"Even so, Habsburg is all but finished."
I said this while stroking Laura's bare skin.
"It's hard to see a future for a nation that has lost nearly half its territory. The princess is no god, after all. She'll draw breath on a knife's edge for a while, and then, at some moment, unable to hold out any longer, the lifeline will snap. Whether at the hands of the Demon Lord's army, or the human army……"
In the end, my expedition against the Crescent Alliance was a success. I had severed the limbs of Princess Elisabeth, the most dangerous figure among humankind.
Beyond that, the split among the Demon Lords had finally, clearly risen to the surface. Paimon had schemed to wipe out the Plains Faction, and just before the final battle, all the Demon Lords save Barbatos abandoned the pursuit. On top of that, the betrayal of the Grand Dukes of Hell. A splendid free-for-all.
"So then, the second question, Laura."
"Mm."
Laura groaned. I could see her tensing up. How adorable.
"I've bought myself time now. The continent has been split four ways and five. But there is still one force that, at least in name, maintains its unity. Where is it?"
"The human army."
Laura answered at once.
"Setting Habsburg aside, the other nations are still gathered under a single banner. Even though my lord contrived to split noble from commoner in the speech contest, that split has not yet spread beyond the army to the continent as a whole."
"Ohh."
"The reason the human army keeps marching back and forth around the Habsburg region is that very thing. To draw the soldiers' cohesion back up—or else to reduce outright the number of soldiers who are potential rebels."
"Correct. That's right."
I clapped my hands. It was the right answer. As expected, when it came to military matters Laura was a walking encyclopedia.
"Revolutions don't break out so easily. The plague and the famine overlapped. On top of that, I sowed poison in the speech contest. But there is still one last blow lacking."
The human nations that still form a coalition, if only on the surface, had to be dismantled completely.
What I desire is the war of all against all. Grand causes like conquering the continent for demonkind, or all of humanity uniting against the Demon Lord—every last one of those noble pretexts deserves to die.
Acting solely for the profit of one's own faction……that is how the factions must become. Utterly selfish.
"So from here on I'm going to carry out two grand strategies. Can you guess what they are?"
"……"
Laura hesitated. I waited leisurely for her answer.
She agonized over it for more than a minute, then surrendered.
"I—I don't know."
"Yes. Here comes the next one—."
I inserted one more bead into Laura's rear. Laura let out a strange little shriek—hic!
"And on top of that, since you failed to answer both questions, one more as an extra."
"W-wait a moment? My lord. That's a rather strange way of counting……hkkt!"
Laura trembled all over. Mm. Truly a heartwarming sight.
Having a seventeen-year-old girl held naked in my arms, trembling, granted me the utmost satisfaction. It wasn't so much that my lust surged; rather, the very sight of the girl scrunching up her face, dreading something, letting slip a moan, was beautiful as a work of art. In short, I was no pervert. I was merely a spectator taking in a single work of art……yes. Nothing more than a dandy Parisian strolling from exhibition to exhibition.
Come to think of it, among the monsters I could newly hire there was a <Torture Slime>. Couldn't I put it to some amusing use? Hmm. Laura being sticky, obscenely violated by a slime, a blonde beauty……it works. This one works. The gentlemen of Paris would surely rise to their feet in a standing ovation, moved to tears. I'll give it serious consideration later.
"Well, I'll show you all that in due course, step by step. Laura, you can't stay uninterested in politics forever. War is, in the end, one branch of politics, you know? Do apply yourself."
"Ugh……understood."
The first of the two grand strategies.
It was, of course, the very purpose for which I'd been scurrying about the hells of the demon realm all this time—namely, building a Demon Lord's castle. Before long the Grand Dukes would send along their sponsorship funds—read: voluntary tribute—in great heaps.
I was brimming with confidence.
A fortnight later.
Lapis brought a construction engineer along with the Grand Dukes' sponsorship funds.
In the demon realm, the construction trade was firmly gripped by goblins and dwarves. The industry was so closed off that no other race could so much as set foot in it. Roughly speaking, the dwarves held seventy percent of the share and the goblins thirty, but I deliberately had the representatives of each side summoned together.
That hadn't been the plan from the start. At first I'd simply meant to hand it off to the most successful firm. It was to be a grand undertaking that would go on for ten years. Naturally it had to be entrusted to a trustworthy firm.
But when I put an inquiry to the dwarf-run <Red Marble Construction Works>, they came back demanding an outrageously large sum. I let out a low groan as I read the estimate.
"Hmm. Even at the very least, twenty million gold will be consumed, is it."
It was a problem.
The sum I'd wrung out of the Grand Dukes in full, plus the sum I'd wring out of them in the future—only by combining all of it could I barely scrape together twenty million gold. It was money extorted through fraud in any case. Thinking of it as building one grand, magnificent dungeon for free, there was nothing to begrudge, but still……
I shrugged.
"Can't be helped. Let's commission <Red Marble Construction Works>."
But Lapis objected strongly.
"Are you in your right mind, Lord Dantalion? Put in a request to only one place and of course they'll overcharge you."
"Hm? Eh? Is that so?"
"That is so."
Lapis declared it flatly. When I answered so naively, Lapis grew angry, as though she'd witnessed something intolerable.
"You must not simply submit to whatever price the contractors name. First, we present a budget proposal from our side. We circulate this budget proposal to every contractor, and order them to propose how they, given the sum, would use the budget as efficiently as possible."
"Uh, uh?"
"Their aim is to make money in any case. We set them competing against each other and drive the price down even a little. Isn't this the most basic technique of commerce?"
Now that she mentioned it, she was right.
"Th-then I'll leave the construction budget and the selection of the contractor to you, Lapis."
"By all means. And besides, Lord Dantalion, you have now become a man of tremendous wealth."
Lapis's eyes glittered fearsomely.
It was the very glint that appeared without fail whenever a lecture was about to begin.
"In simple assets alone, fourteen million gold. The cash arriving soon from Lady Sitri, about one million gold. Add the five million the Grand Dukes will provide hereafter, and you will ultimately possess a full twenty million gold or so. Lord Dantalion, you have managed your funds by rough guesswork until now, but I can no longer tolerate such crude methods."
"Crude, you say……"
The words Lapis chose were sometimes terrifying.
But I had my excuses too. I had never once kept a household ledger in my life. I'd lived with no connection to commerce or finance or any such thing.
"Even if you suddenly tell me to make my fund management sophisticated—"
"On top of that."
Lapis cut me off firmly mid-sentence.
"As of this year, Lord Dantalion, you have come to directly govern the villages near the Demon Lord's castle. Tax revenue has begun to come in. You must systematize everything, starting with the collection and disbursement of taxes."
"S-systematize?"
"You order the village elders to submit statements of tax receipts and disbursements. You impose on the landlords the duty of managing the tenant farmers of their villages. You must also mind the storehouses the villages manage in common. This is the basics."
"……"
Yes. I understood that a great many extremely complicated problems lay scattered about.
"Th-then I'll entrust the village administration to you as well, Lapis."
"Are you in your right mind?"
─ THUD!
Whoa.
It seemed my words had just brushed against a scale on her neck.
Lapis—Lapis of all people—struck the table with both hands! With a great thud. Lapis, whose symbol had always and forever been cool composure……she who had not lost her calm even when assassins ambushed the carriage in hell, struck the table with both hands, thud!
"S……sorry."
My body shriveled up in an automatic reflex. Even standing before Lapis I grow cautious as it is, and with her that angry on top of it, I could do nothing but bow my head, exactly as when I was being scolded by relatives.
"The lord of the villages is, from first to last, you, Lord Dantalion. I have become half a retainer of yours, but I still hold a place in the Kunkuska Trading Company. To dump the whole of a lord's duties on such a person—that is by no stretch the remark of a responsible lord."
"I'm very sorry……"
"And the affairs of a domain are not so simple a thing that I could handle them alone. Appoint officials. Cultivate a body of retainers. To begin with, Lord Dantalion, the only proper retainer you have is Lady Laura."
"Hm?"
Laura, who had been picking at a piece of rye bread in the corner, looked over this way when her own name came up. Both cheeks were stuffed full of bread and bulged out plumply. She looked exactly like a hamster, unbearably cute, but however cute she was, she was of no help to me in this situation.
"That's right. Lady Laura. You come over here too."
"M-me?"
Laura looked back and forth between Lapis and me. Perhaps she'd realized the mood was no ordinary thing. Laura answered in a voice tiny as a mosquito's.
"As you can see, I am in the middle of my meal, but……"
"Listen while you eat."
"U-understood."
Laura came scurrying over. She and I sat side by side at the table, heads bowed deep. It was exactly the picture of an older brother and younger sister being scolded by their mother.
Lapis raised a finger and spoke.
"Look here. A Demon Lord whose fame resounds across the continent, whose dignity stands tall in the demon realm—that is you, Lord Dantalion. And such a Dantalion has a retinue of a mere one. And though we call her a retainer, in truth she handles nothing but military affairs. The rest of the time she's no different from a concubine. It is utterly abnormal."
"Sorry……"
"I'm sorry……"
Laura and I apologized. For some reason it felt as though we ought to.
"When a power grows, a retinue befitting its rank must naturally follow. Expanding the Demon Lord's castle is fine. But who will manage the Demon Lord's castle? Making the surrounding villages part of your domain is fine as well. But who will manage the villages? It is not a good thing merely to swell the bulk of a power. What always matters is the substance within. Obviously."
"I'm sorry……"
"I'm very sorry……"
Laura's manner of speech had shifted into formal honorifics. She uses casual speech even with me, her lord……
"What you need now, Lord Dantalion, is a clean, clear administrative system. Statements of tax receipts, the lord's writs of command, records of the enforcement of decrees, public notices, proclamations, diplomatic documents—the style and form of all of these must be unified. No. Come to think of it, Lord Dantalion, you haven't even drawn up a code of law."
Lapis sighed. It was a sigh less of anger than of exasperation robbing her of words. That sort of sigh.
"Just what have you been doing all this time, Lady Laura? You are Lord Dantalion's first vassal. The head of his retainers. Pointing out and supplementing the areas the lord has overlooked is surely the role of an aide."
"I-I'm sorry……"
A trace of moisture crept into Laura's voice. And it wasn't Laura alone. My heart, too, was pricked over and over. By reproaching Laura, Lapis was in effect censuring me, right there beside her.
"You take what you, Lord Dantalion, deem right as the fundamental framework, and then you investigate what customs actually exist in the villages, how those customs shape the lives of the domain's people, everything, and from that you must draft a code of law."
"Er, excuse me."
I raised my right hand. Laura being scolded all alone was too pitiful, so I meant to draw at least a little of the aggro.
"Yes, Lord Dantalion. Speak."
"Why do we have to draft a code of law at all? Can't we just let it run on customary law, and have me step in only when problems arise?"
"Because you, Lord Dantalion, as lord, must monopolize the right of judgment."
An immediate answer.
"Customary law is, as the name says, customary law. When a problem arises, the domain's people settle it however they always have. Look into the reality of it, and it's no different from granting the right of judgment to the domain's people themselves. That way there are two judges in a single domain. Respect the customs, by all means, but the right of judgment must be, from first to last, the lord's purview. That is the first step of power."
Truly a most correct point.
Lady Lapis sighed once again.
"It can't be helped. We'll carry it out one step at a time, steadily. Lord Dantalion, you cannot stay uninterested in politics forever. Scheming, too, is in the end one branch of politics. Please do apply yourself."
"Mm……I'll apply myself."
"I will devote myself to assisting my lord……"
Laura and I had no choice but to hang our heads low. What else could we do?
In the end, sad to say, it was laid bare that the pecking order of our faction ran: monsters < Laura < me < Lapis.
At any rate—so, appointing new officials.
'Hmm.'
In <Dungeon Attack> there was of course no shortage of capable personnel. Out of all of them, I'd singled out Laura alone to recruit. Until now I'd thought that was enough. And in fact it had been enough.
But—yes. Lapis had pointed it out rightly. The need to expand the body of retainers had arisen. Who to draw in? Perhaps I ought to start giving it some thought from now……