WETRIED TRANSLATIONS

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

[Translator – Aren]

◈ Chapter 338 With These Hands of Mine (2)

Was Pride appearing at this very moment really a coincidence? Was it really just a coincidence that a Demon powerful enough for Wrath to warn me about had decided to come forward at this very moment?

Thinking of Wrath locked away in that prison cell, I tapped my fingers against the table surface.

Had Pride simply stepped forward because there were so few Great Demons left, or was this deployment part of some sort of larger plan?

My thoughts were stained with all kinds of suspicion and distrust.

"Pride......."

No, no. Suspicion and distrust weren’t actually that important. If it was just a coincidence, we could just adapt to it and act. If it was someone’s scheme, we could marvel at how masterfully they’d concealed it and prepare to respond.

-Has Pride’s apostle made a move……?

However, the reason I was reacting so strongly to Pride’s emergence came down to exactly three, all overlapping into one.

First, Pride was dangerous enough that even Wrath had to warn me about them. Second, I was considering taking a step back from the battlefield. Third, if I did, the burden on the Inquisitor would increase exponentially.. The point where those three things intersected was the source of this irritation and anxiety eating away at me.

-Erm, are you sure? Pride’s apostle may be stronger than most apostles, but I wouldn’t have thought they were capable of causing an incident of this scale……

-Well, we received testimonies that a pentagram engraved with feathers was seen on the altar they erected in the center of the city.

By then, I started wanting to leave.

If I stayed, it seemed like all I’d hear from this moment forward was the scale of the damage and more tedious theoretical debates. Did I really need to sit through the entire thing? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to ask the Young Lord or anyone else to just summarize the important parts for me later?

If they intended to ask for my help anyway, they’d have no choice but to explain what happened here.

-That’s the conclusion the wizards reached after gathering the survivors’ testimonies. Even if it might be difficult to trust their account completely, I believe it’s more than worth taking into consideration.

After spending enough time justifying it to myself, I turned to leave. If someone asked whether I was really leaving just for efficiency’s sake, the answer would be no, but it was definitely an escape for my own sake.

"......"

Feeling the gaze of the one who had been expertly hiding behind the Inquisitor's and Archmage’s larger bodies, I put my hand on the door. The Young Lord briefly turned his head to look at me after noticing that I moved, but he didn’t try to stop me from leaving.

-Creeeak.

With a single door between us, the suffocating emotions finally released me. A brief taste of freedom.

"Sir? What brings you here?”

The problem was that even after gaining this freedom, I didn't really have any particular place I could go to. But going back to my room didn’t really appeal to me. I’d been holed up in there for the past few days after all.

Since I was already outside, I thought I might as well get some fresh air for the first time in a while. There was nothing in particular I needed to do, though.

"I thought you would be attending the meeting……”

"I left."

"I see. Well, I suppose this isn’t really something you absolutely have to hear, Sir.”

Of course, since just aimlessly wandering around didn’t suit me either, I came to find Daniel, with whom I had some sort of connection at least. We might have settled our bad blood, but we still weren’t exactly comfortable around each other, so there was still some slight awkwardness…but that was something I’d just have to accept.

A brief silence fell over us.

"What are you doing?”

"Ah…We’re sorting the bodies and remains.”

It hadn't even been a week since the incident. They had burned and buried the bodies to prevent the plague from spreading, but there was no way they could’ve perfectly handled everyone who had died in the meantime as well.

In other words, those were the bodies they were dealing with now. Thud, thudthud. On one side, bodies were being burned, while on the other, people continued digging the ground to bury their remains.

"...I’d like to help. Would that be alright?”

I adjusted Ratel, dividing it into two pieces hanging at my sides, one shaped like a Zweihänder and the other like a longsword.

I knew that this thing was made from Wrath’s ribs, but my habit of fiddling with my swords outweighed the disgust that image brought up, so there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I’d already become someone more accustomed to having weapons strapped all over my body than to being without them.

"Um, erm… Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

Ah, speaking of longswords, I still hadn’t returned that amber-colored sword.

I kept telling myself that I needed to return it whenever I thought of that sword, only to completely forget about it the moment I met up with the Young Lord. I’d really give it back this time. I’d engraved another promise, that I couldn’t be certain I’d keep, into me.

"There’s no reason I wouldn’t be.”

"Perhaps you should rest a little longer……”

"I rested for five days. Any more than that would just be laziness.”

But when I thought about weapons, I was reminded of someone else.

"Berserk…Where’s Berserk?”

I still needed to apologize to Berserk and get her a new weapon. I felt bad that I was only remembering it now, along with some slight bewilderment. Berserk hadn’t been at the meeting, and she wasn’t here either.

"Is she not here?”

Berserk might be quite the free spirit, but she wasn’t someone who lacked a sense of decency, skipping out when we were facing such a tragedy. She might ditch something like a meeting because she found it boring, but she wasn’t the type to avoid work that demanded physical strength.

And yet she was nowhere to be seen. Why was that?

"By Berserk, you mean……”

"Did she go to another recovery site?”

"Erm… No. She isn’t in this city.”

"......?"

My question was answered almost immediately. Berserk had left the party. That simple statement perfectly explained her absence.

"I see……”

So she wasn’t in the city. That made things a bit annoying. Apologizing to her and compensating her now became a lot harder.

"Why are you looking for her?”

"There’s something I need to return to her.”

I’d have to think about this more tonight. Rather than getting hung up on these unexpected variables, I tightly gripped Ratel.

"Anyway, may I help with the digging?”

"...We’d be grateful.”

"Alright."

Wrath’s flames could probably burn these corpses without leaving a single trace or even smoke, but since it would emit Demonic Energy, I couldn’t carelessly use them. People would probably feel uneasy about having the dead burned by flames created through Demonic Energy.

So I decided to help them by digging. Thanks to Ratel’s ability to freely change shape, there was no need to bring a shovel separately.

"That’s fascinating. Can you turn it into anything?”

"Yeah."

"That must be convenient.”

"It is.”

I personally dug into the ground using Ratel, which I had transformed into a shovel. If I wanted to. I could’ve pushed all the dirt aside in one go, but I deliberately chose not to. There was a chance that it might unsettle the priests if I did that, and more importantly, it would have gone completely against the reason I had come here to begin with.

I’d come here to spend some time outside after all. If I cleared everything away with Ratel, what was I supposed to do after that?

Besides, there was nothing better in this world than simple manual labor when it came to passing time without having to think much. That was why I had no other choice but to choose inefficiency over efficiency.

"You’re digging pretty fast. Have you ever done something like this before?”

"......"

Well, even that inefficient approach didn’t help me pass that much time either.

"Please have some water while you work.”

"Ah, thank you, Brother.”

How many spots had I dug out for the remains by now? A young priest would come by every so often and hand out some water.

"...Would you like some?”

I’d thought he might simply just ignore me or give my share to Daniel instead, but to my surprise, he handed some directly to me. “Thanks.” I accepted the young priest’s kindness.

Rustle.

I lowered the neck warmer, covering my mouth, and brought the wooden cup to my lips. I could feel the gaze of the priest who’d been squirming in front of me settle on the tip of my nose, but it didn’t really bother me too much. Even with the neck warmer lowered, the hood was still covering my eyes and hair.

"...Isn’t that uncomfortable?”

Eventually, the young priest left without any reward for his troubles, and Daniel, who had long since noticed where the priest had been looking, cautiously asked me about it. It was clear that he was also bothered by the fact that I had been covering my face.

"I remember you didn’t used to wear that…Did something happen?”

But there wasn't really anything I could tell him. The reason I kept my hood pulled down was actually because I was just attempting to somehow save face.

After all, how many soldiers had seen me with brown hair (wig) when I first entered this city? And how many had seen that my hair was brown during the early parts of the beetle, when I was fighting on top of the walls?

Of course, as the battle progressed, I ended up removing the wig completely. But for someone to have seen that. They would have to keep watching me even in the middle of that desperate situation. Given the circumstances, I doubted anyone had managed to do that. In other words, my identity was safe.

"Sir?"

But if I openly showed them my now half-and-half hair, how could anyone who remembered the previous me (with brown hair) possibly see it and not become suspicious?

And once that suspicion started to swell, questions would inevitably follow. Stuff like ‘Why has your hair color changed? Explain yourself.’

"...That’s.”

But how was I supposed to explain that? How could I tell him that I’d been walking around in a disguise?! The moment I admitted that, he would definitely start digging into what I’d done while disguised. And then how the hell was I supposed to explain that completely different personality……?!

"...I did run away from Bemurchen before, right?”

The excuse I had regained my memories had at least allowed me to act a little less harshly than before.

But looked at another way, it also meant that even with an excuse like that, this was about as much change as people were willing to accept.

If what I did while disguised ever became known, I’d definitely be interrogated about it. ‘What the hell was all that about? Seriously, what were you really doing?’ stuff like that.

"Those who know my full circumstances understand why I did that, but those who don’t would only find me suspicious. I’m just hiding my appearance to prevent that. Even if the truth comes out one day…this is still better than causing a commotion right now.”

Meister had noticed and let it go without prying too much into it, but even he probably wouldn’t have just brushed it off if he’d actually seen how I acted while I was disguised, right?

So I had to hide it. I really had to. If I didn’t, I’d definitely……

"Ah…I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

The biggest problem in that regard was the Young Lord and his Knights, since they’d seen both versions of me…but the Young Lord said he’d make sure they kept quiet about me, so for now, I decided to place my trust in him.

Even if they did try to rat me out to the others, it wasn’t as though I had no way of stopping them.

"Actually, I thought you were conscious of the rumors going around among the soldiers.”

"...Rumors?”

"Erm, there was a Knight who disappeared from this city several years ago, and there’s been a rumor silently spreading among the soldiers that you’re that Knight.”

Daniel awkwardly told me about this matter. The thing about a ‘Knight who disappeared several years ago’ immediately brought the image of a certain someone to mind, which made my conscience sting, but Daniel didn’t seem to notice.

The fact that he didn’t know where Faust came from probably had a lot to do with that. When Faust spoke about his past, he had left out the fact that he was from this city, as well as the fact that he was the child of a famous Knight… The Ember Knight.

"...I don’t know why such rumors would be going around.”

Seriously, though, why was a rumor like that going around? Had the desperate urge to cling to some sort of hero in the middle of a crisis led them to that kind of delusion?

"I didn’t hear the details either…but apparently they all mentioned a sword engulfed in flames.”

"Flames……?”

"Yes."

“...Wrath’s power resembles flames. They must have mistaken me because of that.”

"Probably.”

While I was growing curious, Daniel gave me a faint smile, gripped the round handle of his shovel, and drove it into the ground. It sank 2 or 3 centimeters into the dry, cracked earth and slowly tilted. If Daniel hadn’t kept one hand on its handle, it would have surely fallen to the ground.

"Anway…That Knight had brown hair, so I thought perhaps you were deliberately wearing your hood to avoid shattering the soldiers’ hopes. You may not know this, but a hero they recognize does more than some unknown one.”

"...I wasn’t really aiming for that.”

Maybe the mention of hair color made me flinch slightly, because Daniel’s next words instead made me think, ‘Oh?’ If the soldiers had already convinced themselves I was that Knight, then maybe the sightings of me with brown hair would just be written off as part of what they wanted to believe.

"There are also some people who say they actually saw a brown-haired man participate in the battle……”

The more Daniel spoke, the more realistic that hope started to seem to me.

"But it must be a misunderstanding. If a Knight goes missing, unless they deserted, it usually means they were killed… and the dead can’t come back.”

"...Right."

“Perhaps the chaos made people remember things incorrectly. People tend to focus on more striking features than hair color, right? A sword engulfed in flames is eye-catching enough to overshadow something like hair color.”

"Exactly. A person’s memory is easily manipulated, and a person’s own hopes and biases can influence how those memories become distorted.”

"You know about that too……?”

"I’m more surprised that you know that.”

"When you chase criminals, you often find that a witness’s memory doesn’t match the criminal’s actual appearance.”

Maybe the fact that I disguised myself before really would just get quietly buried. Even if people who knew the original Demon Knight heard about the brown hair, the chances of them dismissing it as the soldiers misremembering things had gone way up.

That was a huge win.

"Ah, right.”

"......?"

"By any chance…Hmm. Never mind.”

"If you want to say something, just say it.”

"I’m worried that this might be a bit rude.”

Just when I was feeling somewhat pleased, faced with this unexpected stroke of luck, Daniel suddenly started hesitating.

"Say it."

I was a bit worried about what he might ask, but my curiosity was a lot stronger. Daniel furrowed his brows slightly at my somewhat forceful tone.

"Um…Do you know the Young Lord personally?”

"That’s another unexpected question.”

It wasn’t rude, but I had no idea how he’d found out about that.

Then again, considering how the Young Lord had treated me, maybe it wasn’t that hard to guess. Even if I was this city’s benefactor, he had been treating me far too generously.

"What made you think that?”

Either way, this wasn't something that would cause any particular trouble if he found out. I answered with a question, basically confirming his suspicions. Daniel blinked twice.

"Well… after we were done drinking, Meister said it was strange how easily we were being given permission for these kinds of things.”

So that was what made him notice, huh? Understandable, I guess. The fact that Meister had been the one to point it out made even more sense. As one of the world’s greatest master craftsmen, he’d probably spent plenty of time around powerful people, which made him exactly the sort of person who would notice something suspicious like that.

"We don’t know each other.”

"Ah… I understand.”

"Is that all you wanted to ask?”

"Hmm… There’s one more thing.”

One more question?

"What is it?”

After thinking for a moment, I decided to indulge him. The relief that my disguise issue might blow over smoothly had left me feeling a bit more generous.

"Um…Are you going to stay here?”

But wasn’t that question way too sensitive? From Daniel’s perspective, I guess the question he asked before and this one might not seem all too different, but still……!

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