Chapter 453: Chapter 453

The Demon Lords fell silent. Likely because my proposal sounded absurd.

Only one among them kept her expression unchanged—Gamigin. She alone gazed steadily at me. That was natural, for she was the only one here who had ever actually written a “scenario” with me.

Marbas, Vassago, Sitri. The three of them had always been supporting actors in my scenarios. Not once had they sat down with me to draft a script together. They merely played their parts in the scenarios I had prepared in advance…….

“Dantalian. What do you mean by that? Are you suggesting we just stand by and let the Republic discover the emperor’s true nature?”

Strictly speaking, this is their first time.

Until now, I had always acted from the shadows, half-hidden beneath Barbatos’s wing, but this time, I’m standing before the Demon Lords explaining my scheme and plan with my own mouth, face, and gestures.

“Comrades. From here on, I ask that you listen carefully to the plan I will now lay out, step by step.”

“We must place ourselves in the shoes of the Republic’s Consul.”

“In the Consul’s shoes?”

“Yes. The Consul cannot so easily place trust in my daughter. She may be a traitor, but she is still the adopted daughter of a Demon Lord. Could she not be a double agent? Could her betrayal be false, a ploy to use her? It would only be natural for the consul to be suspicious…….”

Elizabeth treated me as a devil among humans.

There were over twenty confirmed Republic spies infiltrating my domain, and those were just the ones whose identities had been uncovered. If I included the covert operatives working in the shadows, the number would easily be double that. Dozens of spies had been deployed to a single city.

Elizabeth had always been wary of me, always watching, always on guard. And now, all of a sudden, Dantalian’s adopted daughter sought asylum?

Of course she wouldn’t trust that. No, I could state with absolute certainty:

―Elizabeth would never trust Daisy.

Because Elizabeth acknowledged my abilities.

There was no way she’d ever believe that someone like me, a man of my caliber, would be careless enough to allow something as trivial as a “rebellion by an adopted daughter”. The more convincingly Daisy tried to prove her loyalty, the deeper Elizabeth’s suspicion would grow.

I was no different. Imagine if one of Elizabeth’s most loyal retainers suddenly betrayed her and came to me, pledging allegiance. Would I trust them? Of course not. The thought of a monster like Elizabeth simply allowing a close aide to defect, such a scenario was nothing but an absurd impossibility.

In a way, Elizabeth and I trusted each other more than anyone else ever could.

“My adopted daughter will go to great lengths to earn the Consul’s trust. The revelation that Emperor Rudolf is nothing more than a puppet corpse is far too weighty to present right away. She’ll start small, leaking minor pieces of information step by step to build her credibility first.”

And one such “minor” piece of information was the secret passage within my own Demon Lord Castle.

I slowly swept my gaze across the faces of the Elector Demon Lords seated before me.

None of them looked particularly pleased. Naturally so. The way I spoke, it was as if I had already unraveled everything about Elizabeth and Daisy, as though I knew both their minds and their every future move with unwavering certainty.

How could I be so sure? What guarantee did I have that things would unfold exactly as I said? No one voiced it aloud, but I could sense each of them quietly harboring that question.

Even so, I had no choice but to speak this way.

For nearly ten years now, I had watched those two with unwavering focus.

Well, no one would believe me if I tried to explain to them how dangerous Elizabeth is anyway. To the Demon Lords, she was nothing more than the last heir of a fallen nation. Someone worth keeping an eye on, perhaps, but certainly not someone to fear.

None of them seemed to grasp just how extraordinary it was that Elizabeth had managed to hold the Republic together all this time, essentially standing alone against the entire Demon Lord Army.

Well, I suppose part of that was my fault. Whenever Elizabeth so much as attempted to make a move against the Demon Lord forces, I was always there to block her schemes before they could amount to anything…….

Honestly, it was a little frustrating. Why was I the only one burdened with worrying about Elizabeth? I was always the one shouldering the hard work, the one constantly laboring behind the scenes, and yet, so few ever recognized it. In the end, all I got out of it was disadvantage after disadvantage.

Still, if I looked at it another way, it meant that in this elaborate “game of chess”, only Elizabeth and I were truly playing. There was no need to let the thought make me bitter.

“In two days at most. No later than that, Republic spies will infiltrate the secret passage in my castle.”

A smile curved my lips.

“And when that happens, we’ll know everything at once…… Where Barbatos has been taken, and what the Consul’s next move will be.”

Five minutes had passed since the strike team had breached Dantalian’s castle. Consul Elizabeth watched their progress in real time through a crystal orb.

─ This passage…… it must have been built at least five years ago.─ So it wasn’t hastily constructed. To think something was hidden here…… Truly, the darkest place is right under the lamp.

The quiet exchanges of the infiltrators echoed through the orb. The secret passage was shrouded in darkness, and even the projection flickering within the crystal was dim and murky. Elizabeth stared at it, her expression unreadable.

Kurtz Schleiermacher, seated beside her, spoke.

“So the girl was right. There really was a secret passage.”

Elizabeth sipped from a horn-shaped goblet filled with wine. The drink was little more than vinegar, a cheap, sour vintage of the lowest grade. In her youth, she had loved fine wines, but ever since becoming Consul, she had replaced all her private indulgences with goods of the poorest quality—things more suited to impoverished peasants than a ruler.

“The question is how much control Dantalian truly has over this situation. Surely, he’s already anticipated that we would attempt to infiltrate through his secret passage.”

Kurtz lifted his glass from his lips, puzzled. Even as his sovereign, the leader of an entire nation, sipped that wretched excuse for wine, Kurtz himself was casually savoring a drink of the finest quality.

“We subjected her to a truth spell only yesterday, confirming that her betrayal was not engineered by Dantalian. How, then, could he have possibly foreseen our course of action?”

“I don’t put much faith in truth magic.”

Elizabeth dismissed coldly.

“At the end of the day, it relies on heart rate and physiognomy. At best, its accuracy is fifty percent. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that girl, Daisy, could consciously regulate her own heartbeat with precision.”

“Consul, we subjected her to over seven hundred eighty separate questions last night alone.”

Kurtz let out a quiet chuckle.

“Sure, slipping past one or two questions is child’s play for a trained agent. But dodging fifty questions? A hundred? Five hundred? That’s nearly impossible.”

Last night, the Republic’s intelligence agency had gone all out in welcoming their “guest”.

Veterans with decades of espionage under their belts had gathered to interrogate one sixteen-year-old girl, Daisy von Custos. No fists had been raised, yet the relentless questioning, which had gone on for hours without a moment’s respite, had long since crossed into brutality far beyond mere physical violence.

Those seven hundred and eighty questions weren’t a simple laundry list of inquiries. Each one had been meticulously woven together, like a tightly meshed net designed to ensnare the slightest inconsistency.

Even if, as Consul Elizabeth claimed, truth magic was hardly infallible, seven hundred and eighty such questions were more than enough to compensate for its shortcomings. Kurtz Schleiermacher’s voice carried a playful lilt as he spoke.

“Surely you’re not suggesting that a sixteen-year-old girl managed to deceive us on every single one of those seven hundred questions, are you, Your Excellency Consul? Haha.”

Elizabeth remained silent.

When the other party suddenly fell silent, Kurtz found himself awkwardly at a loss for words. He was just about to think of a way to restart the conversation when a voice came from the crystal orb.

─ Goblins! There must be at least twenty!

─ Stay calm and hold formation. As long as we don’t break rank, goblins are no threat.

Kurtz’s eyes narrowed slightly. Thankfully, he no longer needed to scramble for a new topic.

“So, there were guards posted after all. Makes sense. Even a secret passage should have at least minimal defenses. But goblins? That seems a little…… underwhelming.” Official source ıs NoveI(F)ire.net

Elizabeth’s voice was flat, her gaze still indifferent.

“Dantalian would never post mere goblins to guard that passage. If it’s breached, the ninth floor of his castle would fall instantly. If he were to station guards there, they would undoubtedly be formidable demons. This is a ruse.”

Elizabeth’s lips curved ever so faintly.

At that very moment, a scream of panic erupted from the crystal orb.

─ Hellspiders! Damn it, there are hellspiders lying in ambush on the ceiling! All units, shift to phalanx formation and brace for attack!

The squad tried desperately to maintain their composure, but the screams only grew louder, more frenzied. Not only had massive spiders descended from above, but golems, disguised as rocks, rose from the ground to crush them. The secret passage projected within the crystal orb descended into chaos in an instant.

Elizabeth murmured in a voice utterly devoid of emotion.

“First, he lets them see goblins, then ambushes them with hidden forces. An effective tactic, but one that would be impossible to execute without foreknowledge of the enemy’s approach.”

“You mean…… he anticipated that we would send an infiltration unit……?”

The screams coming through the crystal abruptly dwindled.

Of the fifteen members of the squad, only one remained. Dozens of monsters surrounded him, cutting off every avenue of escape. The man dropped his axe onto the cavern floor.

─ P-Please! Spare me! I don’t want to die! Please, I—

A wet, sickening sound tore through the orb as his body was ripped apart.

After that, only the grisly noises of monsters feeding on the corpses filled the Consul’s office—the sound of flesh tearing, bones cracking into splinters. Elizabeth’s expression did not so much as flicker as she reached out and extinguished the image in the crystal orb.

“Impressive, is it not?”

“I’m not sure what you mean…….”

“I am talking about Dantalian. Did you not notice? He slaughtered every last intruder just now.”

She cast a sidelong glance at Kurtz.

“That means he did not even consider taking a single prisoner. Naturally, you would expect him to interrogate them, to find out who had uncovered his secret passage and sent that strike team…… but he skipped that step without hesitation. He already knows the Republic is behind this.”

Elizabeth lazily twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

“I sent a squad with deliberately low combat ability this time to make sure they’d be captured alive. And yet…… it seems he was already aware. I even handpicked soldiers who could speak Sardinian, but it didn’t matter in the slightest. Still, we did gain something: confirmation that Dantalian is targeting us directly. That alone is worth the cost.”

A smile curled across her lips.

“For a simple invitation to dance, his approach is quite…… extreme, wouldn’t you say? At this point, even if I wanted to decline, my pride wouldn’t allow it. Kurtz, prepare an envoy. It’s time to open the second ball.”

“Yes, Your Excellency Consul.”

TL Note: Thanks for reading the chapter. I have no idea what happened. I swear to god I just time slipped or something. I released the last chapter and was like, “okay, I’m gonna work on the tomorrow.” and then I did. I got like halfway done and then the holidays came by and I had family reunions to go to, and then my aunt suddenly visited from the states and kept coming over to our place with my grandma every day for a week. That following weekend, my brother stayed the night and then his wife and daughter came the next morning. We just had like an impromptu family reunion again….

My brain feels so confused right now. I DON’T KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS. AHHHHHH.