"……That's remarkable. I respect you as a man."
"Ahem. No need to respect me over something like that."
Beleth cleared his throat and turned his head slightly. A faint blush crept across his tanned cheeks.
Good grief. One single compliment and the man goes bashful. In Dungeon Attack, Beleth appeared as nothing but an impossibly foolish warrior, yet here he was—a romanticist of the century, no, a romanticist of the millennium. For the record, I interpreted the word "romanticist" as "lovable doofus."
"Anyway, where was I. So did you do it with Lord Barbatos?"
Beleth stared at me, visibly anxious. His eyes were bright and round, almost childishly so. If you cropped just the pupils from his face, they'd pass for a Shih Tzu puppy's. An ogre's build, a wild boar's face, and on top of that, Shih Tzu eyes—I had to keep fighting back the urge to gag.
"Of course not. Lord Beleth, you know the Legion Commander's preferences. He won't bother with anyone who isn't a woman."
I shrugged.
"As you can see, I'm a man."
"But hold on. Didn't Lord Barbatos call you his concubine? What's that supposed to mean?"
Beleth fixed me with a suspicious glare. Was it even possible for someone running on pure brain muscle to feel doubt? This was bad. The last thing I wanted was to earn the enmity of a high-ranking Demon Lord over some absurd joke about concubines.
*Acting Skill, activate.*
Notification windows cascaded upward.
*"Acting Skill has been activated."*
*"Bonus effects are added to the skill based on Intelligence and Charm stats."*
*"The die of fortune teeters precariously at the corner of the table and stops! The probability that the other party will doubt your claim drops to 'fairly' low."*
Confirming the skill's success, I let out a sigh.
"It's what you call a toy."
"A toy?"
"I'm not sure if I should say this..."
With a gesture suggesting I was about to share extremely valuable information, I took a step closer to Beleth. Naturally, Beleth tilted his head toward me.
"The Demon Lord is an incredible sadist."
"H-He is?"
"Absolutely. Have you never seen the way he plays with women? It's truly remarkable. The whips are just the beginning; tying them up with ropes is merely an appetizer. Mounting them on a wooden horse for three hours of torture is the main course, and dripping candle wax is dessert."
Beleth swallowed hard. The sound wasn't a gulp, but more of a gulp-gag. The boar-hybrid was big in everything. Judging by the way his mouth was watering, he must be vividly imagining it right now—in his twisted fantasy, Barbatos is probably naked and swinging a whip as we speak. Pervert.
"Anyway, my role is that of a so-called spectator. I suppose you could call me a seasoning to add a special flavor to the dish. While the Demon Lord enjoys himself with the women, I'm tied up to the wall the entire time."
"Tied to the wall?"
He didn't get it. Truly, fourteen hundred years of virginity. Strictly speaking, he wasn't a virgin anymore, but everything in the world has an expiration date. Who knows how long the title "sexually experienced" lasts, but no matter how long, it's probably shorter than a millennium. According to the multidimensional law of expiration dates, you, Beleth, are a virgin.
"Think about it. How handsome is the Demon Lord?"
"Mm."
"And how beautiful are his lovers? Those women are writhing together in a shameless tangle right before my eyes. Embarrassingly, I can't help but get aroused. And when I'm all stiff and aroused, the Demon Lord uses me as his plaything."
"Oh, I see!"
Beleth suddenly exclaimed like Zen master Daruma who had just realized the truth.
"I never knew the term 'concubine' held that meaning."
"Of course, I might be lucky in that I can admire the Demon Lord's body, which is like a marble sculpture."
Meaning his physique is as flat as a marble sculpture.
"But having that bare skin, just like a marble sculpture, right in front of my nose, I'm utterly powerless to do anything. I want to fuck, but I can't. I think I'm going to go crazy."
"That sounds like... a heaven that's actually hell."
Beleth looked conflicted, unsure whether to envy my situation or pity me.
"It's humiliating, helpless, and hopeless, Lord Beleth. Let me be honest with you. I don't have the strength to endure that kind of situation anymore."
I grabbed Beleth's right hand with both of mine.
"Even if I'm merely ranked seventy-first, I am still a Demon Lord. To be treated as nothing more than a plaything! Someone like you, Lord Beleth, who understands a warrior's honor—you must understand how I feel!"
"Hmm? Of course. I am a true warrior, after all."
"There is only one way for me to escape this living hell. That is for His Excellency the Corps Commander to find a true soulmate. Once His Excellency truly falls in love with a man, he'll have no more need to use me as a toy!"
I choked up as I spoke. It was a truly masterful performance. If the Academy committee had been watching, they would've torn up the competition rules right then and there just to hand me the Best Supporting Actor award. Fooling a single half-Ogre hybrid wasn't even worth calling a job.
"Ahem, that would be the case, wouldn't it? There's no way Barbatos would fool around like that."
What a joke.
Barbatos getting married was unimaginable, but if by some miracle she did, she'd seduce about thirty men on her honeymoon and throw a sex party right alongside her husband. She'd even turn her husband into a meat hole and have the men run a train on him. You could count on it. The distance between the goddess Beleth had conjured in his imagination and the Barbatos bitch I actually knew was about two and a half million light-years.
"That's exactly right. Lord Beleth, the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew it instinctively. You are the destined soulmate for His Excellency the Corps Commander!"
"Wh-what did you say?"
"Lord Beleth, you are the second-highest among our Plains Faction. There is no one more suitable to lead the Plains Faction alongside His Excellency the Corps Commander. Moreover, haven't you been in love with His Excellency for a full one thousand four hundred and fifty-six years? I have never heard of anyone maintaining unrequited love for that long. It is a magnificent devotion! Even Aphrodite, the goddess of love, would surely kneel and surrender before you, Lord Beleth."
I preached with spit flying from my lips.
"In status and in heart, there is no candidate who can rival you, Lord Beleth. I declare with absolute certainty that you must become His Excellency the Corps Commander's true partner. This was clearly decided by fate thousands of years ago. From today onward, I intend to help you in secret."
"Help me... What do you mean?"
"What else could I mean? I'm offering to help make your unrequited love a reality. Even if I'm just a plaything, I am His Excellency the Corps Commander's concubine. I'll dig up everything—what type of man he prefers, what gifts he likes—and pass it all on to you."
Beleth's pupils dilated as wide as watermelons.
"Are you serious? You'd really do that for me?"
"I am Dantalion. Believe it or not, I have never uttered a single lie since the day I was born. You could scour the entire world and you wouldn't find a more honest soul than me."
It just so happened that the only person in that world was me.
"Please believe me. If you truly cannot believe in my sincerity, then believe in my misfortune. The misfortune of desperately wanting to hit it but never being able to, of being tied to the wall for six whole hours with nothing to do but stare at Lord Barbatos's bare skin! Lord Beleth! Marrying the Legion Commander is the only solution that will free me from the infernal prison!"
"You... you, are you really..."
Beleth trembled.
"You really are a good fellow!"
And with that, he threw both arms wide and embraced me. *Crack*—I heard a faint sound of bones creaking. My arm bones felt like they were about to shatter. An excruciating pain shot through me. I let out a weak groan. Even so, I never let the smile on my face waver.
"I'm sorry. I've been misunderstanding you all this time!"
"The Legion Commander can be quite the prankster... *kh*... He probably deliberately said things that would be misunderstood just to mess with people, didn't he?"
"Indeed. That's exactly right. Lord Barbatos does have a mischievous streak!"
It's not that he *has* a mischievous streak—he *is* mischief incarnate.
"Dantalion. No—brother! If you help me with my romantic endeavors, I will certainly repay you. Even if the Goddess does not deign to look upon our sincere hearts and fourteen hundred years of devotion come to naught, I, Beleth, the thirteenth-ranked Demon Lord, will never forget the aid of my brother."
"Truly, those are most welcome words."
I smiled warmly. The real pain radiating from my forearm made the corners of my mouth tremble.
"From now on, I wish to regard Lord Beleth as an elder brother. Please accept the bond of sworn brotherhood."
"Ah, so be it, little brother! I look forward to it! We may not have been born in the same year, the same month, and the same day, but let us swear to die in the same year, the same month, and the same day!"
We embraced each other fiercely. I felt the creaking of bones once again. My forearms were far too delicate to withstand the grip strength of an Ogre half-blood. As I barely maintained my composure, a sound effect rang in my ear.
"Affinity with Demon Lord Beleth increases by 20."
"You have entered a sworn brotherhood with Demon Lord Beleth! By forming a special bond with a great being, your reputation (infamy) has increased significantly."
...And so, a sworn brotherhood was formed.
Beleth, myself, and later Zepar joining our ranks—the three of us came to be known as the three brothers of the Plains Faction. This anecdote was twisted and twisted again until it spread as "a warrior, a general, and a strategist united their resolve for a righteous cause." In truth, all that existed were two lolicons and one criminal.
Such is life.
It had been four days since we set up our encampment in the courtyard before the Red Fortress. In that time, the border lords had begun to muster their armies. They were deliberately taking their time, and we had been waiting for them to do so. There was, after all, an unspoken agreement between the Demon Lord's army and the human army.
For the Demon Lord's forces, food meant human flesh above all else. Rather than grinding through small skirmishes over a long period, it was far more advantageous to fight one large-scale battle in a short window. That was how they could procure provisions with ease.
The same logic applied to the human army—they too preferred a large engagement over prolonged guerrilla warfare. If they forced the Demon Lord's side into scattered guerrilla fights, the Demon Lord's army would have no choice but to disperse its troops in every direction, and once monsters spread out across the countryside, human villages would be devastated. Even if they won the battles, with the common folk in every backwater hamlet wiped out, there would be no way to rebuild their domains.
To a lord, a village was not simply a unit from which to collect taxes. Each village also served as the front line against monsters. Even without the Demon Lord's army leading monster regiments, the continent was teeming with monsters. Even the hill behind a village could be home to goblins. It was precisely the villages that suppressed these small, clustered bands of monsters.
Villages cultivated their own militia units and cleared out the surrounding monsters on their own. If a large number of villages disappeared at once, the monsters would seize the gap left by the vanished militia and swell their numbers in an instant. From a lord's perspective, a village was not merely a source of tax revenue but also a military unit that kept monster expansion in check during peacetime. It could not be easily discarded as a expendable pawn.
In this respect, unlike the original world, the commoners here wielded considerable political voice. Without an overwhelmingly strong centralized state, it was simply not possible to trample the commoners at will.
Though there was a trade-off to that, one might say.
Lords also frequently adopted the attitude of "Your village has a problem? Sort it out yourselves." Their welfare policies were exceedingly weak. The Black Death was a prime example. When the plague began sweeping the continent, the human lords immediately looked after their own first. Any supplies trickled down to the common folk at best reached the villages directly under their castle walls.
There were even rumors of lords who saw the Black Death as an opportunity. Rumor had it that some lords threatened to hand over significant portions of a village's autonomy in exchange for obtaining Black Hubs. With the state of affairs like this, even people living within the same nation—between region and region, noble and commoner, city and countryside—had virtually no sense of bonds with one another.
Ask any commoner and the overwhelming majority would introduce themselves by saying which village they hailed from rather than declaring themselves "a subject of the Habsburg Empire." The only time they united together was during large-scale monster invasions like the one that gave rise to the Crescent Alliance Army. The defenders who had held the Black Mountains were an exceedingly rare exception to this rule.
In any case, both the Demon Lord's army and the human army were eager for a large-scale engagement. We had received intelligence that the border lords had finished assembling their forces. Their numbers were roughly thirty-five thousand—among them, a staggering fifteen hundred knights. It was a highly abnormal army. In response, a council of war was convened in the Sixth Corps of the Crescent Alliance Army.
"Those arrogant little livestock are finally gathering in one place."
Barbatos spoke in a tone that suggested something was displeasing her.
It was a massive command tent. Eighteen Demon Lords sat on either side of a long table. Barbatos occupied the seat of honor, legs crossed.
"It's not like pigs are suddenly going to turn into orcs. The time to show them what's what is approaching. But I do have one piece of unpleasant news."
The corner of her mouth twisted upward.
"Paimon's First Corps still hasn't moved. That slit-witted whore is no doubt hoping the humans and us will mutually destroy each other. She remains as depraved a harlot as ever. Wiping out the human army entirely is what we want, but having that bitch call the shots is something we absolutely must avoid."
Barbatos swept her gaze across the room.
"I want to annihilate the human army while simultaneously not playing into Paimon's hands. Any good ideas on how to pull that off? Don't be shy—speak up."
A silence fell over the tent. It was only natural. Barbatos's words amounted to asking whether there existed any way to defeat the border lords without taking a single casualty. There was no such thing. Barbatos clicked her tongue, having expected as much. The other Demon Lords awkwardly averted their gazes from her.
At that moment, there was a Demon Lord who raised a hand.
It was my right hand.