The vanguard of the 6th Legion of the Crescent Alliance Army had seized Kramps, the fortress of Habsburg!
To call it merely "seized" would be an understatement. A massacre had taken place. Despite two Sword Lords being stationed there, Demon Lord Beleth had razed the fortress with the force of a tempest.
The Imperial forces proved themselves the elite soldiers they claimed to be, fighting to the very last man. They were not beasts lashing out in desperation after losing all hope of survival. They clung to each enemy with stubborn, ferocious tenacity, determined to drag even one more foe down to the afterlife with them.
Believing that with every desperate stand, the Empire's life would be stretched just a little longer.
"Ohh."
Demon Lord Beleth could not help but be moved by the magnificent fighting spirit. A single tear traced down his rough, weathered face. Beleth was a man of deep feeling. He may not have been one to think with his head, but he knew how to feel with his heart. Overwhelmed by emotion, he issued his command.
"Slaughter every civilian in the fortress. I shall adorn their final moments with even greater tragedy — and thus, with even greater heroism."
Beleth had lived for over a thousand years. He knew a fair bit about how humans secured their names in history. He personally oversaw the killing of every human remaining inside the fortress, even at the cost of slowing his army's advance.
Most of the populace had already evacuated. Those who could not bring themselves to abandon their homeland — those who remained in their homes praying for even a sliver of mercy from the conqueror — were slaughtered without regard for age or sex. Yet here, Beleth felt that simply killing them was missing a certain decisive finishing touch.
"Hmm. Let's join the corpses together to make rafts."
Five hundred Imperial warriors and four hundred civilians. They were butchered and bound together in groups of ten. Rafts of human flesh were completed. Beleth deliberated for some time before deciding to separate the heads and fashion them into yet another raft. He regarded the fruits of his slaughter with the gaze of an art connoisseur.
"That is spectacularly magnificent!"
Beleth was satisfied. He sent the corpse rafts floating down the Danubius River with the utmost courtesy. Unfortunately, several of them sank. The majority, however, caught fair winds and sailed on grandly, their sails billowing proudly.
It was the sort of thing the people of the Demon Realm referred to with dread as the "Demon Lord's Aesthetic."
The corpse rafts drifted down the Danubius River, arriving at village after village, and sometimes at cities. Those who fished them out in curiosity recoiled in horror one and all. The fear etched into their collective unconscious bared its fangs once more.
The Demon Lords have come.
In every expedition of the Crescent Alliance Army, the most radical among them were the Plains Faction. They fancied themselves generals of war, but that was all it was — self-proclaimed. Their sole mission was massacre. The Plains Faction Demon Lords were the masterminds behind every act of butchery that history books recorded in exaggerated detail.
But the 8th Crescent Alliance Army had Dantalion. Dantalion was far removed from the practice of massacre. He had no stomach for needless bloodshed, and he firmly held that if the human race could be won over, then they should be.
Even after the Plains Faction occupied the territory of the Margrave of Rosenberg, no massacres occurred. It was because Dantalion — and Barbatos, who had come to place his absolute trust in Dantalion — kept the Plains Faction Demon Lords in check.
Even after the Battle of Bruno, the Plains Faction had refrained from massacres. Dantalion had insisted that "the fewer civilians we kill, the more momentum swings to our Demon Lord army." But now, half a year had passed since Dantalion departed the Plains Faction. The Plains Faction Demon Lords were showing their true colors.
"Humans! The only freedom we shall bestow upon you is terror, the only liberation we shall gift you is subjugation, and the only truth we shall grant you is ignorance!"
Beleth immediately crossed the Danubius River. Along the way, he diligently cleansed every human village he encountered. Thanks to this slaughter, exactly as Beleth had anticipated, the five hundred Imperial warriors who had died defending the fortress would be remembered in the annals of history as tragic heroes.
Beleth was not merely intoxicated by aesthetics.
There was a practical purpose behind the slaughter. Beleth had been collecting the corpses from the villages and marching with them, intending to put them to use in the upcoming siege of the Habsburg Island Fortress.
"Corpses have plenty of uses, you know."
Beleth grinned from ear to ear.
The sight of mutilated corpses in itself would instill terror in the human army. It could erode enemy morale. If push came to shove, he could cast dark magic on them, load them into catapults, and lob them over the walls. With any luck, an epidemic would break out inside the city.
"Alive, they entertain me. Dead, they serve me. There's no creature in this world more useful to us Demon Lords than humans."
Beleth piled the corpses onto the backs of the black wolves in great heaps. The Death Knights each shouldered a corpse as well and marched on. In the end, they transported over a thousand human corpses. This slowed their march considerably, but Beleth didn't care.
After all, Beleth was nothing more than the vanguard. Arriving early at the island fortress would accomplish nothing. The Habsburg Island Fortress was one of the most sturdily built cities on the continent. Ever since its founding, the Crescent Alliance Army had never once managed to seize it.
No matter how quickly they moved, it would take at least a month. That was the assessment made by the Crescent Alliance Army's high command. Beleth agreed. His mission was solely to secure a beachhead. The fact that he had chosen to gather human corpses instead of marching faster was the correct judgment.
—If, that is, the human army had nothing but ordinary leaders.
Three days after capturing the fortress, Beleth's army arrived at the island fortress.
"…Hey, hey. What the hell is this?"
Beleth came to a halt. A vast plain stretched out before him. Rising in the center of that plain stood a great city. Taking in the sight, Beleth let out an idle laugh.
"Some cunning bastards beat us to the Imperial Capital?"
The plain had already been scorched to a dull brown. The city walls were blackened with soot. Thin tendrils of smoke rose lazily from within.
The Imperial Capital was already ablaze.
The capital of Habsburg had been burned to the ground!
Beleth immediately reported through the Magic Crystal Orb. The Crescent Alliance Army's leadership couldn't make sense of it. The Imperial Capital was burning? What were they talking about?
The most important objective of this entire war was none other than the Imperial Capital. The Crescent Alliance Army had to capture it, and the human armies had to defend it. Yet it had burned down before the Alliance even arrived. At first, the leadership of the Crescent Alliance Army suspected one another.
"……Old geezer Marbas. Was this your doing?"
"Nonsense. My Second Legion moves a day later than yours."
"Hey there. Dear comrades."
Barbatos swept a cold gaze across the room.
"Something's off. One of us jumped the gun. Hey, Sitri. Look me in the eyes. Don't turn your head away. Did you do it? Did the First Legion move out?"
"Small body, small skull, I suppose, Barbatos."
Sitri blew a raspberry. She was currently leading the First Legion of the Crescent Alliance Army — the Demon Lords of the Mountain Faction — in Paimon's stead.
"I get that you don't have many brain cells, but you should at least remember the important stuff. Last time, we burned through all our forces wiping out the Bretagne royal army. We don't have troops to spare, and even if we somehow scraped some together, there's no way we could take the Habsburg Imperial Capital on our own."
Barbatos turned his head. There, a golden-haired Demon Lord was leisurely plucking grapes and eating them.
"Gamigin."
"Oh my, how rude. You can't go around suspecting your comrades like that. Our Fifth Legion was the last of all of us to join up, you know? I'm not the type to sit back and pick my ears behind everyone's back like you lot. Besides, we don't have the numbers like the Second Legion does. How exactly would we take the Imperial Capital by ourselves?"
"Hmph. By yourselves — that'd be impossible, sure."
Barbatos sneered.
"Agares, Vassago, Gamigin — didn't you three plan this together? Spit it out, you brain-dead noodles. That's why you've been fighting so half-assed the whole war, saying things like 'we need to conserve our forces.' Son of a bitch — you've been secretly diverting troops through the back door to attack the Imperial Capital this whole time, haven't you?"
"Well, well. Don't get cocky, you greenhorn little miss."
Agares, the second-ranked Demon Lord, grinned. Her sky-blue hair made her easy to spot.
"The Habsburg front was your Sixth Legion's responsibility from the start, wasn't it? We came all the way out here out of the great kindness of our hearts — just to help you. Hm? You're in no position to interrogate us, and we're not exactly the sort of meek souls who'll let the ninth-ranked lecture us with a raised voice."
"I'm not ninth-ranked, I'm eighth, you muscle-brained bastard."
Barbatos growled. Agares covered her mouth with an exaggerated "oh my."
"I'm truly sorry! Your rank is so low I honestly forgot. But you were being rude too, hm? At least crack the top five — that way people can remember you more easily. Eighth place? The number's so big that even a dummy like me can't be bothered to memorize it, honestly."
"Oh my. I could brand it directly into that thick skull of yours, if you'd like."
The two Demon Lords exchanged vicious smiles.
"Go ahead and try, you filthy little mademoiselle."
"You're dead, you bitch."
Barbatos was on the verge of summoning his combat scythe when Marbas let out a heavy sigh.
"Is it too much to ask for a single meeting around here to proceed without bloodshed? Barbatos. Agares. If the two of you truly wish to duel here, fine — I have neither the authority to host nor to forbid it, so I'll step aside quietly. But do understand that neither of you will ever receive an invitation to another banquet again."
"Hmph."
"Fuck."
Barbatos and Agares turned their heads away.
Marbas was the only one among the Demon Lords suited to play the role of mediator. Bael, ranked first, maintained a policy of complete noninterference unless the situation grew truly dire. The other high-ranking Demon Lords were all too proud to listen to anyone else.
Only Marbas, the head of the Neutral Faction, could coordinate and manage the Demon Lords. Though his official rank was fifth, he was in practice the supreme authority of the Demon Lord army. When Marbas spoke, even etiquette demanded that others step back.
Marbas spoke.
"If we go on suspecting each other, this will never end. For the past several months, each of us has been operating independently. How you ran your armies during that time — only you know. Not a single legion can clear itself of suspicion completely. That includes your Sixth Legion, Barbatos."
"……."
"More importantly, there is no need for secrecy. We conquered the Habsburg Imperial Capital. That is a military achievement, not a stain. Whoever it was that brought down the Imperial Capital will be praised for all eternity. What could be gained by hiding it?"
Marbas slowly scanned the Demon Lords one by one. His gaze said plainly: if you have something on your mind, speak up now. No one answered. Because the truth was undeniable.
Marbas spoke with care.
"Suspecting each other at this point achieves nothing — there is no evidence behind any of it. It is nothing but slander. Therefore, it is more prudent to conclude that it was the enemy, not our own ranks, who burned the capital to the ground."
"Mmhmm. You're saying Habsburg burned their own capital down?"
Gamigin tilted his head. His golden hair swayed.
"That's something I really can't wrap my head around. A capital is a capital, right? It's the heart of the nation. What possible gain is there in burning it to the ground?"
"……."
Once again, no answer came.
Throughout history, there had been rare instances of dynasties abandoning their capitals and fleeing. But not a single one among them had ever deliberately burned their capital to the ground. There had been cases where enraged citizens set fire to the palace. However, the total destruction of an entire capital was utterly unprecedented.
To humans, a city was a treasure to be reclaimed. Even if the Crescent Alliance Army forced them out for now, they could retake it someday. Throughout their history, humans had repeated that process countless times. So why on earth had they reduced their capital to ashes without warning?
"It seems unlikely we'll be getting an answer anytime soon. Shall we continue the advance for now? We can figure out the correct explanation after the fact."
Everyone nodded at Marbas's suggestion. The army was already pushing into the burned-out ruins of the imperial capital.