I needed to set aside some time to think. I gave Laura's words a half-hearted response. I casually went along with the idea that there was no need to insist on formal speech, chatting away without much care. It was because Laura using honorifics felt awkward.
In truth, if we were going to rank by age, Lapis should have been the one speaking casually to me.
I gave it a moment of imagination.
'Dantalion? Why are you like this again? Do you even have a brain? It's truly pathetic. And you call yourself a Demon Lord? You might as well just decide to disappoint me on purpose.'
Just imagining it was terrifying.
Laura shook her head from side to side.
"There must be firm rules between a ruler and their vassal."
"Let's do this. When other people are around, use formal speech. But when it's just the two of us, we'll talk comfortably, like we have been."
"Very well, then."
Her eyes lit up.
"Helping one's lord with private concerns is also the duty of a vassal. Though I am but a humble servant, Dantalion, I shall serve my lord with full dedication in both public and private matters."
"It's nice to see you brimming with enthusiasm…"
Right then, an alert popped up — an adventuring party had invaded the dungeon. Laura noticed it too; she was wearing a necklace that automatically emitted an alarm whenever someone broke into the dungeon.
She slowly rose from my embrace.
"Hmm, I'll be back."
"Weren't your stamina reserves significantly depleted from performing the branding? I can handle it."
"No. Thanks to my lord's concern, I've already recovered. A king does not act rashly — I shall quickly claim the enemy's head, so please wait for me. I intend to make the first battle since becoming your vassal a splendid one."
Laura stepped out of the Demon Lord's quarters with a spirited stride, as if she had truly recovered. She even seemed a little excited.
Either way, it was a blessing. I desperately needed time to sort out my thoughts.
Let me start by checking the current situation.
I muttered in a trembling voice. When others were around, I had to speak inside my mind, but I was alone now—there was no need to hold back from talking to myself.
"St-Status Window."
Completely out of tune with the gravity of the situation, a cheerful "Ding!" rang out. If I could pick the one thing I wanted most in this world, it would be to get a settings menu and change that damn sound effect right away.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
True Name: Dantalion
Race: Demon Lord Affiliation: Dantalion Demon Army
Alignment: Neutral (-10)
Level: 20 Notoriety: 1120
Job: Dungeon Operator (F), Demon Lord (E)
Command: 25/30 Might: 7/10 Intelligence: 29/30
Politics: 24/30 Charisma: 15/20 Technique: 4/10
*Title: 1. Demon Lord of Terror
*Abilities: Tactics (F), Marksmanship (F), Mining (F)
*Skill: Acting
[Achievements: 2]
[Subordinates: 42/210]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Compared to before, the digits in my stats had changed. The job level (Demon Lord) going up had drastically raised the upper limit of my stat caps. Each job level increase raised the player's growth ceiling. Even so, the caps felt excessively high. That meant some factor other than job level alone was influencing things.
I quickly opened the title tab.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Title]
1. Demon Lord of Terror. Shattered the great order of the world. Receives reverence from Demonkin, fear from humankind: Leadership cap +10, Intelligence cap +10, Charm cap +10, Subordinate units cap +100, Infamy +500,
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"That's it!"
The exclamation burst out involuntarily. It was a pretty good title.
No matter how much a character grinds or clears quests to raise their base level, they can't increase their stats beyond the cap. For instance, if the cap for Strength is 30, even with a base level of 99, you can never have more than 30 Strength.
That's why it's important to raise your job level appropriately.
Job levels consist of nine tiers: F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, and SSS. Each time the job level goes up by one tier, the caps on certain stats increase by 5.
Base level increases your actual stats, while job level increases your stat caps. Mindlessly grinding isn't necessarily good. If your caps are already maxed out and you raise your base level, none of your abilities actually go up—they just get stored as latent potential. Players need to nurture their characters by continuously managing both levels, like upgrading hardware and software together.
From this perspective, the [Demon Lord of Terror] title, which massively boosts caps that can normally only be raised through job levels, was incredibly good. Normally, raising your job level requires all sorts of elaborate efforts. For example, to raise your job level as a swordsman, you'd have to hunt as many diverse monsters as possible, duel martial artists from different schools... Ugh, just thinking about the suffering I went through raising my previous character makes my teeth itch.
Simply put, [Demon Lord of Terror] effectively gave me two free job level increases.
"Well, this is something."
I felt hollow.
I was surprised, but not happy. The increase in both base level and job level was certainly good news. But I had no idea why it had happened. I wasn't stupid enough to celebrate wholeheartedly over luck whose cause I didn't understand.
Imagine someone offers you a hundred million won. Even if you ask why they're giving you the money, they won't answer. You don't know this person at all and have no way of knowing why they'd hand over such an enormous sum. In that situation, who would genuinely rejoice and happily pocket the money?
The problem was that I had already received the hundred million won. Now it was time to figure out the other party's intentions no matter what.
─ A scenario has destroyed a designated fragment of fate!
─ A-rank scenario [Iron-Blooded Female CEO] is being 'completely' destroyed!
─ B-rank scenario [The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Ally] is being 'completely' destroyed!
─ S-rank scenario [The Division of the Human Realm] is being 'severely' destroyed!
"There's definitely something wrong here…."
I stared at the four holograms in silence.
The deliberation didn't drag on nearly as long as expected. Once my head shook off the shock and began working again, I grasped almost immediately what those four sentences meant. There was no need to run through any elaborate deductions.
"This is a game scenario."
The moment I made Laura my subordinate, notification windows started popping up. That meant all those scenario-related sentences had to be interpreted in connection with Laura.
The Iron-Blooded Female CEO referred to Laura. The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Ally had to be another scenario tied to Laura—most likely an event in which Laura joined forces with some of the Demon Lords to attack the Hero's faction. The Division of the Human Realm meant, quite literally, the Human Realm splitting apart around the empire the Hero belonged to and the kingdom Laura led. The A-rank, B-rank, and S-rank designations were probably determined by how close each event was to the main scenario.
In other words, by making Laura my subordinate, I had prevented an event that was originally supposed to happen in the game from ever occurring.
"But why did something so obvious end up helping me?"
My question shifted elsewhere. The answer didn't take long to arrive at either. A notification I had never seen before appearing meant that the difference between 'me' in the game and 'me' in this world had generated a new notification. One that the Hero couldn't see, but only a Demon Lord could.
What is a Hero?
A Hero is an entity that progresses through quests.
Then what is a Demon Lord? Simply put, it is an entity that obstructs quests. In short, if the Hero's mission is to resolve quests, the Demon Lord's mission is to make quests impossible to resolve. Therefore, while the Hero gains experience points through quests——
"A Demon Lord gains experience points by destroying quests."
The picture became clear.
I now understood why quests never appeared in this world the way they did in the game. Before, I had simply accepted it as "things are different in reality compared to a game." But that wasn't it. For a Demon Lord, quests never appeared in the first place. Rather, finding quests related to scenarios and destroying them—that was the Demon Lord's 'invisible quest'!
Breaking quests is a Demon Lord's true mission.
Paradoxically, the expression 'breaking' a quest carried both the meaning of completing it and the meaning of truly shattering it.
As I was sorting through these thoughts, a question suddenly struck me.
"…Wait, then why didn't anything show up back with Andromalius?"
The decisive catalyst that led to the Hero deciding to defeat the Demon Lord had been Andromalius. If breaking quests was how I earned experience, then the killing of Andromalius should have yielded a tremendous amount of experience, shouldn't it? Could it be that Andromalius hadn't actually had much of an impact on the Hero's progression through the scenario? That couldn't be right.
"Damn it. I can't make heads or tails of this."
I flopped back onto the bed. I give up! I couldn't figure it out anymore. There was a severe lack of information. It seemed like the only way to resolve the remaining mysteries would be to track down another key figure tied to the main scenario and either beat them into submission or recruit them as a subordinate.
Just as I was scratching my head raw, Laura returned to the Demon Lord's chamber.
"Oh? You're back sooner than I expected."
"A situation came up."
I tilted my head. Come to think of it, the notification window announcing the party's total annihilation still hadn't appeared.
"The people are currently waiting at the entrance to the Demon Lord's Castle."
"Waiting? They're not storming in?"
"No. They are not intruders, Dantalion."
If they weren't intruders, then what were they? I looked at Laura with a curious expression, and she spoke in an even more serious tone than before.
"They're an envoy. According to them, they've come representing the nearby villages. They say they have something of grave importance to convey to their lord."
The envoy was composed mainly of elderly people. Aside from a handful of young men who appeared to be their guards, every last one of them seemed to be a village chief or someone of comparable standing.
When I appeared accompanied by thirty golems and ten fairies, the old folks hurriedly bowed. Well, calling it a bow was generous — they merely lowered their bodies with the support of their walking sticks. But I didn't mind, knowing this was roughly the greatest display of respect an elderly person could offer.
"Stand at ease."
"We are honored by your presence, great being."
The elderly man at the front slowly straightened his upper body. Sure enough, he was one of the village chiefs I had subjugated before heading to Niflheim. I recalled him as the chief of a fairly well-to-do village, not some backwater hamlet.
"I'll hear your business, but keep it brief. What brings you to my domain?"
"Great being...!"
The old man suddenly dropped to one knee. The movement was so abrupt it was practically alarming — I thought his knees might shatter. Good grief, old man. Do that too hard and the express train to the afterlife won't arrive on time — it'll get there early!
However, I couldn't let myself be looked down upon by those who didn't even understand my intentions, so I calmly asked again.
"I said I'd hear your business."
"I humbly apologize! I humbly beg your pardon! This lowly one is the village chief of the village at the foot of Lauc Mountain, and the elders here are likewise village chiefs. As the great being demanded, our villages thoroughly eradicated all adventurers. However, we were unable to deal with one adventuring party."
"……Hmm."
Well, there would naturally be adventuring parties that village folk couldn't handle. Probably an E-rank party, by the looks of it. I said nonchalantly:
"Anyone can make mistakes. The apology you're showing me now is heavier than the weight of your mistake."
"T-that adventuring party gathered several villages together and formed a kind of alliance."
"What did you say?"
I frowned.
The old man, who had already lowered himself, now pressed his body flat against the ground.
"I humbly beg your pardon… Most villages submitted to the great being's command, but a few harbored rebellious intent from the very beginning. They fell for the adventuring party's deception…"
"Fell for? Fell for what?"
"They… they're targeting the great being's… assets…"
"Tch."
I was dumbfounded.
I could more or less guess what had happened. The adventuring party must have blown plenty of hot air into the villagers' ears. Something about mountains of gold coins sitting in the dungeon, no doubt — the same old routine. The ignorant mountain village folk had fallen for it.
All things considered, it was just villagers and an E-rank party. It was mildly unpleasant, but I had no intention of berating the elders who'd come to inform me.
But what came next was something I couldn't help but be surprised by.
"The one leading this band of rebels is said to be a man named Lief, from Jalsen Village."