It had been two days since returning from Niflheim. Was this what they called vacation hangover? The moment I got back, I flopped onto the Demon Lord's bed with the expression of a dead man. Home — and among all the comforts of home, the bed above all else possessed a strange magical allure. I let out a bitter smile at the thought that I already considered this place home.
Of course, there were things one could do while lying down. For instance, lavishing affection on all the monsters I hadn't seen in a while.
"Right here — this tickles, doesn't it?"
— Kyurururu!
When I gently rubbed my index finger along its side, the fairy squealed and writhed. It protested for me to stop tickling it, then flew upward with a whoosh — only to creep back again the moment I held still. It seemed to regard me as something between a frightening but thrilling amusement ride. I gave it my all and massaged the fairies. While lying in bed.
— Kyaha? Kyaha.
Another fairy approached and grabbed my left index finger. Then it stared up at me with those big, round eyes, clearly hoping for something. The look said it all: *You'll do it for me, right? You will, right?* Even someone like me couldn't help but feel his heart flutter.
Could these be angels, not fairies? Even if I had a child of my own, I doubted I could love it as much as I loved these fairies.
"All right. Ultimate technique... *Two-Hand Attack.*"
I made the declaration with utmost solemnity.
The ultimate technique.
A secret art so devastating that even when my life hung in the balance, I could never bring myself to use it — the twin legendary arts of flesh-rending, bone-breaking substitution. Once unleashed, there was no escaping its grasp — a demonic abyss, the maw of Rafflesia itself.
— Kyahaa?
Sensing my gravity, the fairy gazed straight up at me. *Ha — it doesn't matter if you noticed now.* You've already awakened a monster that should never have been disturbed. I raised my hands. Like a pianist about to perform the cadenza in Mozart's Piano Concerto, I lifted both hands high. Then I grabbed one fairy in each hand and tickled them mercilessly.
— Kyururruk! Kyurururuk!
Two fairies twisted and writhed against the bedsheet. What was there to hide? *This* was my true art — something that left *Acting* and all its pretenses far, far behind. A technique that subdued enemies with a hundred-percent hit rate. But the Two-Hand Attack had one drawback.
Specifically — you can't do anything else with your hands.
Both hands are sealed.
And since I was lying in bed, both legs were useless too. Some might object: *Why don't you just get up from the bed?* Whoever says that clearly doesn't understand what a bed is. A bed is not something you get up from. A bed is something you lie down on. Getting up from a bed is a betrayal of its very purpose. True mastery of a bed means that once you lie down, you must endure — persisting until you feel you could lie there for all eternity — and only then have you truly used it properly.
It felt like the story had just strongly implied why I'd spent my days as a NEET back in my original world, but for the sake of my mental health, I chose to ignore that. What mattered was that both my arms and legs were bound. Unable to retreat until the enemy raised the white flag first, I was being sucked into an eternal regression called Tickling — an endless loop of cosmic futility — forced to roll Sisyphus's boulder for all eternity……
As I wallowed in the renewed tragedy of my existence, more fairies had already gathered around me. Had my current predicament seemed like tremendous fun to the little ones? Now they were tugging at me, clamoring that it was their turn, looking for all the world like elementary schoolers fighting over whose turn it was at the arcade machine outside a stationery store.
I muttered in shock.
"You bastard... are you really forcing me into a state of suffering even worse than this?!"
Overwhelming power with sheer numbers. The eternal, unchanging doctrine of absolute tactics was now being reenacted on the bed of the Demon Lord's chamber, Rank 71 — the Demon Lord's Castle of Dantalion, Demon Lord.
The fairies burst into giggles at the expression on my face. Their laughter sounding like "Indeed, we are the nightmare that will defeat you — despair and despair again, you fool" was not entirely my imagination. I felt exactly like Yang Manchun of Goguryeo, standing atop the fortress of Ansi, watching the endless tide of Tang soldiers pouring toward him.
"Ugh, you damn cheap shot artists! Fight me with skill, not numbers!"
— Kyahaa? Giggle giggle.
"What? Human wave tactics count as a perfectly legitimate strategy?"
I groaned. Whatever species of monster these were, they were shameless and despicable to the core. The master who raised such monsters must be a pervert of a caliber so twisted I could barely even fathom it.
I poured every ounce of strength and stamina into resisting the tickling. It was a fight-or-die resolve. But there was nothing to be done. As soon as one fairy dropped out, a fresh one stepped in to replace her; when the next newcomer collapsed, yet another took her place.
"A f-fairy hasn't gone down yet……!?"
What was this?
This was absurd.
It was as if our team's players were gasping for breath and dropping from exhaustion, yet somehow the referee had granted the other team not three substitutions but an infinite right to swap in fresh players. There wasn't a shred of sportsmanship to be found — not even as much as the grit caught under a fly's baby claw.
If this kind of match happened at the World Cup, there would instantly be a worldwide riot, and FIFA would be burned to the ground without question. And at the forefront of that revolt, holding the banner high, would be no one other than myself. Reality was this absurd — things that could never happen in sports happened here without pause.
"Fine. If that's the way you want to play it — so be it."
I stopped tickling them back. The fairies tilted their heads, question marks practically floating above their eyes as they stared at me. The cuteness was lethally adorable, but I was not swayed. I had realized what lurked behind those precious little faces — a revolting and horrifying degree of viciousness.
I lifted my chin and let out a cold snort.
"There's a last resort I never wanted to use. Remember — you're the ones who pushed things this far."
— Kyaha?
"Where the wings of depravity cleave through a sky that has forgotten the stars... and fate, trapped in the blink of an instant, wanders through eternity. By the names of Heracleitos and Anaximandros, of the contradiction that smiles at dusk, and of Endless, of Paradox — I shall summon legend to this very place!"
I thrust both hands skyward like an orchestra conductor.
In this moment, I was the Demon Lord incarnate.
The very epitome of dread — the figure who appears in fantastical tales, muttering incomprehensible foreign tongues to plant seeds of unease in the hearts of the protagonist and their party. There was no room in this scene for some bottom-tier Demon Lord whose total stats didn't even crack triple digits. To anyone watching, there was only one man seated here — perfect, dark, and utterly terrifying.
What made it even more fearsome was the fact that I hadn't stumbled over a single word the entire time. Even if every ancient Greek sophist banded together and charged in as one, they would be no match for my tongue — they'd be so consumed by humiliation that they'd throw themselves into the azure depths of the Mediterranean. That was the level of absolute narcissistic perfection on display.
"Experience the miracle of one becoming two, and two becoming ten — The Night Dance of Ten Golden Fingers!"
That's right. Nowhere was it written that a single finger was all you were allowed to use for tickling. If ten fairies came rushing at you — then simply respond with ten fingers of your own! That was The Night Dance of Ten Golden Fingers.
— Kyarururur!? Kyaha, kyarururur!
The effect was spectacular. Ten fairies were subdued all at once, collapsing helplessly under the tickling onslaught. True, tickling fairies with your pinky was rather difficult, but I stroked their sides as delicately as I could manage. The fairies laughed nonstop. It was a clearance sale of laughter.
"Kahaha! You shameless wretches — you relied on your numbers, but your fatal mistake was failing to notice the river was shallower than usual!"
"Oh my."
A voice of admiration came from beside me.
"So the strategy is to individually dismantle a numerically superior enemy force all at once."
"Precisely. This is my ultimate secret tactic — a move I, Dantalion, have kept hidden until the very end!"
"I see you have quite the grasp of military strategy as well. I'm impressed. It's been a month since I started traveling with you, and yet your true depths still have no end. You're like an onion — the more you peel, the more layers there are."
"Well, even if you praise me like that, what's left over is...?"
I stopped playing the fairies like instruments with my fingers.
When I turned my head, there was Laura de Farnese sitting hunched by the bedside. As always, she gazed at this scene with those colorless, scentless eyes.
"......"
Cold sweat trickled down my spine.
"Since coming here, I've defeated quite a number of adventuring parties. I'd even grown somewhat proud, thinking I might have a talent for tactics — but compared to you, I'm still a rank amateur. How embarrassing. I'll continue to train."
"Um... since when have you been watching?"
"Hm? What do you mean, 'since when'?"
I swallowed hard.
"W-well. Since when have you been watching me play with the fairies."
"Not for long."
Laura said, flipping her golden hair over her shoulder.
"More precisely, from around the time you shouted 'Two-Handed Attack.'"
"You saw everything from the start?!"
I grabbed my head and screamed. Because I'd been lying face down the whole time, I hadn't noticed Laura sitting right beside the bed. The Demon Lord's room was shabby, but the bed alone was absurdly luxurious and tall. Who would've thought that would become my undoing.
Cold and ruthless Demon Lord on the outside, warm man on the inside — that was my image. At least, that was the image I projected to Laura. Laura was a talent who would one day become one of the continent's greatest strategists. If I could help it, I wanted to leave a magnificent impression on her. That way, she wouldn't betray me.
But she'd caught me — a doting fool playing around with monsters. I'd never even shown Lapis this pathetic a side of myself!
'No. Calm down.'
My mind raced in an instant. Listening to Laura's tone of voice... she didn't seem to know yet that I'd been putting on an embarrassingly childish charade. In other words, there was still a chance my image hadn't taken critical damage. In moments like these, the key was to be as brazen as possible. As if I hadn't simply been playing — as if everything I'd done carried some great significance.
"By the way, Dantalion. There are a few things I'm curious about."
"Wh-what is it?"
I answered, trying to act as if nothing was wrong. My voice trembled a little, but it passed muster.
"What on earth does it mean that the wings of betrayal cleave through a sky that has forgotten the stars, and destiny wanders through eternity, trapped within the gaps between instants? I can't quite make sense of it."
"GRAAAGH!"
I screamed.
Th-this was far more powerful than I'd imagined!
I wanted to hide in some mouse hole right away, but Laura's questions kept coming, and I couldn't pull myself together.
"And Heraclitus and Anaximander, the paradox that smiles at dusk and the Endless..."
"Aaargh! AAAARGH! Stop, please stop!"
"If the name of a paradox is supposed to summon a legend to this very place, what possible correlation exists between a legend and the movement of ten fingers? It must hide a meaning far too deep for me to even begin to fathom."
"The cringe history! The cringe history is unfolding in real time!"
Back in elementary school, I used to be caught up in the delusion that I was a member of a secret organization with tremendous power. I'd mutter things like 'The monsters are trying to invade Seoul again' just walking down the street. One day, a girl who walked to school with me asked, 'What are you talking about?' I shook my head with the expression of someone who knew ordinary people could never understand. And I told her: You'll get hurt if you know. I don't want to drag you into this cruel world.
The expression on that girl's face is something I'll never forget for as long as I live.
I wanted to cough up blood.
Meanwhile, Laura spoke with an utterly serious expression on her face.
"I would ask that you teach me the hidden meaning behind your art of war."
"Art of war... art of war..."
My mind went completely blank. I had no idea how to respond. Only one thing screamed through my brain, heart, and gut as one — I had to escape this situation by any means necessary.
I cried out in my mind.
'Acting skill, activate!'
Perhaps because I screamed with more desperation than ever before, for the first time since the tutorial, the Acting skill activated with a dazzling sound effect.
[The Acting skill activates.]
[A lucky die stops right at the edge of the desk! The probability that the other party will doubt your claim drops to 'considerable'.]
Compared to how before the probability of suspicion only dropped to 'slight,' it seemed the skill had succeeded at a higher tier this time.
Of all times for a critical to proc! It never fires when you really need it, like on Walpurgis Night! No, there was no time for pointless regret. That was already in the past. First things first — dealing with the catastrophe bearing down like a landslide right in front of my eyes.
I blurted out whatever came spilling from my mouth.
"Military strategy is the combination of thirty-six stratagems and over a hundred schemes… Among them are Contradiction, Paradox, and Endless… The reason these terms sound unfamiliar is because they are strategies I secretly named myself…."
"Oh my."
"To deceive the enemy, you must first deceive your own army. To deceive your army, you must first deceive yourself… You display actions that seem utterly meaningless, yet those actions accumulate and overlap, until at the very end they sublimate into a single cohesive stratagem… The opponent lets their guard down completely, and only at the final moment do they grasp the meaning behind every action that took place — but by then, it is already too late…."
"I see."
Laura let out an admiring sigh.
"In other words, behind your sentences that appeared to have no meaning whatsoever, a profound strategy was actually lurking. Those layers combined, and in the end, became ten fingers."
"Y-yes. I can't believe you figured that out — Laura, you're truly something…."
"No. In fact, I still haven't figured out how Contradiction and Paradox, which smile in the early evening, lead to Tickling through whatever process that may be. To think that your profound intent resides somewhere my reason cannot reach — it's humbling. I will strive even harder from now on."
"Ha-ha, effort is always a good thing. Ha-ha, ha…."
I forced a hollow laugh when a sound effect suddenly rang out.
[Laura de Farnese's Affinity increases by 2!]
[Laura de Farnese's Affinity has reached 50. Affinity will not increase further unless an event occurs.]
Somehow, it worked.
I couldn't even tell myself how on earth it had worked, but I could tell that it had. That was enough. What more could I possibly need?
Just as I was about to let out a long sigh of relief, Laura tilted her head and asked.
"However, I am inherently lacking in learning, so I'm simply unable to uncover the meaning on my own. It's embarrassing, but it's the truth. So, would it be all right if, when Lapis arrives later, I asked her opinion on what your true intent might be?"
"Absolutely not! Anything but that!"
My desperate cry echoed through the dungeon cave.