It was night time once more beyond the water mirror.
Within the tent, Yasuharu was clutching his tablet and curled up tightly as if to drive away the scene he had just witnessed from his mind.
“Y-you…!”
The Dragon God still wore the same vile grin as he continued to watch the Seer, who was grinding his teeth.
Monsters were moving ominously in the darkness. As he watched them, he went over the strategies that the enemy had deployed so far, carefully examining each one.
First of all, the kobold’s role in the battle had changed drastically.
A direct assault on the main camp while mounted on a wolf.
Then he joined up with the Demon General and launched a head on attack.
There had also been great spells fired at long range. Furthermore, he was now capable of close combat, which had previously been his weakness.
“That damned lesser goddess…”
Even up to the moment before defeat, there had been no signs of her preparing such a divine vessel.
But now that he thought about it, ever since he had exposed everything and mentally cornered both Keita and the others, she had not shown her face in the meeting hall. Had she been using that time to secretly arrange all of this?
The kobold was strengthened now, and the Demon General had also become more lively.
Berganda was standing at the front lines and unleashing his full power. By whittling down the enemy’s main force, he had reduced the amount of command work that was required, which gave him greater freedom to act.
On top of that, the little dragon…who the Seer had assumed was useless, was now using break arts, making it more difficult to do anything towards Berganda.
And then there was also the wolf ambush earlier. He had not expected the star wolf to have the intelligence to be able to use the divine vessel of invisibility.
“…What does it mean…what is happening…”
Furukamuto thought, his mind felt like it was tangled.
It had been a strategy planned with astonishing care.
However, for the reality in front of him to come to pass, preparations made today or yesterday would not have been enough.
“…Since when…”
“Hmmm?”
“I am asking you, for how long have you been preparing this!?”
Once the trick was laid bare, the structure of the scheme became terrifyingly simple.
However, what exactly had been done in order to make this strategy possible? And so Furukamuto demanded that the Dragon God tell him the truth.
“Well, that is a rather vague question, Seer. Surely someone with intellect as strong as you would be able to figure that much. Am I wrong?”
“But to even do such a thing, you would have had to have known the nature of my divine rule to begin with! When did you figure it out?”
“Ah, that…”
The dragon licked at the fire wine in his hand and answered indifferently.
“From the very beginning, obviously.”
“Wh-what?”
“To be precise, it was that moment when you so proudly showed off your army and threatened Salia into withdrawing.”
In an instant, his memory returned to the past, replaying the words they had exchanged during that moment.
“I believe that I asked you this. ‘Your Hero has come to Morania, has he not?’”
“You…you are saying that you figured it all out…just from that!?”
“More importantly, the moment that you revealed your divine rule to revolve around an RTS, it was only natural to assume that you had implemented a save and load function as well.”
Back then, he had admitted that the Hero was present because trying to hide it might have resulted in exposing the true state of their situation instead.
“Of course, there were other things as well. With divine power as great as yours, you should have been able to spread your blessing thin but wide, and dispatch troops to every region. Given the existence of your dog tags and those ‘eyes’ in the sky, it would have been easy to maintain control over your forces.”
“And yet…the fact that he did not means that…”
“That he was conserving his blessings. Or perhaps there was another reason. That is all.”
By now, Saliashe had regained her composure completely. It was as if she no longer even regarded him as a threat.
That calm face of hers only deepened his irritation.