The tenth chosen was always overlooked by everyone else. The goddess had chosen him for a very different reason than everyone else. The ten chosen needed to hold back the General, and everyone else was in the group because they could fight him directly. The king of the world was there because the Revifier couldn’t be bothered doing all the administration and organisation it took to make her own armies fight the General’s empire. The tenth chosen was in his office doing paperwork again, almost falling asleep before the Librarian teleported in. She had a habit of teleporting in to browse his large pile of documents.

“Aw. Look at our little king. Can’t he hire someone to deal with his workload?” She said before grabbing the thickest file on the pile. It was about yet another fallen seraphim trying to stake their claim on hell while declaring war on the Revifier.

“Put that back. This is important information that you will probably leak. Only I am permitted to handle this.” The king of the world said while approving a bill from a far away world asking for a reincarnator to deal with their local demon infestation.

“We really ought to just wipe these demons out already. We’re fighting them more than we’re fighting the General at this point. What have those poor souls even done for us anyway? Sure, their erotica is passable, but a couple good books don’t mean they’re allowed to exist.” The king of the world sighed at her statement. He knew that the only person who had a chance against the demon kings was Mcdermott. The chosen were strong, but the demon kings weren’t anything to scoff at even without considering that they ruled over a population that was entirely conscripted, and entirely of their own free will too.

“Why don’t you do it then? I can’t afford to send another army to try and pacify them. Opening another front with the nano-chattes is–” He was shushed by the Librarian as she used telekinesis to close his mouth.

“My my, you still have some fight in you? Insulting me in front of my face is a mistake not many can afford to make. I thought I taught you better.” The Librarian wasn’t stupid. She knew what he knew and more. A demon king was on evening footing with her, and she didn’t like that one bit.

“Alright, I apologise for telling you the truth. But really, stop complaining about stuff we can’t do anything about.” The king already had to deal with that issue. Anytime the General showed up somewhere, he’d try to rile everyone up only to get ignored. Anytime a threat appeared somewhere that his armies couldn’t manage to deal with, he’d have to manage the problem himself instead of getting help. When he had problems that not even he could manage to solve, he learned to live with them. Few other chosen ever had to do the same.

“Haha! That’s a problem you have to deal with. There is nothing I can’t do anything about. We’re just on different tiers.” Said the Librarian while wiggling her finger at the king of the world. “You can’t even deal with a demon princess in your own newly conquered world.” The king of the world dropped his papers and looked at the Librarian.

“Come again?”

The air was unusually moist as we walked through a small abandoned town. Dirt roads just solid enough to be driven on all led towards this one stop. It was a really barebones town all things considered. It only had a church, small store littered with bottle caps and cigarette butts, and a small school at the edge of the town. The store itself had a rugged feeling, as if it was kept together by a small family struggling to get by. The tiled floor and unorthodox stacking of their wears that was simply meant to display whatever they sold was aerie in its bluntness. Anna was walking through, inspecting the items with a tenderness you’d expect from someone nostalgic for their home country’s culture.

“Woah! Humans sell cakes this good for like… five somethings? How’d you afford to do it?” The demoness threw the wrapper away and Anna quickly grabbed it before straightening it out. ‘Barny’ was the name shown front and centre. It was a simple chocolate cake shaped like a bear.

“It’s not even that expensive compared to the Metro I used to go to.” Anna said.

“You buy stuff at a metro?” I said.

“Not that type of metro. Metro is like Walmart but russian.” Said Anna as Christian and Sam walked away to the church. I already suspected that Christian was christian, so whatever theological discussion the two were about to have was above my paygrade. The demoness was munching on all sorts of food from the shop, not caring if it was rotten or not. “Let me check something.” Anna walked over to the mini freezer near the window and dug through to find a yellow piece of paper. “Ha! Still two bucks. I always used to get one of them small vanilla cones. They were like… a fifth of a dollar. I don’t know how they managed to keep it this cheap.”

“What the fuck is this?!” Said the demoness as we looked back to see her near an empty bag of salted fish jerky.

“Why the fuck did you eat that?! That’s meant to be eaten with beer.” Said Anna while she grabbed a bottle of water and shoved it into the demonesses mouth. Anna squeezed the bottle just to get as much liquid as possible into the demonesses body as quickly as possible.

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“I… I thought It would taste good.” Said the demoness after swatting the bottle away. I noticed a note on the ground and grabbed it to read while Anna responded.

“It does taste good, you uncultured swine! You just have to eat it in moderation. Of course you wouldn’t get how good our sophisticated snacks are.” Anna said.

“Anna, what the fuck is ‘meat jelly’?” I said while grabbing onto Anna’s shoulder. The note was a hand written recipe for some sort of aspic.

“Erm… Ok look, it’s not the first thing I’d want you to try, but it’s good! It’s like solid soop.” Me and the demon princess looked at her with questioning looks. “Trust me! Look. I know you two are constantly cooking in the taverns we’re going to, so let me cook you some next time so you know how good it is.” I looked at the demoness who was ready to say no. I was actually curious, so I responded before the demon princess.

“Fine, but just this once. If it isn’t good, you’ll have to eat whatever abomination the demoness is gonna make.” I said.

“Excuse me? It’s not my problem you can’t handle the culinary masterpiece that is my cooking.” Said the demoness while putting her hand onto her chest and puffing it up.

“Now, let’s actually talk about what we’re gonna do here. I don’t want to end up with another Korea.” Said Anna. If we did what we did to Korea, we’d basically become the Scarlet emporium’s attack dogs.

“We need to figure it out diplomatically. That means we aren’t killing every adventurer in our way.” The demon princess slumped in disappointment after I said that. “Unless it’s someone in power who is too stubborn to yield.” The demoness grinned ear to ear, regaining her enthusiasm despite me only giving her a shred of hope.

“Russia literally broke after trying to align Ukraine with itself, and it had the biggest scare factor of all. Everyone was rambling about how their army is undefeatable, and Ukraine didn’t back down. Who’s to say they’re gonna back down just because we’re ‘unbeatable’.” Said Anna. Russia only broke up into several warlord states after the pillars. Ukraine was one of the few states that managed to stay together thanks to the patriotism it built up during the war. The pro-state adventurers outnumbered any revolutionaries ten to one.

“That’s why I didn’t rule out killing a couple of their leaders–” Anna interrupted me before I could finish.

“Nonono. It’ll start with a couple, but when they get replaced, you’ll kill those ones too, and you’ll keep going until the entire nation is dead or terrified of you. We need an actual plan.” I pushed Anna off me before continuing.

“That’s Christian’s job. He is by far the most intelligent when it comes to talking. We can convince the leaders that joining the Scarlet Emporium is better than any option they have on the table. Staying independent is too risky, and would mean that they’re besieged by every other country that is owned by a guild, and every other guild is weaker than the emporium, so the emporium is their best bet.” I said. My rough outline of a plan calmed Anna down as we walked outside to see and hear Christian and Sam shout at each other. I suddenly felt the urge to just ban religion as a topic of discussion.

“Of course it makes sense! Eating the fruit of good and evil was a test they failed.” Said Christian.

“How would they know if disobeying God was evil if they didn’t know what evil was before disobeying God. At least my religion doesn’t have blatant holes in it.” Said Sam.

“How dumb would you need to be to disobey God? God explicitly told them to not do it. Morality had nothing to do with it.” And with that said, I stepped in between them.

“Seriously? Didn’t we talk about religion yesterday?” Christian looked at me and sighed.

“Sorry pal, it’s just that Sam can’t mind his own damn business. I was showing him the nice ornaments these people made.” He pointed over to the small bells and many decorations plaguing the church. The whole place reeked of boredom and felt like a hot box even from a distance.

“You literally called my god evil.” Said Sam.

“I mean… isn’t she evil? She directly traumatised half of us. Not everyone is lucky enough to be reincarnated.” I said.

“That’s your fault for not obeying her hard enough. I bet half of you didn’t immediately side with her when you saw her.” This confirmed my suspicions of Sam being a bottom.

“Sorry that we have some fragment of independence and value for our own free will. Anyway! That’s enough talking about religion. I bless thee to now not have to argue about it for everybody’s sake.” Sam rolled his eyes as Christian chuckled. “Now, Christian, you’re gonna be the key to our success this time.”