"My Lord Margrave. An urgent report has arrived."
"What is it?"
An elderly man looked up from his paperwork. Fritz von Rosenberg. He was a noble of the Habsburg Empire. He was also one of the two Margraves overseeing the Black Mountains region. He commanded a formidable order of knights.
"The Verdant Citadel has fallen."
"Oh?"
Von Rosenberg removed his monocle. He fixed the butler with a sharp gaze.
"The enemy's forces?"
"According to reports, it's a monster army of one thousand. Three Demon Lords have united, and among them, there are none ranked within the top 30. However, five Ogres were included."
"Five Ogres."
The Margrave stroked his mustache.
"Threatening. But it's within the level the citadels can handle on their own. What did the citadel commanders say?"
"'We will hold them, so the Margrave may rest easy.' That is what they reported."
He nodded.
"It's a rare chance to earn merit. Snatching it from them would only sour relations with the citadel commanders. Accept their request; the Margrave's army will not deploy. However, tell them we will be ready to sortie at any time if they request it. Also, inform the Crimson Boar Knight Commander to assemble the knights."
"Understood, my Lord."
The butler bowed respectfully and left the office.
Margrave von Rosenberg pondered for a moment whether the thousand-strong monster army could pose a threat to the other three citadels—the Azure, the Golden, and the Crimson. The deliberation was short. A thousand was no threat to anyone. His role would be to repair the damage sustained by the garrisons after this battle was over.
The Margrave returned to his paperwork. The Black Mountains were safe. The problem was not external, but internal. He had heard the political strife in the Imperial Capital had been heating up lately. Whether His Highness the Crown Prince would emerge victorious—that was what occupied the Margrave's thoughts.
The stratagem progressed without a hitch.
Five hundred men bypassed the green citadel and established a position to its rear. The moment the rear position was secured, another five hundred struck the citadel's front. They assaulted the gate from both ends simultaneously. You might say it felt like crushing a tomato in the palm of your hand. The green citadel fell without difficulty.
Conventional wisdom held that a besieging force needed at least three times the number of defenders, but that rule applied only when humans fought humans. Goblins were one thing, but orcs were fundamentally larger and sturdier than humans. With the right approach, a siege could be pulled off with a force equal in number to the garrison.
A thousand-strong monster unit, including five ogres. The Demon Lords commanded it personally, and it moved with disciplined precision—then struck from both front and rear. No matter how elite the defenders had been, a wall manned by five hundred human soldiers was captured without sustaining significant damage.
"So this is what war is. Surprisingly hollow."
"Different from defeating a small adventuring party, to say the least."
Laura answered my sentimental observation with her usual diligence.
"A sovereign commands not from the front line, but from the center of the formation. It is rare for a commander to witness the horrors of war directly before their own eyes."
Laura and I rode side by side on warhorses, surveying the interior of the encampment. She was right. I had intervened in the strategic planning, but I had not participated in the fighting on a tactical level. My forces, openly committed to the Crescent Alliance Army, consisted of thirty-two golems and ten fairies—a mere forty-two in total. We had been excluded from the battle.
I gave a bitter laugh.
"The horrors of war, you say? What we are watching right now is horrifying enough."
All around us, monsters—our allies—were having their meals. Regardless of the era, the single most critical aspect of military operations was logistics. How you supplied your forces with food and rations could well determine the course of a war.
Unlike the modern age, in an era where maintaining a proper supply line over any distance was nearly impossible, an army's logistical strategy amounted to one principle: forage locally. For humans, local foraging took the form of purchasing or plundering. And for monsters?
—Crunch. Gurp.
A mere few meters away, an orc was tearing into a chunk of meat. He carefully peeled off the leather and chain armor that got in the way of eating, the way one might remove bones from a fish. Then he took a bite. The sound of slurping juices rang out magnificently.
The chunk of meat was a human leg.
The "local foraging" the Demon Lord's army practiced was nothing short of brutal. Corpses generated during battle were provided as food. Not only human remains—goblin and orc corpses were treated as rations as well. Even now, dozens of thin columns of smoke rose from various points throughout the camp. Every one of them was smoke from smoking corpse-meat into jerky… From a human's perspective, this place was nothing less than hell.
Just three hours ago, I had been retching on the ground. The nauseating stench of human innards, the smell of burning corpses—those scents had crawled up my nostrils and clung stubbornly to the inside of my skull. And yet the emotion being transmitted to me—what the monsters were feeling—was appetite. Damn it all.
My senses were detecting an odor so foul it was cursed, and yet appetite bloomed in my mind. Truly, what a godforsaken situation. I could say this with confidence: being able to read the emotions of others was never a blessing. Feeling appetite for human flesh was something I genuinely wished to decline.
"My lord speaks truly. That, too, is a horror of war. However, the young lady believes the yoke a sovereign must bear lies elsewhere."
"A yoke placed only upon a sovereign…"
I murmured without realizing it. Laura nodded.
"If you were an ordinary soldier, you could scream your heart out at the horrors of the battlefield. A commoner could lament the world's injustices and hurl curses. But a ruler is different."
She stopped speaking. I stopped too. Without realizing, we were facing each other from horseback. Laura's gaze met mine without any hesitation, heading straight for me.
"The commander cannot pass the blame for the atrocities onto someone else. They cannot pass it onto the world either. Because that very person, the commander, is the one responsible for the war."
"......"
"My lord. Look at the corpses strewn about here. Humans, Goblins, Orcs—regardless of race. What did they die for? Who was it that forced the battlefield upon them?"
There was no need for words.
It was I who presented the battlefield to them. Zepar, Amy, and the other Demon Lords were certainly the main culprits of the battle. However, the more accomplices there were, the fact that I was one of the principal parties remained unchanged. Especially since this operation proceeded according to my intentions. If the battle had unfolded differently?...perhaps someone who died now wouldn't have. I brought about their deaths.
Laura spoke with a gaze like steel.
"It will be painful. It will be hard. It's alright to be in pain and to struggle. However, blaming something else is absolutely unforgivable for a ruler."
"......I."
I spoke and was surprised. My voice was wet with tears. Was I grieving? Even now, having fully accepted Laura's words, I felt sorrow. Ironically, I felt relieved by that fact.
Right now, I was fully embracing the emotions of appetite emanating from hundreds of Orcs. Those were not my own emotions. Amidst these hellish pot of emotions, what was I supposed to take comfort in? Only sorrow—this alone was my emotion. I was myself......but a tragically weak self.
How long could I maintain myself amidst the waves of emotions others poured out? For now, it amounted to experiencing a manic-depressive state. But someday, the Demon Lord Syndrome, the personality split that Lapis had told me about, might occur......Laura was right. A ruler must bear the yoke. But what if the very person who must bear the yoke, their own personality, shattered? That was what I feared.
"If I become too overwhelmed, what will happen? What if I reach a point where I simply cannot bear the yoke anymore? No, what if I become so worn out that I can no longer be called Dantalion......?"
"There is a girl."
Laura said.
"The girl will never leave my lord alone. Did you forget? I devoted everything I have to my lord. That is a vow that my successes and failures are entirely tied to my lord's successes and failures. The same goes in reverse. My lord's successes and failures are equally my own successes and failures."
Her voice held not a trace of doubt. I could only listen to her words blankly.
"If my lord kills a thousand people, I have decided to follow such a lord. Therefore, the responsibility of killing a thousand people is also my responsibility. I will grieve the hardships my lord endures. I will suffer the pain my lord feels."
"......"
"Do you remember the one whom the girl once served as a slave master?"
Of course.
Jack Orland. A slave trader who was beautiful in his foolishness. He had wanted to be a friend, but it could never be.
"At the time, my lord could have killed the slave trader, and should have killed him. Leaving the trader alive might have posed a threat to my lord's life someday. Yet my lord did not kill him. Why was that? My lord answered me thus: that life, to him, meant accepting coincidences."
I remembered. How could I forget?
"For some reason, my lord wanted to spare the slave trader, and so chose to spare him regardless of what threat he might return as. My lord, if the slave trader had later appeared seeking revenge, would you have regretted it?"
"......No."
Laura nodded as though she had known I would say that.
"Because my lord wished it, my lord tried to spare the slave trader. It was, in the end, my lord's own choice. Whatever result that choice brought back, my lord would have accepted it without regret. The girl was enchanted by that way of living and decided to follow my lord. A person's life holds more things they can truly call their own than just death alone......and my lord showed me that."
She smiled gently.
"The girl wishes for my lord to keep living that way, right up to the final moment."
"That's too much, Laura."
I shrugged my shoulders with a touch of exaggeration. If I couldn't at least joke around like that, I didn't think I could hold on.
"Laura, you know full well that what I must bear responsibility for isn't limited to this single battle. The Eighth Crescent Alliance Army was set into motion by me. The vanguard, the Sixth Corps, the entire Crescent Alliance Army, and the countless wars they may wage......when you trace it all back, I'm the one who set it in motion. Right now, you're asking me to shoulder every last one of those burdens. Tens of thousands of lives may vanish. Are you telling me to bear responsibility for tens of thousands of lives?"
"I am."
She said it without hesitation.
No — she was even smiling as she said it. Normally, a single life is weight enough for one person to bear. She was telling me to take responsibility for tens of thousands of lives as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"My lord is not a righteous king. My lord is a Demon Lord, is he not? If my lord is a Demon Lord, then that is naturally the way one takes responsibility for life. My lord — walk the path of the Demon Lord."
"The path of the Demon Lord......that sounds like hell."
I laughed — a hollow, empty sound. But Laura was right. There was no other way of life available to me.
Only then did I realize why Laura had dragged me out of the tent while I was retching, why she had put me on horseback to ride through the camp. She was telling me not to run.
The fields strewn with corpses, the dozens of black plumes of smoke rising from the burning bodies — all of it, you brought this upon yourself, and you must accept it with your own eyes more than anyone else. That was what Laura was saying. And she had sworn she would bear this sight too, accepting it with the same weight that was pressing down on me.
I couldn't help but laugh.
"A subordinate who drags her lord into hell. I do believe I've acquired a spectacularly disloyal servant. Very well. Will you fall into hell with me, Laura?"
"Of course."
The answer came without hesitation. I knew it was not a light one. For a seventeen-year-old girl, this scene of slaughter must have been horrifying to witness. Yet Laura had answered despite feeling that. She truly was far more mature than I was.
We rode on. Through the smoke of burning corpses and the monsters tearing flesh from the dead, we pressed forward. If the Crescent Alliance Army's expedition proceeded according to plan, the slaughter that would unfold would be incomparably vaster and more terrible than the casualties of this battle. If I could not even bear the sight before me now, there was no way I would endure what lay ahead.
I rode as slowly as I could. Laura matched my pace. A little longer — just a little longer, so that the scene before me could be etched into my retinas and my brain. The crackling of fire and the sound of flesh being chewed lingered by my ears for a long time.