could certainly be considered becoming of the treatment he was receiving. But between his short stature, the seedy look in his eyes, and his childish features, there were likely few who could recognize him as the Mad King from his looks alone. And his appearance definitely wouldn't have led anyone to imagine he was the one who'd taken down the underlings just then. But that wasn't even all that he'd done. The boy had carried out the slaughter of the second and third waves near single-handedly. In other words, the real monster wasn't the underlings. It was that human. "You know, I think it's kinda rude that people keep looking at me like I'm some sorta monster." "If you're not a monster, then who is? Hell, even trolls are more human than you are." Upon hearing Kaito's complaint, Valisisa Ula Forstlast, the first imperial princess of the beastfolk, scoffed. Sullen, Kaito offered no rebuttal. He continued walking in silence. Even the soldiers who weren't keeping an eye out for survivors were staying busyâ€”preparing and serving food to warm their bodies up from the chilly, salty wind, replacing their weapons, maintaining their equipment, and treating their own minor scratches and wounds. The air was thick with the smells of the sea, blood, sweat, metal, fur, and leather all blended together. Kaito wove his way between the soldiers and made his way toward the first imperial princess's tent. After dealing with the underlings, he was originally supposed to head for the first-aid station so he could take stock of the wounded. On his way, though, he'd been called over by Valisisa and was currently following her bouncy red tail. It paired poorly with her gallant, masculine uniform, but her tail really was cute. Kaito chose to keep that impression to himself, knowing that sharing it could get him killed, and asked Valisisa a question. "So what's the situation like?" "You can see for yourself how bad things are. That pack of saints is even more useless than I expected... And because of them, all the regular soldiers are having to pick up more slack than they can handle. Those saints are powerful as fixed batteries, true, but their durability leaves a lot to be desired. They aren't suited for constant battles like this. They seemed threatening before, but the humans' stinginess in deploying them in actual combat is coming home to roost. The fact that the humans never took proper readings on their durability is aggravating." "Those are people you're talking about, you know. You shouldn't refer to them like they're weapons." "Ha, calling those saints 'people' is like a bad joke. So much so that it's funny. And even if they were, right now, everyone and their mother are nothing more than pawns. Although you, Mad King, might be the exception. That carefree nature of yours, the fact that you possess power surpassing any other's... It's like you were born to infuriate me. Do you enjoy annoying me, by any chance?" "I'm feeling a little hated right now." "Not at all. Relax. This is far preferable to incompetence. Feel free to be as useful as you please. Usefulness begets love, after all. Once you've averted the end of days, if you wish to submit yourself before the beastfolk, I would even offer you my hand in marriage." "Sorry, but I already have a lovely wife." "Oh, thank goodness. Just thinking about sharing a bed with the likes of a human makes my skin crawl." "Then don't offer." Kaito shrugged, half-exasperatedly. Valisisa laughed scornfully. She seemed to enjoy talking, and she was doing quite a bit of it. But upon seeing them conversing, the beastfolk passing by simply looked in astonishment. Although he'd only known her a short while, Kaito could tell Valisisa's behavior was the reason they were staring. It appeared her pool of conversational partners was limited. If she deemed someone unnecessary, they wouldn't even enter her field of vision. For better or for worse, she seemed to have a straightforward way of viewing the world. Yet when she was dealing with Kaito, she spoke freely. The soldiers' surprise made perfect sense. Has she taken a liking to me, maybe? Or does she just not think I'm worthy of her concern? It could easily be both... Man, I just can't get a read on her. As he turned that thought over in his mind, Kaito arrived at a tent whose entrance was flanked on both sides by doorkeepers. When he went inside, he left the moist, chilly air behind him and was greeted instead by the warmth of a simple stove. The craftsmanship of the beastfolk's portable dwellings never failed to impress. While the imperial princess's tent was likely the only one of its kind, it had all the furniture necessary to conduct official business, and the floor was even covered with a bulky rug. Valisisa sat down hard in her large, stately chair. She swished her tail from side to side as she rested one elbow on her desk. Then she began tapping away at the large map spread out across it. "So? What were the results of your patrol?" "The damage was pretty nasty all over... But when you consider how slow we were to get started, the evacuation efforts are coming along decently. And we were able to hit the underlings' main landing sites fairly hard. They don't have any sort of command structure, so their behavior itself is relatively predictable. As long as we can figure out the best ways to attack them and where they're gonna land, all we have to do is head to the corresponding points and drive them back as many times as we can." As he was laying out his explanation, Kaito snapped his fingers and crafted a chair for himself out of black darkness and azure flower petals. It was the exact same piece as the luxurious article Vlad had once created. Kaito crossed his legs as he sat atop its leather seat, across from Valisisa. Then unhesitatingly, he reached his arm out to the map and touched the large, yellow expanse that indicated the desert. "As for the demi-human pureblood sector, its construction is just as peculiar as I heard. The walls around the first ward are flawless, but as the ward numbers go up, the defensive structures get shittier. I guess the conditions really are different based on purity of the residents' blood... But because of this layout, the brunt of the losses came from the purebloods. They keep the gates to the other wards sealed off, so they didn't have anywhere to escape to. I don't even want to think about the attack the third ward got hit by... They were literally getting tortured to death." "Ha, I warned them to improve conditions every chance I got, but they never listened. The pureblood sector's defenses are designed to protect against overland invaders and mixed-blood uprisings. They didn't even consider that attacks might come from above. Their fate was only natural for ones with a weakness so pronounced... Come now, don't give me that face. I would have disparaged them the exact same way if it was my race we were talking about. If you get hung up on every little thing, we'll be here all day. Get over it. Now, it's the duty of the living to prevent more victims from arising. Did they finish reorganizing their defenses?" "By some miracle, yeah. We pinned down the source of the underlings here at the beach, so once we shot down the ones that were approaching via alternate routes, things settled down for a while. We figured out bombarding them from the second-ward bulwarks was the best way to take care of them. Right now, the soldiers gathered there are using the demi-humans' metalwork cannons to keep up the assault. The civilians are split up among the various sectors and are under tight management. Once we opened up the gates, it was easy to come up with efficient evacuation routes and set up focused escorts. They should be able to hold through the day, even without my help." Valisisa nodded coolly. It seemed all had fallen within her expectations. She shook her soft tail as she continued her line of questioning. "What of humanity's Capital?" "I only just heard back from them, but it sounds like they're doing comparatively well. The remaining paladins and the mages have been working together successfully. They don't have much that's effective against the underlings besides their divine beasts, but those summoned beasts are no joke. That said, we can't make out the damage they've taken in the countryside. They've allowed the lords to decline to dispatch soldiers to the Capital and just focus on protecting their own territories instead. And they've deployed people who can draw up barriers and teleportation circles to all the major cities so they can aid in the defense and evacuation efforts." "And my beloved homeland?" "Right, sorry I had to put you in charge of the Northernmost Shore instead of your own country. Just like I promised, you don't have anything to worry about. All of Vyade's squadrons save for the first are manning the defenses around the World Tree, and I gave them a powerfulâ€” Hmm?" Then without warning, Kaito went silent and started rummaging through his pocket. He pulled out a glass orb filled with red liquid. It wasn't the jewel he'd been carrying around that housed the replica of Vlad's soul. Valisisa narrowed her eyes in puzzlement. Kaito snapped his fingers. Azure petals began dancing within the orb. The red liquid took on a radiant glow, and a person's figure appeared on its surface. The plain, bespectacled court lady gave a deep nod. "Sir Kaito, do you have a moment to spare?" "Yeah, you're fine. What's up?" "I believe you requested to be promptly informed if she woke up, so... She has awakened." The court lady's voice was low, as though she were afraid of something. One of Kaito's eyebrows sprang up. A moment later, though, his expression went calm again, and he nodded. "Got it. Thanks for the heads-up." "With all due respect, the reconstruction sect will raise a fuss once they find out. You may want to hurry." "Believe me, I know. Good work out there." After thanking her, Kaito extinguished the light. She was still bowing as her figure faded from view. The woman had been one of the communications personnel working for the king. At present, humanity hadn't formally given Kaito their backing. In spite of that, though, many humans, the court lady among them, carried out Kaito's orders without running them by their superiors, despite the fact that he was officially powerless. The chain of command was a complete mess. In a sense, humanity had found themselves in quite the odd situation. You can hardly blame them, though. Right now, people are being forced to watch one another get torn to shreds and cast aside like garbage. Given the general chaos, it made sense for them to want to follow the strongest guy around. And all the more so with that person having declared himself an ally to everyone alive. But he couldn't count on their blind faith lasting forever. Once things settled down, many of them would start regretting their actions or else be swayed by some new authority figure and begin reproaching Kaito. But he was fine with that. I don't need unshakable motives or faith from them; I only need their cooperation. As long as he could do what he needed to do, that was enough. Kaito casually slipped the orb back into his pocket. Valisisa puffed her tail up with displeasure. "Hold it. You would bring out that strange device all of a sudden, then put it away without another word? What is it? Compared with the Church's communication devices, its make is unreasonably simple, no?" "What, this? Okay, so first, I craft a glass orb