9 Meeting of the Demon Lords II

(Lilith POV)

"And you haven't told any of us about this?" I asked.

"Only Sloth, Madias and I know about this. The rest of you were not trusted. While I had known about the summoning ritual, I did not know that they had casted it. They had performed the ritual ten days ago, yet I had only been able to receive information about it today." Lucien replied calmly.

"What do mean by not trusted?" Invidia scowled at Lucien, her words leaking anger.

"I mean what I said. It took me two thousand years of effort to plant a mole and raise him to a high enough status in the church to gain this information. The holy church has put much effort into suppressing information about the summoned heroes, even launching a mock crusade every hundred years to deceive us. At most, I would only have known that every four hundred years, the church would suddenly gain a few talented individuals. I would never have expected that they had aspects the same as we do."

I leaned back and folded my arms. "Why would they summon people from another world though when they could just as easily pick from this world?"

Lucien hesitated. "I do not know. I believe that is a question only one of the holy gods could answer. At most, I can hypothesize that they do a summoning to find an individual that suits the aspect better than anyone else on this world. It would explain how the heroes can rank up even faster than us." Lucien rolled his shoulders, his face as indifferent as ever.

"There is one thing I do know." He continued. "The purpose of summoning these heroes is not to annihilate us, only to weaken us as much as possible. The holy gods know that they cannot destroy the titles granted by the God of Chaos, so instead they focus on the people who were granted the titles and their subordinates. As long as they continuously kill demon lords, we will never be able to gather enough strength to conquer the south. Due to the continuous summonings and crusades, the southern half of the continent has only grown more prosperous while our side has been continually turmoiled in war. And if I personally acted to retaliate against the south, the holy gods would certainly interfere at that point."

I saw the other demon lords nod their heads at this reasoning, but I couldn't help but think there was something missing from his explanation. But I didn't have the pieces to figure it out nor did I care that much. My mind was still drifting away to my future playtime with Kitty.

"But we should still have had another 14 years before they performed the summoning ritual. Why did they conduct it early this time?" Madias asked.

"Perhaps they have caught on to the fact that we already figured out their little ritual. More likely, they are just a bunch of fools thinking they can completely conquer us this time. I can not guess the thoughts of humans."

"Then what should we do?" Ellie chirped with a toothy smile on her face, completely unfazed by the new information. I suspect she had been daydreaming during most of Lucien's explanation. I couldn't' snitch on her though, since I had been doing the same. Even if he was a flawlessly handsome man, he was still a man. I only cared about beautiful woman!

"It will take them at least a year to train up the heroes before they start their crusade. We wait for them to take the initiative and then we will crush their hopes." Lucien said, a sinister smile showing on his cold face.

Madias snorted. "Crush them? Did you forget the last time they summoned heroes? Had Sloth not taken action at the last moment, I would have died as well!"

"This time is different. Due to their incompetence in using the ritual early, my informant has told me that they were only partially successful. Only six heroes were successfully summoned."

"Pfft!"

I shrunk back from the mess as blood was sprayed all over the table.'

"Are you serious, Lucien? Those idiots actually lost out on three heroes!" His body shook as he laughed, unconcerned about the mess he had made.

Lucien frowned, looking at the red stained table. "Clean up your drink!"

"Ah— yes sir!" Madias jumped in fright as he hurriedly casted a spell to clean up his mess.

"So which heroes were not summoned?" I asked.

"The titles of courage, purity and love were not granted. The six heroes that were successfully summoned include justice, diligence, temperance, generosity, compassion, and mercy. This time, they will be at the disadvantage, at six to seven." Lucien said, his voice resolute and full of pride. It was likely difficult for someone like him to continue losing time after time without being able to counterattack.

I did not really care about the feud between the south and north side of the continent and I had only put in a token effort for the last three crusades that happened. It seems I wouldn't be able to get away with that this time. Maybe I could capture some new slaves for my harem though…

"We will discuss this further at a later date when Sloth is here. For now, prepare yourselves for war. We have at least a year before the next crusade. If we do not annihilate them this time, we may never have a similar chance again." Lucien stood up, his height towering over the rest of us. "Farewell."

A purple flash flooded the room and he disappeared.

"That bastard thinks he's so much better than us." Invidia muttered.

I rolled my eyes. "That's because he is. Too bad he wasn't a girl. I would have loved to get a taste." I said, licking my lips at the thought.

"Is all you ever think of is sex?"

"It comes with the job." I smirked and stood up. "I have important things to take care of so I'll be off."

A single cast of a spell and I was back at my castle. Teleportation was so convenient.

I smiled as I walked towards the door of Kitty's room. I could have just teleported directly into her room but I didn't want to scare the poor little thing. She got frightened much too easily the last time I did.

Ah~ Every time I played with her, I had to be so gentle not to break her. Kitty should be thankful she had a mistress like me. I was far too good to her.

"Mmnnn!"

My face froze as I grabbed the doorknob. Did she think she could play around without me?

I opened the door and my face darkened. It seemed I had been too lenient in my training!