"Dantalion's personality is far too cruel."
Paimon sipped her tea. Her face was perfectly placid, which clashed with her words.
We were aboard a small ferry. It was painted a clean, crisp white and glided along the river, tracing endlessly gentle waves in the current. A water spirit gripped the hull and guided us along, so the ride was comfortable.
A peaceful afternoon. Using a spirit as our boatman while we enjoyed a leisurely ferry cruise — the kind of luxury only a Demon Lord could afford.
"Can't you be a little more considerate toward women?"
"Considerate toward women? There's no man alive more considerate toward women than I am."
"Honestly. If you couldn't talk, you'd at least be less annoying. Sitri, what do you think?"
"Hm?"
Sitri, who had been ignoring her tea entirely and just stuffing her face with pastries, tilted her head.
She glanced back and forth between Paimon and me, then quickly put on a troubled expression.
"W-well. Paimon is right, but… Dantalion is actually quite kind… or rather, he's pretty good about being considerate… ugh. Sorry, Paimon."
"See? This is why friendship between women is so worthless."
Paimon shook her head slowly.
"One moment you're calling me 'big sister, big sister' and following me around all adorable, and the next you've fallen head over heels for some man. You're saying a man is more important than the sister you've spent a thousand years with? I'm truly disappointed, Sitri."
"A-ah!"
Sitri flailed in a panic, abandoning her pastry. With a soft plop, the cake tumbled into the river.
"No! Dantalion is terrible at being considerate toward women and he's a bad person! Just like Paimon said, he's so vicious that women run for the hills the moment they catch a whiff of his hair! Even the goddesses have long since stopped watching over the mortal world just because Dantalion is down there!"
Sitri nodded fervently, evidently satisfied with herself. In that moment, Paimon and I exchanged a glance. No words passed between us, but the two of us communicated our intentions perfectly.
"Yeah, Dantalion's terrible. Big sister's right.
"...That's a bit much, Sitri."
I put on the most pathetic expression I could manage.
"To think that Sitri had been thinking of me that way all this time... That really hurts."
"Huh? Wait, what?"
"Even if the whole world points fingers and curses my name, I believed that Sitri—at least Sitri—would believe in me and support me until the very end. But it turns out Sitri sees me as some irredeemable scoundrel not fit to be associated with..."
Sitri was startled.
"N-No! Absolutely not! Dantalion, it's because of my sister!"
"Because of Paimon? You're saying Paimon made you fabricate things you didn't even sincerely believe?"
"Mm... yeah."
I fixed Sitri with a sharp glare.
"So Sitri is the kind of person who, if someone tells her to, would slander me with words she doesn't even mean. So to you, my very existence amounts to nothing more than that. Goddess, I had considered Sitri a true friend all this time..."
"Whaaa? Whaaat?"
Sitri fidgeted desperately and grabbed my hand.
"I-I'm sorry. Dantalion. I didn't know it would hurt you... I was scared Sister would get angry, so I just blurted it out without thinking... I'm sorry. I really, truly didn't mean it! I'll never do it again, I promise."
"Hang on a minute. Sitri. What are you talking about?"
Paimon spoke from the side, her voice brimming with displeasure. Sitri turned her head in alarm.
"So you're saying Sitri just lied to me without a single shred of sincerity?"
"S-Sis? That's not it."
"I'm disappointed. Truly disappointed. Ahh, I never imagined the day would come when Sitri would lie to me so casually."
Paimon covered her mouth with her fan and heaved deep, heavy sighs.
For the record, this is something I only realized after coming to this world, but I can say with certainty that the reason noble ladies carry fans is so they can sigh just like that. Covering their mouth with a fan and then sighing openly was incredibly bad manners. There was no better gesture for pissing someone off.
"I may not be able to trust Sitri anymore. Even friendship rusts, you know."
"Nnn... nnngh!"
In the end, Sitri exploded.
"I'm sorry, Sis, and Dantalion, I'm sorry about everything! As an apology, I'll steer the boat, so please forgive me!"
She sprang to her feet. The boat wobbled from her sudden rise. Before we could say a word, Sitri dove straight into the river.
"Kyaa!"
Paimon let out a small shriek as a huge splash of water erupted. That was acting. Sitri probably couldn't see it, but I clearly witnessed Paimon smiling with pure delight behind her fan.
"Paimon. You need to manage your expression."
"Says the one who's grinning from ear to ear, Dantalion."
"Oh dear."
Oops. Sitri was just too adorable, and I let my guard down.
The two of us grinned in unison as we watched Sitri. She was swimming, pushing the boat from behind. The boat surged forward at a speed incomparable to when the water spirit had been guiding it.
Even as she swam, Sitri kept calling out between strokes.
"I'm sorry! Paimon, Sis, I'm sorry! Dantalion, I'm sorry!"
Who could possibly see that sight and not laugh? At last, we burst out laughing. Our laughter rose into the air and scattered brilliantly into the sunlight.
"Hmm. A boat ride like this once in a while isn't bad at all."
"The tea and pastries all got knocked over, though. It's been a long time since the three of us enjoyed something together like this."
"We've been busy with one thing or another, after all."
Paimon smiled gently.
"Thanks to that, a total of thirty-three free cities have been established."
The Liberation Alliance suffered a crushing defeat in the Frankish Civil War. But there was only one Henrietta—a hero of the age—and she couldn't be everywhere. In the Kingdom of Polithunia, the Teuton Kingdom, the Kingdom of Sardinia... in region after region, the people rose up successfully.
There were even places where nothing but peasants carried the revolution to success. In quite a few others, guild masters or newly risen nobles led the charge. And so, across the continent, free cities sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain.
Paimon's expression darkened.
"In the end, we still failed to establish a new republic, though..."
"No one can be satisfied from the very beginning, Paimon. Even if this may seem like a small step to us, in the grand sweep of history it will be a great leap forward."
"..."
Paimon stared blankly at my face.
"...Every now and then, Dantalion, you say something unexpectedly magnificent. And all without a shred of artistic talent. It's uncanny."
"Did you not know? When one truly sets out to comfort another, the Muse goddesses bestow their grace of their own accord."
I reached out and toyed with Paimon's left hand. Paimon let out a soft "Oh my" and covered her mouth with her fan. She didn't seem to mind one bit.
"Honestly. So who did you charm like this yesterday, then?"
"Perhaps my finesse was lacking, but yesterday was thoroughly unlucky. I got in trouble for having a lonely bed. So today, I'm determined not to let this chance slip by."
"Oh my."
Paimon giggled with delight.
Emboldened, I let my hand drift upward, and further upward still. I clasped her wrist, then gently traced along her arm. Paimon willingly accepted my touch like a cat leaning into a caress. Before long, I was letting her crimson hair flow softly through my fingers.
"If I may be perfectly honest, I'd love to keep enjoying this peaceful time together."
"Mmm. I've never been intimate on a ferry boat either, so I suppose there's that to look forward to."
"It seems we've already arrived at our destination, though."
We turned our gaze toward the riverbank.
The city was burning in the distance.
"Burning" might be a slight exaggeration. Five or six plumes of black smoke were rising into the air. Thousands of monsters, armed with spears and blades, had surrounded the city.
"So they're finally capturing Heidelberg after a year."
"It was the foremost fortress city in the heart of the continent, after all. Taking only a year is generous praise, if anything."
Heidelberg was a border fortress.
Built along the banks of the River Neka, this was a city that the Habsburg Republic — Consul Elisabeth's nation — had poured extraordinary effort into maintaining. They had boasted that this fortress would prevent the Demon Lord's army from ever encroaching on the continent again.
To be frank, Heidelberg was practically impregnable.
The walls themselves were thick and tall. A moat encircled all four sides, and watchtowers lined the ramparts in dense formation.
To make matters worse, it was massive in scale. Over ten thousand civilians lived within the fortress alone — a staggering figure. What other fortress in the world housed ten thousand residents?
Every last one of those citizens was a seasoned veteran of fighting monsters. On top of that, the fortress boasted a knightly order of no fewer than nine hundred.
If the entire Crescent Alliance Army had descended upon it in force, perhaps it could have been taken — but the Crescent Alliance was spent. Paimon and Sitri had no choice but to capture this place using only the Mountain Faction's forces.
As was widely known, the Mountain Faction had suffered devastating losses fighting at the forefront of the last war. To make matters worse, a civil war two years prior had drained their strength once more. They simply didn't have the power to topple a monster of a fortress like that.
"Can't we just lay siege to the fortress?"
That was when Laura proposed a plan.
Paimon had come to me, troubled by the fortress being all but impregnable, and I had immediately gone to Laura for advice. After listening to the account in silence, Laura tilted her head.
"Laura. Did I not mention it? The fortress sits right beside the River Neka. Even if we besiege the city, the enemy will continue receiving supplies via the waterway."
"That's exactly my point, my lord. Why not cut off that very waterway?"
"Hmm?"
The River Neka was five to six hundred meters wide. How could anyone hope to completely block it?
"Well, deploying patrol boats would have some effect... but the Habsburg Republic's forces are competent. They'll exploit windows of poor visibility — nighttime, for instance — to run supplies through. Blocking all of that perfectly is simply impossible."
"Geez. My lord really is hopeless when it comes to tactics."
Laura said, exasperated.
"Instead of deploying patrol lines, you just build a bridge straight across the river. Wouldn't that make it impossible for supply lines to get through at all?"
"Excuse me?"
Build a bridge and seal off the river?
"…Building a bridge across a stretch that wide would require an enormous amount of manpower and resources."
"There's no need to build a proper bridge. Secure some bridge piers and link them together with warships. Look, my lord. A fine bridge is complete."
"……."
I fell into deep thought.
In other words, it was like linking warships together — the same trick Cao Cao pulled at the Battle of Red Cliffs. Making temporary bridges with ferries was common enough, but doing the same thing with enormous warships was something I had never even heard of, let alone seen.
It was an outrageously outlandish idea. But…….
"…It could work. No — it will succeed. The Batavia Republic is on our side. If we quietly move warships up the river from that direction…"
"Ah, yes. The encirclement will be complete."
Laura smiled broadly.
"No matter how Heidelberg is praised as the greatest fortress in the heart of the continent, how long can it hold out against a perfectly formed siege? A year at most."
"Rather than scrambling to take the fortress by force, it might be better to just wait a comfortable year……."
"That is precisely it."
I immediately relayed Laura's strategy to Paimon.
Paimon and Sitri, upon first hearing my proposal, gave me looks as though I had lost my mind. But the deeper the discussion went, the more serious the two Demon Lords' expressions became.
"…Well, it's such an ingenious plan that it makes me uneasy, I'll admit."
"That certainly has the ring of plausibility. Very well, Dantalion. I shall adopt this strategy decisively."
A siege the likes of which had never been seen in all of history had begun.