I retreated to my bedroom, closed the door behind me and entrusted my body to my bed.

  That is, I tossed my crown onto its hook, took off my shoes and then entrusted my body to my bed, still ignoring the various metal bits on my uniform.

  I sensed a certain person glide into the room and take a seat next to me, but I decided not to say a word.

  Faced with her insisting, inquiring silence, I was forced to reconsider my decision.

  “Although a body like mine should feel neither physical nor mental fatigue, I still cannot help but feel exhausted.” Somehow, I managed to prevent myself from sighing.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Lady Entropy nod in understanding.

  “Training Kobolds is said to be difficult. Apparently, it mostly depends on their intelligence and how close their instincts are to the actual correct choice.”

  Before I could ask her how she knew such a thing, a quip shot out of my mouth, as though by reflex: “In that case, this will go on forever.”

  I could sense that had she been a normal girl, she would have snickered, and she raised her hand to her mouth. “You have to admit it’s trying hard, though. It really wants to be useful to you.”

  “To us. And I was not denying its efforts, no,” I said, shaking my head. “It is just… exhausting, in several ways.”

  “Several…?”

  “No matter who it is, they will get tired of explaining the same things over and over. Even I, mighty as I am. To add, their ‘prayers’ were a bit… How do I put this, stifling…”

  Once more, tranquil silence filled the room, broken only when she yet again moved those beautiful lips of hers.

  “Is there… Anything, I can…”

  Her voice died down halfway the sentence, and I could not make out its second half.

  “Could I ask you to repeat that? I am afraid I could not quite make out the latter half,” I said, a wry smirk on my face as I gazed up at my bed’s ceiling.

  “Is there… Anything I can, do for you?” she squeezed out, trying to look away. Given I could still see her eyes, I could not say it was going very well.

  I retained my wry smile as I sat up and relocated myself a little to place myself next to her. The moment I did so, her eyes darted in a different direction, but she still gave me an occasional glance.

  I did not dislike this behaviour—if anything, it was adorable—but it also gave rise to an insatiable curiosity. Thus, deciding to feed both my curiosity and my desire to see her act cute, I mussed her hair and spoke.

  “I appreciate the offer, Lady Entropy, but I have a question.”

  “Hm?”

  “This embarrassment… To put it simply, it is new. This is by no means the first time you have offered me your assistance.”

  “Ah-”

  She froze.

  Only when, after several seconds, I waved my hand in front of her face, did she return her consciousness to the present moment.

  “That’s… Uh, well,” she stammered, her eyes darting all directions but mine as her ears fluttered up, down, up, down.

  ‘Despite her lack of a facial expression, she can be quite expressive sometimes’—with those kinds of thoughts running through my head, I decided simply to wait.

  After what was perhaps ten seconds and several deep breaths, she composed herself enough to form a coherent sentence.

  “That’s, uhm. We’ve never gone further than, uh… hugging and you patting my head, right?”

  I nodded, using [Pokerface] to prevent a smile from breaking out on my face.

  “So I figured you’d get, uh… backed up or, say, frustrated?”

  I could no longer concentrate enough to maintain [Pokerface], and spent the next half minute with a hand in front of my mouth, looking away, to cover the smile I could not hold in.

  That said, her decidedly uncharacteristic advances—to put it simply, they left me worried, despite how rude that was.

  Thus, I decided to reply while using our bond to probe out her feelings.

  “Please, do not worry about such things, Lady Entropy,” I said, pulling her towards me as I continued stroking her hair. “I shall tease you without end or remorse, yes, but with important things like these, I can have more patience.”

  Yes. Such an important thing—if she did it simply while thinking only of my feelings, with no regard for what she herself wanted, there was no way I could accept that. I would hold back until the day she wanted this not for me, but for herself.

  “I… Thought you’d…”

  “Certainly, that line of thought is not wrong… But Lady Entropy. Please, do not think only of me. Think of yourself. Your own desires. Do not give yourself away to me for my sake. Do it because you wish to be mine. Yes?”

  “I… Thank you, Astaroth. For… for thinking of me, instead of yourself.”

  “Any time.”

  Once more, as she nuzzled her face into my chest, the room returned to tranquil silence.

  As I had expected from the start, training Alpine was no easy feat—leave alone my level, it would likely take me a week to get its claws to a useable level.

  What did surprise me was the speed at which the children gained their new Classes.

  About three days after they had arrived here, they approached me, a twinkle in their dead eyes, followed by the head instructor.

  I looked at them without a word and nodded my head.

  “Mister demon king!” Asami said after some silence, “mister head instructor told us to come see you!”

  Her smile was almost literally blinding. A few theories about sunlight ran through my head.

  “He said, ‘you’re done for now’, and pointed us your way,” Nexu clarified.

  His face was a gloomy contrast with his sister’s.

  I looked towards the head instructor, who nodded without a word and gestured as though saying “have a look”. I decided to look at their physical condition before appraising them.

  “Give me your arms.”

  The children gave me their arms.

  The sight was rather surprising, and without thinking too hard about it, I lifted each child by one arm. It was a surprise they did not drop their weapons on the spot.

  Light as a feather. A whole five kilograms lighter than they probably should be, if not more.

  “Have you two eaten?” I asked, putting them back on their feet. “At all?”

  “You told us to train until we got a Class,” Nexu said, setting his sword on the ground to rub at his wrist. “So we just…”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  He gestured towards the bag which he was carrying when the two arrived at the castle, and which was now on the ground a little ways off.

  I used [No-Attribute Magic] to pull it over to me and opened it up. As I had expected, a magical bag filled with food and drink.

  Though I would be hard-pressed to consider this food and drink.

  Bread, almost as hard as stone, stale water, unbelievably tough jerky, and old vegetables.

  To put it simply, it was worse than even the lowest grade of rations available to my army. Worse than what I had given Evyna in her first few days. And certainly not food suitable for growing children.

  “I cannot call this ‘food’,” I said, tossing the bag to a maid. “Thus, I cannot call what you two have been doing ‘eating’. A malnutritioned soldier is useless. No, worse than useless—a liability. There is a need to remedy this.”

  I shot a glance at the head instructor, who rubbed the back of his head in shame.

  “Mister demon king, could you at least-”

  “I will now confirm your statuses,” I said, interrupting Asami. In the first place, this was clearly what she was going to ask for.

  Skills from previous classes only remained useable if either the new class was a derivative of the old, or if one held a particular attachment to their previous classes. It seemed they still very much saw themselves as sacrifices to me.

  “Splendid,” I said, nodding to myself. “To earn Classes this quickly… Certainly, with this, you could become excellent fighters.” I aimed my attention at the nearest maid—the one I had tossed the bag to. I gestured towards the children, and her gaze followed. “Take them to the dining room and have my chefs make as much as they can eat. They deserve a feast. Afterwards, take them to the production area of the castle. Notify me once they arrive—it is time to give them their other equipment.”

  The maid left, children in tow, and for the time being, I returned my attention to Alpine’s training.

  Writing the first scene left me with such thoughts.

  The head instructor trained them in a soldier-like way, so they gained soldier-like skills, or something.