by Fuse
…Curse it all!
Suddenly, Clayman threw the glass in his hand against the wall. His anger was making him act out, following orders given from emotions not even he could understand.
The force of the outburst made the bottle of first-rate wine on the table shatter. But Clayman didn’t care. Instead, to calm his nerves, he took something out from his pocket—a mask molded into a smiling face.
“Don’t you worry, Laplace. I’m going to make this awakening work, and then I will have the world in my grasp. All right, Laplace? I’m not going to lose this again! So this time, at least, let’s all be one happy family together…”
There, by himself in that room, Clayman reminded himself of the hopes hidden in his heart—rubbing the mask softly, as if running his hand over a precious treasure.
Right. First decision: defeat the demon lord Clayman. That’s set in stone. If you got someone lurking around in the darkness, trying to pull off some grand scheme, better to rub him out ahead of anything else. Plus, now that I’ve declared myself to be a demon lord, I need ways to keep the other demon lords from taking action against me. Sacrificing Clayman should be a fine way to do that. There’s the other reason.
As long as we don’t know why Milim decided to pick a fight with Carillon, we can’t really rely on what she says. Time to throw my weight around a little and keep things from getting any gloomier going forward. Besides, Clayman just went too far. He needs to feel the retribution. To pay for what he did.
Moving on, our future direction. Yohm was a popular guy in Farmus, hailed as a hero by most. We’ll take advantage of this to have the current king of Farmus released from imprisonment and forced to come to the negotiating table. I want the kingdom to be a thing of the past by the time we’re done. Beyond that, we need to figure out how to deal with the Western Holy Church, as well as send out declarations to the nations we’ve signed pacts with so they’ll know our take on matters.
We had a lot to talk about. Something told me it was going to be kind of a long meeting.
I kicked things off by taking a report from Soei. Clayman was on the move, apparently, and we needed to hear all the details and confer over what to do. Thus, I was on my way to our main meeting hall, expecting to meet with Tempest leadership and the Three Lycanthropeers.
As I did, my Universal Detect sniffed out a group of fifty or so approaching town. Huh? Oh, it’s Fuze, guild master from the kingdom of Blumund. Before long, our security team had us all face-to-face. He pushed through his own soldiers to see me, his face grim.
“It has been much too long, Sir Rimuru. I am only glad that I made it here in time! We have come to satisfy our duty under the terms of the security agreement signed between Blumund and Tempest, and I feared I was already too late.”
He smiled as he spoke, but he still looked at me intensely, and the soldiers surrounding him looked ready to face death at any moment. Each was fully equipped, heavily armored, and prepared for war.
“Whoa. The guild master himself? What on…?”
“Ha-ha! No need to put it like that. Thegis is ready to take over my post, should it come to it. I’ve heard many things about this town from our merchants, that sneak Mjöllmile in particular. You’ve been engaged with the Kingdom of Farmus, it seems…”
Huh? Ummm…?
Come to think of it, I suppose it had been about ten days since we brought our visitors from Blumund back home. Did they immediately suit up and come running to our aid the moment they heard the news? Great if they did, but…
“…Even if we lack the time to erect a defensive wall,” Fuze feverishly continued, “it would be best to build a circle of personnel around the city to beef up our defenses. It doesn’t look like Farmus’s main force has arrived yet, but there is no telling when their vanguard troops may reach us. We’ve passed the date of their war ultimatum, yes?”
The steely resolve in his eyes seemed clear to me as he said his piece. Well, not just “seemed.” They were clear to me. He had already willed his guild master’s seat to Thegis. I guess he really was here to fight to the death for Tempest.
But um…you know… It’s all kinda over already. And with the way Fuze and his soldiers were all decked out in their finest equipment, ready to fan out the moment I said the word, I wasn’t too sure how to give the news.
“Or perhaps you actually intend to seize the initiative and attack first? I have to tell you, Sir Rimuru, that could be a brash move. According to our intelligence, we have confirmed sightings of an army nearly twenty thousand strong. We lack the numbers to defeat them in a frontal assault. Over the past few days, I have been working my connections—I now have a team of three hundred adventurers on standby. They may be few in number, but I assure you they are at your beck and call. This may be a protracted war; our best bet might be to use the forest landscape to wage a guerrilla campaign…”
Fuze was wholeheartedly devoted to us. Almost to the point where I wondered if he should be, really.
“Still,” he confidently concluded, “it gladdens my heart to be able to fight alongside the beasts and creatures who call this forest home.”
Now it was even harder to tell him. The Tempest leaders around me were stone silent, and the contingent from Eurazania was visibly confused. This stuff was already in the past for us all. Like, I wasn’t expecting them to actually lend us support! I know we had that treaty, but it had more than enough loopholes in its interpretation to let them weasel out of this stuff. But, however few, Fuze still got a bunch of fighters together and zoomed right over here. I was kinda happy to see that, but—
“…Ah, what a fine town this is. Beautiful buildings, well-designed houses, paved roads… It pains me to admit it, but it is far more splendid than anything one could find in Blumund. I can understand your reluctance against turning it into a battlefield. But we must hold out and await reinforcements! Our king has promised to deploy our knights, and while it will take them time to prepare—”
“Ahhh, Fuzie, one moment?”
I hated to do it, but I had to stop him, or else we were gonna be here all day.
“Yes, Sir Rimuru? Did you have a suggestion for our strategy?”
“Um, yeah, our, our strategy… Like, if you wanna call it that…”
“Is this something to be kept secret from us? Certainly, I can understand your suspicion, but I hope you can place your trust in—”
“N-no, no, Fuzie! I really appreciate what you’ve done, but it’s all over now!”
“Huh? Over? How do you mean?”
“Um, how to put it…? Well, to sum up, I kind of killed ’em all!”
“…Um? Them all? Them all, who? What are you talking about?”
I could understand his confusion.
“I mean, um, the army from Farmus you were talking about? I killed ’em all!”
“Wh-whaaa?!”
That was about all the utterly shocked Fuze could choke out. Yohm stepped up to give him a pat on the shoulder, while Kabal offered a few condolences of his own.
“No, I bet he wouldn’t believe it,” commented Elen.
“Nope,” Gido added.
Nope, indeed. It hadn’t even been two weeks since that war declaration. I suppose Fuze figured their main force would reach Tempest in a week, so we’d buy two or three days of time in open-field combat and prepare for a siege in the worst case. Considering how the war should’ve started days ago, and we were totally serene about it, I figured he had to think it was at least a bit weird by now—but seeing all of us assembled like this, he must’ve assumed we were about to sally forth and attack, or something.
In his eyes, we went from dealing with a delayed Farmus force to the war being in the books. That was a lot to take in at once, wasn’t it?
“The other day,” Rigurd finally began, “we sent my son Rigur out to you to give the news. You two must have missed each other along the way, I fear. But it is just as Sir Rimuru says. The war is already over.”
Between his and Kabal�
��s and Elen’s supplemental commentary, we managed in a little over a few minutes to convince Fuze that we weren’t pulling an elaborate prank.
“You must be joking,” I heard him whisper under his breath, but time heals all wounds and all that.
The fifty fighters accompanying him weren’t too enthused about it, either, so I ordered our soldiers to take them to our barracks and let them rest up. They looked exhausted enough to collapse on the spot, limp and lifeless. Hearing that there wasn’t any war to fight would cut the tension in pretty short order, I thought. They had apparently been relying on natural trails in the forest instead of the highway, in order to avoid encountering Farmus forces, and all that bushwhacking in full armor couldn’t have been fun.
So the fighters all muttered their thanks to us as they marched off to their quarters. All that remained was the hangdog-looking Fuze.
“Why don’t you get some rest, too, Fuzie?”
“Yes…” He nodded at me. “Yes, this has put my mind in quite a state of disorder. If I could lie down for a bit…”
But just as he was about to walk toward the barracks, another guest interrupted him with (im)perfect timing.
“Oops. Here’s someone else. And who could it be but…”
“But?” Fuze asked, stopping as he heard me mutter. He should’ve kept going. Once he saw who it was, resting was the last thing on his mind—because standing right there was Gazel Dwargo, king of the dwarves himself.
Something I had noticed a while ago: Having my Magic Sense skill evolve into Universal Detect had made my ability to grasp my surroundings far more accurate across a much wider range. Despite how far away they were from town, I could spot the squadron of Pegasus Knights flying in remarkably fast.
Report. Thirty knights incoming. The individual Gazel Dwargo is confirmed to be in the vanguard position.
The ultimate skill Raphael, Lord of Wisdom, gave the report as if nothing could be more trivial.
With this upgrade in accuracy, I was now able to detect and identify people I had met before. That’s incredibly convenient. Convenient…but with this range, easily enough to cover the whole town and a great deal beyond, I’m starting to think this is literally too much information. To be frank, I’m getting sick of all these reports, every single time.
So could you keep ’em a bit more on the brief side, Sage…um, I mean, Raphael? To be exact, you can report in when someone’s approaching only if they’re malicious or harmful to me or whatever.
……Understood.
It felt like Raphael really wanted to say something back there, but nothing to get worked up about. It’s always best to assign all the dirty work to someone else, if you can. Leave it to Raphael! That’s my motto.
So I turned my skill down to the minimum setting as I awaited our guests. Since it was the skill performing the ID for me, I could rest assured that these were no impostors. But before I could even tell Fuze, the Pegasus Knights flitted down in front of us. King Gazel dismounted first.
He smiled the moment he spotted me. “Ah, Rimuru, nice to see you again! So I hear you’ve become a demon lord?”
Oh, that. I thought he’d want a word about that. Didn’t expect him to fly on over himself, though.
“Ah, yeah, kinda. There’s been a lot of stuff going on around here, Gazel, so I figured I’d become a demon lord.” I gave him an awkward grin. “Not to make you feel unwelcome or anything, but we were just about to all meet up and discuss our future strategy.”
“Well, perfect! I would be happy to join this conference,” he declared, like it was his god-given right.
It was right about then that Fuze, exhausted and ready to cry, came up to me.
“Demon lord…? What in heavens is that all about?!”
He had heard our conversation from the side, and I could tell he wasn’t about to let it slide. Yeah, I didn’t really talk about that, either… Going in depth right now would just be a pain in the ass, but Fuze wasn’t going to accept a polite no, I could tell.
“Sir Rimuru, I find it hard to ignore what you just said! Because it sounded very much to me that you have become a demon lord—or something to that effect…?”
He was shaking from head to toe, about ready to pee his pants.
“Um, if you needed a bathroom, it’s down this street and—”
“I do not need a bathroom! I never said anything about a bathroom! This ‘demon lord’ business… Tell me what you mean by it!”
I suppose that feint didn’t work. Fuze was clearly starting to lose his temper, and his real personality was starting to show itself.
“Oh. Um, yeah, demon lord. Well,” I replied as breezily as possible, “I’m one of ’em now.”
This, sadly, didn’t end the topic.
“Ha-ha-ha! Rather poor taste for a joke, wouldn’t you think? I was hoping for a more serious answer from you…”
Ugghh, this is such a pain. Do I have to start from the very beginning before you’ll get off my back? And now I could see Gazel looking curiously at me, too. So as much as I hated going through all this in the middle of the street, I gave them both a quick recap.
Once I wrapped up, I noticed Fuze was muttering to nobody in particular, eyes glazed over. His mind must’ve shut off in an attempt to avoid the reality of it all. At least he wasn’t lecturing me or anything. Leaving him to his own ranting, I turned to King Gazel again.
“By the way, Gazel, are you sure it’s all right for a king to slip out of his own kingdom that easily?”
It was a sincere concern of mine. Not that I’m one to talk, but the king was being allowed way too long a leash, wasn’t he? The Armed Nation of Dwargon, in terms of national power, had to be several dozen times stronger a nation than ours. Wasn’t the king going out on trips whenever he pleased kind of a problem?
“Pfft. What is the issue? I have a decoy fully serving for me!”
Huh? I thought decoys were meant for, like, drawing the attention of assassins away from the real thing or something? Or were they meant for playing hooky like this? I wasn’t too sure either way, but whatever. Gazel had Pegasus Knight captain Dolph with him, along with quite a number of his trusted companions. For a security detail, it was almost too extensive.
“Regardless, Rimuru…” He turned his now-kingly eyes toward me. “The report Vester sent me three days ago—that was no mistake, then?”
“Oh, you mean the twenty thousand—”
“Wait, Rimuru. I had heard the Farmus force had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Do you know something about that?”
“Uh, missing?”
Huh? What was he talking about?
“The way Vester phrased it,” he slowly continued, “a force of some twenty thousand troops simply vanished before they could reach this town. Do you have any idea what may have happened to them?”
He gave Vester a sidelong glance out the corner of his eye, the silent pressure he emitted almost making his subject collapse to the ground. I joined his gaze. Vester vigorously shook his head at me.
“I received the report as well, Vester.”
This was Vaughn speaking, admiral paladin for the dwarven army and sworn friend to King Gazel; and to Vester right now, a source of terror.
“At the time, I believe you told us that the Farmus force had disappeared, and you were investigating why. The report was curious enough to us that we decided to venture over ourselves, but is this the explanation?”
His annoyance might be understandable. I had just brutally massacred a force of twenty thousand, and Gazel and Vester were trying to kind of gloss over it.
“Well, yes, um, the cause still isn’t quite known yet…”
Vester began choosing his words carefully, trying to guess at the intentions of his dwarven friends. He was a quick thinker like that, already trying to bury the lede on what I had done.
“Fool!” I heard Gazel whisper to me. “If you tell the truth here, you’ll become an enemy to all humanity—or if not the enemy, a symbol of
terror worldwide.”
Yeah, I guess so, come to think of it. Someone who can kill in the five figures on one go was scarier than a nuclear bomb, really. The fewer people who knew about this, the better—and certainly, nations and people who weren’t directly involved at all didn’t need to hear the story. The Kingdom of Farmus attempted to invade monster lands, only to go completely missing due to an unknown incident or incidents. That much was the truth, decent enough to spread across the land.
There’s Gazel for you. Far more shrewd than I would ever be. Which means I now have to walk back what I just said a moment ago. Ugh.
I didn’t mind if the townspeople knew; that wasn’t the problem, and it was too late now anyway. Nobody was about to go blabbing it to the general public regardless. The main issue was Fuze. I gave him a glance; he was still in a state of panicked confusion.
“Ummm, Fuzie?”
“Sir Rimuruuu…”
So now what? I just declared to him that I wiped out the entire Farmus military by myself. Should I laugh it off as a lie?
But as I thought about it, Fuze sighed and raised his arms up. “I heard nothing. And of course, I don’t think my fighters in the barracks will remember anything by tomorrow morning. We’re all so exhausted right now, we must be hearing voices in our heads.”
Guess he’s staying mum for me. He seemed remarkably more aged to me now, sorrowful. I suppose he found this the most convenient way to solve the problem—and certainly, the best way to tie up all the strings here right now.
“Hee-hee-hee-hee… In that case, allow me to visit them to make sure,” Diablo offered. He had sidled up next to me out of nowhere with that smile on his face again. Funny guy. The perfect butler. You could ask pretty much anything of him, and he’d do it. At the moment, he was gleefully taking care of the assorted errands I asked him to do. I think I might have heard him whisper “I am quite gifted at altering memories” to me just now, but let’s pretend I didn’t.
Fuze had mixed feelings about it, I could tell, but he was willing to deal with it as long as his people were safe. He understood King Gazel’s take—the fewer people who knew, the better. When politics get involved like this, governments might not be afraid to shut witnesses up permanently, after all. Maybe it’s smarter to shut your eyes now and again.