Not ten steps after I walked away from the bickering goddesses did I freeze in place and narrowed my eyes.

“Master? Problem?” Navillus asked, canting her head to the side.

I shook my head. “Not a… problem. If anything, this is almost exciting. The arrival of a beloved toy of mine.”

“And what might the ident’ty o’ this toy be, M’lord?” Charlotte asked, her eyes twinkling with curiosity.

“What, can you not feel it?” I asked, chuckling, as I raised my hand to my mouth. “Well, it is not unreasonable, with the strong mana of Yggdrasil nearby…”

Tempest seemed to understand what I was getting at, since she nodded in comprehension. “Are you suggesting that the approaching light-attribute mana belongs to a Hero, Master?”

“Indeed, Tempest. And not just any Hero.” I gestured in the direction I sensed the mana from. “I do believe this is the mana signature of our well-known trinket, Claiomh Solais.”

“The god-sword has app’red?” Charlotte said, following my gesture with her eyes. “Now that thou mentions it, there c’rtainly is something t’ be felt from that d’rection…”

“Master, what do?” Navillus asked, accompanied by her usual, incomprehensible squelch.

“Charlotte, go on ahead. Stay in the shadows so that you can report to me if my deduction was incorrect. The rest of you, with me. We are of course also heading over there. Everyone, hold in your mana as best as you can. I want to… surprise them.”

“At thy command, M’lord.” Charlotte slunk away into the shadows and soon disappeared.

“As you wish, Master.”

“Gotcha, Master!”

“Navillus says okay!”

Thus we set off.

“Why do we have to go through this damn forest…”

“I’m sure Lady Luciel has her reasons, Reynald.”

“We know the reason, Ebstrea. A Saint disappeared, right? What I mean is that we’re on foot. Why are we on foot?”

“Well, transfer magic is really rare, after all, and we can’t exactly fly…”

“Then they could at least give us a horse!”

“Do you know how to ride a horse?”

“Well… No, but…”

Listening in on the Heroes’ conversation was not very hard, even from a few dozen metres away, with how loud they were being.

It did not take me very long to determine their conversation was entirely mundane and far less cautious than they should be in potentially hostile territory, so I decided it could not hurt to come out and show myself.

So I did.

“Well, well. A pair of Heroes. How unexpected. Having a carefree conversation about horses in territory of unknown allegiance… How carefree.”

“You—!”

Although verbally, their reaction was the same, their body language could not have been more different. The wielder of the god-sword did not seem to have learned his lesson, given he entered a fighting posture and sent me the most hateful of glares. On the other hand, his mage friend seemed to have learned her place, given she took a step backwards, her legs trembling, and clutched her hands to her chest.

I placed a hand in front of my chest and gave an unreasonable, exaggerated bow, as though a theatre master opening a show. “Overlord Astaroth, at your… Well, I will not say I am at your service, but I will at least humour you with a conversation.”

My every word and action dripped with fake courtesy, carefully engineered.

Carefully engineered to be as clearly fake as possible, that is.

Out of the three of us, the one who seemed to care most about the mage’s reaction was not the girl herself, whom it was relevant to, nor me, whom it was directed at, but Claiomh Solais’s wielder, who appeared truly not to have expected it.

“The hell’d you do to her?!” he asked, stepping in front of her with both his arms spread, in an act I could only describe as childish bravado.

For several seconds, I looked at him in silence. Eventually, a sly smile on my face, I spoke. “Nothing. Nothing at all. If anything, I would say that is the normal response of a typical human’s overactive imagination…”

Our conversation seemed to snap her out of her daze, and she placed her hand on the guy’s shoulder. “He didn’t actually do anything, Reynald,” she said, and she shook her head, which seemed to calm the god-sword’s wielder to calm down considerably. “If anything, he spared us last time… But more importantly, remember what we agreed to do?”

“Right.” He slapped his cheeks in what was probably an attempt to calm himself down. “Sorry, I let the blood rush to my head again.”

With a sarcastic sneer on my face, I gave a one-man applause. “I am touched by your heartwarming scene, truly,” I said, “but I cannot deny it bores me, as well. What is this about an agreement? Even with the two of you together, I hope you realise there is no chance of defeating me.”

The god-sword’s wielder shook his head. “No, no, we didn’t agree on a surprise attack or anything,” he said. The corners of his mouth twitched, and after a few moments of effort, he managed to force a smile. “We made an agreement to have a conversation with you next time we saw you.”

I raised an eyebrow, half in interest and half in suspicion. “A conversation, is it… Claiomh Solais. Corroborate or discredit this claim if you value his life.”

«It has been a while, opponent. As much as I dislike it, such an agreement does indeed exist between my wielder and his companion.»

The Hero, for his part, seemed more startled by this revelation than I.

“Wait, wait, what the heck?! Why are you responding to him, Claiomh?! You never answered when I called for you! You’re my sword, right?!”

His surprise lay elsewhere.

“Have you considered the possibility it likes me more than it does you?” I asked, a fabricated polite smile on my face.

“As if!”

«I did not respond to the wielder’s summons because there was no necessity.»

“Then what made you respond to this guy?”

«Reading the opponent’s emotions informed me his threat was serious.»

“Wh- He would have attacked me?”

«In addition, there was a 93% chance that such an attack would end with the wielder’s death, and the remaining 7% was the wielder relinquishing control to me permanently, followed by a retreat.»

“Have some faith in your wielder, dammit!”

I could not suppress a condescending chuckle. “You would fit right in with the drakonids. Have you considered emigrating?” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?!” he responded, looking just as indignant as Salamander had not an hour ago.

Unlike in Salamander’s case, this time it was truly, wholly unjustified indignance, though.

“Reynald, I think you’re just proving his point,” the mage girl said, gently placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Et tu, Ebstrea?”

“It has been a long, long time since I have heard someone reference a historical quote Caesar likely never even said,” I said, snickering to myself.

The Heroes stared at me in silence for a few moments, though the fear I desired was absent from their expressions, before the mage opened her mouth.

“You… You know Julius Caesar?” she asked, blinking a few times and tilting her head. “Or does this world have a similar—?”

“I do not think so,” I said, shaking my head. “Julius Caesar, not-quite-emperor of the Roman Empire and the main protagonist of the hit videogame Caesar’s Worries.”

This time, it was the sword-wielder who opened his mouth. “Why does a demon know what a videogame even is, let alone knowing about a specific thing?”

I shook my head. “Let us leave that for another time. If you say you wanted to converse with me, surely there is a specific subject. Try not to bore me too much.”

“Ah, uhm, okay,” the mage said, “but before that… The rest isn’t here this time?”

I snapped my fingers. Nearby shadows pulled back, revealing the one who had been keeping them where they were—that is, Charlotte, of course, along with my three other Demon Generals who were not in Gehenna.

“There’s… another one…?” the mage said, frowning.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding,” the sword-wielder said, burying his face in the palm of his hand.

“Now that introductions are out of the way, I shall hear you out, so hurry up and speak.”

My posture was my usual—one leg crossed over the other, leaned against the backrest of my seat. My seat, in this case, was a hastily-constructed throne from the spell Form Darkness. Like last time, Davna sat atop the armrest and leaned on me—perhaps she had taken a liking to the spot.

Because of its hasty construction, the throne rippled with my every motion and looked generally a little out-of-place.

Rather than fix it, I rather liked this, and I decided I would add such otherworldly constructions to my future repertoire, as long as structural integrity was not an important concern.

“Ah, uhm, one more thing?” the mage said, attempting to work up the courage to look me in the eyes.

Tragically, she did not succeed.

“Could we, uh—?” she asked, gesturing towards my throne.

After a moment’s silence, I raised my hand and cast Rock Shaping to raise two relatively flat pieces of stone from the ground.

“Uh…” she said, tilting her head.

“Are you serious?” the sword-wielder asked, prodding one of the rocks.

“Entirely. Please, take a seat, and then hurry it along.”

With unsurprising reluctance, the pair of them sat down.

The mage produced a pair of gemstones from her [Storage]. “First off,” she said, “would you mind if we appraised you, uh, sir?”

The gems’ glow was quite recognisable.

“Appraisal crystals. How fancy.” I narrowed my eyes, but nodded anyway. “If you are willing to waste them to confirm things you already know, go right ahead. You could always sell them to some merchant, buy a mansion and retire instead, you know?”

They seemed more than willing to ignore my quip.

The mage tossed one of the crystals to the sword-wielder with far less care than she probably should have—did the Holy Astal Kingdom perhaps find a way to mass-produce appraisal crystals while I was gone?—and held the other up in front of her face. The sword-wielder, in turn, caught the crystal he was thrown and did the same.

“[Appraisal],” they said simultaneously.

“Urkh,” the mage said, drawing back as beads of sweat rolled down her face, “Yxon was right, this is ridiculous…”

The sword-wielder’s face did not lose to the mage’s in discomfort. “I seriously tried to fight this?” he said, shifting his legs a little.

I saw no particular need to mention my grade had gone up since that fight, and thus that he had not tried to fight me as I was now.

“I do b’lieve,” Charlotte said, “that had thou not p’sessed that sword, thou would long since have p’rished at M’lord’s hand.”

“That’s… probably right, isn’t it?” he responded, a despairing smile on his face.

The mage reached over and gave him a few pats on his shoulder.

“Right,” I said after a few seconds, “if you are about done with your dating sim scene, I would rather prefer you get on with it and ask your questions. Due to a combination of events, you see, I am in a bit of a poor mood, and though I certainly managed to vent some stress earlier, I would not mind doing you some harm, either.”

The Heroes’ cheeks were painted crimson at my first sentence, and they separated as far as they could from one another without falling off their rocks—which was maybe a metre of distance, at most—but that blush soon faded at my second sentence, replaced by a distinct pale colour different from Charlotte’s.

After a few nervous gulps, the mage Hero cleared her throat. “There were a few-a few more things,” she said, nodding. “For example, we, uh, wanted to know about the origins of your, uhm, power. Mister—”

She cut herself off, glancing at Charlotte. I could not see Charlotte from where I was sitting, but it was not hard to imagine her expression.

“Lord…” the mage girl said, “Lord Astaroth, was it? Uhm—are you a Hero, by any chance?”

“I cast that title aside more than ten years ago,” I said, caressing Davna’s hair to distract myself from this not-so-pleasant line of questioning. “But yes, I do possess such powers. Congratulations, you can read. But was that all it said?”

She nodded. “It- There was more than just what Lady Luciel would have given you. Even if we assume you are a native of this world who has received her blessing…”

The sword-wielder nodded, too. “All this darkness stuff must’ve come after she gave you her blessing, surely.”

They seemed to have made some kind of misunderstanding, perhaps because they believed the barrier between human and monster was insurmountable, but I saw no value in correcting them.

“I may have to retract my earlier praise,” I said, shaking my head. “There is another name right there, no?”

“Th-Then…” the mage said, her voice trailing off after her stuttered introduction. She soon picked her sentence back up. “Are you—Lord Astaroth, are you perhaps allied with… The incarnation of the world’s malice, Entropy?”

It was not very hard to see her eyes narrowed in suspicion, even through the frightened shadows playing across her face, and her hand reaching for her staff was clear as day.

“That is Lady Entropy to you, you uncultured simpleton.” I narrowed my eyes and tutted. “In any case. It would be a disgrace for me to call myself anything but a devout follower. Rather than saying I am ‘allied’ to her, it is more accurate to say, yes… That she is, to me, more important than this world itself.”

My choice of words, perhaps unsurprisingly, prompted a burst of dignified giggles from Charlotte.

“And she’s really pretty!” Davna said, grinning and, where possible, leaning even further towards me.

It was exceedingly clear what she was fishing for, so I just pulled her onto my lap to make my job as a professional dragon-petter significantly easier.

“Indeed,” I said, nodding. “Hair with the colour of snow and the texture of silk, a face like a delicately crafted doll, eyes like a rainbow after a heavy torrent…”

The apprehension on the Heroes’ faces was clearer than ever, what with both of them narrowing their eyes, and they both grasped their weapons. They exchanged a few whispers, too, though the only words I could make out were ‘charm spell’.

“No, no,” I said, shaking my head, “there is no charm spell in play. In the first place, a charm spell powerful enough to affect me would leave its target not much more than a vessel of love, would you not say? Is there anything else you would like to ask, or are you just going to attack me and lose pitifully?”

“One… One last thing,” the mage said, outright drawing her staff now. “Why? Why declare yourself the future demon king, why steal the Saints’ Aspects, why let us go, why attack us in the first place? Why did you betray Lady Luciel?”

A moment of silence.

And then, a burst of laughter.

It took me a few seconds to realise it was coming from my mouth, but even then, I did not feel any desire to stop laughing.

Eventually, I stopped, if only to wipe the tears of ridicule from my eyes, and opened my mouth.

“You truly are naïve, foolish little puppets, I see.”

“Wh—!”

“You—!”

The mage jabbed the back end of her staff into the ground and the sword-wielder drew his sword.

“Cease,” I said, shaking my head, “and think for a moment. I would have thought Claiomh Solais’s hint would have given it away…”

“What’s my sword got to do with this?”

“Surely you remember it mentioned the erosion of your soul.”

“Sure I do, but what does that mean?!”

“That is why I said ‘think’. There are very few things it could mean.”

“I have, and I can’t figure it out! If you know, just tell me already!”

I shook my head and tapped the index finger of my free hand—that is, the hand that was not preoccupied petting the dragon in my lap—on my throne’s armrest a few times. “I am… Truly, truly disappointed. I had hopes for you, you know. But very well, I shall tell you—”

I was interrupted by a pair of gut-wrenching waves of power from two sides, and I swiftly leaned my body onto an armrest for support.

For what it was worth, the Heroes did not seem unaffected either, and neither did my Demon Generals.

«Because of emergency circumstances, the GAME feature ‘Warning’ will be made available. It is a feature which can warn you of events that are perceived as threats to the world. It can also provide advice on how to deal with these events.»

«Warning. Interference by a hostile ‘Demiurge’-class creature from outside this world has been detected. Recommended course of action: find the ‘Demiurge’-class creature’s way into this world and destroy it.»