Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? Volume Chapter 20

“……”

In the command center room, the atmosphere is downright oppressive.

The Demon Lord’s expression is grim.

Balto isn’t here.

He’s already been informed of Bloe’s death.

After saying he wanted to be alone for the time being, Balto left the room.

All who’s left are the Demon Lord, Güli-güli—aka Black—and me.

Yes, that’s right. The mysterious Ninth Army Commander, code-named Black, is actually Güli-güli!

Okay, now isn’t the time for joking around like that, I know.

The dark mood filling the room is mostly coming from Black here.

“…I have no right to complain.”

Finally, slowly, Black speaks.

“If you’ll excuse me, I believe I need a moment.”

With that, Black leaves, too.

Well, I can’t blame him.

I’m sure he has some thoughts about how things went down.

The Demon Lord watches Black leave, then lets out a heavy sigh.

“…Nothing ever goes to plan, y’know?”

“…Uh-huh.”

Frankly, this battle was a total failure.

We had several important goals, and we accomplished almost none of them.

“So the commanders we lost are Huey, Bloe, and Agner…”

The Demon Lord murmurs the names of the commanders who were killed in action.

Of the three, I’m not too broken up about Shota aka Huey, but the loss of Agner is tough to swallow. He was a very capable man in many ways.

And then there’s Bloe.

He was annoying and all, but I didn’t hate him.

“…So, White. Why didn’t you bring back Agner and Bloe?”

The Demon Lord’s doubts are understandable.

If I really wanted to, I could have forcibly extracted those two and brought them back.

Depending on your point of view, it might look like I let them die.

“Principle.”

“Mwuh?”

“On principle. Agner and Bloe were fighting with their lives on the line. Ready to die. It didn’t seem right to stop them.”

Agner and Bloe both knew they would almost certainly die, but they still saw the battle through to the end.

I couldn’t bring myself to tarnish that conviction.

Their intense determination reminded me of Araba’s final moments. I didn’t want to interfere.

“Gotcha.”

The Demon Lord doesn’t press the matter any further.

Huey’s death was a minor accident, but we didn’t plan to let Agner and Bloe die, and we could have prevented it.

But we didn’t.

Their deaths were a serious miscalculation.

But there was an even bigger one.

“I never imagined the hero would manage to beat the queen.”

“…Yeah.”

The biggest unexpected disaster was the hero defeating the queen taratect.

No, the fact that he won isn’t a problem in itself.

In fact, we sent it so the hero would defeat it…only after using the Sword of the Hero.

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“I still can’t believe he won without using the damn thing. Considering the differences in their stats and strength, was that a miracle or what?”

“Mm-hmm.”

I can’t blame her for complaining.

There was no way the hero should’ve possibly been able to beat the queen, no matter how hard he tried.

He would have to use the Sword of the Hero for any chance of surviving the battle, or so we thought.

That sword is extremely dangerous.

It’s a divine sword that our old pal D left in this world that can kill even a god.

It’s one use only, but it wouldn’t be safe to leave a dangerous weapon like that just lying around.

So when I learned that it had fallen into the hands of the current hero, I decided to force him to waste it.

That was the purpose of the queen, since it’d be no problem if he defeated that one.

The main goal was just to harvest the energy released by the Sword of the Hero.

But somehow, he managed not to use it.

Talk about a serious miscalculation.

“Well, we didn’t lose anything major, so I guess it’s fine,” I say aloud. “We can always make another queen. It was just a fake queen anyway.”

That thing wasn’t a real queen taratect.

It was one of my clones.

Thanks to my years of training, my mini-mes have evolved all the way into maximum-mes!

Heh-heh-heh!

They’re not quite as strong as a real queen but certainly close enough to take the hero down easily.

Or so I thought…

Sure, I held back so the hero would get a chance to use the Sword of the Hero, but who would’ve thought he would actually win without it?

Unreal.

“So. Our attempt to meddle with the system failed, too?”

Urk!

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That particular failure is kinda my mistake, or at least my lack of ability.

Earlier, when I killed the hero, I was trying to alter the system at the same time and erase the very existence of heroes forever.

In other words, to remove the Hero title.

The Hero title has a special effect against the Demon Lord title.

It’s set up so that the Demon Lord can never defeat the hero, no matter what.

I tried to interfere with the system to get rid of that nasty title, but it ended in failure.

There is a good reason for that, but I can’t make that excuse to the Demon Lord…

So I think I’ll just keep it to myself and call this a mistake on my part.

“Which means a new hero has been born somewhere, hmm?”

The Demon Lord heaves an even bigger sigh.

The Hero title is an inherited one.

When one hero dies, someone else in the world becomes the hero.

That means there’s not much point in killing the hero, since whoever it is, the main danger is the fact that they can defeat the Demon Lord.

But still, I don’t think we have to worry too much.

“There’s no way the next hero is gonna be like that one. For sure.”

At my firm statement, the Demon Lord just goes “uh-huuuuh…”

What’s with that iffy look she’s giving me?

“White, you really admired that hero, huh? You weak to a pretty face or what?”

“No. It’s not like that, okay?”

Why do I feel like we just had a conversation like this recently?

“I’m kidding. But yeah. I kinda get what you’re saying. That was a good hero.”

“…Mm-hmm.”

I watched that hero through my clones for a long time.

He had a pretty tough life, but he never stopped living nobly.

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I can’t imagine a hero that impressive is gonna come along again anytime soon.

The Demon Lord fiddles with the scarf that the hero was wearing.

“White, take a look at this. Apparently, it’s made of spider thread.”

She must have used Appraisal or something to inspect the scarf’s materials.

“I heard it traded at a high price among humans, but can you believe the hero was wearing it?” She snickers sarcastically. “Unreal.”

Wow, seriously?

Talk about a coincidence.

So the hero facing off against a spider demon lord was wearing a scarf made out of spider thread all along.

“So what should we do with this?”

I don’t think we need to do much of anything with it, but you do you.

Then a wicked smile spreads across the Demon Lord’s face.

“Wasn’t the hero’s younger brother a reincarnation? Let’s give this back to him, then.”

With that, the Demon Lord starts imbuing the scarf in her hand with magic.

I guess she’s putting some kind of effect on it.

“Yep, yep. A little present for the hero’s little brother, full of the Demon Lord’s divine protection. Pretty slick, don’t you think?”

Uh, no, that seems in pretty poor taste to me actually.

“Ahh, I’d love to see the look on Yamada’s face when he gets this…”

The Demon Lord grins with excitement, but I gotta say, that’s a pretty nasty move.

Poor Yamada…

It wasn’t until later that I would learn that Yamada himself was chosen as the new hero.