WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

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

[Translator – Aren]

◈ Chapter 312 Make it Stronger (6)

Daniel, despite having likely expended most of his divine power fighting the Great Demon, gnawed at his lips as he watched the Hero return and faithfully carry out her duties.

It wasn't because she made him uncomfortable or because he felt inferior to her. A Hero who overcame a crisis with a spirit of self-sacrifice was, if anything, someone to admire and be grateful for, not someone to direct jealousy to.

"The City Lord’s side is asking whether the purification zone can be expanded. How should we answer?”

"I’m fine, but…what about the Temple side? Do you have enough manpower?”

"Thanks to the Representative handling the most urgent areas right away……”

What made him anxious was something else. For instance, whatever place the Hero had stopped by before coming here, or whoever she might have laid hands on there.

"Priest, please let me go. My family. My children are still out there……!”

"You can’t. If you leave this place……!”

"Let me go! Please let me go, Priest!!”

"Someone, please help with this person……!”

"Please, calm down for a moment.”

He didn’t want to become someone who neglected his own work because he was too busy paying attention to someone he didn’t love. Someone he was, if anything, closer to disliking. And so Daniel subdued the resident causing a disturbance in accordance with the duty entrusted to him.

Naturally, he didn’t handle them roughly. Someone who had merely been separated from their family in an urgent situation and became agitated was very different in nature from an ordinary criminal.

"I’ll bring your family back myself. So please don’t worry and wait here. Brother, if you go outside, your family may actually be put in even greater danger.”

"Priest.......”

By showing his Inquisitor’s insignia, he secured the resident’s trust, then lowered their agitation with a calm voice.

"Could you tell me where your family lives, or where they’re most likely to be?”

"They run a shop in the shopping district…so probably there……”

"Understood. I’ll go to that area myself.”

And although he hadn’t served as an inquisitor for an especially long time, neither had it been brief. The experience he had accumulated over that period allowed him to carry on a conversation, appearing like a seasoned veteran when the situation demanded it.

The resident, who had been uncertain because of Daniel’s youthful face, finally gave in.

“Please, please, Priest…..”

"Yes, I will make sure to bring them back. So please don’t worry and wait here.”

If he said this and failed to save their family, all of their resentment would come back to him…but that was simply the fate of every inquisitor.

After reassuring the resident one last time, Daniel returned to where he had originally been. It was a rest area set up so that soldiers and priests could at least catch their breath before heading back outside the purified zone.

"You did well. Rest for a bit. And you lot! Move out, now!”

"Captain! There’s been a disturbance on 5th Street!"

"Damn it all……! Who’s still got some strength left?!”

Of course, it wasn't a place where anyone could simply rest. It was both a rotation point for personnel and a standby area where people could be pulled at a moment’s notice if something unexpected happened.

Inquisitors, priests, soldiers, volunteers, even wizards and Knights. Regardless of background or profession, whoever seemed useful at the moment was called out as needed.

"I came prepared to die fighting Demons, but the things we’re actually having to fight are civilians and a plague. It feels quite strange.”

Then a Knight who had just returned sat down beside him. Daniel wasn’t sitting in a chair himself, but either way, the Knight had taken the spot next to him.

"...That’s simply unavoidable."

Daniel glanced at the Knight with the solemn, gloomy expression characteristic of inquisitors.

The volunteer Knight from Mannafeld was fairly advanced in years, and for some reason, he reminded Daniel of his late father.

Daniel blamed the nausea churning in his stomach on the smoke and heavily closed his eyes.

"Fighting Demons doesn’t only mean confronting the Demons themselves. Dealing with the remnants they leave behind is part of it too.”

"True enough. You have a point there.”

Then he opened his eyes again and checked his equipment. He needed to prepare to head back out, if only to keep the promise he had made to the resident.

However, he had spoken with the resident immediately after returning from a mission, so he was hardly in good condition. The water he had been issued was almost gone, and the smoke he had inhaled while burning corpses had left his stomach nauseated. Exhaustion and hunger went without saying.

"...You still look quite young, Inquisitor, but you seem accustomed to situations like this.”

But when you worked as an inquisitor, situations like these happened often enough. Having to shoulder other people’s emotions while in the worst possible physical condition, forcing yourself to keep moving for their sake, even an inquisitor having to pursue a Demon while grieving the loss of their own family.

"If I look that way, then I’m glad. It means I’m doing my job properly.”

Or even being denied not merely revenge against someone believed to be your enemy, but the opportunity to take that revenge at all. Those too were things an inquisitor had to endure.

"Oh, dear. I didn’t mean that as an insult. My apologies."

"I didn't take it as an insult, but I’ll accept your apology.”

But every once in a while, or, more precisely, right now…

Daniel found that reality unbearably difficult. Because before he was an inquisitor, he was still a person. Because he was a weak mortal being who could never become a perfect servant of God.

"....I should be going.”

"May God watch over you.”

It hurt. It really hurt.

That he had been unable to influence his enemy’s death in any way. That he couldn’t even be certain whether that person had truly been his enemy in the first place.

If the other party had simply been an unambiguous Demon and an undeniable murderer, then at least he might have been able to feel glad that there would be no more victims in the future.

"Um, where should I go next?”

Daniel remembered the enormous, silent carcass of the beast and the praise for someone that echoed from atop the wall. He chewed over those cries again that made his chest feel tighter and stoked the fires of his resentment.

His enemy, or rather the man who was probably his enemy, was so damn heroic that Daniel couldn’t even hate him in peace.

"Erm, are you sure you’re alright? I seem to remember you only just came back……”

"It doesn’t matter."

Then, if he could neither satisfy his resentment nor feel any catharsis from it, he might as well work himself so brutally that he no longer had the room to think. He had no confidence that he could overcome this pain, so he would at least avoid looking at it and put it off until later. 

In the end, Daniel made exactly that decision. The commanding soldier coordinating personnel looked bewildered, but Daniel had no room left to care. By stubbornly insisting several times, Daniel eventually got what he wanted.

"H-huh?!”

"L-Look at that!”

But even at the end of all that overwork and self-punishment, the salvation he wanted was nowhere to be found.

"...He was alive.”

No, wait. That wasn’t quite right. He simply hadn’t wanted it, but from another point of view, perhaps this could have been salvation too.

"He was alive.”

Before the surging Demonic Energy, before the news that the person Daniel had thought about again and again was still alive, he smiled as though he were crying. An emotion no one else could understand and that words could never explain churned inside his chest, horribly thick and viscous.

"He was alive……”

There was too much hatred in it to call it relief, too much negativity to call it joy, and too much exhilaration mixed in to call it sorrow. That emotion spilled down from the corners of his eyes and along his cheeks.

* * *

There was something strangely unreal about the sight of Ratel’s gaping mouth swallowing Behemoth.

I walked toward it as I watched the boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant gradually shrink. The enormous white mound that had swollen up enormously rapidly shriveled down into a round shape like a piece of glutinous rice cake.

"It really disappeared……”

For reference, Deathbringer was behind me. He had returned after delivering the message to the city, and since he had to tell me how the city had reacted, he’d had no choice but to come back again.

But since I had warned him that it was dangerous and told him to keep his distance, there was still about 30 meters between us.

'Now I can use this whenever I’m in a pinch.'

Anyway, all that was left was to retrieve Ratel, join back up with Deathbringer, and return to the city. After confirming that Deathbringer was staying put, I reached toward the rice-cake-like Ratel.

[...I can say this with 100% certainty. You’re probably the only person who treats a corpse you killed like a potion and collects it for later.]

Wrath sounded thoroughly appalled.

'No way.'

Come on, that was a little unfair. Any Korean who played a decent amount of games, or really, anyone who valued efficiency, would probably do the same thing I was doing, right?

Of course, if it were a human corpse, I’d be disgusted too. But this was a Demon corpse.

Maybe it was because they were so different from humans, or maybe because Demons were nothing but harmful in every possible way. Either way, treating a Demon corpse as an item or crafting material didn’t weigh on my conscience much. So using it like this didn’t seem particularly strange either.

Especially when I thought about how absurdly powerful the enemies I’d faced so far had been.

Honestly, I wasn’t the weird one. The difficulty level of these damn Demons was what was weird. Surely I was allowed at least this little trick, right?

'You guys would use an exploit like this too.'

And really, even if someone wasn’t a gamer or Korean, wasn’t this the sort of trick anyone could come up with?

[Sorry, but no.]

'...Why?’

No, seriously, why? If there was a way to recover Demonic Energy and gain an advantage in battle, they just wouldn’t use it?

Was it some kind of sentimental thing about not eating their own kind?

[…The damn King regulating it is part of the reason, but there aren’t many Demons capable of making contact with the Ancient magic in the first place. Even fewer can call upon it whenever they please.]

'Then why can you?'

[I'm only exploiting the peculiarities of the contract. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be able to use it this often. And even if I could, I still wouldn’t.]

While I fell silent for a moment, trying to understand what she meant, Wrath, who had been floating in midair, suddenly straightened herself. I could feel the atmosphere change against my skin.

[Which brings me to this, Gretchen. How about cutting back on your abuse of the ancient magic? I’m genuinely warning you.]

I was careful with where I looked, so I made sure not to look too strange from Deathbringer’s perspective. The rice-cake Ratel in my hand changed into the familiar form of a Zweihänder as I fed Demonic Energy into it.

Wrath’s gaze beyond the transforming Ratel was unmistakable.

[Ancient magic is a power that exists outside concepts like humans and Demons. And there’s no such thing in this world as convenience without a price. Least of all would an absolute power that governs the universe allow itself to be helplessly exploited by a mere mortal.]

「Don’t listen to her. She just wants the nine years you’re going to spend here to be as uncomfortable as possible—」

[Furthermore, Gretchen, even if there’s no immediate harm, do you really think it’s good for a mere mortal to come into contact with such an enormous concept so often? It may not be the same as directly being exposed to it, but forming a contract means your powers intermingle. Do you really think that can produce nothing but beneficial effects?]

Faust tried to cut her off midway, but she didn’t stop. Her voice, which almost always carried a trace of amusement, was unusually flat and stern this time.

「N-no, she’s wrong…! It’s true that I can clearly feel an enormous power whenever we make a contract, but it’s never harmed me or anything……!」

[As you know well… There are more stories than stars in the sky about humans who relied upon gods, the will of the universe, or powers of that sort and were ruined by them. And when so many similar stories exist, there's usually a reason.]

「 S-she’s exaggerating! Definitely, absolutely……」 

[So, my dear Gretchen, I would appreciate it if you took care not to create yet another story like them. I have no desire to be crushed to death beneath that enormous power.]

Perhaps realizing he couldn’t possibly beat her in an argument, Faust popped into existence and started frantically waving his arms around on top of my hand. Unfortunately, my ears had already heard everything she had to say.

「I-I really am fine……」 

'Yeah, yeah. I know. Calm down……'

While calming Faust down, I pretended to look at Ratel and instead glanced toward Wrath. She certainly knew how to talk. After hearing her out, my thoughts had become somewhat complicated.

「...You don’t actually believe her, right?」

'...Who knows.'

「I-I’m really fine…」

'I know. I’m just thinking about it.'

I didn't want to fall for that bastard’s tricks. But considering the subject she’d brought up and the sheer weight of it, it wasn’t something I could casually dismiss either.

After all, even medicine will wreck your body if you abuse it, and money and power will ruin your life if you misuse them. So what about a power that governs the world itself?

The only reason I couldn’t trust her was because she had spent so much time playing games with truth and lies. The subject itself was unquestionably something worth being cautious about. I had no desire to become the archetypal human in one of those cautionary tales you always see in myths.

That said, I also had no intention of becoming an idiot who hoarded his trump card at a decisive moment just because he was scared of something that might not even be real.

'More importantly, your life must be exhausting.'

[...Where did that come from?]

'You’ve lied as naturally as breathing so many times that even when you say something with good intentions, everyone’s going to doubt you. Like I’m doing right now.'

Seriously, how did this girl even live like that? Looking at someone who personally demonstrated the dangers of being the boy who cried wolf, I clicked my tongue. If it were me, I’d never live that way. At least she made for a good cautionary example.

[What are you talking about……?]

Naturally, Wrath looked dumbfounded. But just as she couldn’t understand how I lived, I simply couldn’t understand how she did.

I gave a small shake of my head, then looked at Faust.

'Don’t live like her.'

「...Huh?」

'You don’t need to be honest every single moment of your life, but don’t live your whole life doing nothing but lying either. In the end, that’ll become poison to you too.'

And Wrath was practically the textbook example of something becoming poison to oneself. After making sure he understood that, I finally started turning around. If I stood around any longer, Deathbringer was going to start wondering what the hell I was doing. Honestly, I'd already been acting suspicious for quite a while.

"Let’s go back."

"Yes.”

I wasn’t planning to hide the fact that I could see Wrath anyway. I could explain it on the way back.

With an uneasy Wrath and Faust hanging behind me, I climbed onto the horse Deathbringer had brought, without knowing who I would meet once I entered the city.

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