and Louis were Million Class members, probably just breaking into seven-figure EP. The Seven Great Nobles were equivalent to demon lord seeds, boasting EP between two hundred and six hundred thousand—a lot of variation between them, I guess.
As far as the general public knew, they also had something called the Seven Days Clergy, although they had been wiped out after an unfortunate incident. They didn’t have any time to restock this group with other champion-class humans, but in the future, there were plans to reform the group with paladin captains and the like.
That about rounded it out.
On Daggrull’s side, you had his siblings Glasord and Fenn, first off. Glasord’s EP was said to be just under two million, and Fenn’s was above Daggrull’s as well—the strength among them was mind-boggling. Basara, who I mentioned earlier, was a level behind Glasord at just over one million, about on an equal footing with Gunther. The rest of the Five Great Warlords had scores of between 150,000 and 300,000, which made them less of a threat than any Lycanthropeer, but the problem was the other high-level fighters in their army. There were nearly a hundred of these, the weakest of whom had EP over 100,000, and the strongest nearly 150,000.
That wasn’t surprising, since the yearly competition guaranteed a healthy supply. But that they had nearly a hundred people that strong was a threat that frankly couldn’t be ignored. I believed quality beat quantity, but if even your rank and filers were above a certain line, that was a problem. It would’ve been great if we could’ve beaten these guys in a single blow like Velgrynd, but I doubted Daggrull was about to let that happen…
“It’s been a while since I last saw the enemy’s sheer numbers as a threat,” I ventured.
“Yes, well, we’ve been at each other’s throats for quite a while, but if it came to all-out war, I did think he’d have the upper hand to start,” Luminus said. “I’ve been working on my preparations, but a certain slime I know whittled down my forces, so…”
“H-hey! That’s in the past now, isn’t it?!”
This bickering was fun and all, but it didn’t really solve the problem.
At this rate, our only option would be to send more reinforcements from Tempest—but then Shion entered the conversation, smiling from ear to ear.
“Hee-hee-hee! There is nothing to fear from Daggrull, Sir Rimuru!” She stood up, then called out to the other side of the door. “Come on in, everyone!”
Into the room shuffled a group of men, all looking pretty nervous.
Hang on. Don’t I know these guys…?
“Good to see you again! I’m Daggra!”
“I’m Liura!”
“And I’m Chonkra!”
They were Daggrull’s sons. I’d left them in Shion’s care, and then I’d completely forgotten about them. Okay, I did file them in the back of my mind, yes, but once things went sour real fast between me and Daggrull, I hadn’t thought about what I was gonna do with them…
“Yeah, great to see you all,” I said. “Glad you seem to be doing fine, but, um, you do know what’s going on right now, don’t you?”
If they said they wanted to return to Daggrull, I supposed we should let them go, not keep them prisoner. Like, each of them was stronger than your average demon lord seed, so giving them to the enemy was a real drag…but if we made them POWs, we’d have to devote personnel to guarding them, which could cause all kinds of chaos. Killing a non-resisting opponent was out of the question, too…aaaaaand I was out of ideas. Maybe we could isolate them in Ramiris’s labyrinth somewhere, but that’d put more burden on Ramiris and her team, so it was safer to avoid that.
I mulled my options as I waited for a response from the three of them. When it came, it surprised me.
“Oh, of course. Sounds like Dad’s switched sides, huh? It’s so embarrassing,” griped Daggra.
“We heard about Uncle Fenn in our bedtime stories, but I never thought he’d come back in this day and age,” said Liura.
“Fweh-heh! What a diabolical guy!” added Chonkra. “Dad said he was about equal to him in strength.”
They sounded a bit more open to our side. So I decided to ask, “Uh, we’re about to go to war with your father, but are you okay with that?”
“Well, it does make me anxious, but me, I’m a lot more interested in testing out how much stronger we’ve gotten.”
“My big brother’s right! Lady Shion’s been training us on a daily basis. Physical training, mental training, a healthy, tasty diet…and we’ve been honing our skills with a lot of training partners, too. If anyone tries to destroy this environment we’ve been given, well, we’ve obtained this power in order to beat them!”
“Fweh-heh! We’re all excited to show off the results of our training, yeah. Me, I can’t wait to use this power to go beat up my uncle…and everyone else, too!”
They were all pleading their case. I guess they meant it—they really were eager to take on Daggrull and his force. I looked at Shion; she was just sitting there, nodding in satisfaction like I should’ve expected this all along.
“Uhmm…,” I mumbled.
So now what? Was it really okay to bring these guys out to battle?
I do not believe it is a problem.
Ciel wasted no time answering my conundrum.
But isn’t there a chance these guys will betray us? I really do think they’re telling the truth, but if they’re faking it, it’d expose my friends to danger. I’m sure the rest of my gang would wince if I told them they’d be fighting alongside the enemy leader’s sons, too.
But Ciel was unwavering.
The chances of that happening are believed to be very low. This is because—
No need to go into detail.
The door opened once more, and Shion’s troops poured into the room. One stern-faced young man was the first to address me.
“Sir Rimuru, we all trust in Daggra and the gang!”
Oh, isn’t that Gobzo…?
He looked so young and virile, I didn’t recognize him. His face was the same, but there was some real spirit in it now.
Apparently Daggra and his brothers had Gobzo’s trust, and he wasn’t the only one. Everyone in Team Reborn sang their praises, one after the other, proving just how much they trusted them. I guess they thought I was about to lock them up somewhere and throw away the key, or worse. How mean. I’m a rational thinker. Just because I think someone might become my enemy doesn’t mean I’ll take their life on the spot, does it?
“Sir Rimuru! As you can hopefully tell, our unity is solid as a rock. We didn’t train ourselves to be soft, and we promise you we won’t be moved by anything!”
Shion looked me straight in the eye as she spoke. I guess as the caretaker of Daggrull’s sons she felt a bit like their guardian.
All this was enough to convince me…but then, to my surprise, Luminus spoke up.
“To tell you the truth, Rimuru, I too am of a mind to dispose of his sons…”
Drop the “too,” please.
“…but I think it safe to trust in them.”
I never expected her to defend them. Didn’t she and Daggrull fight like cats and dogs? I decided to ask why she came to that conclusion, and Luminus frowned at me.
“Well…it has to do with the improvements in Shion’s cooking. The three of them were the main contributors to that, you see.”
“Meaning…?”
“Who do you think was tasting her food? I certainly didn’t like her work, but quite a lot of us here are young and curious. One of the Seven Great Nobles foolishly tried his luck with her dinner course once. He was bedridden for a month.”
Well, he wasn’t gonna die anyway, right? Being undead and all? Maybe I shouldn’t be so sure.
What an idiot that guy was, though…but I hesitated to say that out loud. It took pioneers like him, after all, to bring about great new inventions and discoveries. The same was true for any era. Like, I really respected the first guy who thought it’d be a great idea to eat lobsters or curdled milk, you know? I know being forced to eat disgusting food was a punishment given out in the past, but surely the poor victims undoubtedly made huge contributions to gourmet cuisine later on. Really, that noble had a rare type of courage, you could say.
So I briefly nodded, urging Luminus to continue.
“Since then, nobody was interested in trying her cuisine…but then this trio volunteered. Everyone was so impressed by their gallant spirit, myself included. Yes, even my own servants sang the praises of Daggra and his cohorts!”
Wow, really? Behind Shion’s much-improved cooking lurked a tale of unbearable hardship, I feared. After all, this was stuff that drove Adalmann to comment, “I never thought I’d be so thankful I’m no longer able to eat,” which I thought was kind of the slam of the century. I really had to be grateful for those kid giants, I guess. We owed them big-time.
“Well,” said Daggra, “if that lady’s offering up her homemade cooking, we deserve to be the ones who taste test it, don’t we?”
“Yeah, big bro, you’re right!” agreed Liura.
“It’s a great reward!” said Chonkra.
Uh-huh. Then again, maybe these guys were just messed up in the head.
Still, all’s well that ends well, and if Daggra and his brothers were already part of the team like this, well, let’s have them kick some ass in battle for us.
“All right,” I said. “Either me or Luminus will take on Daggrull, so I’ll let Shion and her force handle Fenn.”
“Hmph! Allow me to handle Daggrull. It will be a challenge, I will admit, but I’m sure I could drag out the fight for as long as necessary.”
Luminus didn’t seem to think she could beat Daggrull. In her mind, she’d hold him down, and in the meantime we’d beat all the other main dudes, then band together to whip their leader. If I took on Fenn, that’d help pad our roster much better than any other approach.
“All right, then…”
But just was I was about to say, “I think I see a way to win this,” I was interrupted by word of a sudden upheaval.
The news came in the form of an urgent Thought Communication from Ramiris.
(Hey, Rimuru, we got big trouble!)
(You always say you got big trouble. I have a lot to deal with over here, too, y’know.)
I was trying to make light of it, but I guess she really did have big trouble this time.
(I’m not jokin’ with you, okay? Listen, I’ve lost contact with Milim! I’ve ordered an investigation into what’s going on, but I got a real bad feeling about this!)
As she explained it to me, Gobta and his force had returned to Tempest a few minutes before, reporting they had successfully defeated Zeranus. Just after that, though, their video feed monitoring the war situation stopped working. Fortunately, the transport gate to the battlefield was still operational, so Gobta came running back through it to check things out while Ramiris contacted me.
(Sounds bad.)
(Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you, Rimuru!!)
Eesh. No rest for the wicked, huh? I doubted anything had happened to Milim, but I could guess what was causing that video interference.
That would be Velzard.
And if Ciel shared my opinion, I could pretty much accept it as fact.
(Tell Gobta and the others not to overexert themselves. I’ll be back real soon.)
With that, I ended the conversation and turned toward Luminus.
“Sorry, I think I’ve got an emergency brewing,” I said.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“It’s looking pretty likely that Milim and Velzard got into a fight. I’ll need to contact Guy as well, so I’m gonna return home for the time being.”
Luminus nodded back at me, composed. “Very well,” she calmly said, allaying my fears. “We will prepare for Daggrull as well, so don’t worry about that.”
“Yes! We alone could defeat the giants, even!” Shion boasted.
I couldn’t take her at her word there, but I felt safe leaving Lubelius to her while I worked out our strategy a little more.
“Anyway, I’ll be back soon,” I said.
“Certainly! We’ll hold down the fort here!”
Oh. I just remembered. It’s only a possibility, but I’d better share it with everyone.
“Luminus, not to sound too pessimistic, but don’t be too confident you’ll have four whole days to work with.”
Four days was the minimum time Daggrull’s army would need to reach this city. But that assumed they stuck to their current marching speed. They might’ve had someone on hand who could teleport the entire army over like I could, so we’d need to watch out for that.
“Hmm, yes. I, too, am considering this possibility. You could certainly cut down on that time, for example. It’d be a very negligent commander, indeed, who assumed that what we can do, the enemy cannot.”
Good. She seemed to have understood me. I had nothing else to say. If the need arose, I could run back to help, so it was better to deal with the more pressing matters first.
“All right. Be careful,” I told Luminus.
“You too.”
She and I exchanged nods.
“Good luck, Sir Rimuru!”
And with that last bit of encouragement from Shion and her troops, I returned to Tempest.
As soon as I was back, I went straight to the Control Center. The sight presented to me was…astonishing. Astonishingly bad, that is. Real bad.
On the big screen was Milim, beside herself with rage. She had transformed into something I’d never seen before and was rampaging across the landscape. Her opponent was Velzard, a bewitching beauty with an alluring smile, but even with Milim turned into a real, bona fide Destroyer, she wasn’t backing down one bit. They looked pretty evenly matched, and…well…it was like a return to the days of the gods, and the sorts of battles they must have waged.
“What’s the deal with this?” I whispered. Ramiris wasted no time answering me.
“Gobta’s recording it!”
That wasn’t what I meant…
“Oh! Right, that! Well, as you see, it kinda really sucks at the moment!”
Great. Glad to see Ramiris is completely useless. I sighed as Benimaru got up off his gaudy, luxurious commander’s seat and greeted me.
“Everyone was celebrating the defeat of Zeranus, but then we suddenly lost contact with the battlefield,” he said. “Gobta had just returned at that point, so we sent him out on reconnaissance, and he confirmed Lady Velzard and Lady Milim were locked in combat.”
At least Benimaru knew how to act.
As I looked at the landscape on the screen, my biggest concern was that we couldn’t tell if there were any survivors. Gobta’s partner Ranga was using Control Wind to try to capture some smell particles and get a better picture for us, but he found nothing. All scents had disappeared. We could see people frozen in ice here and there, and it was clear the entire battlefield had to be in the same state.
“We were hoping to examine the ice statues more closely, but even with Ranga’s protection, it was difficult—impossible, really—for Gobta to approach,” Benimaru told me.
“Wow. It’s that rough out there?”
“Yes, sir. The feed you’re watching is being shot from the closest approachable distance possible. Gobta is whining about it, but I’m telling him to bear down and do his best for us.”
If it was Benimaru, he’d probably be as tough as a polar bear out there, but joking wasn’t a good idea right now.
Carrera and her demons were still there, but I couldn’t connect to them via Thought Communication. We were supposed to be connected by a soul corridor, but still, nothing. The status of everyone on the field was unknown. It was, in fact, the worst possible scenario.
I didn’t want to think Carrera’s team was dead. Besides, that probably included Carillon, Frey, and everyone else, too. Multiple Million Class members, all wiped out in the blink of an eye—it was unthinkable. If they encountered some kind of emergency, their first objective was to buy time—that was the rule we had. And now look.
It wasn’t clear from the video, but Milim definitely appeared to be out of control. She was unleashing power well beyond normal as she waged this massive fight against Velzard. What caused this? I thought it over…and then I pictured something I wished I didn’t. I couldn’t obsess over it, though. Brooding wouldn’t solve anything, and if Ramiris was already this frazzled, we’d all be screwed if I joined her.
Clearly, something bad was going down over there. But it was time to switch gears. What could I do about this? There was no point in panicking. In times like these, you needed to focus on what you could do in the moment. Keep calm, clear your mind, think of how to respond, and act.
“Summon the remaining Dungeon Marvels,” I said. “Have Gobta’s team come back for us; staying there any longer would be dangerous.”
“But…”
“This battle between Milim and Velzard isn’t going to wrap up that soon. If Milim’s gone out of control, it’d take either me or Velzard to take her on, right?”
Not that I really wanted to. Like, if Milim had gone nuts, who really could stop her? When she and Guy clashed long ago, it was Ramiris who intervened to stop them, one way or the other…but I really couldn’t expect an MVP performance like that from her right now. Then again, maybe there was a nonzero possibility…
“Hey, Ramiris… Quick question—do you think you could bring Milim back to her senses while I hold back Velzard?”
“Hey! Are you asking me to go out there and die, or what?!”
Thought so. I didn’t expect that to be a solution anyway, and now I was sure of it. Ramiris was being too much of a baby to handle the situation.
“Yeah, I didn’t think that would be possible. But I also didn’t think they’d take this strategy where they’d deliberately set off Milim like this…”
I sighed. Benimaru was briskly assembling all my officers, and I needed to come up with our next move before then.
Honestly, I never saw it coming. Having a traitor in our ranks was bad enough, and then we had an even worse disaster. I mean, I knew full well this was a pretty effective strategy against us, but—really—who would have expected them to actually do it?
…If Milim truly lost her mind, it may well destroy the world. This is a taboo move for both us and the enemy, and if someone was resolved enough to calmly go through with this, we will need to prepare for an even bigger crisis to come.
…Such as?
The most likely candidate is the release of the World-Destroyer Dragon Ivalage, but we had best be wary of other potential dangerous moves.
So no rules applied any longer? This really was awful. Trying to figure out how to rein in Milim was difficult enough, but Velzard was gonna get in my way the whole time? I thought I could tap Veldora for help, but the moment Velzard appeared on screen, he reportedly started acting all weird and ran out of the room, mumbling something about an errand he forgot to do. I swear. You can never rely on him when it counts.
Not that I was any better, though. If I could escape, I would’ve been doing so at full speed. But that would have meant, with no exaggeration, the end of the human race. Which I didn’t want. I mean, if I was the only one left alive, what was the point of that? I’d much rather fight with everything I had than accept that fate.
No more whining. I flipped the switch in my mind and began to think seriously about what we’d do.
Before the rest of my cabinet showed up, I had one more errand I wanted to tackle. There was a certain powerful assistant I had to summon.
(…So, yeah, can you come over ASAP?)
(Roger that, Sir Rimuru! Sir Guy didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it, but please allow me, Raine, to exercise my consummate negotiation skills on him!)
Yes, I had tried to call for Guy.
If I can be honest for a moment, there was no way for me alone to take on both Velzard and Milim at the same time, no matter how hard I tried. You couldn’t win a war by having enough heart or guts, or “wanting it more” or whatever. I had no intention of getting in a fight I couldn’t win—and if I had no choice but to dive in, I wanted to make every effort to improve my chances, even if it was just a little.
So I sent a Thought Communication over to Guy, and he refused. Maybe he detected Velzard and Milim were fighting and noped right out of that? Nah, I doubt it. Guy, unlike Veldora, was aware of his responsibilities. Chances were he thought there was some even worse threat waiting for us. That was the same conclusion Ciel came to, which was enough to trigger depression in me.
We were dealing with a mountain of problems. Even if I roped Guy in, I could have him handle Velzard, but I’d inevitably have to deal with Milim myself. I could see myself hurtling toward that conclusion, but the fact I had no plan beyond that point was a major anxiety.
If this was nothing but a duel, I could manage. But as it stood, it’d be tough to take on Milim without gravely affecting the area around us, much less the planet itself. I’d probably have my hands full not dying. I’d be able to resurrect myself as long as Veldora was around, but if I was knocked out of the fight, it’d be that much more of a burden on Guy and we’d be blown out after all. No matter how strong Guy was, I really thought taking on those two was a doomed proposal from the start. And even worse, unless we handled them just right, we could wind up destroying the planet in the process.
Bad news, no matter how you sliced it. And now all this talk of Feldway and Ivalage… I defeated Michael, and then these new challenges cropped up one after the other. Whenever I tried thinking of measures to take, my mind just catastrophized every kind of scenario imaginable.
As I agonized, Raine finally gave me an answer.
(Okay, Sir Rimuru, it’s a go! Sir Guy was more than willing to accept my proposal—)
(Rimuru, why the hell are you using my Raine as your errand girl?)
Oof!
That was Guy, of course, interrupting my Thought Communication with Raine. I guess he didn’t understand why Raine and I were getting along so well, but there was a reason for that, of course. As of late, I had come to recognize Raine’s talent as an artist, and I was commissioning her for various personal things. She proved to be quite open to my requests and established herself as my personal painter, more or less. To be more exact, I was her patron, helping her flesh out her talents.
How did we build this kind of relationship? Well, after that meeting at Leon’s castle, I had a look at the paintings I’d confiscated from Diablo…and actually, I found Raine’s work very much to my liking. They were wonderful, in fact, almost like photographs. She didn’t use a model, either—she could depict all this expression just by spreading the wings of her imagination. There were even nudes, too! (Purely artistic, of course.) The pursuit of beauty has no limits, after all, just as there are no bounds to my desires. There weren’t any ulterior motives or anything. It was just that, as someone who pursued “beauty” in my own way, I had an intellectual curiosity that drove me to approach her.
“Raine,” I’d said, “can you paint nudes without a model?” And Raine, upon hearing my innocent question, had replied: “It’ll cost you.” Not a yes or a no, but an “it’ll cost you.” So I quietly offered her a bag of gold coins. Without raising an eyebrow, she quickly slipped it into her pocket. Then, with an attitude as calm and detached as ever, she’d said, “It’s nonsense to give a demon gold coins…but I do respect you, Sir Rimuru.”
At the time, I thought this would be the start of an advanced battle of the minds. So I obliquely replied, “Well, what do you want?”
There was nothing advanced about it at all, and you weren’t oblique about it, either. You were as direct as it gets.
Well, ignoring this heckling from the stand for a moment, here’s how Raine reacted. She’d looked straight at me with those pure eyes of hers and said, “I have an interest in those things you call ‘store points.’”
After that…well, let’s just say winning her over was pretty easy.
So after a personal meeting where we discussed a bunch of things, I agreed to become Raine’s patron and support her artistic endeavors. If Ciel had been kind enough to preserve those images in my brain back then, I wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic…but since Ciel proved uncooperative with me at the most critical of moments, I instead found a new path involving Raine’s paintings.
…Tch.
Hmm? I thought I heard someone click their tongue at me…but I’m sure I’m just hearing things. Audio hallucinations stemming from fatigue or something. I mean, I didn’t do anything untoward, so…
I do not understand why so many of your requests have nudity as a motif.
Oh, come on, Ciel! I thought there was nothing in this world you didn’t understand! I’m sure it’s just in your imagination! And that’s the end of this topic!!
So Raine and I were closer than before, and as an outside collaborator, I could have her do my bidding. It was perhaps natural that Guy—unaware of this—was suspicious, but I had no obligation to explain everything to him all the time. So I stood my ground with him.
(Now’s not the time for this! It’s an emergency, so get your ass over here right now!)
And then I closed the Thought Communication.
The painting I asked Raine for, using Hinata as a model, was not yet complete, and there was no way in hell I was gonna let the world be blown up before I could see it. Once more, I vowed to do everything in my power to overcome this crisis.
Everybody was gathered within five minutes of me giving the order to Benimaru. He was there, looking every part the commanding officer, and Diablo was as composed as ever, showing no sign of his earlier fatigue. Gobta, freshly recalled from his scouting mission because of the danger, was shivering in his seat. He was welcome to sit this one out, but I guess he had more of a sense of responsibility than I gave him credit for.
Ranga, by the way, had retreated into my shadow. Pretty shrewd of him, maybe, but I find that kind of cute. After everything we’d been through, I wanted to be sure he got ample rest. Geld, after all, was undergoing emergency treatment for his injuries. He was out of the woods, but he was worn out in a way simple potions couldn’t keep up with, so he had been taken to our rarely used rehab facility.
Gabil, who was accompanying Geld, was also hospitalized at Shuna’s discretion. He, too, was a lot more exhausted than he looked—perfectly fine on the outside, about to die on the inside. That was the unexpected pitfall of relying on potions too much; people could seem totally healthy just because they didn’t look hurt at all. For monsters, though, magicule count was equivalent to their life force. Deplete it and it could easily cost you your life. I ran into that situation several times naming people, so it was no joke to me, either. Gabil was all gung-ho about attending this meeting, but I forced him to keep resting.
There was one other seriously injured member among us. That was Leon. Diablo had taken him to our medical facility, and he was expected to survive, they told me. Shuna said he should wake up soon, and given that he was a former Hero and current demon lord, it sounded like he was recovering tremendously quickly. I would’ve liked him to attend the meeting if he were up in time for it, but I couldn’t force him. There was no time to wait for his recovery, though, so he’d be absent for this one, sadly.
Beyond that, we had Kumara, Zegion, and Apito from the labyrinth. Adalmann and his team were defending Lubelius with Shion, and old man Gadora had joined them. The Dragon Lords wouldn’t join us for stuff like this, so that covered the whole labyrinth contingent.
Hakuro, by the way, was still at training, performing guard duty for Chloe and the rest of the kids. Saare and Grigori were there with him; the former was a step ahead of the others, it seemed, but Grigori was competing pretty well with the children. I didn’t wanna call Hakuro in; it wouldn’t do to make the kids all worried. Chloe had apparently faked an illness in order to come to my rescue, but this time she really did need to rest up. That was another reason why I didn’t want Kenya and the other guys to start worrying about stuff.
Either way, they were in a safe floor of the labyrinth, away from any enemies that might venture in…but I didn’t want to take any chances, either. So once we were done with this meeting, Kumara would be going right back there to join the kids.
I had another reason for this, too. Momiji and Alvis were taking refuge in the labyrinth, with Kaede accompanying them. The latter had experience with pregnancy and childbirth, so I couldn’t ask for anyone more qualified. I went with this approach to ensure Benimaru could focus on his commander duties. Kaede also emphatically asked for our help, so we were going to have Hakuro focus on guarding them for the sake of Benimaru’s family and their safety.
That was everybody at the meeting, but the small number of people on hand made me a bit uneasy. We had officials and commanders scattered all over the place, but we didn’t even know if Carrera was safe…so maybe it was only natural that I felt more in “crisis mode” than ever before. Still, it was up to me to bottle up those fears and act dignified, just like Benimaru would.
We decided to begin our meeting in a conference hall adjacent to the Control Center, so we could be contacted immediately if something came up. Really, this wasn’t the time for a leisurely debate anyway, so I figured this would be more of a lecture than a conference. It wasn’t quite what I wanted, but there was a fierce battle going on as we spoke, the ground shaking at regular intervals. The Kingdom of Englesia might have been experiencing those tremors, too. If it kept up, the damage would be not only continent-wide, but planet-wide, too. It had to be stopped, so I hoped people wouldn’t mind if I acted a bit like a despot.
The conclusion I had come to was that Guy and I would go out there and do something—a haphazard, irresponsible, reckless “plan” that could barely be described as such. But even my reliable partner Ciel couldn’t come up with anything more brilliant, so I had no choice but to plunge in with this.
“Thanks for coming, everyone,” I began, getting right down to business. “With regards to Milim, I’m gonna go to her.”
A wave of tension spread across the room. I could see why. A military leader going out himself to fight was usually beyond a bad idea. Maybe we did that a little more often on this planet than the one I came from, but it was rare to skip any and all discussion beforehand, so I was sure some people would have their thoughts about that.
“Keh-heh-heh-heh-heh… In that case, Sir Rimuru, I will join you.”
Diablo was quick with that response. However:
“No, I know you’re strong and all, but no way you can go easy when you’re fighting Milim, okay?” I replied. “I think an enemy more up your alley is likely to show up, so exercise your talents on that guy for me instead, okay?”
My decision was final, and I didn’t care what anyone said. If it was us against Milim and Velzard, bringing along a large army would do nothing but increase the body count.
…Against a foe of that level, there is no one else who could be counted as war power for us.
Ciel was in agreement. Benimaru, Zegion, Diablo—Ciel was assuring me they’d all be useless. If they dared to try their luck, there was a very good chance they’d die. It’d be one thing if the mission was to kill Milim, not stop her, but that was not what we were dealing with. It was all up to me to work this out.
I turned toward Guy, who was kind enough to attend.
“Apologies, but Guy, I want you to come along with me.”
“…Huh?”
He glared at me, but I wasn’t about to back down. I’d much rather try my luck at persuading Guy than attempt to stop an argument between two of the strongest in the world.
“Well, you’re the leader of the Octagram, aren’t you?” I asked. “I’m the newbie in that group, and right now, I really want a veteran to help out with this…”
My hope was to agitate Guy enough that I could get him involved in this plan. That would improve our chances to some extent, so hopefully he’d forgive me. But Guy interrupted me, a dour look on his face:
“First you call me over here, and now you want me to help you? You got a lot of guts, you know that?”
“Whoa, whoa, I just want a little help because I’m too timid to go it alone, all right? I’m not messing around, I promise you. I’m serious.”
I bowed my head, hoping he’d understand I meant that. Seeing that, Guy’s attitude changed a little.
“Don’t you get it?” he asked me, his tone more serious. “I know you’re worried about Milim and all, but…”
Hmm. So Guy had come to the same conclusion as Ciel, I suppose. Instead of mediating between Milim and Velzard, his concern was more about what came after that. It depressed me more and more as I thought about it, but I still firmly believed we should tackle what we could first.
“You mean the possibility Ivalage could go free? I’m worried about that, yeah, but if the world is destroyed before that even happens, it’s all over anyway.”
I tried to show my resolve to him, not letting his intimidation get to me.
“…You picked up on that?”
Guy didn’t sound like he enjoyed that fact too much as he silently took a seat. I guess he was waiting for my reaction—which was good for me.
“I don’t actually know what Velzard’s goal here is,” I said. “I can’t imagine she really wanted to rile Milim or make her go berserk like this.”
Making her go into a rage was a means to some other goal. What did Velzard want her to do, though? If we knew that, maybe there was something we could do about it…but we didn’t have time to sit and stew over this. We’d have to save all that for later if we wanted to save Carrera and everyone else.
“Chances are,” Guy said as I thought this over, “Velzard wants to see how serious I am.”
“Huh?”
“Her goal hasn’t changed all this time. She wants to fight me for real and prove she’s better than me.”
“Um…?”
I looked at Guy, wondering where this was coming from all of a sudden. He looked dead serious. I guess he actually meant it.
“That’s why I didn’t want to take her on,” Guy reluctantly added.
Wow. Now this was starting to sound like a lovers’ quarrel—one that could destroy the world. It made me sick, but I couldn’t just ignore the topic.
“Well, whether that’s true or not, they’re going to shatter the planet if they keep fighting. We gotta stop them or else, right?”
“They’re trying to lure us over, though, aren’t they? If we don’t engage her, Feldway’s plan is gonna fizzle out. Isn’t that the best move to make?”
As Guy explained, this planet was created through the power of Veldanava and therefore wasn’t going to be catastrophically torn apart or anything. But Milim’s power was still rising, and if left unchecked, she’d encase the whole planet in a thick layer of contaminating magicules.
…Well, if there’s still gonna be a planet at the end of the day, then great. And I guess it made sense. After all, even Carrera’s magic wasn’t the sort you should really use on the surface of a planet. We only got away with it because we were on a world that could withstand such lethal force. Otherwise, at best, some attack from her would’ve bent the axis of the planet by then.
I was starting to see Guy’s argument. If we joined the fight at this point, it could be just what Feldway wanted—and at worst, we’d wind up having Ivalage plopped down upon us. Guy’s reasoning certainly wasn’t mistaken if we wanted to avoid that risk.
But…
I was just about to nod in agreement, but that option was long off the table.
“Well, sorry, but Carrera and a load of her allies are frozen in ice, and I’m not gonna just leave them there,” I said.
No, it wasn’t just Carrera. There was Frey, Carillon, and everyone else who was fighting down there. We’d never have a peaceful, happy world unless we rescued them. I was firm on that point; there’d be no convincing me otherwise.
“Tsk… Fine, fine. If that’s how you’re gonna be, I’ll go along with it.”
Guy got up, frustrated, like it was all out of his hands.
“I think you understand this, but if we go seriously all-out over there, that’ll spread the magicule contamination across a wider space. So watch yourselves, okay?” said Guy.
I could say the same thing, y’know.
“You’ve already done that once, haven’t you? Be more careful,” I cautioned.
“Yeah! I can’t help you guys out this time, so nothing rough, okay? I tell you, if it’s just you guys, I’m so worried…”
Ramiris kept lecturing me, much to my chagrin—but then, I couldn’t really defend myself. We were so blatantly going in without a net it was almost funny, but I didn’t have any choice. I needed to stay strong, and besides, I’d been through experiences like this many times before.
“Right, so it’ll just be me and Guy trying to stop Milim,” I said. “Everyone else needs to be defending our home base and answering requests for help from other nations.”
I wasn’t leaving this open to debate, which I was sure dissatisfied a few of them, but after conferring with Ciel, it was the best solution I could come up with.
“I really would like to go with you, Sir Rimuru—”
“No.”
I shot Diablo’s proposal down before he could finish it. Yeah, I thought he could take our position in this fight well enough. I refused him anyway because I wanted him to stay back in case of any unforeseen events.
“I think Feldway’s aiming to do more than just resurrect Ivalage,” I said. “Chances are Daggrull’s upcoming attack on Luminus is a diversion, an attempt to divide up our war power. If I get stuck somewhere, then you, Benimaru, and Zegion are about all I can rely on to step in, so…”
I could trust Diablo, which was why I wanted him to stay. Feldway wasn’t our only foe, after all; Zeranus the Insect Lord was still kicking. Plus, as long as our labyrinth was intact, we’d never be “defeated”—not in the normal way, at least. All three of them needed to stay inside it for me, or else I’d feel even more anxious.
Benimaru was our chief commander, a vital role. Zegion I trusted to serve as guardian of the labyrinth. Between the former’s command, the latter’s strength, and the environment of the labyrinth, I knew we could hold out against even Zeranus. Add to that Diablo’s uncanny ability to handle whatever he encountered, and even if an all-out attack was launched on the labyrinth, I thought—or I wanted to believe—we’d be able to cope.
So after a little coercion, I finally convinced all three of them. Them and Veldora.
“Me?” he said.
“That’s right, Mr. Secret Weapon. You’ll be our final, final last resort.”
He’d looked a little peeved about not being called yet, but he gave me a satisfied nod. Like I’ve said many times, as long as Veldora was safe, I could come back to life anytime I wanted. I didn’t want to actually test that out, but it was a kind of insurance, and it made all the difference in my mind.
Since I had snuffed out all further objections, I decided we should head out at once. The more time we spent, the slower our decisions would be, so I decided to let Veldora be our contingency for every other possible scenario.
“I’m counting on you, all right, Veldora?” I said. “I mean it!”
“Indeed, you are in good hands,” he replied.
Seeing him nod at me was just the shot of confidence I needed.
“Rimuru,” Ramiris said, flying up to me, “please help out Milim!”
“You got it!”
With a smile, I promised the anxious Ramiris I’d bring Milim back to her senses. No half measures would work on the strongest of demon lords, I knew, so I’d just have to hope my voice would reach her. If I could contain her anger well enough, at least, I was sure her good sense would come back naturally.
Still, I knew we’d need luck on our side. First, I was running on the assumption Guy could restrain Velzard for me. On top of that, we had to prepare for a long slog of a battle, fighting while ensuring we minimized the impact on this planet.
It was a new and unprecedented level of recklessness, even by my standards. Confronting Milim in this berserk state was akin to suicide in the first place… I told Diablo he had no chance, but I didn’t really like my chances, either. But I had no choice.
“Benimaru, the Control Center is yours,” I said.
“Take care, my lord!” he replied.
I was glad he was there, at least. We needed to be ready for urgent requests from other countries, especially now that Lubelius was in a state of war. I had no idea how this would turn out. Things were changing from minute to minute, and we needed to respond with the times, deploying our remaining forces as best we could. The only person I could ask to handle such tricky logistical work was Benimaru. I nodded back at him.
Now, then…
Hold on, Milim! Don’t kick so much ass that you cause any more damage!
It was time to open Milim’s eyes back up before it was too late. Guy and I left with everyone’s anxious gazes—and an almost too heavy amount of expectation—behind us.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login