7th Demon Prince Jilbagias’ Chronicle of Demon Kingdom Toppling - Chapter 88: Stronghold of The Wandering Soul

８８． Stronghold of The Wandering Soul

「――Thus! I can finally invite Jil-kun!」

A lich descended the spiral staircase with a light gait in front of me.

Good day, this is Jilbagias who finally got invited to the den of undeads for my necromancy lesson.

「This staircase is so damn long.」

Even a demon race like me with blessed physical strength had enough of the staircase that seemingly went down forever.

It was too damn deep, even if I’m already dead and couldn’t feel tired. Just imagining the fact that I had to climb up again later was enough to break my heart.

Sophia was walking with a light step beside me. Dammit, how dare she brazenly go against the logic of the world…!

「It’s okay, we’re about to arrive.」

「Really~?」

My joy was short-lived when I saw a huge gate which according to Enma, 「That’s the emergency escape cave for the dragon.」.

「I don’t care as long as we don’t have to go even further tha――」

I shut my mouth before telling her that I wish she would move her den a bit closer to the surface because I realize that doing that would cause a lot of rejection by the living creature.

「We don’t really care.」

Enma turned around and smiled at me as she spoke as if she had guessed my thought.

「Staying deep underground was much better than having to clash with the other creatures on the surface for silly reasons.」

「I’m a pacifist.」

「Yeah right. But, it’s really troublesome this time.」

Enma heaved a sigh as she made an exaggerated gesture.

「Though I’ve cleaned it and ventilated the place since I don’t know anyone, I’m not sure if it’s really safe to invite a living creature inside. I mean, undead do not need to take a breath.」

My smile twitched when I heard Enma cracking an undead joke.

「That isn’t a laughing matter. Things will go south―― If you suddenly fall flat after inhaling some sort of poison gas left in the air right?」

「Yeah, that sounds really bad indeed. I don’t know how my father and mother will react to that.」

It would cause a lot of political problems. Even if by some sort of miracle, Platy forgave Enma, the other noisy guys would shout 「Those undead are trying to assassinate the prince!」.

「yeah. That’s why it takes a lot of work and confirmation before I can invite you to my place… I’ve used the method used by miners to check whether the air in the mine has poison or not but, are you by chance familiar with the method of using small birds?」

「Ah… I’ve read about that in a book before.」

「That’s why I did my best and caught a few birds. I left them for a few days after ventilating the room, and after I checked out that the birds were still alive, I knew that the room was safe for other living creatures.」

She went through a lot of trouble just to call me…

『he can actually save a lot of time if she just set up a meeting room above the ground rather than going through all this troublesome procedure.』

Ante pointed out the obvious, more simple solution. I’ve already said that!

「It’s not a garbage dump or something along those terms okay!」

Enma made such a declaration as she pointed her finger at me. It seems that was the thing she wanted to say the most――

And

The stairs ended as we spoke.

「Thank you for the waiting, we’ve arrive~d!!」

Before us was a huge metal gate.

Heavily armored sentries were stationed on both sides of the gate.

「The Demon Prince-sama has arrive~d!」

The sentries saluted at once with extremely well-coordinated movement at Enma’s order.

Just when I was wondering if they were golems… They turned out to be heavily armored skeletons. There was no gap in the armor as if it was made to completely protect the inside.

This must be the application of skeleton horse’s technology. It seems they had quite high resistance against light, fire, or holy attributes. Though they looked as slow as hell, guessing from their lively appearance, they were quite agile. It didn’t really matter if it was only one or two of them but, they definitely spelled trouble if we had to face a group of them in a confined room…

I observed the sentry as they opened the gate.

The air moved in from the stairs into the stronghold.

「The air is flowing in from newly added ventilation due to the difference in atmospheric pressure.」

Even if Enma explained with a triumphant face, personally, I felt as if I was entering the den of a humongous monster.

「And by the way, welcome to our stronghold, Your HIghness―― We will always remember you as the first guest of our stronghold.」

Enma bowed in an exaggerated manner. I followed her without bothering my steps like that of a prince.

The giant mountain of marble turned into Demon King’s Castle, in its’ depth was decorated with a variety of rocks on the floor and wall.

Maybe they were the so-called granite which is said to be formed from cooled down clumps of lava deep underground.

They were excavated carefully and polished. They even prepared illumination made from luminescence stone or lamp for me, thus though this stronghold was dim, I could see just fine.

――And so damn spacious.

There was a giant pillar every now and then, and though the ceiling was dome-shaped, It made me wonder if it was really safe for such a vast space to be built right under a mountain of marble.

… Rather, wouldn’t that mean the Demon King’s Castle would crumble if these pillars were destroyed?

『That’s another addition to your arsenal right?』

The problem was, I would be pretty much-minced meat once I destroyed the pillar, quite literally.

But, the same couldn’t be said for the undead. The reason they were permitted to live right under the Demon King’s Castle was definitely the mismanagement of the Demon King. And Enma was the kind of woman who could do that… Rather, she might be trying to appeal to me by showing this right?

「Over there is a warehouse where we store various materials. Even further down the road is a morgue, we make it airtight since the smell might be a tad too much for living creatures, so make sure that you don’t approach it by mistake. And this room is――」

When I cast a skeptical gaze, Enma started to explain things proudly and rapidly as her marble-like eyes were glowing like a child. She is just like a kid showing off their favorite toys.

…I thought that I could be wrong but… Could it be that she didn’t realize that?

Maybe she really just thinks that this place was her own castle which she could use for settling in.

Perhaps this was an important place for her too. Thus she wouldn’t go as far as thinking about destroying it.

Well, there was a possibility that she might really not realize the fact that she held the lifeline of the Demon King’s Castle considering how much she tried to not arouse the vigilance of the demon race. I even wondered how I had to tell this to the Demon King but, I guess I’ll let this one slip. There was a high possibility that she didn’t noti――！

… No, we’re talking about Enma after all, a centuries old necromancer with many aces in the hole. I should prepare under the worst assumption.

If I informed about this matter to the Demon King, he might raise his vigilance toward the undead, I didn’t want to raise Enma’s suspicion to prevent her from using the ground collapse tactic.

But, it didn’t change the fact that I got nice information.

I just needed to close my eyes and ignore the fact that there was an extremely dangerous element hidden right beneath the Demon King’s castle.

「And then, this is where I kept various books related to my field of expertise. Naturally, both Jil-kun and the Devil-san over there are free to enter this place!」

「Eeh, really!?」

――And then, the Devil of Knowledge beside me, who should’ve noticed, was quickly distracted when she heard “Book Collection”. Sofia!

「Then let’s take our time. How about some tea?」

Enma invited me to the room in the opposite direction of the reference room.

「Ah… Ah, ah…」

Sofia reluctantly followed after me as if her 『It pulled her heartstrings 』.

「… It’s not like we’re in a hurry to start our necromancy lesson right? And Sofia can go to the reference room.」

「YAAAY! ALL HAIL JILBAGIAS-SAMA!」

“YAHOOOO!” That was what Sofia said as she dashed back to the reference room… I guess she wouldn’t realize that…

『This is why she’s the Devil of Knowledge, not the Devil of Wisdom.』

Ante was smiling wryly.

『Though she can easily fix the problem, the devil herself is unable to find the problem. That’s the kind of girl devil she is.』

Uhm… Come to think of it… I had no doubt that Sofia was a smart devil but absent-minded at times…

「… Can you allow her?」

I asked so while seeing Sofia whose figure was almost buried under the books in the reference room.

「No problem.」

Enma readily agreed.

「Moreover, I myself prefer to be alone with you… Fufufufu♪」

「Eh?」

「It’s nothi~ng! This wa~y」

No, I hear it clearly though…

… Maybe I shouldn’t mention this to Ante inside of me.

『Honestly I wanted to pop out of your body right now and tell her “Too bad, I’m the one who is always with him”!』

Stop! Please don’t make this more complicated!

… We just arrived at the stronghold and yet, I was already exhausted.

And I swear that the stairs weren’t the reason for that…

I heaved a sigh and went into the room following after Enma with a stifled smile on my face.

===TN: Those Who Can’t Wait For more Jil-kun’s, I’ve Uploaded Advance chapters in Fox<–HERE and in PATREON(cheaper) with a paywall of course===

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Journey of The Childhood Friend Who Got Betrayed by Sword Saint

The Protagonist of Isekaied Story With Cheat And Harem Has No Idea That All Of The Heroines Has Already Been Stolen By Me~Urgh, My Stomach Is Killing Me~

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