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The Audio-Visual Room was offline. With no internet connection to provide distractions, the only sounds in the room were the aggressive clatter of Utaha's mechanical keyboard and the softer, rapid-fire tapping of Leo's laptop.
They were in the zone.
Leo was physically typing the second volume of The Demon King Delivers the Punchline, but his mind was already light-years ahead. He was mentally drafting the middle of Volume 4, constructing a 3D map of the game world, and calculating the resource economy for the strategy game simultaneously.
Utaha, meanwhile, was stepping out of her comfort zone. She was shelving the romance genre to outline an Urban Fantasy battle series. She was currently muttering to herself, agonizing over power levels and magic systems to ensure consistency—a headache Leo avoided by simply simulating the physics in his head.
If I could code mentally, Leo mused, his fingers blurring, I wouldn't even need this laptop. Maybe I can unlock that ability later.
"I'm sorry! I'm late!"
The door slid open with a bang. Eriri Spencer Sawamura stood in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame, the other resting on her knee as she gasped for air. Her twin tails were slightly disheveled, and her face was flushed from running.
"Relax," Leo said without looking up from his screen. "We're not punching a time clock. There's nothing urgent right now anyway."
"That's... not the point," Eriri wheezed, straightening up and marching into the room. "Being late is unprofessional."
She dropped her bag and began setting up her workspace. Unlike Leo and Utaha, who were digital natives, Eriri still respected the analog grind. She pulled out a sketchbook, pencils, and a set of fine-point markers.
Eriri was a prodigy, yes, but she was also a grinder. She knew that talent was a muscle—if you didn't exercise it every day, it atrophied. That discipline was why she was aiming for Tokyo University of the Arts.
She sharpened a pencil, the scent of cedar wood cutting through the stale air of the room. She watched Leo for a moment. He was staring at the wall, typing blindly, clearly lost in a multi-threaded trance.
"Leo," she asked, curiosity getting the better of her. "Don't you need to practice? You said you're doing the illustrations yourself, but I haven't seen you sketch once since we formed the club. If you don't keep your hand warm, your lines will get stiff."
Leo paused. He finally looked at her.
"I painted last night," Leo said casually. "Besides, for me, art isn't muscle memory; it's instinct. It's etched into my bones. I could put down the brush for a year, pick it up tomorrow, and still paint at my peak."
Eriri stared at him, her pencil hovering over the paper. "That's... that's ridiculous. That's cheating."
To an artist who bled over every line, Leo's claim sounded like an insult to the craft. It was a fantasy. Even the old masters needed warm-ups.
Leo didn't argue. He simply minimized his writing software.
"Come here," he said.
Eriri hesitated, then walked over to his desk.
Leo opened a file: Project_Demon_King_Key_Visual_Final.jpg.
The image filled the screen.
Eriri's breath hitched. Her blue eyes widened, and her mouth fell open slightly. She stood there, frozen, unable to speak.
To a layman, the painting was "cool." To a professional like Eriri, it was terrifying.
It was an Impasto style—thick, heavy "digital oil" strokes that gave the image weight and texture. But unlike most Impasto works that used blur and suggestion for the background to save time, this... this was photographic in its detail.
The Demon King sat on his throne, arrogant and wise, a smirk playing on his lips. But it was the army behind him that broke Eriri's brain.
Usually, an artist would paint the front row of soldiers and turn the rest into a vague sea of helmets. Leo hadn't done that. He had painted everyone.
Eriri leaned in, her nose almost touching the screen.
She could see the eyes beneath the visors of the soldiers in the fifth row. She could see the rust on the spear tips in the back. Every face was unique. There were bandits with scarred cheeks, fallen nobles with desperate eyes, greedy mercenaries checking their coin purses, and fanatical priests clutching unholy scriptures.
It was a chaotic, diverse, suffocating mass of humanity. It reminded her of the Ionioi Hetairoi (King's Army) from Fate/Zero, but darker. More gritty.
The sheer oppression of the composition hit her like a physical weight. The emotional range—fanaticism, determination, apathy, cruelty—was overwhelming.
"Holy crap," Eriri whispered, slipping into English.
"The publisher added the text this morning," Leo said, pointing to the bold, red kanji stamped vertically down the side of the image.
[GOD! KNEEL BEFORE ME!]
It was cheesy. It was Chuunibyou. It was over-the-top.
And paired with that artwork? It was absolutely magnetic.
"You... you did this in one night?" Eriri asked, her voice trembling slightly. She looked at Leo, really looked at him, realizing the gap between them wasn't a gap—it was a canyon.
"Took about an hour," Leo lied (technically true, but misleading). "Shinazugawa put it up in their bookstores this morning. Apparently, pre-orders are spiking."
Eriri stepped back, gripping her own sketchbook against her chest. She looked down at her blank page, then back at the screen.
Internal Monologue (Eriri): He's not human. He's a printer with a soul.
"I need to practice," Eriri muttered, sitting down aggressively and attacking her paper with renewed, terrified vigor. "I need to practice now."
Leo smirked and went back to his novel.
Motivation successfully dispensed.