Both armies had finished deploying across the plain. The human forces had their knights lined up in neat rows along both the left and right wings, ready to launch the knight orders into a charge at a moment's notice. Just by rough visual estimation, the number of knights exceeded ten thousand. Ten thousand knights — what a spectacle.
This world has something called Aura. Different nations call it different things — ahra, ora, ouha — but no matter what it's called, it's what turns a human into a superhuman. That's why the military system here is so different from the world I came from.
To put it bluntly, they cultivate knights to an extreme degree.
No matter how solidly a pikeman phalanx forms up, once a knight swings an Aura-infused sword, the pikes get sliced apart like bamboo. Thrusting with spear tips and loosing arrows — neither can penetrate a knight's body. They are, quite literally, human weapons.
The military strength of every nation, every lord, hinges on how many knights they possess. Monarchs are extremely wary of any vassal who commands more knights than necessary. "You established another knight order? Are you plotting a rebellion?" That's the way it goes.
Since knights are so important, anyone who shows aptitude for Aura is recruited, whether they're a fallen noble or a commoner. Minor lords, kept in check by the monarch, can't afford such luxury. Those with Aura potential are generally sent to the capitals of kingdoms or duchies, where knights are intensively trained to build what are essentially vast royal guard corps. In other words — the birth of the Academy.
"The right to establish an Academy" — that right is tremendously important.
Minor lords naturally possess no such right. You'd need to be at least a Margrave like von Rosenberg to barely receive permission. As a result, the Margrave commanded a knight order numbering in the several thousands. Without absolute confidence that they'd never rebel, the monarchs would never have tolerated such an Academy.
And yet, in this world, troop types like pikemen and archers haven't fallen into obsolescence. Why? Simple — because monsters exist.
In the territories of great lords, even monsters live quietly enough. If they run too rampant, a knight order comes rolling in to exterminate them. So they rampage in moderation, get culled in moderation, and live in moderation. They tend to prey on places that don't matter much to the lords — remote mountain villages, say. Monsters, it turns out, are shrewd creatures.
In the territories of minor lords, the situation is entirely different. As I said before, minor lords have very few knights. They simply can't afford to deploy knights in force just because monsters go berserk. So the monsters raid human settlements with impunity.
It's a structural contradiction of society.
It's a minor territory, so there are no knights. No knights means subjugating monsters is difficult. Difficult monster subjugation means the commoners bear most of the damage. And the commoners want to move away but can't — because they have no right to relocate.
While great territories grow ever more prosperous, minor territories grow increasingly unlivable. Commoners spend their entire lives clinging to a single hope — that they themselves might have Aura aptitude, or that their children might — and nothing more.
Funny, isn't it? Even in a world where Aura exists, the fundamental dynamics are the same as in the world I came from. The only difference might be that with Aura, men and women alike are treated equally, without discrimination.
Arrayed across that plain, the countless pikemen and archers stretching to the horizon — they are those very commoners, the lower class.
With no knights, how can they stand against monsters? There's only one answer. When you've got no teeth, you use your gums — the villagers have no choice but to arm themselves.
They take up pikes. They take up bows. They stand against fearsome Orcs and Goblins. Naturally, each village develops its own elite fighters. And when a large-scale monster invasion erupts under the banner of the Crescent Alliance Army, as it has now, they are "mobilized" under the rallying cry of protecting humanity. Mobilized — but it's little more than conscription.
If you've followed me this far, my intentions should now be perfectly clear.
Paimon. You intended to put me forward as the representative of the Crescent Alliance Army and draw the wrath of the human forces. But you saw humanity as a single monolith. That, perhaps, is the limit of one born a Demon Lord and raised as one.
I was born human, and I have lived as human!
I know that human society is never one thing, and has never been one thing. There are nobles. There are commoners. There are slaves. There are men and women, adults and children.
There are those who oppress and those who are oppressed. There are those who resist and those who submit. There is control, and there is rebellion. There are manipulations as delicate and precise as physics—and there are people who notice those manipulations. I can see the contradictions of human society.
Among all the Demon Lords, only I can.
You should never have made someone like me give the representative speech.
I'll show you just why, starting now.
"My Lord. It is time."
Laura spoke quietly. I had been sitting in the corner of the tent, staring at nothing. To say I was "staring" would be slightly inaccurate—I simply had my eyes open, lost in thought. At Laura's words, my consciousness surfaced like a submarine.
I turned my head. There stood Laura, the blonde, and Lapis, the redhead. A human and a Demonkin, standing side by side. These two were the most precious people in my world to me. Laura was my lover and a gifted minister; Lapis was the first girl in this world to believe in me, a loyal retainer to the end.
Yes. There was nothing impossible about those two standing together like this. I was about to pull something that was nothing more than a possibility into reality.
"Very well. Shall we go?"
I stepped out of the tent with the two of them in tow. Orc soldiers lined both sides in wall-like formations. They were clearing a path for me to walk. Until the moment the speech ended, I was still the representative of the Crescent Alliance Army. Days when I would receive this kind of treatment would not come again easily. Even if they did, it would be a very long time from now.
I walked forward.
With every step, the emotions of the monsters surged over me like a tide. Excitement, anxiety, boredom, passion, unease, hunger, reverence… I had grown used to it. They washed gently across the sandy shore of my mind before receding once more.
My vision cleared.
An empty plain appeared before me.
I had emerged completely from the crowd.
There, the Demon Lords had gathered. Paimon, Marbas, Agares, Gamigin, Barbatos… Only the highest-ranking Demon Lords had chairs provided and were seated.
Those of that caliber could control an entire battlefield itself. No matter where their forces were, they could issue orders from here. The lower-ranked Demon Lords lacked that level of authority and so moved alongside their own troops. The mere fact that they could sit here at their leisure was proof that these were the most powerful forces in the Demon Lord army.
"How are you feeling, Dantalion?"
Barbatos hummed cheerfully for some reason.
"You haven't cowered like a little coward, have you?"
"Ah. My life has been far too harsh for that."
"It's only going to get harsher from here on out."
She smiled.
"The reason I didn't go out of my way to object to the Mountain Faction's proposal wasn't merely for the sake of negotiation. Dantalion. I didn't think there could be a more fitting stage for you to step out of the shadows and into the light."
It was a gentler smile than one would ever expect from Barbatos. Like a poet gazing upon a child.
"A king is a leader. One who stands in for the collective will of their people. Scheming and stratagem alone cannot make a king. Whether you have the qualification to lead all. Whether you have the mandate. We must prove that at every single moment. From now on, your words are not mere words — they are the will of all. Come now, Dantalion."
She raised a finger and pointed toward the sky.
"Look at the sky."
Not a single cloud marred its clarity. The spring rain had retreated and sunlight poured down. The sky was always peaceful.
"Look behind you."
She pointed behind them.
A hundred thousand monsters writhed. A hundred thousand emotions — hoping battle would begin, or hoping it would end quickly. The clatter of blades chattered softly in small bursts, and shouts rang out from somewhere. Countless red flags fluttered in the wind.
"Look ahead."
She pointed forward.
There lay the plain.
The only land visible ahead was a smooth, open wasteland. There was nothing that could serve as an obstacle. Desolate, yet peaceful. But beyond that — far away, yet with unmistakable movement, flags were fluttering. Tiny dots had filled the far side of the plain.
For a moment, it seemed as though no sound existed. Perfect silence.
"This is the battlefield that the Demon Lord sees."
Barbatos spoke in a low voice.
"My beloved friend. Become a king and come to me."
So that was it.
Had she always lived facing such a landscape?
Had she spent a thousand years staring into that kind of solitude?
She didn't want me to remain merely a schemer, a strategist, a subordinate useful to the Plains Faction. She wanted a comrade who could stand beside her as an equal and look forward together. Once, Paimon and Marbas had been those comrades.
She must have believed that someday new comrades would appear. And so she waited. She waited for a long time. Then I showed up. She thought I was a promising talent — or perhaps she hoped so — and she tested me. I exceeded her expectations. What emotions must she have felt?
Perhaps what Barbatos felt for me wasn't simply affection. The word "affection" couldn't even begin to contain it. To her, I was the possibility that had finally emerged after a thousand years of waiting.
That was exactly why she had pushed me even harder. She gave me her love, yes, but she also thrust me to the forefront of the Crescent Alliance Army. She made me a battle strategist yet sent me onto the battlefield. And now she was shoving me forward telling me to become a king.
What an incredibly troublesome Demon Lord she was. I was the sort who could at best make a decent schemer. If it meant survival, I would weep bitterly and prostrate myself hundreds of times on the ground. And she was telling someone like me to become a king? Part of me was happy, but another part was deeply troubled, and I couldn't help but let out an awkward laugh.
"Wouldn't I die doing that?"
Barbatos laughed as well.
"Where in the world is there a life without danger or hardship? Even if such a life existed, what meaning would it hold? So move forward. Plant your feet and face adversity. It's only natural that the one who takes more steps bears more risk. And so what of it? Dantalion. The thing worth seizing in these two hands lies beyond that risk."
Not mere survival — aim for what lies beyond it.
Now is the time for you to do that, Barbatos said. She couldn't help but be a strict teacher. She wasn't sending encouragement like Lapis, declaring "I trust you," nor swearing an oath like Laura to stay together until the end — she was scolding me, telling me the world was simply built this way, so quit complaining and move forward properly.
I shrugged my shoulders.
Beside me, over a dozen mages who had been preparing the magic circle reported that they were ready. Marbas looked at me. His gaze asked whether we could begin. I nodded. Marbas began the countdown.
"Let's start. Ten, nine, eight…."
The magic circle blazed with a brilliant white light. When the magic of multiple casters overlapped, the circle turned white. It traced a vivid trail of light across the ground and surrounded me in an instant. Through the blinding white, I heard Marbas's voice. Five, four, three, two, one….
It was done.
By now, a massive three-dimensional image should have appeared in the sky above. Something like a screen that displayed my exact likeness. I was curious to see what it looked like, but I refrained from looking up. That would have been a pathetic sight.
Right now, hundreds of thousands of humans and Demonkin were gazing solely at me.
"Hear me, humanity."
Amid all of that, I opened my mouth.
"Every bit of history up to this point has been a history of class struggle."
Ego.
It was time to spread poison across the world.