Chapter 27
Chapter 27
After coming to the world called Artenia, in a life that had been a continuous series of hardships and adversity, Alice had never once slept deeply with her mind at ease.
She always clutched a greatsword larger than her own body and curled up in the corner of the bed to take only a light doze, and there had been countless times when she startled awake at the rustling sound of insects or the wind knocking against the window. But today, she slept so deeply that it was unprecedented.
Even after opening her eyes, she stared blankly into empty space for a while, unable to distinguish whether this was a dream or reality, so refreshed did she feel.
“Ugh?!”
When she finally came to her senses, she flinched and hurriedly groped at her side.
She moved her hands this way and that, searching for the hilt of the greatsword she had always treated like an extension of herself and never once let leave her body, but cruelly, there was nothing for her to grasp.
“……!”
An alien situation had occurred.
The moment she realized it, her face turned pale, and the tips of her hands and feet began to tremble violently.
If someone had not spoken to her with a mumbling voice, she would surely have remained that way for quite some time.
“If you’re awake, eat something.”
“…….”
She had no memory of letting anyone else into the room, so at the unfamiliar voice that suddenly came from beside her, her body stiffened.
Clutching at her stifled chest, she barely managed to turn her head and saw a man eating his meal with an indifferent expression.
“…Ostia?”
Countless thoughts surfaced and vanished in her mind.
Unable to reach any sort of conclusion, just as her head was about to overload enough to plunge her into panic—
Clap!
A light sound of clapping echoed through the room.
Ostia separated his hands with a slightly furrowed expression and spoke.
“What are you thinking so hard about? You slept straight for three days; even a troll would be hungry by now. Aren’t you going to eat?”
Now that he mentioned it, her stomach hurt to the point of agony from extreme hunger.
Ostia gestured with his eyes toward the place set in front of him, and Alice slowly rose from the bed.
‘What in the world…….’
Ostia motioned for her to hurry over as he watched her, but it wasn’t something she could obediently comply with.
Why had she been sleeping in a bed, and why was Ostia, her target, calmly eating beside her? Her stomach clamored at her to eat right away, but she could only stare blankly at the scene before her eyes.
In the end, as if possessed by a ghost, Alice sat down in front of the table with a vacant expression.
Then, with a face that looked as though she had resigned herself to something, she picked up her utensils and began to eat without a word.
Ostia watched her with a satisfied expression.
With a gaze like that of a father looking at his daughter.
He had already finished his meal, but he did not rise from his seat and waited for Alice to empty her plate.
“Good, eat your fill. And after you eat, you’d better wash up. Honestly, you smell.”
Alice’s face turned bright red just as she was putting a spoon into her mouth.
“Alice, Alice.”
As the delicate name lingered in my mouth, I tapped the table.
With the protagonist’s gender reversed, countless settings had changed.
To think the protagonist had become an assassin.
Perhaps because of that, despite this still being the introduction of the original work, she had obtained absurd power.
At that level, she could probably breeze through the Academy story with ease.
I didn’t know whether this would be of help to me or not, but for now, it was too early to jump to conclusions.
No matter what, the existence known as the protagonist was an absolutely indispensable being for pushing through the story ahead.
“…Hoo.”
At my comment about the smell, Alice said she would wash up first and headed to the bathroom.
After some time had passed, she returned hesitantly, wearing a gown.
“The clothes are in that room, so go change and come back. They’re men’s clothes, but they should be wearable enough.”
It must have been hard for her to be in front of someone else dressed like that.
Nodding at my words, she briefly crossed into the next room, then returned wearing one of my clothes and sat at the table.
When she gathered her damp hair together and tied it up, Alice’s snow-white nape came into view.
And when I saw the scars crossing through its center, a bitter taste spread in my mouth.
Facing me, she let out a long breath and took a deep one.
Then, as if she had finished steeling herself, she spoke with resolute eyes.
“What do you want.”
At that, my breath caught.
Eyes that seemed strong, yet had resigned themselves to everything.
The fear born from a broken heart manifested through the trembling hands she hid beneath the table.
“What can you give me?”
I was the victor, and she was the defeated.
By common sense, it made no sense to spare an assassin who had tried to take one’s life.
But she was still alive, and she must have guessed that I wanted something from her.
In simple terms, Alice was trying to offer that up as a sacrifice to beg for my mercy.
Even if I drew my sword right now and cut her down, she could do nothing.
She might struggle a little, but it would only delay things briefly—the outcome would be the same.
I had to pull Alice into my side, no matter what.
Considering the story to come, her value was limitless.
Call me trash if you want; it couldn’t be helped.
This was that kind of world.
A world where a Korean high school girl living an ordinary life had no choice but to become a mid-level Sword Expert assassin in just one year.
But I, too, was someone living in that era, so revulsion inevitably welled up inside me.
Enduring the guilt toward myself as I looked at her, Alice spoke to me with a tense expression.
“Money, force, information. I have a fair amount of money saved up from completing requests. As for force, I’m weaker than you, but I’m confident I wouldn’t lose to most knights. If you want information, I can roughly investigate who it was that commissioned me to kill you……. And.”
Alice’s voice trembled.
She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and barely continued.
“I don’t have experience with men, but…….”
She didn’t finish her sentence, but I could understand what she was trying to say.
“I’m useful. There are many places I can be used. That’s why you didn’t kill me and let me live, right?”
As if she had finally sorted out her thoughts, Alice spoke to me with an exceedingly confident face.
The trembling of the hand she had kept under the table had stopped, and the eyes that had held resignation now burned with a strange heat.
After finishing her words, Alice quietly closed her eyes, as if waiting for my judgment.
At that, I looked at her with narrowed eyes.
Now that change had already occurred in this world, Alice was no longer the protagonist I had known.
That is to say, the youth who was always righteous, who could not tolerate injustice, and who loved people, no longer existed.
Even the appearance before me now might have been a fabricated facade she had learned while being trained as an assassin.
But.
“I’ll say this first.”
—I have no intention of killing you.
At those words, Alice lifted her head.
What covered most of her face was dubious distrust, but within it, I could see a single ray of light called hope.
This was a world based on a novel.
I didn’t know which came first in the chain of causality, but no matter what, Alice was the protagonist of this world.
If possible, I wanted to believe in her.
‘Alright, then.’
How could I earn the trust of this small girl?
Do you know of a girl who has been stuffed and preserved?
It was a line from a novel I had once read, slightly altered.
The original meaning held many complex implications.
That said, I had no desire to sound pretentious by explaining some philosophical meaning.
I wasn’t that great a writer.
Still, as I looked at Alice, that line suddenly came to mind.
“…….”
Even after my declaration that I wouldn’t kill her, she hadn’t yet been able to let her guard down.
That was only natural, since the thread of Alice’s life was currently in my grasp.
As I slowly tapped the table and fell into silence for a moment, she watched me with anxious eyes.
Not knowing what I would demand or what I would make her do must have been eating her alive.
In truth, if she got out of this place, there were countless ways for her to escape from me.
I couldn’t monitor her all day long.
If she truly resolved to disappear, it seemed unlikely I’d be able to find her again with ease.
Unlike other novels, this hadn’t been a fated meeting, so there was no reason at all for her to remain by my side.
Therefore, if I wanted to continue this relationship, I needed to create a justification and reason for Alice to stay with me.
Judging from her behavior so far, her greatest wish was survival.
Having fallen into such a remote place, she must surely have nostalgia of the sort—wanting to return home safely.
I was the same, so I could empathize with her on that point.
In fact, the answer to this part was clear.
If I said that I, too, had come from Earth, the situation would enter an entirely different phase.
Two people from Earth who had fallen into this world.
One through dimensional travel, one through possession.
One a protagonist, one a scoundrel.
It felt like a laughably absurd combination.
Still, what worried me was what kind of backlash would follow if I revealed my origins at this point.
From my experiences so far, this world had followed the rules of a novel.
Various clichés had played out everywhere, and I, too, had benefited greatly from them.
But what if I twisted the flow here?
If a possessor—one who knew that this world was a novel and knew the future developments—appeared beside the protagonist, what would happen to the story?
‘It might be that nothing happens at all.’
Thinking positively, it would just mean there were two peerless overpowered monsters.
Then there couldn’t be a better outcome for overcoming the crises and adversities to come.
But thinking negatively, I couldn’t even imagine how bad things could get.
That was why the words “I came from Earth” rose all the way to my throat, only to be swallowed back down along with my pooled saliva.
‘Then.’
If I couldn’t reveal my own secret, I had to attack from another angle.
Something here that could create common ground with her.
“…Ah.”
At the sudden emergence of a good keyword, I let a faint smile spread across my face.
Alice flinched slightly at the sight, but I didn’t mind and opened my mouth.
“First, let’s make this one thing clear.”
“…What?”
“It’s about your origin.”
“Origin?”
At my words, Alice tilted her head as if she didn’t understand.
In response to the look that seemed to say hadn’t she already told me she came from Astasha, I grinned and said,
“To be precise, it’s not a country, but a dimension.”
“…….”
The moment my words ended, Alice’s face hardened.
A crack stained with a different tension than before spread across it, but she forced herself to hide those emotions and played dumb.
“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Alice wasn’t a fool.
On the contrary, seeing how she had survived and grown to this point, one could even say she was quite brilliant.
That was why she surely had a vague understanding of where her power came from and why she must never speak of it.
But it won’t work.
I know your settings better than you do.
“It doesn’t seem like you don’t know.”
“…If you’re just trying to tease me, stop. I’ll do what you ask anyway.”
Alice denied it to the very end.
It was a truly wise choice, one could say.
But as I’d said many times, her opponent was bad.
“Dike.”
“……!”
A single word spoken quietly.
At the same time, her eyes shook, and undeniable agitation bloomed across her face.