Chapter 13 — Are You Eating Well? (4)
Chapter 13 — Are You Eating Well? (4)
At that moment, a visceral sense of wrongness shot through his body, chilling Roan to the marrow. He hastily deployed Detection.
The sensation of dozens, then hundreds of people caught in the skill stretched out, one after another.
Fortunately, because the wide area had diluted the force, no one seemed to have died.
"...I think it ended with just unconsciousness...."
[Your latent potential is truly impressive. You can feel the skill's result, can't you, Roan? As long as no one is dead, it's fine. Let's go have lunch now, Roan.]
"Isn't that a bit too cold...?"
[I am a sword. Whether humans or demonkind die, it makes no difference to me. Besides, I'm not even pretending to be kind, yet here I am helpfully looking after your lunch. To call me cold—you're the cruel one, Roan.]
"...."
With complicated feelings, Roan finished his training.
Afterward, when Roan went in for lunch, he noticed the servants were behaving strangely and flustered. Apparently, because all the servants had collapsed or fainted en masse for an unexplained reason, every dish they had prepared had been completely ruined. Seeing Lisa, pale and trembling as she apologized over the late lunch, Roan hesitated several times over whether to admit it was his fault.
Once lunch ended after the brief commotion that had swept the entire palace, Roan headed for his original objective: the prison. When he hung the sword on his sword belt, Fiora remained silent, as if asleep, even when he touched it. Thanks to that, Roan was able to concentrate on the inspection he had intended.
"Eeek, Your Majesty?! I am deeply, deeply honored!"
The prison warden flung himself flat onto the cold stone floor with an exclamation that seemed to stop his breath. The Demon King, who had brought along Shwikviena—who had implored him to call for her the next time he visited her area of responsibility—addressed the warden with stern authority.
"I will inspect everything. Show me the way."
The Demon King's gloomy underground dungeon. True to its name, the place reeked of death. It was not as large as expected. That was because few people held out very long here.
Even as Roan walked down the long corridor lined with iron bars on one side, ceaseless screams echoed from deep within the prison. They were cries of agony that sounded as if each breath might be the last.
'This place is a mess, too.'
The expressionless Demon King inwardly furrowed his brow. He knew, of course, that comparing this place to the modern prison he had known was unreasonable. But the facilities here were even worse than he had imagined. That was because the operating assumption was that it did not matter whether the prisoners lived or died.
Slaves, at least, had to be kept alive to be eaten, so they were given some minimal amount of food. But the prison was a place for extracting what the Demon King's subordinates wanted through the infliction of pain.
Thus, the warden gave a lengthy explanation of how skipping meals was the norm, and how brainwashing and torture ran rampant.
Ordinarily, criminals who caused trouble in the capital of Basel and were arrested were either cut down on the spot(!) or incarcerated in the capital prison. The palace dungeon housed violent criminals who had been culled from across the entire nation, including Basel, and were awaiting the king's judgment, or prisoners who had to be made to divulge information for political reasons.
"And so we use the most technical methods possible to force political prisoners to yield their information."
"In order to develop the drug you saw yesterday, along with a whole range of other drugs, our apothecaries experiment day and night."
The warden and Shwikviena explained the Demon King's Palace's systematic torture regime. Looking at the two of them wearing expressions like puppies waiting for praise, Roan reluctantly nodded.
"Hm. You are working hard."
"You honor us, Your Majesty."
"Th-thank you!"
Having such a genial conversation right in front of what was practically a corpse felt a little complicated. High-level prisoners brought here from the battlefields of the current war against the kingdom were tortured in these chambers and, one by one, spilled their intelligence.
Before the Demon King's eyes lay a knight from the kingdom's knight order—an officer-level knight, they said, from a unit commanded by the king's son. He already hung limp on the torture chair, a figure somewhat removed from humanity. Portions of his extremities had been severed, and his entire body had been battered and crushed. It was not a pleasant sight.
Roan's party left the torture chamber and walked back down the corridor.
'Why doesn't this terrify me?'
Roan quietly stroked his chin with one hand.
However many gruesome sights he had witnessed in his original world, he had never before seen someone's body deliberately mangled to this extreme. That had been the work of much larger organizations.
But the fact that he now felt no horror might well be because he was genuinely experiencing a sense of unity with the body of the game's Demon King.
The Demon King sank briefly into thought. Praised just moments before, the correction officer and the prison warden waited happily for his silence to end, glowing with delight.
"It seems everyone in the prison, including the two of you, is working diligently."
"You flatter us, Your Majesty."
Her words were humble, but Shwikviena's face was filled with a radiant smile. Even that expression overflowed with the sultry appeal characteristic of a succubus.
"What happens to that prisoner we just saw?"
When Shwikviena looked at the warden as if instructing him to report, he answered in her stead.
"Yes. The human knight you just saw has been subjected to physical technique after the application of the drug, Your Majesty. We plan to apply a somewhat stronger drug before disposing of him."
"Disposing of him? You mean killing him?"
"Even if we do not kill them ourselves, most die after a strong drug is applied, Your Majesty. When someone withstands the process and reaches that stage without giving up information, there are almost no whole parts of their body left by then. And unless they provide the information we want, there is no need to go out of our way to keep them alive."
Shwikviena's expression grew subtle as she heard Roan's question. She had been closer to the Demon King than anyone else over the course of the previous day, observing his every action.
'He spared the human slave. Even in the slave quarters, he commanded that they be fed. He ordered that the human maid receiving treatment not be drugged. And here, after seeing a human being tortured, he asks what happens to them.'
Her eyes sharpened.
Just as Shwikviena had anticipated, the Demon King spoke words that sounded baffling to the guards, words difficult to accept all at once.
"If possible, from now on, avoid killing human prisoners as much as you can."
"...Pardon?"
The warden, who had unwittingly questioned him in a daze, jumped in alarm at his own words.
"Oh, heavens—I am so, so sorry! Your Majesty, I am sorry!"
The warden apologized over and over, trembling like a leaf. When Roan gave him time to calm down, he went on.
"If the plan becomes definite, I will announce it to everyone, but for now the reason is difficult to disclose. Still, keeping humans alive as much as possible will be an important element in what I intend to do."
Just blurting out a grand design like stopping the war outright would be too hard for them to accept, and deciding such a thing on his own without consulting his retainers felt wrong. Roan gave the warden the same kind of vague explanation he had offered Shwikviena the day before.
"And as much as possible...."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Feed them."
"...Pardon?"
The warden, who had unwittingly questioned the Demon King's command, sprang into the air and then smashed his head against the stone floor.
On the other hand, Shwikviena once again narrowed her eyes. This time, unlike the warden, she was not surprised.
The correction officer felt as though she could guess what her sovereign was thinking. She wanted to convey this discussion to the Small Council as soon as possible and then hear their opinions.
The Demon King's voice, answering the warden's question, was calm.
"In the end, a living being's outlook changes when its belly is full. Give anyone a moment of warmth and comfort, and their heart is bound to loosen. However necessary it may be to lock them up and torment them in order to obtain what we need, is it not the proper way toward living creatures to at least see that they are properly fed?"
"Yes... yes."
His expression betraying no comprehension, the warden nodded mechanically.
"Even when torture is warranted, ensure that proper meals are provided at least to those who show some goodwill toward us, to those whose session of torture has concluded, and to all who are my subjects."
"Ah, understood."
"Not the sort of thing that is barely edible. Proper food."
"Understood, Your Majesty."
The Demon King's command was absolute. Now these prisoners would no longer have to face thin soup, rotten potatoes, or tough bread.
"And examine other matters as well. See to it, at the very least, that no one dies merely because they are confined in my prison."
"Yes... yes, Your Majesty."
The warden's face showed he had no idea what any of this meant. To him, a prison was a place for killing.
In the world of demonkind, it was entirely natural for the weak and powerless to lose their lives to the guards who watched over them. Unless a prisoner had some useful feature like giving up information, they were nothing but a waste of food. Better to kill them.
So the order to care for the convicts made no sense at all to the warden—but it was the king's command. Bowing his head, the warden declared he would follow his lord's will.
As Roan walked down the corridor, his gaze fixed on the interior of the prison, his footsteps halted in one spot.
"...Who is that one?"
"Ah, a serial killer captured near the border. He attacked our hunting people and even set fire to nearby houses—his crimes were so severe he was transported all the way to the capital prison. Even during all that, he kept plotting to escape; a fellow of the worst character."
Something like a lump was huddled in the corner of the dim prison cell Roan had indicated. Only a close look revealed it as a person, stained with blood, filth, and bruises, its expression half-vacant as it muttered something over and over.
The conspicuously pointed ears were a symbol of the forest-dwelling Forest Elf race. Beyond that, whether male or female, or what their original face or hair color might have been, could not be discerned in the slightest from the current state.
But Roan, at least, could tell who she was. And not only because an Affection window, invisible to anyone but him, had appeared beside her.
'Jackpot...! Right, you would be here.'
In the original course of events, the special force that came to rescue the imprisoned princess would free her as well while they were there. And later, she would join the Hero to come and strike down the Demon King.
Fire Fairy. Rauka. That was her name.
When the Demon King, who had been walking steadily down the corridor, stopped in front of her cell and inquired about her while peering inside, the warden, who had already made his report, asked cautiously:
"Your Majesty, shall I bring her out?"
"Hm.... Even if you bring her out, is she in a state to answer questions?"
At Roan's question, the warden lowered his head in awkwardness.
"It seems impossible at this moment, Your Majesty."
"In that case, Shwikviena."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Once she has been looked after for a time and is in a condition to converse, bring her before me. I believe she may be of use."
"Yes."
"And do not use that substance from the other day."
The correction officer's shoulders flinched for a moment.
"...Yes, Your Majesty. How could I possibly?"
Once he had heard Shwikviena's answer, the Demon King left Rauka's cell front without delay. Roan had taken the opportunity to inspect the entire prison just in case, but apart from her, there did not seem to be any Affection-applicable NPCs or named characters like a princess imprisoned here.
Just the one—that was a relief. Roan left the prison feeling reassured.
The next place Roan headed for was the servants' living quarters.
'At least this place is better.'
Spread across the first and second floors, it received a reasonable amount of light. The freshly swept and polished floor was gleaming. That, of course, was thanks to the servants lined up on both sides. At the far end of the row stood Diobe, who was supposed to have been off duty today, her face expressionless.
The rest of the servants, aside from her, stood in the corridor unable to hide their violently trembling bodies at the Demon King's sudden visit.
Roan felt a little sorry. Even if a general-grade officer made a quiet tour of the barracks, the moment rumors spread beforehand, a scene would ensue in which everyone ran this way and that clutching toothpaste and cleaning equipment—and something similar must have played out here, as well.
These were already people who did everything they could to evade the Demon King's notice. Having to stand exposed right before his eyes like this, unable to hide, was surely a torment.
'But from now on, they're going to have to face me often. I have to make sure that becomes something they can handle without problem.'
Roan opened the door to someone's quarters. The simple room, which held only a bed and a uniform hanging on the wall, was neat despite the signs of use.
"Are there any problems with the supply of clothing or bedding?"
Naturally, there was no way asking this would yield a proper answer.
"Y-yes, Your Majesty. Everything is being carried out without any issue."
A trembling voice barely managed to reply. It was the head butler, whom Roan was meeting for the second time.
'Good. Fiora did tell me to practice even in ordinary situations.'
Recalling the Demon Sword's advice, Roan stood beside the head butler and looked at the head maid who served the Demon King. She was a Banshee whose hair seemed faded in some places. Roan activated his Mihon skill just a little and focused its minuscule point on her.
At that moment,
"...Ah, haah, heuung...!"
...the head maid suddenly staggered. The startled head butler moved to support her, and Shwikviena, who had been following Roan, shot him a ferocious axe-like glare.
'Aack!'
Roan screamed inwardly. The eyes of the head maid, who was laboriously righting herself, had slackened with pleasure and rolled halfway upward.