It took ten minutes to free myself from her grip. Ten whole minutes of just kissing. Completely drained, I collapsed onto the floor with a thud. My mouth was numb.
"I've been defiled… utterly ravaged."
Barbatos was a technician. I couldn't even tell how many techniques she'd used. I was suffocating. The drill, the vibrator, the vacuum—those I could remember. After that, my memory was just… deleted. All I vaguely recalled was being overpowered without the slightest chance of resistance. I pride myself on having a few tricks of my own, but she was truly on another level entirely.
Barbatos wiped the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief.
"You men are as limp as sardines. When I was your age, kid, I used to throw three-day-and-night-long orgies. Heh heh, I was young back then too. I got curious how many rounds were even possible, so I put it to the test. I counted to three hundred before giving up."
"……"
A girl with the appearance of a loli was sitting there bragging about her sexual exploits, going on about what she got up to when she was younger. Terrifying woman—no one called her a Demon Lord for nothing. Not a shred of sexual morality to be found. It wasn't exactly my place to talk, given that I'd slept with Llaura, who was still just a girl, but this one really needed to exercise some restraint.
In any case, the negotiation was a success. A far bigger one than I'd expected.
'Status Window.'
I checked the results of my success.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Barbatos
Race: Demon Lord Affiliation: Barbatos Demon Lord Army, Plains Faction
Alignment: Evil (-40)
Level: 357 Notoriety: 6,985,200
Class: Grand Dark Witch (SS), Demon Lord (S), Dungeon Operator (A+)
Command: 330 Martial: 460 Intellect: 153
Politics: 159 Charm: 209 Technique: 301
Affinity: 50
Current Mental State: 'Huh, that's the first time I've kissed a guy. Not as bad as I expected. Should I just pounce on him?'
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
'Okay. Affinity hit fifty.'
……Something ominous had flickered through the Current Mental State, but he deliberately ignored it.
Affinity fifty.
That was the limit of what could be reached through normal means. To push Affinity any higher, some kind of hidden restriction had to be broken.
Restriction conditions varied wildly from character to character, so there was no way to figure out exactly what condition was tucked away inside Barbatos right off the bat. In Laura's case, recruiting her as a subordinate happened to satisfy the condition at the same time, but that sort of luck was hard to repeat twice. Then again, recruiting Barbatos as a subordinate in the first place was nothing short of delusional.
'I should be satisfied up to here, honestly.'
I wasn't anxious. Barbatos was, without question, overwhelmingly more powerful than anyone I had ever met. I had succeeded in making that caliber of powerhouse one of my allies. I had every right to simply be happy.
But there was one thing that gnawed at me.
'……Her stats are abnormally high.'
Barbatos was overwhelming.
To be precise, she was excessively overwhelming.
It went beyond admiration—all the way to despair. My own stats, combined, barely scraped a hundred and fifty, while hers soared well past a thousand. The numbers were blatantly abnormal.
In the game, she hadn't been this strong. Level 357! That was a level only someone ranked fourth among the Demon Lords could possibly reach. Barbatos used to hover around level 250 at best, never breaking 260. A level like 357 was an absurd, nonsensical figure—that much I could say for certain.
'I've been thinking this for a while, but the difficulty here is messed up.'
The eighth-ranked Demon Lord's level had jumped by a hundred compared to the game. If even she was like this, what about the first-ranked Demon Lord?
Originally, in the game, the final boss—the first-ranked Demon Lord, Bael—had been level 389. But the way things were shaping up now looked deeply ominous. Bael's level had almost certainly shot up as well. I wouldn't be surprised if she had reached at least level 500.
Level 500. It made my head spin. Even the Hero character I had raised in the game wouldn't have been able to clear this. Members of the Dungeon Attack fan site would pass out and then some.
'Venuspants, you son of a bitch…… Damn it. Now I get it—the reason F-rank and E-rank adventure parties were so strong was because the overall difficulty was just that high.'
I had never forgotten, not even for a single moment, what Venuspants—whom I suspected of being the very person who'd crammed me into this godforsaken world—had told me. How could I forget? He had asked me whether I would actually play his new game, and this is what he'd said:
—If the point of Dungeon Attack was to protect the world from the Demon Lords—
—then this new game's objective is to conquer the world.
—Make sure you remember that.
'Ha. Damn it.'
At the time, I'd written it off as useless information, but now I saw things differently. What he'd said finally made sense. Back then, he had been telling me what my ultimate goal in this world was supposed to be.
World conquest.
I never expected words we used to toss around as childhood jokes to hit this hard. Conquering the world in a game—that was not only easy but downright tedious. If anyone in reality demanded that you conquer the world, they'd be labeled a lunatic, and rightly so. And yet here I was, stuck having to earnestly carry out that lunatic's deranged ramblings.
If this wasn't enough to drive someone absolutely insane, I didn't know what was.
The problem was no small matter. Venuspants had said "the world," not "the Human Realm." In Dungeon Attack's worldbuilding, there existed not only the Human Realm but also the Demon Realm—and even the Divine Realm, at least in the lore. Could it be that "the world" referred to all of those realms combined? Try as I might to dismiss the thought, I couldn't suppress my unease. If "the world" truly encompassed the Human Realm and every other realm beyond it... it was nothing short of despair.
"Barbatos. There's actually another reason I came to see you today."
"Hmm? What's this—you want to screw me senseless? One more bottle of Valeron and I might just let you."
"...Cut me some slack."
That was precisely why I had to start making major moves from now on.
The Demon Lords were terrifying enemies. I admitted that much. But in the game's story, they were ultimately wiped out by humankind. The truly formidable foe wasn't a Demon Lord—it was the entire Human Realm. The Hero's party boasted dozens of companions as powerful as Barbatos. With conventional means, there was no way my current self could hope to overcome them.
With conventional means, that is.
"Ha. There are apparently thousands of bastards out there who rub one out every night just dreaming of getting into my pants. One bottle of Valeron is a steal, you little shit."
"So the Demon Realm has at least a thousand girl-crazed degenerates. Good to know. Enough—this is serious. Stop acting coy and listen to me."
"Hmm? Fine, fine."
"That doesn't give you the right to sneakily grope my ass!"
I stumbled backward in alarm. Barbatos pouted and hiked her skirt back up. The white stockings darted beneath the fabric. What kind of woman was this? A bitch like you—I'd never seen one in any life, past or present.
"Tch. Even if you come crawling and sobbing and begging later, I won't give you a thing."
"I have plenty of people ready to play with me anytime, you know."
"Huh? Are you saying she's more attractive than me?"
Barbatos growled. This was the kind of woman who'd get hit and demand a second blow.
"You have no idea how devastating my skills are, Dantalion. Even the most renowned ice maid in the world—if she falls under my fingers, she'll be squirting like a fountain in twenty damn seconds flat. Won't even need my mouth. Don't need two fingers either. Just this one."
She wiggled her index finger playfully.
"This one is more than enough. Turn an ice maid into a nymphomaniac, and a nymphomaniac into a whore. Every last one of them joins my exclusive brothel brigade. You know that noblewoman who came to me for advice, claiming she hadn't felt pleasure in three hundred years? The moans she let out for the first time in her life—'Kill me, damn it. Ah, ah, haaahn! This is—this is the first time, Your Majesty! Hhgh—s-save me! Haaahn!'—screaming like that nonstop. Ahh. Now that's a symphony."
"Geeez..."
I clamped my hands over my ears. She was peppering me with the kind of filth only a sleazy old man with a girl's face could pull off, firing it off like a rapid-fire spell—no way I could endure this. And her voice impressions were incredible! She mimicked moans with such vivid precision it felt like she was really doing it right now.
The problem was, I felt a strange pang of guilt. The more her voice wavered and dripped, the stiffer I got. Judging by the fact that her words still came through crystal clear even with my ears blocked, she'd almost certainly woven a lust-inducing magic into her voice. Just like that curtain-opening spell earlier—this woman had mastered every useless spell under the sun.
"Kid, just close your eyes and leave one minute to me. I'll give you a free tour of heaven. No—don't even need a minute. Look at you, you're practically impotent, so thirty seconds'll do. Men can only finish once, right? What a pathetic, inferior species. But leave it to me and I'll get you to go at least ten times..."
I screamed internally.
In the end, my ironclad willpower withstood the temptation. I already felt slightly guilty for sleeping with Laura, who was only sixteen. And now I was supposed to sleep with Barbatos, who looked like she was twelve or thirteen? If I'd gone a hundred days without release and turned into a beast, maybe. But right now, I absolutely refused.
"Hm, strange. It's rare for anyone to resist my <Turn-On Magic>."
Barbatos grumbled. Sure enough—she really had used a lust spell! And her naming sense was bottom-tier. I felt my soul evacuating my skull. If she'd genuinely named it that with a straight face, I needed to seriously reevaluate Barbatos's mental state.
"Sigh."
I finally managed to compose my voice into something serious.
"There were two reasons I didn't come to see you for an entire month. One was to watch whether the Plains Faction made any moves regarding Rift's body. The other was to spread a rumor in the Human Realm."
"A rumor?"
Barbatos tilted her head. In moments like these, her young face looked innocent.
"Yes. Right now, there's a frightening rumor spreading throughout the Human Realm. It's the rumor that the Demon Lord spread the Black Death. I had the Kunkuska Trading Company circulate it on a massive scale."
"Huh? Why would you do something like that?"
A crease formed between her brows.
"…Don't tell me that bitch Paimon was right and you actually created the Black Death. No, that can't be it. A mere rank 71 wouldn't be capable of creating the worst plague in history. Even a Demon Lord who specializes in manufacturing diseases couldn't develop something like the Black Death."
"You're right. It would be nearly impossible for me, a mere rank 71, to create the Black Death."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"The humans are thinking the same thing. This unprecedented epidemic couldn't have appeared naturally, and some weak existence couldn't have created it."
"Oh my. So they're doubting whether our Demon Lord is the culprit."
Barbatos snorted.
"Humans are always like that. Whenever they're unhappy, they try to pin the cause of their misfortune on something else. They pray to the divine spirits and curse the Demon Lord. They'll never realize that the karma is something only they can bear."
"An interesting perspective."
I shook my head.
"You don't understand the gravity of this, do you?"
"Hmm?"
"The Black Death is currently ravaging nearly every city in the Human Realm. Every nation except the Kingdom of Sardinia, which succeeded in early suppression, is writhing under the epidemic."
Some cities had succeeded in containing the plague. Thanks to me spreading Blackthorn. A few wise and brave lords had mobilized even their personal fortunes to purchase Blackthorn, and used it to effectively protect their territories.
But such lords were an extreme minority.
Most had simply used the expensive Blackthorn to save themselves and their families. There were even lords and major merchants who bought up Blackthorn from me, drove the price up tenfold, and resold it. In the end, the Black Death was causing catastrophic damage, just as it had in the original game.
Blackthorn had been identified as a specific cure, and mass cultivation was underway in various places, but months remained before the first harvest could be completed. It was still too early for it to take effect. By the time you woke up the next morning, your mother, your son — dead. Humanity had fallen into a living hell.
"Barbatos, the Human Realm is slowly falling apart. Dissatisfaction with the lords, the temples, and the nations that failed to respond properly is higher than at any point in history. There have already been nine city-level riots. Among them, there were even a couple that reached the scale of major cities."
Barbatos still didn't seem to grasp the true meaning behind my words. Well, how could he? Only I, who remembered the full history of Dungeon Attack, could read the flow of the world.
"In this situation, rumors have been spreading that the Demon Lord caused the plague. What do you think humanity's leaders will do with that?"
"...!"
Only then did Barbatos react properly.
"They'll have no choice but to use the rumors, whether voluntarily or not. The villains aren't the lords. They aren't the temples. The villain is the Demon Lord. They'll try to dodge responsibility. And the people will trust the rumors even more. Right this very moment, voices demanding the Demon Lord's extermination are ringing out across marketplaces and royal courts alike."
"You bastard...?"
"That's right."
I nodded.
"It's time to reassemble the Crescent Alliance Army. Barbatos, it's war. War is coming."