Solitär watched the figure lying beside her and found herself genuinely amused.
It was rare — truly rare — to see this person wearing such a dopey, blissful grin, as though she had just lived through something utterly delightful.
"So what exactly did our all-knowing Demon King see in her sleep?" Solitär teased, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
"Mm... just a very good dream." Fíliya rolled over to face her.
"Alright... you've been spending all your time with Tot lately. How's that magic coming along?"
Solitär gave her a sideways look, well aware that this woman was absolutely hiding something — but she didn't feel like pressing the issue.
After all, Fíliya looked genuinely happy right now. If it really had been a good dream, if it made her feel even a little better — then Solitär couldn't be bothered to pry.
"Naturally, preparations are complete," Fíliya said with full confidence. "We'll use her terminal virus to give every last member of the Demon Race a purification — a baptism."
All this time, she and Tot had been running experiment after experiment — with Fíliya herself serving as the test subject, naturally.
Her goals were twofold: to refine the terminal virus so it would permanently sever the Demon Race's instinct to consume humans, and to calibrate its concentration so it wouldn't kill lower-ranking demons outright.
Simple enough to describe. Nightmarish to actually execute.
If not for having an unkillable test subject on hand, they likely would have wiped out the remaining few hundred demons entirely before ever arriving at a usable result.
"That must have been exhausting." Solitär said it with helpless resignation.
How could she not know — how many times had Fíliya been killed by the terminal virus in the course of those experiments, all in the name of remaking the Demon Race?
"At first I didn't feel a thing — the pain-suppression magic was doing its job just fine. But then I discovered that Tot's terminal virus is something else entirely. In the course of fighting against me, the virus was evolving. It seemed to realize it couldn't kill my body outright, so it changed its method of attack."
The moment the conversation turned to research, Fíliya lit up completely.
Anyone else would have long since tuned her out. But fortunately for Fíliya, the person across from her was Solitär — and Solitär happened to love exactly this side of her.
"Oh?" Solitär's eyes urged her to keep going.
"Once the terminal virus realized it couldn't destroy my body, it started eroding my mind instead... and then it dismantled my pain-suppression magic from the inside, forcing me to feel it all over again — that searing, dissolving agony. I have to say, it was genuinely fascinating."
"...And then what?" Solitär let out a long, weary sigh.
Only the person sitting in front of her, she thought, could treat something so horrifying as casual dinner conversation.
"Then of course I got the better of it — I'm the Demon King, a little obstacle like that is nothing. But the experiment did have two real difficulties. First: I adapted to the terminal virus far too quickly. I've already built up a resistance to it. These days, the dosage needed to dissolve me is vastly higher than it was at the start."
"The second problem followed directly from the first. Tot's virus production speed started falling behind my needs. In the beginning I could drop by to die a few dozen times in a single day. But eventually she needed several days just to produce enough of a dose to kill me once. You should have seen the look on her face back then — it was priceless. Every time, she'd be slumped on the bed with this expression of utter despair, and the moment she spotted me coming she'd grab a pillow and press herself into the corner of the wall, muttering things like, 'My Lord Demon King, please don't come back, I'm completely drained, there's nothing left.' It was absolutely hilarious."
Fíliya let out a laugh — a decidedly un-ladylike, vaguely unsettling kekekeke — at which point Solitär instinctively balled up her fist and knocked her one on the head.
"Stop laughing like that. It's revolting." Solitär issued the command flatly.
"Excuse me? Solitär, you have some nerve, speaking to me — the Demon King — in that tone of voice."
"So what. Got a problem with it?"
"...No." Fíliya gave an easy shrug.
Then she simply got up, threw her clothes on with brisk efficiency, grabbed Solitär's hand, and hauled her bodily out of bed.
"Come on. Time to work." Fíliya smiled lightly.
"Mm." Solitär nodded — but as her gaze settled on Fíliya's profile, something tugged at her quietly.
...It really was a good dream, wasn't it.
Has this one found a little of her old self again?
The two made their way to the terrace, where Aura and Linie were already waiting. As for Tot — she had been utterly worked to the bone these past weeks, and her role was essentially that of a mascot to begin with, so no one saw fit to drag her out for this.
"Hey, Linie — have you noticed something?" The moment Fíliya and Solitär appeared, Aura immediately turned to Linie with a pointed, needling look.
"Mm, Linie has noticed, Lady Aura."
"Tch, these two are getting up later and later — even I've been up for ages! Tch... what exactly are they getting up to at night?"
"Mm, that is indeed a question worth investigating. Linie hopes Lady Fíliya and Lady Solitär will come clean."
Watching the two of them egg each other on with such gleeful coordination, Fíliya didn't even look annoyed. She was the Demon King, after all — surely she had the magnanimity to endure a little idle gossip.
...Or not.
In one swift stride she closed the distance and grabbed Lady Aura squarely by the cheek.
"Tsss— ow— OW!! Why only me?! Linie said it too!! Alright, alright, I'll shut up, just stop squeezing!!"
Lady Aura's shriek was genuinely alarming — so much so that the entire assembled Demon Race, arrayed in formation beneath the Demon King's Castle, gave an involuntary collective shudder, half-convinced that one of the greater demons above was unleashing some form of sonic magic.
"Tch. There are that many demons watching from down below, and she can't even leave her 'strategist' a shred of dignity." Once Fíliya released her, Lady Aura did not, as she had claimed, shut up — she simply continued her complaints in a low, muttered grumble.
"Relax," Fíliya said airily. "For lower-ranking demons, no matter how undignified their superiors act, they wouldn't dare mock them — they wouldn't even allow themselves to think it."
With that, Fíliya stepped forward to the very front of the terrace.
Below, assembled at Fíliya's prior summons — delivered through Rivale via telepathic resonance — stood every member of the Demon Race.
Fíliya studied the expressions on their faces.
...Well. The ones with some measure of ability — tentatively classified as mid-ranking demons, the former demon generals and squad leaders — still wore something resembling an expression. But the lower-ranking demons stared straight up, blank and mechanical, faces utterly empty.
Having spent so long around greater demons like Solitär, Fíliya had almost forgotten: this hollow, dull vacancy was simply what lower-ranking demons looked like.
But after today — the face of the Demon Race would undergo a great advancement... or perhaps the more accurate word was mutation.
____
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🔥 New history: Oshi No Ko: Co-starring with Kana Arima
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