The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 61: Trust your Demon Lord to create a conspiracy on his own

Chapter 61: Trust your Demon Lord to create a conspiracy on his own

"Is there a stone cliff of something here?" I asked the girls during a late breakfast one day.

Zia dropped her utensil and asked me back in a stutter. "W-what would you do with a stone cliff"

"Not jump off it, I’m sure," I responded with a smirk, but when Angwi came to me, tilting her head, and gave me a piercing gaze, I had to stop being mischievous and added swiftly. "I swear!"

Why...did I feel like they saw me as suicidal? I never did anything even remotely close to that. As if it wasn’t enough that they treated me like fragile glass!

Crossing my arms in front of my chest, I huffed in annoyance. "I just want a place to train."

With a collective ’aah’ from Zia and the maid golems, peace came back to the dining table. Angwi patted my shoulder, and Zia picked up her spoon again. "But why do you need a cliff to train?"

"Well, it doesn’t need to be a cliff, just somewhere rather barren in case I end up destroying things," I shrugged.

The original plan was to do it in my usual spot, the forest clearing. But as I spent a few days digesting the instruction within the scroll, it occurred to me that practicing it might result in unwanted consequences.

The Spear of Judgment, in the end, was a weapon. And weapons were meant to produce damage. While the awakened spear would have different ways of utilization, ultimately, it was a tool of punishment.

What would happen if I damaged the clearing while practicing the scroll’s content? Which, I could guarantee, had a high possibility of happening, since I was a total amateur.

What kind of druid destroyed nature while training, right?

So my option was to find a place where I could safely practice without causing environmental destruction. I prefer high places too, since there would be more room for movement.

"Why don’t you do it in the training ground?"

For whatever reason, the tower had a huge training ground that felt like a colosseum. It was a weird space to have in a tower with only six living residents. I heard the twin guards used the place for sparring from time to time, but otherwise, it was left alone.

Before finding the forest clearing, I used to go there with Jade too. But...

"It didn’t have enough elemental mana," I let out a sigh. Yeah, it was why I changed the training place to the young forest clearing.

"Huh? Can’t you just use the elemental birds?" Zia tilted her head, and then wiggled her spoon at the little bird sitting snuggly above a green jelly. "You even have one as familiar."

"Huh?"

"Aren’t they function as mana providers anyway?"

"They are?" I blinked confusedly, raising my brows. That was new—Natha said Jade would be able to protect me after getting stronger, so I thought it was some kind of guardian pet.

But they could do what now?

I looked at the round little bird that used its morning snack like a bed. "You are?"

*chirp?*

Jade just looked up at me with innocent, round eyes, as if saying ’what are you talking about?’.

"Oh, yeah, this one’s still a baby..." Zia commented.

*chirp!* a high-pitched angry sound came out, as the little bird stomped its little foot to the ground—err...jelly.

I chuckled a bit and patted the green head, providing translation. "No, no, Jade is a grown child now,"

The little bird who just evolved not long before didn’t want to be called a baby anymore, even though it still acted like the days after it was born.

"Whatever," Zia scoffed, sticking out her tongue at the little bird. "You can ask the other elemental birds for help too," she pointed upward with her spoon, in the direction of the rooftop where the adult elemental birds gathered. "Aren’t you the proxy master, anyway?" this time, the wiggling spoon pointed to my right hand.

I looked at the mark on my left hand, and pressed my lips as a slight heat started to creep on my cheek.

"Ah geez, you lovesick boy," the spoon slammed into the soup bowl, splattering creamy substance to the table which immediately getting cleaned by one of the maid golems. "At least gimme material if you want to act lovey-dovey in front of me!"

At the pouting succubus princess, I only shrugged and smirked.

"Ugh—suit yourself then," she clicked her tongue, shoving the soup bowl aside in favor of sweet bread. She pursed her lips still, until another golem—male-looking this time—entered with something in his hand. "Oh, the paper’s here!" she exclaimed and suddenly no longer sulking.

I watched the golem bring the newspaper to Zia, who was waiting with stretched arms. "You know, I just realized you get a paper delivered every day here,"

It was something that I only realized after observing how Natha always had something to read with his morning tea. I had no interest in it before, since I couldn’t read anything harder than children’s books and fairytales. Something like news articles was beyond my literacy level even now, and the only reason I could read the druid scroll was because of the druid blood which enabled me to understand the content automatically.

"Of course," the succubus princess took the paper eagerly while responding. "How else could we know what’s going on while living here at the edge of the world?"

"This is not the edge of the world," I rolled my eyes, before suddenly thinking about it more. Was there even an edge in this world? Was this world round? Was it flat?

Wow, I didn’t know.

"Yeah, yeah, whatev—huh?" Zia blinked as she read the headline, her purple eyes widened and her lips parted in shock.

"...what?" what kind of news it was that made her reacted like that?

Well...although she did kind of like to react dramatically to everything.

"Wait—let me read it first..." she waved her hand to sush me and concentrated on the paper, before starting exclaiming not long after. "Wow! Whoa! Val...Val—you need to read this!"

"I can’t read something that complicated yet..." I pursed my lips.

"It’s about that whatever hero from that kingdom!"

Now that was worth the shock and surprised face. She stood up and sat beside me, bringing the paper with her. It was true that I could’t read advanced sentence structure yet, but I could at least recognize some words and string things together.

Based on my patchy reading effort and Zia’s further explanation, the headline was talking about how the human hero that led the death of the Demon Lord of Wrath had fled the kingdom that hailed him. The news seemed to be relayed by the spies and the demon’s equivalent of paparazzi stationed in the human realm. Furthermore, the article also elaborated on the reason why the hero defected from the kingdom.

And it was exactly as what was stated in the novel;

The kingdom had brainwashed and manipulated the hero, as well as the soldiers into thinking that it was the Demon Lord of Wrath that declared war and attacked human territory, gaslighting the entire force into believing that their cause was just.

"Val, they talked about you too!" she exclaimed further, pointing at the section near the end of the article. "Let me read it for you; ’One of the biggest victims in the whole debacle was the Priest of Judgment, Valmeier. It was stated by our source that the effort and sacrifice of the priest were being paid with defamation. The priest was reported as gotten internally wounded and disabled, and had been missing from sight since his last sighting during the victory banquet...’"

Zia ended her reading and turned to look at me. "It seems like they thought you were dead, Val."

"That’s...good?" I replied incoherently, staring at the article keenly, trying to read it with my limited comprehension ability.

Huh...was this happen in the original novel? This article...wasn’t this seemed to favor Valmeier greatly? While the main topic was about the hero and how shitty the kingdom was, the writer didn’t put such flowery words like ’sacrifice’ or ’victim’ to him, or any other character.

It was as if the journalist was on my side. Like they were paid to make my standing change from enemy to at least a neutral force that was getting manipulated and thrown out after being used.

Oh...

I stood up then, and immediately ran toward my bedroom, leaving the surprised Zia and the chirping Jade that was being restrained by Angwi. As soon as I entered the bedroom, I grabbed the orb on the nightstand and activated it. While it was being connected, my mind kept replaying Natha’s words last week.

—I have a plan

Yeah...he said he had a plan that would help smoothen my way into the Lord Castle. And what was better than making the demons stop looking at me as an enemy?

[Sweetheart?] the call connected a while later. I could hear the muffled sound of people’s voices in the background, so it seemed like he was in the office. [This is rare, you never called me at this time before]

"Was it you?" I asked straight. I could ask tonight, but I didn’t think I could bear it that long. "The thing in the newspaper today?"

The source was coming from spies? Yeah—Natha had a lot of spies in the human realm. I could bet that the source of that information was one of his.

There was a few seconds of silence before a reply come. [Yes]

His answer was short. Definite. There was no long explanation of his reasoning or the method that he used. He didn’t even bother to ask me which ’thing’ I was talking about.

Instead, his voice sounded confident, proud, in a way that I could picture his deep smile as he said it.

"Natha," I gripped the orb with my trembling hands, whispering through my trembling heart. "I want to see you..."

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