Chapter 7 — In the Land of the Blind (1)
Chapter 7 — In the Land of the Blind (1)
'...Whew, I feel like I’m going to get indigestion.'
The scent of well-baked bread and the savory aroma of stew made with fowl meat filled the dining hall.
The main dish, made with a bird called a partridge—thankfully, human meat was not used in the emperor's meals, they said, because it tasted awful—was so tender it seemed you could chew right through the bones.
But Roan sat alone in that vast dining hall. Only a single maidservant waited behind him, attending to his meal.
More than fifteen presences of servants registered on his 'Detection', but all of them hid beyond the Demon King's line of sight.
And Roan had no choice but to accept that his surroundings were this desolate.
'He was a complete and utter degenerate... No, even that phrase might be too mild.'
The Demon King had been the absolute scum of the earth.
No wonder the attendants who appeared in the morning vanished like the wind, trembling, the moment their business was done. The servant who brought the basin of wash water tended his washing and then fled in a fluster. The attendants who helped him undress trembled, barely managing to touch Roan with their fingertips, swapped out his clothes, and then bolted.
In the course of that, there were fragmentary memories that returned in flashes whenever he saw new people or environments.
Most of those memories were stained crimson with bloodshed.
"...Son... of... a bitch..."
"Your Majesty?"
"...It's nothing."
At the Demon King's tyranny in another memory that resurfaced, Roan muttered quietly, set down his fork, and pressed his forehead.
Her head lopped off for touching him while serving him. Her head lopped off because he disliked the set of the clothes she'd dressed him in.
Her head lopped off because his mood was foul over a nap being interrupted. 'Lopped off' here isn't some vulgar expression for dismissal—he means it literally, right then and there, he cut their heads off.
It was rare to see a scene that didn't involve blood. Looking at it that way, it was a wonder that servants still remained in the castle and the castle still functioned.
"Shall I bring out the dessert?"
The maidservant inquired of the Demon King with utmost courtesy.
And she herself accounted for a very large portion of Roan's headache.
The maidservant who'd been waiting before the emperor's bedchamber from the start. Her name was Diobe.
She had been another romanceable character from The Legend of the Holy Hero.
The Affection gauge that floated beside her let out a glum electronic whine—beeep—and displayed: Affection -99.
'Ugh, so uncomfortable....'
He'd known that this character was a servant to the Demon King, but he had not known that she was the servant who attended him right before his eyes like this. He wanted to ask why she had chosen to work in such proximity, but Roan simply could not broach the subject with her.
Because this woman was a person the Demon King had personally slain her husband to pillage for himself.
For a moment, his woeful gaze, camouflaged as the Demon King's keen stare, lingered on her, but Diobe only swapped his finished plate for the dessert plate with an expressionless face.
'When I was the Hero, I really owed you so much....'
A few years ago, before the war had truly escalated. Irritated by localized incursions of the Merde army, the Demon King, on one of his typical whims, personally launched a sudden assault on one of Merde's border cities.
The border regions were always places where humans and demonkind bickered and fought. But at some point, the Kingdom of Merde had started sending in proper forces to sweep through demon villages.
Since it was done on impulse, the Demon King had attacked the city with only a party of three, taking along Minoreus—who was not the Knight Commander at the time—and a single treasurer. Because their numbers were so small, not even the watchmen detected them and they turned the entire city into a wasteland.
Invading was actually easy, because the humans, keeping a lookout for the demon armies, watched the Evirgio side outside the city. It never occurred to them that a mere three people would infiltrate and wreck the whole place.
— Oh-hoh, what a rare beauty. I like a woman who fights. I want to hear what she cries out once I've got her pinned beneath me.
The city's fortress and castle-keep had been turned completely inside out, and the place was shaking with the smell of blood. Diobe stood in the corridor of that keep, sword raised, blocking the Demon King's path. Beyond the windows, the flames devouring the city and screams flickered. Behind her back was the great hall where the women and children of the citadel had taken refuge.
With the shrieks ringing from the distance behind her, Diobe shouted.
— You will not take my body unless you kill me, foul creature! I am a woman who has a husband!
— Could this be the one?
The Demon King threw the head he was holding. The oddly unblemished head rolled and rolled, coming to a stop at the woman's feet. The moment she saw the face, the woman glared with bloodshot eyes.
Afterwards, she was taken to the Demon King's Castle, but due to some caprice, the Demon King uncharacteristically did not lose interest in Diobe. The other castle servants, discerning that she was under the emperor's protection, treated her as if she did not exist.
Diobe volunteered to become the Demon King's personal maidservant of her own accord, and the Demon King, laughing, permitted it.
That was the content of Diobe's flashback CG.
It was something I'd just glossed over while playing the game. But seeing the atmosphere in reality, Roan could finally understand just how much she must have been grinding her teeth when she made that decision.
'She really didn't mind dying, I see.'
It must have also been the Demon King's rare mercy, and a judgment born of arrogance that a woman like her could do him no harm.
But the Demon King probably never knew that her counterattack was beginning in a place he hadn't even considered.
Because later, Diobe would meet the Hero and begin to siphon off intelligence about the Demon King. She would tell the Hero everything: the layout of the castle, the Demon King's characteristics, his behavioral patterns, and everything that could potentially be a weakness.
It seemed she had not cared whether she was caught and killed at that point. She had expected the Hero—or the Kingdom—to take revenge on her behalf.
"How... did Your Majesty find the meal?"
Before he knew it, even the dessert was gone. It was a meal so distracted he couldn't tell whether it went in his mouth or his nose, but at least he did remember that the food was good. Roan spoke to Chef Lisa, who was trembling as if she'd been dragged into a slaughterhouse, in a voice that he tossed out almost casually.
"'Food—it's important.'"
Right,
it was only correct to make people who cooked good food comfortable. If some praise like this could change things, then he'd dish it out as much as needed.
Roan had meant to put the comment out there loaded with affection, but the Demon King's shell, as ever, transformed it into a cold one-liner.
Which was why it was only after the Demon King had left the dining hall that Chef Lisa raised her head, eyes gone wide. Diobe, snapping to attention with an 'ah', hurriedly followed after Roan.
The Demon King looked at Diobe following behind him with a complicated heart. Their eyes met for just an instant. When the cold amethyst eyes fixed on her, Diobe hastily dropped her head. As if apologizing for her delayed service.
But the Demon King knew: that action was merely to hide her expression.
'I must not let them meet.'
The Hero was not yet prepared. Diobe had not yet leaked any information. With Erenier having just departed for the front lines, about half a year remained until she could smuggle intel to someone and for it to reach the Hero's hands.
He would find a way within that time—whether to win Diobe over, or to intercept the intel.
But, first, the current priority was, of course,
'the Princess.'
Roan clenched his teeth, afraid that laughter might leak out unbidden. It was a needless worry. The Demon King's body automatically filtered most laughter down into a poker face anyway. Though Roan was unaware of that fact.
The future was rife with worries, but still: no otaku wouldn't feel their heart flutter at a real-life chance to see their absolute favorite character.
"Diobe."
"..."
There was no reply. Roan looked back over his shoulder.
She had stopped as if her feet were nailed to the floor, her face filled with shock.
Diobe had assumed the Demon King did not know her name. He had never once asked. The Demon King had always called Diobe with terms like 'you' or 'human woman'.
"...Diobe."
"...Ah. Yes. Yes, Your Majesty. Forgive me."
Uncharacteristically, Diobe answered him flustered.
'Ah, this is a rare scene.'
Even in the middle of this, Roan inwardly gave a wry smile at the collector's urge that welled up inside the gamer in him.
"Bring the First Princess to me as quickly as possible."
"..."
She was probably swallowing a word like 'suddenly' deep inside.
"As you command, Your Majesty."
Diobe promptly disappeared at Roan's command. The place she was headed to was that very same notoriously infamous Demon King's prison.
Under normal circumstances, meeting with the First Princess of an enemy nation in wartime is a remote prospect. A princess is high in the line of succession just after the princes, and her utility in terms of political value is considerable.
But in this continent, the First Princess of humanity's largest nation, the Kingdom of Merde, had unfortunately been locked in the dungeons of the Demon King's Castle for months.
In the original game, rescuing this princess—and, as an extra bonus, generating erotic scenes—was also one of the Hero's major quests. Joining the detached force sent to rescue the imprisoned princess, the Hero first encountered the demon nation's capital and the Demon King's Castle, and was made to shudder at the Demon King's unspeakable cruelty.
'But this time, an escape will be impossible.'
Because the current Demon King, Roan, already knew everything about how the Hero would infiltrate the castle and extract the princess from the prison.
The princess was an early-game romanceable character. The detached force set to rescue her would make its move in the near future.
Once, as a player, he'd cheered on the Hero, but now the Hero had become a disconcerting existence that threatened his very life.
'I'll take good care of the Princess from now on, so I'd really prefer if you didn't come all the way here to rescue her.'
It was in that sense that Roan decided to go check on how the princess was faring. In his own way, he also had the heart of a fan who wanted to see her in person.
'And honestly, I'm a little worried.'
The original Demon King, who had been ruling this castle until yesterday, was completely out of his mind. Roan's head ached slightly, not knowing just what terrible things he might have already done.
Furthermore, the information Roan knew was her state as it would be a few months later, when she was rescued. She would be barely clinging on, body and mind completely tattered, having only just managed not to die.
In other words, the intel Roan possessed couldn't tell him what she might have suffered up till just yesterday. Whether she was still intact. Or whether she was already in a wrecked state similar to that of those months later.
'What matters is if she's okay right now....'
And as soon as I accepted the quest, I ate a meal, and then I did ask straight away....
But this was that Demon King he was dealing with. Not knowing what in the world he might have already committed, Roan's head hurt slightly.
'Nngh....'
Roan rubbed his forehead. It felt like a migraine was coming on. Not knowing to whom his prayer should be directed, Roan nevertheless moved his feet with a feeling of prayer in his heart.
As he turned a corner, two troll soldiers who had been standing blankly opened the library door with their eyes wide in sheer panic.
The library, a safe zone where nobody ever thought the Demon King would come, was violated today.
"Oh, goodness, Your Majesty."
The librarian, experiencing his first imperial visitation in over ten years of service, was beside himself with shock. The owl-faced librarian, who had been dozing off with a nod-nod while seated at the desk nearest the library entrance in his modest robes, scrambled out in a flurry, stepped on the hem of his robe, and stumbled.
"What infinite glory."
So the final motion practically looked like him flopping down. A heavy thud sounded as the huge owlbear prostrated on the floor, but that large mass of his only trembled and quivered where he lay before Roan.
"What is it you seek?"
Roan was in awe of the majestic and beautiful library.
The hall, three or four stories high, supported a rounded dome roof atop pillars so enormous several adults would need to link arms to embrace them. Sunlight streamed through the glass set into the top of the dome, illuminating the thick reading tables spread out below.
Avoiding the direct sunlight, ancient books were shelved along the circular wall around the great hall. The tall bookshelves seemed so high that their tops would be unreachable without a ladder.
"I am searching for books regarding the 'Starlight' magic."
Upon hearing the Demon King's words, the librarian's eyes gleamed. That was not a metaphorical expression—literally, a red light flickered in his pupils and vanished. It was magic to review the knowledge he possessed.
However, the librarian's beak did not open.
When Roan looked at the librarian as if puzzled, only then did he realize his sacrilege and jumped in fright.
"Oh, dear, Your... Your Majesty.... P-please spare my life...."
"Speak."
"St-Starlight magic, being a branch that belongs to that form of magic, means its related books are sealed in the Forbidden-Book Section. Our holdings are small, only three books. Shall I... guide you there?"
That magic?
The Demon King's eyes narrowed.
'The mood suddenly feels like Voldemort...?'