Chapter 106: The Demon Situation, Testing the Waters
The next day, Agner came to the inn again. Standing outside the door, a deep sense of helplessness washed over him. *If only the Demon Lord had just stayed missing forever, just like her predecessor.*
He couldn't help but think about the current state of the demon race. They were truly at the end of their rope. Decades of constant war with the humans had pushed their society to the brink of collapse. The fields were barren, and the population was plummeting. Without crops, the people starved. And with the people starving, there was no one left to farm the land, making the fields even more desolate.
When would this vicious cycle ever end?
If the previous Demon Lord hadn't suddenly died—giving the demon race a temporary breathing room to rest and rebuild—their national strength wouldn't even have recovered this much. Yet even so, the situation remained incredibly grim. And now, learning that the new Demon Lord was dead-set on launching another massive war against humanity made a bitter taste rise in his mouth.
With a heavy sigh, he knocked on the door and stepped inside.
The only ones in the room were the Demon Lord herself and the red-robed man he had met yesterday. The red-robed man didn't give off any energy fluctuations at all, looking exactly like an ordinary civilian.
But the Demon Lord...
Even though she was actively hiding her aura with an incredibly high-level concealment skill, the pure, terrifying pressure leaking from her still made his heart freeze with fear. In all his long years of service, he had never felt such suffocating pressure from any previous Demon Lord. It felt as though she could effortlessly wipe him out at any second.
"Agner pays respects to Lord Ariel." He bowed deeply from the waist, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the floor, not daring to look up.
Ariel didn't even bother to acknowledge his greeting. Instead, her cold gaze swept right past him, locking onto the few subordinates standing behind him.
Sensing immediate, catastrophic danger, Agner instantly barked a fierce reprimand. "The rest of you, get the hell out of here! Stop being an eyesore!"
Those subordinates looked deeply unsatisfied, but they didn't dare defy a direct order. They lowered their heads and slunk out of the inn like scolded dogs.
"I deeply apologize, my Lord. I will personally make sure those disrespectful fools are severely disciplined later," Agner reported, his head lowered as cold sweat began to bead on his forehead.
Ariel gave a casual wave of her hand, signaling that the matter was beneath her notice. Then, her gaze settled firmly back onto Agner, turning sharp and calculating.
"I absolutely despise soldiers who refuse to follow orders. I only have use for troops who know how to fight properly, and know how to die properly. Do I make myself perfectly clear, Agner?"
The moment those words hit his ears, Agner's pupils shrunk. *That was close.* Those idiots had just come dangerously close to earning a one-way ticket to the afterlife; thank goodness he had thrown them out in time.
Before he could apologize, Ariel spoke up again, her tone carrying a playful, mocking edge.
"Go back and give a clear message to that unit of yours: they can either choose to be executed by my own hand, or they can choose to march onto the battlefield and fight the humans. Let them choose for themselves."
"Of course, I highly recommend they pick the latter. That way, they might actually stand a tiny chance of survival."
The logic behind her words was completely transparent: *Your Great Aunt here is more powerful than the entire human race combined. Challenging this Demon Lord means absolute death, but throwing your lives against the humans might actually give you a tiny chance to survive.*
If anyone else in the world had made such an incredibly arrogant statement, Agner would have dismissed them as a delusional braggart. But coming straight from Ariel's mouth, he didn't doubt it for a single second. This Demon Lord genuinely possessed the absolute power to back up her words.
"Your subject understands perfectly! I will make sure the message is delivered flawlessly!"
"Mm. Keep expanding the conscription. I am completely unsatisfied with our current military numbers."
"Your subject obeys!" Agner gave a final, respectful bow before quietly backing out of the room.
The exact second he vanished past the doorway, Ariel turned her head toward the red-robed man who was calmly sipping his tea. "Well? Did you find out anything useful?"
Shirazawa looked completely exasperated. "You dragged me out of bed this early in the morning just to force me to watch you play the tough guy?"
"Am I not allowed to?"
"...Whatever. You win." Shirazawa smirked playfully, setting his teacup down as he walked over to the window.
Through the glass, he could see Agner and his entourage rapidly leaving the area. "Do you need me to take care of him permanently?"
The sudden, casual offer caused Ariel to freeze for a brief second. A moment later, her face was filled with absolute shock. "You actually noticed? How on earth did you find out?"
"Heh." Shirazawa gave a faint, mysterious smile, acting like his usual riddle-master self.
"Oh, come on, talk like a normal person!" Ariel lost her patience, reaching out to aggressively pinch his ear.
"Ow, ow, ow..."
This instinctual interaction made both of them startle slightly. A lifetime ago, back when he was just a tiny, weak spider, she used to pull him around in the exact same way. Of course, nowadays, that routine had changed to her playfully digging her fingers into his waist.
"Hmph~" With a soft snort, Ariel let go. She didn't really know why, but her hand had just moved to pinch him completely on autopilot. Then again, she had to admit the physical texture of his ear felt rather nice.
Shirazawa shot her a thoroughly annoyed glare, gently rubbing his throbbing ear. In his current state, he no longer had passive skills like
"Here." To protect himself from any more violence, he opened his palm flat. A tiny, palm-sized, pure white scout spider slowly crawled out from the wide fold of his sleeve.
"This is..."
"A specialized clone that Shiro and I made a while back. They act as a global surveillance network to gather intelligence."
Ariel suddenly understood. So it turned out he had already found Agner's secrets through actual information logs, rather than just figuring it out from their brief chat just now. *I knew it. There's no way a normal human brain could be that terrifyingly omniscient.*
"Just last night, Agner secretly contacted Potimas. According to the records, the two sides have been secretly working together for a long time."
"The demon territories have been plagued by endless war, causing their food supply to drop drastically. Potimas has been using the elf network to smuggle massive amounts of grain and advanced farming technology into this land, single-handedly keeping a huge portion of the population from starving to death."
"In fact, the demon citizens across multiple regions currently feel a deep sense of absolute gratitude toward the elves. The way this nation thinks is turning into something incredibly dangerous."
As Shirazawa broke down the intelligence, Ariel's beautiful face turned incredibly dark and ominous. If Agner merely had some political disagreement with her being the Demon Lord, she wouldn't have bothered to waste energy to step in. But the exact moment his actions crossed the line into becoming a pawn for Potimas, she marked him for death. Anything involving the elves triggered her absolute, pure killing intent.
"This matter is under my jurisdiction. I will personally take care of him," Ariel stated, her tone dripping with absolute finality.
Shirazawa, however, calmly shook his head. "To be honest, I don't actually dislike a guy like Agner."
Ariel's brows knitted tightly as she locked her eyes onto him. "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"To give the demon race a tiny chance of survival, he is willing to pay any price and face any danger. He knows perfectly well that the elves have deeply malicious intent, and he knows perfectly well that playing this double game will get him executed immediately if the Demon Lord finds out. Yet, he constantly walks a tightrope, desperately playing both sides just to save a final shred of hope for the demons."
"From the perspective of the demon race, his logic is completely flawless. In fact, I actually respect his resolve quite a bit."
Ariel's expression stiffened slightly. "Are you misunderstanding the fundamental rules of this world?"
"If the demons refuse to die, and the humans refuse to die, the world's system will completely collapse, and every single living thing will be violently wiped out along with the world itself! Clinging to such a naive, sentimental delusion is the absolute height of stupidity!"
Shirazawa casually shrugged his shoulders. "Then why don't you just tell him the absolute truth of the world?"
"Agner truly believes his choices are right, but that belief is based on a massive lack of information. If he were given access to the true reality of the world, he wouldn't be wastefully running into a brick wall like an idiot."
"In any case, do whatever you want with Agner in the end."
With his piece said, Shirazawa left the room, leaving Ariel standing all alone in the heavy silence.
"The truth..."
Telling the absolute truth of the world carried a catastrophic amount of risk. Every high-ranking leader across the globe worked tirelessly to prevent anyone from raising their
The fear was entirely transparent: the exact second the livestock trapped inside the slaughterhouse realize they are just products made for systematic harvesting, they will undoubtedly raise the banner of total rebellion, plunging the whole world into absolute chaos.
Every single living thing native to this world was locked into a grim cycle: upon death, their accumulated energy was violently taken back by the System to keep the world going, while their memories were completely wiped clean before their souls were recycled back into the reincarnation line. Over and over, the process repeated. They were fundamentally nothing more than a field of chives, harvested season after season.
But even a field of chives would eventually turn to dust if harvested too aggressively.
A soul was essentially a piece of clothing, while skills and stats acted like stains stuck to the fabric. When the clothing got heavily soiled, it was washed through the System's cycle. Yet, the friction of the wash naturally damaged the structure of the fabric; sooner or later, the soul would be worn down into absolute nothingness.
The native people of this world were completely locked out from moving their souls to other universes; they were permanently trapped inside this box, waiting for the world's repairs to finish. If a person was lucky and their soul survived the wash cycles until the world was fully repaired—then congratulations, they would finally get permission to leave for another universe, where they could slowly fix their soul damage in an environment free from the System's harsh wash cycles.
But if they were unlucky, then tough luck. The moment their soul completely collapsed, their existence was permanently deleted—leaving absolutely zero chance for future resurrection.
The exact moment people found out about this horrific reality, they would naturally refuse to quietly submit to being slaughtered. And history from the ancient era had already proven that human nature simply couldn't handle that psychological strain. The final result would inevitably be a global sense of absolute despair: *Since we are all going to rot away into nothingness anyway, we might as well drag the whole universe down into the grave with us.*
To prevent that nightmare from happening, Dustin had created the Divine Word Religion, systematically brainwashing the public into believing that the Taboo skill was a foul, demonic sin—permanently stopping them from looking into the true machinery of the world.
Ariel found herself deeply stuck in a tough choice.
Should she execute him? Or should she spare him?
Or... perhaps she could simply command him to burn away the remaining pieces of his life directly on the front lines of the upcoming Great War, using his military skills to drag down as many human targets into the grave as possible before his unit collapsed.
The exact second that alternative plan formed in her mind, her eyes lit up with a sudden flash of inspiration.
"Wow... I am honestly a total little genius."
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