Overlord, Vol. 9: The Caster of Destruction
Intermission
The young girl seated in the sole chair—a throne—of a luxurious but not terribly large room raised her voice, which anyone would have said was innocent and befitting her age.
“All right! I’m leaving it up to you!”
“Yes, Your Majesty! You can count on me!”
The man who seemed to be a knight stood up from his prostrate position in front of the little girl, his head bowed, before leaving the room in a self-assured manner.
The door closed, and a few seconds later, the girl asked her prime minister next to her, “Is it okay now?”
“Yes. He was the last one, so it’s no problem.”
At the sound of the man’s cool voice, the little girl’s cute, naive expression crumpled.
She sulked—that was the only way to describe it.
Perhaps because she was tired, her eyes went dull and half-closed, her lips warped into a frown, and her shoulders slumped.
“I feel horrible.”
She was acting less like a little girl and more like an exhausted woman in her forties. But her voice sounded youthful. It was like her external youth had remained, but her insides had changed.
“You must be tired.”
“I really am. I’d really like to quit this form.” She picked up the hem of her skirt. “There’s something disturbing about these clothes that leave my legs hanging out.”
“I’ve told you many times, Your Majesty, but there’s nothing that can be done.”
This girl was queen of the Dragon Kingdom, the Black Scale Dragonlord, Draudillon Oryukules.
She was called a dragonlord, but her combat ability was the same as any average person’s. Incidentally, according to the Theocracy’s criteria, she was a true dragonlord, but since it amounted only to the powers she was born with, she was also sometimes known by the rare term true yet false dragonlord.
The issue was that being true or false depended on whether one could use primeval magic or not.
“The reason everyone works so hard if you’re in this form is that it stimulates their urge to protect you.”
“Does everyone have a loli complex? I think being bigger feels better in all kinds of ways…”
Draudillon held her hands in front of her flat chest and jigglingly mimed something.
“That form certainly does have its—”
“Don’t say ‘form’! That’s my real body!”
“Do excuse me, Your Majesty.”
“Oh, c’mon, I can tell you don’t have any intention of apologizing whatsoever.”
“That’s not true.”
Gazing at her prime minister’s cold smile and unable to read the emotions behind it, Draudillon averted her eyes in frustration.
“You seem to understand. Back to the point, it’s true that you might be more popular with men in that form, but that’s not the case with women. In contrast, with this form, we can expect nice reactions from everyone regardless of sex or age. You understand that, I’m sure. If you want to assume the other form, you should wait until after we make a breakthrough in the country’s current situation. Do you have any bright ideas?”
“…Don’t call it a ‘form.’”
“That said, at the rate we’re going, you’ll be able to take whatever form you like. There will be no one left to see it anyway!”
The thought of the Dragon Kingdom’s current state caused a heavy silence to fall between them.
“So this beastman invasion will be different from the others?”
“Without a doubt. I hardly think that great host’s main objective could be the same as the piddling armies that have come up until now. Surely, they mean to bring down our nation. It seems like they’re determined to put up livestock pens or something.”
Near the Dragon Kingdom was the country of the beastmen.
Beastmen were subhumans who were like lions or tigers—carnivorous beasts—who walked on two legs. One look at their heads was enough to tell they were meat eaters, and naturally, their diet included humans.
Races that ate humans weren’t rare. In three of the six great countries competing in the center of the continent, humans were food. In the troll country a little removed from the central area, they were such human connoisseurs that the best food for entertaining guests was human fetuses that were about six months along.
To meat eaters like that, this country was just hordes of food gathered together.
Up until this point, perhaps because the beastmen had seen them as food that would multiply on its own if they let it be, there hadn’t been a full-scale invasion. But for some reason, the latest attack was gigantic, and three cities had already fallen.
The feasting going on out there was enough to make even the queen feel sick.
Naturally, since there was no way to negotiate with this external enemy, the nation had come together against it. They were trying to cope, but beastmen simply had different base stats compared to humans.
Just as indicated by the fact that one of the major countries in the center of the continent belonged to the beastmen, their physical abilities far surpassed those of humans.
For example, if a human and a beastman grew up in the same manner, the beastman’s stats would be ten times greater than the human’s.
In adventurer circles, they had established difficulty ratings—numbers measuring the strength of monsters. If an adult human was 3, then an adult beastman was 30. Mysteriously, yet perhaps because average beastman strength was so high, there weren’t a great number of incredibly powerful individuals; that was the sole saving grace.
“For now, a group of adventurers rallying around the adamantite plates is fighting them off, but they’re outnumbered. They aren’t able to stop the various armies—they must be tribal units or something… Our only option may be to gather all the people in the capital and wait for our opponents’ food supply to run out, but I fear our food situation will worsen first.”
“My head hurts. The future is too dark.”
“Otherwise, we could send in a select team to bash their heads in? It may only invite their fury, but if we can’t stop the invasion, we should at least do what we can.”
“And the leader of that team would be that guy, I suppose?”
“Yes, him.”
There was only one person the pair could be referring to: “Furious Flash” Celebrate of the adamantite-plate adventurer team Crystal Tear. He used a fencing technique called Effulgent Sword, hence the nickname, and his class was holy lord.
“That guy definitely has a loli complex. Whenever we’re talking, his eyes are just plastered to my body. Does he really get such a kick out of this flat thing? Why not just look at the wall, then?”
“Because it’s a fetish. Yes, it’s true, Your Majesty. He has a loli complex.”
Draudillon’s face twitched.
“I wasn’t asking you to make a definitive declaration… I wish our nation’s adamantite plates were a little more normal…”
“What are you talking about? All you have to do is play the part of a cute, pure child and he’ll fight like mad for you. Isn’t he actually extremely convenient for us?”
“But I’m going to have to fulfill his desires at some point! …Hey! Don’t look at me like I’m the pork for tomorrow’s breakfast!”
Her subordinate heaved a conspicuous sigh, and she practically popped a blood vessel.
“Isn’t that all, though, Your Majesty? Please just bear it. You’re still better off than the people who are literally being eaten.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“…If I had the money, I would hire Optix full-time, but what is the Theocracy even doing anyway?”
“Hmm, I’m afraid I have no idea.”
“In past years, they contributed to no small degree. Now is about the time they usually come to help us out, right? I’m not saying they have to send the Black Scripture, but why don’t they at least dispatch the Sunlit one?”
The Theocracy had been secretly sending in forces to save the Dragon Kingdom. It wasn’t much, but they probably helped because she was the head of the country.
“This is what we get for leaving our national defense up to another country. How sad.”
“It’s not like we wanted to! We had no choice. You know that. Our military expenses are already pushing it. If we try to increase them any further, we’ll go broke! Plus, even if we allocate money, it’s not like the soldiers will immediately be stronger.” The Dragon Kingdom had long been spending quite a sum on a yearly basis to counter the beastmen threat, and this was what had come of it. But she wanted to think that spending what they had had kept damages lower than they might have been. “If the Theocracy has abandoned us… Right. What if we asked the empire for help? If we fall, the next will be the empire, right?”
“The Katze Plain is there, so it won’t be the empire straightaway. They could also go around the lake and strike the Theocracy.”
“…Yeah, maybe they aren’t brave enough to plunge into a zone where tons of undead spawn.”
Incidentally, both of them excluded the wyvern-tamer race in between.
“It’s less about bravery and more that they can’t eat undead. There’s no point in conquering them. The only ones who would be happy to take that territory are other undead. Plus, isn’t the empire busy? It’s almost time for their annual war, right?”
“It’s a bit late this year.”
“Hmm, yes, it’s about half a year late. We got this proclamation about some caster, if you’d like to see it.”
“Eh, who cares about the situation in other countries? We need to worry about how to save our own country!”
“Aren’t you the one who brought it up, Your Majesty? …What about using your magic?”
The prime minister waved a finger around. That must have been what he imagined magic to be. Draudillon winced.
“Primeval magic? That’s not the sort of thing a person—even someone with an eighth of dragon’s blood—can control. One wrong move and I could end up assisting in the country’s downfall. It’s our last resort.”
“Our last resort? I hope the day we need it will never come. All right, I’m going to request support from the Theocracy.”
“Okay! Thanks!”
Draudillon responded in a naive, childlike manner, and the prime minster looked coldly at her. “That’s it, Your Majesty. If you can find the wherewithal to do that, it seems like you can write thirty letters to encourage the commanders at the front—tell them a little girl believes in them. And of course, make sure to do it with a child’s handwriting.”
“Blegh. I can’t do that sober. Bring me a drink.”
“Understood. I don’t mind if you get wasted, just please make sure the work gets done today.”
The prime minister bowed and left the room.
Seeing him off, Draudillon looked down at her hands.
“Spirit magic, huh?”
Primeval magic was different from normal magic in that it was cast with souls. If she sacrificed a ton of her people, then connected and broke down their souls, she would probably be able to use an immensely powerful spell. She could probably even imitate the huge explosion her great-grandfather had told her about—the Platinum Dragonlord’s ultimate attack.
That said, she was far weaker than a dragon, so even an optimistic estimate meant the spell required a million sacrifices.
Draudillon buried her face in her hands, trembling at the feeling that it was hell that awaited her no matter what happened.