"Hm-hm-hm~~"
The current Demon King, Fíliya, stood at the edge of the Demon King's Castle terrace with her cheeks cupped in her hands, watching with obvious interest as the figures below moved about in every direction she could see.
"You're in quite a good mood — humming little tunes and everything," said Solitär, Grand Prophetess of the Demon Race, who naturally remained at the Demon King's side at all times.
"Of course. Don't you find it entertaining, Solitär?"
Fíliya smiled.
"I can't quite say I do," Solitär answered with characteristic bluntness.
What the demons below were doing was simple enough: following Fíliya's instructions, hauling raw materials — stone, timber, and the like — to designated locations. Where exactly the fun was supposed to be in watching that, Solitär couldn't fathom. And yet ever since that day, Fíliya had developed a habit of standing here to watch her subjects work.
"It's just amusing. Like watching ants move house."
Fíliya pointed down at the long, unbroken line of workers below. From this height, they did indeed look rather like a colony of ants relocating on a rainy day.
Solitär tilted her head slightly. She still didn't quite get it.
"You know, I think I'm starting to understand how Serie sees things."
Fíliya continued, and Solitär simply watched her, waiting for her to go on.
"When you elevate your perspective high enough, the question of whether to intervene in the affairs of ants really does become a genuine dilemma."
Fíliya wore a look of visible consternation.
"Look — the work these demons are doing right now? If I took over... forget a few hundred people's worth of labor, I could blast through tens of thousands of people's worth in no time flat. Cleave through mountains, quarry stone, channel rivers — I could handle all the construction myself, alone. But then the people under me would have absolutely nothing to do. And besides, I'm the Demon King — at that point wouldn't I just be doing odd jobs for my own subordinates?"
"So Serie's approach of doing absolutely nothing is starting to make a strange kind of sense... if every problem required your top fighter to step in personally, how would you ever develop talent in anyone else?"
Fíliya sighed at that.
"Haah. There's so much ahead of us. The things I have to worry about just keep piling up. The monsters in the Far North are nearly hunted out, and the climate is completely unsuitable for farming... the Demon Race may not be large in number, but they still need to eat. Before long, food is going to become a serious problem."
Solitär, seeing Fíliya's troubled expression, nodded along with something approaching genuine sympathy.
She hadn't exactly had it easy lately either. Despite holding the title of Grand Prophetess, the actual work she'd been doing was closer to that of a head cook. The only one who could help her was Amy; everyone else was dead weight. Fortunately, the lower-ranking demons could at least hunt monsters themselves — just slapping large cuts of monster meat over an open fire was enough — so their meals weren't Solitär's problem. Otherwise, cooking for hundreds of people every single day would have broken her long ago.
"There's a perfectly simple and direct solution, you know," Solitär said, as though something had just occurred to her, pitching her voice toward Fíliya in a teasing lilt.
"Oh?"
"We're the Demon Race, aren't we? The most direct approach is... raiding. When resources run short, apply pressure to the neighboring nations, demand tribute. That's exactly what humans do to each other."
Solitär offered this suggestion with a pleasant smile.
"Mm... sound strategy. I'll make one small adjustment, though."
Fíliya shook her head with a helpless look.
"The age of brute force is behind us. We're supposed to be bringing the Demon Race into a world of reason. That said — 'resource exchange' is actually a workable idea. What the Demon Race has in absolute abundance is powerful mages. Just looking at the lot down there, I can already spot plenty of promising candidates. With a little guidance from me, and given the Demon Race's natural talent, they'd grow quickly."
"Even if we handed over some minor, inconsequential magic for the human world to study and research, we could probably exchange it for a substantial amount of supplies. But magic is also our most precious asset — if I can avoid trading it away, I'd rather."
"So what grand idea does the Demon King have?" Solitär asked with a light smile.
"Two ideas, at the moment. First: reshape the environment of the Far North, and simultaneously breed crops capable of surviving in its conditions. The obvious problem is that even for me, achieving something like that would realistically take several decades — maybe a century."
Solitär couldn't help but click her tongue.
She hadn't expected Fíliya to open with something that sounded like pure fantasy. Using magic to reshape the climate of an entire region... it was, without question, yet another thing no one else could have conceived of.
Fíliya really did love doing things like this — breaking the rules the world was built on.
"And then there's the second option, which would show results much faster: simply sever the continental plate of the Far North, then pick up that landmass and relocate it somewhere more habitable."
At Fíliya's second proposal, Solitär was left thoroughly speechless.
Moving a continental plate... and that was the faster option?
"Moving a continental plate... is that actually something that can be done?"
She couldn't help but ask.
"Of course — didn't the Empire demonstrate it once?" Fíliya said with a smile. Her expression was easy and unbothered, though inwardly she had no real certainty she could pull it off herself — which made it fairly obvious she was only floating the idea as a half-joke.
"Though... the connections between continental plates are remarkably tight. Back then, the Empire only shifted its territory a short fraction of the distance, and even that triggered a whole cascade of consequences. If I actually severed the Far North's plate and moved it elsewhere... earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanic eruptions would probably be the least of it. To avoid catastrophe on that scale, let's go with the safer first option — spend a few hundred years gradually transforming the Far North into a livable environment. In any case, the one thing the Demon Race is never short on is time."
At that, Solitär narrowed her eyes and fixed them intently on Fíliya's profile.
"Hm?"
Fíliya blinked, with an expression of mild regret.
"You're not worried about whether you can actually do it... you're worried about what kind of disaster it would bring to the human world if you did. You won't even accept the proposal to raid the humans — you'd rather take the long way around and pour centuries into reshaping the environment. For a Demon King, aren't you being just a little too protective of humans?"
"Mm... I suppose you're right. Can't be helped, really. When you're raised by a Pacifist, what can you do? The influence runs deep."
Fíliya laughed at herself, then continued.
"And besides, it's not as though I love humans more than I love the Demon Race — obviously I don't. Look at those people down there: I personally stooped to preparing the bricks, the timber, the mortar — all of it — for them. I took the time to teach them how to build houses. Where they want to build, what they want to build — that's entirely up to them. None of the bizarre tangle of taxes that plagues the human world exists here. And now I'm even losing sleep over their future food supply. Honestly... how magnificent am I."
As she said it, Fíliya propped her hand against her forehead with characteristic self-admiration.
"Yes, yes, you're the greatest. At this rate, why not retire from being Demon King and go by 'Wise King' instead?"
Solitär crossed her arms, rolled her eyes at her with barely concealed exasperation.
"I'll pass on that one. I feel like I'm not quite worthy of the title. 'Demon King' still sounds better to me, when all is said and done."
Fíliya turned her head, meeting Solitär's gaze — and her smile only grew more radiant.
____
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