AN UNOPPOSABLE FORCE
Crunch. Crunch.
I shouldn’t be able to hear it anymore.
But the wet, crunching sound keeps clinging to my ears.
Crunch, crunch, crunch, over and over.
“We blew it!”
I can’t help yelling in frustration.
Our strategy was so haphazard that we were hoping to snag an empire leader or two, but instead we managed to land the hero, the biggest catch of all.
But then we let him slip right through our fingers!
If we’d succeeded, it would’ve been a big enough achievement to put all our trespasses behind us!
“Sanatoria, calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down?! And how could you let a snot-nosed girl like that slow you down, Huey?!”
“I did the best I could! Besides, I didn’t see you doing a single thing after that first surprise attack!”
Shouting at each other lets off some of the heat of our anger, and we both cool down a little.
“…I’m sorry. I went too far.”
“No, I got overly heated, too.”
We fall silent for a moment.
“So what are we going to do now?”
“…We’ll just have to find another way to earn some points. We’ve got no other choice.”
That’s right: We’re trying to curry favor and get ourselves in the Demon Lord’s good graces.
Huey and I are actually commanders of the demon army.
We were born into good families and blessed with natural talents, and we put all that to work to earn our positions.
It hasn’t exactly been a life of luxury, since the entire demon race is going through hard times, but we were luckier than the majority and satisfied with our lot.
But that all changed when the new Demon Lord appeared.
She wants to start up the war against humans again, no matter what it takes.
This is no joke. The demon race has already suffered so much from the incessant war that we can barely even get by as it is, you know.
We don’t have the resources for another conflict, and whether we win or lose, the losses will be too great.
Our already bad situation is sure to get even worse.
I won’t claim I did it for noble reasons like the sake of our race, like Balto or Agner.
I just didn’t want to go to war or struggle any harder just to make ends meet.
That’s why Huey and I agreed to our fellow commander Nereo’s plan.
Little did we know that we were walking straight to our own doom.
We didn’t want much—only to wipe out that awful Demon Lord.
One of the commanders, Warkis, took up the banner of revolution against the Demon Lord.
The rest of us aided him in secret, and when Warkis’s army marched on the capital, we planned to join him and declare our open rebellion.
Between Warkis’s revolutionary army and our own troops, we’d be able to outnumber the capital guards and defeat the Demon Lord.
At least, that was the plan.
But when push came to shove, the Demon Lord and her army sniffed out the rebellion and crushed it before Mr. Warkis could even finish gathering soldiers for the army.
And then Warkis committed suicide right before our eyes rather than be executed.
At the time, I thought I was still safe. I felt bad about Warkis, but I didn’t think his death could possibly lead to my own.
But immediately after it happened, Agner gave us a warning, and we realized we were in far deeper trouble than we thought.
“I ask only that you be aware that you have been knowingly let off the hook. That Her Majesty the Demon Lord already has a knife to all your throats. Be assured that there will be no second chances if you make any strange moves again. The Demon Lord is not so benevolent as to look after those she does not need.”
Agner is most likely the smartest person I know.
If he said the Demon Lord knew about us, then he must be correct.
That certainly put me on my toes.
And yet, even then, I still didn’t understand just how terrifying the Demon Lord is.
Until I heard that crunching sound.
“I’m replacing the Ninth Army Commander.”
The Demon Lord had summoned Huey; the Ninth Army Commander, Nereo; and me.
The Ninth Army currently exists only in name, with no actual troops.
Its only member is the commander, so it’s not much of an actual position.
But the Demon Lord announced she was going to form a proper Ninth Army and change the commander.
“Black here will be taking over the Ninth. Play nice.”
She introduced a man I’d never seen before, clad in black armor from head to toe.
A ridiculous outfit and a name to match. Obviously it must be a fake identity.
No doubt, this person is a friend of the Demon Lord’s, who’s getting the job thanks to nepotism.
But I did detect an aura of strength from the man.
It made sense for him to replace Nereo, who’s better suited to internal administration.
And it’s logical that the Demon Lord would want to have commanders she knows and trusts.
…I wasn’t nearly as afraid as I should have been.
I should have realized something was wrong when she summoned just the three of us.
“Which means we won’t be needing the current Ninth Army Commander anymore.”
And that’s when things went to hell.
A wet, crunching sound filled the room.
Nereo’s head vanished from his neck.
His headless body collapsed to the floor before he could even react.
Blood gushed from his neck with the final pulses of his heart, staining the floor red.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
With each successive crunching sound, another piece of Nereo’s body disappeared.
Finally, the Demon Lord licked her lips, and the blood seeping into the floor was gone without a trace.
As if nothing had ever been there to begin with.
I thought I must be dreaming.
I hoped I was just dreaming.
But it was reality.
“Now, who will I need to replace next?”
The Demon Lord looked at us with a grin.
Ever since that day, the wet, crunching sound has clung to my ears.
It won’t go away any more than the terror that accompanies it.
“Where’s the other squad?”
“They haven’t come back. We suspect they’ve been caught.”
“How odd.”
We sent a separate squad to go around and position themselves to cut off the hero’s escape route.
If they were able to pin the hero and his party, we’d be able to catch up to them and attack from both sides.
How could our other squad have been wiped out before we even reached them?
“Perhaps they ran into each other while the hero was on his way here?”
As soon as I say it, I shake my head.
If the humans had encountered the other squad before they got here, surely they would’ve been more on their guard. Since my surprise attack succeeded, that mustn’t be the case.
After our fight, the hero and the other humans wouldn’t have been able to fight the other squad.
So by that logic, did our men run into a demon-hunting clan or something by chance and get wiped out before they ever encountered the hero?
“Either way, it’d be dangerous to stay here any longer.”
Since the humans escaped, it’s entirely possible that they’ll send a big army back after us.
And if the other squad encountered a clan, they might attack us, too.
At any rate, we’d better withdraw.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Are your hand and leg all right?”
“…No, not really. But I can still walk, so let’s hold off on the healing until we get to a safe place.”
My hand got broken in our fight with the hero and his little friends, and that last spell of the hero’s injured my right leg.
It’s not just me, either; the wide-range Light Magic attack exploded at our soldiers’ feet, causing considerable casualties.
If it wasn’t for that attack, we might’ve been able to chase them more effectively, but with so many of our soldiers unable to keep up on their wounded legs, we couldn’t follow the fleeing hero for long.
They got us good, all right.
“…What should we do now?”
Huey’s expression wavers anxiously.
“…Let’s just focus on getting away for the time being.”
I’m worried, too, of course.
We missed our big chance to take down the hero and failed to gain any merits, so now we’ll have to find some other way to get into the Demon Lord’s good graces.
Since she has her eye on us, we have no choice but to obey her every command and do whatever it takes to avoid being killed.
“Fortunately, since we carried out this plan in absolute secrecy, the Demon Lord won’t find out that we’ve failed. We didn’t gain anything, but we didn’t lose anything, either. Let’s just call it a wash.”
“Hmm. So getting soldiers killed for fun doesn’t count as a loss? Iiiinteresting.”
It can’t be. How could I be hearing that voice right now?
At once, my entire body is paralyzed with fear.
The only movement I can manage is the occasional tremble.
Finally, praying that I was hearing things, I slowly turn around. If I move any faster, I’m afraid my injured leg will give out.
Once I turn, I see the last person I ever want to see, especially right now.
A seemingly young girl, kicking back in a luxurious chair that looks very out of place deep in the woods.
Though she appears too young to even be called a woman, on the inside, she’s an unknowable monster.
It’s the person we fear most: the Demon Lord.
“But…how?”
What is she doing here?
How did she find out? When and how did she get here?
I have so many questions and no answers.
All I know is that this might be the end.
“Hee-hee. I heard from White that you guys were up to something interesting, so I decided to come observe, that’s all.”
The Demon Lord smiles innocuously.
But I can tell that her eyes aren’t smiling.
As soon as I heard the name “White,” though, I understood everything.
White is a woman the Demon Lord brought in from somewhere, along with Black.
After the Demon Lord put Black in charge of the Ninth Army, she made White the Tenth Army Commander.
Black brought in the soldiers of the new Ninth Army, so I don’t know who they are, but the new Tenth Army is even more mysterious.
Unlike the Ninth Army, the names on the Tenth Army list are people with real identities, but they all wear matching white clothes and look like completely different people from before.
There are rumors they’ve been brainwashed or hypnotized, which would be funny if it didn’t seem like a terrifyingly real possibility.
And they all seem to be spies.
In other words, White is the Demon Lord’s eyes and ears.
So the Demon Lord has been monitoring our actions through White…
“Our deepest apologies!”
While I stand there half-resigned to our fate, Huey bows deeply and starts apologizing.
“We had the hero backed into a corner, but he got away at the last moment, and we lost valuable soldiers in the process. I am truly sorry.”
He earnestly acknowledges our failure, then goes even further.
“Great Demon Lord, Lady Sanatoria was really only helping me at my insistence. The Sixth Army initiated this strategy, so I will take full responsibility.”
Huey looks like a child, yet here he is trying to act all cool and mature.
“Oh, it’s fine. I’m not really mad about this or anything.”
As Huey tries to take the blame, fully expecting his own death, the Demon Lord laughs it off carelessly.
Upon hearing this, Huey quickly raises his head.
It’s incredibly cold here near the Mystic Mountains, yet his face is covered in a sheen of sweat.
I guess it’s true that when people experience fear beyond their limits, they really do break out in a cold sweat.
But I would never mock him for this, because I’m in a similar state.
“Sure, it’s annoying that you acted on your own, but whatever little pranks you get up to don’t really matter much in the long run.”
She’s basically calling us insignificant, but instead of the humiliation I might normally feel, most of me is just relieved.
I’d rather her think of us as unimportant than see us as a hindrance.
I’ve heard that the old commander of the Ninth Army, Nereo, tried to dethrone the Demon Lord in secret even after Warkis’s rebel army was quashed.
He got the Demon Lord’s chef and an attendant on his side, and they tried to poison her.
This is all hearsay, but according to the rumors, the Demon Lord calmly ate the entire poisoned plate before saying this:
“Gross! Whoever made this disgusting meal is fired!”
The chef’s head rolled the very next day—literally—along with the attendant who had conspired with them.
And Nereo, who was the mastermind behind it, was executed right in front of us.
I can still hear that crunching, smacking sound in my ears.
My appetite has been all but nonexistent ever since. The sound of my own chewing reminds me too much of that day.
I don’t fully understand what happened, but one thing is for certain: Nereo was erased from this world by some horrible unknown force.
Since witnessing that, I now understand why Balto and Agner are so willing to obey the Demon Lord without question.
Both of them are deeply concerned for the future of the demon race, so it was strange that they would obey the Demon Lord, who seems hell-bent on destroying it.
But instead of realizing why, we let ourselves be fooled by the Demon Lord’s youthful appearance, and we woke a sleeping dragon.
Those two must have already known that it’s impossible to defy the Demon Lord.
Although it would’ve been nice of them to clue in the rest of us!
…No, I suppose Balto did try. Every time we met, he warned me not to attempt to rebel against her. I’m the one who let that fall on deaf ears.
I should’ve taken his warning more seriously.
I know there’s no point dwelling on it now, but I can’t help wishing I could turn back time and do things over again.
“Besides, you’ve already been punished for going behind my back.”
The Demon Lord’s words drag me harshly back to reality.
We’ve already been punished…?
What does that mean?
We’re physically unharmed. Does that mean she did something else to us?
Beside me, Huey turns pale.
He has a younger brother.
Could she have done something to our families?!
My imagination starts to run wild.
“Y’know those guys you were saying haven’t come back? That’s ’cause I wiped ’em out already.”
Though I hate to admit it, I feel a bit of relief on hearing that.
I feel bad for those soldiers, but I wouldn’t have put it past the Demon Lord to do something far worse.
“So you don’t need to apologize for losing valuable men, get it? I’m the one who did it in the first place.”
Far from looking ashamed, the Demon Lord sticks out her tongue cutely, like a mischievous child.
How can she act like that when she’s just massacred her own people?
Despite her cutesy actions, I can feel my blood running cold with fear of the Demon Lord.
And at the same time, something seems off.
Why would she wipe out that squad in the first place? It seems like an oddly indirect punishment.
Yes, from a military perspective, having those troops wiped out is a significant loss. But it doesn’t punish Huey or me personally in any real way.
Does that mean she had a different goal, and punishing us was just an excuse?
Why would the Demon Lord need to destroy that squad?
“Erm, may I ask…why those soldiers…?”
The soldiers in the other squad were Huey’s men from the Sixth Army, so I’m not surprised that he would have questions, but I’m still strangely impressed that he managed to speak up.
Maybe I’m getting emotional from the relief that we won’t be punished any further?
“Sure. It’d be a pain for me if the hero died right now, so I had to get in your way a teensy bit.”
Instead of growing angry as I feared, the Demon Lord answers calmly.
But I can’t help being frustrated by her words.
“What?! But we set a trap to defeat the hero for you!”
Huey, you idiot!
What possessed you to defy the Demon Lord when she didn’t seem too angry with us?!
“Yeah, see, this is why I don’t want you doing stuff like this without permission. Although I guess we never really put out a notice not to go after the hero, so we’ll call this one even, yeah? My bad.”
“I don’t believe it… So my troops died for such an arbitrary reason…?”
Huey hangs his head in disbelief.
Of course. To me they’re just random soldiers, but Huey knew them as his subordinates.
I can’t blame him for being shocked.
“Why don’t you want the hero to be defeated?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
Huey was probably hoping to at least find out why his men had to die, but the Demon Lord curtly shuts him down.
“But…that’s…”
Huey glances at the Demon Lord’s expression, then swallows the rest of his words.
I’m sure that explanation didn’t comfort him at all, but if he keeps pushing the Demon Lord for more information, her mood might turn sour.
He has no choice but to accept it, even if it doesn’t make sense.
I inwardly sigh with relief when Huey backs down.
“This might not be much comfort to you, but they were fine soldiers.”
“…Yes. Thank you.”
I’m surprised the Demon Lord complimented the squad like that.
She seems to think of us all as nothing but expendable pawns, so I definitely wasn’t expecting her to comfort Huey like that.
“They grew up nice and strong, and their deaths will make great fertilizer for the world. Yep. Some fine soldiers right there.”
…Of course.
She really doesn’t see us as people at all.
No wonder she said it might not be much comfort.
Huey clenches his fist.
“Hmm? You mad? Are you mad at me now?”
As the Demon Lord taunts him jokingly, I can see Huey gritting his teeth.
“Wait, calm down!” I hiss at him quietly.
It’s all well and good if he wants to defy the Demon Lord and get himself killed, but not if I’m mixed up in it.
“Hey, guys. Did you know I came here all alone?”
The Demon Lord grins at us.
Now that she mentions it, I hadn’t noticed in the shock of her sudden appearance, but there’s no one else here with the Demon Lord—not even any guards.
It’s just her and me, Huey, and the soldiers from the Sixth Army, although most of them were injured in the battle with the hero.
Which means we have her outnumbered.
“What do you wanna do?”
The Demon Lord tilts her head to the side inquiringly.
This certainly is a favorable situation, in theory.
The Demon Lord is more powerful than we can comprehend, but if she’s on her own, we might be able to overcome her.
…As if I would ever entertain such a fleeting hope.
“A hilarious joke, Your Majesty.”
I grab Huey’s sleeve tightly while giving the Demon Lord my best ingratiating smile.
“I’m sure the soldiers would be proud to hear such high praise from the great Demon Lord. How could we possibly be angry? I should wish the same honor for myself one day.”
No doubt she can see right through my bald-faced lies, but I have no choice but to try to smooth things over like this.
The Demon Lord’s mouth quirks into a smile, so it seems like my strategy worked for now.
“Oh, good. Well, I look forward to seeing your work, then.”
Does that mean she wants me to die and serve as “fertilizer for the world” like she said about those soldiers? Because if so, I’d rather not deliver on that.
“Of course.”
But naturally, I have to agree to it out loud.
“Okay, White, let’s head home.”
The Demon Lord turns around.
There’s a girl standing directly behind her, who’s been there since who-knows-when.
A girl who’s inhuman in a different way from the Demon Lord, her entire body white, as if all color has been bleached away.
She’s so out of place in her surroundings that she looks like she stepped from a painting.
“All righty, we’re gonna go back. No more funny business without my permission, ’kay?”
Or else I’ll eat you.
With that, the Demon Lord and the girl in white disappear.
I wait a long while after their disappearance, then sink to the ground.
Only now do I finally feel the stinging pain from my wounded hand and leg.
But the reason I can’t stand any longer has more to do with willpower than my injuries.
“All alone, indeed. Of course she had someone else with her.”
I didn’t even notice her lurking there.
But naturally, even if the Demon Lord really had been alone, I would’ve done the same thing.
We can’t beat the Demon Lord.
No one can.
If we stood a chance, she wouldn’t have shown up so casually and offered a challenge like that.
She was testing us.
What if we’d really tried to take her down?
I’m sure none of us would be alive by now.
The realization sets my body trembling.
It’s cold.
So very, very cold, all the way down to my bones.
I’m terrified.
The only option we have left is total obedience to the Demon Lord, and even then, I don’t know for sure if we’ll survive.
The Demon Lord seems to be hoping we’ll die, after all.
We can’t rebel against her.
We’re not strong enough. We’d simply die.
But even if we don’t, we might very well die anyway.
“What are we supposed to do?!”
I choke the words out loud despite myself.
“Sanatoria. For now…for now, let’s just get going.”
Huey doesn’t seem to have an answer, either.
Instead, he takes my hand and pulls me up, then puts his arm around my waist to help me walk.
As we move, my thoughts churn.
There’s one force that no living thing can oppose: death.
Anything that lives must one day die.
And to me, the Demon Lord seems like an incarnation of death itself.
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