─Among the ones who use their heads, you seem the kindest.
There was a time when Elodie said that to Dierre.
With a nuance as if she was relieved because he was kind.
For some reason, that remark stayed in Dierre’s head for a long time.
Come to think of it, that was true.
Most people saw Dierre as a “kind person.” Dierre himself thought of himself as a very cunning person.
“That’s because you’re a kind person.”
Before, in the past, Frondier was branded as a demon.
When he asked him about this, Frondier answered simply.
As expected. Once again, Dierre’s expression became subtle.
Kind person. That word did not sound good to Dierre.
“Do you dislike being thought of that way?”
“It feels like everyone looks down on me. Well, it’s true that I’m easy, though.”
Sigh, Dierre let out a deep breath.
The dictionary meaning of “kind” has nothing bad in it, but the image people have of kindness is far from the dictionary meaning.
Most of it tends to be associated with weakness, timidity, and an indecisive attitude. There are not a few who think it’s something that wraps such things up.
Dierre asked Frondier.
“Have you ever been told you’re kind, Senior?”
“......No.”
Frondier’s lips thinned. If anything, he seemed to have heard more of the opposite.
“Why is that. You’re a war hero, and you saved many people. It feels like you fit the word ‘kind’ the most.”
“......Who knows?”
For the moment, Frondier evaded. In fact, he knew very well why he didn’t hear such talk.
“Then have you been told you’re righteous? Or good-natured? Or that you have a strong sense of chivalry.”
“......I haven’t heard that.”
Come to think of it, it seemed he had almost no memory of being praised for his personality.
No, it felt like he hadn’t been praised for much of anything.
“Why is that. I think they’re all words that fit.”
“......There will be people who think they don’t suit me at all, you know?”
For some reason, Frondier was avoiding Dierre’s gaze.
Huh, he was trying to listen to his student’s concerns, and now he was starting to have concerns of his own.
“I wish I had the same image as you, Senior.”
“......You want to have the image of a lunatic, a freak, a son of a bitch, and so on?”
“Is that your image, Senior?”
Dierre asked back in surprise. Dierre had barely heard what others said directly to Frondier. So he thought everyone considered Frondier a war hero.
“When I hear the word kind, I feel the gaze that looks down on me hiding behind it. Because of that, the things I get tangled up in are quite, should I say, bothersome, or should I say, tiring.”
Of course, Dierre was originally smart, but through Frondier’s teaching he was showing excellent results in both the literary and martial sides at Constel. Even so, there were still many who took him lightly.
Dierre was well-mannered, kind to everyone, and he would generally accept others’ requests if he could.
In that sense as well, Dierre was actually “kind.” Because of that, excessive requests piled up on him, and teachers also had a tendency to look for him first whenever something happened.
“At least if I had the same image as you, I don’t think I’d have those annoyances. Besides, what I believe is my forte isn’t ‘kindness’ but ‘psychological warfare.’”
“Does kindness get in the way when you do psychological warfare?”
“It doesn’t suit it.”
It didn’t suit. Well, that was true.
In fact, Frondier himself knew that ever since he began to deceive the enemy and use cunning stratagems, he had said a permanent farewell to “kindness.”
Having become that way, Frondier instead felt a curious feeling and looked at Dierre.
Dierre was actually skilled at psychological warfare and mental battles. In the skill test, it was Frondier who fell for that stratagem and passed him.
And Dierre must have kept to that method for a long time. Not only when facing Frondier, but also when dealing with many others.
Even so, was Dierre’s surrounding reputation still overwhelmingly “kindness”?
Frondier looked quietly at Dierre and spoke.
“But you, you can’t become a bad person anyway.”
“......That’s the problem.”
Thunk. Dierre dropped his head.
Dierre Aiger’s traits.
Aside from his eyes, his physical abilities were extremely close to ordinary, and his mastery of aura and the rise of his skill curve were as ordinary as could be.
However, his mentality did not lose at all even to Aster, and his excellent ability at psychological warfare, built upon calculation, seemed like it could give him the advantage even in rock-paper-scissors.
And even within the game that Frondier himself and countless users repeated endlessly, he had never once been twisted into a villain—a complete good character.
'Dierre being kind isn’t a mere image. It’s a temperament that will never change.'
Even if he wanted to shake off the image of being kind, becoming bad was impossible, and he himself was clearly aware of that degree of goodness.
But the foundation of that skill was a psychology and calculation that deceived others and induced their thoughts.
Those two contradictory elements were quite interesting in Frondier’s eyes.
“Maybe that,”
After thinking, Frondier said,
“seems like something you could make use of.”
***
Marco did not answer and just looked at Dierre.
He examined Dierre’s expression. A face that asked as if he truly found it strange.
‘......What is this brat?’
Baal wants war?
He said that to a greenhorn like this?
On an ordinary day he might have dismissed it as mere nonsense, but just now Dierre also said this.
‘A war with the gods.’
Words that are absolutely impossible to say if you don’t know the situation on the Agoris continent.
Dierre obtained information about Agoris.
If that really was because of Baal, then.
‘......Baal, did he really attach himself to Frondier?’
Marco remembered.
When Baal lost in Pandemonium, and when Frondier took him out again,
that Baal protected Frondier from Marco’s blade.
Considering the situation at the time, he thought it was something unavoidable.
Demons acknowledge existences that possess strength greater than themselves. It’s close to an instinctive attraction.
However, after returning to Agoris, he must have realized how absurd it is for the King of Hell to join hands with a human.
‘And yet he still hasn’t come to his /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ senses......!’
Marco’s temper flared for a moment, but he calmed his mind again.
It hasn’t yet been decided that Baal has completely cooperated. This human’s route for obtaining information might be elsewhere.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Baal wants to fight the gods? There’s no way.”
Even as he spoke, Marco endlessly scrutinized Dierre. Especially his eyes.
‘Hmph. Clear pupils. Goodness is surging.’
Demons respond sensitively to human goodness. For humans, goodness is precisely a weakness. Of course, demons know this all the better.
The ones who first become prey as their food are kind people.
The reason they don’t want to make contracts with Frondier also stems from that.
Frondier is nothing but pitch-black. There is no demon who wants to make a contract with someone worse than themselves.
Dierre, who is perfectly the opposite. Marco recognized at a glance the purity and goodness possessed by Dierre’s soul.
And that,
‘They get absorbed in reading others and fail to manage themselves. That’s what demons are.’
was something Dierre was also reading.
Demons’ specialty is always reading and observing the inside of humans.
Therefore, on the contrary, they are not used to being the ones observed.
“Even if you ask how that could be, in reality he is already taking on the gods.”
“......”
Marco was looking at Dierre as if displeased.
Dierre’s lie flowed out smoothly.
“Mr. Marco. I’m not asking about possibilities. No matter how low you rate that possibility, the situation has already happened and cannot be undone. I fully understand that you can’t help but be mistaken since you can’t receive information here. We need a solution. That’s why I’m asking you, a demon. What is Baal thinking right now?”
Dierre completely spoke on the premise that “Baal is trying to fight the gods,” and as if it were something that had already happened in Agoris.
Because Marco, in here, could not receive any subsequent information at all, it was the greatest bluff armament Dierre could put on.
With a pure face, Dierre accelerated his thinking.
'He’s acting composed, but he’s definitely shaken. He clearly knows something about the war.'
While thinking that, Dierre also concealed the chill he felt.
Marco, imprisoned in Obsidian, with almost no exchange with the outside.
Even so, if he knows about the war, then the situation in Agoris is something that had been planned well beforehand.
'He’s currently Satan’s subordinate, but he originally belonged to the 72 Demons. The reason he left the 72 Demons is undoubtedly because of this war.'
After Belphegor withdrew from the Falind continent, once the existence that had blocked them disappeared, the demons of Agoris immediately invaded the Empire.
Believing that the demons hidden in the Empire were in contact with Satan.
And thus began a war by the two demon forces. The damage to the Empire, which was made into the battlefield. That was Satan’s scheme.
In other words, conversely, that was not the 72 Demons’ plan.
Including Baal, the 72 Demons could not even conceive that Belphegor would leave Manggot, and naturally the incursion into the Falind continent was an operation cobbled together in an emergency.
If so, the 72 Demons must have had a plan prepared from before the variable of “Belphegor disappeared.” If so, what was that plan?
They want to return to the Demon Realm. To their homeland. Everything they have done so far is headed toward that purpose.
'When Belphegor disappeared, Baal set aside their original plan and flew to the Falind continent. That must surely be because what they originally intended to do was an action even more dangerous than picking a fight with the Empire.'
By Dierre’s imagination, that would be something more severe than “war,” not less.
Marco let out a sigh and shook his head.
The speed of the sigh was short, and the arc of shaking his head was large.
A reaction to show others.
It’s fake.
“Changing the question is useless. As for me, I can’t know what Baal is thinking. Just as you said, I just heard that information. I’m not receiving any information at all—how could I know Baal’s thoughts?”
“......Is that so.”
“Right. Go find another demon. Or you yourself go west? That would be the most accurate.”
Marco waved his hand.
The expression that showed he was finding Dierre bothersome, the way his body naturally leaned back, the relaxation in the wrist that waved—
'It’s real.'
Inside the troubled expression on Dierre’s face, he caught one small thing.
'This demon thinks there’s no problem even if I go to Agoris right now.'
For Dierre, going to Agoris at this point was not difficult.
What had been difficult until now was that no one knew whether such a continent truly existed, or where exactly its location was. In addition, they had feared the strength of the monsters that lived in the sea.
But that was already a path Frondier and his party had passed through once.
The position, the route, the time it would take to get there, the expected threats—all of that had already been revealed.
There was the variable of Poseidon, but there’s no way he would be on the demons’ side; if the situation was explained, it would only make the demon side more precarious.
'Even so, he’s not wary of me going to Agoris. Or maybe, he even wants me to go there.'
Dierre closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. Then he spoke once more.
“Then let’s change the question.”
