Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? (LN) - Volume 16: Ch 7 - Phelmia

Phelmina

If I truly cared for demonkind, I ought to side with the ebony god, no doubt.
As a noble, I should put my land and my people first.
That is what I have been taught all my life, having grown up in a particularly important and strict noble family.
I believe that I have lived by those words all this time.
Yes, even after being disowned by my family, taken in by the Tenth Army, and following a path that’s a far cry from nobility.
If all went according to plan, I would have married my former fiancé Wald and tended to our family’s needs as his wife.
How did things go so wrong that I’ve become a highly trained assassin instead?
It wasn’t my fault, or at least I don’t think I made any major mistakes…
In the end, it all comes back to Sophia’s doing.
It’s because she seduced Wald away from me that I was driven out of my family under false accusations.
And because Sophia had ties to the Demon Lord, she laid the groundwork for most other noble families to treat me as an outcast of their own accord, too.
Yes, I know, the person who ruined my life most directly was Wald.
But still! I believe Sophia is the one who caused all of it.
How I despise that woman.
Ahem…
Perhaps my personal resentment was intermingled in this explanation, but even after all that, I nevertheless continued to live with noble pride and work for the sake of demonkind.
I chose to join the Tenth Army because I felt it would ultimately be for the greater good of my people.
No matter what I did, I knew I could never outmaneuver Tenth Army Commander White or Demon Lord Ariel.
Yes, at first I saw Lady White and the Demon Lord as enemies.
Though it was Wald who planted the seeds that resulted in my being disowned, that was all possible because of Sophia’s connections with the Demon Lord.
The nobles all took pains to exclude me purely because I was in opposition to someone with ties to the greatly feared Demon Lord.
Wald was just an indirect accomplice.
Of course, I know it is foolish to despise the Demon Lord for this, as it had nothing to do with her directly.
But surely you cannot blame me for being left with a poor impression of her?
I was grateful that the Tenth Army took me in after my disownment, of course.
Even so, that only happened because my father begged Lady White on bended knee.
Despise being forced to disown me under immense pressure from our noble family, my father still found a way to save me somehow.
Which is why I was able to go on without losing my pride as a noble, just as my father taught me.
And yet…
The reformed Tenth Army handles the Demon Army’s darkest, most secret missions.
This isn’t an official rule, but since our leader Lady White is always pulling strings behind the scenes all over the world, she often assigns us jobs like assassination and information-gathering.
By being a part of all this, one ends up learning about the dark side of this world, whether one wants to or not.
The more I learned, the more I was driven into despair.
I thought that being born into a high-ranking noble family meant that I was superior, that I knew more than most people, yet that delusion soon fell apart around me.
Soon I realized that everything I knew was just a sliver of reality as seen from a demon’s perspective, specifically a noble demon family’s.
The knowledge I thought I had about the world only pertained to a tiny part of it.
But even as I learned all this, I continued working for the sake of demonkind.
At least…I believe I did so to the best of my ability.
“But that’s all over now. Forgive me, Father…”
I murmur an apology to my father.
I know that he, too, has worked hard as a high-ranking noble for the sake of demonkind.
And of course I am grateful to him for bringing me into this world and raising me.
Yet here I am, essentially betraying demonkind instead of repaying him.
But I have made up my mind to work for the ivory god.
To sacrifice over half of humanity, and demonkind along with it.
Despite knowing full well that the correct choice for the betterment of all demons would be to join the ebony god’s side.
After Lady Ariel’s briefing, I gathered the Tenth Army and addressed them.
“The ebony god’s forces are sure to attack the Great Elroe Labyrinth. And the Word of God pontiff should be with them. If we can eliminate him, since he has ruler authority, it would bring the ivory god’s side that much closer to victory. Which is why I will be targeting the pontiff. I won’t force you to come along. Anyone who wants to join me, please do so now.”
Siding with the ivory god would mean betraying demonkind.
With that in mind, I wasn’t going to force anyone to go along with my plan.
But much to my surprise, when I declared my intentions, not a single person left.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. Commander White took us in when the rest of the world abandoned us. We would gladly lay down our lives to serve her.”
The Tenth Army is an assortment of oddballs, none of whom are on the up-and-up by any stretch of the imagination.
It was originally an empty title with no real members at all.
While the other armies were restructured under Lady Ariel’s iron-fisted authority, she sent members of the Tenth to lower-numbered armies, until all that was left of the Tenth Army were those whom none of the other commanders wanted.
Soldiers who were demoted due to poor behavior.
Scrawny volunteers who joined the army in hopes of being fed.
But Lady White didn’t turn up her nose at this band of misfits.
She disciplined those with poor conduct and reformed their behavior.
She fed those who were malnourished.
Then she put all of us through the training from hell.
…Yes, I know, it’s because of that hellish training that the Tenth Army came together as one.
The timid and the overconfident alike were subjected to the same horrible experiences, until we understood to the marrow of our bones how insignificant we all were.
We didn’t even have the energy left to resent being put through hell.
But while she trained us mercilessly beyond belief, she never gave up on any of us.
She persisted in training us until every last member of the Tenth Army could be called an elite fighter.
…Even if one member begged her to “just kill us instead!” somewhere along the line.
It goes without saying, I’m sure, that the member in question was subjected to an even more hellish training as punishment.
Though the rest of us were forced to do the same as an exercise in collective responsibility!
Ahem.
Well, in spite of all that suffering, it’s surprisingly hard to hate Lady White.
She doesn’t talk, she’s always expressionless, and you can never tell what she’s thinking.
But if someone’s in trouble, she’ll come to the rescue without a second thought.
Even though she isn’t interested in other people…or no, perhaps it’s because of that…she casually does things that change the course of a person’s life completely.
For better or for worse.
There are certainly some whose lives have been ruined because of Lady White.
But she’s also the only person who accepted the Tenth Army, refusing to cast us aside when everyone else had long since forgotten us.
When we were in the midst of that hellish training, we kept remembering how she’d offered us a lifeline in our darkest hour.
Even though she was the one causing our new darkest hours, too.
It’s a catch-22, I know.
But I still can’t find it in me to begrudge her for it.
Besides the fact that she saved us, I’ve also seen Lady White work herself to the bone for the sake of Lady Ariel.
It’s hard to hate someone who’s so determined to help someone else.
Seeing her like that moved me.
I always thought it was my duty as a noble to work for demonkind.
But when I think about it more carefully, it was other nobles who cast me out of society.
So why shouldn’t I make decisions based on my own feelings, rather than on some obligation?
Rather than from any duty to demonkind, I want to be of use to someone who’s trying to take on the entire world for one single person’s sake.
“Hff! Hff! Will you…tell me…hff…where…the pontiff is…now?”
And now, I’m cornering one of the reincarnations and interrogating him.
The reincarnation known as Shinobu Kusama is sprawled on his back, gasping for breath like I am.
We’re both covered in wounds, panting, and sweating.
This is the first time I’ve gotten so worn-out in a battle since joining the Tenth Army.
I suppose I should have expected no less from a reincarnation.
Since he didn’t seem too enthusiastic about fighting, I thought he’d make a break for it after a while. Instead, he’s given me quite a run for my money…
“Ooh. Kinda sexy to see a chick dripping with sweat like that.”
“Shall I just kill you right now?”
How can he say such idiotic things when he doesn’t even have the strength to stand anymore?
Or perhaps he’s so exhausted that he’s just blurting out whatever comes into his head?
“Nahh. Look, I’m sorry, but I dunno where the old man is.”
“You’re lying.”
Out of all the reincarnations, Kusama is closest to the pontiff, almost a right-hand man.
Surely he wouldn’t be in the dark about the pontiff’s location.
But he just grins weakly and says it again.
“C’mon, it’s true. A ninja doesn’t lie.”
…Whether he’s lying or not, he’s clearly not going to talk.
“Let’s withdraw.”
“…Are you sure?”
I gather the Tenth Army and order a retreat.
“Yes. Clearly, he won’t talk even if we torture him. It might even be true that he doesn’t know. Either way, we’d just be wasting our time. We’ve crushed the enemy headquarters. We’ll just have to count that as a victory.”
I’m sure the question “Are you sure?” was also asking whether I should really let him live.
Kusama is fairly powerful, even for a reincarnation. If he gets his wounds treated with Healing Magic and returns to the battlefield, he’ll be a serious obstacle to contend with.
Obviously, the smartest move would be to kill him while I have the chance.
And yet.
It feels wrong to me to kill a reincarnation who was dragged into this world’s problems through no fault of his own.
“We’re going to track down the pontiff.”
I redirect my attention.
Lady White is still fighting.
All we can do is keep fighting, too.
“Let’s go, Tenth Army.”