".........Huh...?"
A voice slipped out of her lungs without thinking, born of pure bewilderment.
It was Jonne's voice.
It was so small and fragile it was hard to believe it had come from her, but it was unmistakably hers.
"......That's... your request...?"
It wasn't a demand for non-aggression, and it wasn't [Subordination] either. It was something so light that, stunned, she asked again.
"You won a [Contract] that could have asked for anything... and that's all you want...?"
She had assumed Adelio would use his request to demand non-aggression and avoid her completely.
From Adelio's point of view, she had to be nothing but an inconvenient nuisance.
"Yes. That's more than enough for me."
But Jonne's expectation was wrong.
"Did you think that because I'm Lady Blanc's subordinate, I'd ask you to stay out of my affairs?"
"......"
Jonne answered with silence, and Adelio gave a bitter smile.
"It seems you've misunderstood one more thing."
"......Misunderstood...?"
Jonne slowly raised her head as she murmured the word.
Soon, a faint light bloomed in her darkened blue eyes.
And seeing that, Adelio nodded and spoke.
He gave the answer Jonne had wanted so desperately inside her heart, the answer she had never been able to ask for aloud.
"I've never once thought you were a bother. If anything, I even thought that someday, we might become comrades."
"......!"
What he liked was not Jonne the ruler of yellow, but Jonne the demon herself.
That was why, if he had fallen into the land Jonne ruled, or if he had been born into the yellow lineage, he surely would have become her subordinate.
At first, he might have followed by force, just as he once had with Blanc. But over time, just as he had come to sincerely follow Blanc, he would have changed then too.
"So while I'm in [Eldorado], I plan to come through the [Netherworld Gates] often."
Not for hostility, but for harmony.
Not to meet Jonne the king, but Jonne the demon.
"......Comrades? Are you seriously saying that—?"
Adelio said it as if it were nothing, but for a subject to say he would make a king his comrade was the kind of outrageous statement no one could dismiss lightly.
The sort of absurdity anyone would laugh off as nonsense.
"—And what if... I attack you the moment you cross the [Netherworld Gates]?"
So Jonne looked at him with disbelief, as if what he said were little better than madness.
And yet...
Even so, his blue eyes were straight and unwavering, as if to say he meant every word.
"If it's the you I know, then I don't think you'd do something like that. So I don't mind."
Those eyes were steady because he knew Jonne well.
She had a fiery temper that lashed out unfairly at others, yet at times she would choose the honorable path for someone else's sake.
She looked down on other races as inferior, yet she could praise a human strong enough to face her and smile brightly.
Even while consumed by rage from humiliation, she could still hold on to reason for the sake of her subordinates.
"The demon I know as [Jonne] can be destructive because she's a [King], but at the same time, she's also the kind of demon who's like a [leader], one who takes good care of her people."
The contradiction that was the demon called Jonne.
...
"......Ha ha..."
It sounded like laughter that admitted it had no rebuttal.
It might have sounded like the laugh of someone broken, someone who had given up.
But the truth was different.
That laughter did not belong to someone who had lost her will. It belonged to a demon who had forged a new one.
"I never thought there'd be another demon as insane as that Noir..."
Her gaze and tone had returned to normal.
The dark look born of humiliation had vanished without a trace, and only the blue eyes worthy of a king remained on Jonne's face.
"Fine... I'll admit it. You won the wager. I'll keep the [Netherworld Gates] connected to [Eldorado] open, so use them however you like."
As Jonne lightly waved her hand through the air, an enormous amount of magic power moved with her arm, and soon a gate appeared once more, showing the scenery of [Eldorado].
"......And in return for letting me hear that insane idea of yours, I'll tell you this—"
Once the gate was fully formed, Jonne raised her arm toward the sky and spoke again.
.........
And that was the beginning.
.........
Saying she was curious what someone like him would do, she opened her mouth and said,
"—If you're planning to go see Blanc right away, you'd better be careful on your way."
And with that, she announced the beginning of a completely unexpected [games].
...
"Be careful? What do you mean by that—"
There was something uneasy in Jonne's warning, and the air itself seemed to grow heavy.
Crk... crk-crk...
Then, along with it, came the sudden sound of something cracking... and as the noise swelled like a window bulging outward, instinct stirred inside him.
As if...
Baaang!!!
...it were trying to warn him of imminent danger.
...
The moment Adelio, sensing something ominous, was about to speak, cracks spread through empty air, and [something] completely broke apart.
"—A barrier?!"
The thing that had shattered was a barrier.
A powerful barrier tinged with yellow light.
'Was that breaking sensation I felt earlier this...? But why is there a barrier here...'
As Adelio questioned it inwardly, a moment later [Answerer]'s report rang out inside him.
[Report. It is presumed to be a barrier created by the [Primordial Demons] Jonne. It is presumed to have been installed in order to disguise the duel that just concluded.]
'...Disguise it? Why would there be any need to disguise something in a wasteland like th—'
Unlike the calm report from [Answerer], Adelio's sense of foreboding kept rising, and he was about to question it again.
But then...
'—!!!'
Before he could ask, he realized it himself.
With the barrier broken, he could sense it too.
That there were now intruders in this hell.
"Judging by how they've been slowly setting their sights on Blanc's territory for a while now, I guess the [other world] has noticed you too."
Jonne spoke to Adelio, who was staring up at the sky in shock.
"I didn't say anything because I thought you'd lose... but it looked like I had to tell you after all. Those bastards are a real pain."
Those bastards.
There was only one force Jonne despised that much.
The demons' ancient enemy: the [Aggressors].
And among them, the race especially tied to demons had invaded hell.
The intruders called [Phantoms], a race born from angels.
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