Barbatos's eyes narrowed. What kind of scheme was he cooking up, and was he in his right mind? He secretly harbored some hope that she might reprimand him severely. There was no other Demon Lord who valued the Crescent Alliance Army as much as she did. She might even feel anger at the fact that he had fabricated a situation where the Alliance could be formed on his own whim.
But she cheerfully dispelled his expectations. Instead, she even laughed.
"Come on, spill it in a way that satisfies my curiosity."
Her golden eyes swirled with interest and intrigue. She seemed to believe he had some profound stratagem in mind. He offered an awkward smile. Being trusted by someone beyond what he deserved was strangely ticklish.
They sat in the chairs the phantom butler had brought. He spoke first.
"For thousands of years, the Crescent Alliance Army has failed time and again. Even though they possessed an army vastly superior to humans'."
Barbatos snorted. It was a sign of displeasure. It was obvious what she disliked. She was utterly sick of the stupidity of the Demon Lords...
Don't worry, Barbatos. I'll annihilate the main culprits of your stress all at once. You just go on and enjoy your happy adolescence befitting your appearance. Stress is a cause for a girl's chest not to grow.
"Let's think about it in reverse. Why did the Demon Lords cause infighting during the wars? How could they repeat such insane acts not just once or twice, but seven times?"
"They're not just dumb, they're fucking dumb."
"An interesting hypothesis."
He smirked. Barbatos seemed to intensely hate the other Demon Lords. He wanted her to cool her head a little. From now on, he had to proceed with the conversation until his composure pooled so thick it could form a lake.
"If the Demon Lords were that stupid, they wouldn't have survived until now. In my opinion, the reason the Crescent Alliance Army lost is one: because the Crescent Alliance Army was too powerful."
"Hey. Weasel."
Barbatos scowled. Weasel? Was that a nickname she'd given him? There was no one as sleekly slender as him, so calling him a weasel was a first-class slander. He at least wished she'd call him a fox.
"I get that your mind works quite fast. I also get that you regularly coat your tongue in olive oil. But too powerful, so you lost? What kind of bullshit is that?"
The situation was as follows.
Any decent human nation, even if they scraped together all their forces, couldn't surpass 30,000 or 40,000. It was a large army, but it couldn't stop the Demon Lord's army. Even if they came charging with 30,000, this side could stop them easily by deploying just three or four 10th-rank Demon Lords. Monsters were infinitely stronger than the human race in that regard.
If all the nations in the Human Realm joined forces to create an allied army, 300,000 was the limit. The majority of that number would be cheaply conscripted soldiers. The Crescent Alliance Army, on the other hand, numbered at least 100,000. All of them were monsters. The idiom "outmatched in strength and numbers" must have been invented for situations like this. He wanted to express his gratitude to the ancestors who developed such words for future generations.
"Honestly, Barbatos. Out of all the Demon Lords in the Crescent Alliance Army, you're practically the only one who genuinely hopes for the Demonkin's victory. To the rest of the Demon Lords, human nations are nothing more — and nothing less — than targets they can crush whenever they please. What they actually fear is other Demon Lords."
"...Demon Lords fear other Demon Lords?"
"Have you never found them annoying? A king stands at the pinnacle, guiding his people. When there are seventy-two heads of state, no one can live in peace. The only reason this abnormal structure is tolerated is because the Human Realm is holding firm."
I gave a thin smile.
"Almost every Demon Lord must have thought about it at some point — what happens after we conquer the Human Realm? They must live in constant anxiety, worried that a higher-ranked Demon Lord will come to kill them."
"H-Hah!?"
Barbatos shouted. His expression made it perfectly clear he wasn't buying it. He looked ready to argue, but I cut in first.
"Not long ago, I killed Andromalius. And you defended me. In the eyes of the other Demon Lords, how do you think that looked?"
Barbatos wasn't just any Demon Lord. He was a towering figure who led the Plains Faction. Whether she had approached me out of genuine fondness or not, everyone watching couldn't help but see it through the lens of power dynamics.
"The Demon Lord killer Dantalion has the full backing of the Plains Faction. The Plains Faction has always despised the Mountain Faction. Perhaps they'd think nothing of eliminating an opposing faction's members..." That's what the other Demon Lords would be thinking. Especially the Mountain Faction Demon Lords — they'd take the situation dead seriously.
"That can't be..."
"Can't be? You've been calling the Mountain Faction garbage this whole time, talking about wiping them out or killing them. It didn't sound like you were lying."
She clamped her mouth shut.
Barbatos, you were strong. Because you were strong, you never once considered the perspective of the weak. When the other Demon Lords didn't eagerly throw themselves into the war against humanity, you called them cowards and fools — said they were so incompetent they couldn't even beat humans.
What they truly feared was high-ranking Demon Lords like Barbatos.
Between the 1st-ranked and the 72nd-ranked, the gap was so vast it could rightfully be called infinite. For now, under the pretense of advancing into the Human Realm, all seventy-two Demon Lords were acknowledged as sovereigns. But if a Demon Lord attacked another Demon Lord, they'd undoubtedly be condemned as shameless brutes who forgot their own duties and attacked their own kind instead of humans.
But really — what would happen after conquering the Human Realm?
Humanity, their greatest enemy, would vanish. Then only the Demon Lords would remain. Would seventy-two sovereigns peacefully coexist and rule an empire together with cheers and laughter? Impossible. In the end, war between Demon Lords would break out, and only the high-ranking ones would survive...
"The majority of Demon Lords don't actually want to conquer the Human Realm."
More precisely, they don't want their armies consumed in a war of conquest over the Human Realm. Defeating the human race wouldn't make armies unnecessary — quite the opposite. They'd become more essential than ever. That's why every Demon Lord, especially the lower-ranked ones, desperately tries to protect their own forces.
At first, probably only a handful of Demon Lords had acted selfishly. Even when the Crescent Alliance Army failed, they suffered no harm. Seeing that, other Demon Lords gradually started behaving just as selfishly. As a result, the anti-war faction—so-called Mountain Faction—had grown from an insignificant minority two thousand years ago to nearly a majority by the present day…
Barbatos fell silent. It seemed my explanation had triggered something in her mind.
"Haah."
She let out a deep sigh.
"Fuck, so that's how it was. That's why those bastard assholes wouldn't move their armies even when their own kind were dying. During the fourth invasion too… the sixth one too… goddamn it!"
The weak have their own way of surviving.
The strong interpret that in simplistic terms—cowardice, incompetence. Because the strong don't believe they became powerful by being selfish; they'd rather believe it was courage, competence, that carried them to success. And to maintain that belief, they need to look down on those weaker than themselves. It's a convenient psychological structure.
"It's impossible for a handful of Demon Lords to conquer the entire Human Realm. Even if a single Demon Lord invades, the humans will unite immediately. So you'd need as many Demon Lords as possible to join forces and form the Crescent Alliance Army. But…"
"The more Demon Lords you gather, the messier the chain of command becomes, and the more shameless selfish bastards show up! Damn it all."
Exactly. This was the paradox facing Demon Lords as a whole.
Their own kind were far too powerful—that was why they couldn't defeat the common enemy right in front of them. No, they couldn't afford to. If they did, they'd be the ones to die before long. That being the case, the Demon Lords didn't even consider invading the Human Realm; instead they holed up in the Demon Lord's Castle and wasted their strength in pointless political maneuvering.
In the Dungeon Attack scenario, as the Great Adventurous Age dawned, each Demon Lord's power would slowly erode until they were picked off one by one by the Hero's party. Perhaps even then, the surviving Demon Lords rejoiced that their present kin and future rivals had finally dropped away. Even upon hearing that a Demon Lord had fallen to the Hero, they probably sneered—"How pathetic, killed by nothing more than a human adventuring party."
In the end, the Demonkin's overall power weakened with every passing year, and by the time they realized it, half the Demon Lords were already dead at the Hero's hands. They belatedly scrambled to organize the Crescent Alliance Army to oppose the Human Realm, but it was too little, too late. One by one, they were helpless as their heads flew from the Hero's blade… utterly and incomprehensibly foolish.
The problem was that this foolishness didn't truly stem from incompetence—it was the inevitable, inescapable foolishness born from the very structure of "seventy-two Demon Lords." It was a grim story.
"There's only one way to break this deadlock."
"Tell me."
Barbatos looked at me with a serious expression. The girl who'd been teasingly fondling my crotch moments ago was nowhere to be seen. Before me sat a single Demon Lord, worried about her own future—and beyond that, the future of the Demon Realm.
I exhaled a sigh and spoke.
"We don't invade them. We make humanity invade us. And we drastically reduce the number of Demon Lords. At least cut it down to half what it is now."
"Dantalion."
She stared directly at me. It was the gaze of a stern ruler.
"Do you even realize what you just said? You just proposed killing half of our seventy fellow Demon Lords in the entire world."
"Otherwise, all seventy of our kind will die—!"
I warned her.
"Sooner or later, humanity will come to see Demon Lords as their mortal enemies, using the Black Death as a catalyst! Some of the other races might also be swept up by the rumors and turn hostile toward Demon Lords. They'll begin sieging the Demon Lord's Castle in scattered attacks, and our proud kin will eagerly watch on as their competitors weaken!"
That was the future that would unfold in the Dungeon Attack. Right now, in this moment, only I knew about it — a future utterly devastating for the Demonkin.
"If we wait until then, it'll be too late. While the Demon Realm's power is still intact, right now, we must unite and reduce the Human Realm's strength as much as possible. It's a sacrifice of the few for the sake of many!"
Of course, my intentions went beyond that alone. As world conquest was my ultimate goal, it was highly likely that not just humanity but even the Demon Lords themselves would become targets of subjugation.
By provoking this war, I would weaken both the Human Realm and the Demon Realm in one fell swoop. The greatest human-Demonkin war in history would erupt. Both sides would suffer devastating losses. It would undoubtedly take a long time to recover from the catastrophe of war.
That bought me time, and I would grow my power in the meantime.
There was no other way! With conventional means alone, building up my power was utterly impossible! Barbatos was level 357, and what were my stats in comparison?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
True Name: Dantalion
Race: Demon Lord Affiliation: Dantalion's Demon Lord Army
Attribute: Evil (-20)
Level: 21 Infamy: 3750
Class: Dungeon Operator (F), Demon Lord (E)
Command: 26/32 Might: 7/10 Intelligence: 30/32
Politics: 24/30 Charisma: 15/20 Technique: 4/10
*Titles: 1. Demon Lord of Terror
*Abilities: Tactics (E), Marksmanship (F), Mining (F)
*Skill: Acting
[Achievements: 2]
[Subordinates: 42 entities / 210 entities]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Barbatos, ranked eighth, was level 357. That meant seven Demon Lords were stronger than her! How many ages would it take for me to grind out levels strong enough to face those monsters? When would world conquest ever become a reality? And while I was busy getting stronger, would the other Demon Lords just sit around doing nothing? What about the humans? What about the great heroes who would rise alongside the Hero ten years from now — how was I supposed to deal with them?
Time was an absolute luxury I didn't have.
In the end, the best strategy was to erode my rivals' strength. Not just the Demon Lords — the Hero and the heroes who would join him fell into the same category. Even if they were destined to topple mountain ranges and dry up seas by some future date, that was still a decade away.
At this point in time, they hadn't yet reached the peak of their abilities! The Hero himself was nothing more than a seven-year-old brat right now. This was the golden opportunity! You could call it a gamble. Rather than waiting for a future where I had no shot, I would bet every card in my hand on a present where I could still see a path forward.
No — it was more than just a path. If anyone could see through every detail of Dungeon Attack, it was me! I would whittle down the Demon Realm's forces and the human forces alike, carving out time that belonged solely to me. All of that could be accomplished in a single war!
"Barbatos, didn't you always mock the Mountain Faction cowards?"
I spoke with every ounce of my desperate sincerity.
"Most of the Demon Lords sacrificed in this war will be from the Mountain Faction. They're the ones who've abandoned the aspirations of the Demonkin and the duties of a Demon Lord, blinded by their own self-interest. Surely you don't intend to crush the Demon Realm's one hope for the future just to spare the feelings of those kinds of people!"
"……Who's the first sacrifice, then?"
Barbatos asked quietly.
"To unify all the Demon Lords, the invasion of the Human Realm has to be massive. A large expeditionary army will point their swords at the Demon Lords, and before they can even organize the Crescent Alliance Army, at least one Demon Lord is bound to fall to the expeditionary force."
She was right. The Demon Lords would never lift a finger to cooperate unless danger was knocking right at their doors. It would take one, two, maybe even three of their own kind falling before they recognized the severity of the situation. Only when they realized that failure to unite meant being picked off one by one by the human armies — only that kind of shared crisis would motivate them.
"I'm sorry, but……the Plains Faction will have to be the first to sacrifice."
"Heh. As I expected."
Barbatos laughed. She had already figured out what I was getting at. If a Plains Faction member was the first to fall to the human army, Barbatos's influence would naturally swell. She could freely scream for vengeance against humanity. On top of that, it would preemptively shut down any suspicion that the Plains Faction had been the one spreading the rumors about the Black Death…….
Barbatos stood up. She walked toward me.
"How cruel, Dantalion. Truly cruel."
A somber sensuality seeped into her voice. She traced her fingers along my stomach, my chest, my neck, and then my cheeks—as though she might snuff out my life with those hands at any moment. I accepted her touch with a calm expression.
"Back when you were carving that brand into Rip's corpse, I was just hoping you'd grow a little. Squabble with Belial, compete with the Mountain Faction, and maybe—over countless ages—develop into a proper Demon Lord. Looks like I was the naive one after all. Heh heh…"
"Barbatos."
"Fine. I'll cooperate. A war? Exactly what I wanted. Sacrifices? If I were the kind to agonize over that, I'd have given up long ago. For a single moment of glorious war, I'll endure anything. I am a Demon Lord, after all."
Barbatos tilted my chin slightly. Her face and mine were now barely inches apart. The breath escaping between her small lips struck my face directly.
"But you're surprising, and entertaining. Dantalion—you must have known I had this sort of personality and acted accordingly… How far ahead did you predict, and what is it you want? I can barely contain myself wondering what your next move will be. Here, look."
She took my hand. Then she brought it down below her waist. She parted her skirt and guided my hand inside. Before long, my fingertips brushed against thin fabric. It was damp.
"I'm wet… Just imagining how devastating the war you'll unleash will be gets me excited. You're the first demon who's this demonic, this despicable, this much of a bastard."
Ah.
It was that again. Lechery magic. This time she licked the back of my ear with her tongue as Barbatos whispered in a honeyed murmur. My head spun. An erotic intensity incomparable to before drilled into my ear canal. It rattled my brain, traveled down my spine, and burrowed into my lower body. My entire body blazed with heat. Even as I desperately tried to maintain my composure, a syrupy voice poured in from the far reaches of my consciousness.
"I've been wanting to get fucked like a bitch by a bastard like you for the longest time… Wanna try it, just once?"
That was the limit. My consciousness cut out. What I remembered in fragments was the two of us coupling like beasts throughout the vast Demon Lord's palace. We used tables, chairs—whatever was available—and went at it in every position.
She moaned and panted. I gazed down at her and thought: this was a kind of contract. A secret pact between just the two of us, binding us to the conspiracy that would drag their own kind into the depths of hell….
Winter arrived. The year turned.
That spring—the first one I had witnessed since falling into this world.
The Demon Lord Crocell, ranked forty-ninth and a member of the Plains Faction, was killed in a human invasion.
============================ Author's Afterword ============================
— Chapter <Two Conspiracies> END.
— End of Part One. Beginning of Part Two.