He grabbed the wine bottle carelessly, as if he didn't care either way, and poured the wine. Barbatos's eyes widened.
"Hey, hey!"
"Wine is meant to be enjoyed. There's no special way to hold it, no special way to pour it. Worrying about stuff like that is what makes life crumbly."
"This is why you men are—! To properly enjoy anything, you need rules!"
"Yeah, yeah."
Dantalion answered noncommittally. Barbatos pouted, but she obediently received the wine he poured. There was nothing she could do about it. If she moved now, even a single drop of wine rarer than gold might spill. Dantalion sloppily poured some into his own glass as well.
"Cheers."
"Ch-cheers."
Clang — the crystal emitted a clear ring. While Dantalion tilted his glass back and drained it in one gulp, Barbatos couldn't move a muscle. She could only watch him as he gulped down the Vallergnong like it was beer, not even properly savoring the aroma.
"Ahh."
"Is it… good?"
"It's good. Really good. Hmm, I'm not personally that fond of wine, but this is extraordinary."
Her golden eyes sparkled.
"What does it taste like? Huh? I asked what it tastes like — describe it as detailed as you can."
"…Can't you just taste it yourself?"
"Y-yes, of course."
Barbatos took a deep breath. Hoo, hoo. She gave herself a pep talk. This is nothing more than a red-colored alcohol. This is nothing more than a red-colored liquid. This is nothing more than… Whether the self-suggestion actually worked, Barbatos did seem to regain her composure. Though Dantalion was sitting right beside her, staring at her like she was a madwoman.
At last.
The glass tilted. The wine flowed. It wet her lips and the tip of her tongue.
"…!?"
In that instant, Barbatos felt as though she had ceased to be a living thing. She fully admitted now that she had been trapped in a single-room cell called a skull. It had been so dark she could only see things by relying on the faint light that entered through her eye sockets. But what is this? Barbatos murmured from a place infinitely distant within her consciousness. No, a deity whispered from afar. What is this? Is it not light itself? Behold, is not light seeping in from beyond? Astonishing! The light grows ever stronger!
'Ah, ah, ahhh.'
She beheld a vision. She had become a nomad and was galloping. A true nomad. She mounted a running horse without hesitation, cutting through the air at an angle, feeling occasional short shivers from the vibrations that resonated up from the ground, finally stepping a stride without a stirrup, finally wielding reins without reins, so that the land before her was nothing but a smoothly polished wasteland, and already neither the horse's nape nor its head remained, with only a single stream of mane fluttering…
"Boo-hoo. Hoo hoo hoo."
Salvation. True salvation was here.
Dantalion was startled.
"W-wait. Don't tell me you're actually crying?"
"I'm glad I lived, boo-hoo. Those were tough days, but the last two thousand years were really tough, hoo-hoo. I'm glad I'm alive."
Tears streamed down her face. Hot tears. She kept sipping the wine. As if she had decided she must replenish the moisture she was expelling outside with alcohol. Even through that, she smelled the aroma, rolled the wine around her tongue, felt the texture as it went down her esophagus—she followed every step of enjoying wine without missing a single one. All while continuously shedding tears. Dantalion was dumbfounded by that excessively postmodern sight.
"Give it here."
Barbatos, who had emptied a glass in the blink of an eye, snatched the wine bottle. She inserted her right thumb into the groove at the bottom of the bottle. Securing the wine bottle in her hand that way, she poured the wine into the glass held in her left hand. After pouring the wine, she elegantly gave the bottle a slight turn, lest a single drop splash. It was a paranoid level of wine etiquette. The sight was repeated.
Crying, pouring wine, drinking.
"Sniff, sniff."
—Tinkle.
"Boo-hoo, it's delicious, it's so damn delicious."
—Tinkle.
Dantalion had even forgotten to drink his own wine. The sight of an outwardly twelve-year-old girl crying and pouring and drinking wine was, to put it mildly, surreal, and to put it bluntly, somewhat insane. Dantalion knew through the game settings that Demon Lord Barbatos was a famous drinker. But what she was currently showing far surpassed imagination.
He carefully opened his mouth.
"I have a question. Why are you cursing if it tastes so good?"
"Boo-hoo. It's so delicious, but every time I drink it, the amount left gets smaller. That's really, truly fucking tragic. Boo-hoo. They say you shouldn't discuss anything with someone who hasn't drunk Tears-of-Vallernon."
Dantalion heavily doubted who had actually coined that saying, but he decided this was as good a moment as any to broach the subject for the sake of his own goals. Teasing Barbatos had turned out to be unexpectedly entertaining, and a considerable amount of time had passed.
"Is that so? Don't discuss anything, you say?"
Dantalion murmured to himself, adopting a tone of mock regret.
"Well, that's troublesome."
"Ugh-huh-huh. What's troublesome, you bastard?"
"I came here to discuss the mark you left on Riff's corpse. You say I'm not supposed to discuss anything without having drunk Tears-of-Vallernon — I'm rather at an impasse, you see."
In that instant—
Barbatos did not drop the wine glass in her hand. It was not because she was surprisingly composed or feigning nonchalance. She couldn't even manage the small reaction of going limp in the fingers. That was all. With the glass raised halfway to her lips, about to toss back the drink, her body froze.
"...Huh."
She immediately grasped the situation. Two thousand years of honed instinct and intuition told her so. She had taken a direct hit with absolutely no way to counter. A perfect ambush. Wasn't it impressive?
The drunkenness vanished from her golden eyes. A gaze like that of a lioness took its place instead. The time it took for Barbatos, who loved wine above all else, to transform into the eighth-seated supreme Demon Lord was a mere few seconds.
She broke free of her paralysis and gave the wine glass a leisurely twirl.
"So. Vallernon, vintage 505."
A sentence with no context.
The man standing before her understood perfectly what that implication meant.
"Ah, well. You are Her Majesty the eighth-seated Demon Lord, after all. It took that steep a price to get you to let your guard down."
"It's starting to make sense now. From the very beginning, when you tossed that Vallernon into the air — you were laying the groundwork. That outrageous, over-the-top display of cruelty kept me from thinking about anything else."
She looked back on it now with fresh eyes. Wasn't it strange? Who in the world would hand someone a bribe and then throw it away? Especially when it was something precious beyond measure to the person receiving it. To go through every possible effort to procure a treasure meant to win someone's favor, only to deliberately throw it away and make them lose respect instead — it was an act of senseless destruction that defied all logic.
"On top of that, you spoke about wine in the most dismissive way. In other words, you planted this impression in my mind: 'Ah, that bastard Dantalion doesn't know the first thing about wine.'"
Barbatos held back her laughter. She was far too delighted to contain herself.
"Now that I think about it, it makes no sense. You're the one who procured this wine. You would obviously know exactly how precious this treasure is. And yet you babbled on about it being nothing more than alcohol, dismissing it while treating me like some common drunk. That was all a scheme to lower my guard, wasn't it… Hmm. You're quite the strategist."
Dantalion gave a shrug.
"I won't deny it."
"Go ahead and boast. You made *me* lower my guard — me, of all people. Barbatos, master of black magic, lord of a hundred thousand souls, and slayer of the human race. When you suddenly brought up Lif's corpse, I froze for just a moment. In doing so, I tacitly acknowledged that it was my doing."
Her golden eyes slid toward Dantalion with a sharp glance. It was the look a predator fixed upon its prey. Boundless wariness lingered within them.
"Dantalion. The seventy-first ranked, pathetically weak Demon Lord. How much effort and how much acting did you put in for that single moment? Yes — even the casual, informal speech from the very first time we met was part of the act, wasn't it?"
Dantalion smiled bitterly at her wariness.
"True beauty has always been that which renders every pretense and formality meaningless in a single instant."
A phrase they had exchanged upon their very first meeting.
"Tell me, Barbatos. Is the wine you're drinking right now not truly beautiful?"
"Oh my. So you're saying this wine holds enough value to steal away a moment of mine."
Barbatos clicked her tongue in admiration.
"That's exactly right. You know it, and yet you can't help but fall for it. Ah, to make not only the loser accept defeat, but actually *welcome* it with pleasure. Fine. I'll celebrate this moment purely for what it is. It was a perfect performance."
She held out her crystal glass.
"I, Barbatos, offer a toast to you. To Dantalion."
"To Dantalion."
*Chaaang.*
A clear, ringing sound echoed through the air.
Barbatos held a sip of the wine in her mouth. And then she smiled bitterly. The flavor was absolutely fantastical. A wine like this was certainly worth being deceived at least once.
She thought that even if he hadn't brought a Valeron but some other top-tier red wine, Dantalion might still have managed to deceive her. But once she realized it had all been a scheme, she would have hated Dantalion for it. The kindness of asking her to speak informally without reservation, the encouragement to not worry about Paimon, the generosity of welcoming her even though she had shown up unannounced—all of it would have felt betrayed and exploited.
Dantalion had served her the rarest wine in the world. That meant only one thing.
*"You were worth this much to deceive."*
If that wasn't the highest form of courtesy, what was? Wasn't it the greatest encouragement, the utmost kindness?
That was precisely why Barbatos could enjoy the wine with pleasure even in this moment of being fooled.
She despised flattery. In most cases, flattery was a lie. But Dantalion had boldly met her gaze head-on. He had achieved his objective and praised her in the process. This was not the kind of flattery exchanged between the corrupt. It was a gladiator who had fought in earnest paying respect to his opponent after a fierce battle. There was a camaraderie in it that only warriors could share.
Dantalion had not merely won the victory—he had won her heart as well. That was a true victory.
Barbatos smiled.
"How did you figure out what I did?"
"Right now, you could just focus on enjoying the wine."
"You bastard, I'm the type who can't stand not knowing something. If you don't tell me, I'll be sitting here drinking the world's finest Valeron and just obsessing over how the hell you found out, not paying attention to anything else."
Dantalion chuckled.
"Well, that is a problem. It took quite some effort to prepare this gift. If my friend can't properly enjoy it, that's a real loss."
"Knowing that and still—ugh. Fine. Hurry up and start talking with that pretty mouth of yours."
"Just let me have one more sip."
Dantalion took another sip of the wine. It was a technique to make the other person restless with anticipation. Barbatos seethed at his petty little trick, yet she waited in silence. As the loser, she had no grounds to press the matter—not when the winner was gracious enough to participate in a post-game review.
"Ahh. Delicious."
"You little—"
"Alright, alright. I'll tell you."
Dantalion laughed.
"First off, anyone who participated in the Walpurgis Night ended up on the dragon's radar. When you factor in the timing, sponsoring Leaf's adventurer party would've been realistically impossible unless they'd attended the hearing in person."
"Fuck, fine. I got that part too."
A crease formed between Barbatos's pale brows.
"But you're saying thirty-two Demon Lords attended the Walpurgis Night. How exactly did you pick me out of all of them?"
"Simple logic."