The Saint was no less flustered. She pressed her lips together and fixed me with a sharp glare. Are you out of your mind? her eyes demanded.
Paimon deflected her gaze with a smile and spoke.
"What a cruel twist of fate, Saint Gracia."
"…The gods will not forgive you for this."
"Oh, I doubt that. They're not benevolent enough to concern themselves with a girl like me."
Paimon waved his right hand through the air.
"Memoria-Recordatione."
An image was projected into empty air. Just as the scene of my torturing Jack had been shown before, this time the figures of Paimon and Gracia appeared. …Two people sat facing each other in a stone room with thin sunlight filtering in.
— So Demon Lord Dantalion is the one who spread the Black Death…
— Yes, that is correct.
— The evidence seems convincing. But why? I don't understand what you stand to gain by providing us with this kind of material.
In the vision, Paimon wore his usual good-natured smile.
— Gracia. I know your kind well. You need a scapegoat, don't you?
— ….
— The commoners' discontent is reaching a breaking point, the rifts between the nobility are growing ever more severe, and even the military is becoming difficult to maintain. And yet you must preserve the authority of the royal family — and beyond that, the authority of the Temple. …It's no easy task.
Saint Gracia replied coldly.
— That is none of your concern, Demon Lord Paimon.
— You're right. I'll return the same answer. Why I'm trying to bring down Dantalion is none of your concern either. All you need to consider is whether what I'm proposing aligns with your interests.
— …Very well. Then, swear an oath.
— Yes. I swear. An unbreakable promise.
The magical projection ended there.
I was completely dumbfounded. I stared blankly at the scene of the two of them exchanging a secret pact. I got chills thinking about just how deep Paimon's connections ran in the Human Realm. One moment she was cooperating with Third Princess Elisabeth, and now she was coordinating with a famous Saint……
Until now, I had assumed Paimon simply loved the human race and acted on the Hero's behalf. But had something else been hidden beneath the surface? Not mere philanthropy, but something political……some covert political maneuvering whose roots extended further than I could fathom?
That made her even harder to understand. Connections like these. Manpower like these. She had burned every last bit of it just to prove my innocence. No human ruler would ever trust Paimon again. For her to recover that trust would be hopelessly impossible.
Why?
She dug her own pit, and yet she still helped me. Even titrating poison and antidote has its limits. Put simply, Paimon had incinerated the trust she spent perhaps hundreds of years — maybe even a millennium — building in the Human Realm, all in a single stroke to save me. It could not be called a rational course of action……
"Demon Lord Paimon."
The voice of Saint Gracia rang out.
"The coexistence of all rational beings. I thought that was your great cause……it seems I have been gravely mistaken. Do you realize? You are finished."
"Nothing is finished, I assure you."
The Saint scoffed.
"May God's blessing be with you."
Saint Gracia's figure faded from the plain. The broadcast magic had ended.
Through my speech, the nobility of the human forces had taken a blow. Third Princess Elisabeth, who had stepped in as the relief pitcher, had been knocked down as well. And even Saint Gracia, who had appeared as the last firefighter, had crumbled. The oratory battle ended in a three-game sweep for the human side. No human could reverse this disadvantage. It was a crushing defeat.
Paimon thrust her right arm forward and cried out. Her black cloak billowed dramatically.
"O humans! This is the true face of the nobility and the clergy! To win, they sacrifice the masses with their sweet lies, and to seize power, they attack people with fabricated evidence. Will you fight to protect such people?"
Her resonant voice spread through the atmosphere.
"The gods gave you life. That life was never meant to be lived in falsehood. The red blood flowing through your veins does not exist to serve a lie. Your hands were not made to grasp deceit. Your feet were not made to turn away from deception. Our hands exist to grasp the truth. Our feet exist to march toward the truth. And so, bearing the truth that everyone already knows, we walk onward — toward the truth that must come."
Paimon shouted with conviction.
"The nobility are deceivers. This is a truth everyone knows! A world must come where every person cultivates their own land. This is the truth all must pursue! Our lives were given to us in order to realize this clear truth, and no lord of great power, no keen blade, can ever deny our truth. Humanity! People of the world!—Fight, in the name of God!"
A white radiance enveloped Paimon and me. Our side's speech magic had also come to an end.
I stared at Paimon in silence. She was quietly catching her breath. Her small breaths sounded unusually loud. Before I could say anything reproachful, she spoke first.
"Do you have a handkerchief?"
"What?"
I couldn't make sense of it and glared at her. She smiled as if she had expected that. It was a somewhat feeble smile.
"Please keep a handkerchief with you from now on. It's what a gentleman ought to have."
"What kind of nonsense—"
At that moment, Paimon coughed violently. An ominous coughing sound erupted again and again, and a mass of blood was vomited from her mouth. She bent over and coughed up blood toward the ground. It wasn't ordinary bloody water. With every cough, dark crimson clots shot out.
In my panic, I forgot all about how she was my sworn enemy and propped her up. The blood was so clumped together that I couldn't make out its shape, but one thing was clear—it was not something that should be coming out through a person's mouth. What Paimon was expelling could no longer be called coughing. It was a mix of agonized moans and screams.
"Hey—hey. What's wrong? What is this?"
"Mana reflux."
A familiar voice reached me. I turned my head to the side, and Barbatos had already approached. She clicked her tongue and spoke.
"It's a fate worse than death for a mage. The Circle has broken free of its cycle and is running wild on its own—and the higher-ranking the mage with more Circles, the more screwed up it gets. Right now, seven Circles are having a damn rave inside that woman's body. Tsk. Stupid woman."
Barbatos looked down at Paimon with extremely cold eyes. Whether she understood everything or not, I didn't catch a single word of it.
"Damn it, put it simply! Mana, Circles—I don't know any of it!"
"To put it one way, her life as a mage is over. Two thousand years of training, gone in an instant. ...If she'd been human, she'd be dead already and then some. Well, if you ask me, she'd be better off just dying rather than enduring this kind of pain. It must feel like her organs are being carved up raw."
"What..."
Everything that made her a mage becomes meaningless.
As someone who wasn't a mage, I couldn't truly grasp it, but I could easily imagine this was no ordinary crisis. In the end, wasn't it like a warrior who had lived by the sword losing every single one of their limbs?
While she was pale with shock, Paimon, cradled in my arms, coughed up blood once more. My clothes were drenched in her black blood. The scent of blood filled my nostrils. Unlike human innards, there was no foul stench whatsoever. It was purely the smell of blood.
"Why on earth…"
"I don't know. She must have sworn an oath on her Circle when she made that secret deal with the bitch calling herself a Saint or whatever. So — what are you going to do?"
What was I supposed to do? I asked with my eyes. I didn't have the composure to voice a question aloud. Someone was vomiting up their insides in real time right in my arms. Even for someone like me, it was a struggle to keep my head clear.
Barbatos spoke indifferently.
"Now it's certain that this wretched woman has been feeding you a load of lies. If you want, I can execute her right here and now."
"Execute her? The Mountain Faction's opposition…"
"I'll handle that myself."
Her voice was resolute.
"A few days ago, I let it slide because there was no evidence. But now I've got something no one can deny. Dantalion — you may only be ranked seventy-first, but the moment you were chosen as the representative speaker, you came to embody the Crescent Alliance Army itself. In other words, the instant Paimon slandered you, she betrayed the entire Crescent Alliance Army."
"…."
"This isn't my decision alone."
She jerked her chin toward the rear. About ten meters away, the highest-ranking Demon Lords were seated — Marbas and Gamigin among them. When they caught my gaze, each gave a slight nod.
"Agares, Gamigin. Even old man Marbas is on board. No matter how much the old man insists on playing mediator, this one's too clear-cut. He did attach one condition, though — he leaves the entire call to you, Dantalion. Your choice, and yours alone."
Barbatos locked eyes with me. Those golden pupils were utterly merciless. Without a trace of urgency or pleading, she was simply, quietly asking for my will.
"You're the one who was betrayed, and you're the one who was saved. The one to judge is none other than you. If you want Paimon executed, I'll wring this wretched woman's neck right now."
"…."
"Dantalion. You look like your head isn't working too well, so let me spell it out. This is a golden opportunity. If you let it pass now, the odds of executing Paimon will drop significantly."
There was no need to ask why out loud. She calmly laid out the reasoning.
"From Paimon's perspective, it gives her an alibi. She can spin it so the secret pact with the Saint was all a ploy to sow confusion among the enemy. When the Saint, believing she was on our side, slanders you — ta-da — Paimon swoops in and condemns the Saint. The result? Human army morale gets slashed to pieces. That's the kind of scenario she could build for herself."
Paimon's Mountain Faction, though not publicly convicted, had not been cleared of suspicion either. That was why they were taking the vanguard for the Crescent Alliance Army. If you want to prove your innocence, shed your own blood to demonstrate it—that was the conclusion they'd reached.
And here, Paimon was deceiving the enemy by sacrificing even her own mana for the sake of her allies. If the scenario played out that way... the Mountain Faction would be declared completely and utterly innocent. Not only had they taken the vanguard, but the faction's leader had made a sacrifice. What further proof could be needed?
No one was claiming such a scenario yet. At this very moment, the only truth was that Paimon had colluded with the enemy. If they wanted to execute Paimon, now was the prime opportunity... perhaps the only one...
"The choice is yours, Dantalion."
Barbatos said.
His head wasn't working properly. Would killing Paimon here be the right move? No, but then again, why had Paimon taken this risk to help him in the first place? He had no clue. Had she expected him to feel some sort of pity? Damn it, yes. He did feel pity. Watching her vomit up her bright red innards right before his eyes, to feel no hint of pity would be a lie.
Feeling pity didn't mean he was the type to let an opportunity slip... yet, it wasn't pity, but a profound sense of doubt about Paimon's actions that he felt. He had a strong premonition that there might be something about Paimon he hadn't known, something no one had known in both the Dungeon Attack and this world as a whole.
A golden opportunity? Or the resolution to a question? Whichever he chose, regret would remain... so the real question was which choice would leave less regret...
"I..."
He spoke. His lips felt as heavy as a thousand pounds.