Chapter 16: An unwanted title

Now that I no longer need to grab everyone's attention I can finally descend to the ground, since my wings don't let me stay still in midair I had been using one of the few wind spells I know, 'feather fall', which is used to slow down someone's falling speed, but it seems like with my extremely high magic stat, it can make me fall slow enough to make it look like I'm standing still, however, every time I use a spell from an attribute other than dark I get a small headache, so I'm glad that I can stop now.

As soon as I touch the ground, the leaders of both armies come towards me with a look of uncertainty, I'd say that they are actually rather brave, the rest of the soldiers are still unable to move after the shock from before.

There's an awkward silence as the two of them stand in front of me, maybe I'm the one who should talk first.

"Am I right to believe that both of you have decided to give up on fighting?"

"Yes... we acknowledge that we are no match for you"

"We surrender as well"

Well, that's good, but now I need to make sure that they understand why they should not throw away their lives so easily.

"You know... you could have died very easily just a moment ago, but I made sure that you stayed alive, do you understand why I did that?"

The two of them seem to be unsure of what to say for a moment, but then the ork leader finally decides to speak.

"Of course, you didn't want to kill those you were about to conquer"

"Eh? What do you mean by that?"

And then all of them start kneeling in front of me, first the leaders and then the rest of the soldiers.

"Wait, that's not what I... "

When I try to get them to stop, I'm interrupted by a loud 'ping' noise that seems to come from inside my head, what was that?

"Wow, you always surpass all expectations, I only told you to scare them a little, but you went and made them all your servants, good job!"

Arana is standing right to my left... how does she always manage to sneak up on me like that?

"Ara, do you know what that 'ping' noise just now was?"

"A 'ping' noise? Are you talking about the sound you hear to warn you when you get a new skill or title?"

Oh, there's a sound for that? I never paid much attention to it, so I didn't know.

I guess I'll take a look at my status then, I move away from the demons and take out my appraisal stone.

Skills

Focused mind

Self-control

Fast reading

Quick casting

Mana conservation

Encyclopedic knowledge

Multi-casting

Mmmmm, nothing new here, then I guess it must be a title?

Titles

Outcast

Bookworm

Deranged perfectionist

Archmage

Queen of darkness

Demon lord

Well, there certainly seems to be a new title there...

But this is clearly a mistake, I mean, I'm not even a demon in the first place! There's no way I could have gotten THAT title, right?

...

Looking away and then looking back doesn't seem to work, the title is still there.

Let me see what this is about...

Demon lord

An individual who has made at least 1000 demons swear subservience towards them through the use of power and fear.

Increases any feelings of fear caused by the titleholder.

Allows the use of certain spells related to this title.

Oh... I guess there's nothing in that description that says a demon lord needs to be a demon... and I certainly made these demons subservient by using 'power and fear', but isn't this requirement a bit too small? 1000 doesn't seem like such a large number of people.

This is bad, while the belief that 'demons are evil' has been mostly dead for a long time now, everybody still believes that 'demon lords are evil' ... including the demons.

As a consequence of the way they are born, the demon races have always had a problem with choosing their leadership. First of all, it's more difficult for them to choose a ruler because of their bloodline since they mostly don't have parent and child relationships, in addition to that, it's hard to have a consistent society at all when the new groups of demons can appear anywhere at any time.

And then there's the fact that there are some demons who are a lot stronger than the others, this means that a lot of the rulers of the demons end up getting their position because of their power and nothing else, and needless to say, their strength does not help when it comes to being good leaders, and the arrogance they usually get from their power makes things even worse, those are what we call 'demon lords', and they have been the cause of all kinds of problems for the world throughout history.

Well, in the first place, the demon lord title itself mentions that it belongs to someone who rules with 'power and fear', that's clearly the kind of title a villain would have, and now I have it...

"Hahahaha, that title suits you so well! I guess you've finally taken the first step towards world domination"

Arana is just laughing at me, how can she react like that when she sees her friend get into even more trouble?

The demons are looking at her laugh with a fearful expression that makes it seem like they are expecting me to kill her, and they may not be entirely wrong this time...

"Ara, this isn't funny... wait a minute, now that I think about it, even if there are more than 1000 people in those two villages the only ones who surrendered are the soldiers here, so why did I get the title?"

"Well, having the army surrender is the same as being conquered, no? And besides, they already got their chance to take a look at you, so nobody is going to argue about you being a demon lord... hahaha!"

She's absolutely enjoying this... she's gone back to her non-serious mode, which means that I can no longer expect any help from her.

"Look at the bright side, if both the orcs and the orks consider themselves to be your underlings there's no way that they'll start fighting again"

I don't know if I'd say that 'there's no way', but it's true that the odds are probably lower than before, however, now I have an entirely new problem to deal with.

And with Arana no longer being willing to help me, I'll have to think of a plan by myself, let's see what my options are.

Option A is to just roll with it and actually become their ruler, there's absolutely no way I'll do that, these demons are technically not part of the kingdom, but they still live inside its borders, I don't think that the king would be happy about having a demon lord show up inside of his territory, and more importantly, it doesn't matter how you look at it, there's no way that I could ever be a ruler of anything...

Option B would be to explain to the demons that this was all a misunderstanding and that I didn't actually want to conquer their tribes, but doing so would increase the chances of the two starting another war, which would mean that I didn't do all I could to stop them... and besides, it's not like that would fix the bigger problem of me having the demon lord title, titles don't just go away when you no longer fulfill the conditions to obtain them.

So it seems like I'm going to have to go with option C...

I approach the two leaders again, I've already made them wait long enough, all the demons around seem to be holding their breaths, waiting to hear what I have to say, this is a bit embarrassing, I'm not used to getting so much attention.

"Alright, I'm going to tell you the two rules that I will want you to follow for the time being, first of all, you are not allowed to fight each other again, I'm going to leave this place now, but I don't want to hear anything about another battle between the tribes"

"You're going to leave?"

Why did he sound so relieved when he said that?

"Yes, but if you don't follow my instructions I'll come back as fast as I can"

Maybe they'll take me more seriously if I say that.

"The other thing I don't want you to do no matter what is telling anyone from outside your tribes about the fact that you are my subordinates, this is very important, so make sure that everyone is aware of it"

I don't want them to keep it a secret just for my sake, if the kingdom hears that there are some demons working for me inside of its borders, it could be dangerous for them as well.

"That would be all for now, I'll be going now, but I better not find out that you broke those two rules when I return"

Even if I say that, the truth is that I have no intention of ever coming back to this place.

That's right, it's time to make use of the famous 'let's run away and pretend that nothing happened' strategy.

forli