The Weight of Observation
"You've flown a long way."
The Demon King, who had quietly surrendered himself to the irresistible gale, felt the wind coiling around him fall silent the moment he reached the Demonic Tree, and set his body down with care.
Chaos haze still shimmered across the surroundings, lingering residue of Pashupata's power, but it could do him no harm.
Suspicious points, and not just one or two.
Sitting beside the Demonic Tree, quietly turning the matter over, the Demon King muttered his doubts aloud.
First — how, from that great distance, had he gathered information, learned of his presence, and traveled here with such precision?
There could be no means by which humans exchanged information instantaneously across such distances.
This was obvious information that needed no verification.
Because he knew full well that it was his own kind who had built up human civilization in the first place.
Then it must be an ability belonging to that human alone.
The simple conclusion would be that Rohen had planted a spy among the Demon King's army — but that was impossible.
After all, the Demon King's army shared one another's memories; had there been a traitor, he could have been rooted out and killed at once.
Nor can I understand how he grasped which death I chose.
Even if information from the great war of the past remained, it would be information from that time — not from now.
I can be certain of it. He didn't get a feel for it. He knows.
Some power that could extract information about the Demon King's army.
Troublesome, certainly — but viewed from another angle, the one possessing that ability was limited to Rohen and Rohen alone.
And so, if he could only identify how that information was obtained, turning it against him was no stretch at all.
For all of humanity to share and act upon information concerning his movements would run into problems of sheer distance; they could not respond in organic concert.
Which meant this was a chase, a cat-and-mouse pursuit between Rohen and the Demon King, each circling the other.
And whoever allowed their tail to be caught would draw one step closer to defeat.
First of all — it isn't mind reading.
If he had read his thoughts from the great army they'd faced in the northwest, he would also know the number of deaths to which the Demon King held complete immunity.
He clearly knew what the ability was, but not its detailed limitations — so it was right to conclude this was no thought-reading trick.
There must be restrictions. That's the correct read.
That was as far as he could reason for the moment.
Then the key is finding out what those restrictions are.
If he could see through them, he could turn the tables well enough — seizing hold of the flow would be no difficult thing.
"You reek of rot."
"My apologies for the inconvenience."
Barel, her entire body bound fast in chains, was in the middle of an interrogation.
But born as she was a skeleton, torture itself meant nothing.
Destroying the core in her skull would bring death — yet so long as a host created by her own power still existed somewhere, Barel could transfer her consciousness to it at any moment.
Honestly, this was precisely why the Demon King had chosen not to spirit Barel away with him even at that moment.
The Demon King's army shared each other's memories, after all.
Even if she met her death, a being like Barel who could shift her mind into a spare host might yet yield useful information.
"So your basic ability is creating zombies, then..."
"Zombie. That is a word I have never heard."
"Ah. Think of it as making dead corpses move. That should be easier."
Thanks to his past-life memories responding without his meaning them to, Rohen had let the word zombie slip naturally; he corrected himself and gave the interrogator's answer.
"Torture is pointless. And you don't look like you intend to open your mouth... So if I can't get anything useful out of you, crushing the core in your skull and killing you is the right call, I suppose."
Saying this, Rohen tried a subtle intimidation of Barel — but she showed not the slightest stir, and he decided he would have to summon the Succubus once night fell.
The Succubus's power was hard to bring to bear on the battlefield, but in an interrogation like this, she was another matter entirely.
So there was no reason to force the issue right now, Rohen thought, fixing Barel with a sour glare.
"Staring so hard? Isn't that a bit much?"
Barel spoke as she slowly spread the legs that clattered with every bone joint.
"I have no cunt, you see. I couldn't use it the way you human females do."
"Bones and nothing else, and yet you've got a sense of your own sex, do you? Hilarious."
Aria, who had been standing silently behind Rohen, wrinkled her nose and kicked Barel's jaw clean upward with her foot.
"Mmm. You've got the face of a girl with a pretty womb. If it comes time to kill you later, I'll make use of it for you."
"Even if you took it, you couldn't use it. You'd just leave it to rot like the stench reeking off your body. What's the point of coveting it?"
At Barel's provocation that was not quite a provocation, Aria answered with mockery laced with a smirk.
Left alone, the two would only trade utterly meaningless, vulgar barbs, so Rohen sighed and led Aria outside.
"Where are you going?"
Aria asked as she watched him walk off without a word, but Rohen only entered his own barracks, gave word that no one was to enter unless it was urgent, and lay down on a bed that was hard to call comfortable even as a figure of speech.
Once he had checked the Demon King's movements with the White Feather Fan, he would have to move position immediately — there was little time to linger.
And the fatigue he'd accumulated was considerable, so he intended to snatch whatever sleep he could, however brief.
Then, when Rohen — lying on the bed without a word — reached out and pulled her toward him, Aria laughed in spite of herself at how shameless he was, and yet, watching him bury his face against her chest like a child, she reached out with both hands and gently held him.
"...Later, if you're ever in danger — I won't be completely useless, will I?"
Remembering what had happened that day, Aria's face clouded with gloom.
Setting aside how she'd failed to respond properly, she remembered how her lack of experience in supporting him in combat had left her unable to do even that much.
"..."
But far from answering the confession she'd forced out with such difficulty—
Rohen was already fast asleep, and Aria smiled a lonely smile.
Right. Perhaps it was better this way — better that he didn't show her his own weakness...
"Sleep well."
Aria gently stroked Rohen's back with her slender hand.
How much time had passed?
Impossible to guess, Rohen thought, blinking bleary eyes at the hourglass.
The sand piling up told him the hour: eight in the evening.
Thinking he'd woken at a reasonable time, he sat up — and Aria's hand, resting on his stomach, slid softly away.
He considered waking her, but judging that she was short on sleep just as he was, he carefully draped the blanket over her and stepped out of the tent.
Then he went straight down to the cellar where Barel was confined, chanting the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons as he summoned the Succubus.
"What business at this hour of the night?"
Beyond the dim cellar, Barel, bound in chains, lifted her head.
Not worth answering.
"What are you trying to— gah!"
Maintaining his silence, Rohen reached out, seized Barel's skull, and slammed it into the ground, then cast a glance toward the Succubus he'd brought along.
The Succubus bent her waist carefully toward her and, in a low voice, whispered into Barel's ear—
No. The instant the Succubus moved to whisper, Barel's bone joints scattered into powder before their eyes.
She killed herself?
Thinking how infuriatingly quick her instincts were, Rohen knitted his brow.
Still, if killing one of her linchpins counted as a gain, then a gain it was.
When the hour arrived, he had to check the Demon King's movements with the White Feather Fan at once, so Rohen returned to the surface, reported Barel's suicide, and filled his stomach with a simple meal.
...So it's true. It isn't omnipotent.
Barel had destroyed the core in her own skull and taken her own life — and the moment she revived in another host, the Demon King received the shared memory and pondered.
In a situation where no information could be extracted at all, Rohen had evidently intended to interrogate her by some other means — which meant the ability that had pinpointed his arrival so precisely must carry some kind of restriction.
His first decision: move the armies stationed across the territories simultaneously, and observe where Rohen made his appearance.
That human moves with me at the center, always.
He hadn't identified the cause, but if the focus of his information-gathering was certainly himself, then wouldn't Rohen remain exactly where he was so long as the Demon King did not move from his seat?
Having set the proposition, he now had to prove it — so the Demon King quietly waited for the armies he'd dispatched to reach their designated positions.
The interval was roughly ten days.
It was Rohen and the Demon King who were the abnormal ones — erasing the constraints of distance and engaging in battle within less than a single day.
Over this span, the armies of humanity and the Demon King finally meeting in combat was the supremely natural course of things.
And through the shared memories, the Demon King issued the order to begin battle without hesitation.
Not a full-scale war.
Even at the cost of losses, proving whether the proposition he'd established was true came first.
As I thought — was that the right answer?
Seeing Rohen appear precisely where they had fought ten days prior, the Demon King rose to his feet.
There could be no doubt: the power by which Rohen acquired information was bound by the restriction that it concerned the Demon King alone.
Of course, the White Feather Fan carried no such restriction — but from Rohen's position, where he could in truth only examine the Demon King's past, that guess of the Demon King's could hardly be called entirely wrong.
Then the next proposition to prove is whether there's a time limit on it.
If Rohen could obtain information about him in real time, he would move in tandem the moment the Demon King stirred.
And so, after ten days, the Demon King rose and sped rapidly westward.
Yet even after he had moved — confirmed through the memories that flowed steadily to him — Rohen was still fighting at Javelin County, and the Demon King let out a soft laugh.
Had Rohen been able to track him in real time, he would have vacated his position long before.
...This isn't a perfect hypothesis, but it's fairly clear there's a time restriction on how far back he can observe.
Accelerating still harder, the Demon King curled his lips into a repulsive smile.
If that time limit on observation is real, then as the evidence accumulates, piecing out the details won't be difficult.
And so long as Rohen couldn't track his movements in real time and respond, he need only exploit that gap and inflict damage. Simple as that.
As it has always been. One who fights while trying to protect something — that very thing becomes his shackle.
A contest where each side lost every piece on the board, where each had to drive checkmate into the other — that he would welcome all too gladly.
Thus resolving, the Demon King arrived after eight hours of travel in the west.
At a place where the second defensive line of the Asis Duchy was faintly visible on the horizon.