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“If you are not sure as to how you should proceed, I can give you a few options. However, first, you must decide whether you want to believe my story or not. If you do not believe me, I will bring the leader’s head to the Elves. If you do believe, then the next step would be convincing the leader and seeing how that goes. If you can convince him and he promises to release the spirit, I will lend you a hand to defeat the Elves. If you fail to persuade him, I will take his head.”
“But I can only choose one of those.”
“Well, then you better do a good job. I’ll pay a visit to the leader the day after tomorrow.”
“That’s…”

Farana’s face looked completely drained, but I wasn’t going to wait forever for her to convince someone, whom I wasn’t even sure would buckle. Personally, I thought it would be more meaningful to focus on how to unite the Beastmen after the leader was gone, rather than worrying about persuading him. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

Suddenly, Farana’s eyes lit up. She swung her hard-looking claws with incredible speed, or rather at a snail’s pace from my point of view. Surely if she managed to kill me, the leader wouldn’t die today. It wasn’t a bad option if one considered buying time.

However, that was only if I wasn’t the one she was dealing with.

She aimed at my neck without any hesitation, but with her speed, I could easily dodge. Given her status, if I managed to avoid being hit in a fatal area, I wouldn’t have suffered much damage. But given the opportunity had presented itself before me, I decided to simply grab her.

I caught her outstretched arm, pinched it, and applied some pressure. As I did, Farana’s face twisted in pain.

“I admire your courage, but let me first show you my status.”

I then displayed my status screen to Farana. Her eyes widened in shock, and she turned to look at me with a fearful gaze¹.

“I suggest you act quickly. As I said, I will visit the leader the day after tomorrow. Until then.”

Ignoring Farana’s attempt to speak, I slipped out of the room using Stealth. I was eager to see how things would unfold after two days.

◇◇◇

After meeting with Farana, I spent the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing. Like, really, nothing. It felt as though I could even go without breathing.

And given I was a Demigod, I could probably pull it off, and I did. If I wasn’t careful, it was entirely possible to lose track of time and for a few years to slip away while I was in my daze.

Those thoughts aside, today I decided to stalk the leader. Farana was stuck to him like glue, so it was impossible for it to be just the two of us, or rather, with Lullus included, just the three of us. The interesting thing was that the person Farana was sticking to wasn’t the leader but a double. That was because his name was different from what I’d seen yesterday. It was possible that the person I met yesterday was a double as well, but given the current person’s family name was different from that of Farana, it was safe to assume that the leader I met yesterday had been the real thing.

Besides that, the doppelgänger bore a striking resemblance to the leader. So much so that I couldn’t figure out if this person just looked like the leader or had used some kind of disguise technique. For the Beastmen, finding a double would be challenging since they’d have to be the same species.

Even so, it seemed entirely possible for the double to convincingly act as the leader, but that didn’t concern me. What concerned me was that the real leader was somewhere below ground, so I decided to visit him.

◇◇◇

Lullus found a hidden staircase in the mansion, and the two of us went down it. We also set up a barrier at the entrance to ensure no one could follow us. If one mentioned below ground, it was expected that I’d immediately think of prisons or such, but that was not the case. When I heard underground, the first image that popped into my mind was that of a subway or an underground mall. These were the kinds of impressions I associated with it.

The place here, however, resembled a cave. It didn’t appear to have been reinforced with stones or any other materials; it seemed like it had simply been dug out.

Sitting there was the lion Beastman I had encountered the day before, looking visibly annoyed.

“Did you accept your daughter’s proposal?” I asked.
“I ended up coming here.”

The leader said, completely ignoring my question, yet sounding somewhat happy. He then rose slowly, his gaze fixed on me. His eyebrows lifted slightly, as though surprised to see me.

“To think you’d come here. I should’ve been notified if something unusual came up.”
“I can handle surveillance well.”
“I guess there’s no point in asking why you’re here. It’s about releasing the spirit, isn’t it? I don’t know what spell you’ve cast on my daughter, but I do not believe you.”

It seemed Farana had tried her best. But alas, she couldn’t tell him what I planned to do, nor could she tell him my identity. Specifically, she couldn’t tell him that I intended to kill him, that I was a messenger of God, or that I was here to retrieve the spirit.

Above all, she couldn’t admit that I was the one who had provided the information. That left her in the tricky position of persuading him without being able to disclose where she had gotten my information.

It wasn’t an easy task, and I doubted it could be done without significant effort. Besides, even if she’d found a different way to communicate it to him, it wouldn’t bother me in the least.

In the end, it seemed she hadn’t made much progress. So, she’d resorted to using a double to try and get past me. It wasn’t a bad decision overall. However, I had to say—she chose the wrong opponent.

“You’re free to doubt me, but doing so will only hinder my objective.”
“The liberation of the spirit… But we can’t just stand by and accept this! If we don’t inflict the same suffering on those Elves—if we don’t take revenge—the ones who perished at their hands will never receive justice!”
“I’m not sure about that. I have no idea if the dead can even be rewarded. That said, I do understand your desire for revenge.”

I found it hard to imagine that the dead Beastmen wouldn’t want revenge. And even if they didn’t, I doubted they’d turn it away. Revenge, at its core, was about coming to terms with one’s feelings. It was not for an uninvolved party to question its validity.

But that wasn’t something I needed to take into account.

“If you don’t accept my terms, then you’ll die here. I’ve promised the Elf king that if I bring him your head, he’ll take me to the spirit.”
“Good grief. I don’t like doing this, but this is all your own doing, okay²?”

The leader said and lunged at me in the blink of an eye.

1. Robinxen: He just traumatised a child with numbers.
2. Robinxen: What a twonk. Nincompoop.

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