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“I-I’m so sorry, masteeeer!”
I had moved to my executive office after leaving Els’s room, and was sitting listening to Nazuna give a tearful account of her battle with Goh. After relating the episode to me, she apologized profusely, and I smiled at her to give her peace of mind.
“It’s a shame you didn’t capture the leader of the Demonkin Nation Masters, but what happened wasn’t your fault at all,” I said. “We didn’t know enough about where Goh was heading to set up a simple teleportation barrier ahead of time, and we certainly didn’t expect a bunch of rival Masters to show up to rescue him.”
I grew more contemplative. “And not only that, one of them was the black-haired Master that Oboro was obsessed with. According to Miki, that Master is named Hei and he’s one of the top fighters allied with the Dragonute Empire. None of us could’ve expected him, of all people, to show up to help Goh, so you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. Believe me, I’m not mad at you in the slightest.”
“Th-Thank you, master,” Nazuna sniffed. “Next time, I’ll really try my darndest to do good on my mission!”
Her expression made for a strange sight, as a look of determination fought for supremacy on a teary, snot-filled face. An awkward smirk crept across my mouth, and I glanced over at Mei, who was standing off to one side in my office. She understood what this cue signified, and walked over to Nazuna with a handkerchief to wipe her face.
Still, this is really bizarre, I thought to myself while waiting for Nazuna to regain her composure. The Demonkin Nation Masters are supposed to be at war with the Dragonute Empire Masters, going from what Miki told us. Yet several Masters from the Dragonute Empire side had gone out of their way just to rescue Goh? And even if you overlook that bit, why were they anywhere near Goh’s location in the first place? Did they just happen to cross paths? But that wouldn’t explain why they’d rescue Goh. Unless Miki’s hiding something from us?
Although we were keeping Miki prisoner in the Abyss at present, she regularly gave us info in exchange for a few quid pro quos, although these were more “gentlemen’s agreements” than anything put down in writing, and we certainly hadn’t entered into a magical pact either. In other words, there was nothing to stop Miki from only being partially forthcoming with her answers, and she could, for example, be concealing the fact that the two factions of Masters only appeared adversarial on the surface, and were secretly on friendly terms.
Nah, I’m being overly suspicious now, I decided. If Miki had lied to us, all of the intel we had lifted from Gira and Doc would have blown her cover. No, for all of her many, many faults, Miki wasn’t the kind of idiot who’d tell us a pack of lies and hope we wouldn’t catch and interrogate any other Masters. She knew as well as I did that the only reason she was still alive to see another day was due to the value of her intelligence. If she were to deliberately compromise that value in any way, she would just be signing her own death warrant.
Actually, that’d be the least of Miki’s worries, I reflected. If nothing else, she wouldn’t dare to risk throwing away her chance at more quid pro quos from Suzu. As someone who has witnessed her insane obsession with Suzu up close and personal, that would definitely be the real clincher.
Miki was the one who had chosen to defect to our side after falling in love with Suzu, although I’d be the first to admit that she didn’t really have any other options since we had her cornered. But even so, she had willingly become our captive due to her sheer infatuation with Suzu, and I really didn’t see her risking losing her chance to be in the same general vicinity. It was significantly more plausible that Goh had connections to the Dragonute Nation Masters for reasons unknown, even to Miki.
If that’s true, it wouldn’t make sense to lash out at Miki, I thought. Still, I’ll need to have a serious talk with her about this.
Once I finished this train of thought, I dismissed Nazuna, and as soon as she had left, I moved on to my next topic: Doc. I spoke about him with the same murderous edge in my voice I had when talking about my sworn enemies from the Concord of the Tribes.
“If we’re done getting all the information we can get from him, then make him suffer forever,” I declared. “He must endure a fate worse than death for what he did to my brother, and for all of the victims he’s tortured to death. Otherwise, I won’t be able to sleep at night. I don’t care what gacha card you use to make him suffer endlessly; just make sure that both his body and mind are taken beyond the limits of pain and torment. All of that must happen, or my name’s not Light.”
“As you command, Master Light,” Mei replied. “I swear on my honor as a maid that I and every other member of the Abyss will direct the entirety of our beings toward making sure that he suffers a living hell with no end to his pain and misery in sight.”
Mei was just as furious as I was, meaning Doc wasn’t going to escape the same treatment we were giving to those formerly of the Concord of the Tribes. With all of the other bad guys who hadn’t been my ex-partymates, we had tended to show mercy by executing them right after extracting the info we needed from them. Or well, that was at least for those we didn’t decide to torture first. Doc was the unforgivable exception to this rule, but my homicidal malice wasn’t going to end there, for my anger was overflowing like magma at present.
“Summon Ellie,” I said. “The leaders of the Demonkin Nation are just as guilty as Doc, since they aided him in hurting my brother, and trampled all over the dignity of innocent humans. Have her take her dragons to the Demonkin Nation castle and reduce it to ashes.”
My tone softened a little. “We also need to go back to Doc’s lab and make sure all of the bodies still there get given a proper send-off to the Goddess.”
There were still a bunch of dead bodies piled up in Doc’s old lab, as well as people who were still alive and were being used as human guinea pigs, or worse still, who had been turned into monsters. My plan was to cremate all of the souls we couldn’t save, and relocate all the ones we could to Tower City. Mei used an SR Telepathy card to summon Ellie to my office while I sat waiting behind my desk, stewing in my anger.
I need to wipe out the demonkin leaders for all the support they’ve given to Doc over the years, even when they knew he was using humans like my brother as test subjects, I decided. We pulled our punches with the elf queen and only threatened her with the dragons. This time, we’ll turn their seat of power into a pile of ash!
What I really wanted to do was transform the Demonkin Nation’s capital to fiery rubble, since all of the citizens there had lived comfortable lives without caring one bit about the humans who were suffering in their midst. But I couldn’t really go that far because there were a whole bunch of human slaves in the capital, and besides, it wouldn’t really be ethical to take my anger out on innocent demonkin civilians. I had to restrain myself in that regard, but I was free to target the people living in the Demonkin Nation castle—namely Prince Voros, the de facto leader of the nation. He had provided Doc with support despite knowing all of the horrible things he was doing to humans in particular.
I will not rest until Voros is given the same punishment as Doc, I vowed. The last thing I’ll do is let him get off lightly with a quick and painless death! No, I need to capture him and have the dragons burn his palace to the ground as a lesson to the rest of the demons. Then, we’ll proclaim Absolute Autonomy for Humans in the nation and free all of the slaves unconditionally. And if anyone tries to resist...
I continued to stew in my anger as I mulled over all of the orders I was going to give to Ellie, and I kept up this train of thought until the witch walked in through my office door.