Our destination was the Demon King's castle.
Hearing that, it might sound like a party of Heroes on a grand quest, but nope — it was the Demon King's party, not the Hero's.
You know those Demon Kings who rush out of their castle to ambush you? What a shit game design that would be.
Stay in your castle, Demon King!
If the Demon King's not there, that's false advertising!
And to make it worse, the Demon King didn't even leave the castle to defeat the Hero — he left to come after me! Why?!
Thinking about all this was starting to tick me off, so I gave the Demon King a light punch.
The Demon King clutched his head with tears in his eyes, looking completely bewildered.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is that we've now arrived at the Demon King's castle.
Which means, in other words, this journey is coming to an end.
The Demon King's castle was quite a large fortress.
It didn't have that vibe of the final dungeon from some beloved national RPG — if anything, it looked more like a castle in a dream kingdom ruled by mice.
As you'd expect, the castle didn't just pop up out of nowhere — a whole town sprawled around it.
In fact, from the outside, you couldn't even see the castle. You'd have to activate some clairvoyance just to spot it.
That's how massive the town was.
Without a doubt, it was the largest town I'd seen on this entire journey.
You could probably spend days just sightseeing through the town and still not finish.
Even though we entered the town, we kept walking on foot.
Not a single resident noticed us, even though this was supposed to be the Demon King's triumphant return.
Nobody came to welcome him.
Hey, Demon King — is it possible your subordinates don't actually adore you?
Well, I guess the kind of guy who wanders off alone and doesn't even get searched for probably wouldn't command that kind of loyalty.
There hadn't been any "Wanted: Demon King" notices in demon territory either.
I looked at the Demon King with a little pity, and he shot me back a bewildered expression.
We kept walking through the town and finally reached the Demon King's castle.
But the Demon King didn't head toward the castle itself. Instead, he made his way to a large mansion nearby.
He spoke to the gatekeeper, and they let us in.
"Not many people know I'm the Demon King, you know. If I just waltz up to the castle, they'll turn me away at the gate," he said.
The Demon King himself can't enter his own castle? What a world.
The mansion turned out to be the main residence of a prominent demon, apparently one of the few who knew the Demon King's true identity.
The Demon King had apparently lived in this mansion before coming to me, so the household staff knew who he was.
Once inside, we were each assigned guest rooms.
The mansion's owner was usually staying at the Demon King's castle and rarely came back here, it seemed.
He'd sent a servant to relay the news that the Demon King had arrived, but since the owner was busy, there was no telling when he'd actually show up.
While waiting with nothing to do, I discussed our next steps with the Demon King.
The little vampire would be enrolled in a demon school.
Demons had their own schools where they received education.
Not so different from the human race, when it came down to it.
Really, the demon race wasn't all that different from the human race. Their lifespans were a bit longer, their Status a bit stronger, and that was about it.
Their lower reproduction rate meant fewer in number compared to humans, but that was the extent of the differences.
The little vampire would attend an elite school for demon nobles.
At her current level, I figured she could keep up.
The Demon King's thinking, I believe, was to invest in the little vampire's education and connections for the sake of her future.
With a clone planted nearby, nothing untoward would happen easily. And rather than staying cooped up in our little closed world forever, going to school and broadening her horizons would do the little vampire a world of good.
I had no objections.
The problem was Mera.
Honestly, I didn't particularly care either way, but the Demon King felt we couldn't just keep Mera stationed near the little vampire indefinitely.
It wasn't that we couldn't — but he believed it wouldn't be good for either of them.
You might call it codependency.
Mera had made protecting the little vampire her reason for living, as a proxy for what she'd lost.
The little vampire, in turn, placed blind trust in Mera — her last remaining connection to her past.
That kind of dynamic wasn't inherently bad, but if one side was ever removed, the other might fall apart entirely.
The Demon King's view was that we had to separate them for a while and let them each become independent, or things could get dangerous down the road.
I'd never been that dependent on anyone myself, so I couldn't really relate.
In any case, the arrangement was that Mera would be taken on by the Demon King as a subordinate.
As for the Demon King himself, he said he would officially resume his activities as Demon King from here on out.
First order of business: mobilize the demon military.
To wage war against the human race.
I had a feeling it would be a war on a scale unlike anything seen before.
Which meant an equally unprecedented number of deaths.
And that was exactly the Demon King's aim.
Honestly, I thought the Demon King would be stronger just rampaging on his own, but he needed to pit the two armies against each other — make it a full-scale war between humans and demons — or there'd be no lasting consequence.
In the worst case, if the Demon King's overwhelming power forced humans and demons to join hands out of sheer survival instinct — that kind of twist wasn't impossible.
No matter what they secretly thought, when their very existence was on the line, they'd have no choice.
Same reason I was doing D's bidding, really.
If humans and demons formed an alliance like that, all the rifts that had been built up between them over all this time could end up bridged.
If it somehow led to a peace treaty, that would be an utter disaster.
To prevent that, I had to make sure this remained a war between humans and demons.
A pain in the neck, but those were the rules of this world.
Well, all of it might end up being for nothing anyway.
As for me, my eating-tour journey was over too. Time to start moving in earnest.
The preliminary preparations were proceeding smoothly.
The clones I'd planted in various places along the way had been doing excellent work.
I hadn't just been eating my way across the land, you know.
By placing clones in every location I visited, I'd now established an information-gathering network covering a vast swath of both human and demon territory.
All so I could observe this world with my own eyes.
The Demon King wouldn't start the war for a while yet.
In the meantime, I would observe the world and complete my preparations.
Preparations to destroy it.