Dungeon Defense (WN)

* * *

On my way back from the ball.

“Kuhuhu.”

I had been chuckling to myself ever since I boarded the carriage. Lapis stared at me from the carriage seat opposite of mine. Was her dress uncomfortable? Lapis kept fumbling with the edge of her dress around her cleavage area.

“What is so funny?”

“Well, the face that guy made when I turned the Memoria on. He was acting like a proper gentleman up to that point, but his expression crumbled apart in a matter of seconds.”

“…….”

Lapis looked at me in silent disgust. I disregarded her as I concentrated on counting my fingers.

Let’s see. Barbatos had blabbed to about 15 other female Demon Lords about our ‘acts’. I’ve met 17 archdukes of hell so far, and among them, I showed the recording on the Memoria artifact to 7 of them, so…….

I chuckled. The sound of my laughter sounded sinister to even my ears. Oh well. Demon Lords are supposed to be wicked. In that regard, you probably can’t find a Demon Lord as sincere and reliable as me. The symbol of sincerity and trustworthiness, Dantalian. Being praised by everyone would probably not be enough to show how great I am.

“Getting an equal amount of payback. No matter how you look at it, I am very conscientious.”

“……Excuse me?”

Lapis was perplexed.

“That was rude of me. I almost thought that I heard the word conscientious……but from my knowledge, there is no one in the world who is further away from the word conscientious than Your Highness. I must have misheard.”

“No, you heard right. Think about it! I could easily get more payback than what was done to me, but I am not doing too little or too much as I get an equal amount of payback.”

I was such an inspirational figure that I thought I was going to fall for myself because of my own evenhandedness.

“A righteous executor, a wise judge, and an honest partner. These are the bare minimum titles necessary to describe my character. Although they are actually still lacking, so people would have to invent a new title entirely.”

A wave of sadness hit me while I was feeling awed. I was like a person who had witnessed something unimaginably beautiful, but was lamenting due to the limitation of words as a word to describe that beauty did not exist.

I nodded with mixed feelings on my face. 

“But that is life. You cannot express yourself even if you want to. No matter how many times you try, you cannot express yourself completely. This frustration of endless defiance and platitudes……. I have become the embodiment of a greatness that cannot be described by people. What a tragedy.”

“…….”

Lapis stared at me silently. How should I put it? Her face looked like a cocktail of confusion and annoyance. She flapped the collar of her dress as if she felt incredibly stifled.

I put my hand on the window of the carriage before asking her.

“Is it stuffy in here for you? Should I open the window?”

“If you are going to jump out of that window, then please, Sir Dantalian. Please do.”

“No. I don’t really want to do that.”

Lapis let out a sigh. She muttered something to herself. I couldn’t hear her properly, but it was something along the lines of not being this bad in the past and not knowing when someone had become so brazen. In other words, it didn’t make sense to me at all. 

I should stop joking around now.

I took out a piece of paper from my sleeve. I wrote down ‘Kakola Archduke, 2,000,000, 6 months’ on it in Korean. The names of the other archdukes who had promised to send their support were also listed on the piece of paper.

“We have now been promised 10 million gold.”

“……So we have reached our initial goal.”

Lapis’ face instantly became serious the instant money was mentioned. Lapis didn’t let herself get swept up by the mood. She was clear-cut when she had to be. 

“Do you intend to ask the archdukes for their aid from now on?”

“Our plan has been working rather well, after all.”

I had been using only lies to threaten the archdukes. The high-ranking Demon Lords had formed a secret alliance, they agreed to take care of the demon world first before conquering the human world, and Barbatos objected to this……these were all lies.

There was no way that something like an alliance could have formed. I made it seem like the Crescent Alliance was in a state where the impossible would become possible. Why did the legions gather in a single spot? Why did the Plains Faction overlook the Mountain Faction’s transgressions? Why……?

The current situation was outside the archdukes’ expectations. The more sensitive you are towards information, the more desperate you would be to try and figure out the truth. I tossed them a plausible answer while they were in this desperate state. I told them that this was a skirmish to get rid of the archdukes.

“I am glad that the archdukes are competent.”

“You are glad? Would it not be a problem if the opposing party is competent?”

“Well, normally it would be; however, that is not the case in this situation. It is because of the archdukes’ competency that they tripped over their own feet.”

They know how things are proceeding, but they do not know the ‘why’. In cases like this, competent people tend to analyze these situations from a pessimistic perspective instead of an optimistic one. They think skeptically.

This was similar to a match of go. Let’s say that two professionals were to face off and one side does a completely unexpected move. What would the other professional think? There must be some hidden meaning behind this move. I can’t lower my guard. I might pay dearly if I am careless. Let’s be careful.

“If the archdukes were incompetent, then they would have brazenly challenged us in return. My scheme would have been entirely pointless. It is fortunate that the archdukes were competent.”

“One’s competence can occasionally bite you back.”

Lapis muttered to herself absentmindedly. She had worked all her life to become competent. Something I said must have resonated with her.

Being competent is not enough. You have to also trust yourself. 

The world revolves around you. I will make this happen. You need to have this kind of confidence. The high-ranking Demon Lords formed an alliance and are going to invade? Nonsense! You have to occasionally have the strength to exclaim this.

I chuckled lightly to myself.

‘Although I can never become that kind of person.’

Unfortunately, I was closer to being like the archdukes. I doubted everything. I was able to predict how the archdukes would act because I was similar to them. This was as far as my schemes went.

The title of hero fitted people like Imperial Princess Elizabeth. She was both competent and broad-minded. She was quite literally a shining talent. 

I’m jealous, but I won’t lose. There are other things that those who doubt everything can do. Even the lowliest of slaves can stab a dagger into an emperor’s heart.

“Sir Dantalian, there is something that I wish to ask.”

“Ask me anything. I will tell you anything except for the color of my underwear.”

“……I already know that Sir Dantalian never wears any underwear.”

What?

“H-How did you know that?”

“Who do you think has been preparing your clothes up to this point? The clothes you have on right now; in other words, your mantle, your pants, and your vest, those were all prepared by me. Underwear was the one and only thing that you did not ask for.”

Lapis glanced at me with genuinely scornful eyes.

“Naturally, I am aware that Demon Lords innately have a low metabolism. There are many days where you do not shed a single drop of sweat. Nonetheless, not ordering even a single article of underwear is…….”

“I am sorry. Please ask me the question.”

I lowered my head. I should’ve just taken the question instead of trying to throw out a joke. I only ended up taking a huge hit instead. The refutation that I didn’t allow the Kakola Archduke to even make was done by Lapis almost as naturally as she breathed. Is she not terrifying?

“You have currently met 17 archdukes.”

“Mhm.”

“However, you only asked for aid from 6 of them. I do not understand this. Would it not have been better to receive aid from all 17 archdukes?”

“No.”

I gave an immediate response.

“Lapis, you are saying that it would be better to have received a million or two million gold from all 17 archdukes respectively, correct?”

“Yes. You are only receiving aid from 6 of them, and yet you have already been promised ten million gold. Who knows how much more you would have gotten if you asked for aid from all 17 of those archdukes…….”

“Haha.”

I inadvertently let out a laugh.

“It was for the sake of raising awareness.”

“Awareness……?”

“That is right. The archdukes are not idiots. They are sending between a million and two million gold. There is no way that they would not do any sort of research when they have to send such a large sum of money.”

The archdukes will utilize their information networks for the sake of confirming whether what I told them was true or not. They will first try to reach out to the other archdukes around them.

They will then realize that there were those who had promised to send Dantalian money―and there were those who weren’t even told to offer any money.

“Do you understand what this means?”

“I apologize.”

Oh dear, it seems Lapis isn’t very knowledgeable when it comes to this. She is extremely talented when it comes to financial matters, but she’s weak when it comes to genuine games of authority. Should I give her a hint?

“Think about what the archdukes would think their support would mean here. Those guys will definitely start to believe that the people who have invested a large sum of money will have their ‘safety’ guaranteed.”

“……!”

Lapis’ eyes widened. It seems she figured it out.

“To make them think that you had cherry-picked them……?”

I nodded.

“The high-ranking Demon Lords did not ask for the loyalty of every archduke. They requested for the fidelity of only a small minority of archdukes. If this is the case, what will happen to the archdukes that weren’t asked to offer their support? Why did they only receive money from certain archdukes and not even mention it at all to the other archdukes……?”

A smile danced on my lips.

“Can you imagine what the archdukes who had promised to send money will think?”

“You are setting an example……is it?”

Lapis barely managed to utter those words. Bingo.

“The Demon Lords have not fully relinquished the idea of conquering the demon world. They simply separated the loyal subjects from the disloyal ones. Dantalian was not a tax collector who was dispatched to gather money. He was actually an envoy whose goal was to select which archdukes to spare and which archdukes to kill……. This is what the archdukes will think.”

They will then shudder in terror. 

They will realize that they had unwittingly managed to escape from being purged.

“The backs of their necks will probably go cold once they realize this.”

I chuckled. It was impossible to hold back a laugh after picturing their reactions.

“That is why I put in a bit of effort. I deliberately excluded the archdukes who were openly hostile towards Demon Lords. I simply threatened them a bit and ended the conversation after some small talk. I only received money from those who were docile towards Demon Lords.”

“Was this perhaps why you hired spies to gather information throughout the demon world for the past month?”

“It was for the sake of looking into the usual behavior of those archdukes.”

As a result, I found out that only 9 archdukes were relatively respectful to Demon Lords. The rest of them were all uncooperative. No, to be more exact, they were uncooperative with the Crescent Alliance.

Some of them were even offering their financial aid to low-ranking Demon Lords. There was a reason why the Demon Lords of the Mountain Faction seemed high-spirited. They were so brazen that it almost made me speechless.

“Well, that was not my only goal. The other archdukes will soon―.”

It was at that moment. The sound of a large explosion boomed in front of our carriage. The tremor shook the carriage before it immediately lost its balance and tipped over. Lapis quickly got up and covered me.

“Sir Dantalian, please lower your head.”

I didn’t have the opportunity to even say something in response. Lapis held my head as close to her chest as possible before deliberately getting on the floor of the carriage. Shortly after, another explosion rang out. It happened right next to our carriage this time.

I instinctively knew what was happening while I was being held by Lapis.

‘It’s a terrorist attack!’

***

TL Note: Thanks for reading the chapter. Uh, I’ve been releasing pretty fast and regularly lately, so I don’t have much to say. I guess I’m sort of looking for something to do in my free time. I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve started to play League of Legends again. This is terrible. Maybe I’ll resub to FFXIV. I don’t know. This just feels like a series of short, random thoughts. 

I’ll stop here before I go insane. I’ll see you guys in the next chapter!

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