CHAPTER 28
The Ex–Demon Lord and an Unexpected Twist
In summary, the first day went by without a hitch, aside from the mess that Sylphy made. And as dawn broke, the curtains rose on the second day of the school festival. The sun streamed down, illuminating the earth, as we welcomed another breezy blue sky that stretched for miles.
There seemed to be more foot traffic compared to the day before. The people strolling around the festival were becoming more energetic by the second.
Through the throng of guests, I was on patrol alone. I would essentially be moving independently from this day forward. Since Sylphy had been ordered to wait on standby at our class booth, Ireena had to cover for the areas that would have been under her surveillance.
It went without saying that I was keeping a constant eye on Ireena, and she’d immediately contact me if anything went awry.
That said, the demons hadn’t shown the slightest hint of themselves so far. Maybe the threat was a fake. I guarded the campus, suspicious of their movements.
“Ugh. An hour wait? That’s so annoying.”
“Not much we can do. It’s cheap and quality food. That doesn’t happen often.”
“You got me there. Guess I’ll stick it out.”
The clamor of conversation filled my ears and caught my attention, coaxing me to take a peek. I spotted a long line of people snaking from a single stall.
In that moment, I realized that those guys engaged in that conversation had ulterior motives to enter a shop with an hour wait: the Bikini Girls Café.
Those boys weren’t looking for a “quality” meal. They weren’t here to satiate their physical hunger. No, they were acting on pure, carnal desire.
And the ones managing this obvious knockoff of our own booth were none other than—
“Oh, what’s this? Well, if it isn’t the son of the Great Mages. What brings you here?” someone provoked in a cheery, derisive voice as I was in mid-thought.
The students from Class A.
It was a cluster of five aristocratic students who eyed me with overflowing animosity.
“…No reason in particular. I’m on patrol and happened to pass by.”
Their leader sneered. “Yeah, right. I mean, you are a vulgar commoner. Are you sure you didn’t come here to scope our shop?”
Our shop. That’s right. The Bikini Girls Café was run by Class A.
They had the gall to steal our idea right under our noses. Well, if that was all they did, I wouldn’t have had a bone to pick with them. But based on the rumors, they had hired a top chef to spearhead all the food prep and even handpicked the most beautiful women in the royal capital to be their waitresses.
“…Well, I’ll give it to the members of Class A for their expertise in loan management.”
Each class had to make do with their provided budget for the festival, but that amount wasn’t enough if you had grand ideas for your class booth, which is why it would be essential to come up with more cash. This had resulted in our class making a few arrangements, including signing a forward contract, to double our budget…but to pull off the magnitude of Class A’s booth, I imagined they would need around eight times what they were given.
“How did you manage to secure substantial funds in such a short amount of time? I would love to learn a thing or two from you.”
“Hmph. Even if a commoner knew the aristocratic way to manage finances, it would be a waste of time and resources on your end,” he snapped back, sneering. But I could see a single drop of sweat trickle down his calm facade.
It was so obvious. He was basically confessing they had cheated by padding their budget.
“…Well, I’ll take my leave and continue the patrol.”
“Good luck. You’ll need it. I mean, you can try all you want, but we’ll still come up victorious in the end.” He chuckled, openly mocking me as I turned my back on him.
I sighed grievously. I knew I would find skeletons in their closets if I could just crack them open—leading to their possible disqualification. But…I would make a point not to do that.
We would continue the battle despite their advantage. And we would win. I wouldn’t be satisfied otherwise.
…I guess I’m getting riled up, too. I let my feet instinctively carry me to our booth.
The sign advertised THE EROTIC MAID CAFÉ , which couldn’t be easier to understand. The queue outside was no less inferior to Class A’s booth.
“Hmm. It’ll take a while before I can get in,” I observed.
I’d wanted to see everyone at work, but that didn’t seem possible. As I’d told the students of Class A, I was on patrol, which meant I had no time to spare. I was satisfied enough confirming that business was boom—
“Raaaaaaah! Whaddaya think you’re doing, buddy ?!” resounded an all-too-familiar voice, echoing around us in all its idiotic glory.
Through the booth wall, a golden torrent blasted out with fury.
Change of plans. By pardoning the disturbance, I cut in line to get inside, apologizing to the guests in the queue. As soon as I entered the booth, a girl appeared before my eyes—a dolt donning a skeevy, reimagined maid outfit…
Sylphy. She was on her tiptoes, her itty-bitty stature stretched out to its fullest height, with the Holy Sword Demise-Argis poised against a guest.
“Youuuu! You touched my butt just noooow! Perverts get the death sentennnce!”
“Eeeeek?!”
Déjà vu. I saw this same scene yesterday.
…Anyway. I interrupted and subdued her mindless stampeding, then banned the guest who had caused the disturbance from the shop and escorted him out.
As for the giant hole in the wall created by this fool…I had no choice but to do something about it with magic.
“W-wow…! It looks as if you’re rewinding the accident…!”
“T-to manipulate time! Ard, that’s sick…!”
“Oh, I want to marry him…! I’m serious…!”
The girls rocking their reimagined maid outfits shot me gazes filled with passion.
“…This isn’t anything to get excited about. It’s just revival magic that I tinkered and changed. Anyone can do this minor trick,” I claimed before giving Sylphy a stern lecture.
After I made sure she’d sufficiently reflected on her actions, I sighed. “Well then, I shall take my leave—”
“Oh, don’t say that! You’ve come all this way! Allow us to indulge you with our hospitality!” Ginny trotted over, flashing me a broad smile, slipping her arm through mine, and pressing her huge breasts into me… I watched as my arm sunk between those flushed twin peaks and felt their incomparable softness that eroded my grasp on all reason.
“O-okay. Just a short while…,” I blurted out, which was peculiar.
Ginny let a dark smile play across her lips. “All right! Just as we rehearsed! Think of this as the place where the one hundred women of Ard’s harem will be selected!”
“““Yes ma’am!””” A gaggle of girls shouted back, as if they were part of a well-trained army. And it wasn’t just the ones in between helping customers. Even the ones serving others abandoned their duties on the spot as they collectively moved with elegance and unerring accuracy. All to welcome me.
When I got a glimpse of their focused expressions, I couldn’t even joke that I thought abandoning the other customers was a bad idea. I was being looked at with the intensity of a carnivore circling its prey.
“First, greetings! Three, two, one!”
“““Welcome home, Master!””” They formed a single line and bowed in perfect unison as gravity pulled their breasts down, down, down, emphasizing their form. This had to be intentional.
Under normal circumstances, when taking in their sexy silhouettes, I wouldn’t be able to help but feel the heat rising in the room, but…
“Next, guide him to his seat!”
“““Yes ma’am! Right this way, Master!””” All the girls had bloodshot eyes that petrified me. I felt like I’d been tossed into a pack of ravenous animals.
Sure, their looks were overflowing with sex appeal, but…I wasn’t stimulated. Maybe it was due to the transparency of their ulterior motives.
“““What would you like to order, Master?! A drink? A bite to eat? Or maybe you’d like to order me ? That’s my personal recommendation, Master!”””
“…All right, I’ll have a drink. One orange juice, please.”
“““Understood! One glass of extra-creamy milk, coming right up! Here you go! Help yourself to our boobs!”””
“No one asked for such a thing!”
A horde of girls pressed their boobs against my body. Hospitality? It was more like a full-on hunt.
And during this scandalous merrymaking, Ireena entered the booth, as if by a cruel trick of fate. “Wh-wh-wh-wh-what are you doing?!”
“Serving the master. What of it?” Ginny provoked, ready to start an altercation on the spot.
“S-serving him? I can do that, too! Easy!” Ireena yelled, disappearing to the back of the shop for a short while.
“Wh-what do you think? Do I look okay?”
To go toe to toe against Ginny was the only reason Ireena had slipped into the new-and-improved maid outfit. I was sure of it.
And the moment she revealed herself, all those bastards in the booth whooped and cheered.
The risqué outfit had been sewn together exactly as Ginny had intended on paper. The top was an avant-garde fusion of a maid uniform and the tiniest bikini…which meant it exposed Ireena’s silky white skin and supple breasts that grew full over the years. One wrong move, and her private parts would be on display for the world to see. It was a risky situation.
The bottom half, on the other hand, didn’t bother to hide anything. It was questionable whether the skirt served a purpose, and her fleshy butt covered in a black thong was completely out in the open.
…I want to pluck out the eye of every dirtbag drooling over and ogling her. A-a-as your father, I can’t let you leave in this immodest outfit!
“I-Ireena. Please change into the normal maid outfit.”
“No! I’m going to serve you in this!”
“B-but aren’t you embarrassed?” I asked, and her face became flushed as she looked away.
Her thighs brushed up against each other as she fidgeted. “I-it’s not embarrassing at all. I-if I’m being honest…I get really excited when people look at me naked—ever since I was kidnapped.”
By that, she must have been referring to the incident with Elzard…which was when she’d been stripped to absolutely nothing, giving the host of demons full access to her velvety skin.
So this is why she has this weird kink.
I’ve never been more enraged as when I thought of the culprits, Elzard and the demons—Elzard in particular. If we were to meet again, I’d beat her into a bloody pulp.
“I-Ireena! Boss! Y-you look so sexy…! Geh. Geh-heh-heh…!” spouted some idiot, coming close to discovering a weird preference for herself. But I didn’t care about that.
“I’ll serve Ard and wait on his every need! The rest of you, back off!”
“Miss Ireena! You’re so pushy! You have to understand that Ard is everyone’s master!”
“““Yes, that’s right!”””
“Ugh! Enough already! You’re all so annoying! Ard is mine! And my master alone!”
“We shouldn’t be fighting! H-how about we split the difference…and let me do the serving?!”
“No, Sylphy. I would appreciate it if you quietly wait on the sidelines.”
“Gweh?!”
In the Erotic Maid Café, the squabbling among the girls carried on for some time.
…The War to Serve ended at long last, and peace settled back on the booth. Traffic was beginning to die down.
“Um, Ard. Might I have a moment?” Ginny called out.
I would have used patrolling to excuse myself if I thought she wanted to capture a steamy moment together…but she seemed completely serious.
I allowed myself to be led to the back at her will. Ireena and Sylphy followed close behind, but Ginny tolerated this without complaint as we entered the break room. With no one else around, it was the right setting for some real conversation.
“…I have news regarding our competition and outselling Class A. If we don’t take proper measures, I’m certain we’ll lose.”
“Wha—?!” Sylphy yipped as Ginny looked at us anxiously.
Ireena gazed at me with a troubled expression.
“Hmm. What is your basis?” I asked.
“Right. I sent out a number of people for reconnaissance…and unfortunately they cannot help but admit the superior quality of their food and girls. And that directly correlates to their number of customers.”
“Which means there’s already a discrepancy in sales.”
“Th-th-th-th-this is bad! What do we do…?!”
“And how big of a gap is it?”
“I can’t tell you the exact numbers…but I would estimate their profits to be one and a half times greater than our own.”
Hmm. A sizable difference.
“We-we’ve gotta do something…! Oh, I—I know! Maybe we could use the play to advertise?! Then we’d totally get more guests!”
“That is true. As Sylphy suggested, our performance will be an ideal opportunity to promote ourselves… But…”
“Those guys in Class A have already planned ahead with that in mind.”
“Oh yes. There’s no question they have an ace up their sleeve.”
Meaning we needed another counterstrategy ourselves.
“…I suppose this is where I must revive the trusted tradition of erock tic-paper-scissors,” Ginny suggested, spouting a string of weird words.
“To all on campus! The Sword King Battle Tournament has come again this year! It is a festival of swordfighters dedicated to the legacy of the third king of Laville! As always, participants from all walks are invited to apply, including outsiders! The deadline is two PM today. Don’t miss—, ” blared a broadcast over the speakers, echoing through the break room.
Sylphy jumped to her feet with a loud clatter. “Th-this is itttttttttttttttt! ” she roared, looking up at the sky as if she were a sage struck by divine revelation. “Everyone will be at the Sword King Battle Tournament! We’ll totally sweep the competition! And we can promote the shop in every fight!”
Hmm. We had done something very similar back in the old days: In arenas, fighters had engaged in their daily battles donning garments adorned with company names as walking advertisements. It had been supereffective.
“Sounds good to me. I was thinking about joining myself.” Ireena looked as though she was reminiscing. “Daddy entered before, too. He looked so cool holding up his reward, the Holy Sword replica, looking like an epic painting…”
“Holy Sword replica? What is that?”
It was Ginny who offered up an answer. “It’s said to be a treasure from the third king of Laville himself. He had worshipped Lydia the Champion and made a replica of her. This became a national treasure.”
…Her Holy Sword, huh. It wasn’t something I wanted to see anytime soon, replica or not. At any rate, that sword was…
“Continuing on. When our school was founded, the king entrusted the replica of the Holy Sword to the academy in hopes that it might attract those worthy of it.”
“…Is it wise to offer something so valuable as a reward? The tournament is open to all, right? That means…”
“Right. Outsiders can win and carry off the national treasure.” Before I could finish my sentence, Olivia had entered the room at some point, apparently, and spoken up. “But that replica has history. To make matters worse, it always ends up returning to the academy in no time at all… Like it’s looking to fit back in its sheath.”
She made it sound like she wanted someone outside the school to whisk it far away from the academy until the end of time. This weighed on me, but based on how she was acting, I could tell she wasn’t about to divulge the truth anytime soon.
“Anyway. I plan on being in this year’s tournament, too,” she added.
“Oh my… I guess the winner is already decided, then.”
The Sword King Battle Tournament involved two things: sword skills and body-strengthening magic. If those were the conditions, we could scour the entire world, and Olivia would still go unrivaled. Which she should know better than anyone. Why would she be interested in participating—?
“No. It’s too soon to declare me the victor. As for why… Ard Meteor, you’ll be entering, too.”
“…What?” I let slip past my lips, revealing my real voice, struck down from the blow of this bombshell. “N-no, no, no—no—no. What are you talking about, Lady Olivia? For me to participate—”
“Sorry, but I already signed you up.”
What are you trying to do to me, huh?
“B-but making a spectacle of my power is—”
“Shut it. I don’t care about whatever you’ve got going on. If you plan on refusing…I might just decide to take a certain matter into my own hands. That okay with you?”
Th-this damn…!
That matter in question would unveil my true identity—whether I was the Demon Lord. Basically, she was implying that to prove my innocence, I had no choice but to fight in the tournament in a way that dispelled her suspicions…!
“Hee-hee-hee. This will be fun. We’ll finally get to settle things once and for all.” Olivia grinned in a way that was too fabulous, which instinctively made me want to hurl.
“I might enter, too, if Ard is participating. Teach me your sword moves by drilling it into me. ”
“…That sounds like a convenient excuse for you to get in a mix-up and take advantage of him,” snapped Ireena.
“Goodness. That’s what they call distrust, Miss Ireena.”
“I don’t know about that. All succubi are from a perverted race with their heads full of sex all year round. I can’t exactly trust you.”
“…Hey, Miss Ireena. You can smack-talk me all you want, but be a dear and stop insulting my people, would you?”
“Nooope. I’m just speaking the truth.”
They shot daggers at each other.
“Come to think of it, we were unable to settle matters at the Battle Event last time… I’ll beat you this time around. Prepare yourself.”
“Give it your best shot, you dirty succubus.”
Their bodies were enshrouded by an intense determination to battle it out that radiated off them and clashed against each other. But the situation now brewing between them was far beyond my interest.
Inside my mind, one phrase echoed over and over like a refrain. And that was—
Why did things turn out this way?
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