Chapter 188

Chapter 188: To the Demon’s Land

To the Demon’s Land
Chapter 188. To the Devil’s Land

A dim meeting room.
Inside, where not even the identities of each other could be discerned, the only discernible information was that everyone there was a demon follower.
— Rumors about the Doppler have spread throughout the continent.
Whoever raised the topic spoke with a displeased voice.
Doppler.
Not something that merely imitates humans like an ordinary doppelganger, but an infiltration-type disguise that truly becomes that person.
Dopplers had been deployed for 10 years, and until their identities were revealed, absolutely no one noticed.
Those who clumsily claimed to be doubles demonstrated physical characteristics that only that person possessed, and, conversely, had their throats slit.
— As commander-in-chief, do you have nothing to say?
Someone brought up responsibility and fixed their gaze.
The man sitting in the commander-in-chief’s seat had excessively white skin.
— What would I have to say?
— Unexpected actions have already occurred several times, so shouldn’t there be countermeasures or something about it?
At that, the white man let out a laugh.
— Unexpected actions, you say? How disappointing. I already knew.
— You knew?
An uncomfortable current flowed in the dark room.
Thinking there might have been a misunderstanding, but the man continued speaking.
— Yes. That Regent Ferda would find the Doppler and also devise a strategy based on it.
— That means… that it’s not incorrect to say you stood by with folded arms and watched?
A follower pounced on him with a challenging tone.
The white man tilted his head and asked him.
— Didn’t you swear loyalty to Godwin? Because of that, you are getting upset over something terribly trivial.
— I don’t care what happens to this continent. Since I am someone who follows Godwin. But it’s not like we are cooperating in this to turn all the merits we have accumulated into something useless.
— Is that so?
The white man raised his hand.
Then the speaker’s arm twisted in an instant.
Bang!
Crack!
— Kyaaaak!
With a faint shockwave, his hand twisted and bones shattered.
The pain of severed nerves echoed in screams.
He was a mage who used spatial distortion magic, Gokma.
Gokma approached that man in an instant and drew a dagger.
No, that was not a dagger.
If you had ever set foot in a kitchen, you would call it a kitchen knife.
Thwack!
Gokma plunged the kitchen knife into the remaining arm.
— Kyaaaaah!
Slowly he moved the deeply embedded kitchen knife.
The jagged blade, not properly forged, tore the flesh along the fibers.
— Aaaaaah!!!
Only agonizing screams echoed without end.
Five minutes of merciless violence continued, then he opened his mouth again.
— Do you have anything to say?
— S-save me…
— Why try to live? You will die anyway when time passes, so isn’t it better to die quickly?
— Please…
The man, shattered by pain, pleaded with Gokma.
Gokma pulled out the kitchen knife as if bored and threw it away.
He turned his head toward the conference room.
— Do all of you think you will be different?
The blood-stained kitchen knife pointed at them.
— You scream that you follow our Father’s nothingness, that you do not fear death, but in the end, when you face it, you tuck your tails. Do you know why I am so sure?
— …..
— Because all of you are just losers who fled here trembling in fear of this life.
— …..
— Damn defeated pigs who have gorged yourselves all this time, and now that it’s slaughter time, you complain about why you weren’t told the date. It’s absurd.
At Gokma’s words, the place fell silent as if frozen.
Gokma wiped the blood splattered on his face with his finger.
He spoke while remaining seated at the table.
— Let me make this clear right now. I knew that Regent Ferda was prepared to be framed by the Empire to detect demons. And it is also true that I did not inform the double of Joseph Faust who had infiltrated previously.
He began to wipe his kitchen knife on the clothes of the man sitting next to him.
— Although the existence called Doppler was exposed, how is the Empire’s situation right now? They have begun to doubt the identities of nobles and priests, and it is chaos. They are trying to calm that chaos by diverting it outward. Not only demon followers, but also loyal and capable subjects will get caught in the fallout and die.
— …That seems correct.
— Understood.
It was radical, but not an incomprehensible plan.
Right now, with the solid foundations of the Empire shaking, there was sufficient opportunity.
— Before returning to nothingness, enjoy yourselves well. Once you become the same as demons, you will realize how trivial the joys you knew were.
Gokma waved his hand dismissively, and the secret parliament dissolved just like that.
Thus, only he remained alone in that dark space.
— Do you trust them?
No, a man who had remained motionless in the darkness stepped forward and asked.
Gokma sneered.
— What would I do trusting those things? Didn’t you see just now?
— True, they cannot be trusted.
— Even so, I think their fear is trivial.
Humans fear the unknown and surrender to fear.
They had already crossed a river of no return by cooperating with demons.
The only way to survive was to be even more loyal to the demons.
— So, is the plan still intact?
— That’s right.
— Even with that Ferda variable unleashed?
Ferda Valdrova.
Now that the identity of the Doppler, where secrecy was paramount, had been exposed, people would keep the Doppler in mind.
It would no longer be easy to deploy them carelessly.
— They say he blew off Elder Cyprus’s arm.
— That Elder wouldn’t be an elf reckless enough to be careless, but he did a splendid job.
— It’s not splendid. It’s dangerous.
Words of complete agreement.
Yet even so, it was not a problem for Gokma.
— There is no need to respond.
— Why?
— That guy will become our King.
— Will he become the Demon King?
The black giant reacted as if he did not know.
Gokma looked at that reaction and asked.
— Have you never seen the Demon King?
— I have never seen him.
Once called the East, at the end of that land, the Demon King’s Castle.
Excluding the demons created at the beginning, those who had seen the face of that Demon King were rare.
Anyway, the important thing was not the Demon King but the Father, Godwin, so the existence of the Demon King was special only to humans.
— That guy decided to become the Demon King after his beloved wife died.
— Trivial.
— It’s a terribly trivial matter for us. But that emotion ultimately turned him into an existence that not even we, called Monster Stars, can overcome.
Gokma smiled faintly.
— I believe in that power. The despair that love brings.
— Impossible for now.
— True, impossible for now.
Gokma looked at the map on the table.
— Someday an opportunity will come to us. So we simply slowly do what we have to do.
— So, what do you plan to do from now on?
— They say demons approach desperate humans.
Gokma stabbed a point on the map of the Serdes Continent with his kitchen knife.
It was a place recently in a tense standoff with the Kingdom of Arken.
[Heinkel Kingdom]
— Before the demons make the first move, let’s take it ourselves.

Valdrova Castle.
— This is a copy of the journal you requested earlier.
Rize handed Ferda a copy he had spent days interpreting and transcribing.
— Is this the only one?
— I delivered the same content to Eri-nim, no, to Erika-nim.
Eri and Erika.
The names of the Blue Eyes Magic Tower Master and the Eastern Adventurer Guild Branch Master were still unfamiliar to him, so he seemed confused.
— Good work. I will review it carefully.
— Yes, yes…
Ferda first reviewed the list section of the journal.
[Project: Erosion Participant List]
“Quite a few.”
Not only high-ranking nobles, but even nameless commoners were specifically written with their locations.
Ferda was looking for a single name.
But, as expected, it was not there.
“Valdemar Golt is not a demon.”
Imperial nobles appeared here and there as well, but they were not the ones who could attack Valdemar.
There was no justification to assault or corner him.
Interest cooled quickly.
Ferda read the rest of the list and thought.
“What should I do with these bastards…”
Clearing them out refreshingly would be good, but that would only leave an escape route for the demons to flee.
The most ideal scenario is when a rat bastard carries the bait back to its nest.
That way, all the rat bastards in the rathole can be burned.
While Ferda thought of a plan for that, Rize suddenly caught his attention again.
His hesitant movements.
Even a three-year-old child would know he had something left to say.
— Um…
— Yes.
— What should I do now?
Rize asked with a serious expression.
— What do you mean by what should you do…?
— I have so many questions. Why I can read the unique characters of that elf Linne is a question, whether Father also knew this fact, and why you didn’t tell me either.
— …..
— So I thought about it a bit. The more I thought, the only possibilities were the ones I didn’t want.
Rize’s face was full of guilt.
— The most likely reason I can read unique characters is that I am someone who inherited that blood.
The bloodline of the Dark Elf, Linne.
The possibility of being her daughter, no, her son.
— Is that so?
— Yes…
— Then why that face so full of guilt?
— Well… the person who becomes my mother killed so many lives, and lost the things she experimented with… I wonder if I will even be able to raise my head. And besides…
Rize could not continue, but Ferda could tell.
Linne betrayed her clan and fled from the World Tree.
It was the Great Chief’s order, but Rize had also turned his back on his clan in the end.
Rize feared he was following the same path as her.
— Only blood connects you; ultimately, you are strangers. There is no guarantee you will follow the same path as the Dark Elf Linne.
— Thank you for saying that, but I cannot simply live pretending not to know.
Rize took a deep breath.
I thought his serious personality was holding him back, but what emerged on his face, crushed by weight, was determination.
— So what I have thought is that I want to join the expedition led by Erika-nim.
— The expedition?
Rize nodded.
— Yes. As much as Dark Elves are treated as heretics, the root is the same in the end.
Color returned to Rize’s face.
— I have yearned for it for a long time. Isn’t there an elf among the expedition members as well?
— Veinhof. A famous Forest Elf marksman.
— Yes. I don’t handle the bow well… but I can use magic, so I want to try doing things I couldn’t do while inside the World Tree through this!
Watching him, he seemed less like an energetic man and more like a girl with an overflowing adventurous spirit.
Worry reflexively arose first.
— What magic do you use?
— I can’t use flashy attack magic like Eri-nim… how should I explain this…?
— Show me directly and I will judge.
— Ah, yes!
Rize drew runes in silence and cast magic.
Observing the magic he displayed, Ferda was certain.
— You focus on healing and protection magic.
— I learned it by helping the sick for a long time. Is it pathetic?
Pathetic?
“A talent they would be desperate to recruit.”
Priests who set out under the pretext of a pilgrimage to adventure are common.
Most struggle with healing at the 2nd-3rd Circle, and the 4th Circle is when they start to establish themselves.
The 5th Circle goes without saying.
Without massive donations to the Order, employing high-level personnel is a pipe dream.
He was at the level of a veteran 4th Circle priest in human terms.
“Besides, he also has affinity with spirits.”
Elves have stronger communion and affinity with spirits than other races.
Yet however strong it may be, among them only the truly exceptional can befriend the rough, terrifying Nightmare of the World Tree and devour friends.
“Not just friendly, he controls them.”
If you have magical knowledge, you can call that control.
Rize was controlling spirits.
“Which means this elf’s mental strength is that flexible.”
Flexible means unyielding.
The most necessary element in the expedition.
In the expedition, skill matters, but a composure that does not yield in any situation is needed.
That composure cannot be the same for a hundred or ten thousand years.
A place to lean temporarily is needed, and a deeply rooted pillar to lean on must become Rize’s role.
— I think it’s fine, but the final decision belongs to Tower Master Erika, so I cannot interfere.
— Really? Erika-nim won’t look down on me?
The conflict between the High Elves and Iorga weighs on Rize’s mind.
For Ferda, it was an unnecessary worry.
— Even if you say ‘water lizard bastards’ to her face, she will let it pass.
— Gasps. How could I say such harsh words…?
Rize’s face turned pale blue and he became flustered.
Leaving aside his appearance, Ferda also sank into his thoughts.
“The Devil’s Land, huh…?”
Beyond the border of the Far East.
Originally, Ferda’s role was to observe from behind and support.
That was more comfortable for both Erika and Ferda.
“Beyond that border is something that can erase my anxiety.”
The Great Chief said that the Demon King’s mana flows in Ferda.
The Demon King loved someone and was rejected, completing his existence through that disillusionment.
Ferda is no different.
Ferda already knows how terrifying the emotion of a trivial snowball rolling and forming a huge boulder can be.
“She loves this continent.”
I cannot leave her in pain again, her who loves this continent.
So, even if such sadness comes, a method not to hurt her was needed.
That was why Ferda decided to join that expedition as well.

Valdrova was getting ready to go out.
She was more tense than usual.
Yesterday, while working at the construction site, Erika, without horns, approached and said this.
— Tomorrow I plan to brief the members of the expedition to the Devil’s Land. Please clear your schedule and attend.
Expedition to the Devil’s Land.
The excitement and anxiety of meeting new people as the Armored Knight weighed on her chest.
She knows why she feels like that.
Only, at that moment she didn’t want to think about it.
She forcefully ignored that emotion and forced a cheerful expression.
— Ruri-ya, I’m heading out?
— Go safely.
The words are dry, but the expression is not.
That look of disgust.
“Why don’t you maintain the dignity of the King, and go out to get entangled in the games of those humans,” it seems to say.
In the past, she would have been very conscious of it, but the Valdrova of now was different.
“When I return, I should buy something delicious.”
Every time I bring something, she says “Are you trying to bribe me with this?”, but always eats with relish and wags her tail wildly.
To Valdrova, Ruri was nothing more than a cute Chihuahua.
“Nothing will happen.”
Let’s not be unnecessarily afraid of new things.
Valdrova repeated the phrase in her head and walked out the front door.