Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? Volume Chapter 3

Sixth Commander of the demon army.

This is the role that I have been assigned.

I know better than anyone that it’s hardly a suitable role for someone of my stature.

By demon standards, I’m very young.

And I have an extra-youthful appearance, so people always look down on me.

Demons live longer than humans, and some grow faster than others.

I seem to be the sort who ages slowly, given that I still look like a child.

Supposedly, our family line has some elf blood from a few generations back, so maybe that has had an effect on my growth, too.

I say “supposedly” because it’s hard to believe that an elf would really have a child with a demon, considering the typical elven contempt for other races.

But our family line has long been blessed with a high affinity for magic, just like the elves, so maybe there’s some truth to it after all.

And the slowness of my growth is highly unusual for demons, which only makes the elf theory even stronger.

My younger brother is much the same, so the trait probably runs in the whole family, not just me individually.

My classmates and upperclassmen often made fun of me in school for how I looked, and even the underclassmen didn’t take me seriously.

And a slowly developing body means that my physical stats are slow to grow, too.

I invariably lose in any kind of hand-to-hand combat, which has been a great source of embarrassment.

However, that holds true for only purely physical battles. With magic, it’s a different story.

In a contest of pure magic, I’m confident that I’m stronger than any other demon.

Such pride comes naturally to the count of a prominent magical family.

To uphold that pride, I’ve always used my magic to turn the tables on anyone who mocks me.

And once word of my power spread, it wasn’t long before I was named one of the commanders of the demon army, the highest rank a demon can be awarded.

Now the same people who once slighted me have to serve me.

That definitely feels good.

But at the same time, I know I’m not really worthy of being a commander.

The only reason I became one is because there wasn’t anyone more qualified.

Frankly, I wasn’t selected for my personal merits—I was merely the most acceptable choice by process of elimination.

The truth is, the demon race is desperately short on manpower, since we lost many of our best and brightest in the war against the humans.

There are few surviving veteran leaders aside from Commander Agner of the First Army, and most of the other current commanders were once young novices who distinguished themselves through service during the long years of the previous war.

But even then, there weren’t enough, so they had to choose someone from a newer generation who seemed promising and appoint them as a commander.

Namely: me.

In other words, I’m just a stopgap measure.

Of course, I was chosen because of my abilities—there’s no denying that.

But compared to the other commanders, I have far less strength and experience.

I do think my magic abilities are on par with the other commanders, but if in a real fight, I’m sure I would be the weakest of all of them.

And since I don’t have a great deal of experience, I’m still inept at managing an army.

I know that people call me things like Kid Commander behind my back.

During my time in school, I could silence any teasing with my magical prowess, but now that I hold the role of commander, that alone isn’t enough to convince everyone.

I doubt people will stop mocking me until I catch up to the other commanders.

But for someone as young as myself, that’s easier said than done.

No matter how shameful, I have no choice but to bear it.

And then the current Demon Lord appeared.

It seems that demon lords, by nature, have the urge to wage war against humanity.

Older generations of demon lords certainly did, to the point where the most recent Demon Lord who disappeared may be one of the few exceptions.

But when that Demon Lord disappeared, it was actually a stroke of good luck for the demon race.

We had sustained serious losses in the long battle against the humans, to the point where we no longer had the resources or personnel for a war.

This lack of bodies is the reason I became a commander at such a young age, so I have mixed feelings about it.

Since the Demon Lord disappeared, the demons were able to establish a temporary truce with the humans and focus on rebuilding.

However, the current Demon Lord is undoing all that effort.

me ow no vel.com is releasing your favorite novel

In fact, she’s clearly not thinking about the future of the demon race at all.

The previous Demon Lords continued the war with the humans, too, but this particular Demon Lord doesn’t seem to have any concept of moderation.

Previous Demon Lords always took the overall state of the demon race into consideration and marshaled forces accordingly, but the current one doesn’t care about any of that. She seems to fully intend on gathering up every last demon and sending them into battle with the humans.

Most of the commanders disapproved of this.

Even I could tell what would happen if we went down this route, so of course I was in agreement with the others.

And of course, the commanders wouldn’t just sit around and wait for our destruction.

Sure enough, a secret plot to overthrow the Demon Lord began to brew.

I thought this was the perfect chance, so I joined in on the coup d’état without hesitation.

What better way to build a reputation for myself than by bringing down the Demon Lord leading our race along the path of destruction?

We had a good chance of winning I thought.

The Demon Lord looked young.

No doubt she was just getting carried away with the thrill of being recognized as Demon Lord and trying to do the impossible.

What an idiot.

I discreetly joined the revolutionaries and carefully started sending soldiers to join Sir Warkis’s Seventh Army.

The plan was for Warkis to gather the rebel army and attack, at which point I would move the Sixth Army in support.

Miss Sanatoria’s Second Army was cooperating as well, so we were ready to bring down the Demon Lord’s stronghold from the inside and outside at once.

Balto’s Fourth Army was supposed to defend her, but he didn’t seem to want to serve the Demon Lord, either, so we doubted that his soldiers would stay loyal to her.

If we reached out to them, no doubt many would be willing to change sides.

Since the Ninth Commander Nereo, who was in charge of personnel management, was also on the rebellion’s side, it was easy to shuffle people around.

We assembled our forces discreetly so that the Demon Lord wouldn’t notice anything unusual, and soon enough, our rebel army would be complete.

By then, it would be too late to stop the coup d’état.

…Or so we thought.

The next thing we knew, the rebellion had been utterly crushed.

I witnessed the exact moment the mastermind, Sir Warkis, died by his own sword.

You can read this novel at m eow no vel.com for better experience

And shortly thereafter, all the commanders who’d been participating in the rebellion received a warning from Sir Agner.

It was then that I realized we had failed.

Sir Agner, the most seasoned of the commanders, universally considered the strongest of all demons, was siding with the Demon Lord.

I didn’t understand why he would do such a thing.

But that alone was enough to convince me that the rebellion was a lost cause.

Sir Agner’s influence was simply that immense. With him as an enemy, our chances of success were slim.

I had placed my bets on a losing horse.

Now the only thing that mattered was finding a way to recover somehow.

Just as I was beginning to panic, I was summoned by the Demon Lord.

It was then I learned exactly why Sir Agner had chosen to obey her.

I wasn’t the only one she’d summoned.

Sir Nereo, Miss Sanatoria, and me—the commanders who were working with the rebellion in secret.

Compared to Nereo’s undaunted attitude and Sanatoria’s usual relaxed smile, I’m sure I looked pathetically shaken.

I was trembling with fear that we would be sentenced to execution, but instead, the Demon Lord simply told us that the Commander of the Ninth Army was being changed.

It seemed anticlimactic.

The Ninth Army has long been little more than a name.

Its commander, Nereo, was in charge of all matters dealing with personnel, so the majority of his efforts is devoted to that and not his near-nonexistent army.

The Demon Lord announced she was going to appoint a new commander and make the Ninth a proper army.

That was all.

I’d come into the meeting worried I might be executed, so I was relieved to hear this.

But a moment later, I would realize how wrong I was to think the danger had passed.

Terribly, horribly, unforgettably wrong.

The Demon Lord spoke.

“Which means we won’t be needing the current Ninth Army Commander anymore.”

meow novel . com will be your favorite novel site

And with that, she casually disposed of Sir Nereo like a tool that had outlived its usefulness.

A mere execution would have been kinder.

No person should be subjected to what I witnessed that day!

To be devoured without a trace…

No one should have to die like that, and no person should be able to do such a thing.

The Demon Lord might look like a little girl, but on the inside, she’s a foul beast.

Considering how long I’ve suffered because of my own youthful appearance, it’s unthinkable that I misjudged the Demon Lord for the same reason.

From that day on, we were plunged into hell.

Where did we go wrong?

That’s obvious. We never should have tried to defy the Demon Lord.

We were fooled by her appearance, mocked her seemingly stupid plans, and foolishly assumed she was nothing more than a young idiot who had let her ambition go to her head and was going to mess up everything.

But we were wrong.

It’s all too clear to me now.

The Demon Lord knows exactly what she’s doing and is deliberately trying to send us all to hell.

She is truly a heartless beast.

A horror who enjoys nothing more than watching us struggle, suffer, and die!

She could kill me on a whim at any moment.

I have to do as she says, serve her devoutly, and do anything I can to improve her opinion of me however I can…

“Then kill a lot and die a lot.”

Those were her orders.

So we have to kill as many of the enemy as we can.

Otherwise, we’ll all be killed instead!

“Sir Huey! We can’t take any more! We have to retreat!”

My aide is insisting that we retreat.

We’re attacking Fort Dazarro, one of the anchors in the humans’ defensive lines.

The Sixth Army was ordered to take it down.

Frankly, the balance of power is not in our favor.

In fact, it’s going even worse than I imagined.

My troops, the Sixth Army, are chiefly magic users.

This is partly because I myself specialize in magic, but mages are also more effective in large groups, which is why I deliberately organized my troops with a heavy emphasis on magic.

The role of a mage in war is to decimate the enemy army with the trump card called grand magic, a special kind of group-cast spell that causes damage on a massive scale.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the amount of grand magic an army is able to cast can be the deciding factor between victory and defeat.

And in order to cast it, multiple magic users need to use the Cooperation skill to work seamlessly together.

Hence the importance of having a large amount of mages, enough to use grand magic.

Ever since I was appointed as a commander, I’ve been increasing the number of mages under my command by teaching any promising soldiers I found and even negotiating to recruit soldiers with an aptitude for magic from other armies.

Thus, I believe the Sixth Army now boasts destructive power equal to that of any other force.

Unfortunately, that means our frontline soldiers are noticeably weaker than most, and so there is a distinct danger of the enemy breaking through their ranks and reaching our all-important mages in a field battle.

But when laying a siege, we can really put our destructive power to work.

As long as they didn’t sally out of their fort to attack, we could keep hammering them with grand magic from a safe distance until we annihilated the entire fort itself and secured our victory.

I was sure of it.

So why is everything going so horribly wrong?!

“Damn it!”

“Lord Huey, we must retreat!”

As I curse, the aide repeats his plea.

The Sixth Army is in such dire straits that we have little choice.

My aide’s panic makes it even clearer how desperate our situation has become.

We should’ve been able to win this.

It was a contest for magic supremacy, after all!

Yes, our opponent was using long-distance magic as well.

They challenged us to a battle of magic, the Sixth Army’s greatest strength.

me ow no vel.com is releasing your favorite novel

At the time, I chuckled to myself.

I was certain that we could win.

And yet!

How can we be losing?!

We still haven’t been hit with a single grand magic spell.

Although we haven’t been able to land any attacks, either, since they keep crushing our attempts somehow.

Hitting the enemy with grand magic is truly the key to winning a battle.

Naturally, it takes a great deal of time to prepare, and the large amount of magic power involved makes it immediately obvious that grand magic is about to be used.

The goal, then, is to protect one’s own grand magic while preventing the enemy from using it.

Occasionally, grand magic is even used to distract the enemy.

That’s how central its use is in battles like these.

In that sense, we are evenly matched.

They interfere whenever we try to use grand magic, but we’ve been defeating their attempts, too.

That means neither side has been able to utilize their most powerful attacks.

In other words, we’ve simply been shooting normal magic back and forth.

So why is our side the only one taking losses?!

Demons have higher stats than humans!

In a magic shoot-out, surely the side with higher stats should win—in this case, ours.

But the reverse is happening instead.

It doesn’t make sense.

What’s going on here?!

I’m told the enemy general is a human mage called Ronandt.

He’s a legend among humans who has allegedly lived since the days of the previous Demon Lord.

You can read this novel at m eow no vel.com for better experience

I did not believe I had underestimated him.

But still, I was confident that we wouldn’t lose in a pure contest of magical strength.

And yet—and yet!

I grind my teeth.

At this rate, the Demon Lord will kill me.

“We can’t…retreat.”

“But why?! If this continues, we’ll just keep losing more troops!”

“We just can’t!”

If we retreat without producing any success, the Demon Lord will be furious.

I’ll be killed.

Eaten.

No! I don’t want to die like that!

I have to produce some kind of results, no matter what it takes.

Which leaves only one option…

“We’re going to use grand magic. Back me up.”

“There’s no point trying to use grand magic now! We must retreat!”

“Just do it.”

I’ll cast grand magic with my own hands to crush the enemy.

Otherwise, there’s no way to turn the tides of battle.

But while I’m trying to prepare, no one else is moving a muscle.

These dimwits!

“Hurry up and help me!”

I stomp a foot in frustration.

meow novel . com will be your favorite novel site

Just then, something in my head snaps.

“Eh?”

Then, before I can figure out what’s going on, my consciousness fades to black.