"...Your Majesty, that is—"
Ivar Lodbrok fell silent. *That is*, he said, but couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence.
I knew just how deeply rooted his hatred of the Demon Lord was. In *Dungeon Attack*, Ivar Lodbrok had been one of the most prominent Demonkin in the Demon Realm, yet he'd sided with the human forces.
One way for a Demonkin to break free of the dominance a Demon Lord exerts by nature was to place a powerful Slave Brand on themselves and hand that dominance over to someone other than their Demon Lord. Ivar Lodbrok had voluntarily become the Hero's slave.
That was back when the Hero had only defeated rank 20.
Agares was still around, and so was Barbatos. Nobody believed that a mere human swordsman could slaughter high-ranking Demon Lords en masse. The general consensus was that he "wasn't bad with a sword for a human." That was all.
But Ivar Lodbrok had abandoned a career and network he'd built over thousands of years in the Demon Realm. He'd liquidated everything he owned and joined the Hero's party. It was a gamble.
If even the slimmest chance meant every last Demon Lord could be killed—he hated their very existence enough to stake his life on it. He probably wouldn't even want to show his true face in death. Especially not to a shifty Demon Lord like me.
I asked.
"Master of Kunkuska, is there truly nothing that can be done?"
It wasn't a reproach. My tone was heavy.
"There is a great deal of history between us. And yet I have never once singled you out for attack or condemnation. I'm not sure whether you're aware, but my connections are not as shallow as you might think. If I had wanted to, I could have spoken to Barbatos, Marbas, Gamigin at any time. Told them to stop trusting Kunkuska."
"..."
Ivar Lodbrok was listening quietly. His expression was calm, but what was going on inside?
A merchant lives by trust. To a trading house in the Demon Realm, a Demon Lord is the ultimate guarantee of credibility. "This trading house supplies goods to His Majesty the Demon Lord"—that label was a point of pride.
To be abandoned by such Demon Lords. No matter how successful the Kunkuska Trading Company was, it would suffer a devastating blow. This was something Ivar Lodbrok absolutely did not want.
"But I did not do that."
"..."
"Do you know why? Because I bear you a sense of gratitude. Driving Paimon back into the Crescent Alliance—it would not have been possible without you."
Ivar Lodbrok bowed respectfully at the waist.
"I am honored."
"I didn't understand that at all..."
I shook my head as if tired. I hadn't brought this up to hear some empty words of gratitude.
"Still don't understand? I treat you as an individual of equal standing to myself."
"...!"
Ivar Lodbrok looked shocked.
"Being grateful toward another. Considering what you have received from them in the past as you build a relationship with them. That is the proof that you regard the other as your equal. It's impossible if you don't look the person right in front of you directly in the eye."
I muttered bitterly.
"I have always intended to build such a relationship with you. But it seems that to you, I am perceived as just another Demon Lord, no different from the rest..."
Right after the pre-war council, Ivar Lodbrok had come to see me. And he lamented, as if crying out. Was a Demon Lord not ultimately just a less capable pet compared to a Demonkin? Were we truly not given any freedom at all...?
"Isn't the one who isn't looking at the other person directly actually you? You are judging me arbitrarily. I find that unbearable."
"Your Majesty."
"Enough. The Kunkuska Trading Company will be granted sole brokerage rights for all magical items."
I stood up and turned my back. It was a clear order to leave.
"Do well in your business, merchant of Kunkuska."
"..."
Ivar Lodbrok could say nothing. From behind him, I sensed bewilderment, the feeling of not knowing how to react. Ivar Lodbrok left the reception room as if fleeing.
The reception room. As the Demon Lord's Castle became more magnificent, rooms like this had appeared. Famous artworks from the Demon Realm and the continent hung on the walls like wallpaper. On the wall, the severed head of an Ogre I had never even hunted was mounted as decoration.
It was magnificent, but desolate.
Rumors of Dantalion's Demon Lord's Castle spread across the continent in no time.
Refugees flocked there out of sheer desperation, but there were also those who headed toward the Demon Lord's Castle with unmistakable hostility.
"If it's Dantalion, he's the Demon Lord who humiliated and toyed with all of humanity. How can people beg him for shelter, huh? I'm going to slay Demon Lord Dantalion!"
He was the type of young man to burn with a sense of justice. A commoner, at that.
Quite a few among them were aspiring knights. Most were youths between fifteen and eighteen who had shown talent in childhood, earned admission to an academy, only to be deemed "defective" as time went on.
The cost of an academy education was far beyond what an ordinary commoner could afford. You had to enter service as a vassal under a lord and spend decades paying it back. The problem was that such defective products were awkward for lords to make use of as well.
They were certainly more useful than an average soldier. After all, they had received years of knightly training. That much was only natural.
But their pride was inflated far beyond any reasonable measure.
"You will grow into knights who serve our lord, his excellency the king, by his very side. Take pride in being a knight and always conduct yourselves as honorable warriors."
The aspiring knights had been fed those words from the time they were children. Unreasonable expectations had been branded into their very bones. Throw them into an ordinary army and they would do nothing but cause friction with their outsized egos.
Fortunately, a few of them woke up to reality early on. They worked hard to show their instructors that they still had something to offer. Those ones managed to become non-commissioned officers and, however lowly, secure a place in a lord's vassal company.
But there were always those who would sooner die than swallow their pride, no matter the time or place.
This young man was one of them. He seethed with fury. Disappointed that his instructors had failed to recognize his talent, jealous that classmates who were less just and far less knightly than he had succeeded.
"Just you wait. When I make a name for myself as a hero, you'll come begging, and I still won't become your knight!"
Of course, the young man had nothing. He held nothing but a flashy diploma in his hands. Or, to put it another way, a debt document he would spend the next several decades repaying.
The diploma was a source of pure, unbridled pride for him.
"I am a graduate of the Friedrich Academy!"
It meant absolutely nothing in reality, but precisely because he had nothing else of his own, he clung to that scrap of paper as though it held some tremendous value.
The paths available to a young man of this type were rather limited. Of course, if he had simply been willing to turn his head ever so slightly, he would have found an astonishing number of options. But turning his head was the one thing he refused to do. Above all, he wanted a path that would satisfy his pride and, better yet, guarantee his success.
"I'll slay the Demon Lord."
And so the young man packed lightly and set off for the Demon Lord's Castle.
The fact that Demon Lord Dantalion was ranked at the very bottom mattered, too. The young man was dull, but he never once entertained the notion of slaying a high-ranked Demon Lord. Still, if the Demon Lord was ranked seventy-first, wouldn't he be within reach? He couldn't do it alone, but if he gathered companions, wouldn't it be possible?
With their wild dreams, swordsmen flocked to Dantalion's Demon Lord's Castle.
"...I thought it was some backwater, but I was wrong."
The young man was surprised to find a rather impressive city built near the Demon Lord's Castle.
To humans, the Black Mountains were generally perceived as a place where monsters were about as plentiful as stones. The fact that there was a city beneath them was startling enough on its own.
The young man was now truly penniless. The little money he had managed to save had all been spent on the journey to the Demon Lord's Castle. He hurried into the city's adventurer's guild.
The adventurer's guild had been sturdily built. It wasn't the sort of dilapidated structure that looked like it might collapse at any moment. Proper brickwork made it clear the guild was running as it should.
"Mm."
The young man nodded in satisfaction. A place had to at least be like this to qualify as the starting point of his heroic tale. Puffed up with dreams, the young man stepped inside the guild.
The interior was quite bustling.
"Anyone heading out to slay Goblins? I'll only charge two silvers per head."
"Wait — one gold per head, are you serious!? We're barely scraping by as it is!"
"That's why the Helena Magic Tower pays better than that other tower over there. We've been getting robbed blind all this time, damn it."
Tough-looking adventurers were recruiting party members, haggling over hire fees, and swapping useful information. There wasn't a single person there who wasn't at least four years older than the young man.
The young man felt a twinge of nervousness, but the more he did, the more he told himself he had to step forward with confidence.
After registering as an adventurer at the reception desk — and since he didn't have the one-gold registration fee, the young man had to go into debt yet again — he walked steadily toward the center of the building.
'I can do it. Schiller, you're the kind of guy who can pull this off.'
The young man drew in a deep breath.
'I'm different from these washouts. I've had a sword in my hand since I was a kid. Why would I be afraid of some Demon Lord? I'll succeed and return home in glory. All right, let's go. Time to make it spectacular.'
The young man let out a booming shout.
"Adventurers, those of you closest to the life of warriors!"
His voice was loud. The adventurers, who had been chatting noisily, fell silent and turned to look at the young man.
When over a dozen faces as rough as thugs' all stared at him at once, the young man nearly cowered. But they were only adventurers, weren't they? He pressed on, shouting once more.
"You too must have once harbored the passion to slay the Demon Lord. Look at yourselves now—content to eke out a living by hunting nothing more than Goblins. Are you not ashamed of the life you lead!"
"……."
"As you well know, the Demon Lord Dantalion is a criminal condemned by all heaven and earth. If we, as humans, do not bring him down, the Goddesses shall not forgive us!"
The adventurers' expressions didn't change in the slightest. They simply watched the young man in silence.
The young man rejoiced inwardly. The adventurers were listening. They were only human after all, just like him. Even if they hadn't acted on it, they must have once harbored the fervor to one day bring down the Demon Lord.
He spoke with renewed confidence.
"I am Schiller, a knight and graduate of the Friedrich Academy. I have come all this way to slay the Demon Lord Dantalion. If there is any among you brave enough to etch your name into the annals of human history alongside me, then come forth! Do not be shy—step forward with your heads held high! Together, let us defeat the Demon Lord Dantalion!"
A brief silence followed.
The young man congratulated himself on a reasonably decent speech. His voice hadn't been overly dramatic or weak. He hadn't looked down on his audience or groveled before them either. In his own estimation, the speech had possessed a classical beauty.
But what the adventurers gave him in return was not a rousing response.
"Ahahahahahaha!"
Laughter. A thunderous wave of it.
Over forty adventurers laughed in unison. Even the clerk at the reception desk was snickering. And the laughter wasn't even long—the adventurers laughed their hearts out for precisely five seconds, then turned their heads away as though nothing had happened.
The adventurers resumed their conversations as before.
"I'll take two silver coins per Goblin head—"
"Make it five silver. That's rock bottom. Come on, you've got a conscience too, don't you……."
"Yeah, the magic towers run by the Demonkin are surprisingly more trustworthy. At first, I felt the same way, but once you get used to it, it's not a big deal. They work fine."
After a brief lull, the adventurer guild had become just as noisy as it had been moments ago.
"……."
Only the young man couldn't grasp the situation. What on earth was this reaction?