A spacious conference room.
It was wrapped in silence.
Several men and women sat around a large round table in the center of the room.
At the heart of that table sat a large crystal ball.
From the last seat nearest the entrance, one man was chanting a spell toward the crystal.
He was dressed like a clown. His name was
He had been entrusted with hosting this meeting and was also the person in charge of a certain plan.
The plan he had been working on for many years—creating a new Demon Lord.
For the sake of making his ambition a reality, failure in this plan was not an option.
And today was the final day of that plan.
He had managed to summon four of the capricious "Demon Lords" here.
He had to make this work no matter what.
You couldn't move a Demon Lord with money.
What caught their interest—prey they were obsessed with, or perhaps something of extreme rarity— Demon-class artifacts.
In any case, one had to offer compensation of extraordinary value.
This time, Gelmud had succeeded in mobilizing four Demon Lords. In other words, that meant he had paid that much in compensation.
If a new Demon Lord were to be born, the other Demon Lords wouldn't stay silent.
Fools who unilaterally declared themselves Demon Lords were killed for provoking the wrath of the Demon Lords. Though there had been cases where someone who provoked such wrath and was attacked managed to defeat their assailant in turn.
Such individuals, by virtue of their own strength, were acknowledged as Demon Lords...
But over the past several hundred years, no such powerful Demon Lords had been born.
The last one to be born was the human "Demon Lord"
With his overwhelming magic power, he continuously increased the demonkind under his dominion and proclaimed himself a Demon Lord in a remote land.
One of the Demon Lords, furious at this, declared war— the Curse Master— But Leon defeated them in return.
And he did so single-handedly.
In response to that, the "Demon Lords" recognized him as a new Demon Lord.
However, such a Demon Lord succession through sheer power was an exceedingly rare occurrence.
Therefore, for a newcomer to claim the title of Demon Lord, they needed the backing of at least three other Demon Lords. The idea was to make others think that if anyone moved against a new Demon Lord, they would simultaneously have to contend with those backers as well.
It was following these procedures that Gelmud burned with ambition to bring a new Demon Lord into being.
This time, he had come within one step of establishing the Orc Disaster as a Demon Lord.
He prepared a spectacle—the birth of a Demon Lord—as entertainment for the Demon Lords, who had grown bored. Having them enjoy the show was one condition of gaining their backing.
Of course, that alone wasn't enough. He also offered rare magic weapons and demon-class artifacts.
For Gelmud, this was the gamble of a lifetime.
The Orc Disaster would defeat the Lizardmen and Goblins and then evolve into a Demon Lord species.
Today was supposed to be the day that finalization took place.
Once it became a Demon Lord and secured its backers, it would simultaneously destroy a human city.
That would announce the birth of a new Demon Lord to the world.
If that happened, Gelmud's ambition would be realized. From the shadows, he would manipulate the Orc Disaster and stand on equal footing with a Demon Lord.
And yet...
The crystal ball showed no response.
Gelmud's heart was on the verge of crumbling from panic.
This was bad.
Making the Demon Lords—who were here expecting a show—angry was something he didn't even want to imagine.
"It didn't work!" would not cut it. In that instant, he could well be ground into mincemeat without anyone batting an eye.
And it wouldn't just be a quick death. He'd be cursed, unable to die, ground into paste, and only his consciousness would remain.
No good. He couldn't bear to think about it any further.
Gelmud frantically chanted his spell again, but the crystal ball remained unresponsive.
"Hey... what's the meaning of this?"
A voice colder than ice rang out.
In the silent room, the voice resonated with enough Intimidation to drown out Gelmud's spell.
Gelmud, drenched in a cold sweat that had no business appearing, frantically tried to cobble together words of excuse.
"Pl-please wait! I-I'll investigate the cause right away!"
So he said.
Instinct was telling him that staying here was a death sentence.
But then— Creeeak!
A sound like something being crushed rang out, and then— BOOOOOOOM!!!
A massive something flew past Gelmud at high speed right next to him, blew the door behind him away, and destroyed it with a thunderous crash.
One of the Demon Lords—a small, beautiful girl with silver hair—had picked up the large round table with her left hand and hurled it at him.
Missing on purpose was the only plausible explanation.
That single table was an exquisite work of art carved from precious aromatic wood, worth a significant fraction of a small nation's national budget.
The ornately decorated, heavy door now lay in ruins. Beyond it, a gaping hole in the building's wall could be seen.
Both had been utterly destroyed, but the girl paid no attention to any of that.
"You... do you think you can take me lightly?" the girl said.
Gelmud was so terrified and panicked that words wouldn't come properly, but he managed to— "Forgive me! I-I'll verify the cause immediately!"
—a strangled plea.
"Oh? You'd better hurry. I'm generous, so I'll wait for you!"
Where's the generosity in that?! He had no luxury to even think that.
Gelmud, face contorted in terror, squeezed through the destroyed doorway and flew out through the massive hole in the wall.
The conference room was on the third floor, but he couldn't care less about appearances anymore.
He burst outside and immediately began casting a flight spell to make his escape.
His ambition had been blown clean away.
The only thought occupying Gelmud's mind now was a desperate desire to not die. That was all.
He hadn't meant to underestimate the Demon Lords. He was perfectly well aware that they were absolute beings.
But he had underestimated them after all.
Gelmud prided himself on being an upper-class demon. That was precisely why he'd thought that even against a single Demon Lord, he could put up a decent fight.
It was only because there were four of them that he'd thought he needed to be cautious and humble.
He was wrong.
A Demon Lord was feared precisely because it was a Demon Lord. It wasn't a Demon Lord because it was feared.
Recognizing this, he was terrified of his own arrogance.
An equal relationship with a Demon Lord was impossible for someone like Gelmud.
Yes—he understood this from the bottom of his heart.
Someone who couldn't even gauge a Demon Lord had no business speaking of them as equals.
At a speed approaching the speed of sound, Gelmud flew toward the wetlands.
But this was no longer about his ambition.
He had to devote everything he had to making up for this debacle, with his very survival on the line.
--- What in the world is going on?
I was hovering in midair, surveying the state of the battle at the wetlands.
A scene that was hard to comprehend was unfolding below my eyes.
What on earth is happening?
I already know!!!
I immediately contradicted my own question.
Just think about it for a moment.
From above, I could see sudden flashes of light bursting from one corner, and several Orc soldiers being blown away with thunderous booms.
Hmm? As I turned to observe, I heard a massive—WHOOOM!
When I hurriedly looked over, a black hemisphere had appeared on the battlefield.
After vanishing in a matter of seconds, all that remained was ground that had been turned to glass by the intense heat.
Every single Orc soldier that had been milling about there had been perfectly, completely erased.
WHAT THE—!?!
I understood the situation in an instant, but my mind refused to accept it.
Not only that, but suddenly a raging storm erupted in another corner of the battlefield.
It scattered violent winds across a wide area, and jagged lightning strikes incinerated the Orc soldiers.
The black-armored Orc soldier in that corner had been unable to withstand the fury of the storm—either turned to charcoal or blown away entirely.
What is going on?—That was my honest assessment.
The blade of her nodachi was glowing a faint violet.
She must have wrapped it in Demon Aura.
With every swing, a purple flash tore through the air, and Orc soldiers were mowed down by the slash.
Naturally, those who took the blade directly didn't just get cut in half—they were obliterated outright.
The reach of a single strike was about ten meters. An attack that bisected everything in a straight line.
With her elegant beauty, a faint smile playing on her lips, she danced as she unleashed her slashes.
Perhaps her stamina was bottomless, because she attacked without pause, and the surrounding Orc soldiers couldn't even get close.
Overwhelming power.
But even so, there were those who made even Shion look pale by comparison.
First, Benimaru—just what was that black hemisphere about?
No, the moment I saw it, I had a vague understanding of the mechanism.
It was a combination of three of my abilities: the Barrier, Heat Manipulation, and Black Lightning.
First, the Barrier fixed the space in place. Then Heat Manipulation accelerated the molecular movement within, generating extreme heat.
Finally, using the Magicules inside as fuel, Black Lightning generated plasma, incinerating everything inside in an instant.
It could be called a composite skill—perhaps "Black Flame Manipulation" would suit it.
It had likely been inherited by Benimaru through metamorphosis via his Unique Skill, Morpher.
Since I had Great Sage, I was fairly confident in that assessment.
The distinguishing feature of this skill, unlike a nuclear explosion, was that it inflicted zero damage to anything outside.
As evidence, even after the barrier was dispelled, no shockwave or anything similar leaked out.
It appeared to be designed to exponentially intensify the heat within a designated area.
As a result, the heat inside was beyond imagination. If you were trapped within the barrier, survival was hopeless.
The problem was that he was using such a terrifyingly dangerous skill so casually...
And then the other one—or rather, the other beast.
Ranga.
This guy had suddenly evolved into a Black Storm Star Wolf, which surprised me, but...
The skill he had fired off immediately after evolving was the real shocker.
If Black Lightning were used without any restrictions whatsoever, this was probably the result.
He seemed to have gone full power—there was no sign of a second shot.
But that single shot had obliterated an entire wing of the enemy forces. That was impressive.
The mental brake I unconsciously or consciously applied—that was something these guys simply didn't have.
"This is dangerous, so I won't use it"—such thoughts never crossed their minds.
Against hostile forces, they would use it without hesitation. In a world of survival of the fittest, perhaps that was only natural.
No, actually, maybe I was the strange one.
Hesitating to use it and then having allies suffer for it—that was unacceptable.
In the world of my previous life, that world, there had been an unwritten rule that powerful weapons couldn't be used.
Weapons that only served as deterrents. But was that really true?
There was no point spending money on weapons you couldn't use. Then why spend money developing them?
Wasn't it precisely for the moment when you actually needed to use them?
If using them against civilians was evil, did that make using them on the battlefield righteous?
For those on the receiving end, the argument that the sin changes depending on the weapon used would carry no weight.
And perhaps... in order for power to serve as a true deterrent, showing that immense power exists was never entirely wrong...
Two hours had passed since the battle began.
Benimaru had fired a total of four black, hemisphere-shaped attacks.
He apparently couldn't fire in rapid succession, but it didn't seem to require an inordinate amount of Magicules either.
Ranga had fired only the one shot at the start.
I thought that one had been too powerful, and indeed it had been a full-power, all-out strike.
However, that one shot had been useful in creating a sense of unfathomable wariness toward the enemy.
I could see the Orc soldiers, driven by Shion, scrambling to flee.
I shifted my mindset and calmly directed the flow of the battle.
Strangely, I felt perfectly composed.
The first strike had been Benimaru's decision, but the rest were attacks directed at locations I specified.
I was methodically targeting clusters of enemies, whittling down their fighting strength.
I was having Shion herd the enemies into groups, then striking them once they were bunched up.
I had Hakuro precisely pick off enemy commanders and generals.
That couldn't even be called combat. He would approach silently, and in an instant, reduce them to dust.
His Unique Skill, Hungerer, increased the power of those under its influence by devouring corpses. That was why he was so meticulous about further erasing the bodies after reducing them to dust.
A form of 發勁?
He released Demon Aura from his palms to incinerate the corpses.
It was less burning and more dissolving...
He would locate commanders and the several Orc Generals on the field, relay their positions to Hakuro, and have them eliminated in an instant.
This way, the battle progressed with no casualties on our side as we overwhelmed the Orc army.
Currently, Orc soldier casualties were approaching thirty percent.
And at last, the Orc Disaster was finally making its move.
Both sides temporarily reorganized their forces and shifted into a standoff, glaring at each other.
Having cleared my head, I calmly observed the situation.
The arrogant pigs had apparently realized at this point that their advantage had slipped away.
The Orc Disaster stepped forward.
An ugly pig monster.
Slowly, it cut off the head of one of the two surviving Orc Generals with a hand blade, then devoured the head.
Then, its murky yellow eyes brimming with hostility, it began releasing Demon Aura.
Receiving that aura, the Orc soldiers seemed to grow more powerful, but...
(Benimaru, can you fire that Black Flame Hell thing again?)
(Easy peasy!)
(Ranga, what about you?)
(My Lord! About thirty percent of my Magicules have recovered. I can't match the previous power, but one more shot is possible!)
(One shot is all I need. Besides, against these Orcs, that was overkill. The same range as before, but dial back the power and fire!)
(As you command!)
(Shion. While you're at it, why don't you land a nice flashy hit on the Orc Disaster yourself?)
(Yep! It's about time I can go all out, right?)
What...? So you weren't going all out this whole time?! Whatever...
(O-oh! Do your best!)
I'd been thinking she was swinging that nodachi around at full power with glee, but it turns out that was just a warm-up.
Maybe she really had obtained some strange power too. That was my thought.
(Hakuro. You could probably kill the Orc Disaster , right? But not this time. Hang tight.)
(Oh dear, very well then. I suppose I'll let the young ones have their moment in the spotlight...)
(Thanks!)
And with that, I had my counterattack preparations in place.
The Orc Disaster was no longer a threat.
Its abilities were still incomplete. I'd finish it off while I still could. Just as I thought this— SKREEEEEEEEEEE!!!
An ear-piercing sound reached my ears.
My Magic Perception had caught something approaching from afar at subsonic speed.
That someone descended right into the center of the wetlands, directly between the two armies.
I sensed an extremely powerful Demon Aura. A strange man dressed like a clown.
He was likely an upper-class demon.
I descended to the ground as well, following close behind.
Ranga and Benimaru pressed close to my side.
The clown-like man glanced at me and— "What is the meaning of this?! You've gone and ruined Lord Gelmud's plan!!!"
—he shouted at the top of his lungs.
Gelmud. An upper-class demon and the mastermind behind this whole affair.
And the very first demon I had met in this world.
As expected, the protagonist still didn't get his moment...
Next time will definitely be the protagonist's turn!