Chapter 399: Assuming the Blame

“…Well…I see things are going well here,” I hear a voice come out of nowhere and look to see who it is, seeing Pandora, quickly I bow to her a little scared for not having felt when she arrived.

“Y-Your Majesty,” I say bowing, my hands gripping tightly as I’m sweating cold from how nervous I am.

“Freya, get up, we have more important things to do than waste time like this,” she says as I get up somewhat fearfully, I’m very nervous and I fear she’ll blame me for Lilith’s death, since no one went to help her because we didn’t even know she was in danger.

’She seems irritated…’ She must already know about Lilith, she probably found Aokitsu at the castle, I quickly get up as I look at the troops fighting against the humans.

The battlefield is full of bodies, blood, and the cries of soldiers being taken down on both sides, it’s not really a very pleasant sight to see, the metallic smell of blood is everywhere.

“Report,” she says, just observing our troops as well, but her gaze at the bodies of the dead allies is as if they were irrelevant.

“Well, we’re doing well in terms of supplies since a large part of the bodies is processed into food, although not immediately, and despite considerable losses, we’re managing to push the humans back to the ships, they’ll probably retreat in two more days…”

“Too slow, I want them out of here today, no matter what it takes, after the humans retreat, we should move the troops to the border, we can use teleportation to move part of them to help Elena,” her tone of command is cold.

’This…’ I quickly understand what she means and although I think it’s a radical decision, I’m not the one leading here, it’s her, so I’ll just obey.

“Understood, Your Majesty, I’ll do it immediately…” She just ordered that we expel the humans even if we have to sacrifice our own troops, as I prepare to go, I notice Pandora’s arm.

’What’s that black thing? Armor?’ I don’t feel mana coming from that black armor on her right arm, and Pandora is emitting a lot less mana than usual, it even makes sense considering she fought all the heroes alone.

“Before you go, Freya, have our troops retreat to the sides, I need some space, I’ll give you 10 minutes to do that,” she gives this extra order as I quickly start running to the strategy tent.

I grab a relic and start giving orders to the troops to clear the space by opening the middle of the battlefield, normally this would be bad since it creates a breach for the enemies to invade, but Pandora knows what she’s doing.

I also inform part of the army to retreat to the back, that we will bombard the area with magic, we couldn’t find the enemy’s crystal, so we can’t use a massively destructive magic, but a normal magic bombardment is still possible.

And the humans, like opportunistic vermin, quickly try to enter through the open area, advancing against us, but as soon as exactly 10 minutes pass, I hear a thunderous sound.

And looking outside, I see a colossal shark of pure darkness, it must be at least 300 meters tall, and it’s devouring everything in its path in a straight line, all the humans who tried to invade through the opening are now becoming food.

’Do we really need to bombard the area?’ Just this thing deals with all the common soldiers, in the end, this is the difference between a Demon King and common soldiers, they don’t have a chance of winning.

I go back to where Pandora was, seeing that there are also many small sharks circling the area, this will probably make the humans retreat since the losses outweigh the gains.

“Freya, tell me, did a hero appear here?” Pandora asks without looking at me.

“Y-Yes, one appeared, but retreated to the ships and used a teleportation escape circle, probably being taken back to the kingdom as the only… survivor.”

“I see… so she still managed to get out of my territory… start bombarding the area with fire magic, do it for the next half hour, while I’ll have the sharks attack the ships, this will force them to flee since if they stay, it means losing their escape route,” she warns, as I agree and immediately start formulating magic.

“Aokitsu is currently going to help Elena, so these troops here are under my and your command, but as soon as we’re done here, I’ll go back to the castle, so everything will be under your responsibility in this area…”

“Understood, Your Majesty…”

“After we’re done here and I return, you should bring the troops to my kingdom, find someone to heal the wounded, and prepare to move the combat-ready troops to the border, I want to expel the humans from my territory in no more than two weeks,” she says authoritatively as she starts to enter the shadows.

“…” I just bow, keeping the orders in mind while thinking about who can help heal the wounded now that Lilith is not here.

’The church that Lilith was taking care of has a lot of people capable of helping with healing… but I don’t think we’ll have enough healing for so many wounded…’ The natural thing will be to heal those we can, and leave those who are about to die without healing, after all, we can’t spend resources on people who are already almost dead.

The resource limit will force us to only heal severely injured people who can still stay alive, and people with serious but non-fatal wounds, and if healed, they can return to the fight.

’Now… how do I explain to the soldiers why Lilith is not there to heal them?’ I don’t think Pandora wants to inform that Lilith is dead, that would be bad, so we should hide it for a long time.

…

…

…

I watch the shadow sharks attacking the human ships, they finally realized that the sharks’ focus is on the boats, while the giant shark is devouring any humans on land.

I see them desperately preparing the ships to leave, but without the heroes’ abilities, there is no longer any way to move the ships extremely fast.

’Two months… considering the time, they’ll take two months at sea before they can return to the human kingdom…’ Obviously I won’t let them escape, no one invades my lands and gets out alive while trying to flee.

I’m just letting them “flee” because it will be harder for them to resist at sea, the truth is that I already have Delphina’s support in this, I asked Delphina a simple favor before the war started.

And this favor was the following, if humans tried to flee by ship to return to the human kingdom, Delphina should send something to kill everyone on the ships, and she said she would send her divine beast to do that.

So as soon as these humans retreat from here and enter open sea, they will be killed, that’s why I don’t try to stop their escape, I just attack the ships to force them to flee.

’It’s not like these humans will be missed’ the human kingdom still has many troops in its kingdom, and that’s where things will really turn into a massacre.

“What to do…” I think about how to deal with Lilith’s death, it’s no use for me to lament too much about it, I won’t let sadness and anger cloud my thoughts, the worst part is that Lilith was too strong.

With her being so strong, her death will shake all the demons, and it gets even worse when we consider the fact that she was the saint who healed all the demons and took care of barriers during emergencies.

’If I tell them that a human killed Lilith… many demons will get angry at the humans… but the number of demons afraid will increase’ No matter how blindly loyal they are to me, if a demon feels fear, they will fight more weakly.

“Hmm, in the end, this is the answer, isn’t it?” A king must take on both the love and the anger of a population, I will declare to the demons that I killed Lilith so there won’t be the problem of fear.

And since they are extremely loyal to me, despite being outraged and maybe even uncomfortable, they will still accept this decision, I just need a good excuse to explain why I would kill Lilith when she is so useful in the war.

’I can’t stain Lilith’s image by saying she was a traitor… besides, that would be a lie because she was loyal, and that would also be ridiculous and a dishonor on my part… what excuse is good enough?’ It has to be something that doesn’t dishonor Lilith, but also doesn’t make it seem like I “killed” her without reason.

“Older sister… that… can work…” The demons love my older sister, not only because she was the strongest Demon King that ever existed, but because she was an insanely good king who greatly helped the demons, she literally created the golden age of the demons.

And since she is my sister and Lilith has already served her, I can use that as an excuse, I can say that I killed Lilith to devour her body and find a way to bring my sister back.

Since Lilith is a loyal servant, it would make sense for her to sacrifice herself for my desires and to bring my sister back, and of course, the only ones who will know the truth are those closest to me.

’I think I’ll go with this option… and it’s not 100% a lie either, after all, I’ll use the characteristic I stole from Lilith to go to the moon.’

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