Mountain Faction

The Mountain Faction is one of the three great political blocs into which the 72 Demon Lords are divided, alongside the Plains Faction and the Neutral Faction. It is by far the most populous: of the thirty-two Demon Lords present at the Walpurgis Night where Dantalion makes his debut, seventeen belong to it, and even most of the demon realm's archdukes lean toward it. Its founding principle is the inverse of the Plains Faction's: rather than burn the human continent for conquest, the Mountain Faction prefers to avoid war wherever possible and to secure territory and profit for demonkind through diplomacy, leverage, and patience. That makes it cautious, wealthy, and chronically distrusted by the war-hawks who see passivity as cowardice.

**Walpurgis Night and the Two Conspiracies (ch 63-73).** The faction enters the story as Dantalion's first arena of high politics. Its weakest member, Belial (rank 68), is framed by Barbatos, who carves a forged brand into the corpse of the adventurer Riff; Dantalion solves the puzzle by reasoning that no Mountain Faction member would frame their own. Soon after, when twelve human armies converge on the demon realm, the faction's true colour shows: rather than rescue the panicking Belial, leader Paimon (rank 9) coldly abandons one member to protect the bloc — and Barbatos, by Dantalion's design, swoops in to look the better patron. From the outset the faction is shown as a disciplined but brittle machine that subordinates the individual to the collective.

**"Dig two graves" and the republican secret (ch 109-114).** Caught secretly negotiating a truce with the Habsburg Empire — treason in the eyes of the Crescent Alliance — the faction is dragged before a tribunal. Sitri (rank 12), Paimon's blunt sword and lover, blusters that they "acted only for the demon realm," but Dantalion turns the hearing into a trap: guilt or innocence aside, a vote would convict them. Beneath the politics lies the faction's deepest truth, gradually revealed: Paimon is a closet republican idealist who cares for the demon commoners and sympathises with humans, and the Mountain Faction is the quiet political face of her centuries-old, continent-spanning **Liberation Alliance**. It even covertly built and steered the Batavia Republic. Its mountain-versus-plains rivalry is, at bottom, a war of ideologies.

**Fragile coalition and the age of balance (ch 230-234, 303-304).** After the Eighth Crescent Alliance, the three factions are made — for the first time in two thousand years — to act as one under Barbatos, with the Neutral Faction's Marbas brokering reconciliation between Plains and Mountain so the cycle of vengeance does not consume them both. Paimon herself defines the faction as "a group created to avoid war as far as possible and to profit through diplomacy." With Bael and Agares gone, none of the three blocs can move the whole Demon Lord army alone; the Mountain, Plains, and Neutral factions coexist in a tense balance that Dantalion learns to play as broker.

**The Fall of Gold and Bloody Sitri (ch 417-424).** Paimon's death at Dantalion's own hand decapitates the faction. Sitri — never groomed to rule — takes the throne to keep it from collapsing, even submitting to "bride lessons" to learn statecraft. To avenge Paimon she slaughters nearly a hundred thousand demon civilians across the demon realm, earning the epithet "Bloody Sitri" and squandering the popular sympathy that was the faction's lifeline. When she executes her own member Belial without trial, the bloc fractures: at Walpurgis Night the elder mage Morax (rank 21) — who confesses he engineered Belial's defection as a test — defects first, and eight of the ten remaining Demon Lords abandon Sitri within minutes, denouncing them all as "hypocrites" who hid behind Paimon's ideals while letting her die.

Throughout the novel the Mountain Faction functions as the soft, diplomatic, republican-tinged counterweight to the Plains Faction's militarism — the keeper of Paimon's idealism, the secret hand behind the Liberation Alliance, and ultimately a body so bound to one beloved leader that it cannot survive losing her ideals, only her name.

Where the Plains Faction worships conquest, the Mountain Faction is built to avoid war 'as far as possible' and to enrich demonkind through diplomacy and leverage. Beneath that pragmatism beats a hidden republican idealism: leader Paimon genuinely cares for the demon commoners and sympathises with humans, and the bloc is the quiet political face of her continent-spanning Liberation Alliance — even the Batavia Republic was secretly her work. Its rivalry with the Plains Faction is therefore less a turf war than a clash of worldviews over how, and whether, demons and humans should coexist.

The faction's strength and its flaw are the same: total devotion to one beloved leader. Under Paimon it is the largest and most respected bloc, disciplined enough to sacrifice a member (Belial) for the whole. But that cohesion rests on her popularity. When Dantalion kills Paimon, Sitri — a pure warrior with no taste for politics — must rule to stop the collapse, and her bloody vengeance squanders the public sympathy that was the faction's lifeline. By the final Walpurgis Night, with Belial executed and 'Bloody Sitri' reviled, eight of ten remaining Demon Lords walk out, proving the Mountain Faction could outlive Paimon's name but not the loss of her ideals.