The sky she looked up at had been stained gray for as far as she could remember.
"..."
The girl blinked.
A pungent smell of smoke lingered at the tip of her nose. She could faintly smell blood, too. She concluded on her own that she must have fallen asleep on a battlefield again. Something felt sticky on her cheek, so she pressed her palm to it—and would you look at that. Dark, reddish scabs of blood were caked there.
"Hey."
A thick, heavy voice reached her ears. The moment she turned her head toward the sound, a damp washcloth smacked into her face. The girl grabbed the cloth and stared at the other person in silence.
"Slept like a dead rat, you did. I can't tell if you're brave or brainless. What are you going to do if a straggler cuts your throat while you're out like that?"
"I didn't die."
The girl wiped her face with the damp cloth. How much blood had she caught on her face? The gray cloth quickly turned red. How much of that blood had come from her own body, the girl had no way of telling.
"Then isn't that good enough?"
"It was way too close. I couldn't just stand there and watch."
"How nosy. That doesn't befit a Demon Lord."
The girl smiled without expression.
The girl looked around. With her face wiped, her vision had cleared somewhat. It was a vast, boundless plain. Desolate earth stretched to the horizon without a single blade of grass. What was it the mages had said? she suddenly recalled. They said this kind of wasteland forms when magic power is drained rapidly.
What caught her eye was not merely the land blanketed in red sand. Corpses. Countless corpses lay strewn across the ground. They were the soldiers who had perished in last night's battle.
"It's because I haven't been a Demon Lord for very long."
"How old are you?"
"Hmm. I stopped counting at some point... Somewhere past ninety, I think."
"You're a complete kid."
The girl giggled.
She hadn't meant to insult him. It was just that he looked so old for his age. Grey hair. A deeply wrinkled face. Judging by appearance alone, he'd be considered the oldest of all the Demon Lords. But in reality, he was the youngest of the young.
"……."
"Sorry. Don't glare at me like that. It's just funny that I'm two hundred years older than you. Sooo, what was your name again?"
The girl scratched the back of her head sheepishly.
"I'm terrible with remembering people's names."
"You said the same thing yesterday, and the day before that. Hasn't it already been a week? Perhaps you could spare a thought for my position — having to introduce myself dozens of times over."
"I said I'm sorry."
With a huff, the girl pushed herself up. Her whole body ached. Every joint creaked like the hinges of an old door. She twisted her torso back and forth, loosening up.
"But it's not like it's my fault. Even if I bother to remember your name, you'll all be dead anyway. Especially rookie Demon Lords like you — your heads get chopped off like it's nothing. How many Demon Lords died yesterday?"
"Three that I know of."
"See? Over twenty Demon Lords have dropped this week alone. How am I supposed to remember every single one?"
Demon Lords and the Dragon race.
The bloody war between rulers who could not coexist had reached its final stages.
The Demon Lords proclaimed themselves the sovereigns of Demonkin. The dragons, who possessed the power to fiercely resist the Demon Lords' dominion, defied this claim. It did not take long for the two factions to wage a war of blood for blood.
This was no ordinary war. The Demon Lords and the Dragon race each asserted that they alone were the most noble beings in this world. It was a struggle that would continue until one side was utterly annihilated. A war of extermination, in the truest sense. In a war where retreat was not an option, those who could not retreat took up their weapons.
The girl raised a finger and folded them down one by one.
"Let's see. Mister Mammon was torn limb from limb. Mistress Beelzebub was roasted to a crisp, whole. Belphegor had all his skin peeled off. And Mister Bael is back there on his deathbed, half-dead, getting ready to die. See? Even the ones who looked the most imposing all got wrecked. What makes you think I'll remember your name long enough for it to even matter?"
"I will not die."
The old-looking Demon Lord spoke with undisguised displeasure.
"At least I won't die as desperately as you seem to want to. I can promise you that. Even if I do die, I won't die before you do."
"Now that's a funny one."
The girl scowled.
"Fine. I'll actually remember this time. What's your name?"
"Zepar."
The man locked eyes with her directly.
"Zepar. Don't ever forget it, brat."
"Who are you calling brat? You're the one who hasn't even lived a hundred years, you whelp."
The girl stuffed the towel into her pocket. She intended to wash it and return it later.
The man didn't say a word, but there was no way the girl didn't know. When she'd passed out and collapsed, the man had stood watch nearby to make sure nothing happened to her. He'd deliberately prepared a wet towel and handed it to her.
The man would probably die. That's what the girl thought.
This wasn't the kind of war where a clueless young Demon Lord could survive. They'd succeeded in killing most of the Dragonkin, but the Demon Lord's army had taken devastating losses. Now they had to march to subdue the last remaining enemy — the most powerful Dragon Sovereign.
There, most likely. No — certainly, the man would die.
That was precisely why she'd deliberately avoided remembering his name. She hadn't told him hers either. In a battlefield where death was a foregone conclusion, recognizing each other would only bring pain later.
But after he'd gone so far to help her, refusing to even exchange names felt wrong... The girl gave a bitter smile and spoke.
"I'm Barbatos. Let's try not to die today, too."
"Barbatos."
The man murmured the name slowly, as if committing it to memory.
"There's one thing I'd like to ask you."
"Hm? What."
"Hundreds of thousands of demons have been killed in this war. When you factor in the total damage to the Demon Realm, the scale is truly appalling. Is there really a need to wage a war while bearing such losses?"
The girl furrowed her brow.
"And here I was thinking you were the quiet type. Turns out you're just a philosopher tormented by pointless worries."
"I'm asking a serious question. You didn't become a Demon Lord by choice either, did you? One day you opened your eyes, and lo and behold—you just happened to be born a Demon Lord. Where in the world do we get the right to drive hundreds of thousands of lives to their deaths?"
The man stared intently into the girl's eyes.
The girl was one of the younger Demon Lords. Yet in battle, she displayed talent that surpassed anyone else's. When she advanced with her dual swords swinging, her soldiers would charge toward the mountain-sized dragonkin with courage a hundredfold. They did not fear death.
In short, the girl possessed something that made people willing to throw away their lives just to follow her.
The man thought about it from there. Perhaps the girl could answer his question. If she was the kind of leader whose soldiers willingly offered their lives, maybe she could tell him what meaning lay in those deaths…
"It's a simple question."
The girl shrugged.
"A world ruled by Demon Lords, or a world ruled by the dragonkin—which one would bring more happiness to the Demonkin? Think about it, and the answer comes naturally."
"Happiness…?"
"That's right. We Demon Lords can read the hearts of the Demonkin to some extent—at least well enough to tell whether someone is lying. If we served as judges, at the very least, no one would be punished for crimes they didn't commit, and no one would escape punishment for crimes they did commit."
The girl smiled gently.
"You see? The unjust would vanish from this world."
"……."
"It's just that, nothing more. But that's exactly the kind of thing that doesn't exist in the current world."
The girl reached her hand toward the sky. Then, as if trying to seize something, she clenched her fist tight.
"Until not a single life in this world dies unhappy and unjust—I will keep fighting until then. I want a world where everything is clear. A world where you're punished if you commit a crime, and you're not sacrificed if you don't."
That is an ideal only we can achieve, the girl said.
"Of course, countless people will die along the way. There's practically no way I can take responsibility for every one of those lives. That's exactly why—I swore I would be the one to lead from the very front."
That was why, on the battlefield, the girl charged ahead before anyone else.
Even being a Demon Lord, she never hid behind anyone. She never forced sacrifice upon her soldiers. She always stood at the vanguard and led the troops herself. The Demonkin were captivated by the sight of her—inspired by her sincere actions—and followed in her wake.
And then came the final battle.
There, too, the girl held true to her convictions.
When the dragonkind spread wings so vast they blotted out the sky—when every Demon Lord froze in place—when the dragonkind's roar shook the earth and all hundred thousand soldiers trembled in terror—it was then, without a shred of hesitation, without the slightest wavering, that a single footstep rang out.
The girl, her white hair whipping in the wind, swung a two-handed sword twice her own size toward a dragon a thousand times her size. That strike tore through scales harder than steel without fail.
With every step she took, the girl bled.
When she took yet another step, before long tens of thousands of cries surged forward, chasing after her.
The battle raged for three days and nights.
Even as everyone collapsed from exhaustion, the girl alone never bent a knee. When the others stared blankly ahead, crushed by despair, certain defeat was the only option left—it was there that the girl, ceaselessly unleashing sword strikes, held the great dragon's gaze.
Perhaps there was a moment when the girl alone stood against the dragon. Regardless of whether anyone else was nearby, she kept taking one step after another.
If myths truly existed, then this would have been the moment a myth unfolded before the world.
A small girl, relying solely on her sword, was single-handedly slaying a dragon.
She looked as though she might burst into flames from the dragon's breath at any moment, yet she always dodged the fire by a hair's breadth. She looked as though she might be crushed flat under the dragon's paw at any instant, yet she evaded each blow with barely an inch to spare. And those sword strikes—ones that seemed they should shatter at any moment yet never did—she continued them without end.
Someone whispered.
Immortal.
—The immortal Barbatos.
In the end, it was the girl who drove her blade into the snout of the last Dragon Lord. The war in which eighty thousand of a hundred thousand soldiers lost their lives and forty Demon Lords fell in battle began with the girl's footsteps and ended with the girl's sword.
"......"
The moment she delivered the killing blow to the dragon, the girl collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
The man rushed over and caught her. He genuinely believed she was dead. For the past three days, the girl had been fighting battles where dying at any moment would have been no surprise. And yet, absurdly, the girl nestled in his arms let out a small laugh.
"We're both a mess."
"......Yeah. We really are. A complete mess."
The man laughed in disbelief.
"I really thought I was gonna die this time. How was it? Wasn't I a little cool?"
"It's sad that I can't deny it."
In that moment, the man found his answer within his own doubt. To protect this girl. To guard the path she would walk forward — that was the meaning of his being born as a Demon Lord.
"You were so cool I fell for you. Marry me."
"What are you saying, you old man."
The girl closed her eyes and whispered faintly.
"Grow a nice mustache first. Then I might consider it."
And so, the great battle came to an end.
An old memory.
It was the day a man swore eternal loyalty.