After the turbulent night came the dawn before a brand-new day. The lord's manor had become the Demon Race's lair: the assembled nobles had been thrown into the penal chamber, and everywhere within the manor stood Demon Race soldiers with cold, dreadful expressions.
The adjutant Hermet had never imagined he would be given such an opportunity—he was to serve a member of the Demon Race. Perhaps "serve" wasn't quite the right word; it would be more accurate to say "obey." The other party had the power to destroy the whole of Kinton, yet had not done so. That meant he first needed to understand her purpose in coming.
"Do you have any questions?"
The high-grade oil lamp burned with a faint fragrance. Seated at the desk, Aura wore an expressionless face, her attitude impossible to read.
"Um... Lady... Aura?" Hermet called out tentatively.
"Don't you have anything to report to me, your superior?" Aura picked up a high-end fountain pen inlaid with gemstones from the desk.
"I do, Lady Aura, I do."
Hastily replying, Hermet steeled his nerve and cleared his throat. "Right now, all three of Kinton territory's defensive lines have collapsed, the lord has been... been sanctioned, and the populace has been behaving very quietly as well. The entire territory is now wholly in your hands, Lady Aura. Tomorrow, all that's needed is to issue the populace a notice of the new lord. As for whether any unrest might break out—you have a great army at your command, so it should be nothing to fear."
"I already know all that."
"Ahem, well then, beyond that, I would advise that you, Lady Aura, dispatch the army to encircle and garrison all of Kinton, and seal off information in a timely manner."
"Why?"
"This is a place where many roads converge—it harbors the spies of the Empire and of the various nations. Today's events will become known to other countries, and in days to come they will inevitably draw many enemies here. Were it not for Hend's mercenary company maintaining order and the Central and Northern regions holding each other in check, this place would long ago have been absorbed into someone else's territory."
"Mm." Aura nodded, once again confirming the situation—it matched closely with what she had studied on the map and heard from Hend. This Human seemed quite clever, and most importantly, he didn't appear to be lying. "Not bad. You're passably qualified. From now on, as for the lord's affairs—unless it's a major matter that requires my confirmation—you can handle everything else as you see fit."
So lenient? Hermet couldn't believe his ears.
"Um... Lady Aura, may I, no, may this lowly one pose a question?" He still mustered the courage, wanting to try to ascertain Aura's intentions.
"Speak." Watching the man tremble in fear, Aura was in a good mood.
"Do you intend to be the lord of this place?"
"Of course! Didn't I already say so?"
"Why, though?"
"What do you mean, why? I just want to do it this way."
"..." For a moment Hermet was struck dumb.
"Alright, the governance of this place is left to you. I'm going to go take stock of the captured Human soldiers first. As for notifying the populace tomorrow and such, I can lend you some soldiers to handle it."
"Th—" Seeing that Aura, having come to trust him a little, was about to leave.
Hermet began to hesitate.
"Is there something else?"
"Regarding tomorrow's matter, may this lowly one make so bold as to offer a suggestion? This lowly one believes this suggestion will absolutely be of great help in securing your seat as lord, Lady Aura!"
"Let's hear it, then?"
"Reduce Kinton's tax decrees—the lamp tax, the bread tax, the drinking-water tax, the shoe-wearing tax, the spinster tax, and so on. This whole series of tax decrees was set up purely so the nobles could squeeze out money and resources. They're all taxes that don't need to exist."
"What's that supposed to be?" Aura didn't quite understand what a "tax decree" even was. As long as you had strongholds, food, and weapons, wasn't that enough?
Accustomed to commanding the Headless Knights and the Demon Race army, Aura believed that ruling simply meant leading the troops to fight from here to there, from there to somewhere farther still—victory expanded the army and the territory, and when tired you encamped to rest, granting the stronger fellows suitable positions like captain or general to help her manage the army, so that everyone would obediently heed her words under the Magic of Obedience.
Setting aside the years she had wasted away in Gaderia, this was how Aura had spent these past several hundred years.
Absolute obedience was the law.
Hermet was abashed; his answer seemed not to have satisfied her very much. Could it be that this Demon Race member was deliberately toying with him? Did she actually not want to give up the gold and silver within the territory, and was merely pretending not to understand?
"Well, it's no problem if you don't agree. After all—" Before he could finish, Aura cut Hermet off.
"Then abolish them."
"Huh?" That carefree, indifferent tone instead left Hermet momentarily stunned.
"What use is something that isn't needed?" With that, Aura pushed the door open and left.
How reasonable—there was no rebutting it. Even more unexpected was that Hermet's long-held wish had just been so easily realized. It all felt unreal: something Humans couldn't accomplish, a member of the Demon Race had accomplished instead.
When he came back to himself and realized Aura had already left, Hermet hurriedly pushed open the half-open door and ran down the corridor to catch up.
The Demon Race soldiers standing on either side of the stairwell merely glanced at the scrawny adjutant running past and made no move—Lady Aura had issued an order that, for the time being, Humans were not to be killed at will.
"Lady Aura, huff, huff... please wait!"
"You're really annoying, you."
"My apologies, Lady Aura, but do you truly intend to entrust all these affairs to me to handle?"
Hermet asked this on the surface, but inwardly he muttered in lingering dread: [Who exactly is the lord here? Handing over the great authority to notify the territory and the arrangement of every affair—could this be a test of my loyalty?]
"Of course. Stop coming to pester me."
Aura was now beginning to suspect she'd picked the wrong man. Something already spelled out clearly, and he still came running over to confirm it once more, like an idiot.
Letting Humans manage a Human territory—this was Aura imitating Nanoda's approach.
Gaderia had developed to this day; some external factors that couldn't be ignored kept cropping up, but in the end it had still grown to a considerable scale.
Aura believed that the first step in keeping Humans as livestock was to first find a Human underling to develop a territory on her behalf—what the later Demon Race would call "rule by men."
As long as the Humans were responsible for managing the territory, Aura would have plenty of things to consider: her daily Mana cultivation, the breaking-in and training of captured Human soldiers, the target of her next campaign, and so on.
Little did she know that, when Nanoda had done the same thing back then, it had actually only been because she wanted to be a hands-off boss; applied elsewhere, it wasn't necessarily the best method of rule.
If Aaron was Gaderia's most prestigious lord, then it was only natural that Gaderia's populace had not utterly despaired in the face of calamity, and so could rebuild and govern Gaderia well.
But Kinton was a chaotic den, a place that couldn't be any more wretched. Its populace was either long since numbed, or else unruly rogue mercenaries; nobles ran rampant, and depravity had become a plague.
Even so, Hermet still loved the homeland of his birth.
"Lady Aura, no matter what you intend to do next, I will absolutely set Kinton territory in order and not fail to live up to the opportunity you've given me!"
Having made up his mind, this time the adjutant's obedience was sincere. Hermet knelt down on both knees and, with that newly rekindled look in his eyes, watched the receding figure of Aura as she departed.
"Stop pestering me. Next time I really will cut off your head, Human."
Aura ignored the Human's inexplicable surge of enthusiasm.
What she did not know was that, viewed objectively, Aura's luck was just as good as Nanoda's. Had Aura chosen one of the other nobles, Kinton territory might well have destroyed itself without any need for Aura's slaughter.
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