Several days later, while I was reading reports in my private quarters, Luciana came to visit.
She brandished a handful of documents as she spoke.
"I looked into John Du."
"That was fast. You already figured it out?"
"It seemed like something important, so I made it a priority. Take one look at the Demon Lord's face, and you pick up on things pretty quickly."
Luciana said this with a confident expression.
In response, I placed a hand against my own cheek.
Hard to the touch.
There was no skin, no muscle, no blood flowing through it.
Just blackened bone, discolored by miasma.
"...My face is nothing but a skull, though."
"You can still read feelings in it. Here, take a look."
Luciana set the documents down on the desk.
I picked them up and began reading through them.
Each of the several pages pertained to John Du.
The first showed a depiction of his appearance.
Short, chestnut-brown hair and silver-framed glasses.
According to the information in the file, he appeared to be in his early thirties.
He looked younger than his actual age.
His features weren't particularly distinctive — an unremarkable impression overall.
That said, he wasn't ugly by any means either.
Just the sort of ordinary person you could find anywhere.
He had a lean build and carried himself like an intellectual scholar.
It was hard to believe this man was involved in weapons development.
"He's affiliated with the Arcane Artifice Nation and works as a technician in weapons development. His background checks out. Apparently he's made a name for himself within the military as well."
Luciana leaned over my shoulder, pointing at various sections of the material as she explained.
I had already anticipated that he would be well-known.
He had been dispatched to the Imperial Capital's arcane workshop, after all. One would need considerable accomplishments to receive such an appointment.
"It looks like he rose through the ranks rapidly starting about a year ago. He's visited the Imperial Capital several times to provide technical expertise and submit progress reports."
"I see."
I focused on the sections describing his career history.
They largely corroborated what Luciana had told me — only in far greater detail.
I couldn't help but admire how thoroughly the information had been gathered in such a short time.
(...One year ago.)
I fell into thought.
John Du's rapid rise had begun right around the time I became the Demon Lord.
The timing was a perfect match.
Could that be a mere coincidence?
According to the materials, his breakthrough had been a proposal to improve the magical cannons. His plan was submitted to the Imperial Capital's arcane workshop and was successfully adopted. From that point on, John Du had gone on to propose one weapons development project after another, all of which seemed to have contributed to major advances.
(...Beyond that one-year mark, there are no notable accomplishments to speak of. If anything, he was treated as dead weight.)
John Du had only recently begun to shine so conspicuously. Rereading the materials, I could find no clear catalyst. He had simply emerged as a brilliant technician without any foreshadowing.
The first thing this made me think of was those who had been bolstered by the world's will. The Hero and the Holy Maiden I had killed were such cases. They had all of a sudden acquired tremendous power.
Could this technician, John Du, be another one of them?
The timing of his rise certainly supported the theory.
But it felt too early to draw a firm conclusion.
He might simply have been born with a spark of genius.
Given the coincidence of timing, something like this was hardly impossible.
Unlike the Hero and the Holy Maiden, he hadn't awakened to any dramatic power. He had merely developed superior creative thinking that allowed him to advance weapons development more smoothly. I couldn't definitively say that the world's will was involved.
"So what are you going to do? If it's you, Demon Lord, you could just teleport over and assassinate him, right?"
"For now, I'll keep him under surveillance. Excessive technological leaps aren't desirable, but humanity does need hope."
I answered Luciana without hesitation.
The likelihood of John Du becoming a nuisance down the road was high. New weapons would continue to be produced because of him. I had already experienced firsthand during the battle at the Imperial Capital how warfare was transforming. Even the new weapons in the Demon Lord's territory's research facility were mostly built upon captured technology.
In a sense, we ourselves were benefiting from John Du's technical prowess.
He was not someone who would stand on the front lines and fight. But his influence would undoubtedly rival that of a hero.
Whether or not the world's will was behind it, that was simply a fact.
Luciana pressed a finger to her lips and glanced at me with a nostalgic look.
"Humanity's hope, huh... I suppose it does come down to experience?"
"I won't deny that."
When I said this, she looked surprised.
"Oh my. No modesty?"
"It's the truth. Wouldn't you say the old Demon Lord's army saw it that way too?"
I recalled those former days.
Back then, people had been searching for a firm source of hope — namely, the Hero. A powerful existence who could drive back the Demon Lord. Because that person was active, people were able to survive even in the depths of despair.
"Now that you mention it, I suppose so. You and the Hero were like spiritual pillars for the humans. From the Demon Lord's army's perspective, you were nothing but pesky nuisances, though."
Luciana grumbled with a bitter expression.
There was a touch of irony in her words.
From the Demon Lord's army's standpoint, we had indeed been mortal enemies. We had disrupted their invasions time and time again, and in the end, we had even slain the Demon Lord herself.
Naturally, Luciana and I had fought each other to the death on multiple occasions. I had caused her no end of suffering.
And yet, after more than a decade, here we were in a master-servant relationship.
Life truly was full of the unexpected.
"John Du is the kind of man who will illuminate the world not through personal martial prowess, but through his wisdom and technology. He is destined to become a source of hope for people — just in a different form than what came before."
"The times are changing, huh... I wonder if I can keep up. I feel like I'm going to get left behind."
Luciana murmured wistfully.
I understood how she felt. I had a ten-year void in my own history. Even though a fair amount of time had passed since my resurrection in the modern era, I still had reservations about next-generation weapons like firearms and magical cannons.
But I couldn't put a stop to that current of progress.
I could, of course, destroy civilization by repeating my invasions with ruthless thoroughness. But at the very least, that was not the future I desired. I had no wish to see a world reduced to ruin and nothing but despair.
As someone bearing the mantle of the Demon Lord, it was contradictory — but it was my honest conviction.
John Du's technical abilities would someday enrich people's lives. For now they were being used exclusively for weapons development, but surely they would eventually find a much wider range of applications.
I quietly hoped for that.
My wish was terribly warped, no doubt.
While heralding the premonition of destruction, I was inwardly cheering for prosperity.
While harboring hatred and despair toward humankind, I was aiming for the world's peace.
It felt like desperately propping up the balance of a hopelessly broken scale.
"Th-This is terrible!"
Lost in thought about the world and my own existence, I was startled as the room's door burst open.
It was Grom who came tumbling in, shouting at the top of his lungs.
He was in a tremendous state of panic.
It was a scene I had witnessed many times before. Whenever he showed up like this, it meant something had gone wrong.
A sense of foreboding crept over me, but I kept my composure and asked calmly.
"What is it?"
"Th-The Holy Staff Nation... the Holy Staff Nation has started a conflict with the Arcane Artifice Nation!"
Grom spread all eight of his arms wide as he delivered the report.