When I arrived at the Habsburg Imperial Palace through instantaneous transmission.
The Demon Lords had poured out into the palace square, creating an air of utter chaos. On this night, the moonlight was brighter than it had ever been. The clouds' only role was to occasionally cast a faint violet halo around the moon.
Among them was a Demon Lord wearing nothing but undergarments. Upon hearing the news that Paimon and I had been attacked, he had rushed out in a panic without bothering to dress. That was Sitri, as it happened. Even from a distance, Sitri was maintaining a sinister silence.
That sense of foreboding lay over the entire square like a low-hanging fog. Without exception—Mountain Faction, Plains Faction, Neutral Faction—every last one of them had fallen silent and was staring in this direction.
"......"
I took a step forward.
A heavy fog seemed to catch around my ankles, as though trying to hold my stride in place. With every subsequent step, rather than breaking free from the fog, my calves sank ever deeper into it.
I passed through the main gate trimmed in gold and walked in a straight line toward the square. It was almost comical. Every now and then, the lighting in the night sky shifted in time with my footsteps. The moonlight would shine down upon my toes, only to be swallowed by clouds once more.
"Hah......"
Someone let out a moan—or perhaps it was a scream. As the distance closed, the Demon Lords realized that I was not merely walking over alone. I was cradling someone in my arms.
A woman with hair redder than roses.
The Demon Lords drew sharp breaths.
"That can't be......"
"Gods above."
Some covered their mouths with their palms in disbelief, while others stared at me unblinkingly. The night clouds parted and moonlight spilled through. Thanks to that, the Demon Lords were able to observe more closely.
Paimon was drenched in blood. Her snow-white face had been grotesquely smeared with blood flowing from her mouth. Her blood was painted across my lips, the corners of my mouth, and my left cheek as well.
I gently set Paimon down in the center of the square. Then I straightened my back and looked around.
"No...... no, this isn't real......"
Sitri crumpled to the ground. The nearby Mountain Faction Demon Lords braced her up. With both her arms draped over them, Sitri kept repeating the same words—"It isn't real...... it isn't real......"—like a broken music box.
Yes, Sitri.
It was me.
I killed this woman.
I planted delusions in her, exploited her faith, toyed with her, twisted everything, promised her the greatest happiness, and then ripped that happiness away with these two hands.
"...My dear comrades."
This woman's name was Paimon.
"Just now, barely thirty minutes ago, our most beloved and honored lover drew her last breath. Right here. In my arms, she became a cold corpse."
I remembered clearly what she had said to me. My mouth was speaking to the Demon Lords, but my mind was thinking of Paimon.
— Before the meeting and ball begin, she thinks the seventy-first ranked Demon Lord, Dantalion, must be interrogated.
— Dantalion killed Andromalius without hesitation. She can't help but wonder: Is he truly one of us, the Demon Lords? If he is, how could he so easily murder another Demon Lord?
— She still has things she needs to confront Dantalion about!
Our first meeting was almost the worst possible.
We knew absolutely nothing about each other.
"The traitors... were eight Demon Realm Grand Dukes. The ringleader was Grand Duke Ulbala—this traitor intended to imprison Paimon and me, then force Walpurgis Night upon you all. Taking the two of us as hostages, he planned to establish slavery as a permanent, unbreakable institution. That was Grand Duke Ulbala's stated motive... those goddamn sons of bitches!"
I bit my lip in fury. My lip split and blood trickled out. I had become someone who could pull off this level of acting with my eyes closed—good enough that I no longer needed to rely on any skill.
— Do you have a handkerchief?
— From now on, please always carry a handkerchief. It's what a gentleman should do.
That much time had passed.
You had been involved in every trial I endured. Both my near-imprisonment at Walpurgis Night and my near-fall into ruin within the Crescent Alliance Army—both because of you.
"...Seven of the Grand Dukes sided with us, and ultimately a fierce battle erupted among the Grand Dukes. At first, we had the advantage. We succeeded in driving the traitors out. But the traitor remnants were still intact, and our allies pursued them to finish the job. And then... while most of our forces were away..."
My throat seized up and I parted my lips again and again. The tears thickened and blurred my words. Every bit of it was deliberate acting. I was fully aware that I was performing flawlessly. My expression laid bare rage, grief, and shock in raw, naked detail.
If I had been acting solely for my own sake, Paimon, you were something else entirely.
— Our Demon Lord, how utterly foolish he was! He thought he was protecting the Demonkin. He thought he was fighting for the Demonkin. But look. It wasn't the Demon Lord who ended up dying.
— It was hypocrisy and deception. Even if the continent were unified, hypocrisy and deception would never cease. They would only burn brighter and more splendidly, eventually consuming the Human Realm, the Demon Realm, and the entire world!
You were no hypocrite who abandoned your own kind to love only humans, no tyrant so bound by the title of Demon Lord that you turned away from what was truly right, and no coward who could never bring yourself to act on what you believed.
— Did you know? This happened back when Barbatos and the girl were still friends.
— We were joking around, saying that if, by some impossible chance—one in a million—she ever fell for a man, what kind of man would he be?
— …Close your eyes, Dantalion.
You were goodness itself, to me.
And so, having killed you, I am nothing if not a villain without excuse.
"Paimon… Paimon, she died shielding me!"
I wailed.
"The assassin lunged at me. I couldn't do anything—I just stood there like a fool… And then Paimon threw her arms around me, and the assassin drove his blade into her back again and again… again and again…"
I twisted my face into a mess of anguish. There was only one reason I called up memories of Paimon: to wring genuine emotion from the depths of my chest. I wasn't mourning her. I was exploiting my memories of her.
"Again and again! Every time the blade tore into her back, I felt it—felt the vibration through her body! With every swing of the assassin's arm, Paimon crumpled a little more! I could feel it… I could feel it… but I couldn't do a single thing!"
For the sake of a more perfect lie.
"Paimon never let go of me until the very end… She held me in both arms to the very end… shielding me… She was coughing up blood, and that blood covered my face, and even so… even so, Paimon, until her very last moment…"
I screamed like a wounded beast.
No more words were needed. I simply vomited out raw, unfiltered emotion. The night air trembled. I buried my face in both hands, dug my nails into my flesh, and let a rasp of blood escape my throat. The Demon Lords were overwhelmed by my fury.
A truth was being forged here.
"Revenge...!"
Between scream after scream, I spat out words in broken fragments.
"Revenge without mercy! All of them... every last one...!"
I was now the only person in the world who knew what Paimon had truly been.
If I dyed her with lies, with no one left to correct or fix that, it would simply remain as truth. That meant I bore unlimited responsibility for one woman named Paimon.
"Destroy them, and destroy them again!"
So that no excuse would be possible.
So that Paimon would bear no fault whatsoever. So that no responsibility would need to rest on her shoulders. It was I who had plundered and defiled everything she was, right to the very end.
Therefore.
Without a single trace of vagueness.
Without the slightest hesitation.
No wavering, no regret, no doubt, no remorse.
"Please avenge her...!"
That I, Dantalion, was the one who killed Paimon.
"Kill every last one of those treacherous bastards in the most horrific, most wretched way imaginable!"
That it was I, Dantalion, who was Paimon's killer.
I could nail it into the world as an irreversible truth.
I knelt down right there.
Thud—my forehead struck the stone floor.
"Please... I beg you... comrades, I know I have made mistakes and fallen short in countless ways. But her revenge... I would give everything I have, if only you would grant her revenge... please, I beg you..."
Thud, thud—I smashed my forehead against the floor again and again.
In a world gone pitch black, the only sound was the dull, heavy thud of my skull striking stone. Skin split open. Blood flowed. I hammered my skull against the ground as if trying to imprint my death mask into the earth. It felt exactly like swinging a hammer downward.
Then someone embraced me.
Soft, warm palms cupped over both of my ears.
"It's okay."
I lifted my head with tremendous effort. Blood trickling from my forehead made it impossible to open my right eye. I peered ahead with my left, barely making out the shape before me.
Sitri was there, smiling.
Her whole body trembled as though she might collapse at any moment, but it was unmistakably a smile.
"It's okay, Dantalion. It wasn't your fault."
"……."
"Yeah. It wasn't your fault, so… everything is going to be alright. All of it."
Sitri pressed her cheek firmly against my forehead. Something other than blood ran down my face. It was Sitri's tears. They streamed from Sitri's eyes, slid across my skin, washed through the blood, and slowly traced along the line of my jaw.
A mixture of my blood, Paimon's blood, and Sitri's tears dripped quietly onto the ground.
"It's going to be okay… yeah, it really will be okay…."
Sitri—the person who should have been grieving more than anyone else in this place—was choking back sobs with everything she had, trying to comfort me. She probably didn't realize it, but in this moment after Paimon had vanished, Sitri's actions could well be taken as representative of the entire Mountain Faction.
In other words.
My acting had succeeded once more.
"It's my fault… if I hadn't been here… if only I didn't exist, Paimon would have…"
"Yeah. It's okay."
"Paimon…"
I burst into tears while clinging to Sitri.
I had never expressed my emotions so intensely in front of the Demon Lords before. I had always been calm and composed, sometimes even adopting a mocking posture toward my counterparts. And here I was, bawling like a child in a complete mess. That unexpectedness would lend greater credibility to the act.
I'm not sure how long I cried.
At some point, I lost consciousness.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a bedroom. Daisy was sitting beside the bed, nursing me. The window was brightly lit. At least one night had passed, minimum.
I stared at Daisy with a blank expression. Daisy, wearing an equally blank expression, spoke.
"It has been two days since you lost consciousness, Father-in-law. Yesterday, the Crescent Alliance Army was formed and deployed to the Demon Realm. The supreme commander is Demon Lord Sitri."
"......"
I closed my eyes and nodded.
Deceiving the world was this easy.
This easy.