by Fuse
Still…
“I will not question how my fighters are handled, but I insist on joining this conference of yours.”
It sounded to me like this was one point Fuze refused to negotiate on. His eyes were resolute—he must’ve figured the topic of our meeting wasn’t something he could afford to be in the dark on.
“All right.” I shrugged. “I want you to believe that I’m not hostile to humanity. I won’t keep you out.”
And so, Rigurd guided Fuze to a waiting room. Since we now had a dwarven contingent participating, we needed to set up a larger meeting hall for everybody, and in the meantime, they could all probably use some rest.
“Hmph,” grumbled Gazel as we saw them go off. “You trust that man, Rimuru?”
“Yeah, he’s safe.”
Fuze was a trustworthy man. I was confident enough in that.
“Mm. Then I suppose the problem is those people.”
He turned his attention toward the empty space behind us. Um, or was it empty? I turned around, surprised, only to find an unfamiliar group watching us. There was a well-dressed gentleman at the lead, his face well-defined; he must have been very popular with the opposite sex when he was younger. His eyes were notably sharp, and he was flanked on both sides by five or so guards, all outfitted in similarly fine gear; perhaps high-ranked military officers or the like.
The group was clearly well trained, and…man, they were right behind me this whole time, and I never noticed? What the hell happened to Universal Detect, man?!
However, I was the only concerned witness, it turned out.
Report. No clear hostility detected among the group.
If that’s what the somewhat pouty Raphael had to say, I could believe it. Maybe this was my fault. I did just tell it to stop giving me reports all the time. I suppose “malicious or harmful” is a bit too vague to make much sense of. Raphael had a right to be angry, perhaps.
Sorry, I said to myself. Go ahead and give the full reports from now on. It seemed kind of lame, really, apologizing to one of my own skills, but I at least wanted to express my feelings.
As I underwent this internal conflict, Gazel and the mystery group were already engaging each other.
“And you people are…?”
“Ah, I see it’s the emperor who enjoys hiding in his underground burrow! Very impressive, to see a coward like you provide backing to the ‘demon lord’ like this…”
The stern greeting did nothing to break the man’s easygoing style. He was clearly trying to goad the dwarven king while the officers rolled their eyes at him in exasperation.
Gazel, recognizing them all, flashed a bold smile. “Aha. You, then. The elf descendants whose heads are always in the clouds. Did you descend from that fancy tree city of yours, then?”
I suppose they all knew each other. Raphael was right—no malice to speak of; these two just didn’t get along too well, is all. Or more like they enjoyed arguing for the sake of arguing.
“Sir Rimuru, I believe these to be envoys from the Sorcerous Dynasty of Thalion,” stated Soka, one of Soei’s operatives. She had apparently brought these people here—and once the man recognized King Gazel, he immediately started giving him crap.
“You never change, do you, Erald?”
“Neither do you, Gazel.”
This was the way the two decided to greet each other, looks of sheer contempt on their faces.
“And that girl there is…?”
“Oh, hello there. My name’s Rimuru, and I run things around the forest alliance we have here.”
Erald, the squinty-eyed guy, had his eyes turned to me, so I gave him a casual hello. Any visitors from Thalion needed to be treated with the utmost courtesy—not that I really knew anything about manners or diplomatic customs or anything. Becoming a demon lord’s great and all, but it’s not like there’s an instruction manual for it. Hopefully I’ll track someone down who can teach me the finer points sometime.
Upon hearing my name, Erald suddenly tensed up—then opened his eyes as wide as he could. “You!” he bellowed. “The demon lord who seduced my daughter! I hope you are prepared to atone for that!”
He immediately began to cast what even I could tell was a vastly overpowered flame spell. Yikes. Chill out, dude.
Based on the knowledge I gathered, a flame spell on such a high level was one of the most difficult pieces of magic to pull off. The whole family of fire magic occupied its own branch in the tree of aspectual magic, starting with your garden-variety puff of Fire and moving on from there to Fireball and the more difficult Fire Wall and Fire Storm. The harder it is to pull off, the more of a boom it makes.
At the very peak of this scale lies what, for the sake of simplicity, I call “compounding” magic. Combining the burning nature of flame spells with the shock-wave effects of explosive spells, for example, can provide magic on a scale beyond either of the original two types. That was just the type of compounding Shizu was gifted at, come to think of it. The main difference was that she relied on an elemental spirit to power her casting. That’s not easy, not unless you’re as talented a caster as Shizu was, but once you have that relationship in place, the elemental will do most of the fine-tuning for you.
Compounded spells on the very tippy top of the scale like this were quite hazardous, because they required you to control the magic manually. But since they were not a part of any “official” magic family, they offered a great deal of freedom. You had full control, juggling aspects of the spell like launch speed, targeting accuracy, size and scope of the effect, and duration. If brute strength was all you wanted, you could level a town easily enough with one.
This, of course, came at some danger to the caster. You needed enough spiritual force to gather the required magicules together to keep the spell under control, or else it wouldn’t work, letting that energy run amok instead of being consumed—and potentially raze the entire area around you. It goes without saying that this sort of magic wasn’t something the general public saw much of—we’re talking literally military-grade stuff. You had to be at least an accredited wizard to be allowed to touch it.
It was absolutely not the kind of thing I wanted in my city, and now Erald was casting it. What was he thinking? It made no sense to me. And what’s he mean seduced?
The whole thing left me confused for a moment, but again, I shouldn’t have worried. From the side came a loud bang, like someone fired off a shotgun, and then Elen’s distressed shouting.
“Dad, come onnnn! What are you here for?!”
She barged in, looking livid, and immediately gave Erald a bop on the head before he could react. It was enough for him to come back to his senses. I suppose he was her father, then? And judging by the chewing out Elen was giving him, he must’ve been a bit regretful by now. Scary, isn’t it, seeing someone fly into a rage without warning like that? He seemed like such an intellectual gentleman, like Gazel. So much for that.
“Ah… Ha-ha-ha. Sorry about that,” he said with a cheerful smile. “I was informed that a demon lord had kidnapped my daughter, and I suppose I lost my cool for a moment.”
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you get to cast maximum-force fire magic in my town. What a loony dad.
“No, my lord,” one of his men, a timid-looking assistant, coolly observed. “Our reports involved far more than that, but you jumped to a hasty conclusion.”
“See? I knew it! This is totally your fault, Daddd!”
I felt a little bad for Dad, visibly withering on the spot, but he had it coming. If anything, I wanted him to regret it even more.
“…You always were too overprotective a father,” Gazel said once things calmed down.
“I am not,” Erald fired back unapologetically. “How can I help it? Elen is simply too precious to me.”
“Yes, all children are to their parents, but… Ah, this is pointless.”
The way Gazel rolled his eyes told me that Erald was known for this. You can’t fix the fatherly instinct, I guess.
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Once things had simmered down between Gazel and Erald, Elen stepped up to say hello, an elegant air surrounding her despite her rough adventurer’s garb.
“I am sorry I have been out of contact, King Gazel.”
“Ah, Ellwyn? I hardly recognized you! How grand it is to see you in good health. I see the years have been very kind to your beauty!”
“Keep your hands off her, Gazel!” Erald interjected, earning him another slap from Elen and round of admonishment from his assistant. Gazel just shrugged, apparently used to this act. If Elen’s on the scene, her father just loses all sense of self, doesn’t he? Not exactly the member of the intelligentsia I took him for at first. Better watch out for that.
“Sir Rimuru, this is Erald Grimwald, my father and archduke of Thalion.”
“It is an honor to meet you, leader of Jura and master of the monsters. As my daughter just said, I am Archduke Erald Grimwald. Please, just Erald is fine.”
So this guy’s an archduke in the Sorcerous Dynasty? That’s pretty high up there, isn’t it? Dwargon isn’t the only kingdom sending their big guns over to see us. I would later learn that he was closely related to the Thalion royal family—the current emperor’s uncle, in fact. That explained why he was acting so familiar and casual around Gazel. To put it simply, he was one of three most powerful people from his native country.
I could hardly hide my surprise. Does that mean…? Wow, is Elen some kind of crazy-influential fairy-tale princess?! I knew she was of noble blood, but not that much! She’s not far from the throne at all, lineage-wise, and she’s working as an adventurer? Talk about being given a lot of freedom! And I can’t be the only one to think it’d be better to put a stop to that, not that Elen herself would likely care. I imagined she probably had people keeping an eye on her, given how sure she was that the advice she gave me on becoming a demon lord would come back to haunt her. And all that trouble she gives Kabal and Gido, too. I really ought to reward them for that next time.
But for now…
“So did you travel here just to inquire about Elen?”
I doubted it, as I sized up Erald.
“Hee-hee-hee! No, of course not. As we consider how we should interact with your nation, I wanted a chance to see you with my own eyes—this leader that my daughter seems so fond of. Given the sense of authority you appear to bring to your people, I find it hard to believe you are a slime at all… But still, I feel I have a much more complete picture of your strengths now.”
He accentuated this with a nefarious-sounding laugh. I suppose that overpowered flame strike was his way of testing me as well. Me—and Benimaru, Shuna, and Shion adjacent; none demonstrated a hint of panic—it wouldn’t have; they had already seen he had no intention of actually launching it. Given how hotheaded they all were not long ago, that was some palpable growth.
“It was clear,” Shuna explained, “that you had far less than the required energy needed for the spell you were casting, once I read what it was.”
Erald grinned at this, a bit ashamed that his act was spotted for what it was.
“Well, I suppose I have quite a while to go, if you can see through me that clearly!”
“Not at all,” she calmly replied. “Between the speed at which you deployed it and the skill you showed at making it look real, it was an impressive sight to see. Considering the artificial body you possess, that level of accuracy is remarkable.”
“Oh? You noticed I was using a homunculus? Color me surprised.”
“Yes. It seemed to me you had fused your spiritual body into it. Very impressive. It would certainly take a nation of magic-users such as yours to pull that off.”
I used Analyze and Assess at Shuna’s suggestion. She was right; Erald had borrowed this body from somewhere else. His officers were all “real,” but once you reach the higher ranks of nobility, I suppose it paid to be careful. I had thought he was rather lightly outfitted for a summit with a self-styled demon lord. Maybe the dwarven King Gazel over there was the crazy one.
Still, it was really something. An elaborately fine-tuned homunculus, indistinguishable from a human being. Once things calm down, I’d love to learn how that works.
So Erald was here to size up our nation and its leaders. That and a few other things, too, I’m sure, but we can tackle that later. No need to force it out of him right this moment.
Since he’s here and all, I figured I might as well have him join the conference, so he’d have more stuff to judge us with. I wanted his take on our future direction as well, and this would be a good opportunity for that. It might result in us and the Sorcerous Dynasty becoming enemies, of course, but we’d just have to cross that bridge when we came to it.
Gobta ran up to inform me that the meeting hall was ready.
I was planning to have this be a more informal confab between Jura buddies, but things had changed. This really was a summit. Usually, with things like these, you’d have lower-level diplomats meet up first and agree in advance on questions to ask and topics to tackle, figuring out where there was room for compromise once both sides were aware of each other’s stakes. Here, though, there was no greasing the gears in advance. We’d be giving frank opinions to each other, and in the end, we’d pin down our federation’s future. It wouldn’t be going too far to call it a war of words.
Steeling my resolve, I headed for the meeting hall, ready to emcee one of the most important gatherings I—and Tempest—had ever experienced.
In later years, the event would come to be known as the Monster-and-Man Summit.
In the hall, I found everyone standing upright, awaiting our arrival. All the main powerbrokers in the event—the Three Lycanthropeers, Fuze, King Gazel, and Archduke Erald—were shown to their guest seats. Once I took my own at the far end of the hall, everyone else sat down.
The air was heavy when the talks began.
We began by having each side introduce themselves, given the multiple large nations now involved. Some already knew one another, but I thought it best for politeness’ sake that everybody was on the same page.
“So. Let’s begin by having our guests introduced.”
I turned to Shuna, who promptly began reading off names.
The Beast Kingdom of Eurazania, represented by the Three Lycanthropeers from the Beast Master’s Warrior Alliance. Given that Phobio and Sufia had a slight—all right, serious—tendency to think with their sword-swingin’ muscles instead of their brains, I figured we’d mostly be focused on Alvis’s feedback.
The Armed Nation of Dwargon, land of the dwarves, represented by their kin himself, Gazel Dwargo. He seemed perfectly content with me trying to cover up the whole twenty-thousand-dead thing. He undoubtedly had his own motivations for it, so I suppose I ought to keep that under consideration. It seemed like I’d be able to rely on him quite a bit going forward.
The kingdom of Blumund, represented by…no one, officially, although having the nation’s guild master in Fuze wasn’t a bad substitute. Fuze was intimately connected with Baron Veryard, one of the kingdom’s top ministers, so he did have enough authority to be here and provide some valuable advice.
The Sorcerous Dynasty of Thalion, very suddenly represented by Archduke Erald—a sharp-minded, noble-looking, powerful figure, even if he was near powerless to defy his beloved daughter. If he was here to gauge the worth of our nation, I presumed he wasn’t foolish enough to let Elen sway his judgment. He wasn’t someone to neglect—and definitely not someone to drop my guard around.
Besides…Thalion was powerful enough to take on the entire Council by itself, on the same level as Dwargon. If all went well, we could establish formal ties with them, perhaps. I didn’t want to be greedy, though, so baby steps would be key in dealing with him.
Sizing them all up like this, we had a fairly prestigious lineup here. In a way, I was glad all these humans were here for it. If it was just us Forest of Jura denizens, our deliberations might’ve drifted off the rails entirely.
Next came i
ntroductions from the Tempest side. One by one, I had my top brass talk about themselves a little bit. Rigurd and the hobgoblin elders practically oozed authority by this point, decked out in befittingly regal-ish clothing and not losing out at all to their counterparts in foreign lands. More regal than myself, really. The bedrock of our whole nation.
Once every department in town checked in, we next heard from Treyni, dryad and caretaker of the forest. Having such a lofty local presence around seemed to surprise Erald at first, but he bottled it up and nodded a greeting to her. Gazel found this more than a little amusing, even though I’m sure he and his crew were just as surprised about the whole damn thing when they first met her. Ah well.
Finally, there was the contingent from Farmus—Yohm, Mjurran, and Gruecith as well. I wanted to have them build a new nation for me, something I was planning to suggest at this summit. Would people be open to it? That was a vital part of the whole thing, something that’d augur the ultimate success of this event.
Once Shion and Diablo behind me gave a couple of quick hellos, the meet-and-greet part of the summit was over. Oh, wait. Forgot someone.
“Shuna, do we have a change of clothes for Veldora?”
“Yes, Sir Veldora is…”
Before Shuna could finish, a loud, hearty Gwaaah-ha-ha-ha! filled the hall. I wanted some clothing for him since being in the buff probably wouldn’t impress too many visitors, and it looks like we were just in time. The doors opened to reveal Veldora, taking in the sight curiously. I stood up to greet him and explain things to our visitors.
“I have one more friend to introduce, one whose name should be familiar to you all. I know this may sound surprising, but…”
