Paimon turned her gaze back to the map.
Beside her, Sitri pulled a bored expression. She had just been having a thoroughly good time with three centaurs, but had grown weary of the fun and come looking for Paimon. Sitri was the very embodiment of lust, though Paimon was no one to be underestimated in that regard either. She'd been looking forward to spending some depraved yet beautiful time with Paimon for the first time in ages, but—what a letdown. Paimon was just quietly studying the map.
Sitri pouted her lips.
"Hmph. Sister's thoughts are easy enough to read. Do you think I'm that stupid?"
"My, my."
Paimon tittered.
*'She's pouting because I won't play with her. How adorable.'*
Paimon studied Sitri, curious to see what she was actually thinking. Sitri wore a self-assured expression.
"The others keep calling me stupid, but I just so happen to be the twelfth-ranked Demon Lord, you know. I can think at least as well as anyone else—no, better than anyone else."
"My, my. I had no idea our dear Sitri was so clever."
"Hmph—so, Sister, you're trying to do that thing, what's it called? Borrow a blade to kill?"
The smile on Paimon's lips deepened. It wasn't quite the right phrase—Sitri meant to say "borrow a knife to kill"—but Paimon saw no need to correct her. The point had come across well enough. When Paimon said nothing, Sitri took the silence as affirmation and spoke with mounting excitement.
"So while that lucky brat Barbatos has been off brawling with the humans and worn down her forces, our Mountain Faction gets to advance unopposed. That's what you're thinking, right? Tell me I'm right!"
Like a puppy waiting for its master's praise. That was Paimon's thought.
"Half right, half wrong, I'm afraid."
"H-huh?"
Sitri furrowed her brow. She wore the expression of a creature facing the greatest crisis of its life.
"Half right... half wrong? If it's right, it's right, and if it's wrong, it's wrong! Ugh. How can it be half right and half wrong?"
Sitri was a Demon Lord who had risen to the upper echelons through sheer martial prowess and commanding presence. Yet for all her formidable strength, her strategic mind was, frankly, somewhat lacking. Once she set foot on a battlefield, she would dominate combat with perfect, instinctive precision as though she had never been called stupid a day in her life—but anywhere other than the battlefield, she was, regrettably, all too often suspected of having slightly insufficient brain matter packed inside her skull.
If Barbatos was a warrior who mobilized every stratagem and ruse to elevate the battlefield into a work of art, Sitri was a warrior who dominated the battlefield through sheer force and instinct. Either way, both were more specialized in combat than in warfare as a whole. That was precisely why Paimon believed that what was visible to her was invisible to them.
In Paimon's eyes, she herself was not a warlord — she was a sovereign.
"What do you think will happen to the world after our Demon Lord army conquers the continent?"
"Hm? Won't it become a world where Demonkin can live comfortably?"
Paimon laughed. The innocent, guileless answer was refreshing. Sitri puffed out her cheeks and stared at Paimon, clearly asking if she was being made fun of. Paimon did not avert her gaze. She regarded Sitri at her leisure with those crimson eyes, carefully choosing her words before parting her lips in a tone that was soft yet unmistakably clear.
"My apologies. It's been so long since I've seen someone of your stature retain such purity that I couldn't help but smile. A blossom still freshly unfurling — it's been ages."
"……."
Realizing it was a sincere compliment, Sitri lowered her head. Her face flushed crimson. In this respect, Big Sister is practically cheating, Sitri thought. Paimon always looked at others with unwavering sincerity. Such sincerity was exceedingly rare in the world of Demon Lords.
Amid the rampant betrayal and scheming, Paimon alone drew a clear line between allies and enemies. She treated allies as allies and enemies as enemies. She made no effort to conceal her love for humans and the non-human races.
In this respect, Paimon was distinguished from Barbatos. Barbatos, too, was someone who kept a clear distinction between allies and enemies — but she sought to reign as master over her allies. Paimon, on the other hand, embraced her allies as comrades. It was likely that very difference which accounted for the Mountain Faction's ranks being far more numerous than the Plains Faction's.
"A-anyway! What does half right and half wrong even mean?!"
"A world where Demonkin can live comfortably. That part is correct. It will come to pass. But conversely, it will become a world that is that much harder for humans to live in."
Paimon swept her palm across the map of the continent.
"But look. Humans are this numerous. Even if the Demon Lord army conquers the continent, it won't be able to drive humanity to extinction. Humans will most likely be reduced to a servile class, enslaved to serve Demonkin society."
"Hm. So what? The weak serving the strong is simply the natural order of things."
Paimon looked at Sitri with melancholy in her eyes.
"But is that truly a world for the Demonkin? Sitri. I don't believe so. It wouldn't be a world for the Demonkin — it would be a world for the Demon Lord."
"Huh?"
"The Demon Lord can read the emotions of every Demonkin. To the Demon Lord, a Demonkin is not merely a stranger. One who can treat others as oneself — that is what a Demon Lord is… which is precisely why the Demon Lord is best suited to reign over the Demonkin. Everyone thinks so."
The Demon Lords, the Demonkin, even the non-human races — all of them accepted it as a matter of course.
Even if the Demon Lords could not build an absolute state due to real-world difficulties, she believed without doubt that an absolute state under Demon Lord rule was the ideal for all. Whether people embraced that ideal or not, she was certain it pointed in the right direction.
Paimon felt the same way. In truth, she was a more fervent believer in the ideal than anyone. Few Demon Lords had thrown themselves into the First Crescent Alliance Army with as much passion as she had. Up until then, Paimon and Barbatos had been comrades marching toward the same vision — and nearly every Demon Lord shared that vision. But as the Second Crescent Alliance Army played out, doubts began to surface in Paimon's mind.
Was it really so?
Was a world ruled by Demon Lords truly the most righteous form of world?
She agonized over it again and again. The Demon Lords had sought to annihilate human nations for no other reason than that they could not read human emotions — because humans were nothing but an obstacle to building a perfect society. Yet through several great wars, Paimon had witnessed that humans were not so different from Demonkin.
During the Third Crescent Alliance Army, Paimon eventually clashed with Barbatos.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"We simply cannot read their emotions — but what makes humans and Demonkin all that different? Barbatos, they bleed too. They know suffering. They know joy. Above all, they can even speak with us."
"So what? Damn it, so what are you proposing?"
Despite Barbatos's murderous glare, Paimon held her ground and pressed on.
"Think about it… what if there had never been beings like us — Demon Lords — in this world? If the ability to read emotions is the only criterion that separates humans from Demonkin… then in a world without Demon Lords, wouldn't humans and Demonkin be exactly the same? Barbatos. Isn't the true anomaly in this world not the human race, but rather us — the Demon Lords?"
That was the decisive blow.
From that day on, Barbatos and Paimon parted ways. For Barbatos, Paimon — who questioned the very purpose of a Demon Lord's existence — was simply intolerable.
The Demon Realm was desolate beyond measure. The Demonkin living there dreamed of dwelling equally upon a bountiful land. The one who shouldered that dream was none other than the Demon Lord. Barbatos yearned to represent the aspirations of the Demon Realm, and believed that for an equal society to exist, the alien species called humanity had to be erased. The Demon Lord surveys the emotions of all subjects and reigns as a rightful sovereign…
Paimon, on the other hand, found it dubious. If humans and Demonkin were no different from each other, could it truly be right to annihilate the human race in the name of building an ideal society? Was not a truly ideal society one where humans, Demonkin, and demi-humans all lived as equals? The conflicts between realms currently hinged on the Demon Lords. Because the Demon Lords existed, Demonkin and humans regarded each other as fundamentally different species. A truly ideal world was one where all beings lived as equals — even without the Demon Lords…
It was the moment the Plains Faction and the Mountain Faction severed ties.
"A world of equality beneath the Demon Lord. It sounds wonderful, truly. But this is the reality: the Demon Lord reigns as sovereign above all, and beneath everyone, the human race serves as slaves. Whether that is truly the face of an ideal world — as a young lady, I find it rather difficult to accept."
"……."
Sitri could not fully grasp what Paimon was saying. Yet she somehow sensed that something profoundly important was spilling from Paimon's lips.
"In this Crescent Alliance Army, our Mountain Faction has been assigned to the Teuton Kingdom and Batavia Republic front. Fortunate, isn't it? Lord Bael went out of his way to look after me… offering the chance to cooperate with the Batavia Republic… I am always in his debt. And now I have gone and rendered his kindness useless."
Paimon offered a smile as though she might vanish at any moment.
Sitri gazed at Paimon with her face scrunched up in a frown. She spoke honestly.
"Sorry. I don't really understand what you're talking about, sis."
"For humans and Demonkin to live together as equals, there is ultimately only one path forward. It is not absolute monarchy centered on a Demon Lord, Sitri. A nation in which every person acts as a sovereign citizen—that is to say, a democratic republic—is the only answer."
The Batavia Republic was the only nation on the continent to have adopted a republican system. Republican ideals had also spread widely in other countries. Paimon intended to cooperate with the republican faction and antagonize the monarchist faction.
After all, the leadership of most human nations belonged to the monarchist faction. Within the Crescent Alliance Army this time, those who would suffer direct harm were also monarchists. The same held true on the Demonkin side. The Plains Faction, the most warlike of the bunch, supported monarchy whether consciously or not.
'In the end.'
Paimon scoffed inwardly.
'All the devout supporters of monarchy will simply gnaw each other to pieces.'
The Demon Lord's army and the monarchist faction would go at each other with abandon. In the meantime, the Mountain Faction would cooperate with the republicans. Once the war ended, whichever side—the Demon Lord's forces or the human nations—had backed the monarchy would be severely weakened. That was virtually certain. Paimon intended to seize the opening created by that outcome. The Mountain Faction of the Demon Realm and the republican faction of the Human Realm, working together, would reverse the balance of power in a single stroke!
Killing two birds with one stone.
That was why Sitri's guess was only half right. It was not merely about pitting humans against the Plains Faction. More precisely, it was about pitting the monarchist faction against the Plains Faction.
The reason Paimon had passed intelligence about the Crescent Alliance Army to the Third Imperial Princess of the Habsburg Empire followed the same line of reasoning. With war now underway, the Third Princess would have no choice but to cede military authority to the First Prince, the legitimate heir. The Crown Prince, once he held the military, would never sit still while his rival, the princess, remained a threat. So what measures would the princess take? Paimon had a rough idea of what she would choose. No—Paimon intended to guide the princess toward precisely that choice.
Paimon rolled up the sheepskin map.
"Let us leave the heavy talk here for now. Sitri, shall the two of us enjoy a little quality time together? It has been a while."
"Hm? Oh, sure. Hehe. Leave today to me, sis. I'll send you straight to heaven."
Sitri snatched Paimon up the instant those words left her mouth, as though she had been waiting for them. Then she laid Paimon down on the bed tucked in the corner. Paimon laughed.
"My, my. The young lady does not favor rough treatment, you know…"
"That's only because you don't know the true meaning of rough. From now on, call me Master."
"A role-play? That works as well. Master. Please do be gentle with me."
"Heh. How dare a lowly maid hope for kindness! You should be grateful that I'm gracing your filthy hole with my noble cock!"
Sitri began her caresses without even bothering to undress properly.
Feeling the exquisite touch, Paimon thought. She had hoped the Human Realm forces and the Demon Lord's army would clash more fiercely, but Dantalion — that man had pulled some strange strings. She never expected him to completely break through the Black Mountains with roughly two thousand troops.
She needed to warn the Human Realm forces to beware of the Demon Lord called Dantalion. While she deliberated on who to leak the information to and how, she let out a heated breath.
"W-wait! Ahh, too hard! Master, just a little, nng, softer...!"
"Shut up. Hah. Your lower mouth is dripping wet like this and you still won't be honest, huh."
"Mmn, aaahn!"
...She would have to worry about it after this time was over. That was what Paimon thought.
============================ Author's Afterword ============================
I've uploaded a continental map in the novel settings section.