The Worst Punishment
When the interrogation ended, I went to find the Ashtar Duke.
He looked to be preparing for the army's withdrawal.
Whether Berna lived or died, I intended to leave that decision to him.
I had told Berna I would spare her, but the truth was I still couldn't tell whether keeping her alive was the better choice.
The Duke had risen to his current seat by stabilizing Ashtar when chaos returned after Eldacrad's death. I needed his counsel.
"So. What did you learn?"
"About the Four Heavenly Kings and the Demon King. The Four Heavenly Kings are chosen by the Demon King, fall into corruption, and receive an Authority. The problem is Seto of the Four Heavenly Kings."
I told him everything without holding back.
"Seto?"
"Among the Four Heavenly Kings, Seto is a rare existence who appears even in ancient records. Bernoa was captured by Seto and became a Heavenly King because of him."
Everything now pointed back to Seto.
Only by seizing Seto could we learn the long history of the Demon King and the Four Heavenly Kings.
"So everything may lead back to Seto?"
"Yes. And the fact that they always keep the number of Heavenly Kings at exactly four is strange as well."
That, too, was something we would only understand once we had Seto.
"If we kill Bernoa wrongly, a new Heavenly King might be created."
"Yes."
As expected, the Ashtar Duke was no ordinary man.
"If what you say is true, we cannot simply kill her. What do you think?"
"Berna's mental state is unstable. Honestly, I don't know either. Wouldn't Father understand this better than I do? You overcame Ashtar's age of chaos yourself, didn't you?"
At my words the Duke closed his eyes.
A brief, utterly still silence followed.
"If we resolve this by emotion alone, killing her for revenge wouldn't be so bad. But if Seto creates a new Heavenly King afterward…"
Having another Heavenly King whose abilities we knew nothing about would be a nuisance.
That new one might even be stronger than me.
With the Hero essentially useless right now, killing Berna was something that required careful thought.
"It would become troublesome. Keeping Berna—whom we can suppress and whose powers we already understand—alive might be better, but…"
"There's no guarantee she will cooperate with us. She might even work with Seto instead."
"Ah, you don't need to worry about that."
"Why?"
Because she saw me as her lord—or as the Demon King. That was why she had said she would submit to me.
"She looked at me and saw Eldacrad. My grandfather."
The Duke fell into thought again.
If this were only for Ashtar, the choice might have been easy. For the sake of all humanity, it was not a decision that could be made lightly.
"Then using her isn't a bad idea either. In front of Ashtar's people, we publicly execute some other demon with her face hidden. Meanwhile, you put that bitch to work under you. How about it?"
"Are you certain you're all right with that?"
This was the man who had prepared a campaign of retribution to avenge his father. Could he really make such a decision so easily?
"You've already made up your mind yourself, haven't you? You are the one who captured Berna. We already agreed her disposition was yours to decide."
"Understood."
If he was willing to give me that much, I was grateful. It was what I had been hoping for deep down.
"Raise the banner over Crad Castle! The border between Ashtar and the Demon Realm shall once more be Crad Castle!"
The Ashtar Duke left soldiers and engineers behind to expand Crad Castle.
He had officially declared its recapture.
The road home was clear; the Demon King's army had already been crushed, so nothing stood in our way.
I climbed into a carriage and sat with Celia.
"Lady Olivia, it's strange that Pector still hasn't shown himself."
"He and I made a promise. For a while the Empire won't come near us, and Ashtar won't be foolish enough to turn openly hostile either."
"Hmm. We defeated Berna as well. We could march straight to the Demon King's castle at this rate. Occupying a Demon King's castle with no Demon King in it… doesn't that sound good?"
"It would be a nightmare to hold. What's the point?"
What came next, I didn't know.
Seto might turn out to be a stronger enemy than I expected.
Or something else might still be waiting behind the Demon King.
Demon King's Castle
"I never thought Berna would lose like that. Stupid bitch. The moment anything involving Eldacrad comes up she completely loses her mind."
He had used that very trait to make her a Heavenly King. Still, he had already gotten all the use out of her that he needed, so it hardly mattered now.
"Do we need to create our all-powerful Demon King again?"
No. Not yet. Placing a Demon King on the board right now would be unwise.
He had honestly never expected that Ashtar girl to be so strong.
He had exploited Berna's unstable mind, of course, but even fighting her alone, he was no longer certain he could win.
He had tried a surprise attack while Ashtar's main force was away, only for the Duke's second son and those new weapons to inflict heavy losses without giving him anything meaningful in return.
I should have gone myself.
If he had led the army in person, things would never have turned out this way.
He had sent only his subordinate legions and lost everything. Bernoa had been captured, and Ashtar had barely been scratched.
He should have either gone after Ashtar himself or joined the battle at Crad to keep the rampaging Berna under control.
"Pector is useless as well. And how that girl can even use the Authorities granted by the Demon King is still a mystery."
The real problem was that Berna was still alive.
Ashtar should have cut off her head and burned the body without a second thought. Something had gone wrong somewhere.
As long as she lived, he could not create a new Heavenly King.
That was one of the conditions for making one.
Even so, things were still manageable.
He had already prepared plenty of sacrifices. Three Heavenly Kings would be more than enough to resurrect Him.
"It has been a long time. Before long we will certainly be able to bring the god down. The god who will create this absurd world anew!"
Seto did not particularly revere the existence called the Demon King.
From the beginning the true Demon King was neither an object of loyalty nor anything else worth serving.
It was merely a trace of the abyss left behind by the god.
People awakened the evil that was their true nature by that trace and fell. Those were the current Four Heavenly Kings.
"Then we must move the Church."
With the Heavenly Kings reduced to three, stimulating the Church would do.
The Empire was vast and thoroughly rotten; the Church would sink its roots in easily. That would be the place to start.
Two weeks had passed since the expedition ended.
Execute the Fallen Saint of the Four Heavenly Kings, Berna.
The Four Heavenly King Berna, dragged to Ashtar, was stoned by the people until blood ran from every part of her body.
Ordinary stones thrown by common folk would never have truly harmed her, of course.
Even so, the decades-old grudge of Ashtar's people who had lost their families was repaid to some degree.
The execution was carried out almost immediately.
Yes—on the surface, it was carried out.
What actually happened was an entirely different story.
"I can't believe you grabbed some other demon and burned her at the stake instead."
Bernoa, wrists still bound in shackles, twisted her face into a scowl.
Apparently she had never expected them to spare her.
I shrugged.
"We already caught every demon worth catching. What's the big deal? We just made a show of killing one of the things that was going to die anyway."
It was an internal matter on our side.
We hadn't killed an innocent person just to keep Bernoa alive.
The expedition had brought back more than enough of the Demon King's demons.
Those demons had been executed for the families of the soldiers who died on Eldacrad's original campaign.
We had avenged the failures of the past and settled public sentiment at the same time.
And then—
I decided to brand Bernoa with a Familiar Contract so I could put her to work.
It was originally a technique used by succubi, but with a little modification even mages could make use of it.
She had already declared she would obey of her own will. I needed it anyway to seal the power of a Heavenly King.
The mark had to be placed somewhere others wouldn't easily see. Women had more places to hide things than men, which was convenient.
I put it on the valley between her breasts.
Even after her fall Bernoa had never been the type to expose herself, so it shouldn't matter.
"With this, the contract is sealed."
I smiled in satisfaction. Bernoa, who had been keeping her eyes closed, opened them, saw the Familiar Crest between her breasts, and went pale with horror.
"Are you insane? You stamped a Familiar brand right on my cleavage?"
"Where else was I supposed to put it? It has to be somewhere it won't show easily. It's not as if there's some other seal that can bind the demonic energy of a Heavenly King."
I liked the brand. It looked like a simple mark on the surface, but it locked a shackle around her heart.
If she refused to obey, I could burst her heart on the spot and kill her.
"If it's on the cleavage, people can still see it! Any priest with half a skill will spot it the moment it enters their field of view. Where the hell did the granddaughter of that man leave her brain?"
"You're awfully picky. It won't be noticed. Wait—where are you moving it?"
"The lower abdomen is safest."
The lunatic actually relocated the brand from her cleavage—and of all places she chose the lower abdomen.
Exactly where a succubus would plant one over the sex.
The shape was already bad enough; now it looked even worse.
Still, it didn't matter. That spot really would be harder to discover.
"So what are you planning to make me do?"
"Become a Saint again."
"You want me to become a Saint of the Goddess Church? Again?"
"Yes."
Of course, a Saint in a completely different sense.
"Have you lost your mind? I already betrayed the Goddess! And you want me to—? The Pope would strip me naked in the capital of the Holy Kingdom and burn me alive! No, worse than that. A clean beheading would be kinder!"
Ugh. She still fretted over things like that just because she used to be a Saint.
At least she knew the Pope was the kind of man who would eat his own personality for breakfast. That earned her a tiny bit of goodwill.
In any case, I wasn't asking her to go back to the Holy Kingdom.
"What kind of nonsense is that? What I want is for you to take the position of Saint of the Imperial Church in my place."
"What?"
The look on her face—like a pigeon that had just been punched—was hilarious.
"Looking at you, you resemble me, don't you?"
"What does that matter?! If you hate me that much, just kill me! You want a former Saint to believe in that rootless Imperial Church?! Even if I abandoned the Goddess, I still know how thoroughly corrupt that place is!"
For a Fallen Saint she sure had a lot of scruples.
"Why would I give a woman who wants to die what she wants?"
"!!"
"Death is salvation for you. You think I'd grant you salvation? Don't make me laugh."
Apparently I had hit the mark. Bernoa's face went paper-white.
"Ugh… then what you're saying is…"
It wasn't anything special.
Leaving aside the fact that dying because of her love and guilt toward Eldacrad counted as salvation, what I was offering her was luxurious compared to everything she had done so far.
"I'm still the daughter of the Ashtar Duke. I have no choice but to leave my post often. So I want you to stand in for me."
"You vicious bitch!"
I'll take that as a compliment.
Thanks to someone, I now got to live with Celia. She deserved at least this much payback.
"Did you really think I was going to let you die quietly? Puhahaha! Do you have any idea how much trouble I went through because of you, you fucking—? You thought I'd just let you die?"
And it wasn't only Olivia who had suffered. Noah had suffered plenty too.
No matter how many times we killed them, armies kept pouring out of nowhere.
It was high time she did some suffering of her own.
"Damn it!"
"You're already as good as my subordinate. And it's not just Grandfather's will I carry. The blood of Ashtar and the blood of the minority peoples of the Ruined Land both run in me. Are you going to ignore the words of the granddaughter of the man you love?"
This woman could not defy me.
Everything else aside, the fact that I had been chosen by Eldacrad mattered. I shared his blood and inherited his will.
On top of that, the contract was perfect.
"A bitch like you should have been the Demon King."
"Answer me."
"Y-yes… I understand."
Bernoa answered with blood trickling from her lips.
I smiled brightly.
She had originally been a Saint.
Even after falling into a Heavenly King, she still had a Saint's pride. Forcing her to become the public face of the Imperial Goddess Church—a den of corruption and rot that was little more than a private army training camp—was the ultimate humiliation.
Nothing could be more degrading.
Bernoa glared daggers at me.
"If you didn't like it, you shouldn't have betrayed anyone."
Tsk, tsk. What an idiot.