“I have a technique to make opponents drop their weapons, so I practiced it repeatedly.”

“Practice…?”

“Yes.”

Even when Paul questioned him with anger, Frondier simply answered calmly.

“So, he kept dropping his weapon, picking it up, dropping it, picking it up… and after I realized he wouldn't attack while I went to pick up the weapon, I gradually slowed down my picking up speed, and eventually…”

Frondier sighed. As if he were truly disappointed in Jeremy.

“He stopped picking up the weapon.”

“…….”

“I was curious about the stamina and tenacity of devils, but it was far worse than I expected.”

Listening to Frondier’s words, Paul could almost picture what Jeremy had gone through.

Completely toyed with by his opponent, yet desperately clinging to a sliver of hope, struggling with all his might.

Frondier had no intention of defeating Jeremy. His goal was to make him lose his will to fight and surrender on his own.

And as intended, Jeremy crumbled. Both his mind and body.

“Thanks to that, it took me a while to get back here. But since Mr. Paul woke up in the meantime, I guess I saved myself some troublesome effort.”

Screech.

Frondier pulled over an empty chair from the laboratory. He then placed the chair in front of Paul and sat down.

Frondier’s gaze towards Paul was still devoid of emotion.

“Mr. Paul, we weren’t meant to be like this.”

“…….”

Paul averted his eyes, finding those words absurd. Bullshit. Paul was a devil, and Frondier was a human. There was already an insurmountable gap between them.

“I just wanted to know how to distinguish between humans and devils. But Jeremy interfered with that, and now Mr. Paul is interfering.”

“Like you’d tell a human that. If you knew, you’d try to kill all the devils hiding in this Empire!”

Frondier blinked at those words. He tilted his head for a moment, as if in thought, and then spoke.

“That could be the case. Or it might not be.”

“What kind of nonsense are you talking about!”

“I hear that devils are driven by ‘desire.’ We shouldn't expect human law or morality from them. The reason devils who have infiltrated the Empire can remain hidden is either because their desires are tolerated within human society, or because they have committed intolerable acts and are hiding them.”

Frondier brought up what he had heard from Lily. As he tried to understand Lily’s way of thinking, he was starting to get a sense of how he should approach it.

“Of course, it’s the latter that I want to find. If all the devils hiding in the Empire are the latter, I will kill them all. If that’s what you think, then you’re right. But if they’re all the former, I won’t touch them.”

“……How can you tell the difference between the two? Will you decide who lives and who dies based on your own feelings?”

“No. If they’re the latter, I’ll have to see how they’re hiding their crimes. I’m not the one who distinguishes them. They distinguish themselves. The severity of their crimes will vary depending on what they’ve hidden. I’ll be able to track down what kind of crimes they’ve committed.”

At Frondier’s words, Paul lowered his head and clenched his teeth. He clenched them so tightly that blood began to flow, and his body trembled.

Paul spoke in a voice filled with anger and anguish.

“……Why are you doing this?”

“…….”

“What do you want? You killed Belphegor, so you should be content with playing hero for a while. That’s what humans do.”

Paul had said the same thing when he set the Mana Depletion trap for Frondier. Frondier, the hero who saved them from Belphegor. He believed that Frondier would naturally be enjoying the peace that everyone felt after the war.

“Every human I’ve ever seen, even the Zodiacs, had a time of celebration after their success. But what about you? You don’t take money, you don’t take women, you don’t even enjoy praise or applause.”

A week after the war ended, Frondier went to fulfill his promise to Lily.

During that time, he simply stayed at the mansion. He needed to sort out the chaotic situation after the war and had time to think about the information he received from his smartwatch.

Frondier, who played the most crucial role in the war against Manggot. Everyone in the Empire knew this, yet Frondier acted as if he had nothing to do with the war.

He simply moved on to his next task.

“Why are you looking for devils again after such a big event? Do you have some kind of devil phobia? You never even realized they existed before, but now that you know, you can’t stand not catching them, “

“Hey, Paul.”

At that moment, Frondier interrupted him.

The honorifics towards Paul had disappeared, but his voice didn’t sound particularly angry.

When Paul looked at Frondier, he spoke as if genuinely puzzled.

“What I’m looking for is a criminal organization. I’m looking for bastards who infiltrate high-ranking nobles and commit crimes without anyone knowing.”

“…….”

“Do you think I would have treated them differently if they were human?”

Paul wouldn’t know, but Frondier had dealt with humans far more often.

He had met all sorts of people, and there were times when he was truly angry, pained, and even saddened.

“Especially you and Jeremy, who tried to kill me with Mana Depletion. If I intended to kill all devils, one of you would be dead by now. Don’t you think so? One mouth is enough to extract information.”

“……This guy.”

“Be grateful that I’m still keeping both of you alive. And,”

Frondier lowered his posture. Naturally, the distance between him and Paul narrowed slightly.

At that moment, Paul read an emotion in Frondier’s eyes for the first time.

It was ‘concern.’

“You guys fear Belphegor, but are you not afraid of Satan?”

“……What?”

“You know about the devil incident at the Imperial Palace, right? There’s a possibility that Satan had high-ranking devils released into this Empire beforehand. I’m looking into that possibility.”

“……!”

Paul was about to instinctively refute Frondier’s words, but then he realized that it was entirely possible, and his face went pale.

“The devils from the west trying to invade as soon as Belphegor retreated from this land, you guys who were hiding in the Empire from the beginning, Satan’s subordinates scattered like seeds beforehand. The chaos unfolding here is what Satan is aiming for.”

“…….”

“Do you still see me as your biggest threat?”

Paul fell silent at Frondier’s words.

Seeing that, Frondier simply asked a serious question, genuinely seeking an answer.

“A war between devils is on the horizon, so why are you protecting devils just because they’re devils?”