Supreme Monarch

In the Taine Ze Region and its capital, Sun City. There lies the Brimstone Family's main Castle, which contains the Sun King's Palace, within which is a luxurious office filled with all sorts of exquisite items of furniture.

In the office where generations of Great Demon Lords performed their duties, its rightful owner, Malik Vyle Brimstone, was nowhere to be found. Instead, the room was currently being occupied by the second princess of the family, Izabel H. Brimstone.

Izabel sat behind the Demon Lord's desk as she went through a stack of paperwork. As the demon lord was currently in a meeting with all of the highest-ranking members of the family, she was the one left in charge.

While her father, the Great Demon Lord, had many offsprings, she and her sisters were the only purebloods amongst his children and thus, the only legitimate heirs. Normally, her sister would be the first in line for such a task but her father was well aware of her twisted personality and could not trust her with it so the duty naturally feel to her as the second in line.

Frankly, this wasn't even a job to be proud of as any of the ministers could do it. As she was still the head of the family's specialized division, she should've been invited to that meeting yet she wasn't. This only goes to show how much her family's faith in her abilities was dwindling, especially when compared to her insanely talented sister.

Hell, if she hadn't retired from her post herself, Izabel was sure she would most likely have already been married off and her younger sister who was still in the Magic Academy would take her place.

'How vexing.'

Izabel thought as she shook her head to get rid of the negative thoughts before returning to her work.

Her face then immediately grew dark as she stared at the documents that were submitted, a heavy sigh escaped her mouth. Surely no one could keep a cheerful expression after reading through said documents, especially not in her current state.

The document's contents detailed the current state of the Darknar region, in correlation with the Taine Ze Region.

During the War of the Undead Army, though it would be more accurate to call it a massacre, all of the Brimstone family's representatives lost their lives in a less than dignified fashion. This also included the few extra scouts they had sent in secret.

Even so, it wasn't as though the damage inflicted on their family was significant. While demigods were incredibly valuable resources and even she— a direct descendant of the Great Demon Lord and the second princess of the Brimstone Family— wasn't close to becoming one. Still, they were not something that any of the great five would cry about.

Not only did the Great Five all have the resources of nurturing talented individuals into demigods, but they also had tools and artifacts capable of bolstering the strengths of Demon lord level fighters to demigod level.

This was something no other noble family could muster as they would be lucky to have a Demon lord level fighter beside their actual demon lord, much less, demigods level.

Still, they had lost more than 20% of their most capable scouts with the most useful of innate abilities that were crucial to the family's information gathering abilities.

Not only that but their representatives had also been used in sending a message to them as they had been completely massacred in a more than humiliating fashion. Such disgrace had completely damaged their reputation as one of the Great Five.

The negative impact of this loss was gradually becoming apparent and this was all clearly outlined in the document. Not only did this affect their standing with the other Greats, but even the lower ranking nobilities were beginning to look down on them as the weakest link amongst the Five.

Izabel let out a groan as she placed the document on the table, her vision shifted focus to the other person in the room and with great hesitation, she asked.

"Hey, sister. How would you deal with this if you were still in charge?"

Upon hearing the question, her sister, Citrus H. Brimstone, who sat on a chaise longue far away from her, smiled mischievously as she raised her head. Citrus, who had been forced by Izabel to look through a different set of documents had finally found an opportunity to escape for a while.

Although one could consider her a genius, she was never a fan of doing paperwork which was a huge part of her responsibilities as the former leader of the specialized division and was part of the reason why she had decided to retire early and hand over the reins to her little sister.

"Hey... that's mean... but, even if you asked me what I would do... my dear Lil sis, how can I give an answer when you haven't even given me enough details in your question? I don't read minds you know. Then again I could if I wanted to~"

"Please be serious and pay attention, otherwise there's no point in you being around me. It's about this."

Izabel ignored her sister's distracting tactics and stayed focused on the point. She did not bother with an explanation, she just picked up the documents she had laid down and fanned them around.

Citrus, hearing her Lil sister lightly threatened her pouted cutely with an ecstatic expression on her face and stood up, walked towards Izabel, and took the documents from her.

"...Huh."

After scanning the document from top to bottom, Citrus's expression returned to normal as she replied in a casual tone.

"That...there's nothing we can do about it at this point. It's the Elders' fault for not taking it seriously, they should've begged me to go, hehe~"

"Damn…"

Izabel raised his head towards the ceiling with a defeated expression on her face. Her hand instinctively played with her amulet as sighed.

If her sister, who was much more brilliant than her, said this, then there really wasn't anything they could do about it. However, as they were currently placed in charge of handling the situation in Darknar, they could not just give up on something like this so easily.

It was clear the behemoth was holding a grudge against them for kidnapping the ice girl and frankly, she could understand why.

With the force he had displayed on the battlefield that day, if they were a normal noble family, he probably would've already attacked.

"Is this matter really that troublesome? Even though our family's strength has waned temporarily, that's all it is, it's all temporary. I don't believe that it's serious enough to warrant that defeated expression on my darling little sister's face. Besides, this only makes things interesting don't you think~"

Moving behind Izabel, Citrus took the chance to hug her from behind as she spoke with a somewhat predatory grin on her face and a glint in her eyes, which garnered a reaction from Izabel.

"Stop that!"

"Hehe... you're so cute when you're mad, I love it~"

"You annoy me, can you please just focus for once. If it was only our family's strength that's weakened temporarily that would be fine. But not only has this traitor situation hamper our trades with the other family, but we've also lost access to our mines in the Darknar region."

"And so~"

"Sigh... why can you only think of yourself every time. I'm sure you remember that our Taine Ze region is a desert region don't you."

"Yup, yup... lots of sand everywhere~ I don't like it."

With a sudden polar change in expressions, Citrus replied before walking away from Izabel.

"My point is, our region doesn't have the resources to produce most of our own foods, hence why we rely on importation from our branch family's regions. Even so, the population of those regions is also high so they can only spare a minimal amount of food supplies for us. That's why we buy the rest doing regular trades with the other families."

"This is not interesting stoppp..."

"Be quiet. As I was saying, in order to make trades with the other families we need finances and besides the taxes enforced on the Hunter HQ and the Merchant Guild, as well as our yearly tax collection, 30% of all our finances comes from our Mines in the Darknar region. Without that, trading for food with the other regions will become impossible and our people will slowly starve."

"You don't say. How fascinating."

Citrus replied sarcastically as she returned to her seat and lay there with a bored expression on her face.

"Please be serious. I'm the one who's gonna get in trouble if I don't handle this. I'm not exactly... just forget it."

Thinking about how she had struggled to catch up to her sister all her life, Izabel suddenly felt the energy drain out of her she sank back into her seat.

"First of all, this is not your job, you're doing too much again. Secondly, this is boring so I'm gonna take a nap right here. Thirdly, if you need information you should probably meet that boring guy. Besides, we're the Brimstones, we could always just take what we need from the other regions, what's the point in demons being so political these days. Ridiculous."

Saying that Citrus lazily closed her eyes as she pretended to fall asleep while pouring a bit. Izabel was a little annoyed but at this point, there was nothing she could do about this.

She was the one who asked for her help so she had to deal with this. Besides, this was the first she had ever heard Citrus speak seriously without making inappropriate jokes or sly comments.

Although she hated to admit it, her sister was probably right. Her original mission in going to the Darknar region the first time was to capture the water nymph, Erin, and kill Albert, who was the one responsible for her escape in the first place.

However, with both parties constantly within the safety of the barrier, they had decided to switch their target to the unknown demoness noble that was clearly the direct descendant of the Alcar family in order to steal her innate ability.

Although the mission seems to have also ended in failure, the truth of the matter is, they had actually succeeded in their part as they had accomplished their mission the moment they delivered the girl to the lab so it wasn't their fault if the entire lab was destroyed by that behemoth.

However, Izabel could not help but feel unsatisfied with that outcome. Ever since she had inherited her post from her more talented older sister, she couldn't help but continuously walk in her shadow.

For someone like her that was considered average in comparison to both her elder and even her younger sister, she couldn't help but have the drive to constantly prove herself to everyone around her, including herself.

The job with the nymph had been her first real mission since she was promoted so she had wanted to impress the Great Demon Lord yet, once again, she had returned in shame.

She was already well aware that some believe if it were to be her sisters, they would have never returned in failure.

With that, the faction of the elders that believes she should be removed as the current heir to the family in place of her younger sister seems to be growing rapidly.

As she could not afford another failure, she had asked the one person she could not escape being compared to for help, and still, she had only succeeded by utilizing a technicality.

'This is so unfair.'