WETRIED TRANSLATIONS
Is It Bad That the Main Character’s a Roleplayer?
[Translator – Aren]
◈ Chapter 305 Proof (10)
"Still, like you said, the fact that you don’t have any concrete proof is definitely a problem. Me, I don’t particularly care whether you really gained control over the Demon or whether the Demon is just pretending to have two separate personalities, so I can more or less let it slide. But the Temple obviously won’t be able to do that.”
Meister’s satisfied expressions didn’t last very long. His face turned serious again as he pointed out an entirely reasonable problem.
"Or maybe the Hero who was bawling her eyes out because she just couldn’t bring herself to kill you will persuade the Temple?”
"Who knows……?”
But that was something I had already considered as well. I could make up verbal excuses as much as I wanted, but producing actual physical evidence was impossible. A contract wasn’t something that appeared visibly on the outside.
"If you don’t have any evidence yet, we can move past that. Why didn’t the original owner tell you the truth while you had lost your memories? If he’d opened his mouth, you wouldn’t have had to wander around searching for the truth.”
While I remained silent because I couldn’t think of a good solution, Meister brought up another question. I could almost glimpse his desire to satisfy every last bit of his curiosity before the Inquisitor and the others returned.
"...He was also in a state where the Demon’s interference prevented him from making contact with me. Apparently, whenever he tried to tell me anything, it would instead end up harming me, so he had no choice but to remain silent.”
"Wow, that’s damn awful.”
Meister gave a simply yet remarkably blunt response to my entire explanation.
"Exactly."
I didn't disagree. Feeling sorry for Faust was one thing, and the way this entire chain of events had unfolded, being damn awful, was another.
Goddamnit. If he’d just explained everything to me before bringing me here, I never would’ve accumulated this kind of cringe-inducing dark history……
"Ah, right. Then Grandpa meant he had no right to interfere purely because you were a summoned soul……”
"Why are you making that face?”
"No, it’s not that it doesn’t make sense…… It just feels like there’s something missing. Grandpa isn’t the kind of person who’d back off just because you were simply a summoned soul, in other words, some third party’s soul.”
...There was a little distortion in what I’d told him, but there really wasn't anything else to it. The only other thing Azure Lake knew was that my soul came from another world and that I’d been dragged here out of nowhere. Right? Or was there more? Did he figure something else out?
"I can’t think of anything beyond that.”
I tried to work out what Azure Lake might have been thinking, but I couldn’t get a read on him at all and eventually gave up. It wasn’t particularly important anyway. Judging by the fact that he’d only told his grandson, ‘I had no right to stop him,’ he seemed to be keeping my secret as promised.
"Right."
In any case, Meister backed off at my response. At the very least, he seemed to realize there was nothing more he could interrogate me about.
For a while, silence filled the space between me, suffering from another bout of embarrassment, and Meister, who was thinking up more questions.
"...So what are you going to do now? Now that you know you’re a summoned soul, are you going to undo the summoning?”
"I’ve already found a way to undo it.”
"Must be difficult then?”
As always, Meister extracted several pieces of information from a single sentence and skipped straight over several conversational steps. From the word 'found,' he had already inferred that I couldn't undo it immediately and instead asked how difficult it was.
"Or does undoing it cause some problem with the Demon?”
"That’s not it. If I properly undo the summoning…The Demon will no longer be a problem.”
And now that I had bound her down with the contract, I figured the Demon probably wouldn’t become much of a problem anyway. There was always the possibility that I might die of embarrassment first over what little dignity I had left being utterly destroyed, but the Demon herself would have a hard time causing trouble the way she had until now.
No. The Demon wasn't the problem. She wasn't the only problem.
"...I simply want to apologize. For the trouble I caused people because my memories weren’t intact all this time.”
How I would spend the next 9 years, and everything else beyond that, were separate problems.
"...Isn’t that something you don’t need to apologize for?”
"The fact that it wasn’t intentional doesn’t make what I did any less wrong. And once you realize something was wrong, you should correct it immediately, or if it can’t be corrected, you should at least show a willingness to make amends. That’s the only reason I wish to apologize."
If I could be absolved of acting like an asshole because of my roleplaying simply because I hadn't truly meant it, then that same logic would have to apply to Faust as well. He had merely been foolish enough to make the wrong contract. That child hadn't deliberately tried to screw me over either.
But could anyone really proclaim to Faust, ‘You didn't do it of your own free will, so you’re not guilty’?
My decision to give that child a chance and that child being declared innocent were two separate matters.
Just as intent and victims can exist independently of one another.
In other words, if there were victims, then an apology was owed even if the harm hadn’t been intentional. Therefore, I would apologize as well. The rules shouldn’t change depending on how grave or minor the wrongdoing was.
"You sure make life exhausting for yourself. Well, do whatever you want.”
[...You damn pushover. Seriously?]
I thought this wasn’t living an exhausting life, but simply living the way one ought to. At Meister's indifferent response and the Demon's voice echoing through my head, I slowly blinked.
"That being said, I’d like to ask for your help.”
"What?"
"You said it yourself earlier. If I have no evidence with which to persuade the Temple, that’ll cause problems.”
"...You want me to help you find evidence?”
"Yes."
For the record, this was also why Meister had been the first person I confessed to. Goddammit, if I wanted to finally drop the whole roleplaying act, I needed physical proof, and finding that on my own was far too difficult.
"First off, you’re definitely able to properly control the Demon now, right?”
[You insane bastard, are you seriously planning to join back up with the Hero—]
「Shut up. I’m sorry. I’ll make her shut up somehow.」
[Let go of me, you damn brat!!]
"...Yes.”
I stared off into the distance for a moment before answering Meister. My head was damn noisy.
"And there's obviously nothing that could visually demonstrate that you have her under control."
[You are absolutely not going back to the city—!]
「Shut up!」
[Don’t pull my hair, you damn brat!]
"...If the fact that you and I are having a perfectly normal conversation could be used as evidence, or if they had some way to look inside my head, we might be able to salvage at least something.”
Even as I said that, Meister gave me a look that clearly said, ‘Like that would ever be enough.’ The shrug of his shoulders was just icing on the cake.
"Switching places like you did earlier… is out. There’ll definitely be some idiot who claims it’s another deception. Technically, it’s impossible to prove that there are three souls inside the body. They probably won’t accept Grandpa’s testimony either, since there are already signs he was protecting you… In that case, what about proving who you were before you were summoned?”
"That will be difficult.”
"Is that so? Well, I suppose there’s a good chance they wouldn’t believe that either. Personal records are easy to falsify.”
It’s difficult not because of falsification or anything, but because I’m simply from another world… I merely shifted my eyes slightly at Meister’s words.
"Ah, come to think of it, you said earlier that if the summoning is undone normally, the Demon and everything else will be fine. What’s the method?”
"...Either I die, or I endure 9 years without succumbing to corruption.”
"If the Temple asks, leave out the first one. They’ll definitely try to kill you.”
"Right."
"And the second one…9 years without succumbing to corruption. That condition’s a little vague. What exactly counts as succumbing?”
Good question. Come to think of it, I never heard the exact condition either.
I raised a hand to signal for him to wait a moment, then closed my eyes and concentrated.
'Can you hear me? If you can, tell me the conditions for succumbing.’
They said that if I thought something strongly enough like this, it would reach them even without me muttering it aloud. I wasn’t sure whether it would work.
「Ah, just a moment. The condition for succumbing is……」
Fortunately, it seemed to get through. Faust, who had been bickering with the Demon, focused on me.
「While in your right mind, or with absolute sincerity, you have to say, ‘I wish this entire world would just go to hell.’」
'...There's no loophole where I can phrase it indirectly, right?’
「No.......」
Right. The guy who’s eaten meat knows how it tastes, as they say. There was no way a bastard this good at exploiting loopholes would’ve overlooked something like that.
I furrowed my brow with a mixture of mild irritation and, despite everything, relief.
As if the day would ever come when I’d say something like that. If this were a story, that sentence would be such an obvious flag, but I muttered it anyway.
"The condition for succumbing is apparently for me to sincerely say, ‘I wish this entire world would just go to hell.’”
But there was no helping it. What could possibly happen that would make me say something like that? Even when my leg was completely mangled, I had never blamed the whole world for it.
"What if you leave out one word?”
"Unfortunately, that doesn’t work.”
And this bastard Meister went straight for the same loophole I had thought of. Yeah. People really do think alike.
“Anyway, the condition is that you make it 9 years without saying those words. In that case……”
"Thought of something?”
"Hey, what about this instead?”
Anyway, Meister seemed to have found some sort of solution in that condition and briefly explained it to me.
"...How about it?”
"...There are some mildly human-rights-violating elements to it, but I think it could work.”
It was, quite literally, only somewhat human-rights-violating and, otherwise, much more reasonable than I had expected. I nodded to show my agreement.
* * *
Even on the way back to the wall, the Inquisitor kept crying until her cheeks looked ready to burst.
"At this rate, you’re going to end up in a sickbed because of dehydration.”
Deathbringer’s look of utter disgust didn’t stop her. She had suppressed her emotions for so long that now she poured them out in torrents. Her eyes, swollen until they had narrowed to slits, seemed to decide even that wasn’t enough and drew on every drop of moisture in her body.
"Th-they’re back!”
Seeing the people on the wall welcome her, the Inquisitor burst into tears all over again. She couldn’t help it because she knew their expectations were directed toward the ‘Hero.’ She had betrayed those expectations.
"M-Miss Hero, why are you……”
"I-I, Iiiiii.”
One of the priests treating the soldiers came rushing over in surprise, but the words wouldn’t come easily. Sniff. No matter how much she sucked it back, her runny nose kept coming, passing her lips and gathering at her chin.
The priest flustered helplessly for a moment, then eventually offered her the edge of their robes.
"If you’re crying because the Demon escaped, then it’s alright……”
"Waaaaaaah.”
If she were crying because she had let the Demon escape, then at least she would still be able to face these people. But that wasn’t why she was crying.
At the priest’s single remark, she burst into tears yet again.
"So you weren’t an iron wall. You were just a crybaby.”
Deathbringer, who was tending to the horses beside her, shook his head.
"Forget that. We need wizards capable of healing magic immediately.”
"And why exactly are you looking for them……?”
"Ah, because we need them, obviously! Where are they?! We need to take as many as possible.”
Even if he said they were going to treat the Demon Knight, nobody would volunteer. And before that, they had to get this wrapped up somehow before that old nag Daniel arrived. Taking those two facts into account, Deathbringer made his request more like a demand.
The expressions of the command personnel rushing over to assess the situation turned awkward.
"There are many people here who urgently need magical treatment as well. Especially since most of the priests have gone out to purify the plague. Unless you properly explain why you need them, even a request from the Hero will be difficult to grant.”
"Ah, seriously, why do you have to make this so damn……”
“I-I’ll do the purification. Hic, I’ll, sniff, do it.”
But when it came to treating those who didn’t harbor Demonic Energy, or simply performing purification, there happened to be someone here capable of resolving the manpower shortage all by herself.
“I’ll do the purification, sniff, so…”
In exchange for volunteering to fill the gap herself, the Inquisitor asked them to dispatch the personnel who would be freed up because of her. It wasn’t an entirely impossible request.
If the Inquisitor gave it everything she had, she could treat ⅓ of the wounded soldiers currently in the city. Simple purification went without saying. If she put treating individual patients aside, purifying the entire city itself wouldn’t be impossible for her.
"If that’s the case, we should first report to the senior priests……”
But although the people present held positions of authority, they were not the highest-ranking people here. Faced with a request they had no authority of approval themselves, they asked for time. Deathbringer’s face darkened immediately.
"We don’t have time for that—!"
"What’s going on?!”
Fortunately, before Deathbringer could explode, someone with the authority to make the decision came rushing over. More precisely, he approached with a limp while being supported by someone else.
It was the young lord who had lent them the horse.
"You are......."
Perhaps because they had met face-to-face when asking him to lend them the horses, the young lord immediately recognized Deathbringer. And perhaps because of the last thing Deathbringer had said,『I’m going to bring back the person who was hanging from the Great Demon’s body.』, the young lord could be seen repeatedly looking beside and behind him.
"Where is he? Where is he? Did you bring him back?”
"Not yet. We found him, but his injuries are too severe. We need someone who can treat him.”
"His injuries……?”
"A priest won’t do. We need a wizard capable of healing magic.”
At Deathbringer’s additional explanation, the young lord opened his mouth, his complexion turning pale.
"Then send someone immediately—”
"Young Lord."
And so, the moment the person supporting the young lord quietly called out to him, the young lord, who had been about to give his approval, closed his mouth again. It was the reflexive response of someone who had spent his entire life having fault found with everything he did.
"You must not make decisions based on emotions.”
"But, Dame Topaz.”
“Are you truly judging this rationally right now?”
"That’s........"
As irritating as the nitpicking was, from a Knight’s standpoint it wasn't something entirely unreasonable to say. Regardless of who they were trying to save, reallocating the city’s personnel was something that had to be carefully considered.
And yet, faced with that criticism, the young lord trembled particularly badly. The Knight hadn’t used an aggressive tone, nor was she looking at him as though trying to humiliate him, but still he reacted that way.
His furrowed brow and distorted eyes trembled pitifully, as though they might shatter at any moment.
“The iron—the Hero will fill in for the wizards while they’re gone.”
But to Deathbringer, the young lord’s condition wasn’t particularly important. The permission he could give them mattered far more.
"So don’t worry about being short on manpower—”
"What do you mean by that?”
So he pressed on, almost urging him to hurry, when a new fighter stepped into the ring. One missing arm, and, despite being stained, the unmistakable emblem of the Temple. He was, at the very least, no ordinary priest.
"Who exactly are you planning to dispatch these wizards to save?”
Hic. The Inquisitor swallowed hard at the clergyman’s question, which she had steeled herself for.
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