by Fuse
In the end, however, a win was a win. Clayman’s domain had lost its main line of defense. But that didn’t end things. The trio had a job to do—seize Clayman’s castle and fully neutralize the threat inside.
Noncombatants comprised the majority of the people remaining in the castle, none of whom signed any oath of loyalty to Clayman. The more quick-witted among them, or those who took the employment simply for money’s sake, surrendered without a hint of resistance. There were also many who were restrained in the castle by mental or spiritual bonds, but a combination of persuasion and magical de-cursing on Shuna’s part allowed them to capture the entire castle in short order.
With the occupants neutralized, it was time to start searching. They had already confirmed that the demon lord Carillon wasn’t being held here, but they wanted to seek out anything they might be able to use against Clayman.
As they did, a figure approached them.
“…Please, one moment.”
“Mm? You’re still alive? Did you need me to finish you off?”
“Wait, Hakuro. He has no will to fight left.”
It was Adalmann, and Shuna had to calmly keep Hakuro from drawing his sword. The wight fell to his knees, accompanied by a single skeletal fighter.
“Please, allow me to call you Lady Shuna. Thanks to your magic, all of us have been released from the bonds that tied us here. Perhaps it was fate that kept us alive without being cleansed. I have a request that I hope you will let me propose.”
“…What is that?” a quizzical Shuna asked, fearing this would be yet more trouble for them.
“Thank you for hearing me out. I was hoping I would be able to meet the figure that you have devoted your faith to, Lady Shuna. When I lost my faith, I also lost the chance to ever reach the heights of my power ever again. My faith in my goddess Luminus is dead—and I need to find a new god for myself.”
“““……””” The three each gave Adalmann incredulous looks.
“I… Well, we have a great respect for Sir Rimuru, yes, but we don’t worship him,” Shuna stammered in reply.
“Sir Rimuru, you say?” Adalmann was unfazed, still eager to sell himself. “Truly a wonderful name, one fully worthy of describing the glories of my new god. We may merely be a pair of fragile undead, but I believe we may be able to offer you assistance. Lady Shuna, would it be possible to arrange an audience with this Sir Rimuru?”
Shuna wanted to remind Adalmann of the difference between blindly, unconditionally worshipping someone and treating them with respect while dealing with your problems by yourself. But she didn’t. It seemed like too much to get into. Instead, she conjured up a mental image of Rimuru, the boingy slime she knew.
Well, why not? Once he sees Sir Rimuru in the flesh, that might be enough to make him give up.
Adalmann seemed to be the type who got the wrong impression of people easily. It would take time to persuade him to think otherwise, so Shuna figured it’d be expeditious for everyone involved if she just nodded and said yes.
Once the dust settled, Shuna was in command of Adalmann and the several thousand undead that “survived” the battle (or whatever it was that undead did). Clayman’s castle was now fully conquered.
CHAPTER 5
WALPURGIS
The impossibly ornate door connected right to the meeting hall.
A large, round table was positioned in the center, with twelve evenly spaced chairs surrounding it. Ten demon lords were on the invite list (with Carillon absent), so two of these seats would be empty even if I took up one. Attendees sat in chronological order of their demon lord appointment, and so I was placed right in front of the door—not that I minded. My attention was focused in the room around me anyway.
On an occasion like this, I wanted to observe my new colleagues as much as possible. Of course, there were only two people here right now. One was Ramiris, at the seat of honor way on the other side. She was seated and kicking her legs around, having a whale of a time, like a kid on a car trip. I figured I could ignore her.
No, my attention was on her right, at the seat directly facing me. There I saw a man with bewitchingly attractive red hair. A man, definitely, but there was more than a touch of femininity to his dashing good looks. His eyes were shut, but I doubted he was napping.
One look was all I needed to know: This dude was trouble. Analyze and Assess seemed to suggest that he wasn’t any big deal, but my sixth sense was giving me the eeriest vibes with him. At first glance, he seemed like an inexperienced kid, kind of magically strong but unable to control his aura. Without the Great Sage’s analytical skills, I might’ve been tricked—that was how crafty he was at hiding his true self, feeding the people around him misinformation and making them underestimate his true skills. We hadn’t even started fighting yet, and the battle was already under way.
It made me recall the mind-reading skills of Gazel, the dwarf king. Kind of like my Great Sage, nobody would know you had that skill unless you told them. It wouldn’t be until someone tried it on you that you’d notice it, I think, unless it was a mind reading that went really deep into your psyche to avoid that. As long as my latent resistance didn’t fail me, I was pretty sure I’d be okay.
As a result of this, hiding your skills was very important. You could also bluff people into thinking you had certain skills or deliberately mess up a skill to make them think you were inept to wield it. There were all kinds of ways to play with your opponents’ minds, and that was exactly what this pretty boy was doing—tricking other people’s Analyze and Assess skills to mess around with them.
My idea had always been to hide my powers, keep my aura turned down as long as possible, and give the enemy zero information to work with. This guy, meanwhile, was using his rivals’ data-gathering skills against them. It was a sort of screening process. He was, in effect, asking his foes “Do you have the power to read me?” If they didn’t, they were out of the picture; if they did, he’d gauge their response. If the fake info he planted into their minds was enough to scare them off, they weren’t worth dealing with in the first place—but if you did notice his trick, that glance at the sheer depths of his powers would make you unable to resist him.
But think of it like this. Even the data he wanted you to know about indicated that he had as much magical force as Carillon. There was no way to guess how much he actually had. Even if you understood his game, it was hard not to let it unnerve you a bit.
This was Guy, and he was clearly on a whole other level.
By the time I was done examining Guy, a large man lumbered into the room, bringing only one guest with him. This was Daggrull, the demon lord giant whose overwhelming presence dominated any room he was in. He immediately walked up and slammed himself into a seat at Guy’s right, kicking back and putting his feet up. The empty space between them must’ve belonged to Milim, indicating that the table divided demon lords into two halves based on their order, with Guy on one end and me on the other.
I turned my eyes to him. Guy was a tall figure himself, but Daggrull was enormous, not to mention comfy-looking in his specially made chair. Even something like this chair was an opulent-looking magical item. This was Veldora’s favorite rival, and the magic with which he presented himself definitely signaled to me that he could take on a dragon type.
Plus, the amount of magicule energy on him was just ridiculous. Was that higher or lower than Veldora’s? It seemed bottomless to me, but it’d be hard to accurately measure unless I fought him for real. Still, quality beat quantity. Just because he had a bunch of magicules on hand didn’t make him seem that scary to me. The key was how well he used them. Differences in skill level were a vital aspect of any fight, of course, and a demon lord like Daggrull couldn’t be that unskilled. I suppose I’ll need to watch out for him, too.
Now another one came in, a handsome, muscle-bound man decked out in some real fancy-looking threads. He was tall, if not as tall as Daggrull, and his facial features looked like they’d been chiseled. His sh
ort, curly blond hair looked wild on his scalp, perhaps representing his violent personality. To put it simply, he had Hollywood good looks, and he knew how to charm people.
I suppose, of course, the thing that stuck out the most were the two fangs visible from his lips. He must’ve been the demon lord Valentine, the vampire. He sat to Ramiris’s left, so in terms of the seat order, he must’ve been about as old as Daggrull—that, or perhaps he just took over for whoever he replaced. Not that seat assignments mattered that much.
What struck me more were the pair Valentine brought with him. One was an elderly man, kind of a manservant type. Definitely well-trained, unmoving and statuesque. His aura was restrained, revealing nothing—the same strategy I used. The second one, meanwhile, was an eye-catchingly beautiful silver-haired girl who seemed to shine like the sun. Her skin was pale, and she had one red eye and one blue. There was something oddly eerie about this girl, who appeared to be on the cusp of adulthood and was clad in a maid-style dress. Maid dresses are like battle uniforms, as they say, and it wouldn’t be odd for this girl to be pretty strong.
And these two were both working for this guy? That’s a surprise. The girl, in particular, was just letting her gigantic aura out all over the place. But—hang on. When our eyes met, I was struck by the most uncomfortable feeling. Maybe I was imagining it, but it seemed like she was changing the nature of her aura at random.
Understood. Analyze and Assess indicates that the target likely bears more magicules than the demon lord Valentine.
Ah, I knew it. I couldn’t read her overall energy count, but it’s higher than Valentine’s, the guy she’s serving. It was very cleverly concealed—if you didn’t have an ultimate skill like mine, you’d never spot it. But again, they weren’t really intent on hiding it—like Guy, they wanted to assess you, see whether you spotted it or not.
Could this girl be the real demon lord? Or perhaps the previous holder of this seat, the demon lord that retired out. Maybe this is that “Milus,” the vampiress that even Veldora had high praise for. The changeover happened more than 1,500 years ago, so perhaps not too many demon lords knew about that—or did but were keeping mum about it. Or didn’t care. Either way, better be careful.
Valentine, the current demon lord, was no pushover himself. He had a heroic sort of ambition, even more than an untransformed Carillon, so there was no reason to doubt his strength. And if that wasn’t enough, she had that freaky girl with her. If it was her domain that got burned to ash, it wouldn’t be strange for her to despise Veldora at all. I resisted the urge to yell “Why’d you have to piss that lady off?!”
At least there was one saving grace—who wouldn’t mind dying by the hand of such a beautiful figure? (Quite a few people, I imagine, but…) I’ll just have to hope she doesn’t learn about Veldora and me—or if she does, that I don’t have to clean up the mess.
After a little while, the fifth person showed up—this one a loner, almost sleepwalking to his post. He had two swords on his belt, but that’s it. Not much of an arsenal. I got a quick glance at his eyes; they were light blue. His hair was a very dark shade of purple with silver streaks in it. He still looked young to me, maybe even high-school age, and he had well-defined facial features, although they were spoiled by his sleepy eyes and general listlessness.
He stopped by Ramiris’s seat to say hello. “Yo. Man, you’re still, like, the size of a bug, huh?”
“Oh, you trying to start a fight with me? Like you could even handle me, Deeno.”
So person number five was Deeno. He definitely seemed cut from the same cloth as her. Neither was seriously riled; they seemed to just be screwing with each other.
“Why would I need to, dumbass? Like, it’s totally obvious who would win.”
“Pfft! I didn’t realize you were in that much of a hurry to die. I’m in perfect physical form today, I’ll have you know!”
“Uh-huh. Hey, haven’t you shrunk since last time I saw you?”
“What do you want from me?! I only just got reborn recently!”
When I asked her about it, Ramiris said she had been resurrected around five hundred years ago. It would apparently take her several centuries to fully mature. This seemed to convince Deeno.
“Ohhh, that’s why? That’s kinda a pain for you, isn’t it? But you kept all your memories, right?”
“My memories, yes. But my spirit’s degenerated along with my body… Ooh, but I’m still the strongest outta all of you! I need a handicap like this, or it’s no fun!”
“Guy, I think Ramiris is sayin’ something? Did you hear her just now?”
“Bahhh?! What are you, stupid? I know how to pick my enemies, all right? I’m not saying I could KO Guy in one punch or anything!”
A bigmouth like her changed her stripes all too quickly. I guess that red-haired guy really was Guy, too, and judging by Ramiris’s freak-out, he really was a menace. I’ll just write “Guy = dangerous” in my internal notepad. It’s little notes like these that have saved me from peril more than once. You can’t underestimate the power of that.
The two kept on talking in hushed voices so as not to rile Guy. They were discussing Beretta and Treyni, Ramiris’s guests, and of course Ramiris was bragging up and down about them.
“Wha? Why’s a total loner like you got attendants here?” Deeno complained. “You’re making me look like a dweeb for showing up alone!”
“Hee-heeeee! Now I can get back at everyone for calling me a little shrimp and a loner, you in particular! Wait’ll you see how powerless you are against these guys!”
“Oh, you want us to fight? Is it okay if I rip ’em up?”
“Huh? Of course it’s not okay! If you break them, I’m seriously going to tell on you to Guy and make him make you pay for it!”
It’s like Guy was her big brother or something. It was breathtaking how quickly she let other people do the dirty work for her.
“…But really, man, these guys are the real deal. Like, I looked at ’em for real just now, and it’s like, damn!”
Beretta and Treyni silently nodded at Deeno. They were far too good for Ramiris, really.
“Right! You see? You see, you see? Now I’ve got some muscle to back up my words, know what I mean?” Ramiris stuck out her chest (not that she had much of one) to show up Deeno. Their upgrades were entirely my doing, but ah well.
Beretta and Treyni remained silent. They were the perfect attendants. They didn’t speak, and the dozing Shion behind me could definitely learn a thing or two from them.
Once he finished saying his hellos, Deeno stumbled over to his seat. It was next to Valentine’s, making him another member of the old guard. Deeno ignored Valentine entirely as he sat down…and immediately put his head on the table and started sleeping. That seemed kind of rude. Maybe demon lords didn’t make it a habit to say hi to one another, and all those put-downs with Ramiris were the exception to the rule.
Deeno couldn’t have acted less interested in being here. Showing up was enough for him, it seemed, but falling asleep without even bothering to read the room was, in a way, incredibly self-centered. Fearless, too.
I suppose that act had to be backed up with some actual ability. Hopefully. Let’s go with that. He was jamming my skills a bit, so I couldn’t be sure of what he had. He stared at me with his half-open eyes whenever I tried analyzing him, so he had to have noticed. That banter with Ramiris made me think he was pretty chill, but I definitely shouldn’t put my guard down. Given the rapport he seemed to have with Ramiris, though, I hoped I didn’t have to make him my enemy.
The next one through the door was the empress of the harpies, the demon lord Frey. Milim told me about her, and let me tell you, she was explosively erotic. I wondered how she flew with those breasts; they must generate a ton of wind resistance.
…Oops. My mind’s going off track. But can you blame me? That was just the sheer impact of her appearance.
Once she stepped inside, her eyes turned first to Milim’s empty seat and
then to me. Even the way she turned her head was mesmerizing. I mean, come on… And when she passed by, oh, what a wonderful aroma she had on her.
As I basked in this, I felt something sinister behind my back. Shion was clearly peeved. Must’ve noticed I was letting that perfume get the best of me. Well spotted, Shion. Riling her any further was too scary a concept to entertain, so I reset my mind and got back to business.
Her magicule count wasn’t anything to write home about—maybe smaller than Shion’s or Benimaru’s. Of course, Shion could probably line up well with Valentine at this point, so I’m not saying it was that tiny. Quality, not quantity. It’d be foolish to judge on this alone. In terms of chest size, meanwhile, it was really hard to pick a winner— Oops. Better not think about that.
If I had to guess, maybe she had a lot of hidden skills? That was the kind of concerning vibe I got.
What was worth noting were her attendants. One was another big-breasted harpy, on the same level as Frey. She was young, and her body was about as lascivious as they come. The other was a large man, his magical energy on par with Frey’s. He had huge, eagle-like wings sprouting from his back, so he must’ve been a male harpy. He was a measure smaller than Daggrull but otherwise could give Valentine a run for his money in muscles and good looks, although the lion mask on his face made the latter part unclear.
Wait. Lion?
Report. According to my analysis and assessment—
Yeah. No way, right? I mean, this guy felt totally different from Carillon. It had to be some other guy. I didn’t need Raphael to spell it out for me. I’m not that dumb.
……
There was no way the AWOL Carillon would attend Walpurgis with such an obvious ploy. He’d be more careful with it, taking pains to act prudently. They say there are at least three people in the world who look exactly like you, and I’m sure that’s the story with this guy, too.