…A Hero always faces the right way, like a blade turning toward the Demon King, like a hunter stalking monsters through mist. She’ll pick the path where most live. Mm, Vega, that makes me think—I’ve got a half‑baked idea…

If it’s half‑baked, please don’t say it, my ignorant master. You don’t know how many sleepless nights it costs me to spin your “half‑baked idea” into a plan.

…Ahem. It’s simple, really. Just a guess tossed into the wind.

We strolled the walls of Segbaru, capital of the Wilderness Kingdom Veneli, like two shadows on sun‑bleached stone. Vega fussed over my expensive formalwear with needle‑thin fingers.

A gauzy black shawl like moonlight netting, gold cords and buttons like dappled sunlight, a pure black, clean‑cut suit like a calm lake. The killer was the pleats on the shawl—so many ripples for a “minimalist” style. I couldn’t fathom it, like trying to count leaves in a storm.

But after we bought it, Vega praised the designer’s “pleat aesthetics,” marveling at cloth and design as if reading lines in a palm.

A single pleat can hold more words than a poem, apparently.

Please don’t move. Battle will ruin the fabric, and that’s fate like frost on grass. But my lavish master, keep these pretty pleats intact until you draw steel. Ah, I’m sinking too deep into my own sea. Please continue your thoughtless thought. I’ll treat it like a passing dream.

…Do wraiths dream? If I dig here, I’ll hit stupidity. Ahem. I’m thinking: since a Hero chooses the right side, can I lure her with profit?

Anyone—no, gods and demons included—can be lured, so long as they care about something and share our logic, like rivers that follow gravity. The catch is, we usually can’t afford the price. Vega glanced at my buttons, then turned one true.

What about half a world?

No. The world itself belongs to humanity. The Hero would call that a loss, like selling salt back to the sea.

What if I promise no more invasions from the Demon Realm, new knowledge spreading like spring seed, a Utopia forged by an iron hand, civilization leaping like lightning, voyages to the stars and even other realms—a world like that?

…

Or two‑thirds of the world. Or three‑quarters. Four‑fifths? Where’s her price point?

Maybe… maybe the Hero still won’t agree. But the mortal world would sell one‑fifth of the world and the Hero to you, like grain bartered in famine.

That sounds like betraying our own champion. If I make it happen, the Divine Beings won’t hold me in good light, like a lamp shaded by ash.

We passed near Veneli’s king. The prince, princess, and queen worked below, placing strategic supplies like bricks in a dam. Only the king stood on the wall, a lone pine in winter wind.

King and walls were one.

Ankenro Veneli, just past forty, strong as a drawn bow. He wasn’t a great fighter, but three years ago, at the frontier plains, three floating sin‑beasts drove an unprecedented monster tide against the western expansion grounds. Ankenro led the army himself. With tactics fit for a history scroll, he split and crushed the horde, proving he was a master of war, a fox among thunder.

Now he wore a bearskin cloak like a mountain’s shadow. His steel sword rested on the stones, its edge breathing magic light like cold dawn. He watched the Demon King drift closer, thorn crown and mithril plate gleaming. Those spells barely kept him from dying just by gazing at Slaughter. Even so, his eyes felt pain like being gouged by ice.

Ankenro didn’t move. He stared, a lighthouse facing a black tide.

He was Veneli’s king. His standing there was a flag against the Demon King, a banner in storm.

A pity—

He didn’t understand. The Son of the Demon King, not yet ascended, does have a range. But whether ten meters or ten kilometers, the difference in impact isn’t much—like thunder heard near or far.

Though, in theory, both sides could shake hands at that price, reality is full of potholes. The biggest is that I can’t promise. Or rather, if I break the deal, no one can come collect, like trying to shackle the wind.

Because you’re… too strong?

We walked past the Veneli king. In the distance, a girl in a crimson gown came with gun and sword, like a comet with twin tails, and called to Anna.

Vega stopped tending my pleats. She stood respectfully at my side, then asked at the right beat, soft as rain.

See, if I want, I can cut off Veneli’s king’s head right now, even with everyone on full alert, like a hawk diving past spears. Trade needs mutual recognition and basic rules. I’m precisely the one who can ignore rules. It’s not taste or reputation—this power alone makes partners wary.

That’s not just a dominant stance. It’s close to me publicly having the right to breach, like a wolf walking calmly through a fence. I intend to cooperate, but humans fear. Fear is a frost that bites the roots.

I traced a finger at Ankenro’s neck like a passing breeze. He seemed to feel something. His statue‑still posture shifted as he gently shook his head, like a boulder shrugging moss.

But there was nothing he could sense. His intuition was a mirage over heat.

Right now, Vega and I have raised our rank to the highest tier that still keeps a human shape, like masks that hold form. Even the timeline shows cracks and tears in my eyes—well, in mine alone; Vega can’t see them. Mortals observe the world as “physics.” Beyond that, only theory can prove, like constellations guessed through cloud.

If I wish, I can nudge past and future a bit, even while I exist in “now,” like touching ripples ahead and behind.

Being this strong doesn’t help my current problem at all, though. Power is a sky. My issue is mud.

Being too strong makes positions unequal and threatens trade itself, like a lion at a market stall. I’m the villain; I need enough menace. But fear kills the will to trade, and that emotion—let’s avoid it.

Stini, robed in red like a flaming leaf, had already engaged white‑skirted Anna. Gusts heavy with the concept of Slaughter blew over, turning the hard stone face of the wall into pale ash, like snow that refuses warmth.

So, on the Mephi Consortium side, host more gatherings. Shift our other businesses too. Move from “intel hubs” to “platforms that mingle with humanity,” like tea houses crossing bridges. When I go to Colonna to propose to Gloria, I’ll lay down every hidden card at once, like flipping a table map, and show how big the blast would be if I chose to light the bomb.

That’s coercive diplomacy, isn’t it? No, it’s already intimidation diplomacy. It seems, my gentle master, you won’t lower your stature to fit humanity. Instead, you’ll tell them, “I can breach, but don’t intend to,” and trade from on high, like a mountain speaking to a valley.

Vega smiled like warm wine. She nodded, then stepped back into Shadow, a petal sinking into dusk.

Even my “gentle” master acts cruelly. That cruelty is bone‑deep, ink in marrow. Then I’ll follow your will…

…and present to you the Utopia you dream of.

Understanding. Agreement. Resonance. Thinking with the other’s will and resolve. Respect for their spirit and soul. To send Anna off, I adjusted myself toward that weather—like a sail trimmed for a particular wind.

But this kind of “gentleness” doesn’t mean cozy small talk. It means reason and clarity—

—and the cruelty that comes with reason, a blade under silk.

That’s the “gentleness” Anna wants. She’s not a girl for flowery romance and sweet nothings under moonlight. She needs true kindred purpose, recognition of her own ideals, like two stars sharing a course.

I did speak to Vega about a Utopia. But an iron‑blood Utopia built by Demonfolk… eh. It’s all a gift for Ferrel anyway, like a crown boxed in secret.

I shook my head, then dropped from the wall like a gliding shallow shadow. No sound. No one noticed.

Stini returned from the Hero’s Trial changed, like iron tempered in a river. Not just her severed arm regrown. Her soul felt raised, a summit just reached.

Beyond the gun‑and‑blade pairing I’d seen before, she sometimes called a two‑handed greatsword, a moon hewn into iron. If I hadn’t had the Wolf Herder deliver that dress, and if it hadn’t turned red—proof she slew a Divine Being—I’d struggle to believe this sharp fighter trading blows with Anna was the girl I knew.

Anna’s Giant Scythe traced wild, changing arcs, like swallows looping storm. Even without using divine or demonic authorities, she could duel a legendary Hero blade‑to‑blade. Stini, meanwhile, had grasped the rules of fighting gods and demons—only will and soul matter, like a furnace where flesh turns to smoke. She even saved the magic she’d have spent on body buffs.

In an epic, this would be the final chapter. The Hero arrives before the Demon King razes the city, like rain before fire, and fights with all she has. Win or lose, curtain call.

…But now, the sky’s set differently.

If Stini sends Anna home, I’ll save a lot of paperwork, like burning a bridge to skip tolls. But Anna will likely bear me a grudge. Our earlier deal and cooperation will get messy.

I sighed. I donned the mask that signified the World Saving Demon King, a calm moon over a dark lake. Then I drew close to the battling Demon King and Hero. My true body stepped into the world, like a storm finally showing its eye.