After the meeting ended.
Princess Elisabeth untied her hair ribbon the moment she stepped into her office. Then she hurled it onto the floor.
"I can't take this anymore!"
"C-Calm down, Your Highness."
"Calm down? Do I look calm right now? What — sexual morality, this and that? Those son of a bitches — if I could chew you up and swallow you whole, I'd gladly become a cannibal!"
Unable to contain her fury, the princess kicked the wall. Crack — a hole was punched clean through it. She was a swordswoman who wielded Aura freely, and the wall couldn't withstand her monstrous strength, crumbling apart. Knight Charles flinched, squeezing his eyes shut. When she got excited, not even the Emperor himself could hold her back.
"The people of the empire are dying day by day from the Black Death! The treasury was bankrupted long ago by their little entertainments — only the military is still running properly. And what are those bastards doing?"
"Please refrain from such vulgar words upon your sacred lips—"
"Those sons of bitches are huddled up at the meeting, sitting around shamelessly running their mouths! They haven't done a lick of work! They've dumped all their domain management on proxies, and here they are, congregated in the Imperial Capital, doing nothing but living decadent days!"
The princess snorted with rage.
"This country is finished. It's nothing but a sewer."
"Y-Your Highness."
The knight broke into a cold sweat.
Everyone on the continent — not just the citizens of the Habsburg Empire — knew that the empire was on its last legs. But this was still the Imperial Palace, the beating heart of the empire. Insult the state so brazenly, and who knew what charges might be pinned on you. Despite the knight's remonstrance, the princess kept shouting.
"So my participation in the meeting is that much of an eyesore, is it?!"
She saw right through it. The nobles were incompetent, but when it came to their own interests, they were cunning as devils. The reason they wasted time on utterly worthless drivel about sexual morality and whatnot was — none other than to drive the princess out.
It had been a long time since the First Prince and the Second Prince had attended the Supreme Council. They were probably off somewhere right now, grabbing whichever serving girl was handy and having a grand time. Into that situation, the princess had shown up at the meeting. For the nobles who had aligned themselves with the First and Second Princes, it was deeply uncomfortable.
They feared the agenda might tilt in the princess's favor. So they deliberately steered the discussion toward topics that would be excruciatingly difficult for a dignified lady — affairs, incest — anything to keep the princess from intervening. If word somehow spread that "the princess showed tremendous interest in homosexuality and incest," there was no telling how far the political fallout would reach… In the end, the princess had no choice but to wait in silence until that grueling sexual discourse finally drew to a close.
The nobles had been issuing an indirect protest to Princess Elisabeth.
─ Even if we were to play the fool, we have no honor or reputation to lose.
─ But Your Most Noble Highness the Princess has far too much to lose, does she not?
─ This is a meeting room in which only nobles may participate. Your Highness the Princess, please do not soil your ears to no avail — I humbly ask that you withdraw. Matters of state, great and small, we shall deliberate and settle on our own.
They had thoroughly excluded the princess from the meeting. Even the nobles who belonged to the princess's faction had concurred. They would no doubt rationalize it as an intention to spare her the burden of work, but how could the princess not see through their true motives? They simply did not want their prerogative to decide the empire's critical affairs infringed upon.
In the end, the meeting concluded well past its scheduled time. Not a single agenda item had been resolved before the nobles dispersed. And that was not all. Less than an hour after the meeting ended, rumors were already circulating among the maids that the princess had unjustly assaulted two of the nobles. The princess was freshly reminded of just how shamelessly grotesque and thoroughly suffocating a self-interested faction could be when it no longer cared about appearances.
"My, my. The sound of Your Excellency's kicking echoes through every corner of the palace."
The office door opened and a man stepped inside. He wore a genial smile. The man was the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and a member of the princess's faction. The princess glanced at him and let out a sigh.
"Lord Hidelberg. I'm saying this so you'll hear — so you'll hear."
"Even so, the nobles won't care. You know that, don't you? They are universally acknowledged as the thickest-skinned people on the continent."
"I'm going to lose my mind."
She sank into the plush sofa. After the scene she'd caused, her anger had finally subsided. She sighed.
"I'm only sixteen years old, and I'm already growing gray hairs. I'd wager you I'll die of anger-induced illness within ten years."
"Your Excellency, your hair is silver to begin with. Even if gray hairs appeared, no one would be able to tell."
"Are you seriously trying to pass that off as a joke right now?"
The princess pouted. The Vice Minister chuckled.
The smile faded from his face, and he spoke gravely.
"A messenger has arrived. The Bretagne-Batavia Alliance forces have seized the fortress of Crocell, ranked forty-ninth among the Demon Lords. They reportedly mobilized three thousand troops. According to what the alliance troops are boasting, the Demon Lord's Castle was filled to the brim with gold, silver, and treasure. Each soldier received ten gold in shares, so it's probably not entirely fabricated."
The princess's expression turned serious as well.
"So they're trying to redirect domestic discontent toward the Demon Lord. A rather filthy scheme."
"They're fast movers, Your Excellency. The Black Death was ultimately spread by the Demon Lord. The royal family punished him for it — so don't lay the blame on the royal house... I apologize, Your Excellency. But there's nothing much our Habsburg Empire can do about it either."
"What does the military say?"
"'Whenever His Imperial Majesty the Emperor gives the order, they're ready,' they say."
The princess sighed.
"Minister of Foreign Affairs."
"Yes, Your Excellency."
"Do you know why this rotten country is still holding together?"
The Minister of Foreign Affairs furrowed his brows as if troubled. He shook his head slightly and spoke.
"By the sacred grace of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor and the blessings of the gods..."
"You're spouting hot air. There's only one reason: the military is far too competent."
Princess Elizabeth grabbed the wine bottle off the table and drank straight from it. It was hardly the etiquette one would expect of royalty, but neither Minister of Foreign Affairs Hidelberg nor the knight Charles could say a word to stop her. She drained nearly half the bottle in one gulp.
"Ahh. Dissatisfaction keeps piling up at home. Repeated crop failures, a ruined economy, policy blunders, and this year on top of it all, a plague. Every time this discontent builds, our great Habsburg Empire goes and invades somewhere. And wins. The imperial subjects become intoxicated by military victory and forget the hardships of reality for a little while... That's how it works. Covering up national failures with military successes."
Whether by a streak of luck, the Habsburg Empire kept producing brilliant generals. In the last hundred years, the wars the Empire had lost could be counted on one hand. And even those were not significant defeats. The subjects took pride in the Empire's might and consoled themselves that their difficult lives were still better than those in other countries.
"It's a grotesquely distorted structure. The court nobles believe the military will sort everything out eventually. The commoners are no different. Rather than trying to resolve things politically, they throw themselves into the army... In the Empire, the military is the one institution that doesn't distinguish between commoners and nobles, after all."
"That the military is competent is a tremendous blessing."
"I know that!"
She slammed her hand on the table.
"That very competence is eating the Empire alive! The ministers—when policies fail, they think they can just cover it up with war, don't they! It's the same this time. They're putting forward a ridiculously simple solution: relieve the discontent caused by the Black Death by waging war against the Demon Lord!"
"Your Excellency."
"Where did the scrutiny go for failing to implement proper quarantine measures? Where did the criticism go for failing to secure large quantities of Black Herb?... I'm sick of it. They don't have an ounce of accountability."
Silence fell. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and the knight stood there at a loss for words. The princess realized that venting here would accomplish nothing. She apologized candidly.
"I'm sorry. I showed you an embarrassing side of myself."
"Not at all, Your Excellency. We know that you worry about the Empire's safety more than anyone. Still, we believe it would be right to join the assault on the Demon Lord's Castle as soon as possible."
The Minister of Foreign Affairs brightened his voice.
"I have already investigated a suitable Demon Lord's Castle in advance. Your Excellency, have you perhaps heard of the Kunkuska Trading Company?"
"The Kunkuska Trading Company?"
The princess fell into thought. Among the roughly three hundred trading firms she could recall, the name Kunkuska was nowhere to be found. She shook her head.
"That's a first."
"It's a trading company known only to an extremely select few. That's because it operates in the Demon Realm. They can readily procure goods that humans cannot obtain on their own, so the highest-ranking nobles swear by them."
"Oh?"
The boredom vanished from the princess's eyes. A trading company operating in the Demon Realm—that was rather intriguing. Sensing her mood shift, the Minister of Foreign Affairs launched into a more leisurely and animated spiel. He flaunted his extensive knowledge of the Demon Realm, entertaining the princess's ears.
The man was a young, up-and-coming nobleman in his twenties, possessing both ability and ambition. Having recognized that the Empire's future lay with the princess, he had sworn his loyalty to her. He was perfectly willing to put on whatever expression or adopt whatever tone of voice would please his sovereign. The princess sensed his devotion and was quietly pleased.
'A blessing in disguise. There are many talented people among the young nobles.'
The ministers currently governing the Empire were, without exception, selfish. Their successors were a different matter. They knew honor and were competent in ways one could never have imagined from their fathers' bloodlines. Exactly ten years. In just ten years, they would inherit their titles. The Empire could transform into something entirely unlike what it was now……
'All the Empire needs is ten years.'
The princess had barely managed to recover her smile. She was holding on day by day on hope for the future. As she laughed at the Minister of Foreign Affairs's silver tongue, a strange question suddenly crossed her mind.
'...How did such capable children spring from such worthless nobles?'
It was a question she had never considered before. She fell into contemplation but soon stopped thinking about it. After all, she herself was the daughter of an emperor driven mad by lust. The old adage that children take after their parents seemed to be false, after all. What nagged at her was simply this: the chasm between the perfectly incompetent current generation and the perfectly capable next generation.
It was as if someone had deliberately divided the eras this way.
'But that's impossible.'
The princess scoffed at herself. Still, there was hope. In just ten years, the irresponsibility, selfishness, and supreme incompetence that currently plagued the Empire would fade quickly as well. Papering over the nation's political ills with war—it was nothing more than a stopgap, but it would hold up easily enough for ten years or so.
"According to information secretly obtained from the Kunkuska Trading Company, this place—the Demon Lord's Castle of Belial, ranked sixty-eighth—is said to contain particularly vast quantities of gold, silver, and treasure."
"Sixty-eighth? Isn't that rather low? Normally, the higher the rank, the more spoils one can plunder from a Demon Lord's Castle."
"That was my concern as well, but the Kunkuska Trading Company assured us that..."
After a brief discussion, the princess stamped her approval on the military expedition proposal. There was little hesitation involved. The Habsburg Imperial Army, unlike the court's ministers, was highly competent. A Demon Lord ranked sixty-eighth could be swept away with a thousand Imperial soldiers alone.
To the princess, Demon Lords were fools. They could never unite. Thousands of years of history had proven it. Their attitudes would hardly change overnight just because one Demon Lord's Castle was under assault—that was what Princess Elizabeth was certain of.
With her consent, the military expedition proposal was approved by the Noble Assembly the very next day. The nobles welcomed it as well, since it allowed them to redirect the commoners' grievances—caused by the Black Death—toward the Demon Lords. The Imperial Army, already in the process of mobilizing, moved immediately upon receiving the order.
There were two things Princess Elizabeth and the Habsburg Empire had overlooked.
First, it was not just the Habsburg Empire—every nation in the Human Realm had dispatched armies toward a suitably targeted Demon Lord's Castle of its own. Contrary to the princess's expectations, a total of twelve Demon Lord's Castles had been engulfed in flames of war.
Second—the information that the Kunkuska Trading Company had spread had been fabricated.
"So they're saying the food in the Demon Realm is always spicy! Good heavens, I nearly had my tongue jumping out of my mouth!"
"Heh heh."
The young princess let out a soft laugh at the Foreign Minister's exaggerated gestures.
She never realized that all of this was unfolding exactly as a single Demon Lord had planned. Not her, nor anyone among the leadership of the twelve nations that existed on the continent.