The document Meena the snake demon handed to me contained information about the next demon that would appear, including the location.
It was a city called Johnbull, located in the northwest of Alvan.
Since it was located on the border, it traded with other countries, mainly with Dia’s homeland, the Kingdom of Soigel, and although it fell behind the port town of Milteu, it was prosperous in its own right.
The demon was expected to appear in three days, an extremely close date, and the location was only about 80km away from Tuatha Dé.
Any crisis occurring in Johnbull could spread all the way to Tuatha Dé.
When I surveyed the population of Johnbull, I realized that even if all the residents of the city were sacrificed, unless there were a large number of high-quality souls in the midst, it would be a tad too insufficient to fulfill the goal of producing the Fruit of Life.
If there weren’t enough souls there, the demon would most likely target Tuatha Dé next.
In this vicinity, Tuatha Dé was the most populated land, as well as the farthest from the royal capital, and the least likely to receive reinforcements, making it a prime target for the enemy.
[So Johnbull will be targeted, huh. I’ve been there myself. It’s a nice town.] (Dia)
[A nice town, and one that Tuatha Dé doesn’t want to lose.] (Lugh)
That city was also an important business partner for Tuatha Dé.
Even though the Tuatha Dé domain was highly self-sufficient in food, it didn’t necessarily cover the daily needs of everybody in our territory.
It was too inefficient for that.
The only people who could settle for that were those who, like House Romanlung, owned an overwhelmingly vast and wealthy territory with the appropriate resources.
And it was precisely because Johnbull was a city thriving in the commercial industry that we bought most of the things we lacked from them. And conversely, we sold them what we produced in Tuatha Dé.
There were several cities that could replace Johnbull, but they were too far away.
The transportation cost was so high that the prices of merchandise that used to be available for cheap would jump, and the people who used to sell stuff to Johnbull would have to spend all their profits on transportation.
[Did you learn about this through the usual information network?] (Dia)
Dia asked me that question in our rocking carriage.
[Yeah, as always.] (Lugh)
Since I was deliberately hiding Meena’s true identity, I explained that I got the info from my personal information network.
Because letting the others know the truth could prove dangerous instead.
There were two more people on board.
One of them was Tarte, who was thoroughly reading the document I drew up about the demon that would appear this time.
I wrote it based on Meena’s intel, then I added to it what I learned from Aram Karla, I analyzed it all, and I even wrote down countermeasures.
As for the fourth passenger, I called out to her.
[I’m surprised you could free up your schedule.] (Lugh)
[I didn’t free it up, I cleared it up.] (Nevan)
The peerlessly beautiful girl whose blonde hair looked like melted gold smiled at me. (TN : Here in the WN, her hair is blonde. But in the LN, it’s purple.)
I had promised her that I would let her join us during our battle against the demon, so I invited her.
[I didn’t think you would believe me.] (Lugh)
Duke Romanlung also had his personal information network.
And I knew they didn’t get hold of any information regarding the new demon.
After all, this intel was brought to me by my demon informant.
[Fufufu…! This truly piques my interest. I mean, I cannot believe you possess information that not even Romanlung could find.] (Nevan)
[You’re not asking me where I got it from?] (Lugh)
[Your usual information network, isn’t it?] (Nevan)
[That’s right.] (Lugh)
She kept the same smiling expression.
She knew it was pointless to ask me, so she didn’t insist.
But that didn’t mean she had given up, it was just her way of declaring that she would look for the answer herself.
As we were being rocked by the carriage, smoke began to come out of Tarte’s head.
[Urrgh…! That demon is way too powerful! This is foul play!] (Tarte)
Tarte stared at the document she had read over and over again with an annoyed expression.
In her case, even such gestures were cute, funnily enough.
[You’re right. The next demon is the Beast King Riogel. And as his name suggests, his characteristics are similar to those of a lion.] (Lugh)
[That lion must be really strong.] (Tarte)
[Yeah. Felines possess flexible, springy muscles with a tremendous level of power output. They have sharp reflexes and exhibit an impressive amount of concentration, like those of carnivorous beasts. …Although, that last feature will be easy to deal with.] (Lugh)
I had a feeling that if Beast King Riogel was “by himself”, he would be easy to assassinate.
[Even though he possesses a high level of concentration?] (Tarte)
[The thing about reaching the level of concentration needed for hunting prey is that it makes you narrow-minded. I do the same when I snipe, but to do that, I erase all information from the world except for my target and myself. This deep level of concentration is the reason I don’t miss my shots.] (Lugh)
[Ah! I understand now. In other words, he will have more blind spots, and he will be slower to react to attacks coming from them.] (Tarte)
[Yeah, exactly. That’s why I needed an assistant. Someone to be the prey which he’ll focus all his attention on. With you, Tarte, I can focus on killing him.] (Lugh)
The moment you hunted your prey was the moment when you were the most vulnerable.
It was an unavoidable structural issue.
Herbivores, who were always looking to escape, possessed a wide field of vision and were constantly on the lookout.
However, hunters were different.
In order to surpass the concentration of a continually cautious enemy, even for a moment, and bring them down, they narrowed their field of vision and focused deeply for a short time. Their level of concentration was incomparable to that of herbivores.
But the drawback was that they couldn’t stay focused for too long, and they couldn’t notice anything that was outside their field of vision, leaving them wide open.
[But what you’re thinking is that it’ll be hard to pull off, right?] (Dia)
[If he were alone, that would be a weakness to exploit, but he has a harem with him. Another trait typical of lions.] (Lugh)
Lions formed herds of several females centered around one male.
The Beast King Riogel wasn’t the type of demon that could spawn monsters, but he always had cronies around him.
[Um, what is a “harem”?] (Tarte)
[I’ll answer that for you. Let’s see, there’s me, you, and that girl I’ve never met before, Maha. The three of us are Lugh’s harem, so to speak.] (Dia)
[Hold on a second, could you please add me to your harem as well?] (Nevan)
Dia gave Nevan a cold stare.
[Your father the Duke wouldn’t want that, would he? If you got together with Lugh, he would do everything to get me and Tarte out of the way, am I right?] (Dia)
[Not at all. He and I have a fairly high opinion of you two. Therefore, we expect that any child that you two would have with Lugh-sama will be born with blood worthy of being taken in by Romanlung. In case things don’t work out with Lugh-sama, we’ll still have your offspring carrying suitable blood as a spare plan.] (Nevan)
[Ugh, you Romanlung have no shame whatsoever.] (Dia)
[Fufufu! Thank you for the compliment.] (Nevan)
As usual, Nevan’s brain was lacking in common sense.
She did possess emotions such as passion and the desire to monopolize, but above all, she was a Romanlung.
[I don’t recall ever building anything like a harem. A harem is a group of several females submitting to and gathering around one single male. The females devote themselves to the male, both as his swords and his shields. They’re not equal, the male is dominant.] (Lugh)
[See? That’s exactly what we are.] (Dia)
[Um…! I am devoted to you, Lugh-sama! Both as your sword and your shield!] (Tarte)
[I stand corrected, then. Unfortunately, I don’t have the qualifications to be in your harem. Because if I had to choose between you and myself, I would choose myself.] (Nevan)
…This is giving me a headache.
[Let’s get back on topic. In short, we’ll be dealing with a pack. In addition to that, unlike the orcs who raided the academy, it won’t be a bunch of small fry sticking close to a single strong demon. Not only are the females almost as powerful as the male, but they also possess their own free will, they’re smart, and they take appropriate actions. They function as a team. Which is a far cry different from just having numbers.] (Lugh)
They worked together in a coordinated fashion to increase their strengths and eliminate their weaknesses.
A well-functioning team was one that increased the power of each individual many times over.
[Um, I’m starting to feel awfully nervous, so I’d like to ask you, those females are all monsters, right? So unlike demons, we can kill them normally, right?] (Dia)
[Yeah, they’re monsters. But apparently, when the male touches them, they acquire the same natural disposition as a demon. So unless the Hero kills them personally or we kill them within the【Demonkiller】field, the male will bring them back to life by touching them.] (Lugh)
Dia and Tarte remained silent.
They seemingly realized how formidable the enemy actually was.
The mere fact that the demon had followers that were as strong as him was already a pain, but this demon could even bring them back to full health with a single touch.
[Um, how are we going to defeat them?] (Tarte)
[At the end of the day, no matter how much we prepare ourselves, we won’t get anywhere without isolating the male and the females. So, here’s what we’ll do.] (Lugh)
[Do you have a specific method in mind?] (Dia)
[I do. You know that cannon I always use for my【Cannon Strikes】?] (Lugh)
[Yeah, the monstrous one.] (Dia)
[I tweaked it a bit to make it a catapult… or rather, a launching pad. I’ll use it to blast the male several kilometers away. The demon will regenerate even if we kill him, so moving him far away will be an effective tactic. Then, since we’ll be able to freely kill the females, we’ll reduce their numbers as much as possible, and in order to prevent the male from bringing them back to life when he comes back, we’ll incinerate every last piece of the females’ remains. We’ll just keep repeating that same process.] (Lugh)
It may seem like a daunting task, but it should be an effective move.
And I had a plan B in case using the catapult didn’t work.
[Um, would it not work if you sniped him with your【Railgun】?] (Tarte)
[I could land my shot, but if I hit him without using【Demonkiller】along with that, he’ll just regenerate from it, making it all pointless. On the other hand, with all his followers around him, it’ll be almost impossible and too dangerous for you and Dia alone to try and use【Demonkiller】on the demon.] (Lugh)
If I used【Railgun】, I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else.
And I didn’t count Nevan as a fighting force in close combat.
[Fair point.【Demonkiller】has a really short range, and the incantation takes a long time to chant.] (Dia)
[Indeed, and our opponent is immortal. When facing a demon, the point is not to kill him, but to immobilize him, which already raises the hurdle. But if they even have numerical superiority, then it may be a hopeless fight. And I think blowing him away will be just as complicated.] (Tarte)
[I can handle that part with a little ingenuity. Trust me.] (Lugh)
I wasn’t bluffing, I actually had a clear vision of what to do.
I could feel someone’s gaze upon me.
Nevan had been looking at me in silence since a while ago.
[Is there something you’d like to say?] (Lugh)
[I simply find it strange that although you have a much easier method, you won’t use it.] (Nevan)
So she did notice, after all.
There was indeed a much easier and safer way to go about it, on the condition that I gave myself a certain permission.
[Would you mind telling us for reference?] (Lugh)
[You used wide-ranged powerful magic spells to wipe out an entire army of orcs back at the academy, didn’t you? That’s what you should use. All but the male will not regenerate unless the male touches them, yes? If you use that, there will not even be a single piece of their flesh left, and even if there were, it would be blown far away. The male may resurrect, but he will be unable to resurrect the females in one go.] (Nevan)
The spells she was referring to were【God Spear】and【Rifle Volley】.
I slaughtered the orc army using a combination of those moves and gave the credit to the Hero, but she let the truth slip, leading to the fact that I was capable of such destructive power to become public knowledge.
Tarte and Dia were looking at Nevan with gazes of admiration, as if they had heard an unexpectedly good idea.
[I also thought about using those. But demons show up anywhere at any time. The best place to spot that one would be in the vicinity of Johnbull. The outer walls of that city are far more fragile than those of the academy city or the royal capital. If I were to use those spells in such a place, I would blow up the entire city. More than a thousand lives would be sacrificed.] (Lugh)
That was my bottleneck.
In my battle against the orc demon, his army was quite far from our camp, and we had a robust protective wall.
In our battle against the beetle demon, the inhabitants were all killed to begin with.
But this time, things were different.
We were going to fight near a large city, one that couldn’t even withstand the aftershock of my【God Spears】.
[How is that a problem? This is a battle to save the world. I don’t think the citizens of Johnbull are worth the Holy Knight, who must continue to protect the world, taking such a risk.] (Nevan)
[That’s something I can’t agree with. Between a risk of this level and thousands of lives, I would choose the latter. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m prepared to sacrifice thousands of lives if I find myself so cornered that I have to. But this time, it’s not worth considering. I’ve thought up an idea knowing that if it’s us, we can carry it out.] (Lugh)
I wasn’t going to deny what Nevan said.
And I wasn’t going to claim that human life was more precious than anything else either.
I understood that if I died, this world would perish.
On that basis, I felt that I could take this level of risk.
[If you know what you’re doing, then alright. What thoughts do you two have on this?] (Nevan)
[I’m with Lugh all the way. I don’t doubt his capacities one bit.] (Dia)
[Likewise…! I have faith in Lugh-sama!] (Tarte)
[My, what marvelous trust you have in him.] (Nevan)
Nevan smiled in a way that was slightly different from how she smiled until now.
Then, she clapped her hands with a showy expression.
[Dear me, what a foolish question I asked you. Lugh-sama, you have already “accepted to make necessary sacrifices.” There was no way you would have given a naive reply. Fufufu…! I’m falling in love with you all over again. I shall see what I can do to support you. With my light magic, you will have a higher success rate. Or should I say that you’ve been counting on it from the beginning?] (Nevan)
[Very perceptive. I’m calculating the risk while taking that into account.] (Lugh)
[Never before have I met a gentleman who could see things the same way I do. We are, without a doubt, meant to be together.] (Nevan)
The carriage ran.
Towards the decisive battle ground.
She found out about what I had no intention of discussing until the end.
Something I had kept from Dia and Tarte.
If I really wanted to reduce casualties, we had to evacuate the residents of Johnbull.
However, in order to evacuate them, I would have to reveal where I got the information from to the government.
Moreover, I was afraid the demon would pick a new target due to the disappearance of the residents.
If he chose to target a completely unexpected location instead, the damage could be multiplied manifold.
Even if I had a human heart, I was still an assassin, one who calculated life by numbers.
Which is why, even if it was unlikely, in order not to let him change targets, I allowed myself to let people die in our battle in Johnbull.
However, because I made that choice, I swore on my pride that there wouldn’t be more deaths than I could tolerate.
Now that I had made my decision, it was the only thing I could do.
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