Hero Esmeralda (9)
Lilith, chief of the Demon Army's Operation Staff and aide to the Demon King himself, was enjoying a moment's respite with a cup of coffee as she worked through her duties.
By now, word of the outcome of Jim's escape plan should have arrived. With the firm conviction that this time would be different, Lilith accepted the incoming transmission with all the elegance her posture could muster.
A brief exchange of pleasantries followed.
And then came the heart of the matter.
"—It failed, you see?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
How could the two of them have traded such calm greetings with this waiting on the other end? Lilith was flustered by the sight of a subordinate who wasn't merely thoughtless, but seemed to lack the capacity for thought altogether.
"What on earth went wrong?"
She had poured considerable effort into this operation. The moment they'd decided to exploit the backstory Jim had built for himself, she had already brought in an actor with genuinely superb skills.
And not just any actor—a human one.
Which meant the odds of him being exposed as a demon had never existed in the first place. Even if his acting fell short and drew suspicion, the fact that the man was human meant the Hero couldn't have carelessly accused him of anything.
"Yes, so here's what happened..."
***
A creepy middle-aged woman had suddenly started groping at me, insisting I was her son.
Who is this person?
"Wh-who are you, exactly?"
Saying I'm her son? I'm an orphan. I came into this world without ever knowing my parents' faces.
"Um... it seems you've lost a son, ma'am, but you've got the wrong person."
It was pitiable, truly—but refusing her flatly here was the kind thing to do.
A parent who had lost a child, drifting without purpose all the way into these deep mountains. Should I play along with her grief and escape with her? It would get me out of the Hero's party easily enough, yes—but it would carve a wound into one person's heart that could never be erased.
Wounds like that only hurt worse the longer they go undiscovered. I held no grudge against her; I had no wish to inflict such pain on this poor human.
Besides, I'd already been through this exact thing once before.
Back when I followed those damn bastards thinking they were an extraction team—how nearly did that end for me?
"Th-that's right, you are my son..."
"No, I'm not."
"You're supposed to say yes... We clearly agreed you would..."
"Ma'am, I know it's painful, but look properly. I am not your son."
"Ahaha, you hear that? I think you've got the wrong person. And do be careful around here, you know. There are rumors that quite a few people in this area have been bought off by demons and are plotting unspeakable schemes."
"......"
"Say, for instance, someone who accepted a fortune in gold to put on a little performance."
"I—I must have been mistaken. You look so exactly like my son that I... wait, no—now that I look, this isn't even our village? My, my. I've come to the wrong place entirely."
The mysterious woman scurried off in a hurry. Come to think of it—thanks to what the Hero had said—I found myself wondering whether that woman hadn't been planted as part of an operation to spring me out of here. But no, surely not.
Nah. There was no prior agreement, so they wouldn't have just dragged some stranger in and had her act on the spot.
I had no desire to gamble on a mere possibility with nothing confirmed, and no desire to drag an innocent human into my mess either.
***
Only after hearing her subordinate's report did Lilith finally understand.
"Damn it all—this was deliberate."
The trouble was, she was not the sort of person capable of remembering that no prior agreement had ever been made. The great flaw in her carelessness was her assumption that everyone else thought exactly as she did.
Unfortunately, Jim's intelligence was vastly lower than Lilith imagined.
*I should have started by apologizing for what happened with Lieutenant General Eleven... He deliberately refused to escape even when the chance came—no doubt as a protest against me.*
Lilith had long since concluded that Jim was more than capable of escaping under his own power.
And why wouldn't she? This was the man whom the Legion Commander Eleven had rated as a candidate for the next Demon King.
Somewhere along the way, Lilith had come to believe that even the very need for an escape plan was all a test of her—another trial Jim had devised.
Her judgment clouded by his inflated reputation, she failed to realize there wasn't a single reason in the world why he would test her.
She was simply looking at one surface of the situation, and burning with resentment over it.
"Hnnngh..."
The tables had turned on Lilith, who had spent her whole career puppeting other people around.
In secret, alone, she wept and lamented her own fate.
Of course, if anyone deserved to lament a plan gone sideways, it was Jim.
"An apology. I have to apologize. Even now, I must set things right."
Already scarred deeply by failure after failure, Lilith knelt where no one could see and placed the call with the utmost care.
"This is Lieutenant General Lilith..."
On the cold stone floor, her black stockings snagging thread by thread as she bowed and scraped, Lilith carried on the transmission.
***
Her voice on the line was unusually deflated today.
I couldn't tell what it was about, but apparently she wanted to apologize for the other night.
Honestly, I don't know exactly what happened then—I was unconscious for most of it—but it seems the culprit behind my blackout was the operation team.
Lieutenant General Lilith, it turned out, was the kind of superior who would bow her head for her subordinates' mistakes.
Anyway, the operation had apparently failed.
Frankly, considering the state the Hero was in when I woke up this morning, I could tell that success and failure had been separated by a single sheet of paper.
Lieutenant General Lilith really is on another level.
She's operating on a completely different plane from the extraction teams that have been sent after me all this time.
And she made it back alive, no less. I find myself looking forward to what comes next.
Just how deep does Lieutenant General Lilith's prowess run? I simply can't wait.
I said I couldn't wait. I said it.
"With you putting it that way, I'll be sure to meet your expectations next time. Haha."
"...Nyeh heh."
The reply came back sounding like someone who'd cried herself hoarse and gotten her tongue tangled, but I'm sure it's fine.
My ears are clearly the ones at fault.
"Jim! Is your preparation finished?"
"...Yes."
*I* was the one who threw a fit about wanting to return to the village. Granted, that was supposed to be part of the plan—but with the operation a failure, there was no choice but to pay the price.
"Haha, we'll be raising a gravestone now. It'll be fulfilling work, won't it?"
"...Of course."
She'd said it was for the honored graves of the dead villagers, so first we had to erect gravestones that didn't exist.
My spine had gone cold the moment the Hero hauled over a conveniently massive boulder, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine she'd hand me a hammer and chisel and tell me to carve the names myself.
Why didn't she prepare this beforehand?
It was enough to make a man weep.
"Ah, judging by the size of the village and the number of houses, at least seven families must have lived here. Fourteen people or so, wouldn't you say?"
Esmeralda asked with a beaming smile.
She torments me as if she intends to air every grievance from this journey right here and now.
Of course, knowing her personality, she probably said it without a single thought behind it.
"...It was seven people."
"Are you sure? Really? Only that many? Something feels awfully suspicious—or is it just my imagination?"
"There were seven houses, I said."
"Right, right? Then let's carve the names of the village's seventeen residents, shall we?"
"Huh? It went up...?"
"Carve them, hmm?"
Esmeralda, smiling sweetly as she pressed the chisel and hammer into my hands.
There was a strange, inescapable pressure in that smile, and so I carved the names of villagers who had never existed into the gravestone.
Even coming up with the names was an ordeal. Naming them carelessly in the demon fashion would be the perfect way to rouse the Hero's suspicion, so I was forced to labor over plausible-sounding human names.
Damn it all. I've never agonized this hard even over my own name.
"Hee hee."
Esmeralda, the very person who'd put me to work, sat atop the great boulder, swinging her legs back and forth as she watched.
I used to think she looked like an idiot, but ever since the bandage incident, I'd come to find even that side of her rather cute.
And her skirt was short, so with just a little effort one could glimpse what lay beneath...
"...Jim. Focus, please."
"Ah—yes, ma'am."
I got scolded. Had I really been staring that blatantly?
Still, I did see it. Black, of all things—far more provocative than I'd expected.
"Nngh...?"
"Hm?"
A strange sound made me turn my head again, and there was the Hero, primly straightening her skirt.
The glare she fixed on me was anything but ordinary. I'd been caught, apparently. I dutifully turned back to my carving and continued etching the villagers' names into the stone...
But that glare, boring into my back, never let up until the work was done.
***
The Heavenly God Order.
The Saintess, Irina Saintis, was receiving a status report on Esmeralda, who had set out on her journey alongside Jim.
"Oh my—the Hero, you say?"
News that she had encountered a being presumed to be a Legion Commander, no less. Irina narrowed her eyes, then asked in a voice cold as frost.
"And the corpse? Was it recovered?"
"No, Saintess... she is still alive."
"Oh my, what a relief. Then she must be wounded—she's on her way to the Order now, isn't she?"
"That is correct."
"I see. Thank you for the report. You may go now—you're looking rather pale."
"...Thank you."
Irina bestowed a benevolent smile upon the pallid believer.
But the moment the believer saw that expression, she trembled as though stricken with terror and fled the room as if running for her life.
"Can't even manage her own face anymore. She won't last long."
Irina turned away.
In the direction of her gaze lay a bloodied mass of flesh.
"All that fuss, over disposing of a mere insect."
This was the torture chamber.
She had tortured demons here, over and over again.
How much of her holy power could they endure? What did they know?
Each and every one of those answers had to be dragged out through pain. Nothing more.
It was simply what had to be done.
Now that the Order had lost its legitimacy, only by doing whatever it took could she keep it alive.
The Order had lost its god—its very symbol—and could never be free of that responsibility.
That was why everyone had abandoned it. To flee from the guilt, one had no choice but to betray the god completely.
And so Irina had chosen to become cruel—and thus she seized control of the Order.
"Ahh..."
And now, with all of it grown so utterly loathsome, so excruciatingly painful—
"I find myself missing Jim today. I wonder if he'll come back with the Hero."
She thought of Jim—the only half-blood demon she had ever met.
Yes. He was what she needed.
Only that existence could offer Irina any comfort at all.