9:11 a.m.

The army at the rear, tasked with holding back the monster forces, had been reduced to just a handful of soldiers.

The female soldiers had already been overrun by the ferocious beasts before them. Before long, they’d fall to the ground amid splattering blood, just like the comrades who’d sacrificed themselves before them.

『Your Majesty, we’ll serve you again in our next lives...』

Having prepared herself to make the ultimate sacrifice, the young woman commanding the rear army raised her bloodstained weapon high.

Just then, footsteps rang out.

Thud, thud, thud!

This was a place of life and death, where no one should have passed through. And yet a girl holding a folding fan came walking through, her movements elegant.

Before long, she entered the soldiers’ and monsters’ field of vision.

『Hmm. I shouldn’t have tried to save those few minutes. I’ve ended up somewhere that’ll take even more time.』

After glancing around, she—Lucia, one of the Seven Demon Kings—came to that conclusion.

After the meeting, she’d planned to take a shortcut and hurry back. Who knew a war would break out here—and that one side would have such a close connection to her.

Though Lucia was a demon, her way of life made her lean more toward the humans.

Of course, that alone wasn’t enough to make her intervene.

The bigger reason Lucia chose to open her fan was that she thought:

Dibiles’s soldiers were, in a sense, her beloved’s subordinates.

By that logic, the soldiers were practically her own subordinates!

From the human corpses strewn across the ground, Lucia guessed what had happened earlier.

And she was angry.

“I already hate monsters. If you’d stayed near your nest, I wouldn’t have bothered with you. But you dared to hurt my people...”

The moment she grew even a little angry, the fate of tens of thousands of monsters was sealed.

Upon spotting a new target, some of the monsters immediately changed course and charged toward Lucia.

At the front of the charge, a vicious wolf opened its mouth wide, baring its sharp teeth.

Its powerful jaws snapped shut as sticky drool dripped from its mouth. It lunged at Lucia, aiming for her throat.

Lucia flicked her fan. A gust spun from its surface with a whoosh, blowing away the foul smell coming toward her.

At the same time, the razor-sharp whirlwind spread out, forming an invisible barrier in front of its mistress.

Bang!

The moment the lunging wolf touched the barrier, its body was torn apart. Its bloodied limbs and other parts were sliced into countless fragments of equal size in an instant.

At the sight, the nearby wolves stopped running and gathered around their target to watch.

Then the barrier, which had been still, began to move. Its edge swept forward along the ground, closing in on the rows of wolves ahead.

The cries of beasts rang out one after another.

The wolves that were torn apart had no time to make a sound. Their companions behind them, however, cried out in fear.

After those cries, the wolves in the rear met the same fate. They had no chance to escape before the pursuing barrier cut them to pieces!

Then more barriers took shape in the other seven directions.

After sealing off every exit from the battlefield, the Demon King began her own “banquet.”

Blood spilled like fine red wine; the beasts’ howls sounded like toasts ringing out over clinking glasses.

As the host of the banquet and the only star of the show, Lucia now wore a flowerlike smile at the corner of her mouth, holding her fan before her vermilion lips.

She didn’t like killing. But once she decided to act, she never hesitated for even a moment.

No matter how many monsters there were, she had nothing to fear. To her, numbers were simply the confidence of the weak, gathered together to die!

『Speaking of which...』

Even as she attacked, Lucia had enough attention to spare to ask the soldier commanding the rear:

『How’s my darling been lately?』

『“Darling”? Who’s that? Is it someone I know?』

Lucia didn’t really want to use that name.

But from the soldier’s answer, she could tell that unless she brought up her beloved’s position, Dibiles’s soldiers probably wouldn’t be able to talk to her at all.

『The Imperial Consort. I’m asking how your Imperial Consort has been lately.』

『Oh, you mean Her Majesty’s spouse. She...』

『Ptooey!』

Unable to hold back for a moment, Lucia lowered her head and spat toward the ground.

She knew she’d just made a scene, but she couldn’t help it.

Whenever she heard certain sensi.tive words—like “Empress” or “the Empress’s spouse”—her mood instantly soured.

(under her breath) 『What spouse? She’s just a homewrecker who butted into someone else’s relationship!』

At least she hadn’t said that part out loud. She’d shown some consideration for how the soldiers were feeling.

Since they were still in the middle of a battle, she forced down her displeasure and asked again:

『What were you saying about the Imperial Consort? Say it again. I didn’t catch that.』

For a few seconds, the soldier had only seen Lucia spit something onto the ground, and had no way of knowing what was going on inside the Demon King’s mind.

The soldier assumed she wasn’t feeling well and had just spat out some phlegm. Paying the gesture little mind, the soldier simply told her:

『At least before we left the country, we heard the Imperial Consort had been doing quite well lately.』

『Is that so? Then...』

『Oh, and I heard the Imperial Consort and Her Majesty have gotten even closer lately. Those two are really so in love!』

At that unnecessary addition, Lucia’s expression turned even worse than if she’d swallowed a whole durian.

Even someone lying dead in a coffin would have had a better complexion than she did now.

In the end, Lucia couldn’t hold back. Even in a situation like this, she couldn’t resist taking a shot at the soldiers:

『Don’t get too happy on the Empress’s behalf just yet. If one day the Imperial Consort asks to end the marriage, all this joy you’re feeling now will have been for nothing.』

『No way!』

The soldier immediately shot back:

『The Imperial Consort and Her Majesty are so in love. There’s no way their marriage could ever fall apart.』

『I didn’t say it was falling apart. But it’s not hard to imagine a perfectly happy marriage suddenly shattering one day, like a mirror dropped on the floor.』

『Nonsense! That will never happen. Even if you’ve helped us, you still can’t curse Her Majesty’s future.』

『Why would I need to curse it? This is just a prediction of what’s about to happen.』

『Apologize! Right now, here, apologize to Her Majesty and the Imperial Consort, even though they’re thousands of miles away.』

『No way! I might apologize to my darling, but why should I apologize to that tsun·dere woman?』

『Whatever Her Majesty’s personality is like, the Imperial Consort loves her!』

『Ha! That joke isn’t funny at all!』

As Lucia argued with the soldier, the leader of the monsters entered the heart of the battlefield. The chieftain had joined the battle at the invitation of the Northern Marshal.

The monster was a humanoid minotaur holding an axe in each hand. Judging by its horns, it seemed to be a distant relative of the yak.

Monsters had pretty good hearing, so even while on the move, the chieftain could clearly hear the argument.

What was going on?

The chieftain couldn’t make sense of it. A moment later, a thought even crossed its mind:

Could the enemy be turning on each other?

The chieftain thought this was a chance. Then, from far away, it saw Lucia make a certain move in the time it took to blink.

Lucia took her anger out on the monsters. Instead of picking them off with ordinary attacks, she raised one hand and pointed her palm at a spot ahead of her.

『This is a fourteenth-tier fire spell! Burn that Empress or whatever to a crisp!』

Compressed fire elements gathered outside Lucia’s palm. Their heat rose in an instant, then they became a pillar of fire that blasted forward with tremendous force.

As it shot forward, the pillar of fire rapidly widened, turning from an attack aimed in a single direction into an indiscriminate assault covering multiple areas.

Like a fire dragon coiling around its prey, the wildfire—so vast it could only be called a “sea of flames”—swept toward the monsters, engulfing them as explosions erupted.

Centered on the monsters, an explosion of fire with a radius of over a hundred meters appeared before the soldiers’ eyes.

The soldiers of Dibiles had no doubt:

If they’d been standing beside the enemy with their comrades, this Demon King would’ve burned them so completely that not even ash would remain!

『Burn! Burn! Burn...』

Lucia used her magic without holding back. Endless layers of raging fire swept over the land, burning it without end.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

One explosion followed another. Before long, few monsters remained, yet the flames kept coming in greater numbers.

The last group of monsters met their end more or less like this:

They dropped their weapons and turned to run. Before they could get far, the flames rushing after them burned them to a crisp.

Then a second wave of fire slammed into them, blasting their charred remains into the air and “cremating” them midair.

Before even the victims’ ashes could fall, a third wave of flames came rushing in...

If souls could be destroyed, then after being burned for so long, the spirits of all those monsters would surely have been reduced to less than ash.

And the chieftain?

Strictly speaking, it had been caught in the crossfire. Lucia hadn’t even seen it when she cast her spell.

The chieftain had simply planned to walk up to the front of its forces, give its underlings their orders, and then defeat the enemy as usual.

It hadn’t expected that

before it could even finish the first stage, it would take more than a dozen direct hits from the fire spell.

The chieftain thought that once all the fur on its body had been burned off, the attack was over. But each “end” was followed shortly by a whole new beginning...