CH 254

Chapter 254 – Fastest Man in the World(3)

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“Hooo.”

A sweet-smelling smoke flowed out from between my lips.

A drunk and beautiful girl was in front of me with cheeks as red as a ripe apple. A delicate wine in my right hand and herbs that my subordinate had made specially for me in my left hand. This is the life. This is what it means to be a man.

It’s so beautiful life.

I’d have to borrow a westerner’s tongue in order to be able to express the current emotion I was feeling.

I was so moved that I absentmindedly stared at the smoke that dissipated in the air. Ivar Lodbrok seemed to misunderstand something as she laughed slyly.

“Your Hiiighness? I’ll put the alcohol away if you can’t handle any more?”

“Kuku. You aren’t intimidating at all when you’re slurring so much.”

“This humble one’s tongue is fiiiiiine, though━?”

“Sure you are.”

The corners of your mouth have melted completely and you can’t control your facial expressions at all now.

I picked up a bottle and gulped it down. The confident look on the girl’s face gradually became darker as the bottle became lighter. Eventually, Ivar Lodbrok’s expression became blank once I emptied the bottle completely.

Should I try poking her now?

“Phoo…….”

I lowered my head as if I couldn’t take any more. The girl’s voice lit up a bit once I did.

“Is it too much for you nooow?”

“Kuuh. No. Any more……hoo, might be hard.”

I dropped the bottle in my hand to add a little more realism to my acting. The bottle landed softly since the floor was carpeted. Ivar Lodbrok must’ve thought that I was completely intoxicated as she quickly got up from her side of the table and sat down next to me.

She patted my back as she spoke.

“Your Highness? Will you stop? Shall we call it my win, then?”

Her words sounded concerned, but her tone was filled with joy.

Seeing her in such a messy state made her look rather cute. I even wondered for a moment if I should push her down and take her here and now. Ivar Lodbrok is a wise person. She’d probably be delighted to make a physical bond with a Demon Lord like me since she could use it politically.

But it was still too early for that. I wasn’t particularly infatuated with Ivar Lodbrok’s beauty. It was simply a desire to formally copulate with a heroine from the game that I love so much.

“Fine, fine……I surrender! I can’t take it anymore. I give up. If you want to ask me something, then go ahead. I’ll answer anything that I can.”

“Then……Your Highness. It may be impudent of me, but allow me to ask you something.”

Ivar Lodbrok stroked my back.

“How did Your Highness know about this one’s past……whether it be about how this one had hid her true body or how this one had lost her lover a long time ago, how did Your Highness know about these things?”

“Oh? Those? It’s simple. I have the power to see the past.”

I gave her the answer I had prepared beforehand.

“The power to see the past?”

“Whenever I see someone……I naturally recall the things they went through in the past. Well, it isn’t an amazing ability. And it’s not like I always recall things either. For example, I cannot recall the past of Demon Lords. I only get small glimpses very rarely.”

‘So you aren’t a prophet…….’, the girl muttered to herself.

“Then when Your Highness spoke down to the woman from the imperial family of Habsburg on Bruno Plains?”

“Indeed. I was lucky at that time. I recalled those events as soon as I saw her. I admit that I must have recalled……her most painful memory.”

“I see.”

Ivar Lodbrok sounded convinced.

“Your Highness……you said that you question the reason why Demon Lords exist. Why is that?”

“Hm? Didn’t I tell you? Be it demons or humans, the only reason there is a difference is because of the petty tricks of Demon Lords.”

I mixed in groans between my words to make it seem like I had a headache. I also made sure to talk in a long-winded way like a drunkard. I had to make sure that it sounded like I was telling the truth, but also as if this was the prattling of a drunk.

“When it comes to sentience……yeah. In regard to them being sentient beings, humans and demons are no different. What does it mean to be sentient? They are free beings. They are able to control themselves. And yet, because of Demon Lord, solely because of Demon Lords, demons are robbed of their freedom…….”

“…….”

“If demonkind wishes to be born again as demonkind, then Demon Lords must all disappear. Yup. My goal……My goal is to make all Demon Lords disappear.”

I heard the girl gasp.

“All Demon Lords……?”

“That will be the start of everything. Mhm, that’s right. Only then will demonkind be able to live fairly……. They will be able to live as genuinely sentient beings.”

“B-But, didn’t Your Highness lead the Crescent Alliance to success?”

“What’s important is balance.”

I raised my head and stared straight at Ivar.

“Out of all the things declared by Demon Lords, there is one thing they got right……. The fact that Hell is too barren for demonkind to live. Look at the orcs. The orcs that have settled on the continent are prospering everywhere and breeding……but what about in Hell? There are, at most, a few thousand. That is how much the environments differ when you compare the continent with Hell…….”

I grabbed a bottle that was on the table and took a swig.

“Kuh. What would happen if all the Demon Lords were to die right now? An unprecedented mass panic would occur. The humans would then use that opportunity to chase every last demon out of the continent. We must weaken the human forces before we can get rid of the Demon Lords.”

“Balance, is it…….”

Ivar Lodbrok mumbled to herself.

“Balance. Both sides must be shaved down to a fair size through continuous wars. The 8th Crescent Alliance was the first step for that plan. Although we ended up winning a bit too much. That was a miscalculation.”

I stared straight into her eyes.

“That is why I caused a civil war.”

“What do you mean by that……?”

Ivar Lodbrok’s voice shook.

“That war happened through the arbitrary actions of Her Highness Agares and Her Highness Gamigin…….”

“How foolish. Despite having schemed the battle, Gamigin did not receive any sort of punishment. Instead, Barbatos gave her some land. Do you think this was a coincidence?”

“Is Your Highness saying that you planned that war from the very beginning!?”

I smiled.

“Agares may not be smart, but she isn’t completely stupid either. If I didn’t put an ally like Gamigin at her side, then she wouldn’t have even tried to start a war. We did have to give all of Moravia to Gamigin in order to persuade her, but, oh well, it wasn’t a bad trade.”

“……!”

The girl’s purple eyes wavered.

“Thanks to that, I was able to weaken the Demon Lord army a bit. Now the Demon Lord army does not have enough strength to continue the Crescent Alliance. No, even if they did, they probably still wouldn’t. Do you know why?”

“……This one is clueless.”

“Huhu, you must be drunk. Normally, you would have easily put the pieces together. It’s simple. A seed of doubt has been planted in the Demon Lord army. Agares had already started a war once. What certainty do the other Demon Lords have that one of their allies won’t betray them?”

In truth, the Neutral Faction had stopped their expedition after the internal discord that occurred.

There was a potential threat of being betrayed by allies. That has happened numerous times throughout history and Agares did so again recently. It should be fine to say that the 8th Crescent Alliance was over now.

“As a result, the humans gained the opportunity to take a breather. Isn’t it fortunate for them?”

“If the humans are able to recover their forces……does Your Highness intend to start another war?”

“That is correct.”

I asserted.

“In the next war, I will push both humankind and the Demon Lord army to the brink of annihilation. I will make it so that the humans cannot continue the war even if all of the Demon Lords were to fall. That’s right, it should be enough if we let Bernicia and Castile remain……it should balance out with that.”

“That is absurd. That is an absurd path!”

The girl flared up as she shouted.

“How many lives do you think will be lost!? Tens of thousand……no, hundreds of thousands of people may die indiscriminately. You said that you would give freedom back to demonkind, but you would be forcing demons to their deaths……that is outrageous!”

“Oh? Then? Are you saying that we should leave things like this?”

I smirked. Ivar Lodbrok doesn’t have much love for her kind anyway. This can be solved easily.

“The number of demons and humans that died throughout the past thousands of years because of the Crescent Alliance already exceeds the hundreds of thousands. How many more will die in the next few thousand years? Like that, those thousands of years will repeat pointlessly with the Demon Lords still alive and the demons without freedom.”

“…….”

“If hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost anyway, then it would only be appropriate for Demon Lords to die as well! It doesn’t matter if this sounds absurd. This path is more correct!”

I grabbed the girl by her hand. Her hand was small and soft.

“Ivar Lodbrok……do you not feel resentful? Speak to me. What you went through in the past. All of the unjust things that were done to you. Tell me about the resentment you have toward Demon Lords!”

“I……I.”

The corners of the girl’s mouth shook.

“……I was a member of a small and weak group. His Highness Vassago……he made a promise with this one’s kin. He promised us riches and prosperity as long as we helped him.”

Finally, the ‘story’ that I wanted to hear from Ivar Lodbrok was coming out of her mouth. Vassago. The Rank 3 Demon Lord. There was a time when Ivar Lodbrok had sworn her loyalty to him in the past.

“But, once he fell into imminent peril while fighting the dragonkin……Vassago, he…….”

“He what?”

I asked back strongly.

“What did Vassago do?”

“He used this one’s kin……as a sacrificial scapegoat.”

Ivar Lodbrok shed a tear.

“He used his oppressive power as a Demon Lord……. While we were unable to flee and continued to die off, only Vassago escaped……. My father, my mother, and my lover, they all……. I was the only……. I hid underneath the corpses and survived alone…….”

“…….”

“This is just how Demon Lords are……. This one made a vow to one day get vengeance! That I would return to them a betrayal of the same weight to those people who have ridiculed, toyed with, and betrayed us……!”

Thus, after losing her entire kin, she entered the business world by herself.

Even Demon Lords require money. She was determined to take hold of every Demon Lord’s funding by creating the biggest merchant firm in the demon world. She did whatever means necessary as a vampire and did her best even if it meant throwing away some bodies.

The poststorm that occurred after Ivar Lodbrok betrayed the Demon Lords in <Dungeon Attack> really did end up being immense as well.

The biggest merchant firm in the demon world ended up collapsing in only a single day. The numerous smaller firms that had been relying on Keuncuska ended up going bankrupt, the entire economy of Niflheim burst, and, naturally, the Demon Lord army fell into extreme panic.

Ivar Lodbrok achieved her revenge.

“Hhg……gh…….”

The girl was crying.

Her small shoulders trembled as she remembered the family and lover she had lost long ago. Thousands of years are more than enough to make one’s desire for revenge and yearning for one’s family fade; however, Ivar Lodbrok managed to walk all the way here while shouldering that vow.

“I know.”

I hugged her tightly.

“I know what you have gone through and how cruel Demon Lords are. That is why I have always wished to work together with you. I believed that you were the only one who could understand my hatred for Demon Lords.”

“……Your Highness.”

“Ivar Lodbrok. My comrade. I may be a Demon Lord and you a demon, but we harbor the same feelings despite that.”

I stroked her blonde hair as I whispered.

“Let us rid the world of Demon Lords. Let us create a world where no one will cry due to being wronged by a Demon Lord. Let us believe that this is the reason we were born into this world. Even if it means shedding the blood of hundreds of thousands of people…….”

I could feel the girl nod with her head against my chest.

Of course.

Everything I said was a lie.

‘Kuh.’

She probably doesn’t know that I’m smiling right now. Get rid of every Demon Lord? That would include me as well. That’s not even funny.

I don’t have a hobby of committing suicide. I simply went along with Ivar Lodbrok’s feelings and told her the words that she desperately wanted to hear.

‘I did it! I’ve cleared all of the conditions!’

I had to clear the following conditions in order to break the cap on Ivar Lodbrok’s affection:

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First condition – The player character and Ivar Lodbrok must be drinking ‘alone together’.

Second condition – More than ‘three hours’ must have passed in the game since the player character and Ivar Lodbrok started drinking together.

Third condition – At least ‘one year’ in the game must have passed since the player character met Ivar Lodbrok.

Fourth condition – The player character must hear a ‘certain story’ from Ivar Lodbrok.

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If you fulfill all four of these conditions, then you can raise Ivar Lodbrok’s affection above 50. I can smoothly raise it all the way up to 99. Although I have to fulfill one more condition if I want to hit 100.

Furthermore, the condition to break the greatly anticipated 99 affection cap is this:

‘See Ivar Lodbrok’s ‘true’ body!’

That’s right. When Ivar Lodbrok joined the hero’s side, she didn’t use her true body from the very beginning. She used the body she showed me earlier, the body with a similar frame but different colored eyes. She had quite a careful personality.

Dear me.

I ended up already seeing Ivar Lodbrok’s true body.

‘In other words……I broke two of her Affection Locks at the same time!’

It was for this sake that I kept singing about wanting to see her true body over and over again. In truth, the victor was already decided since the moment Ivar Lodbrok came to see me with her true body in tow. Didn’t I say so earlier? Games are something with predetermined results.

Sure enough.

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「Deep friendship! The other party considers you as a genuine comrade. A new title has been given to the other party because of this bond.」

「Absolute trust! The other party considers you as a lifelong partner. A new title has been given to the other party because of this surprising bond and trust.」

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The notification that would appear when breaking an affection cap appeared right before my eyes. Even though Ivar Lodbrok’s affection hadn’t exceeded 20 yet, the notification had appeared because the cap was broken.

This was the biggest trick among tricks.

Now all I had left to do was raise her affection with no obstructions whatsoever to block me. It should go up even faster now thanks to the effects of the new titles. Conquering her should be like taking candy from a baby.

“Hgh……hgg, hu…….”

I smiled happily while hugging the crying girl in my arms. I lied a little, but I didn’t have even a slither of conscience left in me to feel guilty about lying now. The fact that I had conquered an official heroine filled me with a great sense of accomplishment.

This was the moment when the fastest route clear in history took place.

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TL Note: Thanks for reading the chapter. Man, I’m reminded over and over again how manipulative Dant is. He really makes women swoon. It’s only a coincidence that Ivar looks sort of young :^)

I don’t have much else to say this chapter. I’ve been playing Lost Ark recently. I wanted to play on NA West since I have the best ping there, but all my friends went to East, so now I suffer with slightly more ping. It’s a pain, but I do it for my friends :’) Man, I’ve been waiting for this game to come out globally since 2018. That’s like 4 years. Why’d it take them this long?

Welp, I’ll see you guys in the next chapter.