Chapter 118
Chapter 118
“Was it a long time since we had a setup like this.”
At my words, Werner and Diark grinned.
I thought a gathering of just men wasn’t bad at all. No, to be honest, this was more comfortable. When I was among women, it felt like my energy was being drained.
As we were chatting about this and that, the lively chatter of the women coming from the carriage running alongside ours made Diark’s ears perk up.
“What, should I have moved you over to that carriage?”
“…Honestly, I did wish you would.”
He grinned and said it was a joke in response to my words. Then Werner, sitting beside him, pointed at Diark and spoke.
“I heard things have been going well with Miss Maria lately. Miss Alice told me before—she said the two of you went out alone at night for a date in South Yorkshire.”
“…How did she know that?”
Thinking he had hidden it pretty well, Diark’s eyes went wide. Of course, Alice was an upper-tier assassin. Sneaking past the attention of one or two academy students and following them would have been child’s play.
The two of them secretly holding hands and going outside, and Alice grinning as she secretly followed behind them.
Just imagining that scene made me smile on my own.
“Ostia, what about you then?”
“…Me.”
This time Diark launched a counterattack. I couldn’t help but make a subtle expression.
I already knew about the goodwill the women showed me. I wasn’t some dense male protagonist from a story, and if I couldn’t notice such proactive displays of affection, that would mean there was something wrong with my head.
But whether I accepted it was a separate issue.
“For now, there’s my fiancée, senior Petra, Alice whom I’m close with, and Miss Elysia and Miss Leysias—I even greeted their fathers. As for Miss Yuria… I’m not sure.”
“…Don’t tell me all of them?”
As Diark counted them off, Werner looked at me with a doubtful expression. Certainly, they were all attractive women. Even before their backgrounds or abilities, each of them had clear goals and convictions, so just looking at them was dazzling.
In this country, monogamy wasn’t legally fixed like it was in reality. So if I truly wanted to, I could take all of them as partners, but I couldn’t really imagine such a scene.
“…Who knows.”
Unfortunately, I couldn’t give even myself a clear answer.
Still, it would be a lie to say my heart wasn’t drawn.
If I had to name the person I was closest to…….
‘Still, wouldn’t it be Petra.’
Originally, I approached Alice to make use of her as the hero. That twisted in an unexpected direction and led to a relationship, but before I knew it, Petra appeared and grabbed me by the collar, pulling me toward her.
If things followed the original route from here, wouldn’t the possibility of ending up with her be quite high?
“We are leaving the capital.”
The voice of the coachman guiding the carriage reached us. As Diark was about to respond with a word of thanks, I found myself thinking that all of this was futile.
Even if things went well from here on, I didn’t know when I might return to reality. In such a situation, wasn’t drawing a happy future just empty hope?
The greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment. If that moment came right before my eyes, I wondered whether I could endure that sense of loss.
“Well, if it’s you, you’ll figure it out.”
Perhaps my complicated feelings showed on my face, because Werner lightly tapped my shoulder as he spoke. In response, I could only nod silently.
The first night after leaving the capital.
We unpacked our luggage at an inn located in the first village along our route.
After finishing dinner, it grew dim outside. Since it was the first day, no one seemed particularly tired, but we had to travel by carriage for about twenty days. It was about time to turn in, but I called everyone to my room.
Though it was an inn outside the capital, it was along a route frequented by travelers, so the facilities were quite decent. It was spacious enough that even nine people could gather without issue.
“As I said before, this trip to the Holy Kingdom happened because of me.”
Standing at the center of the group, I spoke while looking at the eight people sitting on the bed or the floor.
I obtained Excalibur in Britain.
There was no one here who didn’t know that. But what I was about to talk about now went deeper than that.
The demons that appeared in Britain and South Yorkshire, and the Majin who attacked Leipzig.
Aside from Petra and Alice, the others only knew bits and pieces, so I laid out the general story for them.
The topic of demons and Majin would still be unfamiliar, but the weight of such words depended on who spoke them. That was why the group listened to me with serious expressions.
“So you’re saying that demons themselves, or Majin who sold their souls to demons, are hiding all over the world?”
“That’s right. What’s more, with the power they received from demons, they’re several times stronger than ordinary people. Most of them probably used that power to rise to high positions.”
As far as I knew, there were a few such existences even within the imperial family. The sturdy emperor didn’t collapse for no reason. But as I had said several times, I had no intention of stopping that.
Once the emperor fell, the story moved on to the next stage, and the one hiding within the imperial family would surely be a monster far beyond my current self.
Otherwise, there was no way they could hide and live unscathed in a place teeming with countless powerful figures.
After pouring out everything at once and taking a brief breath, Diark, who was sitting a little apart from Maria, raised his hand.
“I have a question!”
“What is it?”
“The place we’re heading to now is the Holy Kingdom, right? It’s even called a sacred land. Could there really be those kinds of guys even in a place like that?”
It was a good question. I nodded without hesitation.
“There are.”
“Really?!”
At my emphatic assertion, everyone in the group wore expressions of surprise.
That divine power was the natural opposite of demonic energy was a widely known fact. Their faces clearly showed the question of how a being harboring demonic energy could possibly remain hidden among that.
But in the original work’s episode, that lackey had clearly infiltrated the Holy Kingdom.
They had even gone so far as to use the saintess, the very symbol of the Holy Kingdom, in an attempt to break the protagonist.
And as for who that bastard was…….
‘I can’t remember.’
Right before the third semester, once the journey to the Holy Kingdom was decided, I went over the plot developments once more. I had written down most of what I knew on parchment, but I didn’t remember everything.
Now that I had possessed Leios’s body, all my stats had risen explosively, but back then, I had the memory of an ordinary person.
Even then, that was only because it was the first work by an established author I had encountered, so I studied it intensely. If I had been assigned another author’s work, I wouldn’t have made it this far.
Still, I had reached my limit.
I knew something happened, and that the saintess appeared, but I had forgotten who the mastermind was.
A mastermind was a mastermind in the truest sense—one of the ordinary people around us. But neither their description nor their name came to mind.
‘As a last resort, I want to rely on River’s eyes, but that bastard is exceptionally skilled at concealing demonic energy.’
Unless I came into direct contact, it would probably be impossible to identify them.
At the statement that someone was definitely there, but that we couldn’t tell who it was, everyone let out a groan.
“Then does that mean we have to consider everyone as a potential enemy?”
“That’s right. Except for the saintess.”
“The saintess…….”
At that, Werner stroked his chin. The saintess, symbol of the Holy Kingdom—she was said to be a girl one year younger than us, with silver-white hair like Yuria’s and a noble dignity.
Her personality was kind, befitting the title of saintess, and her conduct was refined as well. But as if the gods were fair, there was a slight issue on the mental side.
The Majin had exploited that point of the saintess to torment the hero.
“Well, that said, there’s no need to be overly on guard. With priests swarming all around, the Majin won’t be able to act openly.”
At my words telling them to enjoy themselves as much as they liked since we were going anyway, they smiled faintly. Like any religious land, the capital of the Holy Kingdom was full of things to see. They had deliberately developed it as a tourist destination and drawn in many people every year.
Still, I had no intention of forming any particular relationships with them. Even getting a little close meant dealing with them preaching their doctrine, which was bothersome, and once a war with the demonic realm broke out, they would always have to stand on the front lines in the name of holiness.
“Since it’s the first day, let’s leave it at this and break for now.”
As night grew late, we rose from our seats. Everyone cast glances here and there, looking somewhat regretful. At that, I pointed downward with an expression that said it couldn’t be helped.
“I saw earlier that there’s a tavern on the first floor. I’ve rented out this inn until tomorrow, so drink in moderation.”
“As expected, I really did make a good friend.”
Diark jumped to his feet and burst into a hearty laugh.
For this exam, any mishaps that occurred during travel were entirely the individual’s responsibility. Because of that, things like this were treated quite leniently, and a few drinks didn’t even come close to being an issue.
Soon, everyone started heading downstairs. I planned to tidy up the room and get a bit of rest, but Werner noticed my intention and grabbed my arm.
“You’re not thinking of sneaking off alone, are you.”
Though it was a drinking gathering, it wasn’t a boisterous, reckless atmosphere. In the novel they were described like full-grown adults, but they were still seventeen-year-old boys and girls.
On top of that, most of them had been raised with noble family educations, so their words and actions were full of refinement.
I had told them to drink moderately, and that’s exactly what they did—just sipping beer or wine, chatting softly enough that a gentle hum of conversation filled the rented tavern.
Because we were close, honest stories that we normally couldn’t share began to come out. Eventually, the topic settled into something people this age tended to like.
“Out of everyone here, not a single one of you has ever had a lover?”
Diark stared at his friends with eyes wide open.
Living instinctively, he had met women several times even before coming to the Academy. He had never expected to make it this far in life, since he was fated to die young.
“Well, in my case, because of my family’s policies…….”
Elysia answered with a slightly flushed face as she sipped her wine. Leysias nodded at that.
Given their families, it made sense that the two of them couldn’t freely meet men.
The others also shared their circumstances with awkward expressions. Only Petra looked subtly restless, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. Then, with a casual remark Alice tossed out, the room fell into silence.
“What about Ostia?”
In an instant, everyone’s attention turned toward me. A hollow laugh escaped me on its own.
Leios’s coming-of-age story was one you couldn’t hear without tears. He hadn’t had the luxury for romance, but the real me was a working adult in my late twenties. I had dated a few girlfriends before.
“None—.”
Thud.
Just as I was about to deny it out of sheer aversion to hassle, Leysias casually tossed something onto the table.
Searching my memory at the familiar shape, I realized it was a magical artifact that discerned lies.
It was something sold at the artifact shop ‘Ganyeorin Orc’ in the Kingdom of Demedrio, and I myself had once looked at it with interest.
“…….”
When I lifted my head to look at her, Leysias whistled at nothing in particular and looked away. At that reaction, I let out a wry laugh and stood up.
“Well, I do have a fiancée. If that counts as a lover, then maybe.”
At my answer, which was neither a lie nor the full truth, but simply stated facts, the artifact didn’t react. Leysias bit her lip slightly, looking frustrated, and I left the table, saying I’d step out for some air.
As the night breeze hit me, my head, which had been floating from the alcohol, returned to its proper place.
“…If you go by actual age, there’d be nearly a ten-year gap.”
In reality, even drinking together would draw accusations of a crime. But what could I do—if you didn’t like it, you could possess into this world too.
“Well, whatever.”
Inside, the atmosphere was good in its own way. If we were going to wade through a pandemonium ahead, trust among companions was important. I had no intention of breaking that.
Sching.
That was why, while looking around at the surroundings cloaked in darkness, I drew my sword.
“They’re coming in loud from the very first day.”
Along with a blood-stinging scent, killing intent surged toward me. Sure enough, a blatant attack right from the first day.
“Well, it’s your fate, so go on and accept it.”
I offered a prayer for the repose of the souls of the frail little lambs who would soon vanish like dew.