by Fuse
Now we were starting for real.
Our conflict with Clayman remained an internal affair for the moment; that could wait. Soei gave me a quick report, but apparently, they couldn’t discover Clayman’s main base of operations. The fact that he had an army on the move was concerning, but Soei was keeping up his watch.
Nothing new was going to happen with that immediately, so I decided to get this summit wrapped up first.
I decided to begin with a recap, as annoying as it was to me. We had all been through a lot, but laying out everything in detail to everyone at once should save us time later. I wanted everyone to be on the same page.
So I began by relating how I met Veldora, dropping in my status as an otherworlder along the way. Hiding my origins seemed meaningless at this point. All of my people in Tempest knew, and I had no vested interest in keeping it from Gazel or Erald. It’s not like a demon lord also being an ex-otherworlder would give them anything new to work with against me. Leon was one himself, after all.
I gave a quick summary of the orc lord fight and how it led to us building the town here. Sharing information was important, even if doing so led people to react in different ways.
Moving on, I shifted to my voluntary journeys in Englesia. This involved a lot of glossing over of my life there, along with the request I received from Yuuki, but I did go into detail about my fight with Hinata. Man, she was rough. If it had been anyone besides me, they probably would’ve been killed—Benimaru or Soei, even. Her skills were on par with or beyond Hakuro’s, and she could cast magic the likes of which I never saw before. That Holy Field one was particularly nasty. I used Thought Communication to let everyone else experience my memory and recognition of it. She might have a smaller version of that in her pocket, ready to spring on single targets. I didn’t think anyone in the room could do much against it, but it was better than going on nothing. The more they knew about the threat Hinata posed, the better. They might be able to escape, at least.
“Hinata Sakaguchi?”
It was Fuze who reacted first.
“She may seem cruel at first. I suppose she gives the impression of a crazed murderer to most. But according to the information we have, she’s actually a little different from all that. For one thing, she’s always willing to extend a helping hand to anyone who depends on her, and anyone willing to accept her help is sure to receive it—but if you don’t listen to her advice, she’ll never deal with you again. Whatever her motivations, though, I am assured she is a rational leader.”
He seemed to know a lot about her—and was willing to come to her defense, too. I didn’t want to fight her, either… It’s just that she didn’t want to listen to my story one bit, you know? If she refuses to help people who ignore her own background and situation, that describes my interactions with her pretty well. She must have a ton of people seeking favors from her, and I can see how she’d want to ignore them after a while. Pragmatic would be the way to describe it. Yuuki described her as a realist, too. I’m sure Fuze’s intelligence was valid. He sure seems well-informed, doesn’t he?
Gazel nodded at this. “Mm. The guild master of Blumund clearly has a finger in every pie, as they say. The accuracy of your information is equal only to that of my own dark agents. I will gladly testify that what you heard is exactly what we have heard.”
Nice to have the confirmation. But:
“Maybe so, but she didn’t listen to me at all.”
She didn’t. From the get-go, I was her target. Even if someone was feeding her a line about me beforehand, it was like she was deaf to me.
“Well,” Erald said, “that would be because one core tenet of Luminism is that you are never allowed to bargain with monsters.” I was surprised to hear that from him. Hinata was enough of a celebrity to even be known in Thalion, it seemed. She had a rep in places I never dreamed of… Although, I suppose any nation’s intelligence agency would keep tabs on the most powerful knight in the Western Holy Church. Is she famous because she’s beautiful? I thought for a moment but decided it best to keep that secret.
Following their guidance, I began to build a picture of Hinata in my mind. She was notorious for her cruel words and coldhearted actions, but apparently she had never actually broken a single tenet of her religion. She was the model soldier in every way, an unblemished guardian of law and order. So why didn’t she put an end to the summoning rituals taking place worldwide? The kind of rapid-fire summons favored by certain lands bore a very high chance of bringing children over. It was evil, really, on a national level.
“On the other hand,” Fuze countered, “do we really know for sure Hinata is aware of all of this summoning and willfully ignoring it?”
A fair point, but…
“Summoning magic powerful enough to produce an otherworlder is a forbidden, secret Art, not the kind of magic you’ll see in public. The Council of the West has criminalized it, and I’m sure you won’t find a lot of nations who’ll voluntarily admit to it. They’ll just say ‘No, we don’t do that’ and then make it impossibly difficult to pursue the issue any further. The Western Holy Church holds a lot of sway in their region, yes, but if we’re talking about getting to the point of freely meddling in internal government politics, then no, it’s not that deep.”
Even if a kingdom like Farmus used otherworlders as military weapons, I’m sure they’d just explain it away as, you know, discovering an otherworlder on their doorstep and giving them shelter. Without solid evidence, not even the Church could investigate. You couldn’t really complain that Hinata was negligent, per se.
And that brought to mind something else Yuuki had mentioned:
“If something seems the most effective way to her, she’ll do it, I guess you could say, but…but it makes no sense to me, no.”
Maybe Hinata really was working to stop this, in her own way. If so, there was no point stewing about it here.
“The point is,” I reflected, “Hinata’s a serious threat. If I could at least get her to talk to me, we could set something up where we don’t have to be dueling to the death…”
But if the Church labeled me a foe of all divinity, a duel would be unavoidable. I wanted to avoid that if possible, but if it happens, it happens.
“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. Perhaps I could go out and take care of her, then? There is no better way to quell your anxieties for the future than eliminating the problem from the start, no?”
Wow, Diablo. Confident much? Being the new guy on the team must’ve made him hungry for work. I really wish he would think more before he opened his mouth.
“Whoa, man, you realize that even I lost to— Um, I mean, fought to an even tie with Hinata, right? Just because you’re on the scene won’t make it some open-and-shut case!”
“He’s right, Diablo,” Shion added. “If someone like you wants to face him down, then I’ll go over and finish her off first. I await your order, Sir Rimuru!”
See? First Diablo starts mouthing off, then Shion joins the fray and goes all battle crazy again.
“Now, now, Lady Shion. I do owe you a debt for teaching me the ins and outs of assisting Sir Rimuru, so I hardly wish to berate you…but I sadly cannot believe that you could defeat Hinata.”
“Oh, really? So you think you’re stronger than I am? Well, fine. Let’s go out and settle this for—”
“We will settle nothing!” I shouted to distract them.
Diablo might have acted all calm and collected, but I guess he enjoyed egging people into a fight, too. He was polite to me, but that didn’t seem to extend to the rest of his superiors. Pretty brazen for a new guy. And the way he provoked potential opponents was downright dangerous with the hyper-impulsive Shion.
“Gwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! So it’s time for me to take action, is it? Very well! Allow me to just step out for a moment—”
“You’re not going anywhere, Veldora! If she targets us, we’ll deal with it then, but there’s no need to take a fight to her right now. Let me just repeat, I don’t want to anta
gonize the Western Holy Church!”
I had forgotten Veldora was seated next to me. He was ready to fly out the door before I stopped him.
Man, all these problem children… They’re growing fast, but still, education’s so important for them. Come to think of it, Benimaru and Soei weren’t itching to start fights at all anymore, and Geld had enough common sense that I could rely on him. Gabil got carried away a lot, but he still knew his place, so he never caused me many headaches. Plus, the way Ranga practically resided in my shadow, ears perked up for my command—he was almost cute compared to the others.
The big issue was with Shion, Diablo, and Veldora. Any mixture of the three was dangerous. I could feel my anxieties ramping up. Better be more careful dealing with them.
“Either way, that’s enough debate about Hinata and the Church. We may fight them depending on how matters unfold, but I intend to proceed with caution and watch what happens!”
So that was settled. But one thing I couldn’t forget was the presence of someone maneuvering behind the scenes. Hinata knew about me—she had an “informant,” she said, but there weren’t many people out there who knew I killed Shizu. It’d be hard to identify the mole, but it had to be someone I knew. The Kabal-Elen-Gido trio; Fuze and a few other Blumundians; and Yuuki. Beyond that, the only ones who knew all lived in this forest.
But that would mean…
Raphael was busy deriving a list of suspects for me. I appreciated his logic, but it could be someone, or something, we had no knowledge of at all. I didn’t want to work with the wrong impression, and I didn’t want to suspect anyone without real evidence. Better just lock that in my mind and keep my eyes open.
What was the point behind having Hinata and me fight each other anyway?
Was someone hoping I would dispatch her?
Did they want to obstruct me from returning to town?
Or did they want to lure Hinata out into the open?
…Or all of those things.
Seriously, Raphael? Talk about greedy. There were too many unknowns, and I couldn’t shake the impression that I was being played like a fiddle. Let’s just be patient for now. It can wait.
Getting back on track, I told the assembled group about how our town was attacked once I escaped Hinata—a wild, bloody conflict, engineered by a clutch of Farmus otherworlders. I wanted to do something for the victims, so I elected to make myself a demon lord…but before I could continue, Elen made the confession herself.
“And my dad already knows, doesn’t he? Like, that’s the whole reason you’re here, isn’t it?”
Wow. The way she looked at Erald with those upturned eyes. Dangerously cute. The poor guy’s like putty in her hands with that act.
“Elen…” He sighed, resigned. “It doesn’t matter if I know or not. There’s no need for other nations to know, too…”
I could guess how he felt. This really was Elen’s fault. What she did went beyond rocking the boat—it totally ignored the balance in this world. But Erald had guessed this would happen. “I’m sure,” he had said in our earlier secret talk, “my daughter Elen will reveal she gave you the demon lord suggestion. The only way to stop her would be to drag her back home, and she’d hate me for it. It would be a terrible plan.”
He might’ve tried sounding like an expert strategist when he said it, although he sounded more like an idiot to me. Hard to tell, really. But Erald’s prediction was right, so maybe the former.
I turned my eyes toward Gazel, a bit conflicted about all this. Seeing him nod back, I decided to proceed with this discussion the way we had planned.
“All right. And thanks to that, I used the assembled Farmus forces as a sacrifice, and one thing led to another, and I successfully became a demon lord.”
That wrapped up the basic story I had. Now for the real work.
“So… Right. Everything I just discussed with you is the truth, but what we’ll announce to the public will be adjusted somewhat.”
The Tempestians in the audience seemed pretty thrown by this. To the monsters, brute strength meant everything. Something like fudging the details for the story we’d give other nations must’ve seemed pointless to them. But lies and deceit are what politics are all about, really.
“What is the reason for this?” Benimaru asked for the group. “And in what way would you change it?”
I was ready for this question. We worked that one out in advance, too.
The way we’ll do this is that I’ll declare myself to be a demon lord, but we won’t reveal that I’ve actually awakened.
This is based on the assumption that other nations have no idea what actually went on around here. There’s no way for them to investigate the facts. Every potential eyewitness is dead, and apart from those of us in the room, only three humans know the truth. Everybody knew that the king of Farmus was a greedy tyrant, so it would be easy to frame our actions as justifiable self-defense.
By our logic, it’d sound far more credible if Farmus lost following a fully engaged battle, rather than being annihilated by a single demon lord. We’ll also say that all those many piles of dead had unwittingly opened up an awful, dreadful seal. Yes, the blood that they shed as they lay there seeped its way underground, opening the eyes of the dragon that stirred below—in other words, resurrecting Veldora.
Luckily, the champion Yohm, accompanied by me (the plucky Jura-Tempest Federation leader who’s angling to become a recognized demon lord), worked together to coax the dragon to our side, at the cost of many sacrifices. Quelling the beast’s anger, we agreed to worship Veldora as our guardian. Setting things up this way would establish my claim to the demon lord name and neatly pin all the blame on Farmus while establishing us as the good guys.
“Think about it,” Gazel commented. “People fear what they do not understand; they will never willfully accept it. A monster who singlehandedly destroyed an army of twenty thousand will find no one willing to believe his claims about peace and friendship.”
Fuze and Yohm seemed to understand, as much as they groaned about it. And these guys were two of my closest confidants. Someone who didn’t know me? They’d react just like Gazel said they would. I could wind up at war with all the Western Nations the next day.
“But,” he continued, “if we claim the Storm Dragon is behind the twenty thousand missing soldiers, that would be easier for the masses to grasp. The Storm Dragon is already a living catastrophe, after all, a mastermind of all types of destruction.”
This seemed to convince the crowd. Only Veldora stayed in his seat, snickering “Heh-heh-heh, call me a mastermind, will you? You are a smart man, indeed” and completely missing the point. Well, if he’s happy, I’m happy.
“I support this plan of action as well,” Erald said. “Stating that my daughter helped Sir Rimuru become a demon lord would inspire nothing but fear and disdain. Much better for him to have been able to negotiate successfully with the Storm Dragon because he became a demon lord. He’ll be much more appreciated that way, I think you’ll find.”
He smiled, his eyes looming over the meeting hall in search of dissent. I swear, he’s the kind of guy who would do anything for Elen.
“Oh, Dad… That’s exactly the kind of nefarious scheme I would’ve expected from a noble as crafty as you…”
I couldn’t tell if Elen was praising him or making fun of him, really. It made me feel bad for Erald a bit, as I waited for the audience to quiet down.
“And that’s not the only advantage for me,” I said. “It’s important that the human race doesn’t needlessly fear us, but this might also fool the other demon lords eyeing me into thinking that Veldora’s the only threat, right?”
And that would give me some breathing room to work with.
After I thrashed Farmus, the demon lord Clayman must be on the lookout for me, at least. If we spread the rumor that it was actually Veldora providing the big guns, I think that’d make me less of a worry to him. Gazel, king of an allied nation, wanted to have Dwargon
come out of this looking good. Me, I wanted the Western Nations to think nicely of me, while making anyone hostile to me underestimate my abilities and put their guards down a little. For now, it was much more helpful if they thought I was a whiny pushover than someone worth fearing.
“Besides, if word gets out that we’ve got the authority to negotiate with Veldora, that’s gonna keep a lot of nations from messin’ with us, don’t you think? No matter what the Western Holy Church says, I think there’s a good chance they’ll have trouble finding anyone to carry out their orders.”
That might be the biggest advantage of all. Even before Gazel’s suggestion, we needed to reveal Veldora’s presence sooner or later—and if we did, we might as well do it when he’s at his most useful. We were planning to tango with Clayman soon, so deliberately antagonizing the Church right now was nothing short of idiotic. Waging a two-front war would just spread us out too thin; we had to avoid that as best we could.
The trick here was to keep our foes as unworried about me as possible but as worried about Tempest as we could manage. I tell you, Raphael made some choice edits to what was already a killer scheme from Gazel. Sensing his, my, and Erald’s motivations, he weaved them all together to get the most use out of them in this plan. Amazing work. Ever since that ultimate-skill evolution, his mind’s been sharper than ever before.
“I see,” Veldora said, nodding his satisfaction. “So now you have a reason to take care of me, then?”
Oh, great. He only listened to the parts of this story he liked, didn’t he? That wasn’t quite what I meant…but ah well.
Apart from him, the rest of my government seemed to enjoy the idea. “I understand the merits of this,” Rigurd said, looking a tad relieved as he vigorously nodded. “In this case, we can continue negotiating in much the same way we have before.”
That must have been a worry for him; how this would affect future trade with other nations. He was developing a keen eye for Tempest’s economic development that I appreciated.