Wittenmaier left work early for the first time in a while.
For him, "early" meant leaving at the scheduled hour, nothing more. The young man was so unfailingly diligent that word of it had spread throughout every branch of government — solely because of his diligence.
"The Sleepless Director-General."
People said the name with reverence.
Wittenmaier, quite literally, did not sleep. He arrived earlier than anyone and always left later than everyone else. Even the officials working the night shift had never once seen him rise from his desk to head home.
*Wittenmaier of the General Staff Office never sleeps. He is Minerva's owl, Consul Elisabeth's loyal watchdog, and he sees everything...* — rumors about him drifted through the government like ghost stories.
And now Wittenmaier had left at the scheduled hour, right on the dot.
The General Staff Office erupted into chaos.
"Clearly, we must have done something wrong!"
"He's silently reproaching us idle bureaucrats...!"
"Nobody is to think about going home. We're all working overtime tonight."
The officials nodded with grim expressions.
Simply because he had left on time, every last official was now working overtime. A new legend was being born in the newborn Habsburg Republic. As for Wittenmaier himself, he had no idea what a remarkable feat he had accomplished — he was already heading to a bar.
"Yo, Baron Director-General of the General Staff! Over here!"
The moment he stepped through the door, someone called out. A group had already claimed a corner of the bar. After taking in who they were, Wittenmaier sighed and walked over.
"General Schleiermacher, how many times must I say it? I am no longer a baron. I gave up my noble title long ago."
"Oh, right. That's true, that's true. I went and forgot. Haha."
"Do try to remember from now on."
Kurz Schleiermacher grinned good-naturedly.
Watching this, Wittenmaier let out a sigh once more. This man called Kurz — he was certainly capable, but for some reason Wittenmaier simply couldn't get close to him. It wasn't merely a matter of clashing personalities. He felt that on a more fundamental level, they were misaligned.
If only it were just a feeling… Wittenmaier thought to himself as he sat down at the table. Shortly after, glasses were raised in a toast.
"Isn't this the first time all five of us have gathered together since the founding ceremony?"
"Hm. Probably, yes. My memory isn't exactly the most reliable thing in the world."
"That's quite right. You can trust my memory, Foreign Minister."
"Call me Hadelberg. There's nothing quite as enjoyable as being addressed by name by a beautiful woman."
At the table sat Kurz, Wolfram, Charles, and Yuria.
Including Wittenmaier, that made five. Every last one of them was among the closest of Princess Elisabeth's inner circle. Had word gotten out that they had all gathered in one place, there would have been at least several hundred humans trembling in fear and terror. Even now, the tavern held no one but these five and the innkeeper.
Kurz Schleiermacher, Commander of the Consul's Guard. Wolfram Hadelberg, Foreign Minister. Charles Richthofen, Knight Commander of the Royal Guard. Yuria, the Consul's First Secretary. And finally, Maximilian Wittenmaier, Chief of Staff…
All the real power behind the Republic had assembled. It wouldn't have been strange if they'd started plotting a coup right then and there. If even one of them had suggested killing someone in this very room, by the very next day that person would have been found as a cold corpse in a gutter.
"Has it already been a month? It hardly feels believable."
Yuria said this while taking a long drink of wine. A beauty through and through, even her voice seemed to carry a certain enchantment — no matter how softly she spoke, it drew people's ears in.
"Ah. Calling it a month doesn't begin to cover how fast it's gone. Honestly, it still doesn't feel like things have settled down…"
"Is that so? I must say, Sir Hadelberg, our knightly order hasn't exactly felt busy."
"I've never envied soldiers more than I do these days, Commander Charles. If someone would just put a sword in my hand instead of a pen, I'd go forge an alliance with the Demon Lord's army myself right now."
Wolfram Hadelberg let out a bitter smile.
"Building a relationship with just one country is difficult enough, yet here I am locked in a battle of nerves with diplomats from eleven nations. Every last one of them is racking their brains trying to figure out how to provide as little financial support as possible, how much aid would be just enough to keep our Republic alive and nothing more! Damned bastards, every one of them. I'd honestly feel more at ease negotiating with the Demonkin."
He shook his head in an exaggerated, comical manner. A few quiet laughs rippled through the group.
"Just because someone's a soldier doesn't mean they're all like Commander Charles."
Kurz Schleiermacher gave a casual shrug of his shoulders.
"This place is going to hell. With the nobles dropping like flies, the number of officers has plummeted. We're trying our best to find competent talent and shove them into officer positions, but honestly, I have to admit it's like pissing on a frozen foot. The army is barely maintaining its appearance on the outside."
"Oh. I heard volunteer enlistment has increased significantly, though?"
Schleiermacher let out a sigh.
"Of course it's increased significantly. If we issue a mobilization order right now, we could scrape together a hundred thousand troops without too much trouble. But they're nothing but sour apricots that look good in the light. What good is a rabble of untrained soldiers?"
"Can't you just train them?"
"That's exactly the problem—we're critically short on officers to do the training. Ugh."
Wittenmaier nodded as he listened to the account.
Schleiermacher was the commander of the Consul Guard, and Wittenmaier himself was the Chief of General Staff. Both were military men. Charles Richthofen was technically a soldier too, but the Order of the Black Knights had a distinctly different character. It was only natural that Wittenmaier felt more kinship with Kurz Schleiermacher…
Hadelberg, who had been listening to the state of affairs, grimaced.
"So the defeat at Austerlitz was decisive after all…"
"The Crown Prince's faction also had many capable generals and officers. Isn't that right, Wittenmaier?"
Wittenmaier furrowed his brows. He had originally been part of the Crown Prince's faction. Schleiermacher had just implied as much.
"Indeed. General Kolowrat, General Kutuzov, General Kienmayer, General Langeron… they were all exceedingly competent men. Forgive me, but had the Crown Prince not commanded so recklessly, they wouldn't have perished so wastefully."
"But they're dead, and the Chief of General Staff survived. Isn't that so?"
Wittenmaier's face twisted further.
'He's doing this on purpose to rattle me. What an unpleasant habit.'
This was precisely the sort of thing that made him ill-suited for Schleiermacher's company, Wittenmaier thought. Schleiermacher seized every opportunity to needle others. That was exactly why he couldn't bring himself to feel genuine camaraderie.
"I don't particularly believe I survived because I was more capable than any of them. The Goddess simply showed me her favor."
"Meaning it was fate, then…"
Kurz Schleiermacher gave a faint smile.
"Everyone, I've brought some interesting information about the Demon Lord Dantalion."
"Dantalion? You mean the one who gave that speech on the Bruno Plains?"
Hadelberg tilted his head. He was a civil official, so he hadn't directly participated in the war against the Crescent Alliance Army. Perhaps that was why the weight carried by the name Dantalion had reached him differently.
It wasn't just Hadelberg. That same atmosphere pervaded the civil officials as a whole. For them, the seventy-first ranked Demon Lord who had delivered a flashy speech at a single battle was far less important than Barbatos, who had just assumed the role of regent of the Habsburg Empire.
The soldiers felt the opposite.
Barbatos was fearsome, but he could be faced. In the war, Consul Elizabeth — then the Third Princess — had clashed with Barbatos's forces time and again. Each time, the princess emerged victorious. Dantalion, on the other hand… was the only one who had handed the princess a defeat.
"You have new information? What is it, General Schleiermacher?"
Bittenmeier's gaze sharpened. His eyes, which always looked clouded with exhaustion, were gleaming.
"It's about the Battle of the Black Mountains."
Schleiermacher smiled and took a sip of his beer.
"As you know, the defensive line of the Black Mountains was breached in just three days. Do you know who led the Demon Lord's forces at the vanguard?"
"According to reports, I heard it was Zepar, the sixteenth ranked Demon Lord."
"That's right, Secretary Bittenmeier. But what if I told you there was a separate Demon Lord who designed the operation?"
Bittenmeier's expression stiffened.
"…Don't tell me."
"Yes — Dantalion. He is the one who passed through the mountain fortresses of the Black Mountains at the fastest speed in recorded history. And that's not all."
Kurz Schleiermacher spoke. His voice carried an oddly amused tone.
"Just yesterday, the reconnaissance of the northern Habsburg region was completed, and the report contained some fascinating findings. This hasn't even been submitted to the Consul yet. It turns out the people in the Brandenburg territory are, quite surprisingly, living in peace."
"How can that be?!"
Hadelberg exclaimed in shock.
"Isn't Brandenburg territory the region that was occupied early in the war? How could the damage from the Demon Lord's army be minimal?"
"What makes it interesting is that they apparently enacted laws specifically prohibiting pillaging of the local populace."
"Prohibiting pillaging?"
This time it was Yuria. Her voice rose.
"The Demon Lord's army didn't plunder humans? Why?"
"It's a tactic to widen the rift between commoners and the nobility. Think about it. Margrave Rosenberg was forced to retreat in the early stages of the war without fighting even once. Why was that?"
"……Desertion of conscript soldiers on a massive scale."
Wittemeyer answered.
"Tens of thousands of conscript soldiers deserted, I've heard. I believe the Margrave managed to scrape together barely ten thousand troops and barely managed to retreat……"
"That's exactly where Dantalion intervened."
Schleiermacher smiled.
"They banned pillaging and even distributed Black Herb entirely free of charge, or so I'm told. They even personally subjugated the monsters' settlements……The people's loyalty had no choice but to shift from the Margrave to the Demon Lord's army. Haha. In the end, the retreat all the way to Austerlitz was also part of Dantalion's design."
The room fell silent. Only Sir Charles was calmly chugging his beer with an unperturbed expression. Yuria elbowed him to get his attention.
"Hm? What is it? Did I run out of drinks?"
Charles looked around blankly, turning his head this way and that. Yuria let out a sigh. Noticing the somber atmosphere, Charles carefully set down his beer mug as well. The expression on his face was that of a squirrel reluctantly putting down an acorn.
Wittemeyer slowly opened his lips.
"……The speech at the Battle of Bruno Plains dealt us serious damage. It was a scheme to divide the common soldiers from the noble officers. If Dantalion intended this from the very beginning, then the clemency shown to the people in the Margrave's domain was all part of the plan as well, wasn't it?"
Schleiermacher nodded silently.
Wittemeyer swallowed hard.
"Then……from the breach of the Black Mountains, the bloodless takeover of the Margrave's domain, the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of Bruno, the Regent incident……all of it was planned by a single Demon Lord? And moreover, that plan actually came to fruition. In effect, one person manipulated the entire continent. Is such a thing even possible?"
Silence returned to the tavern. The defeat of the empire had not been the work of some fate or destiny. It had simply been revealed as the doing of a single Demon Lord.
Hardelberg swallowed his words before speaking.
"Listening to your story, it seems the Consul has a most ridiculous opponent against him… Shouldn't we make some preparations against the Demon Lord Dantalion, starting now?"
The people nodded their heads.
However, no answer emerged regarding exactly how such preparations should be made, not even by the time the gathering ended that night. Wittemeyer could only ponder who the Republic's true enemy truly was...