The Demon Lord's Sword

— Today's 〈Sword Emperor〉, achievement: dispatched a great serpent. Pity, that — for you who are already fairly monster-shaped, this thing was even more of a monster. Rampaging where it pleased was your bad luck…

"You — just now — thought something extremely rude, didn't you."

"No, not in the slightest."

〈Sword Emperor〉 Elma, brushing back the fall of damp black hair with one hand, lipped at Merea.

Looking again — possibly from carrying the great serpent the whole way back, her white skin had a faint sweat-sheen on it; combined with her sharp beauty as standard, it was throwing off an unsayable kind of charge.

The Lemusans walking around them, on top of seeing the great serpent slung casually over her shoulder, were caught looking — twice over.

Watching that Elma, Merea, with theatrical flourish, whistled, and continued the line.

"So — what is that?"

"Right — there was a request, so I went and finished it. This 〈Red-Phosphor Great Serpent (Carlnecca)〉, apparently, slipped into the area near Lemusan territory, and was eating up livestock — became a problem."

"Doing brisk trade, Elma's monster-cull stand."

"Monster-culling is not, strictly, my speciality — and, plainly, not what I particularly want to be doing… Mind, this round was the request as it stood, so a part of it can't be helped. By the time it's reached people, it's late."

Elma, troubled, scratched her cheek.

"At any rate — rough work, that I am good at. The money-fiend, in record time, planted a Sherwood Firm branch right next to Star-Tree Castle, and that's where this kind of work is being routed in from. Lemuse's soldiers, of course, are fielding requests of this kind too — but it's a bustling time on both sides, and overflow comes out. That the money-fiends had their eye on. Closing requests becomes a hand for the funds team and ties back into Lemusan public-order maintenance —"

"Right, that part itself I think is good."

Merea, with a light nod, immediately added —

"But — recently I've been thinking, again —"

After getting the line out, Merea suddenly looked down and started shaking faintly.

Then, all at once, his head came back up, and he let a half-protest of a line out —

"— Are you all not too capable!? — Am I needed?! — Eh? I'm starting to feel like I'm not."

Eyes faintly damp, expressing the unsayable forlornness with unfair precision.

"There's a frightening number of dexterous ones gathered here!!"

Merea had noticed that his comrades were adapting to Lemusan life at a horrifying speed; he, the one struggling, was beginning to feel like a figurine on a shelf by contrast.

A small note of frustration about that — had recently, on occasion, started making itself felt.

---

Once a battle ends, the activity of the 〈Demon Lord Alliance (Mea-Nesaia)〉 turns out, more than expected, to be plain work.

Plain — but the most important kind.

That is — the various preparatory groundwork needed in order to act.

For that, at present, the Demon Lord Alliance was split into three squads.

One — the funds-procurement squad.

With Shaw at its centre, members ran around procuring funds by every method going — peddling, trade, all of it. The squad, in effect, that handled the Demon Lord Alliance's wallet.

Lately, with Lemusan life enough on the rails that they could move outward, they had even started running ore- and herb-gathering trips outside.

Of course, what they collected became, fundamentally, saleable.

— Tough, and fast.

So long as Shaw was leading, errors of any meaningful size simply would not arise — Merea seriously believed that.

The money-fiend's pleasant smile rose up in his head.

Two — the information-gathering squad.

In point of fact, this might be the busiest squad at the moment.

The volume of work was high.

And, in a sense, this squad was the core of the Demon Lord Alliance's activity.

Merea's If there are other Demon Lords out there, and they are seeking saving, I will reach my hand toward that line — that bold, large-grain principle that the rest of the Demon Lords had all signed on to — for the sake of that, gathering information from each region was this squad's main role.

In addition, there was 〈Seven Imperial Weapons〉, surfaced at the close of the recent engagement.

Information on that was being gathered in parallel.

For the Imperial Weapons specifically, Elma was attached to this squad as well — but Elma's primary attachment was to the third squad below; her involvement here was, accordingly, moderate.

Elma herself was not a great fit for that kind of fine-grained desk-work either.

"With you here, files go missing and overall efficiency drops, you know…" — squad-member testimony.

Lilium, who had enrolled at Aios's academy and carried both clear scholarly track-record and curiosity, was attached to the information squad too.

For the moment, she more or less was this squad's head.

And finally — the external-combat squad.

What might be called the practical-action corps. — Practical, and combat, both.

"I'm nominally part of the practical squad too — and, so far, I've not actually done anything practical…"

"In your case, member of a squad is less weighted than head of the entire thing. Given that balance, can't really be helped, no? — On top of that there's Marisa's bespoke curriculum. — Mind, master being trained by maid is its own picture too, of course."

"Visually, that is a picture. — Sounds pathetic out of my own mouth!"

Merea covered his face with both hands and let a sob-tone out.

"Settle down, idiot."

Watching Merea's flailing, Elma stepped in close and rapped him on the head.

"Gh… Mind, me having no role to play there simply means how good everyone else is — and that, on its own, I'm fine with.

But — the real-combat side of things, I should be properly part of, I think. When it stops being practice and becomes — combat, especially."

External combat.

Naturally — if avoidable, far better avoided.

But —

— This will, still — be required.

Save the Demon Lords, first.

After that — change what Demon Lord means.

In the prior step — they had, already, traded blows once.

What Merea was reaching for was idealistic, but his thinking was not, indiscriminately, dumped into fluffy ideals.

Merea knew both ideals and reality.

In any event — to change what the word Demon Lord meant would, in all likelihood, demand a savage volume of effort.

Time too.

What concrete shift would actually pull the meaning of Demon Lord into a better shape — was, still, undetermined.

— Save the world? Help the grieving citizenry? Suppress, say, a calamity?

Setting aside the abstract phrase save the world, even the second phrase is not, by itself, indisputably good.

For — saving some particular citizenry can mean being condemned by another citizenry.

That somebody's justice runs head-on into another somebody's justice — in such an age of warring claimants, was frequent.

By contrast, suppressing a calamity still admits hope. — If the calamity is truly natural, that is.

— Once one starts pulling the thread, no end.

Knowing that this would be the shape, Merea had, even so, decided to walk that road.

A great many people, probably, will laugh at this road.

Walking it through is impossible, they'll say.

He knew.

— Which is exactly why I have to keep thinking, always.

In time — moments will come when one has, in fact, to move.

The one to make the call, at that moment, will be him.

Calls of frightening weight — there may be those too.

Even so —

— Better than stopping the thinking and being carried along by the age, walk a road decided on your own.

For Merea too — that is frightening.

But the comrades following at his back propped his back up.

And, after such a call is made, the ones who actually move as the hands and feet of that call — are the practical-action corps — the external-combat squad —

— 〈Sword of the Demon Lord (Mea-Ne Emelie)〉.

Merea, in his chest, said the name.

---

The three squads, as they currently stood, already had by-names attached to them.

A Demon Lord with a love of naming things had set the three names, working from a single motif.

Funds-procurement squad — 〈Wallet of the Demon Lord (Mea-Ne Listale)〉.

Information-gathering squad — 〈Knowledge of the Demon Lord (Mea-Ne Razlas)〉.

External-combat squad — 〈Sword of the Demon Lord (Mea-Ne Emelie)〉.

In ordinary use, abbreviations: 〈Wallet (Listale)〉, 〈Knowledge (Razlas)〉, 〈Sword (Emelie)〉.

"At any rate — for the foreseeable future, I'll move as part of 〈Sword (Emelie)〉. Hands are short, too. Truthfully, I'd rather be at the front line at all times."

"Right. — But — for the can't be helped permission-pass currently going around, there will be plenty of people who, on the inside, are seriously worried. You are, without a doubt, the strongest man in this Demon Lord set; that, however, is not the same as always safe. — Don't forget you are the head, on top of the rest."

"— Yes."

Merea returned an honest nod to Elma's serious point.

Seeing the nod, Elma let a small breath through her nose, set that topic down for now, and pulled a different angle out instead.

"That said — the outermost-visible squad, the one most subject to all kinds of evaluation, is us, 〈Sword of the Demon Lord (Mea-Ne Emelie)〉. From that angle — you, who are also the symbol of this whole group, taking the front and acting on it, may, in fact, be a necessary first step. The rest of us also have to mind how we move."

The Demon Lords currently attached to 〈Sword (Emelie)〉 — Merea included — were, by combat skill and other practical-action measures, the able ones; for now, with only a little over a week since the move to Lemuse, every one of them was, accordingly, in a stretch of solid training.

But, as 〈Wallet (Listale)〉 and 〈Knowledge (Razlas)〉 brought information in over time, that was going to flip into busy movement.

Holding what was nearly conviction, Elma turned her thoughts again to the Sword (Emelie) position.

To the Elma about to drift into thought, a slightly more relaxed-toned line came in —

"Mind — the combat by-name is, even now, a slightly noisy label; in time, swapping it for something gentler — would be nice."

Merea, hands clasped behind his head, said it.

But, in the breath after the line, a sharp light came back into his red eyes.

In the same beat, Merea kept the line going.

"For now, though — we have to protect. That part, I have made my peace with. Not that I have no hope — only, I have seen too many people who failed that way."

"…Right."

To the line, Elma nodded, weighted.

Sword.

Which is, at the same time — a shield. A tool for protecting.

That two tools' names ran, in coexistence, through the same word — Elma also understood.

---

For some time after that, the two walked the Lemusan streets without speaking.

Walking under Lemusan curiosity-and-strangeness eyes for a stretch — Elma, at last, raised the line.

"At any rate — you, no need for that much hurry. Sit, grand and unmoved, in our centre. It's fine to leave the small business to the rest of us."

"Nah — I want to try things on my end too. — But — I don't have the adaptability the rest of you do!!"

"You are, fundamentally, an ancient who descended from a back-of-beyond mountain into the city for the first time…"

"That's a mixed picture you're painting…"

"Raised by Heroic Spirits, so your value-set is half ancient in places; never having come off Lindholm Sacred Mountain since birth, by that single point already a fossil —"

"…"

At that line from Elma, Merea sat down on his heels in the white-stone alley and started tracing the art-craft cut into the stones with his fingertip. — Visibly sulking.

"…Fossil…"

"O-oi…"

"No — strictly speaking, you're not wrong, but…"

It was not, by any means, all bad.

Everything he saw came up shining.

Seeing new things, hearing them, touching them — were all comfortable stimuli.

But, recognising the absence of standard common sense — a measure of unease did come with it.

In the end, the studies Marisa was running him through were, to a real extent, addressing that unavoidable common-sense gap; the labour-cost was the higher because of it.

"Merea — formula-work, combat technique, those two pointed directions — that's where the knowledge and experience are stacked. The ordinary knowledge missing as a consequence is, on reflection, unavoidable — that's how far past the line you've gone the other way. Lost formula-theory knowledge, technique, things that don't survive in any record across any of the world's libraries — at the point you have those memorised in head and body, you should be proud. — Place permitting, you yourself are like a piece of treasure."

Elma, conscious that the angle was slightly drifting, praised Merea to the moon and back.

She had, lately, got some practice at a method of cheering Merea up when he sulked at being unable to do normal-people things.

"Really…?"

"Yeah — really."

Merea was, surprisingly, easy.

"In which case — for now, I'll head back to the castle."

"Conversation just got severed in a really off-hand way — but, fine."

Merea, on his end, was quick to recover too.

"So — what about you?"

To Merea, who'd risen smoothly to his feet, Elma asked, jerking her chin toward Star-Tree Castle.

"Going to walk a little more before going back. Going back now, I get jailed by Marisa."

Watching Merea say it, body shaking, not as a joke, Elma let a wry smile up.

"I sympathise…"

"Yeah…"

After that, the two lightly hand-tapped and parted.

Merea walked the Lemusan streets again, blending in with the crowd as he went.