I thrashed about blindly, grabbing whatever I could.
I picked up the chair and smashed it down five times, ten times, dozens of times.
There was no direction to it. I simply repeated the motion of hurling something to pieces. The chair was nice — crafted from fine, sturdy wood. It seemed like it wouldn't break even after a hundred strikes. But what was this? The chair didn't even last twenty before snapping.
Anything and everything broke with ease.
I reached out my hand. A longsword hung on the wall as decoration. I drew the blade and flailed it wildly in every direction. Living things died quickly. Nonliving things broke easily.
The bed was torn apart, and feathers drifted down in a blizzard of white.
Feathers in the air — far too many feathers — rained down.
*Clatter.* Something fell from my hand. The hilt had slipped from my right hand without my noticing. At the same moment, the strength drained from my knees. Like a puppet with its strings cut, I sank to the floor. Feathers brushed against my chest, my cheeks, my palms.
"......"
Beyond my vision, blurred white with drifting feathers, a figure wavered. When I stopped my rampage, the feathers slowly settled to the ground. Standing there was Daisy — dressed in black, with black hair and eyes as dark as the depths of a well.
"Not a single word. Don't you say a single word to me."
Daisy walked slowly toward me.
I tightened my grip on the sword I had dropped to the floor. If she so much as spouted some nonsense, I intended to drive the blade through her heart. It was an irrational thought, but I was not in a rational state. Daisy had already nearly reached the realm of a Hero, yet she could not defy me. Go ahead — say whatever idle crap you want. I'll kill you in one swing ——
*Pop.* A ridiculous sound rang out.
Daisy held a wine bottle in her hands. The cork had been pulled from the bottle. She held it over my head and upended it. Naturally, wine-colored liquid poured down onto my head.
It streamed along my hair and down my jawline.
The red liquid soaked my face, my clothes, the floor. Even the white feathers scattered on the ground absorbed the wine. All the while, Daisy gazed down at me with an utterly indifferent look.
One bottle was emptied in no time. Daisy opened a liquor cabinet in the corner of the room and retrieved another bottle of wine. *Pop* — the cork was pulled free once more, and wine cascaded over my head again.
Once, twice, three times, four times.
At last, after draining more than ten bottles, Daisy finally stopped. The floor was soaked red with spilled wine.
"Has your head cooled a bit, Father?"
"……."
"The amount of blood I shed during the Heart Sigil surgery was roughly this much."
I let out a hollow laugh. Or maybe it wasn't a laugh at all—just air leaking from my lungs.
"It was only a third of this."
"You have a habit of inflating something you have only one of into ten, so you can hardly call it a lie if I merely exaggerated by threefold."
I pulled a handkerchief from inside my jacket. Even the handkerchief was thoroughly soaked in wine. Daisy then offered me a clean white one. I took it, wiped my face, and tossed it out casually, as if speaking to no one in particular.
"I need to kill more. I need to kill far more."
My head went cold.
What I needed to do. How I needed to do it—all of it rose clearly into my mind, vivid enough to see right before my eyes. Under normal circumstances, I would have consulted Lapis to check whether there were any holes in my plan. But this time, everything was so plainly obvious that consultation was unnecessary.
I would make this judgment entirely on my own.
"Daisy. Summon Paimon."
"Understood."
Daisy followed the order without a hint of doubt. I sat down on the bed, which was torn to shreds, and waited for Paimon to arrive.
About twenty minutes passed before Paimon entered my room. She had clearly been roused from sleep, still in her pajamas.
"Oh my. Dantalion?"
The moment she stepped inside, Paimon gasped. Every piece of furniture was smashed to splinters, and the floor was littered with ceramic shards, feathers, and spilled wine. It was quite a sight.
"What happened here. What on earth happened……."
"Barbatos has betrayed me."
I smiled faintly.
"Barbatos has betrayed me."
"……."
What kind of expression must I have worn in Paimon's eyes?
Paimon closed her mouth and came to my side. She sat down at the edge of the bed, then carefully pulled me into her embrace.
"It's alright, Dantalion. Barbatos simply holds a different conviction. One that happens to be the complete opposite of ours — a conviction that child could never abandon. Yes, that is the kind of Demon Lord Barbatos is."
"Paimon……."
"Hehe. Perhaps we need to step back one pace."
Paimon spoke brightly. She was probably forcing the cheerfulness.
The one who suffered most from the abolition bill failing was none other than Paimon herself. Honestly, I didn't particularly care whether slavery was abolished or not. I had merely pushed it through in silence because I had resolved to carry Paimon's conviction in her stead.
"Freeing human slaves can be put off for a little while longer. If we resubmit the agenda with relaxed conditions — freeing only Demonkin slaves — it will certainly pass at Walpurgis Night."
"But, Paimon. Will that really be alright?"
I murmured with my face resting against Paimon's chest.
"The Demon Realm Grand Dukes will simply hoard human slaves in that case. Even if the Demonkin are freed, humans will sink all the deeper into the abyss. Is that still acceptable?"
"……No, it's not. How could it be?"
Paimon replied in a tone that seemed to be holding something back with great effort.
"But it's still far better than leaving the institution of slavery completely intact."
"……."
"The maiden knows that the world never changes all at once. Even when it appears to change in a single sweep, if you look behind it, countless reforms and countless sacrifices are hidden there."
Paimon pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead.
Our eyes met. Paimon was shedding tears. Yet a smile graced her lips. More than anything, it was a sorrowful smile.
"Dantalion, we aren't scholars who leisurely observe history — we're the ones who bear it on our shoulders. Even if it's just one step, that one step is something we have to take ourselves. Because no one else will..."
"Persuading the Grand Dukes is one way to do it."
I looked Paimon straight in the eye.
"Even if we officially permit human slaves, we can prohibit them unofficially."
"How?"
"Paimon. I intend to settle things once and for all with the Grand Dukes. Once demonkin slavery is banned, the Grand Dukes' power will inevitably shrink in an instant. All we have to do is pay them compensation for it."
Paimon tilted her head slightly.
"What kind of compensation are you talking about?"
"The territories of the six Demon Lords seized in the last purge. We distribute those to the Grand Dukes."
"……!"
Paimon's eyes widened.
In the last purge, six Demon Lords and eleven Grand Dukes were removed. Originally, the six Demon Lords had naturally owned territories on the continent. Those territories were currently returned to the Habsburg Empire.
"B-but, Dantalion. If you hand those over, the blow to the Grand Dukes would be significantly reduced. The whole point of proposing the abolition of slavery was to weaken the Grand Dukes — this could end up putting the cart before the horse."
"That was merely a pretext to begin with."
I said firmly.
"Our true goal was to abolish slavery. Weakening the Grand Dukes was simply the pretext needed to persuade the Plains Faction and the Neutral Faction."
"Yes. But if you suddenly offer to distribute territories to the Grand Dukes now, the other Demon Lords will push back."
"We keep it secret."
"……."
Paimon closed her lips.
"There's no need to inform the other Demon Lords. This is, at most, an unofficial exchange of proposals. If the Grand Dukes agree to give up human slaves in accordance with our proposal, we will entrust them with the supervision of territories. There's no need to appoint them as lords. Simply having them serve as the lords' representatives will suffice."
"So… you're saying we should deceive the other Demon Lords."
Paimon's eyes narrowed. A grave expression lingered behind her eyelids.
"This is a dangerous deal, Dantalion. Once the other Demon Lords find out, they'll undoubtedly condemn us fiercely."
"I have a way. Trust me."
The two of us sat in silence, gazing at each other.
After a moment, Paimon nodded.
"Very well. What would you have this girl do?"
"For the time being, I'll only need to borrow your 'trust,' Paimon."
We chatted back and forth.
A long night was beginning.
News that the motion to abolish slavery had been rejected spread in the blink of an eye.
The Grand Dukes must have been bewildered. They had already received a firm threat from me, so they'd been certain the motion would pass. They would naturally want to figure out just how events were unfolding.
In the midst of this, a rumor began to circulate that Barbatos and I were locked in a fierce confrontation.
'Recently, Demon Lord Dantalion has essentially monopolized power within the Demon Lord army. Barbatos voiced his dissatisfaction with Dantalion's moves, and the two have ended up clashing…' That was roughly the gist of it.
The rumor was mostly inaccurate, but it had hit the core truth with surprising precision. Barbatos and I had indeed staged a cold war. After the night we fought, we hadn't so much as looked at each other properly. We had spoken through Magic Crystal Orbs a few times, but that was the extent of it. On the rare occasions we ran into each other in the Imperial Palace, we passed each other by as though the other didn't exist.
So the rumor carried considerable credibility. It was true that Barbatos had openly cast his opposing vote against me at Walpurgis Night, and it was true that the two of us had been cold toward each other unlike before.
But from the Demon Grand Dukes' perspective, it would be difficult to simply take the rumor at face value.
The Grand Dukes were extremely wary of me, Dantalion. They were far too dangerous a people to believe a rumor just because one surfaced. Hadn't over ten of their number been purged a mere half year ago?
"Send a letter of reconciliation to the Grand Dukes."
I invited the Demon Grand Dukes to the imperial palace. The reason was simple — to apologize for having personally threatened them last time. The Demon Grand Dukes, of whom only fifteen now remained, sent me their replies.
Stripping away all the flowery rhetoric, the gist was as follows:
'We accept your apology, but we cannot come to the imperial palace.'
The Grand Dukes were suspicious. They were wondering whether I was scheming something again — whether I intended to lure them all to one place and dispose of them in one stroke, just like at the last New Year's gathering. They might trust another Demon Lord, but Dantalion was someone they could never trust — that would be the general consensus among the Grand Dukes.
It was then that the Demon Grand Duke of the Serpent Hell sent a proposal.
'If you would hold the meeting not at the Habsburg imperial palace but at my own palace, I would be willing to attend.'
The other Demon Grand Dukes agreed to this proposal as well. In essence, they were saying that rather than traveling to the continent themselves, I should cross over into the Demon Realm — their own backyard. Implicitly, this carried the sentiment that if I were truly sincere about apologizing, I ought to show at least that much good faith.
Some of the Grand Dukes probably thought I would refuse.
But I readily sent a message of acceptance.
After all, since I was the one in the position of apologizing, it was only natural that I should make the effort; and visiting the Demon Realm was nothing at all improper for one who had become a Demon Lord.
There was one condition, however.
I would not be going alone — I would visit accompanied by Paimon.