WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

Is It Bad That the Main Character’s a Roleplayer?

[Translator – Aren]

◈ Chapter 298 Proof (3)

"...Let me warn you in advance. From this point onward, I won’t save anyone who falls behind.”

As the Hero mounted Frederick’s back, a thought suddenly crossed her mind.

Are you fighting again this time? Are you once again throwing yourself into danger to save people?

"So, you devoted ones. Protect your own bodies yourselves.”

...Even though none of your devotion is ever rewarded?

"We’re leaving."

By nature, devotion wasn’t something offered in expectation of reward. She knew that. There were moments when one had to make sacrifices simply because it was the right thing to do. Just as this moment was one of them, and just as there would be more in the future.

Neeeigh!

"O God……”

But, but……

"Your servant stands here.”

She remembered the empty prison. 『 .』Was it truly acceptable for devotion to go this unrewarded in this world?

"Grant due honor to those who sacrifice themselves.”

She murmured quietly atop the galloping horse.

Two hours to reach Munmund. For those two hours, please let that city endure without falling.

Please let as many people as possible remain within reach of an outstretched hand.

“Grant those who refuse to give up the courage they deserve.”

And may the God of this land not abandon them. May He not turn away from us. From every being upon this land, from Your young children, from Your faithful servants.

"Show unmistakable hope to those who seek to save another.”

To even one pitiful soul.

"Please…prove that devotion has some value."

Please.

* * *

"Why would I give up?”

At the suggestion whispered beside my ear, I tightened my grip on Ratel.

"What the hell did I stay here for if I’m supposed to give up now?”

Creaaak. The thing that could hardly even be called a sword hilt ground against my palm.

“What? Did the devs hard-code it so I can’t kill that pig bastard before those people die? Did they?”

[Who knows? I doubt God would be crazy enough to decide something like that.]

"Then we’re good.”

At the same time, I forced more and more Demonic Energy into it. The white, viscous substance wriggling through the gap in Behemoth’s eyelid no longer stabbed at the eyeball.

"If it wasn’t designed to be unbeatable, a gamer can beat it.”

Instead, it filled every gap between the eyeball and the surrounding flesh. Behemoth shook its head as though irritated, but it meant nothing. Neither Ratel nor I, firmly anchored by it, would be dislodged by something as minor as a shake of the head.

"Which means I can beat this thing too.”

Slash!

The cockroach that had crawled all the way up here lost its head to the amber-colored sword. Ratel, which had seemed capable of expanding endlessly, no longer felt as though it were spreading. Apparently, it had completely filled the empty space inside. It looked like it had covered roughly half the eyeball.

[This is.......]

Then all that remained was to pour Demonic Energy into Ratel and use it to create fire.

I remembered what the Demon had said. That flames would naturally arise when I became angry. Fortunately, I happened to have more than enough emotion capable of setting Demonic Energy ablaze.

[How unpleasant.]

The poison I could never bring myself to unleash upon the child, yet couldn’t keep bottled up forever, flowed like tears and grew heavy as lava. Bitter fury coated its edge in another layer.

[It took me a hundred years before I could control fire properly.]

And so flames slowly began spreading beneath Behemoth’s eyelid. The fierce fire seeped in coldly before erupting in an instant, gradually heating the eyeball touching it and the moisture composing that eyeball.

"If you don’t call those insects back right now, I’m going to roast your entire eyeball.”

Kweeeeeeegh!!!

Unable to endure the pain, the monster finally lifted its eyelid and screamed wildly.

"You hear me, you damn pig? Call the insects back right now!!”

Did I feel sorry for it? Not particularly. Who told it to unleash insects and kill people? Who told it to kill people right in front of me? Who told it to be so damn tough that I had no choice but to resort to something like this?!

"The insects! Get rid of them!!!”

I glared at the eyeball, which appeared completely white beneath its coating of Ratel. Objectively speaking, it had hardly inflicted any direct harm upon me, and its absurd durability was hardly its own fault, but I didn’t give a damn about that.

It was one of humanity’s mortal enemies that needed to die, and I needed somewhere to direct my anger to. That was all that mattered.

[There’s no way that beast understands what you’re saying.]

Of course, this thing wasn’t actually the main source of my pent-up rage, so venting my anger on it now probably wouldn’t leave me truly satisfied in the end.

But that was fine. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t empty everything out at once.

If I shoveled it away one scoop at a time, someday even this sediment would finally reveal the bottom.

And while I was busy battering Behemoth’s eyeball as an outlet for my anger, Behemoth finally tried to slam its own head into the ground. It seemed its short, thick legs couldn't reach where I was, so it intended to rub its head against the earth and scrape me off.

Boom!

There was just one thing it had failed to account for. Behemoth’s head was built so that its tusks protruded farther than its forehead.

Boom!

The tusks, inevitably striking the ground before its head could, smashed apart sections of earth and sent numbing vibrations through me. Each impact made the hems of my clothes and my hair jump.

[Adjust Ratel’s transparency. You still need to keep drilling through the spot you pierced earlier, don’t you?]

"...What the hell is this thing made of?”

What could possibly be in this thing that even its transparency could be adjusted? I asked in a subdued voice. The Demon floating lazily around me answered without hesitation.

[My rib and magic.]

"Disgusting."

Fwoosh!

Disgusting or not, it was ridiculously useful. Swallowing my instinctive revulsion toward Ratel, I increased its transparency. Behemoth’s enormous eye became visible beneath it. [There.] The spot I had pierced was nearby as well.

Tap! My body shot forward as though flying, and I gripped the amber sword tightly. If I took my stance and made it obvious I was about to stab, that bastard would jerk its eye away, so striking the exact same spot had to be done by surprise.

For an instant, Ratel, covering the damaged spot, withdrew, and the amber-colored blade plunged straight into it.

Swoosh!

At last, it pierced through several of the membranes beneath the sclera as well. The vitreous body, hard as frozen pork belly, welcomed my blade.

[...You’re getting pretty good at handling Ratel.]

Even as I continued driving the sword deeper, I stretched part of Ratel out like a tentacle and used it to hold my body in place. The eyeball wasn’t supporting me like the ground beneath my feet, it was standing vertically like a wall, so I had no choice but to avoid falling.

Slash! Even at a time like this, a cockroach lunging at me was cut into three pieces by a dagger I pulled out at random and fell away.

Guooooooooh!!!

While I was cutting down a few of the cockroaches, the beast whose eye I had stabbed raised one foreleg high and slammed it straight into the ground. Booom! Even what little flesh I had on my cheeks trembled, and my clothes whipped violently around me. This was practically bungee jumping.

Ruuuuumble!

But the bigger problem was the wall. The instant a shockwave comparable to an earthquake swept across the ground, another section of the wall collapsed, and thunderous crashes rang out from the city. The screams of humans came as a bonus.

Thud, thud, thud.

But misfortune never came alone. Behemoth itself had even begun charging toward the city. All the effort I had put into luring it away suddenly became meaningless.

Shit. The sheer aggravation of fighting an enemy this ridiculously difficult to kill and the frustration of the hopeless reality before me surged up all at once.

"Hey, how tough is this thing?”

[I don’t know what you’re planning, but if it were tougher than Behemoth, I wouldn’t have released the protective cocoon in the first place, would I? And if the blade breaks, repairing it costs a hell of a lot of Demonic Energy, so unless you absolutely have to, don’t try anything stupid.]

...Then it was useless. I abandoned the idea of spreading Ratel wide and erecting it as a wall. A wall that would simply break meant nothing.

"What about elasticity?”

[Not great.]

If its elasticity was poor too, spreading it like a net to slow Behemoth down probably wouldn’t work either. I bit my lip as I looked at the rapidly shrinking distance.

"Is the difference in durability so extreme that it’ll shatter the moment that charge hits it?”

[... Who knows? I’ve never tested anything like that.]

"You useless bastard."

[That’s harsh.]

It wasn’t made from my ribs, so should I just accept that Ratel might break and try making a wall anyway? I kept turning the problem over in my head while roasting one of Behemoth’s eyes to a crisp.

Nothing in particular came to mind. Without the ability to cleave through something and pulverize it in a single blow, I was completely able to do anything.

"O God."

Right. I had abilities suited to killing and eliminating enemies, but not to protecting someone else.

"Your servant stands here. Raise a wall that will hold back evil.”

Unlike the red-haired young woman standing over there.

* * *

Booom!

It was something like a thorn. It wrapped around the wall yet protruded outward from a single point into a sharp tip. It was unmistakably a thorn.

Guuoooooh!

And at the same time, it was a wall.

The beast, Erysichthon, which had been charging forward intent on crushing the city, found its path blocked by a wall both thin and massive and thrashed its head wildly. Golden thorns had already pierced the point where its thick neck joined its legs.

"Cough."

How could someone who had stopped such overwhelming mass alone possibly avoid coughing up blood?

Yet put another way, that was all it amounted to. The one who had single-handedly stopped a beast the size of a large village merely spat out blood once before raising her head again.

The vessel that had expanded through repeatedly breaking, shattering, and rolling across the ground supported her. Her red hair fluttered gently in the wind.

"Thus, I declare from this moment forth, this place is a sanctuary."

The thorn buried deep in the enormous beast’s flesh quietly began taking root. The divine power that had formed the wall pooled there and spread its roots, as though every trace of it intended to burrow into the beast’s interior.

"Evil, I shall hold you accountable for the sin of trespassing upon this sanctuary.”

Guooooooooh.

The beast of plague roared as it scattered swarms of insects. Even a beast whose intellect had fallen to the lowest depths could understand its own impending death, and so it cried out.

In an attempt to survive even a little longer and to sate its endless hunger. Erysichthon commanded its minions to devour every living thing around it.

"Agh!”

“Uwagh!”

"......!”

The Hero frowned. No matter how much stronger she had become, her hands were still small, and she could still choose only one thing at a time.

"S-save me……”

"I don’t want to die……”

Punish evil, or save the pitiful?

At the cries coming from every direction, the Hero tightened her grip on her shield and mace. Something had to be abandoned.

"Purify them!”

Something had to be abandoned.

Whenever she stood alone, it had always been that way.

"Fulfill the duty entrusted to you!”

Ah. Through her blurred vision, the red-haired young woman opened her mouth as she looked upon the figure shining unmistakably before her.

Though obscured by mud and blood, the one who bore both the pitch-black hue, symbolizing evil, and the gray that had failed to become good yet still burned white, just as always.

"I’ll kill the Demon!!”

Ah, if only you had stood here as pure evil.

If the Demonic Energy I sensed and your true essence had been one and the same.

Would that have made things easier for me?

* * *

I had no idea why the golden light I never wanted to see again looked so damn welcome today. I laughed like I was about to cry at the barrier stopping Behemoth, only for my expression to harden when I caught sight of the face beyond it.

"...That kid’s skin and bones.”

Were those Temple bastards not feeding her properly? Why had the kid shrunk to half her size? Why had that round, angelic face become so thin?

[You're seriously worried about that right now? Hah……]

But this still wasn’t the time to worry about the Inquisitor’s circumstances. The situation had yet to be resolved.

Watching Behemoth retreat from the divine power, I adjusted my grip on the amber-colored sword buried halfway into its eye. The insects on the wall were being exterminated in real time, and the people seemed to be healing with the aid of the golden light as well, so there was nothing left holding me back.

I quickly pulled the sword free, then prepared to drive it down again. The bastard rolled its eye around desperately, trying to avoid the attack, but unless it could roll the thing a full 180 degrees, that was impossible. The sword sank into Behemoth’s eye all the way to the point where the guard met its flesh.

Rumble! Behemoth heaved its entire body like an enraged bull before beginning to turn around completely.

Ruuuuumble. Its enormous body charged toward the desert.

[That pig bastard… Looks like it’s turning tail now that it realizes it can’t win.]

But its eye had already been breached. I shoved Ratel deeper into the eye and thrust my hand inside along with it. Inventory. The tool capable of swallowing anything I touched if I so desired transferred Behemoth’s vitreous body into some other space, then dumped it out behind me.

[More importantly, Gretchen… I think this every time, but you really are good at using your inventory.]

In an instant, Behemoth’s eye shriveled. In other words, there was now enough space inside the eye socket for me to stand.

I entered without hesitation. The absurdly tough clear was slippery beneath my feet, and smooth flesh was visible farther in. I wondered whether, among all of that, I would have to stab to reach the brain.

[Why not stop here?]

But just as I gauged how much Demonic Energy I had left and where the brain might be while pouring even more power into Ratel, the Demon quietly asked me a question.

"Why?”

[Your original goal was to save that city from the threat, not kill Behemoth.]

“So you’re saying I should let it go when I’ve practically got it?”

She herself had openly shown nothing but contempt and disgust, calling it an insect and a bastard, and now she wanted me to give up? Having already taken down Envy and Greed, I doubted she had suddenly decided to switch back to the Demons’ side.

I glanced at the Demon's face, trying to discern her true intentions. “If you want to convince me, give me the truth.” Even to my own ears, my bleak voice brushed coldly past the Demon.

[If you want to kill this thing now, you’ll have to use everything you have left. But the Hero is in that city right now.]

Ah, was that all she meant? I poured a little more Demonic Energy into Ratel. Vrrrm. The Demonic Energy packed into it to the very limit made Ratel vibrate.

[I’m only asking just in case, Gretchen, but you aren’t under the delusion that the Hero will let you live, are you? If that’s what you’re thinking, I sincerely suggest you reconsider. You know it too, right? In your current position, survival is hardly an option available to you.]

The vibration steadily grew more violent.

[...Of course, if you want the Hero to kill you so you can return home, then fine. It can’t be helped. Poor Faust will still bear the traces of having contracted with me and be cast into Hell without even being able to dream of salvation, but if you truly want to go home, then by all means.]

But the hand that should have thrown it had missed its moment.

[So what will you do, Gretchen? Will you pour even the strength you’d need to escape into killing this thing?]

I glared at that venomous tongue.

A Demon truly was a Demon.

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