Hero Esmeralda (8)
Lilith, who as always had been drafting the Demon King Army's various operations, gave a courteous bow of her head as she watched an aged man return on dignified footsteps.
"Ah, Lieutenant General Eleven, welcome back. How did it go? Lieutenant Jim?"
"He's a young man with something special about him, exactly as you said."
"Hehe, then I'm relieved."
Lilith nodded repeatedly.
A satisfying result. She still had no idea what Jim's specialness was, but hadn't Eleven, who had once stood in circumstances much like her own, verified it with his own eyes?
The suspicion buried deep inside her — that maybe Jim wasn't special after all — vanished cleanly in that very moment.
And with it, the probability that the Demon King Army's future would vanish cleanly along with it grew considerably higher.
"Lieutenant Jim must have had a hard time of it. Where is he now?"
She could simply have asked Eleven what Jim's specialness was, but Lilith chose to deflect rather than commit such a blunder.
It would be laughable, after all — claiming there was something special about him, then not knowing what it was. She would find out the truth by meeting Jim herself.
"Ah, well, about that. The mission itself failed."
"...Excuse me?"
Lilith was so flustered that for a moment she even forgot to maintain her composed act.
For an instant, her cool, intelligent expression took on a distinctly vacant look.
"Failed? But it was a plan that shouldn't have failed even accounting for a full-scale battle with the Hero... no, with the entire Hero Party at once, was it not?"
Lilith hadn't sent Eleven off without a thought.
However scatterbrained she might seem, she was a member of the Demon King Army's Operation Staff, and she had done her work well. There were places where she was oddly clumsy and strangely careless, true, but every operation she had drawn up until now had been rational and efficient.
That was unmistakable talent.
Which was precisely why facing failure yet again cut her to the bone.
"The problem was that I couldn't bring myself to trust your word and decided to test the boy myself. I apologize. Things have come to this."
"N-no, not at all."
Lilith flinched.
Truthfully, she had considered that given Eleven's temperament, he might well want to verify Jim's abilities himself. It had been, in effect, tacit approval on her part.
She couldn't open her mouth.
"At first I swung my sword at him intending to kill him. Instead, I was the one badly wounded. Not now, perhaps, but it wouldn't have been at all strange if that boy ascends to the throne of Demon King one day."
"I beg your pardon? You drew your sword on him out of nowhere? You tried to kill him? Did you... did you at least attempt to speak with him first?"
"Well, that's how it went."
How it went? What on earth is 'how it went' supposed to mean?!
No — wait. It was really that serious? He got on that being's bad side, took a beating, and came home? And he's recounting it like a badge of honor?
A massive headache struck Lilith alongside a wave of dizziness. The urge to throw in her resignation today of all days grew several times stronger.
Granted, it was she who had tacitly allowed such behavior. But she had never imagined he would attempt a fight to the death. No matter how you looked at it, a grown man of his years wouldn't torment a young man in the prime of his life.
And yet here he was — not only tormenting the boy but apparently cutting him with a blade as well, chuckling away like it was nothing. He looked for all the world like a madman.
They do say the older people get, the more shameless they become... but I never imagined he'd commit an atrocity like that and still carry himself with such composure.
Only then did Lilith truly understand that Eleven had risen to Legion Commander not merely through his strength and loyalty.
It was the shamelessness. And the madness.
"In any case, this was entirely my own unilateral decision, so no blame should fall on you."
"Have you... reported it?"
"No?"
No? This absolute madman?!
Eleven's unilateral decision? Yes, fine — it was, undeniably, his own doing. There was no excuse to be made there.
But does he seriously expect Lieutenant Jim to take that excuse at face value?
Wouldn't anyone naturally assume he was rationalizing? A Legion Commander had swung his sword at a talent so exceptional he'd been assessed as a potential future Demon King.
Anyone with eyes would see a plot to usurp the throne.
Lilith's knees went weak. Fear crept over her, slowly and inexorably.
And she fixed a glare on the culprit at the root of that terror.
"So in the end, you provoked him and made an enemy of him."
"That's how it went. I made a grave error. Deal with me under military law."
"Sigh..."
But because Eleven had so readily admitted his own fault, Lilith found herself unable to say a word.
Even if she wanted to rage, she couldn't; even if she wanted to reprimand him, military law demanded she judge the matter coldly and impartially.
It was precisely by conducting herself that way that she had been able to distinguish herself on the staff.
She knew. She knew it would be a waste to discard an asset like Eleven just like that.
So Lilith, as she always did, produced an answer befitting an officer.
"Go to the frontier for the time being and take time for quiet reflection, Lieutenant General Eleven. I will not press the charge deeply."
"Will that suffice?"
"You yourself said to deal with you under military law. And how, pray tell, is one supposed to apply military law to a Lieutenant General who merely failed to win the goodwill of a Lieutenant?"
"I see... Thank you."
Eleven's eyes went round with surprise at Lilith's astonishingly composed, level-headed response.
He was one of those who had quietly looked down on her all this while, convinced the Demon King had simply installed his own niece through nepotism. Seeing her render such a cold, precise judgment, he understood his eyes had not deceived him — he had simply been wrong.
And so one operation ended in failure.
In exchange for losing Jim's goodwill, Lilith gained Eleven's.
Ah! Damn it all — what is any of this?! Because of that crazy old man!
Naturally, being the slightly careless woman she was, she hadn't planned for any of that.
And so, after Eleven departed.
Lilith agonized over whether to contact Jim immediately and apologize, but before long she shook her head.
She wasn't mentally prepared yet. She would do it a little later.
With that thought, Lilith let out a long sigh and murmured:
"...Well, surely nothing worse than this could possibly happen now."
But her prediction was wrong.
And exactly three days later.
It was at the council where all the Legion Commanders — save Eleven — had gathered with the Demon King.
"By the way, what's become of that fellow Eleven? Haven't seen him around lately."
"Your Majesty, did you not order us to draw him out previously?"
"Ah, that's right, I did. So what's the man been up to these days? Lieutenant General Lilith."
"Eh?"
Lilith's mind went bone-white once again. Come to think of it, she had moved a Legion-Commander-level officer without so much as the Demon King's authorization.
Granted, she had been granted full executive authority — but she should at least have filed a report.
Instead, she had requisitioned personnel at her own discretion, the operation had failed, and she had then banished the man to the frontier as punishment, ordering him into a period of self-reflection.
Lilith's pupils shook without mercy.
"W-well... I imagine he's taking a rest cure somewhere with clean air and pleasant scenery by now?"
A twisted smile that had escaped her in her struggle to keep her composure.
And words that offered not the slightest excuse — only the bare, unadorned truth.
Because of it, the way the Legion Commanders looked at Lilith changed.
From the casual disdain they had always carried to the expression of people who had just glimpsed something terrifying.
...Lieutenant General Eleven.
She purged him?!]
She's not sane!
In that very moment.
Lilith was reborn as the single most dangerous individual in the Demon King Army's internal power struggles.
Ah, I'm jealous. I want to just lie back and rest forever too — and he gets to do it by committing an offense? That sneaky bastard, I'll kill him!
And Belphegor, who had taken Lilith's words entirely at face value, was genuinely contemplating a purge.
"Um... Jim?"
"Yes?"
"Ah... n-nothing."
Lately, Esmeralda had been continuing her journey with Jim feeling half-dead inside. Ever since that incident, every time the moment came to change his bandages, the surface thoughts she caught from him left her unable to hold her head up.
His manner, at least, was perfectly courteous. He hadn't seized the opportunity of the bandaging to make any lewd remarks, either.
It's not as if I can say anything about what just floats up out of his head...
But the thoughts themselves were disturbingly concrete.
Every time she read a surface thought along the lines of what if I tried this?, her whole body flinched against her will.
In effect, she was being relentlessly subjected to Jim's one-sided mental harassment.
Confronted with a situation she had never once experienced in her life, Esmeralda jolted.
"Hnng."
Jim's face, serious and proper as he carefully wound the bandages — and thoughts that were the exact opposite of that face.
Even knowing she was the one tending to him, those thoughts made it feel as though his hands were roaming all over her.
"Haah... I-I'll take it from here by myself."
[Note: He is thinking that something about this is incredibly erotic.]
Kgh! You goddamn...!
Esmeralda gritted her teeth.
She had seen Jim harbor thoughts like this about her other comrades often enough before.
Well, of course he had — dragged along against his will in the same party for three straight years and monitored around the clock, there had hardly been any opportunity to relieve himself. The poor bastard had been pent-up.
Ordinarily, Esmeralda had merely rolled her eyes in a kind of disgusted resignation at how Jim's urges never got past the thought stage. Never in her wildest imagination had she dreamed she would be the target.
I let my guard down. Getting this close to him was the problem.
Jim had always thought of Esmeralda as an idiot, which was why she had never even registered as an object of desire.
But the day she crossed paths with Eleven, an exhausted, dead-tired Esmeralda had asked him to bandage her up. That was where it all went wrong.
And of course, the fact that Jim himself had been strangely different ever since that day was also a problem.
No, come to think of it, that just makes me furious. This little bastard hasn't even been seeing me as a woman this whole time, has he?!
Feeling grimy all over yet with no idea what to do about the situation, Esmeralda could only flounder.
Anyone else could have brushed it off, surely. They might have been able to guess what Jim was thinking, but never to know it for certain.
But Esmeralda had no choice but to watch Jim's unfiltered inner thoughts in real time, and it left her utterly at a loss.
She couldn't even lash out over it — she simply had to ignore it — and she had precisely zero resistance to this kind of thing in the first place.
Which meant there was nothing for it but to sit there and take it.
"I'd better finish this quickly and go check on Irina first."
Never in her life had Esmeralda longed so desperately for the presence of a priest, who could heal wounds in a single stroke.
To the point of aching with longing for Irina — the very comrade she had guarded against more than anyone.
And so they arrived at Jim's hometown.
Obviously, it wasn't his real hometown. It was, one might say, the stage he had constructed in order to infiltrate the Hero Party.
Frankly, it left her unmoved.
The most dangerous enemy was already behind them, and she'd assumed nothing ahead could be worse than what they'd passed through.
Yes. Esmeralda had let her guard down.
She hadn't slackened entirely, of course — but worrying only about some potential horde of demons was what planted the seed of disaster.
"Jim? Jim, is that you?"
The village that had surely been in ruins carried, faintly but unmistakably, the atmosphere of a place where people lived — and a middle-aged woman she had never seen before came hurrying over, eyes wide.
"Huh? Who might you—"
"Oh my goodness! My son! You're alive! I thought I'd lost you for good!"
"..."
Esmeralda was aghast.
Astounding acting. A true thespian!
Only then did she understand that Jim's reason for returning to the village hadn't been merely to isolate the Hero.
Yes — Lilith had her careless streak, but she had unmistakably been competent.
The moment she grasped the failure of Eleven's operation, she had drafted an entirely new plan.
And that plan was a pretext that even the Hero herself could not easily dismiss.
[Note: He has accepted a large sum of money and agreed to cooperate with the performance.]
"Now we'll live together again. We'll go down to a safer city and build a life together! I swear I will never again neglect my family!"
It was the utter destruction of the very reason Jim had once tried to join the Hero Party in the first place.