Chapter 96

To the Castle

I followed the observer as he leapt from roof to roof . He was moving like a character straight out of an action movie, but for some odd reason, the way he hopped reminded me of a rabbit . Indignant, angry thoughts coursed through me as I followed him . Chasing him was a royal pain . I was going to catch him . And when I did, I was going to make him pay .

A random thought hit me as I moved . You know, this might just be the chance I've been waiting for .

I had been able to detach myself from the hero and the order she was affiliated with in a manner that didn't scream suspicious . I likely would have been stuck as a part of one of the church's squads had I stuck around with them any longer, and that would have been bad . I would have lost the opportunity to act on my own . As such, I had been thinking about how I would eventually part from them . But now, I didn't have to .

Bunny boy, the ninja wonder, was heading straight towards the royal castle . Following him would ultimately allow me to enter the enemy stronghold . The path he took would quite literally lead me right where I needed to be . I had realized along the way that our little incident had stirred up far too much of a commotion . The prince and his allies would soon realize that the church was out to dethrone him . It was only a matter of time . And catching the observer wouldn't buy much of it . It's not like I can get any intel out of him either . He's just another agent . I doubt he'll know much of anything at all .

My best course of action was to continue shadowing him . And as such, I stopped thinking about the many ways I could beat him senseless and continued to simply tail him from a distance . With my Stealth skill active the whole way, of course .

The act of chasing him on its own was repetitive . I kicked off a roof, fluttered through the air, stuck a landing, and repeated . I had found it rather difficult at first . I kept tripping all over myself and almost plummeting to the ground . It took a while, but I did get the hang of it eventually .

I had thought about deploying my wings instead . I hadn't been all that interested in mastering parkour . But alas, I chose to . I hadn't wanted to run the risk of being seen with them, no matter how low the risk may be . There was still a chance of someone spotting me even without my wings, of course, but realizing that I was present would be all the act would amount to . Being spotted with my wings out, on the other hand, would basically waste all the effort I'd spent pretending to be human in the first place . And I wasn't about to chuck my sunk costs out the window for no real reason .

Wait . Are demon lords actually demons? Or are they technically two different things? My race kinda changed when I evolved, and I don't really think you actually need to be a demon to lord over them, right? Just what is a demon lord anyway?

Most of the races were fairly well defined . Humans were well… human . Beastkin had animalistic features . Demi-humans such as dwarves and elves were defined as creatures that were human-like in nature . Demons, however, weren't nearly as well defined . They were quite literally thought of as everything else . Anything even remotely humanoid that wasn't a human, demi-human, or beastkin was a demon . If we go by that definition, then I guess I technically am a demon .

The issue with the aforementioned definitions was that they were fairly ambiguous . Specifically, there was no clear line between a demi-human and a demon . Demi-humans were thought of as demi-humans simply because the humans had widely accepted them as such—a fact that had seemingly resulted from the fact that they were slightly more human-like in nature . Demons, on the other hand, apparently followed the general trend of being slightly more hotblooded and combat-oriented .

But again, the terms were vague and purely up to one's subjective judgement .

Despite starting off as an archdemon myself, I didn't know all that much about demons . One of the few things I'd heard about them was that they lacked unity, which made sense given how they were defined .

There were too many different groups shoved under the umbrella of the demonic . It only made sense for them to be disparate in nature . The one similarity the demon tribes shared, according to Lefi, was that they were pretty much all musclebrains . When most people thought of demons, they thought of members of the fiend or wingbearer races . As such, these two races and others like them came to be known as exemplary examples of what it meant to be a demon . There was only one problem . Both fiends and wingbearers advocated that might made right . Both tribes believed that it was the strong that should rule . And because they were considered prime examples, many other tribes started to follow their lead; it didn't take long for the vast majority of demons to become bonafide meatheads .

That said, there was obviously no way that every single member of every single demonic race was focused entirely on becoming more powerful . There were non-combatants amongst them . Case in point: Leila . Our resident demon girl was more or less the exact opposite of a musclebrain . Though she's a bit of a weirdo, so it might actually just be her . Oh yeah, speaking of Leila…

The sheep-horned demon had told me a fair amount about the current state of the world . According to her, demonkind's current leaders no longer believed that they would be able to defeat the humans alone . They had recently put the differences between themselves, the beastkin, and the demi-humans aside and started collaborating in an effort to surmount the human threat as a joint force . Moreover, there had been an effort to gather up the more intelligent demons in order to create a better roadmap for the future . That last bit alone already gave way to the fact that there were in fact differences between races and the members thereof . I wonder what a country run by demons is like . I should probably pay it a visit sometime .

I continued to chase the man while contemplating thought after thought . A bit of time passed, and we eventually reached the capital city's centrepiece, the castle that I'd been gazing upon from afar ever since I first initiated this wild goose chase .

It was a splendid structure, made of pure white stone . It was polished, gaudy, and basically everything you'd expect from a neat little castle . But that was all it amounted to . Heh . Mine's way better .

I sat relishing in a sense of superiority, but not for long . Bunny boy had finally stopped bouncing from roof to roof . He had reached his destination . After leaping off a building and falling back to the ground, he looped around the castle and entered not through its front gate, but rather, a rear entrance that was situated along one of its outer ramparts .

The single soldier standing guard prompted him for his ID, which he pulled from within his hooded cloak . He then began moving again, and this time, headed towards a door leading inside the castle .

I continued tailing him . I carefully leapt over the wall while making sure to make as little noise as possible before moving towards the door . To be frank, I was a little tense, so I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, and reached for the doorknob .

Only to find that it didn't turn .

There was a bit of a rattling sound, but that was it . The doorknob didn't budge, and the door didn't open . It was locked . Shit . I should've seen this coming . Of course people lock doors behind them . Why wouldn't they?

And though my actions should have alerted the man and informed him something was wrong, it turned out that I was lucky .

"Who's there?" Because, although he had appeared suspicious, the man simply opened the door and stuck his head out its entrance . He seemed to think that I was the guard, and that I had business with him, but he was wrong .

The first thing I did as I saw his face was twist my body and deliver the day's third roundhouse kick . He groaned a bit as his head was smashed against the wall before collapsing onto the door and widening the opening . But that was it . He didn't manage to react quickly enough to make any noise .

I immediately slipped into the doorway, confirmed that there wasn't anyone else around, dragged the unconscious peeping tom inside, and shut the door .

"Holy shit . " I heaved a sigh of relief . "That was close . "

I tried to make my break-in as stealthy as I could . I tried not to make any noise, and I tried not to get spotted . The idea was to be as stealthy as a snake in the grass, to keep things as easy as possible by preventing my foes from sounding the alarm . The less they suspected, the less on guard they would be . And the less on guard they were, the easier it would be for me to take control of the situation .

But evidently, I didn't quite have all the skills I needed to pull it off . I didn't even realize that I should have checked to see if the door was locked . I was an amateur attempting something that one should never try at home, something meant only for highly trained professionals .

And unlike a certain snakey dude with a beard, I wasn't a member of the special forces . And I couldn't just become him . Things just weren't going to be that easy . Speaking of good old snake and 'stache, he's boss as fuck . He can go undetected standing in plain sight, and the genome soldiers almost never see him even when he's right next to them .

I now understood that completing a mission without ever being revealed was difficult, and that he could only ever do it because he was special . Amateurs like me were sure to be caught in a matter of minutes . Yeah . That's right . This isn't an excuse at all . He's just totes OP . Probably had a ridiculously high-level Stealth skill or something . [1]

"Alright, what next?"

I raised a hand to my chin as I considered my options . I had already completed all my initial objectives just by successfully making it into the building . Though I did have some overarching goals, I hadn't bothered formulating a detailed plan on my way here . Such is the spirit of laissez-faire .

While I would have loved to continue without a plan, I knew that it wasn't a good idea, so I reviewed my objectives . The first was to murder the fuck out of Prince Douchebag . The second was to restore the old king to his rightful place on the throne .

With my objectives and the things the knights had mentioned yesterday in mind, I realized that saving the king was probably the more important of the two . I wanted a bit of one on one time, and I needed to make sure that I got to him before he was killed . The moment he died would be the moment the prince's faction gained legitimacy, spelling an end to the whole operation . Wait . Why haven't they killed him anyway? If I was rooting for the prince, then snuffing out the old geezer the throne used to belong to would probably be the first thing on my list . He's basically the opposing faction's leader . His rescue would put me and my bros in some deep shit . So why haven't they just done it? Are they planning to execute him in public for the sake of propaganda or something?

I caught myself considering something inconsequential, so I shrugged it off and focused on my objective . I needed to save the king . Urgently . I think they said they had him locked up underground?

“Now, if I was making a castle, where would I put my underground dungeon…?” I scanned my surroundings as I muttered, only to realize that I was in a passageway . There was nothing in front of me but a single door .

I didn't have the liberty to interrogate the guy I knocked out . He had the whole douchey spy aesthetic going for him . It was obvious that he was tight-lipped; he wasn't going to crack so easily . I didn't exactly have all that much knowledge of torture . There was a pretty good chance I'd accidentally kill him if I tried . And because I wasn't all that keen on gore, I was more likely to damage myself than extract any meaningful information .

There wasn't much of a choice for me to do anything but proceed as is . I would stay stealthed and wander around the castle in order to fill the map . Guess I'll set up a few Evil Eyes while I'm at it .

As they were quite expensive, I only had a few that could operate outside the dungeon's bounds . But at least it's better than nothing .

My next course of action in mind, I walked across the hall and reached for yet another doorknob .

***

TL Note

[1] Metal Gear references, a dime a dozen .

Editor's note (Joker): Hey, guys! Joker here . Yup, yet another fast chapter coming out thanks to all of Boss Young'un's hard work . He's lookin' for a job, keeping his skills brushed up, playing loads of games, and still has time to crank these chapters out . I dunno if I could do it . It truly is a labor of love for him . My mom's birthday was the other day, so naturally I spent it playing DnD with a couple of friends . Started up a 5e game and they all seemed to like it, so I'm glad . But don't worry . We went out to eat the day after to celebrate, because the restaurant she wanted to go to was closed . It was pretty good food too, so I was happy . All right, letter sack, letter sack… Ah, here it is . Looks like we got three letters today, so a big thank you goes out to Zaow (@Zaowchen), madcart, and Zehd Cashew . Remember, if you've got a question you'd like me to ask, post it in the comments and I'll reply . Get noticed by your senpai today! See y'all in the next chapter!