That evening, I was on the rooftop of the castle.
Standing at the highest point in the Royal Capital, I gazed down upon the cityscape below.
This place, which had once become a city of the undead, was once again showing signs of life.
All traces of its former appearance were gone, and it now functioned as the new capital.
"……"
A strong gust of wind swept past.
The sky was gradually growing darker.
There were no clouds today.
I would be able to see a beautiful night sky, no doubt.
In truth, I ought to be pushing through my paperwork. Even as I stood here, the number of matters demanding my attention was surely growing by the moment.
My subordinates were working hard.
I had no luxury to be lazy.
And yet, I couldn't bring myself to tackle any of it.
As I stood there doing nothing, I heard footsteps behind me.
The presence that appeared came to a halt beside me.
"What is it? Waiting for the stars to come out, are you?"
When I turned around, it was Logan.
Arms crossed, he was watching me with eyes whose emotions I couldn't read.
I felt as though I were being interrogated, and a vague unease settled over me.
Setting that feeling aside, I shook my head.
"I don't have a hobby of stargazing."
"I know."
Logan answered immediately and took a step closer to me.
Then, in a quiet tone, he asked me a question.
"Dwight, what's troubling you?"
"……"
I lowered my gaze and fell silent.
If I didn't have the body of the undead, my agitation would have been plain for all to see.
But Logan was the kind of man who would have noticed my state of mind even now that I had become undead.
Deceit and evasion didn't work on him.
He followed up by asking the question that cut straight to the heart of the matter.
"Is it about the hero — Clea Baton?"
At those words, I went rigid.
He had noticed after all.
Careful to keep my voice from trembling, I responded.
"……How did you know?"
"The reasons for you to brood like this are limited. How many years do you think we've known each other?"
Logan spoke with a hint of anger.
He was probably genuinely angry.
I couldn't argue with him.
He was absolutely right.
Even back in the old days, I could never keep anything hidden from him.
Apparently nothing had changed.
Logan spoke to me in a calm voice, making a suggestion.
"Tell me. It'll help you sort things out."
"But……"
"For now, throw away the title of Demon Lord. Just be Dwight Harvelt, and confide your worries in an old friend."
Logan pressed on relentlessly.
His words carried an intensity I could never have imagined from his usual self.
He was that serious.
The atmosphere made it impossible to refuse.
Having made up my mind, I nodded.
"……Very well."
Logan and I sat down on the edge of the roof.
Dangling our legs into the open air, we gazed down at the city side by side.
In that position, I finally brought up the worry I had kept hidden.
"To get straight to the point, I'm torn. Between two options, I can't decide which one to choose."
"And what are those two options?"
"Whether I should bring her back to life, or not."
The moment those words left my mouth, the pain in my heart swelled.
My vision narrowed as though squeezed shut, and the words caught in my throat.
For the past half year, this was what I had been wrestling with.
It had always lurked in the back of my mind.
I hadn't told anyone, and I had tried to find the answer on my own.
But I couldn't.
"I want to show her the world that has become peaceful. This is my own wish. But she may not have wanted that."
"Do you have any basis for that?"
"She is the only person whom my power cannot turn into an undead."
This was a fact.
The authority of the Valley of the Dead far surpassed ordinary necromancy — it could raise any corpse as an undead creature.
With the addition of magic, all manner of modifications and alterations were possible.
It could even produce undead of any chosen race.
And yet, she alone was the exception.
No matter how much of my power I used, she would not rise as an undead.
Her remains still existed, so it should have been simple.
More than a year had passed since I returned to the surface.
My authority had grown vastly more powerful compared to when I first obtained it, but that one thing remained beyond my reach.
(She wished for the world to be at peace.)
That was why she had become the hero, and in the end, she had even defeated the Demon Lord.
And she had accepted her own execution.
She knew that resisting would only spark new conflict.
Her desire for peace had been genuine, without a doubt.
I wanted to show her the world that had become peaceful.
So I inherited her will, and I had been devoting myself to that cause ever since.
The path to peace was entirely different from hers, but I believed our intentions were the same.
And yet, perhaps that was wrong.
Maybe she wouldn't want to see the world as it was now.
That doubt had shaken me deeply.
It constantly invited anxiety and threw the brakes on my every thought.
If not for my duties as Demon Lord, I might have wished for my own death.
"Ultimately, summoning a hero from the past into a peaceful world is nothing short of an act that breeds conflict. It would only invite unnecessary turmoil. It runs counter to the very purpose of my existence."
The return of the hero, and a world kept at peace through deterrence.
These two things were difficult to reconcile.
As a policy, they were contradictory.
From the standpoint of the Demon Lord, a hero should never appear.
Up until now, I had thought the same way and had even eliminated those who might become heroes.
Bringing her back to life meant abandoning everything I had stood for.
I had no intention of fighting her.
But the people of the world would expect the hero to defeat the Demon Lord.
Everyone longed for the final triumph of good over evil.
It was a development I could not welcome.
The her who had been revived into the modern world would surely be bewildered by her own position as well.
She would lose the ability to live in peace.
"At the research institute, they are investigating the arts of resurrecting the dead. They haven't achieved it yet, but I'm certain they will succeed someday."
I was convinced of it.
That facility possessed the most cutting-edge technology in the world.
Given enough time — hundreds, thousands of years — they would eventually reach resurrection magic.
They would bring her back to the modern world not as an undead, but as a fully living human being.
And when that technology was finally obtained, I couldn't decide what I ought to do.
"Diera said it. She asked me what the her of today would think if she saw me now. I couldn't give her any answer."
That had been half a year ago, at the end of Balk's schemes, when we fought.
Those words left me open, and I ended up taking a grievous wound.
It was a consequence of my own immaturity.
That, too, was one of the great worries weighing on me.
If it had been a mere taunt or feint, I wouldn't have wavered.
The reason it created a fatal opening was that, deep down in my heart, I had been asking myself the same question.
I had to admit that.
It was something I had been unconsciously turning away from all this time.
To put it bluntly, I didn't fully believe in my own actions and methods.
I was afraid she would despise me.
Perhaps, regardless of the expectations of the world, I would end up crossing swords with her after all.
(Can the Demon Lord of the modern era face her with a clear conscience?)
I asked myself the question, but it wasn't something I could answer immediately.
At any rate, my guilt was undeniable.
These were the worries and conflicts I carried within me.