The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 552: What is love without planning your enemies’ demise together?

Chapter 552: What is love without planning your enemies’ demise together?

Not long after the guards told us about them, the Eternal couple showed up on the research floor. Why? Because we were there already anyway, and Natha decided to have our afternoon tea there--you know, making use of a vacant building.

Honestly, not a bad idea. Perhaps I’d just turn this place into my private library while at it.

"Ah, home is the best," Lesta took a deep breath while walking into the lounge.

"We’re not home yet..."

"Shut it!"

From the look of it, they must have used the inter-realm portal of the magic tower to return from Wrath and continued with a carriage straight to the research tower. They still had their traveling cost and the smell of mana-fueled devices around them.

Naturally, they hadn’t met D’Ara yet.

"Lesta!" I got up and hugged him, laughter came out naturally from seeing someone close I hadn’t met for a long time. Lesta tilted his head in confusion but still patted my back in response, and I shifted to his Eternal next. "Eruru!"

Eruha held my shoulder before I could hug him--how stingy--and he stared at Natha inquisitively.

"Zidoa returned to Lust," Natha shrugged.

"Ah..." both Lesta and Eruha nodded then, and the vampire finally let me hug him briefly. "And the elf, huh?"

"How do you know?!" my eyes widened in surprise while stepping back.

"Because he’s not here," Eruha replied briefly before walking to the couch and taking a seat across from Natha.

Oh, right. Huh...it seemed like he was quite perceptive about other people’s relationships despite how messy his own was at the start. How weird.

"But why are you back already?" I looked at them. "Do you not need to keep an eye on the war anymore?"

As far as I knew, the war was still ongoing. They had been persistently fighting at the human border, even when their Lord was still recuperating. In that case, shouldn’t they watch over the war effort even more?

"We still keep an eye on the war, but there’s no need for them to be there anymore," Natha said.

"Why?"

"Why do you think, Young Master?" Eruha smiled behind his teacup, the red eyes gleamed.

Ugh--this was what happened if I asked Eruha something; sometimes, he would activate his teacher mode. But, well...it helped my brain do some work and I would achieve enlightenment sometimes, so even Natha refrained from giving me an answer.

Let’s think...

Why did Natha go out of his way to send two of his most trusted demons to another Realm and have them stay there for a long time? Obviously, it was because of the war; because Natha wanted to control the outcome of this war.

"You were there because we wanted to make sure the war wouldn’t endanger us," I muttered while flipping a chocolate cookie in my hand. "Are you being here mean the war no longer endangers us?"

I tilted my head, frowning and biting into the cookie--need that sugar for my brain, you know.

"No, no--that doesn’t make sense," I shook my head. "The war still has the potential to endanger us as long as it hasn’t ended yet."

Anything could happen in the war, after all. Just like before, someone could successfully poison the Lord--although, from what Natha told me, the warriors wouldn’t stop just because the Lord was dead. Someone from the last tournament would just take his spot temporarily until a new championship was underway.

Things could also happen on the other side, like more support from the neighboring kingdoms, or they somehow produce another Hero. Our enemies--the ones from inside the Demon Realm--could strengthen the human force and make an agreement to divide Wrath’s territory.

If there was something I learned so far, it was that the higher-ups never cared about racial hatred or anything. They just disliked the fact that the Goddess forbade them to expand their territory beyond the border with the Demon Realm. Waging wars with another was difficult because they would need ample justification to receive the support of the masses and the church, but with the Demon Realms? They only needed to use racial hatred.

So, honestly, imagining the human kingdom allying with some wicked demons wasn’t a stretch.

After all, the timing between the human’s attack, the Lord’s poisoning, and the infiltration of L’Anaak Eed was too perfect to be a mere coincidence.

The stars might be lining, but this was like setting up an artificial constellation.

"So...umm...why?!" I slammed the cookie down--lightly, just lightly--in frustration.

I just wanted to ask a question--why did they make it into a verbal test?!

"But Young Master isn’t wrong," Lesta chuckled in response while Natha stroked my head soothingly. "It does have something to do with the thing that endangers us."

"Nggh..."

"We’re trying to win the war to prevent danger, but what happened while we were doing it?" Eruha finally gave me a guideline.

Ugh, I guessed it was karma for lazing around while Eruha was away. So...what happened while they were trying to win the war? We put our attention on the Realm of Wrath, and because of that...

"...ah! The danger came to us anyway?" I clasped my hands.

"Yes," Eruha drummed lightly against the side of his teacup as if giving me applause. "Or more likely, the war became a distraction that shielded our eyes from the real danger pointed at us."

"Oh, so..." I snapped my fingers. "Since it doesn’t matter anyway, you decided to go back?"

"That’s half of it," Lesta smiled--ah, I kind of missed his calm, nonchalant smile that made me feel like everything in this world had to be faced in a relaxed state of mind. "Isn’t it better to just work from home?"

He raised his cup cheekily before drinking his tea, and Eruha added. "I feel bad for Malta having to do everything."

Oh, gosh--that’s true. Malta had to take care of both of their workload, especially after the incident. She seemed happy about it since she was built like that, but sooner or later, she might collapse before she realized how overworked she was.

Although, well...half of it was probably because I kept having Natha stay with me instead of working properly, teehee...

I cleared my throat from a sudden sense of guilt. "Then what’s the other half?"

"Fishing," Eruha replied briefly as usual.

"In the winter?" I tilted my head, blinking in confusion.

"Pfft," Lesta choked on his tea. "Yes; fishing in the winter is actually the best," he laughed. "They become less wary because fewer fishermen are out there."

"...you’re not talking about the edible one, aren’t you?"

I shifted my gaze between the three of them--these old demons who liked to tease the youngster. Natha smirked and replied with a shrug. "Depends on your preference, honestly."

"Ew? What about morals?" Natha chuckled and rubbed my pursed lips. "So, what are you fishing out?"

Natha arched his brow and suddenly, I recalled what we were talking about before Lesta and Eruha came; the kind of look he had in his face at that time. I blinked to consolidate my conjecture and gasped.

"Could it be...?!"

Natha smiled as he played with my hair, silver eyes curled in cold light. "As expected of my sweetheart."

Yeah...the people who infiltrated the Lord’s Castle were only half of the troupe that wanted to pull Natha to the ground. Underground, even.

I leaned forward and for some reason, my voice dropped into a whisper, as if we were talking about something scandalous. "Wait--do you think they can be baited out?"

"We had been locking down the Realm of Wrath ever since the poison incident, and Eruha deliberately announced that he spread his ’eyes’ in every border," Natha explained. "Whoever poisoned the Lord and messed up the communication wave would have to stay there, so they must be trapped inside too."

I clasped my hands excitedly. "Oh! So, because Eruha left, they would try to escape now, right?"

"Yes."

Oh, this is getting interesting, isn’t it? I almost giggled, but I remembered this was a serious discussion about weeding out our enemies, so I held back and put a frown on my face.

"We have information already, but it’s still sparse," Natha tapped on the armrest, meaning he was still unsatisfied with something. "Seems like everyone holds different kinds of information, and no one truly knows all of the higher-ups."

"What about that nightmare?" I asked. I remember he was the main instigator--aside from the Spectre, of course. He was also the information broker; a middleman, you could say. Wouldn’t it mean he had to communicate with the bosses?

But the answer was disappointing.

"Hagai is still working on him."

I clicked my tongue. "The poop dinner doesn’t work?"

"He’s kind of too far gone to remember things clearly," Natha chuckled lowly. Despite not finding more information, he sounded jolly nonetheless.

"Oops," I giggled--more because Eruha and Lesta were looking at us inquisitively. Perhaps because of the ’poop dinner’ I said earlier.

Natha leaned back and patted my head while exhaling slowly. "Well, we still found a lot of things, and this fishing will be another one."

"I see,"

Well, the interrogation would yield less if we killed him immediately as Natha wanted, so I guessed it was still a profit.

"So...what’s next?" I swept my gaze across the room. "What will you do to the rest of the perpetrator?"

Natha smirked. That sinister light I saw not long ago was back in his eyes.

"Umm..."

"Didn’t you say it?" he tilted his head, looking at me with a pair of cold silver eyes.

"Huh?"

He leaned down, voice dropped low and full of repressed anger. "You told me to make sure the whole world knows they should never think about messing with us."

"Oh," my eyes refused to blink in front of those gleaming moonlight, and my throat bobbed at the graze of his baritone. "That’s hot..."

"Young Master, you were saying it out loud," Lesta chuckled.

"I’m aware," I said, still yet to blink.

The smile on Natha’s lips deepened, and the next thing I knew, I was already in my bed, surrounded by black feathers.