WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

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

[Translator – Aren]

◈ Chapter 309 Make it Stronger (3)

Crack.

Morning Star¹ opened her eyes at the sound of something hard breaking. At once, something damp seeped into her open eyes. It was soft, yet mixed with individual grains that stung her eyeballs.

At the prickling pain, she snapped her eyelids shut. She hadn’t even figured out what it was yet, but she had no choice. Every other part of her body ached and throbbed as well, drawing groans from her for no reason.

In the end, Morning Star gave up on opening her eyes and violently twisted her body around. Each time she did, unpleasantly cold, sticky substances pressed against her. They weren’t heavy enough to make her feel as though her body would burst, but there was enough pressure to restrict her movements.

"Mmph."

They even slipped little by little into her mouth and nose.

The fishy smell of earth and blood. She realized where she was.

Splat!

She overcame the pressure and thrust a hand upward. The mud that had buried her sprayed out in every direction, and cool air brushed against the hand now exposed outside.

Thud!

Still like that, Morning Star planted her hand against the ground and hauled herself upward. She felt something plump trapped between her palm and the earth burst, but ignored it.

Being able to breathe again, and having the sensations throughout her body grow clearer, mattered more to her.

"Ptui.”

Morning Star spat the dirt from her mouth and surveyed her surroundings with a glare. Terrain that had been overturned, thrust upward, and transformed beyond recognition, she, herself, coincidentally lying within a hollowed-out pit that blocked the surrounding view, and several bugs that appeared to have been eating away at her.

She swatted the bugs around her with her palm as she compared what she had seen before dying with what she could see now.

The ground had risen and pits had been gouged out, leaving nothing that resembled her previous view, but her distance from the wall behind her seemed unchanged.

In other words, there was a high probability that she had revived in the exact place where she had died. Morning Star’s eyes narrowed.

Rustle.

Meanwhile, her hand reflexively ended up brushing over the place where she had been stabbed.

She felt the fabric of her clothes, torn, burst, and pierced until hardly a single intact patch remained. There was the hole proving that she truly had been stabbed, along with the traces showing that afterward, bugs had endlessly gnawed away at her.

They were also marks proving that she had died once before, or, even if that stab hadn’t killed her, that she had been left in an environment where death would have been inevitable.

And yet, despite all that, why was she now breathing and continuing to think?

...And why had the restriction on her heart, the thing that had allowed her to exist as herself only so long as she stood as Pride’s puppet, disappeared?

Thump, thump.

Her heart, beating more sluggishly than before, now beat freely.

Morning Star found that extraordinarily strange. So strange that it felt as though the mask she had maintained her entire life might crack.

Scrrrape. The sword she had kept clenched tightly in her hand ever since the beginning dragged across the ground. That itself wasn’t a major issue. Whenever a sword and the ground met, they naturally made that sort of scraping sound.

What was strange was the angle she perceived her wrist to be at and the distance from which the sound was coming. If Forbidden, a rapier with a considerably long blade, were scraping along the ground, the sound should have come from farther away. At this angle, it shouldn’t have been coming from there at all.

Morning Star’s eyes turned toward her right hand.

Always keep this by your side, nameless sibling. So that you may receive the opportunity you rightfully should have had.

The sword, Forbidden, that her right held no longer had anything that could be called a blade.

The moment Morning Star realized that, her face twisted.

"...A…bel."

A being born to become a martyr, to be offered up as a sacrifice. The only person who had persuaded the arrogant creations that ignored her and had a sword forged for her.

At first, his pity had only made her feel unpleasant…….

「Please, live a life of your own.」

Morning Star remained silent for a long while, then finally clenched her teeth and forced herself upright.

She didn't worry about whatever might be around her. Considering where she had been when she died, her current position should have been only a little over 100 meters from the wall, but the terrain around her was now a complete mess.

In other words, just as she couldn’t see the wall, the people on the wall wouldn’t be able to see her either. So it was fine.

"Ah, Pride.”

And even if it wasn’t fine, she would make it so.

"I will see to it that I deliver ruin unto you.”

Because she would make absolutely certain of it.

"Ah, there are so many bugs.”

Without knowing who was on the opposite side of her, Morning Star stepped up beyond the edge of the pit.

* * *

"...Ah, there are so many bugs.”

I waved my hand a few times at the insect that kept buzzing around my ears. Thinking that all of these had been summoned by Behemoth only made me feel even worse.

'Can’t these things disappear?'

[What? The bugs?]

'Yeah.'

And that bastard Demon had once again poked her head out into reality. I narrowed my eyes at her as I looked at her now-dense form, only opaque enough that I could barely see through to the other side.

[If they were made of Demonic Energy, they wouldn’t be summoned creatures.]

Of course, the Demon paid not even a speck of attention to my glare.

'There’s a difference between the two?'

[About as much difference as there is between sword aura and an iron sword.]

...Sword aura disappeared once the Arcane Power infused into it ran out, but an iron sword didn’t. Was that what she meant? Put another way, if they were summoned creatures, they wouldn’t disappear unless someone removed them directly?

"Seriously, as expected of a Demon. Even at the very end, all it does is leave shit everywhere……”

[What do you expect from a beast?]

"You’re included in that, you piece of shit.”

[...How unpleasant.]

I glanced at the Demons that had died caught between Behemoth and me, then at the insects gnawing on their corpses.

My Demonic Energy had recovered a fair amount by now. Should I burn them? The thought briefly crossed my mind out of sheer disgust, but died down under the gazes coming from the wall. Meister wasn’t giving me the signal to run, so it seemed things were at least moving in a favorable direction… and I had no desire to spoil that myself.

I mean, I might only be starting a fire to kill some bugs, but the people over there could interpret it as something completely different.

Buzzzz~

And so, after crushing only the few bugs that approached me with my palm, I instead turned my attention to other sounds. For example, the wind circling over the wasteland, or the rustling sound of grains of sand rolling along.

Rustle.

The sound of something walking across the wasteland as well.

"......?"

Footsteps?

I was looking for a living demon… Ah, putting it like that made it confusing with that bastard next to me. From now on, that bastard’s title is Wrath.

Internally renaming someone however I pleased, I focused my hearing a little more anyway. I was trying to search for any living Demons. But as though it had merely been my imagination, only the sounds I had already been hearing returned. Things like bugs and wind.

"Hey, did you hear anything?”

[...?]

'A sound.'

[Not really.]

Just in case, I pressed Wrath about it too and concentrated harder with my own ears, but still, there was nothing.

Faust was still hiccuping, so it felt a little awkward to ask him.

And was there anything visible? Not really. Behemoth’s presence completely blocking one side of my vision was far too overwhelming for that. The state of the terrain Behemoth had left behind was pretty damn horrific too.

"Hmm......."

Or did something really come here aiming for the corpse?

Suppressing my disgust, I looked around the fat bastard again and checked once more. But aside from a few bugs flying around, I couldn’t hear anything gnawing at or cutting up the corpse.

"Maybe not......"

[If you’re worried about the corpse, you could just check the flow of Demonic Energy. Why are you bothering to move around?]

Lastly, I glanced toward the wall, which Wrath was partially blocking from view. But the terrain Behemoth had trampled and churned up so thoroughly really didn’t look like somewhere anything could still be alive.

"...Right."

And when I followed Wrath’s advice and focused on the Demonic Energy, there was no moving Demonic Energy at all. Buzzz. Including the bugs flying at my ears, it seemed most likely that I’d simply mistaken their sounds for something else.

In the end, I turned back toward where I had parked the motorcycle.

"Ugh."

These bugs were seriously annoying. Just crawl on my skin instead. Stop sticking your heads into holes. I shuddered at the horrible sensation and waved my hand again.

[...Why not just make something like earplugs or a hood instead?]

Then Wrath made a suggestion. Apparently she found the bugs unpleasant to look at too, because there was a rather pleading note in her voice.

'Make one?'

[You can regenerate, alter your bodily composition, and even conceal your Demonic Energy. Why wouldn’t a simple transformation be possible?]

That’s… true, I guess?

'I can transform my body……?'

[Yes. I mean, shouldn’t the fact that your appearance perfectly matches the settings you came up with tell you that much?]

'That’s true, but……'

There had been a remark in there that poked directly at my sense of shame, but my curiosity overwhelmed the momentary embarrassment and took over the flow of my thoughts.

After all, no matter how suspicious it was that my appearance perfectly matched the settings I had created, how could my thoughts possibly have gone as far as self-performed plastic surgery? I’d simply figured that, coincidence and all, this was how I’d ended up being chosen.

[The method is similar to changing Ratel’s form. Observe the part you want to change, then transform it with Demonic Energy.]

Anyway, almost entranced, I grabbed my collar and focused Demonic Energy into it. The stiffly raised collar began wriggling and changed shape immediately afterward.

The collar stretched like slime and followed my imagination, spreading over my head until it became a hood. The cross-shaped brooch that had been attached to the collar shifted to an appropriate position and remained hanging at roughly the same height.

'Wait, if I can do this……'

Remembering the bugs that had been clinging around my mouth for a while now, I moved the Demonic Energy once more. The Demonic Energy rippled like a wave and soon became cloth covering my neck and mouth.

I disliked the feeling of something clinging tightly to me, so it wasn’t like tights or stockings, and since both ends were connected, it wasn’t exactly a scarf either. If I had to call it something, it was closer to a neck warmer.

'...Hey, this can change my body too, not just my clothes, right?'

[Do I even need to say it?]

'...My hair color, and my arm too?'

[Your arm is black in the first place because we made it that way to match the stupid settings you came up with, you know?]

By that point, the implications of this whole transformation ability really started to sink in. I blankly let a single thought float through my mind.

'... Even if things go completely sideway, at least I won’t have to worry as much about disguises.'

[Every transformation consumes Demonic Energy, and if you alter yourself too drastically, your senses will become misaligned, and you’ll feel uncomfortable. But otherwise, yes.]

Of course, I had no intention of disguising myself and going on the run right now, so this would only really become useful if I were driven into an absolute corner.

'Ah, right.'

[What?]

'Speaking of appearances, what did you mean earlier when you said you read my memories?'

Separately from that, while marveling at my newly discovered character-customization privileges, I remembered something I had briefly forgotten. At my question, Wrath let out a little ‘Ah.’

[Exactly what it sounds like.]

'No, I mean, why did you read my memories……?'

[Because we needed them?]

'Ah, seriously……'

She clearly seemed to understand why I was asking, yet the way she subtly sidestepped the point was uniquely irritating. Seriously, calling this bastard a Demon didn’t feel like a waste of the word in the slightest.

「...We needed memories that would allow us to disguise this place as a game, so we read them. And for your personal information like your name, age, family, friends, and even things like your childhood and adolescence, the ancient magic didn’t permit us to access those, so you don’t need to worry.」 

Around then, however, the boy, who had finally stopped crying, answered in her place. The question whether they wouldn’t know my name as well if they read my memories briefly crossed my mind but was immediately answered by his words.

'That’s…a relief, at least.'

It really was a relief that they didn’t know my entire life.

My mind relaxed for a moment, only to snag again on a word I had nearly let pass without noticing.

'What do you mean, ‘Memories needed to disguise this place as a game’......?’

「We needed something to reference for making this like the HUD? And UI? So we checked some of the games you’d played.」

'...The games I played? All of them?'

For a moment, I panicked and recalled every game I had played in the past. Thank God, I hadn’t really played many weird ones. At worst, there had only been some shitty bug-ridden games made for laughs.

But… But the problem was……

「Yes… We checked all of them……Ah! We also checked that game called… ‘Legend of Heroes,’ was it? And we saw you preparing that set…ting? Thing for it too… Ah, though that was closer to watching you than reading your memories.」

The moment Faust’s voice struggled its way through the word ‘Set…ting?’ I bit down hard on my tongue. I couldn't help it. Hearing it from Wrath and hearing it from Faust carried completely different levels of devastation.

「The contract selected you before you started the game, so… U-um, why… Why are you doing that?」

Thud. Faced with that overwhelming destructive force, my knees gave out helplessly. On top of the whole ridiculous performance I’d put on here, they had seen all the character-setting nonsense I’d done before that too. They knew everything……

"This is humiliating……”

「Wh-why.......??」

"I want to die……”

Wrath knowing had somehow been manageable, but the thought of a kid having seen all of that made me so unbearably embarrassed I didn’t know what to do.

In the end, I collapsed face down onto the ground and buried my head against it.

_________________________________________________________________________

¹ As in Emerald, not Pride

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