“A certain executive is suspected of lacking professional ethics.”
“Here is to our demon lives having dreams, and to each of us shining in our own way.”
Deep within the Demon King’s Palace, Noctiluca, one of the Twelve Disaster Pillars, ignored the idle gossip of the other demons.
Instead, she stared straight ahead at the figure seated upon the dark, gloom-shrouded throne.
“Your Majesty, the Demon King, is this truly your decree?”
A deep, resonating hum vibrated from within the midnight-purple full-body heavy plate, but the figure on the throne remained silent.
As the Disaster Pillar who had held the number one spot for “Most Difficult Dungeon Boss to Clear” for two consecutive years, the young girl racked her brain but could not understand why she was the one being “optimized.”
Why wasn’t it one of her colleagues, who spent their days designing unspeakable traps and contraptions to capture female heroes?
Furthermore, their targets weren’t always just women—sometimes, they weren’t even human.
Compared to those vermin, Noctiluca felt like the reincarnation of a model worker, drawing on her past life as an elite employee on Earth.
Although she had turned into a beautiful girl after her reincarnation, she maintained a 1,000% serious attitude every time she faced the small-fry who invaded her dungeon.
She had utilized every ounce of knowledge she’d learned from a certain veteran game developer famous for making players fall from grace.
Iron balls rolling through narrow corridors, doors that could not be opened from this side, mimics disguised as bonfire save points, elites who mastered parry-cancel mechanics and catapults, and skeleton soldiers who loved sniping from the other side of narrow log bridges with homing arrows…
Not to mention her own presence, waiting at the end of the dungeon as the final boss.
Imagine a party enduring three hundred miles of “garbage” monsters and traps, finally pushing open the palace doors only to find that what awaited them wasn’t the surprise of a large treasure chest, but a two-meter-tall heavy armored magic knight radiating an aura of despair.
This knight, wielding a massive heavy hammer, would wait for them patiently before sending them straight back to the dungeon entrance with a single swing.
The 13th Dungeon, which she guarded, was famous for not having been cleared by a single party in nearly a year.
Adventurers had given her a codename: the “Abyssal Magic Armor.”
It literally meant “The Magic-Armored Knight as Suffocating as the Abyss.”
However, in post-drink banter, many people interpreted the term differently: there was no difference between investing funds into the 13th Dungeon and throwing them directly into an abyss—either way, you’d never hear them land.
Aside from a single reckless youth known as the “Weakest Winless A-Rank” who persisted in challenging her 365 days a year, almost no one was willing to waste time or money on this dungeon.
“…Sigh.”
A deathly silence lingered for a long time before the Demon King finally let out a long sigh.
“We ask you, Noctiluca. In the past year, how many humans entered the 13th Dungeon on a monthly average?”
“No more than ten, Your Majesty. Aside from a certain simple-minded madman who keeps losing and fighting again, those who don’t know their place usually tuck their tails and leave after one or two failures.”
Noctiluca puffed out her chest with pride.
The movement translated from the girl’s petite body to the thick armor, causing a dull sound of grinding metal.
Beside the throne, a demon dressed in deep red velvet robes and wearing a monocle let out an exaggerated sigh.
His eyes looked at her as if she were a piece of hopeless, rotten wood.
“Noctiluca, have you truly never considered the dungeon’s revenue?”
“…?”
The blue eyes beneath the heavy helmet narrowed slightly.
She remembered this guy—Mammon.
As the Disaster Pillar presiding over Greed, he was the Demon Race’s chief miser, in charge of the revenue and expenditures of all dungeons.
The figure on the throne seemed intent on letting Mammon continue.
With a light flick of his finger, a Projection Crystal floated into the air, and every gaze in the room immediately focused on it.
“Indeed, your 13th Dungeon has the lowest clear rate among all current dungeons, but its revenue performance is at the absolute bottom.”
The demon man with the monocle spoke with rhythmic inflection, his slender fingers sliding through the air.
Though the girl in the heavy armor wanted to retort, the revenue rankings projected by the crystal indeed showed the 13th Dungeon in last place.
The net income figure was two digits lower than the second-to-last place, and the 3.0 rating next to it was painfully eyesore.
“At the same time, the 13th Dungeon has massive overhead, resulting in it barely breaking even.”
“Those expenses are mainly for trap maintenance, employee insurance, pensions, as well as their stipends and equipment repairs—”
“None of those are things we need to consider.”
Mammon ruthlessly interrupted Noctiluca’s argument, a cold, mocking light flashing in his goat-like eyes.
“Insurance? Subsidies? Have you been brainwashed by the humans, Noctiluca?”
“Then tell me, what happens to the injured employees!?”
“Execute them and get a new batch. If they won’t do it, there are plenty of other demons who will.”
At those words, the veins on Noctiluca’s forehead bulged.
Why was there always someone in every world who deserved to swing from a lamppost?
However, Mammon seemed completely oblivious to Noctiluca’s fury and continued to drone on:
“If we say an average Disaster Pillar’s combat rating is a 70, you might even score a 75. But when it comes to your contribution level to my—no, to the Demon King’s financial status… the other Disaster Pillars are 80s. You—”
Mammon’s tone suddenly shifted, his low voice echoing through the Demon King’s Palace.
“You are a 20.”
“…”
Acting as if he didn’t notice Noctiluca’s murderous gaze from beneath her helmet, the demon shook his head with feigned regret.
“However, as the senior who values you the most—the one who personally plucked you from obscurity to become a Disaster Pillar—I naturally don’t want to see you pack your bags and leave. As long as you are willing to surrender the operational rights of the dungeon and take a pay cut, I… oh, no, Her Majesty might not necessarily—”
“Get lost.”
“Keep you—huh?”
Mammon’s shrewd smile froze on his face.
He apparently hadn’t expected this magic knight, who seemed to only know how to swing a hammer and fix traps, to give such a blunt response.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said, get lost.”
The deep voice, distorted by magic, erupted from beneath the heavy armor.
Noctiluca laughed in spite of her anger, but she didn’t want to waste time with this old demon whose head was filled with nothing but gold coins.
She turned, facing the throne, and dropped to one knee.
Her armor hit the obsidian floor with a loud boom.
“Your Majesty, please allow me to resign as a Disaster Pillar.”
“Audacious!”
Before the Demon King could answer, Mammon began huffing and puffing at Noctiluca.
“To become a Disaster Pillar and serve the Demon King is a blessing most demons couldn’t earn in several lifetimes. How dare an Unclean One of unknown origin like you—”
The demon of Greed couldn’t finish his sentence because he found that his mouth had suddenly disappeared.
Physically disappeared.
The figure on the throne raised a hand. Mammon quickly clutched the smooth skin where his mouth used to be and retreated respectfully into the shadows behind the throne, speaking no more.
However, his golden, horizontal pupils remained fixed on the magic knight’s massive form.
“And why is that, Lady Noctiluca?”
the Demon King’s voice asked softly.
Having a beautiful older sister as a boss was probably the only reason Noctiluca had managed to stick with the job until now.
The girl inside the heavy armor let out a long sigh.
If she hadn’t been picked up by this Demon King right after she reincarnated, she would have liked to be a good person rather than nesting in a dark, sunless dungeon as a boss.
“I have never felt happy being a Disaster Pillar.”
The lame excuse echoed through the vast, empty palace.
Combined with the raspy, deep voice distorted by magic, the statement sounded somewhat ridiculous to the other demons present.
“—Is he joking?”
“He’s definitely using his status as a favorite to provoke the Demon King…”
“Sigh, youngsters are so arrogant. Just wait and see how Her Majesty kicks him to death.”
Most of the demons held a spectator’s mindset, waiting for Her Majesty to hand down a punishment to Noctiluca.
This bloodthirsty audience was more than happy to see such an outcome; after all, the vast majority of those present were jealous that this nobody had ascended to the rank of Disaster Pillar in a single bound.
“…We understand.”
The Demon King, whose name was synonymous with omniscience, fell silent for a moment before announcing her verdict.
“Noctiluca, We hereby strip you of your title as one of the Twelve Disaster Pillars. However, in consideration of your merit in ensuring your dungeon never fell, the death penalty is waived. Our punishment for you is as follows: as of today, you are exiled to the Human Realm, never to be recalled.”
In a dead silence, the demons who had been waiting to see Noctiluca fall from the clouds into the mud looked at one another.
They had never seen the Demon King hand down such a sentence.
Although the signing of the Peace Treaty three hundred years ago meant that any demon stepping into the Human Realm would be hunted by both humans and demons alike, wasn’t this essentially giving Noctiluca a chance to run away and even survive?
“Your Majesty—”
Mammon, who had just regenerated his vocal cords and mouth, tried to interject again, but a cold look from the Demon King choked the words back into his throat.
He shrunk his neck back.
“Do you have an objection, Lord Mammon?”
“I… I say Your Majesty is wise.”
Turning her back on the confused, mocking, or pitying gazes of her former colleagues, Noctiluca slowly stood up.
She took a deep look at the throne, then stepped without hesitation into the teleportation array the Demon King had opened behind her.
Seven days later, the entrance to the 13th Dungeon was found sealed.
After the Hero Association sent personnel to investigate, the dungeon was declared to be in an unexplorable “deadlocked” state.
Just as everyone was lamenting that the legendary “garbage” boss, the Abyssal Magic Armor Noctiluca, had never been successfully cleared, an A-Rank hero known as the “Weakest Winless”—whose sole life goal was to conquer the 13th Dungeon—looked at the sealed doors and completely lost his dream.