Rose had placed both her hands over her breasts, lifting them up softly. Since her outfit was open on both sides, they looked like they were about to spill from her clothes.
“...Mmf.”
“Wh-What are you doing?”
“Master, by Rose’s evaluation, Rose’s mammaries are not small... Rather, their size ranks above the average value for the races, but...does this size not satisfy Master? Does Master prefer lumps of meat that sag in accordance to the laws of gravity, like those of these Dark Elves?”
“Bfwa! I-I-I have no idea what you’re talking about! There are traps lying in wait, so stay vigilant, fool!”
“Pardon Rose, Master...” Her response was as polite as ever, but she continued lifting up her breasts in an attempt to accentuate them.
Diablo tore his gaze away from Rose’s shivering breasts. In all seriousness, they had to stay vigilant. If the Dark Elves weren’t aiming bows in his direction, he would have had more time to look though!
“Damn you, Dark Elves...” He found himself mouthing his frustration.
His anger turned into magical energy, which rolled off him like palpable rage. Rem and Shera turned to face him with tense expressions.
“Ah!?”
“C-Come now, Diablo... Strangers just walked into their land, it’s only natural they’d be nervous, right?”
Maybe they just misunderstood how he felt? But he couldn’t explain what was actually going through his mind, so Diablo folded his arms haughtily.
“Look at that, Diablo, they’re huge!” Shera, who was as detached as ever, continued looking around.
“Yes, yes. It’s an impressive castle, given it’s made of wood.”
“Not that! These Dark Elf ladies have huge boobs!”
“Buha!?”
—You’re just now noticing that!?
“...What are you saying, Shera?” Rem said with an exasperated expression.
“I mean look at them! I’ve never seen boobs this big! Dark Elves are amazing!”
“...We’re risking life and limb here and that’s what you’re thinking about...!? How shameless!”
“I-I mean, yeah, buuut... But they really are!”
While Shera was frantically trying to make excuses, Diablo thought back on Rem’s words.
—Forgive my hormones, Rem!
While Diablo’s mind was being throttled to and fro by breasts, the carriage finally stopped before the castle.
†
Diablo and his group stepped off the carriage, looking up at the castle. Wooden boards were built on top of each other, forming the shape of a castle out of five dwellings stacked on top of one another. It was similar to a Japanese five-story pagoda, a tower made of wood. A thick branch extended outside from one of the openings in the planks that served as windows, leaves blooming on it in abundance.
“...Could this place have been built around a large tree and its branches?” Rem asked, knitting her brows.
“I get it!” Sylvie nodded, a convinced expression on her face. “It’s a natural support pillar!”
Shera voiced an impressed “wooow” while Diablo shared Rem’s impression.
—It’s like a castle made of papier-mâché...
He kind of wanted to take back that moment of being impressed earlier. Though, it wasn’t like they had come here to evaluate the Dark Elves’ castle, nor did they really care much about how they lived.
“Phew!”
The grizzly bear person, who served as their guide, removed the head portion of their costume. A curtain of black hair overflowed, hiding the slender nape of their neck. They without a doubt had the head and face of a woman, but she had something of a virile atmosphere to her. Her skin was very tan and dark. Diablo couldn’t really ascertain an Elf’s age, but she looked to be about twenty-five in Human years.
“...So you were a woman.” Rem was seemingly surprised as well.
“Yes, there are some circumstances regarding that. All the Dark Elves in this village are women, with the exception of babies. Dark Elf men leave the village to work away from home.”
The others removed the heads of their costumes as well, and, sure enough, they were all women.
“...So there are no men here. I’m a female Adventurer myself so I don’t think this is reckless, but since you’re fighting magical beasts, I’d imagine you’d want to have the men around for a sturdy vanguard.”
“I won’t deny that. But the Lord of the Black Forest doesn’t approach our village often. It usually leaves us alone if we intimidate it but...its eyes were so bloodshot this time. What could have riled it up...?” Her expression seemed pensive for a moment, but her thoughts shifted back to her current duties. “Whatever the case may be, we’re grateful that you visitors defeated the Lord of the Black Forest. However, we do not welcome the other races. Especially the Elves.”
Feeling the Dark Elf’s glare on her, Shera hid behind Diablo. The fact that her appearance was unusual for an Elf on account of her breasts was one thing, but if they found out she was the Kingdom of Greenwood’s princess, things would become needlessly complicated. For this reason, she was currently wearing a robe.
“...You wear these furs to avoid the poison, yes?” Rem asked, trying to change the subject. “Is this place safe?”
“Ah, this!” The woman rubbed the costume’s belly. “We call this the 《Black Cloth》. Blackwood is rife with poisonous plants, so we wear these when we go hunting. But we can’t let people who cover their faces in the castle, so, for that reason, we are to remove them here. Though, there are no poisonous plants growing within the village.”
Diablo looked up at the castle. “So this is where the Dark Elves’ leader is.”
“Our chief is there.”
“Hmph... Introduce them to me. I’ll allow it.”
At Diablo’s words, the woman who wore the Mohawk costume spoke up angrily. It was a girl with short-cut hair and a sharp gaze in her eyes.
“How disrespectful, you fool!”
She looked to be about fifteen in Human years, roughly the same age as Shera and Rem. But even if she got angry at him, Diablo had to keep up his Demon Lord role play. He couldn’t change to some polite character at this point. The Demon Lord way was to answer coercion with even more overpowering coercion.
Diablo opened his mouth to retort, but Rem and Sylvie intervened in a flustered fashion. They’d probably realized what he was going to say.
“We’re sorry! Could you kindly take us to your chief!?”
“...Ahaha...Diablo is both from another race and a bit foreign to our culture. A tiny bit, yes?”
“Mrgrgr...”
The girl didn’t seem in the mood to fight, so she stepped down easily. If she wasn’t going to stick to her bluff until the end, she may as well have not started this to begin with.
—Her personality’s kinda off...
The woman in the grizzly bear costume took off the bottom of her outfit. Diablo took two steps back despite himself.
“Nuha!?”
She wore an undershirt that was similar to a tank top and a pair of extremely short low-rise pants.
“Phew... These are necessary to block off the poison, but it’s terribly hot in them.”
“...Aren’t your clothes a bit too thin?” Rem frowned.
“Haha! There are only women in this village. None of them will mind.”
“...Diablo’s a man, you know!?”
“But he’s from another race.” She really didn’t seem to care.
“...But he’s from the races! This isn’t exactly trivial!”
“You say one strange thing after another, guest. Your outfits aren’t much different from our own.”
“...Ugh...”
Rem had equipped—or rather, was wearing—the 《Gemstone Gambeson》, an item she received from Diablo. It was a highly effective item, but was also a very revealing outfit.
And while no one seemed to care much because of her childish physique, Sylvie was wearing not
hing but a bit of cloth, and Rose’s outfit was open at her back.
—The clothes-to-exposed-skin ratio is kinda skewed in this party!
The Dark Elves also didn’t seem to mind seeing each other naked. They didn’t have their tops on when they drew water after all. No, it didn’t just come down to that, some were even laughing boldly as they did.
Some of the women present seemed bothered by Diablo’s gaze, blushing profusely or turning their backs to him.
—Wait, why’s the mohawk bear girl doing that too!?
Watching the girl who glared daggers at him earlier shy away because she was effectively naked was a jarring feeling, to be sure.
“Uuu... Don’t look at me!”
The woman who wore the grizzly bear costume gestured for Diablo and his group to enter the castle. “This way, guests! Can we ask you to be friendly around the chief?”
Could the mohawk bear girl’s behavior be considered friendly though?
“Worry not.” Diablo returned a smile. “I was amicable enough, no? Were I an enemy, this forest would have been a sea of fl—”
Rem and Shera both cut him off with a loud, “Ah! Ah!” desperately trying to smooth things over.
—Huh? Are they trying to say things would go quicker if I just kept quiet? This is weird... Even if my communication skills weren’t as off the charts as I thought, I thought I made some impressive progress... No way... Am I still socially inept? There’s just no way!
All of the confidence Diablo had built up suddenly crashed against the rocks...
They entered the castle. It was dim and dark. The window was blocked by a tree branch, filling the building with the shadows of its leaves. Since the place was made of wood, there was no fire to light the place up.
“...The Elves have superior night vision, so they can see just fine in this darkness” Rem whispered in Diablo’s ear.
“Hmph.”
There was something like that in the game’s setting, come to think of it. In Cross Reverie, any information needed to progress the game was always visible to the player regardless of their race, so it didn’t matter. Since Elves and Dark Elves hunted in dim forests, they had night vision as a racial ability.
Their guide stopped in her place.
“This is the seat of our chief.”
Chapter 3: Meeting the Chief
Diablo’s eyes gradually grew accustomed to the darkness. At the center of the building was a large tree that extended upward like a tower, and people were seated upon its meandering roots. It was still too dark to tell what they were wearing, let alone the expressions on their faces however. Only Shera, with her night vision, squeaked in surprise at something.
—What’s wrong? Do they look that scary to her?
Diablo thought to use magic to illuminate the place...but right now they were visiting for Rem’s sake. Angering the Dark Elves would be unwise, so he decided to let Rem handle communication.
“...I am an Adventurer.” Rem stepped forward. “I go by Rem Galleu. Are you the Dark Elves’ ruler?”
“Ohohoho...” a calm, womanly voice echoed in response. “Ruler? No, I am only their chief. Nothing more.”
Just like the woman who guided them here, this voice’s intonation was thick with an accent. But with this being another world, they should all be speaking the same language. Diablo was the only one who understood what they were saying in Japanese. He presumed that while the races did have their own language, other countries used different dialects, and this difference in intonation may be a representation of that.
“...Could I ask for your name?” Rem asked.
“’Tis Rafflesia S. Orangewood... You may feel free to simply refer to me as Rafflesia.”
“...Understood, Lady Rafflesia.”
“Ohohoho... You needn’t be so serious. Oh, yes, I’m sure this darkness is quite inconvenient for our non-Elven guests, yes? Let us illuminate the place.”
A spell was chanted and a ball of light appeared near the ceiling. A 《Light》 spell illuminated the room as if someone had turned on a light bulb. Blinded by the sudden light, Diablo squinted as he tried fixing his gaze on the person speaking to them, only to swallow his spit in surprise the very next moment.
—Yup, I can see why you were shocked now, Shera!
Rafflesia had giga boobs.
He thought this may be the case once he saw the local women, but this sort of volume went beyond his wildest imagination. To say it was more than could fit in one’s hand would be a vast understatement; one would need two hands to support them.
Her outfit was layers of fabric held together by a sash at her waist. If her stomach were to stick out here, she would have looked like some swollen frog monster, but her figure was slender and curved like an hourglass. Diablo was dubious as to how that outfit supported the weight of her upper half, but found he couldn’t tear his eyes from her. Her hair wasn’t black like the other Dark Elves, but a shade of silver that approached white.
“Your boobs are really big, Lady Rafflesia!” Shera said what everyone was thinking but didn’t have the nerve to say without reservation.
“Ohohoho... You’re quite blessed yourself, are you not, miss? I would be hard pressed to believe you were an Elf had I not known otherwise.”
“Huh? Ah, hmm... Ahaha...”
Shera laughed timidly. She hid her form with a robe, but it seemed Rafflesia had seen through her disguise immediately. It was probably to be expected, but there was more to this woman than a pair of enormous breasts.
“Hmm...” Rafflesia’s eyes narrowed. “This is a surprise... Are you Elven royalty? Your aura has such a luminescence to it.”
“Ah, hmm...”
Shera fell speechless. She wasn’t the type who was capable of lying.
“What!?” the Dark Elven women sitting in the background reacted with surprise.
It seemed there were soldiers lying in wait in the shadows. Diablo had assumed there would be four or five soldiers—presumably archers—present, but there were far more than he imagined. It seemed even he wasn’t capable of accurately perceiving Elves hiding in the woods.
“You idiot!” Rem grabbed Shera by the shoulders. “Why won’t you say anything!?”
“B-But, I really am the princess...”
“...But the Dark Elves hate the Elves! Didn’t you think about what would happen if they found out you were royalty!?”
“B-But, Rafflesia seems like a nice person...”
“What if she’s not what she ‘seems like’ and tries to hurt you!?”
“Well, Diablo’s here...”
Rem hung her head dejectedly. Shera’s life of wealth and blessing made Shera far too hopelessly optimistic. By contrast, Rem’s life of continual lonesome hardship made her a pessimist.
Diablo shrugged.
—Being depended on doesn’t feel too bad.
A Dark Elven girl, the one who wore the mohawk costume, nocked a bow and arrow in Shera’s direction.
“You’re the Elven princess!?”
It wasn’t just her—other Dark Elves had also drawn their bows.
“We Dark Elves were once betrayed by the Elves...” Rafflesia said with a severe expression. “We hold a particularly bitter grudge against the current Elven king.”
“Huh!? But it’s the first time you’ve even met me!”
“True... But even if the offender forgets, the victim cannot help but remember. Be it a hundred or thousand years ago.”
“No, that’s not fair!”
Shera’s ears drooped lower than usual while Rem gritted her teeth.
“...It’s like I said. You’re an idiot.”
Rem slipped her fingers into her belt, clasping a summon crystal. Rose and Sylvie seemed to be standing still, but their senses were sharpened as they prepared to plunge into action at any second.
Diablo sighed.
—This is just like at the Grand Cathedral...
Hanging back and letting others handle negotiations just made the s
ituation roll into the worst possible scenario. He believed in his comrades, but acting as a Demon Lord was what suited him the most.
He pulled the 《Prototype Great Scythe》 from his pouch. He couldn’t use the Tonnerre Empereur on them if he wanted to hear about the ritual magic, but, if he used low level magic, it shouldn’t kill them.
“I haven’t the time for your nonsense. Hear me, you Dark Elves! I am Diablo, a Demon Lord from another world! Your petty grudges do not concern me. Obey my orders if you value your lives!”
“A Demon Lord!? I knew the Elves couldn’t be trusted!”
The mohawk costume girl fired an arrow.
She’d done it.
Some voices called out to stop her, but it was too late. It was an attack from a short range, so even if it was from a weak girl, Diablo anticipated some damage. But suddenly, Rose stood between them, moving like a squall, and cut the arrow down with her arm.
“What a pitiful creature you are, to attempt an attack on Master...” she spoke, her eyes open so wide it was almost surprising her eyeballs hadn’t rolled out of their sockets. “You deserve a painful death!”
“Rose, don’t kill her!” Diablo strictly forbade her.
At the same time, Rafflesia also cried out, “Desist!” but her attempt to hold the Dark Elves in check only spurred them to attack further.
The other Dark Elves fired their bows one after another, raining arrow after arrow on Diablo and his group. There were probably thirty arrows that had been unleashed. He’d used 《Volcanic Wall》 before to protect himself, but using fire magic here would burn the tree down. That would be going too far, Demon Lord role play or not. He felt like he probably only provoked them more than anything, but he never came here to fight them in the first place...
Brandishing his scythe, Diablo unleashed his magic.
“《Sonic Wave》!”
A defensive wind element spell that sent shock waves blowing the Dark Elves’ arrows away. A barrage of air spread out around them, knocking back anyone around—namely the girl who’d fired the first arrow.
“Kha!”
Her back hit the wall, seemingly doing considerable damage. But to anyone that was even a bit further from Diablo, it felt like nothing more than a sudden gust. He’d managed not to hurt Rafflesia, but the soldiers in the tree’s shadows were still at large.
How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord: Volume 7 Page 7