The Demon King Overrun by Heroes Novel - Chapter 105

Chapter 105
## Chapter 105: The Problem with Perceptive Princesses

The outcome of any clash is dictated by its figureheads.

Regardless of whether the force is a small band of elites or a sprawling legion, every group has its icons, and the personal stakes between these leaders often decide the fate of the entire field. One person of overwhelming capability can completely reverse the momentum of a conflict.

At this moment, the center of gravity for the imperial forces was undoubtedly the Crimson Dragon Knight Order.

They were spearheaded by their captain.

Yet now, a blade was buried deep in his chest—a sight that seemed to broadcast the inevitable downfall of the imperial army.

“You treacherous snake…!”

“Victory to the Southern Alliance! Long live Prince Pablo Varkat! His Highness saw right through you. He anticipated how you bottom-feeders would act and kept me hidden for this very moment.”

“Quiet, you rat!”

Thud—

The captain of the Crimson Dragon Knight Order drove a brutal elbow into the knight’s skull and ripped his blade free. Crimson lifeblood sprayed out in violent pulses.

“Commander!”

“You cowardly piece of filth!”

The captain’s legs buckled.

It was a chaotic turn of events, a sudden betrayal, but Pablo was not a man to let a gift from fate slip through his fingers.

“Strike now!”

His massive greatsword whipped through the air like a lethal rotor. The surrounding knights scrambled to avoid the arc.

Crack—

The heavy slab of steel shattered plate armor and bit deep into flesh. A knight shrieked as he was sent tumbling backward. But he did not die without purpose.

“Form up around the captain!”

“Protect him! It was a sneak attack!”

“You spineless bastards!”

The Crimson Dragon knights, who had been spread thin while dismantling the alliance lines, began to converge and reform their ranks.

“The captain of the Crimson Dragon has been brought down by His Highness!”

“The cowards are retreating! They’re ganging up!”

“Advance with the Prince!”

The alliance survivors, who had been on the verge of total collapse and despair, felt a spark of hope ignite. The knight’s shouting and the shocking news of the captain’s injury breathed life back into their broken spirits.

However, the fire of battle did not burn with its previous intensity.

Seeing their leader wounded, the Crimson Dragon Knight Order began a disciplined withdrawal. The momentum, which had been crushingly in favor of the empire, started to swing toward the alliance.

“Get out of my path!”

Pablo Varkat pushed his body to its absolute limit, desperate to finish off the Crimson Dragon captain, but the defensive perimeter was ironclad.

Ultimately, the killing blow eluded him.

Nevertheless, the field belonged to him. He had secured a tactical triumph.

He hoisted his gore-stained sword toward the sky.

A massive roar erupted.

The remaining alliance knights screamed in celebration.

Less than half of their original number were still standing.

“Where is that knight?”

“I beg your pardon? Which one are you referring to, Your Highness?”

“The alliance soldier who buried his steel in the Crimson Dragon captain’s back! He was wearing the colors of the Kingdom of Torkan!”

The weary survivors and the fresh reinforcements arriving from the rear began a frantic search.

And then.

“…Gah.”

A soldier from the Kingdom of Torkan was discovered, stripped of his gear and buried in the dirt. He was alive, luckily, but he certainly wasn’t the man who had turned the tide of the war.

The alliance realized in that moment that an outside force had stepped onto the board.

“…What the hell is going on?”

Who was it?

—

“Did I misunderstand the report?”

The man let out a sharp, joyless bark of laughter.

“The leader of the Crimson Dragon Knight Order was severely wounded, forcing a retreat despite having the upper hand. The mana vein wasn’t secured, though the Southern Alliance took the brunt of the casualties.”

“The body count is irrelevant.”

It didn’t matter how many men were lost on either side.

“The only metric is whether the vein was reclaimed. You aren’t going to pretend you don’t understand that, are you?”

People interpret the world through the lens of their own desires.

The empire has countless rivals, and even more who dream of its ruin. To those watching every move of the imperial throne, the fine print of the battle was secondary. All that mattered was the headline: the empire failed, and the vein remained out of their grasp.

“Who is aware of this?”

“Only a few. However…”

“The real issue is how those Southern Alliance mongrels will spin this.”

“Even if they boast and inflate the truth, the reality doesn’t change. The empire remains the dominant power.”

“Our reputation is at stake. The empire’s dignity is being dragged through the mud, and by extension, so is mine. Have you forgotten that I was the one who set this in motion?”

The five knight orders granted the right to use the dragon’s name were the crown jewels of the empire. They were built on the premise of invincibility. A loss was more than a setback; it was a crack in the foundation of the state.

And that foundation had been chipped. By the very Southern Alliance “ants” they had spent years looking down upon.

The empire’s enemies would move in like starving scavengers at the first sign of weakness. While it might only be a superficial wound, the reaction of the imperial citizens—who viewed their nation as infallible—was a much more volatile problem.

“This necessitates a total mobilization.”

When those who cannot lose are defeated, there are only two remedies: hide the truth so thoroughly that it ceases to exist, or achieve a victory so massive it eclipses the memory of the failure.

The man was leaning toward the latter.

He knew the Southern Alliance—his bitter foes—would never keep quiet about a victory of this magnitude. Not when a mana stone vein was the prize.

“Pablo Varkat. A bright star, indeed. Who would have guessed he could withstand the Crimson Dragon Knight Order?”

The man’s jaw tightened.

He would not allow for a third embarrassment.

—

“…We have to walk away from it.”

Pablo Varkat spoke.

Though he was often seen as a crude, stubborn man—essentially a male counterpart to Luiz Bergeft—he possessed a keen understanding of the geopolitical landscape. He could see the movements on the board three steps ahead. If he couldn’t, he never would have risen to represent the Southern Alliance or earned his reputation as a “star.”

“What are you saying, Your Highness?”

“We broke the Crimson Dragon Knight Order. We stepped on the dragon’s tail.”

In war, there are boundaries. Even between the Southern Alliance and the empire, as long as the goal wasn’t total genocide, certain lines were respected. The five dragon knight orders of the imperial family were the most sacred of those lines.

“The dragon knights are not permitted to lose. If they do, that loss has to be purged from history.”

An invincible force. Their shame was the empire’s shame.

“This won’t be like the previous skirmishes. They will come for us with everything they have, driven by a need to erase the Southern Alliance entirely to save face.”

“You’re being overly pessimistic.”

“Are you suggesting we should have simply let them win?”

“Didn’t Your Highness lead us to victory in the first place?”

“Precisely. And that’s why our options have narrowed to two. We either beg for a ceasefire now, or we prepare to be drowned by an imperial wave, hoping we can win a fight big enough to make them forget this one.”

“……”

The assembled nobles felt a chill run down their spines. They had spent years fighting the empire; none of them were naive enough to doubt Pablo’s assessment.

“We offer the empire a peace treaty and act as if this engagement never occurred. We pretend the Crimson Dragon Knight Order was never on the field.”

“Must we really degrade ourselves to that extent?”

“We knew the risks of facing the dragon knights when we committed to this war!”

“A mana stone vein is within our grasp! You were just telling us we had to take it at any cost, and now that we’ve won, you’ve lost your nerve?”

The nobility began to stir in protest. It was expected. While the empire was terrifying, the Southern Alliance was no pushover. Spreading the news of the Crimson Dragon’s defeat would send morale to record highs.

Then, one of the lords spoke up.

“I am well aware of the empire’s shadow. But I see no reason to humiliate ourselves after a win. If Your Highness truly believes this is the path, there must be a factor we aren’t seeing.”

“There is. In a standard conflict, I wouldn’t be this cautious. I would dig in and hold the line. That is exactly why I was so intent on killing the Crimson Dragon captain.”

“And what is the factor?”

“An outside player has entered the game.”

“…!”

“What do you mean?”

“Recall when I first located the vein and was jumped while alone?”

“Yes.”

“I dismissed it as a convenient excuse at the time, but looking back, Austin Croin of the Blue Griffin Knight Order seemed genuinely bewildered.”

“You think someone staged that ambush to force our hands into war?”

“Could it have been a performance?”

“It’s a mana stone mine. Walking away now would be insanity.”

“If that were the only suspicious event, I might agree.”

But the list continued.

“While I was negotiating with Austin Croin, an imperial knight attacked me without provocation. That was the spark for the actual fighting. Under normal circumstances, no knight breaks rank while their commander is speaking to the enemy. Imperial discipline isn’t that lax.”

“The empire could have planned the provocation.”

“Then explain this: while I was locked in combat with the Crimson Dragon captain, a knight from the Kingdom of Torkan struck from the shadows. Because of that hit, the captain was crippled, and we avoided a massacre.”

“One of our own heroes?”

The representative from the Kingdom of Torkan began to beam, sensing a moment of great prestige for his house.

“Isn’t that cause for celebration?”

“Except that after the dust settled, that knight vanished. We scoured the camp and found the actual knight of Torkan buried in a hole, stripped of his armor.”

“…Good heavens.”

“Is this the truth? Your Highness, you cannot make such a claim lightly!”

“Ask anyone who was there. They’ll tell you the same.”

Pablo struck the table with his palm.

“We are currently performing on a stage built by someone else. The Southern Alliance is being manipulated by some shadow-dwelling parasite.”

And that individual.

“Is hungry for a much larger bloodbath.”

We shouldn’t be slaughtering each other—we should be hunting that person down.

“Because that person,” Pablo added grimly, “invoked the name of the gods.”

“…No, it can’t be.”

“Are those cockroaches still crawling around?”

The color drained from the faces of the nobility.

—

The Crimson Dragon Knight Order.

One of the elite five marked by the dragon’s crest.

Berge knew them intimately. After the imperial crown prince had been taken, they were the ones at the tip of the spear, tearing through the tower’s defenses. They weren’t legendary heroes individually, but their collective power was unmatched. Even a star hero would struggle against their unified strength.

They were, without exaggeration, the most formidable force on the continent.

‘A bit off the mark.’

Was it the captain’s own instincts, or is my control over mana still a bit unrefined?

I had aimed for his heart. But the second I lunged, he felt the shift in the air. He couldn’t dodge it entirely, but he adjusted his posture just enough to keep the blade from a vital organ. That split second of intuition saved him.

Regardless, the Southern Alliance came out on top, so the goal was met.

“In any case, the empire is backed into a corner now—their pride won’t let them walk away.”

Just like the frenzy following the prince’s kidnapping, they’d resort to every dirty trick in the book. The dragon knight orders were the cornerstone of their national identity.

“But isn’t there another path this could take?”

“Such as?”

“A sudden diplomatic resolution between the two powers?”

“Not a chance,” Berge laughed.

“You shouldn’t be so certain.”

“It’s not a guess; it’s a logical deduction based on the facts.”

“But the empire is prideful. If they realized they were being used as pawns, they wouldn’t play along. The alliance would feel the same.”

“Perhaps. But when you dangle wealth and the chance for vengeance in front of people, they can’t help but take the bait.”

“What if there’s a third option?”

“Which is?”

“The alliance makes a quiet deal with the empire before the news goes public. They bury the incident and take a small loss to avoid a total war.”

“Why would they bother?”

“Because you overplayed your hand, Demon King.”

“Nobody knows it was me.”

I hadn’t touched a drop of demonic power. I was masked or hidden behind a visor the entire time.

“It doesn’t matter if they know it’s the Demon King. The mere existence of a ‘third party’ is enough to make them cautious.”

“So you really think they won’t escalate?”

“Maybe?”

“You’re wrong.”

Berge shook his head with confidence. For once, he felt he had a better handle on the situation than she did.

“The empire is greedier than you realize. They are obsessed with their image. The Crimson Dragon is their sacred limit. They won’t let this slide.”

“You seem to be an expert on the empire all of a sudden.”

“I know them better than you do, at the very least.”

“Hmm, if you say so.”

“Don’t give me that smug look.”

“I’m not making an expression.”

“That is definitely an expression.”

Berge snapped at her. Ernyan simply looked away.

This is the price of being too soft on her.

“Fine. Let’s make a wager. If things go my way, you give me access to at least five of the Hildean noble vaults.”

“And if I’m right?”

“What do you want?”

Her eyes narrowed into a playful, calculating look.

“Can I just save my request for later?”

“Whatever you want. If you actually win.”

Berge grunted. He was certain he wouldn’t have to pay up.

—

Ahem.

Ernyan gave a little shrug.

She whispered under her breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

“I wonder where that expert went? The one who knew the empire so much better than me?”

“……”

“I’m sorry?”

The elf who had just sprinted in to report the suppression of the rumors looked confused.

“You were so sure the Crimson Dragon was their ‘sacred limit’ and that war was inevitable. You spoke with such authority, like you were an imperial yourself.”

“…Be quiet.”

“I get to collect my prize later, right?”

“……”

“Surely the great Demon King wouldn’t go back on a bet?”

“I swear by the Demon King’s Standard and the First Emperor—I don’t break my word.”

“You don’t even believe that yourself.”

This is exactly why sharp-witted princesses are a headache…

“…I’ll stake my honor on it.”

“Now that, I can believe.”

The skirmish didn’t turn into a full-scale war.

Dammit.