An Enemy Closer Than Any Ally
A king who has wrought great deeds is worthy of every people's reverence.
The Demon King was an enemy beyond forgiveness, and yet, considered purely as a king, there was none more admirable. In less than ten years from the day his name became known, he had bound the fractured demon races into one and, gathering their will to a single purpose, invaded our lands.
To humankind he was nothing but a merciless invader. To demonkind, he would have been the savior who redeemed their race.
At least, that was what the common people believed. When we slipped into a city of the Demon Realm, every resident sang his praises and offered thanks.
The Demon Realm is a wasteland. Land where crops will grow is scarce, and every such place, they say, had been swallowed whole by the strong. Among the weaker races, a death by starvation was nothing out of the ordinary.
After the Demon King unified the Demon Realm, the starving did not vanish — but their numbers fell sharply. All of it because he had plundered crops and soil from our homeland.
"I thought you respected the Demon King."
"Respect? Why would anyone respect a bastard like that?"
And yet those known as the Demon King's closest confidants seemed, far from respecting him, to despise him. They had even been granted power by him. I could not begin to understand the reaction.
"...Didn't he make the Demon Realm more abundant? I heard that after he appeared, far fewer people starved to death. The common folk were grateful."
"You're misunderstanding something. Not every demon is the same kind of demon. Your commoners and your nobles aren't the same kind of human either, are they? We're no different."
The pink-haired succubus had a great deal stored up. Left to herself, she looked ready to go on talking long after the fight between the Hero and the Demon King was done.
"First, let's correct the basic misunderstanding. We Demons, and a few other species, do not think of the Demon Realm as barren land."
"Demon? Weren't you a succubus?"
"...Be careful. No one who called me a succubus lived to tell of it. I am a Demon, and proud of it. Not some succubus fawning between a man's legs."
"No, but then why are you dressed like a saintess—"
"It's my taste. Respect it. And what do you mean, like a saintess? I am not dressed like a whore."
There was no need to explain that, in our party, the two words meant the same thing. There were more important matters at hand.
"Forgive me. We've drifted from the point."
"...We don't need food. The Demon Realm is rich in mana. Absorb the mana dwelling in the earth, and your nutrients are replenished. That is all there is to it."
To Demons, and to those commonly called the higher demon races, the Demon Realm was no wasteland. They could draw mana from the ground and restore themselves as much as they pleased. Some of the higher species could not absorb mana, but they had monopolized the land and grown their power upon it, and so had no particular reason to invade the human world.
The only ones in difficulty were the weaker races — those with neither the strength to drink the mana seeping from the soil, nor the ability to claim fertile ground. Goblins, orcs, and their like, who had barely escaped extinction through a prodigious gift for breeding.
"We didn't want a war. Everything we wanted was already here. Everyone was living content, and then that mad warmonger appeared."
"Then the Demon King is a good man who thinks of the weak— no. That isn't it either."
Avoiding starvation only to die on a battlefield is no great improvement. Even so, I still could not understand why they praised him.
"Then why do the lesser demons..."
"Because he tosses them feed, and they like it. Besides, they were an inferior breed of whom people used to say that any death but starvation was a good one. He gave a soldier's death to wretches who were going to starve. Why wouldn't they be glad?"
So they had not come to live well because of the Demon King. What came before had simply been so much hell that life, by comparison, had improved. The thought that they could not even recognize their own misery stirred my pity.
And alongside the pity, relief. The intent would shift somewhat from the original plan, but our scheme — to end the war by removing the Demon King, the center upon which everything turned — would succeed.
"Then if only the Demon King is gone, the war will end."
"No, it won't."
"What?"
"Whether the Demon King dies or lives, the war does not end."
The shock of the Demon's words was like a carriage in full career suddenly overturning. Heaven and earth flipping, with no warning at all. Afraid that three years of effort might come to nothing, I asked her.
"...Why is that?"
"Because too many have died."
We humans were not the only ones who had lost family to a war none of us wanted. The cause lay within, but demons who had lost family to the enemy were no different.
"I've never been to a battlefield, but the letters that come from Papa now and then are full of resentment and hatred toward humans. The other races won't be much different."
"...It isn't our fault, though."
"No. I'm sorry. But if we simply withdraw from here, your side won't sit quietly either."
The Demon was right. Just as demonkind had stored up grudges against humankind, humankind had been driven half-mad with bitterness by the long war. Even if they retreated in good order, we would surely give chase and kill every demon we could.
This isn't how it should go...
If it came to that, the premise of this assassination would collapse entirely. Our operation rested on the Demon King being the center of his army. Kill that center, and the army would rot from within, and each legion commander would turn on the others for the chance to become the next Demon King. We had even accounted for them falling all the way back to the Demon Realm to regroup in the midst of it.
But if the Demon King was someone resented by all — not the savior who led demonkind, but an enemy they held in common — then no one would care for the name of Demon King at all.
"That face. You thought everything would be over if the Demon King died. Of course it wouldn't. A kingdom doesn't fall just because one king dies."
"At least I thought I wouldn't have to look at that Hero bastard's face..."
Struck where it hurt, I answered without thinking. At that, the Demon and the knight tilted their heads, interest kindling.
"Sounds like your side has its troubles too. Your boss is a problem case as well? Knowing we aren't the only ones suffering puts me a little at ease. Isn't that right, Tyrant?"
"......"
The knight called Tyrant, unable to speak, it seemed, answered in sign. I did not know the signs, and so I had no idea what she had said.
"What did she say?"
"She says it's unfair if we only tell you our side of things, so you ought to hand over some information of your own."
"Ha..."
Somehow, this was no longer the air of a fight. Had this been my own house, I would have wanted to set a meal before these enemies.
"If even my own story will do..."
"That's exactly what I want to hear. Oh — do you want some wine? I received a good one from Papa. Tyrant, you're drinking too, aren't you?"
The knight called Tyrant nodded. I was still letting out a hollow laugh at the absurdity of it when the Demon was already holding out a glass of wine.
"I am Izarbella, princess of the Demons. Call me Bella."
"......"
Beside her, Tyrant gestured once more. What it meant, I learned from Bella's own mouth, just as before.
"I am not pretending!! I really am a princess!!"
What in the world was I doing?
I had never felt any sacred duty toward the task of bringing down the Demon King, but neither had I meant to do the work halfway. And yet look at me now — in the middle of the enemy's camp, sharing idle talk and wine with the enemy. I knew it was a thing even worse than the Hero I so despised, and still...
"What is that bitch!! If she'd been a Demon, I'd have plucked her wings and ripped off her tail and left her looking like a human!!"
Watching Bella rage as if the matter were her own, I could not find it in me to want a fight. Tyrant trembled as if furious too. She raised two fingers into a pair of scissors and made a gesture of spreading them wide, and at the sight Bella went pale with shock.
"You want to tear her open down there...? I have never heard you say anything so extreme."
"...Thank you for being so angry on my behalf."
"I got angry because I felt like it. There's nothing to thank me for."
"No. It's only that no one has ever been angry for me before."
Shameful as it is to admit, I have no friends. The Magic Tower is a cold arena of competition, where anyone who falls behind is discarded without mercy. Even the masters who once regarded me as a disciple now see me as a rival, and that is why they sent me here. My house, too, set the good of the family above any one person, and so until now there had not been a single soul on my side.
"Having someone take my side is strangely new. By the way — what sort of demon is the Demon King? The rumors said she was a woman."
"The Demon King is a middle-aged man who reeks of stale age. I don't know why a rumor like that spread, but it worked out nicely. That lecher of a Hero is probably pressed up against the old man right about now."
"Yes. How fortunate."
"Still, the Hero is awful too, even if he doesn't match the Demon King. Even an incubus has more restraint than that."
"They are a little alike, now that I think of it. Our Hero is popular as well, among the commoners who don't know any better."
"Sometimes the foolish are happier for it. I wish I had been. How long am I supposed to keep living this hostage life..."
I had taken them for confidants. In truth, they were hostages. Well — if it was true that she was a princess of the Demons, the backlash would be tremendous, so a hostage would not be strange.
"The rumors said you received power from the Demon King..."
"They're shackles. Flee from here, or let the Demon King die, and they vanish on the spot—. Huh?"
Bella suddenly curled in on herself. At the same time, the vortex of power that had filled her body began, little by little, to still. When at last her strength and Tyrant's had sunk to the level of legion commanders, all of us understood.
The Demon King was dead.
A smile flickered across her face for an instant, but this was not a thing to simply rejoice over. The Demon King's death meant the Hero had won. If that man, notorious as a lecher, laid eyes on someone as beautiful as Bella, what thought would he harbor?
"...Run."
"Huh?"
By the time I came back to myself, the word had already left my mouth. Perhaps it was only that we shared a shitty superior. Those two, met less than an hour ago, did not feel like strangers at all.
"I'll hold the Hero, somehow. The two of you — split apart, go different ways, and get out of here however you can."
"...Will you be all right? Even letting demons go?"
"The humankind that shoved me into a place like this looks less like family to me than the two of you, who understood my pain."
"...Hang in there!"
"I will. So please — hurry...!"
"All right!!"
Bella shot west. Tyrant shot east. Just before she went, Bella shouted back at me.
"Wait — what's your name!!"
"Yes?"
"We don't even know your name yet! What is it!!"
"Elang. Elang Meister."
"Yes. Let us."
Looking the other way, I found Tyrant waving as well, a great sweep of the arm. There was something so childlike in the force of it that I laughed before I knew it. I waved back — as if I had become a child again, with all my strength, hoping it would carry to them how glad I was to have met them.
When their figures sank past the horizon, I lowered my gaze to the Demon King's citadel. The heart of a castle where hundreds of thousands of demons lay in wait. Toward the place where the final battle with the Demon King had been fought, and where the Hero was waiting, I began a slow descent.