Chapter 8.1

Chapter 8.1

How many times have I passed out now?

A large gauze pad was stuck to the back of Valen’s head. He glared at Nadol, who stood before him, while being forcibly tied to a red velvet sofa.

Despite having been struck by Valen, Nadol appeared unscathed, without a single scratch. On the other hand, Finn had lost another front tooth in addition to his fangs.

Argen sat beside him.

When Valen abruptly turned his head, Argen also looked back. She was sipping steaming hot tea and then removed the cup from her lips. After rolling her eyes as if contemplating something, she offered the tea she had been drinking to Valen.

Valen’s face twisted into a grimace.

“Alright, alright. Attention, please. Attention! The important part starts now.”

Nadol tapped the blackboard with a thud.

The blackboard was filled with rough handwriting. It was all about the working conditions within the Demon King’s castle. Statistics on vacation days over the past 100 years, overtime, business trips, job satisfaction, and so on. In short, it summarized that the workload was excruciatingly high.

Why do I have to listen to this? Unlike the fervent Nadol, Valen’s face remained cold and stern. However, he didn’t miss a single word.

Despite having clashed with demons for a long time, information about them was severely lacking. The scale of soldiers they could deploy at once, the strength of their war weapons, their weaknesses—none of it could be predicted. They were constantly defeated by different tactics and unforeseen attacks.

The demons were an excessively secretive group, and the captured demons were so loyal that they would shut their mouths even under torture, saying, “I don’t know anything about that!”

“Overtime work is influenced by various factors such as natural disasters, festivals, and national events!”

Nadol pointed to a spot on the blackboard with his staff.

“But the highest proportion is due to humans. They account for a whopping 80% of the total. 80%!”

“……”

“Is your side filled with nothing but battle maniacs? You keep sending soldiers without getting tired, leaving us no time to rest. Right, Lord Argen?”

Argen nodded.

“And the number of them! The flags they plant are different every time. Sometimes they attack separately from different places, and other times they come all at once with multiple flags.”

Nadol rubbed his throbbing forehead.

At the same time, there was a light sound of a teacup being placed beside Valen.

“We’re not blaming you.”

Valen let out a hollow laugh. Are they worried I might feel guilty? Ridiculous. Despite Nadol’s outburst, Valen felt no sympathy.

To his eyes, those charts represented the number of humans who had died at the hands of demons. The demons had no understanding of why humans would risk their lives to take up arms.

Parents, siblings, children, and lovers who met their deaths due to the demons’ mere whims. Do they have any idea of the extent of that loss?

Sorrow that even time couldn’t erase remained as a massive scar, turning each day of living into a hell.

It was an emotion that the primitive demons, who lived only for pleasure, would never understand.

“Even the demons have reached their limit!”

Nadol shouted.

“We sent a letter with one of the human soldiers who invaded the demon realm. It expressed our earnest desire for peace and cooperation. But…”

“What came back was an army of fifty thousand.”

Argen shook her head gloomily and sipped her tea.

“The goat checked the mailbox every day, hoping for a reply.”

Sending a letter to the human kingdom from the demon realm? Apart from war, there had been no interactions between the two races. A complete severance.

Especially since the demon realm itself was notoriously closed off, even the smallest piece of information about them would cause a stir across the entire continent of the human realm. If a letter had indeed been sent, Valen, the leader of the Demon Extermination Alliance, would surely have known about it.

“He doesn’t seem to believe us.”

“We still have a copy of the letter sent that day.”