I tossed my shoes into a corner, placed my crown on the bedstand, chucked my cape into a corner and dropped onto the bed in the room the elves had prepared for me.

I was accosted by the not-terribly-pleasant sensation of lying atop a pile of wet leaves. Although, given the circumstances, the comparison that more immediately came to mind was—

The dinner the elves had served us.

With a sigh, I turned around so as to be facing up.

A knock sounded from the door, so after probing a little with my mana to ascertain the other party was neither an elf nor a drakonid, I opened it up with a touch of magic to reveal Charlotte.

“Might something be both’ring thee, M’lord?” she asked as she approached me, followed by Davna.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” I said, “I was just not expecting those blathering imbeciles to be so… exhausting, yes, I will go with that.” I shook my head. “So, what brings you two here? I could not imagine you coming to me without a reason.”

Not that I would particularly mind if they came here without a reason, however.

“My role was mer’ly that o’ an escort, M’lord,” Charlotte said, gesturing to Davna. “W’thout the ass’stance o’ one with the ab’lity to look terr’fying, yet charm’ng, she would nary have made it to thee.”

In other words, she was calling herself “terrifying, yet charming”. Well, I could not say that was inaccurate.

Upon closer examination, Davna did seem rather worse for the wear—despite her usual bright smile, her tail drooped low and her scales almost appeared to have lost their lustre. In addition, she was covered head to toe in expensive accessories golden, silver and jewel-encrusted.

Gifts, though not entirely appreciated, it seemed.

I sat up straight and, with a quick gesture, peeled most of the decorations off of her.

“Davna?” I asked, a wry smile on my face, “is something the matter? I shall hear you out.”

“Master…~” she whined, taking a seat next to me, “I’m tired…”

“How come?” I narrowed my eyes.

“They’ve been chasing me around for hours now…” she said, letting out a heavy sigh. It was not dissimilar to the one I had heaved earlier.

She slumped backwards onto the bed, and immediately sat back up with a startled yelp.

“This bed feels weird, Master…”

“I am well aware of that, Davna. I was on top of it when you came in, remember?” I shook my head. “In any case… the drakonids are an annoyance to you, are they?”

Without so much as a word of warning, she rested her head on my shoulder. “Getting gifts is fun at first, sure, but this is too much…” she said, abandoning the task of ‘carrying her own weight’ and giving the whole thing to me.

Though a dragon, she currently only had the body of a fourteen-year-old, so supporting her weight was no big deal. Still, I turned her head, since one of her horns was pricking my shoulder. “It must be hard,” I said, playfully poking her in the forehead, “to be so well-liked.”

She puffed up her cheeks in a cute fit of indignance. “You don’t go around Pandemonium, either, right, Master?” she asked—indeed, there was the hole in my teasing.

“Certainly,” I said, chuckling to myself, “if I were to enter the capital, I would be flooded in gifts and challenges alike. But, really, now. You come to the lord of darkness because you feel fatigued? Truly a fearless one, you are…”

Prompted by the lack of a response, I looked over to her—

And found she had fallen asleep on my shoulder.

“Really now, this girl…” I muttered, but I could not find the will to disturb her.

“If I might be p’rmitted t’ speak a few words, M’lord?” Charlotte asked, looking between Davna and I with a wry smirk.

I nodded. “Speak freely. I shall allow it.”

“With all due r’spect, M’lord, I do not b’lieve Davna views thee as an abom’nable lord o’ the dark, or an’thing o’ that sort,” she said, closing her eyes. “She may view thee with r’spect, cert’nly, but I b’lieve ‘tis pos’tive in nature.”

“Then I cannot call her anything but naive. I am, in the end, the ultimate enemy of the races of humanity, an undeniable mass-murderer…”

“When one views the w’rld from the p’rspective o’ a dragon, the likes o’ a human is nay but an ant,” she said, though it was clear from her tone that she thought such of humans, as well. “Even when said dragon is only sev’n years o’ age.”

“B’sides,” she added in a whisper I could not tell if I was supposed to hear, “thou hast not yet slain any inn’cents…”

I turned my gaze back to the little dragon. “I would rather like not to be forced to put down a girl who is like a daughter to me because she is indiscriminately slaughtering people, though.”

“With thy method o’ childrearing, M’lord, one can only ass’me she will grow to enjoy comp’ny, even should she forget the value o’ life.” Charlotte chuckled, not quite mockingly.

“I suppose we can only hope,” I responded, gently brushing Davna’s head.

In the end, it probably took more effort than it should have, but I managed to coax Davna into sleeping in her own room. I fell asleep on the strange bed even while my body complained.

The first thing that left my mouth as I woke up was a groan, and I somehow felt more tired than when I had gone to sleep. After doing approximately nothing for several minutes more than was necessary, I managed to register that it was morning and got out of bed.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, yawned and shook my head, with half a mind to jump straight back into bed. A knock from the door pulled me out of my delusions.

“M’lord,” Charlotte said from the other side, “art thou awake?”

“Master, wake up! I wanna eat!” Davna’s voice sounded—it seemed the two of them were still together—and her sentence was punctuated not by the patient silence of one awaiting an answer, but by the violent thud of a foot colliding with a door.

A dragon’s foot.

There was no way a simple wooden door could resist such an impact, so it certainly opened. I could also say in certain terms it would not be closing again, given it was now out of its hinges, halfway across the room.

“... Oops.”

Davna came in after the door, looking at it with a bit of a dumb expression on her face.

Charlotte and Navillus followed her inside, though neither of them spared the door so much as a glance.

“This is verily the reason I have told thee time and time again t’ hold back thy strength, Davna,” Charlotte said, inspecting the hinges of the doorframe.

“Sorry…”

“Ap’logise not t’ me, but t’ the elv’n craftsman who made the door, or t’ M’lord, who is using the room.”

Navillus decided to ignore the two of them entirely and slid over to me—I could not blame her.

“Master, food?”

I heaved a sigh. “Right, right, I get it already. You three, we are going to go eat.”

I could not shake off the strange sense of exhaustion as I made my way over to the dining hall, Demon Generals in tow.

Only after finishing breakfast did I notice something—or rather, the absence of something.

“Charlotte,” I said, making sure none of the natives overheard me, “do you happen to know of Tempest’s whereabouts?”

Several seconds of silence followed my question, and then an answer. “Come t’ think, she was abs’nt during breakf’st… I confess I do not p’ssess this knowledge, M’lord.” She shook her head and closed her eyes in pensive thought.

“Hmm…”

“Whatcha talking about, Master, Charlotte?” Davna asked, taking a few steps forward and sticking her head out in front of me. Given she almost fell over, she did not seem to have considered what that would do to her balance.

“Davna, have you seen Tempest around?” I asked, stopping in my tracks as to avoid a collision. She took a step backwards anyway.

“Tempest? She said she was gonna research the elves and drakonids all day and disappeared. Didn’t she tell you, Master?” If her eyebrows were any indication, she was indeed a little surprised I was asking this at all.

“How… characteristic,” I said, barely preventing myself from leaking out my true feelings.

“But M’lord,” Charlotte said, and I could almost sense slight worry in her tone. “Wouldst thou normally not have not’ced such a thing much earlier?”

“The same goes for you, vampire.”

“I s’ppose so…”

“Ahem.”

Clearing my throat somehow failed to get the attention of everyone in the room, despite the display I had made just the day before. After trying a few more times, I gave up on the moderate route and gestured to Charlotte.

“Quell yeselves in the presence o’ the almighty Overlord Astaroth!” she announced, her voice oddly booming for a girl of her size, and she used the tip of her sword’s sheath and the floor to produce a loud clang.

That got everyone’s attention, alright.

Incidentally, goddesses and leaders alike were absent today. The leaders I could imagine were overseeing my entourage’s training, but I was not sure where the goddesses had disappeared to—not that I could find it in me to care.

In addition, the drakonid and the elf I had scared off had not returned.

“Somehow,” I said, “it took all of yesterday just to establish basic, common-sense behavioural etiquette. We may not have arrived first thing in the morning, but it still took several hours, you absolute imbeciles.”

I could not hold back a slight smile as several of the elves and drakonids awkwardly looked away, and several more gained slight red tinges to their faces. Anger or embarrassment, I neither knew nor cared.

“That said, today, we shall address the problem itself.” I narrowed my eyes at the hope-filled gazes. “So then, first off. Explain to me what lead to this situation.”

The elf who had, as I recalled, introduced herself as the Elven Council Vice-President raised her hand. “Very well,” I said, gesturing to her, “you do it.”

“Certainly,” she said, her same unchanging business-like smile on her face. “Would you prefer the full version, or may I abbreviate it?”

“The short version is fine,” I said, barely stifling a yawn at the prospect of an entire lecture on elven culture.

“Understood.”

She cleared her throat and raised a finger into the air like a lecturer.

“As you may know, the barb-” she started, before cutting herself off with a cough. “The drakonids are a tribe of nomads who migrate across the world as dictated by their goddess Lady Salamander.” She gestured towards them, presumably for emphasis.

I nodded.

“And as I will assume anyone would certainly know, we elves have a positive relationship with many of the creatures that live in the forest,” she continued, gesturing as close to “all around her” as she could manage with only two arms.

I nodded once more.

“Of course, that includes the venerable Treants, who happen to inhabit the area the barb- drakonids have been instructed to migrate through,” she said, her unchanged smile somehow looking rather smug anyway.

“Hmm.”

I was waiting for her to continue, but she simply smiled at me, so I decided to open my mouth.

“First of all,” I said after a few moments of thought, “I am not sure if I like the fact that you almost said ‘barbarian’ not once, but twice.” I shot an accusatory glance in her direction, in response to which she averted her gaze. “And second. You have not provided me with enough information to see the problem, here.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but I raised my hand.

“Do not bother. Your voice is starting to bore me. You do it.” I pointed to a different elf.

“Ah, uh, yes! The problem is that the drakonids, uh, ‘bless’ any area they pass through for a couple of years, which leads to, uhm, deforestation, to say the least,” the elf said, glancing between me and the Vice-President. “And, well, Treants generally thrive in, uh, well-forested areas, so if the drakonids passed through, it’d be, you know.”

I felt like I had missed about half the words in the elf’s explanation—I chalked it up to the unfamiliar bed—and shook my head. “I do not. Explain,” I said, resisting the urge to close an eye.

I did not miss the flash of helplessness that streaked across his face, but I decided to ignore it. “Well, uhm, in the best case scenario, the Treants would be forced to relocate.”

“And the worst case?”

“They’d, well, um. Burn.”

“That would be… Problematic.”

Silence reigned supreme in the room, sprinkled with the occasional whisper I could not be bothered to make out.

“Well,” I said after a while, turning to the drakonids, “how does Lady Salamander decide the areas you are to pass through?”

“Hell if we know, you’d have to ask her.”

“... And where is she right now?” I asked the drakonid who had kindly nominated himself as a representative.

“As if I’m answerin’ that question,” he answered, an obnoxious amount of confidence in his voice. “But…” His sentence tapered out, as though trying to draw the next word out of me, instead of him.

“If you have something to say, then say it,” I said, not possessing the drive to engage with a drakonid’s nonsensical riddles.

“We might tell ya if ya beat us. All-on-one.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The rest of you agree with this?” I asked, unbelieving they would so readily challenge a ninth-grade monster.

Yet I saw no objections.

“Then-”

I was interrupted by the sensation of someone grasping my wrist, and turned around to find—

Tempest, staring me in the eyes with an urgent look on her face.

“Master, would you let me analyse you for a second?” she asked—no, implored of me. “I promise it’s truly critical.”