Chapter 18 — Reconstructing Affection (3)
Chapter 18 — Reconstructing Affection (3)
"P-please, don't do this...."
The ogre soldier, back at his shift in the prison after nearly ten days away, smirked lewdly as he listened to the human woman's pleading.
"After all this time, you've even got your clothes cleaned up, for a human. How are you wandering around like this?"
"His Majesty... no, His Majesty told me...."
The soldier's already ferocious face twisted into something even uglier. Barbara, Princess Grünent's lady-in-waiting, shrank her small body even further.
It had only been last week that he had tormented her in this prison.
While moving Princess Grünent's quarters, some of the princess's ornaments seemed to have gone missing. Thinking they might still be in the prison, Barbara had been cautiously looking around the area near the cell where the princess had previously stayed.
The prison was a terrifying place even to think of, but Barbara had heard from the human probationary servants that the atmosphere in the castle had eased considerably toward humans. Besides, the princess had cherished the ornament ever since she was in Merde. Barbara wanted to give her mistress, whom she had worried about, a delightful surprise.
The warden who guarded the prison entrance, who would previously have ignored or browbeaten Barbara, had silently let her pass with a surly expression.
So she had let her guard down. She had believed the human servants' words. Fear welled up in the lady-in-waiting's eyes.
"A lowly wretch like you dares to use His Majesty's name?"
As the ogre snarled, Barbara's body began to tremble violently. Chuckling, he lifted the hem of her skirt.
"Trying to lie to me, you piece of trash...."
"Ah, p-please...!"
"Heh heh. I know. I know. Don't be impatient. I missed you, too."
The lady-in-waiting's face turned deathly pale. She had lost her virginity in this prison, and afterward she had been repeatedly summoned by the wardens. Sometimes she was violated even in front of the princess.
Memories she had forgotten for a moment surged up like a burst dam, and she lost her reason.
"Ah, no! Stop it, stop it!!!"
"You crazy bitch...."
The lady-in-waiting tried to wrench her body sideways with all her might to escape, but the ogre seized her arms and slammed her against the cold stone wall of the prison.
All she could do was struggle weakly and scream. The ogre was already violently pulling down her underwear and unfastening his trousers.
"Aagh!! Stop it, stop it, I hate it!!"
"Y-you sssssssssssssssss...."
"...?!"
Suddenly the ogre's body was yanked roughly a meter backward. Then, out of nowhere, he began to convulse violently, his whole body trembling and making strange sounds. His limbs were rigid, his eyes rolled back, and drool ran from his mouth.
Anyone from the modern world would have cried, "Was he hit with a Taser?!" Though there were no stun guns in Evirgio, there was a lich treasurer who had no qualms about unleashing lightning magic at any time upon any target that displeased him.
Behind the ogre, who had collapsed in a heap with faint smoke rising from his body, stood a skeleton in a splendid robe, looking at the stunned lady-in-waiting.
"Hey."
"...."
"Hey, human woman. Are you all right?"
"...Ah...."
"Are you all ri—, ack!"
Barbara suddenly threw her arms around Liron and sank to the floor.
"Th-thank you, thank you!"
"...Huh?"
Liron could not understand what was happening.
During her months in the prison, Barbara had ceased to fear the skeletal demons, and furthermore she had learned that they were more courteous than other demonkind.
Because they possessed no genitals.
Moreover, this skeleton had just saved her. Fear that the fallen ogre might rise again at any moment caused her to judge, in an instant, that she should entrust herself to the more powerful lich.
And so Liron, who had briefly come down to the prison to look for experimental materials, found himself holding a human in his arms for the first time in more than three hundred years of life. A human woman he had never held even when he was alive himself.
"Uh..., hm. You don't seem to be a beastman. Who are you?"
The lady-in-waiting's choking, desperate sobbing finally eased. She barely managed to stand and said in an exhausted voice,
"I am Grünent... the Princess's lady-in-waiting.... I am Barbara."
"Ah. So you're the princess's maid."
Liron scratched his skull with a skeletal finger.
"Don't linger in a dangerous place like this; go back up at once. What kind of training did this lousy warden even receive...."
He would have to give the correction officer an earful.
"His Majesty commanded that humans are not to be touched. You're telling me there's still someone who isn't properly obeying?"
"Th-thank you.... Thank you."
After seeing the human maid disappear with repeated bows of gratitude, Liron muttered to himself,
"Not even one of my sturdy kin. A weak human, no less. When His Majesty is already keeping a burning eye on matters. What a fool."
Clucking his tongue, Liron stepped over the unconscious ogre and headed deeper into the prison to attend to his business.
"...Councilor."
"...."
"Liron!"
"Eep, yes!"
Liron jolted out of his reverie. One of Aranya's long arms—or forelegs—had come down and pinned the middle of the treasurer's documents. The spines at the end of the limb clicked menacingly.
"Liron. Are you listening?"
"Ah, yes. Yes. Chancellor."
"Hmm...."
Aranya, who had been eyeing Liron with suspicion, jangled a piece of jewelry held in another hand. It was an ornamental hairpin with several small metal and glass decorations attached. It resembled the one tucked into Aranya's own black hair.
"You're telling me a human repaired this?"
"Yes, my lord. I dropped it in the education room the other day and a piece broke off, but one of the trainees who saw it fixed it right there on the spot. It was flawless."
"I'll say...."
They had merely fitted the fallen metal trinket back in place and bent the shape slightly. Yet for demons, such a thing was unusual. Demons with hands shaped like a human's were fewer than one might think, and even among those with manual dexterity, none ever sought to show it off.
Even Minoreus and Liron, who had no interest in women's jewelry, examined the hairpin with interest upon hearing Shwikviena's words.
Tasks requiring delicate hands—such as the care and manufacture of weapons or the preparation of experimental materials—were plentiful within the castle.
"There are servants who already go about wearing prototypes made by the trainees. It is said that in the city, there are so few places that make jewelry that even when ordered, one must wait a long time, and that the items the human trainees make are superior."
"Yes, so I noticed. I've seen it, too."
Aranya nodded.
"I truly never imagined it. That His Majesty's sagacity would run so deep."
"Hm, open praise like this makes me quite bashful."
At Roan's sudden appearance, the four retainers started in surprise and rose. Lately, beyond suppressing his Overwhelm, Roan had also been practicing how to erase his own presence. It was an ability he could attempt because the original Demon King had been a superb swordsman.
"Your Majesty. When did you arrive?"
"Hm, is this the jewelry?"
It seemed he had heard the entire story about the jewelry already. With a wry smile, Aranya offered the hairpin to the Demon King with both hands.
The Demon King, who had been turning the ornament this way and that in his palm, fixed his gaze on one spot.
"...This? Is it glass?"
"Ah. Yes. Your Majesty."
The Demon King's eyes narrowed. It was because he recalled a rumor the Hero had heard during the game.
There was a place that prized glass highly.
A shortage occurred in another kingdom, creating a quest to exchange that kingdom's overflow of resources for this glass.
At this time, the Hero, together with the princess, helped resolve the matter and gained fame and an item.
"Where is this made?"
"East Yellow Territory. The desert sand there is very fine. The quality of the glass is the best on the entire Moira Continent. Now, even if the precious glass were stockpiled, there would be no humans to come and buy it, but...."
...So that was why the shortage had happened.
Because trade between humans and Evirgio had been severed.
The treasurer answered the emperor's question and looked at him, but Roan merely returned the ornament to Aranya without a word.
"Hm. I was on my way to the office and stopped in for a moment. I saw you all gathered this early and wondered what the matter was. I heard the correction officer wanted me to briefly stop by because she had something to discuss. Was this it?"
"Ah, no, Your Majesty. I wished to speak with you about the royal prison, Your Majesty."
"Was there anything in particular to add? I believe I saw the state of the cleaning and food not long ago."
Although a diligent superior was said to exhaust those under him, he was far better than one who chopped off heads.
As if to compensate for his previous indifference, Roan had been moving quite busily, and the Small Council was willingly aligning itself with this appearance of their lord.
"We are obtaining quite useful information."
"...Hm?"
"The human prisoners have begun to talk about the kingdom's internal situation. Your Majesty."
"Hm."
The Demon King let out an ambiguous exclamation at Shwikviena's words. Minoreus's eyes grew wide and he asked the correction officer,
"Why all of a sudden? All the torture up to now had been ineffectual."
"Fufufu."
A succubus's alluring smile rose to the correction officer's face.
"Why, would that not also be thanks to Your Majesty's wisdom?"
Roan, who had almost asked 'Because of me?', kept his mouth firmly shut. In moments like this, staying quiet got you halfway there. The Demon King's shell possessed the power to turn silence into charisma, after all.
Shwikviena continued.
"It seems the human slaves cleaning the prison caught the prisoners' attention, and they asked what was going on. The slaves apparently told them that in the castle they would not be eaten but would be educated and put to use, and that if they worked properly they might even receive wages."
Ah.
So they'd begun to want to live.
The Demon King's violet eyes flashed sharply.
"Those who had previously starved had already begun to soften as they ate properly and rested in clean quarters, and it seems their hearts broke further when the human slaves delivered word of Your Majesty."
For a moment, admiration for the Demon King overflowed from the eyes of Aranya, Liron, and Minoreus.
"Merde's situation appears to be worse than expected. Winning a battle of demonkind against humans could not have been easy. For every one of our soldiers who dies, ten of theirs fall.
Thus, it is said that the number of people to work the farms this year has greatly diminished. Consequently, the harvest is unprecedentedly small. They find it difficult to procure provisions, and it is said that the meals eaten in our prison are better than the rations distributed to human knights."
"Good heavens, did Your Majesty foresee even this...."
At Minoreus's blank statement, Roan made no reply. His seemingly modest attitude drew even greater admiration from Aranya and Liron. It was a virtue a young Demon King would have difficulty cultivating.
"Furthermore, the human princess's release from prison appears to have played a part. The ladies-in-waiting had occasion to visit the prison, and it is said they told the prisoners that Your Majesty was taking good care of the princess and the other humans. It seems they said Your Majesty is merciful."
It would not have been easy for people who had been tortured to swallow that outright, but they were spending time in a prison where they were more well-fed than they had been in Merde. Moreover, if they kept hearing the words of human slaves and beastmen whose treatment had suddenly improved, it stood to reason that some might change their minds.
Even if it felt like a stroke of dumb luck, gaining the respect of one's subordinates was a good thing. Whether in war or domestic affairs, they did all the real work after all.
"I have done nothing. It is all because you all carried out the tasks so well."
He meant it. Roan had only given orders. The members of the Small Council truly did their work well, and even did so diligently.
But his retainers were deeply moved, looking at a Demon King who exhibited a political attitude rarely seen among demonkind—humility.
'Good heavens.... Was he truly a person who could change so much, if only he set his mind to it? I thought I had grown old enough, but clearly I must further develop my eye for people.'
The chancellor looked at the Demon King's upright face. Once she had thought it as cold as a block of ice, but now, sovereign dignity radiated from his appearance.
'It is truly a relief. Only now can I face the late emperor without shame. If I serve His Majesty with all my heart going forward, how far can this nation be set to rights....'
The members of the Small Council renewed their resolve to dedicate their very bodies to building the future of demonkind.
*
"Why did you kill them?"
The atmosphere had been so warm just moments ago. He'd even been showered with praise from his retainers. Respect had overflowed from their eyes.
Looking at the murderous gaze before him now, it felt like a spring day's dream.
Roan had returned from the Small Council chamber to his office a moment ago. Diobe, who had briefly returned to her primary duties, had been tidying up the office.
Shwikviena had delivered the news that Rauka, the forest elf they had found in the prison and ordered to be treated, had recovered enough to speak, so Roan had ordered her brought to the office.
And Rauka had appeared like a violent beast paraded in defeat, wearing a muzzle and all manner of restraints, with an Affection tag of -100 hanging beside her. It was an all-time low, the floor permitted by the Affection system.
She had apparently been washed, somehow, and though her hair was disheveled, its fiery red color proved she truly was the same Rauka from the game. That was because in this game's world, the Moira Continent, she was the only forest elf with flame-like hair.
'At least, that's what the game told you.'
And she was glaring at the Demon King with a look that could kill. Though muzzled, the device only covered her face, so she should be able to speak.
"I was told you were imprisoned in this royal prison as a serial murderer. It is rare for a forest elf to be dragged out this far. Why did you commit such heinous acts?"
"Unforgivable...."
In a voice that spat blood, Rauka snarled.