Two people with the same mind. They thought exactly alike. While their personalities might have differed, they were essentially the same person. Deek and Deedee, Deedee and Deek, the pair rode in tandem, their goal was the Demon Lord Aberis.

“How difficult will it be to destroy him?” I once asked.

“Very,” Elaya admitted. “With Xin and I at our prime, we barely managed to defeat him the first time. Then, he had held back and used it to reincarnate. It stands to reason that the reason he waited so long to make another move was to make sure such a thing didn’t happen again. He is likely much stronger now. Even if you can deal with his army, defeating him completely without him slipping away again would require a perfect trap. Even the Demon King failed to destroy him.”

That was what Elaya had once said to us when we asked such a question. Thus, we used everything we had to lure that man into a trap. What we had were two of ourselves. Of course, we had never discussed things. A lot of our interactions filled with anger and frustration weren’t deception at all. However, we both had the same mind, and we both could think, and independently, we realized that our only chance to blindside Lord Aberis was to do what he’d never expected. We had to do what no one would expect.

We did what we couldn’t have managed alone. While Deedee took care of Chalm, setting up the battlefield and preparing the conscripts we had been training, Deek went to the capital where he gathered and recruited an even larger army.

Had the two armies been allowed to unite right away, tensions would assuredly rise. The pompous nobles and church would have caused issues with the free people of Chalm. By the time Demon Lord Aberis arrived, we’d be struggling to keep them united as much as we’d be preparing to fight Aberis. The nobles who had once fled from threats to their lives would remember that they had no investment in Chalm and it wasn’t worth dying for. The people of Chalm would lose help.

If we were dropped into a siege, they would see the horrifying army of the Demon Lord. They’d remember how this country was once under his iron fist, and they would begin to lose all faith in being able to succeed. Deek had accounted for all of this. By putting them against each other, they began to feel a reluctance to fight with each other. We distracted them with a pointless conflict, all while secretly preparing them for the real one.

We guessed what the other would do, all while maintaining appearances to everyone, even our girls. The Demon Lord had to have spies. After Salicia, we realized even a slave could unknowingly reveal things they shouldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my girls. Rather, it was that I wasn’t sure of myself.

Thus, we met at Deeksville. The conflict didn’t matter. What mattered was that we had a chance to test each other. Had either of us found the other to be lacking, then perhaps we would have killed them and become the only Deek. However, we were both just as strong and determined. We had made our decisions then. This battlefield, this day.

Deek had sent Elaya to the dungeon, where she aided Xin in this project. Astria had also needed to help them on the fairy spring side. Deedee had spent weeks growing the mana spring so that the dungeon would have the power to do this, but it took Astria to move all that power to the dungeon. Even then, we barely had the strength to reach the gorge and bend space, bringing their army to us.

“How do you like the battlefield I’ve created?” Deedee asked, her eyes shining.

“Great. What about my army?”

“Eh, they’re alright…”

“You…”

“But, watch this!” Deedee raised her hand and snapped.

Explosions erupted, and the gorge suddenly started to collapse. Just as the demonic army was desperately trying to line up, avalanches came down from both sides. Well, it made sense. There never was a gorge. Deedee had made it using the golems. It actually would have served as a path through a hilly terrain to make travel between Chalm and Deeksville easier. Incomplete as it was, it made the perfect defensible position a day’s ride from Chalm that Lord Aberis couldn’t help but put his army at.

It also made a perfect trap. One hundred golems self-destructed, causing rock slide after rock slide. In mere minutes, the unprepared army was retreating from the collapsing gorge and running toward our army. As the survivors left the safety of the gorge, it suddenly disappeared, the magic bending space finally failing, leaving only 1

/3rd of the army left in a completely disordered state. At this exact moment, text appeared across our eyes.

You have entered the dungeon, Demon’s Demise.

It looked like our dungeon finally gained a name.