254

Chapter 254 — What If (2)

[Sir Kniiight, look at this. The Grand Chieftain gave it to me.]

[Are you eating while you’re at it? Your lifespan’s already short enough. If you keep starving yourself like that, you really will keel over early.]

So, here’s the story of how I closed my eyes to escape reality and ended up sleeping all the way until night.

[Isn’t it super pretty? Hehe.]

[You said you took food with you, so why do you look like you’ve wasted away to half your size?]

I spent a moment massaging my temples over the headache caused by sleeping too long.

Meanwhile, Yukgwi sounded so much like somebody’s grandmother or grandfather that it was hilarious.

It had only been two days since we last saw each other. What did Yukgwi mean, half my size?

“…I distinctly suggested that we minimize contact.”

Putting that aside, why were these two here?

It had been four days since I’d said that if the Mountain Lord, who supposedly spent most days in the nest, kept going out constantly, it would only draw suspicion, and that we therefore ought to avoid meeting whenever possible….

[Ah, it’s fine. Everyone seems to think I went on one trip across the continent and caught a taste for wandering.]

…So that was what they thought.

Well, I supposed it didn’t look that unnatural from the outside for someone who had spent an entire life inside the forest to get a breath of the outside world and suddenly become obsessed with taking walks.

In that sense, it was perhaps only natural for the swamp priests to misunderstand.

Unfortunately, that also eliminated any excuse I had for refusing the Mountain Lord’s visits.

My brows furrowed slightly.

[You ate dinner, right?]

The truth was that I had slept straight through lunch, so obviously not.

But only amateurs reported every little thing honestly.

“I was just about to eat.”

I lied without so much as wetting my lips.

What was in the food I’d received today again?

My hand was already inside my inventory, rummaging around.

[Why don’t you eat that during the daytime when you can’t light a fire?]

One sentence from Yukgwi stopped me cold.

A chill ran down my back.

[It’s cloudy today anyway, so it’s fine.]

For reference, to find the origin of that remark, we would have to go back to two afternoons ago.

At the time, I had been filling my stomach with preserved food when Yukgwi asked, “Why don’t you cook something?”

But who in the world could answer, right there on the spot, “Because I can’t even light a fire and I can’t cook either”?

Forget my persona. My actual pride wouldn’t allow that.

So after desperately racking my brain, I’d persuaded Yukgwi by saying, “If I light a fire in the daytime, the smoke may reveal my location.”

And, to be fair, that logic wasn’t exactly wrong….

[You said you eat fish. That one caught some for you.]

[Hehehehe.]

And this was the result.

I was trapped on all sides.

“…Lighting a fire inside an enclosed space is—”

[What are you talking about? Obviously you’d go outside and light it.]

“…….”

No, well.

There are Adventurers in the world who can’t start fires.

And there are even Adventurers who can’t cook over a campfire.

[What’s wrong with you? You’re acting like someone who can’t cook.]

…Damn it!

“…….”

[……?]

“…….”

[…Wait. Seriously?]

No, but seriously, hear me out.

This wasn’t entirely my fault, okay?

Sure, even back in the modern world I occasionally burned food, but at least I had enough common sense to lower the heat when something started burning!

But here—here, you couldn’t control the heat.

When something started burning, you were supposed to lower the flame, but that simply wasn’t possible.

Under those conditions, was it really my fault if I turned food into black charcoal?

Wasn’t that the sort of mistake anyone could make?!

[Goodness. Sir Knight, you couldn’t cook?]

[Wow… I really didn’t expect that.]

Unfortunately, my valiant defense resounded only inside my own head and never reached them.

I wanted to die of embarrassment.

[How were you so confident about living by yourself?]

“…….”

[Isn’t this fool going to starve to death?]

[That’d be bad. Should I assign somebody to look after you?]

“…There is no need to go that far.”

No, come on. I wasn’t that hopeless a person….

Grilling was the problem. I could still boil or simmer things.

If I had a pot, I really could manage.

Seriously.

I kept arguing in my head before realizing that the more I did so, the more pathetic I sounded.

It was miserable.

Sure, I failed at seasoning by a tiny margin every time.

Sure, I slightly messed up the water ratios.

Sure, I occasionally undercooked things a little or boiled them a little too long.

But I was still the kind of person who could make food that was edible.

How had someone like me ended up being treated like a culinary disaster? Like some failed alchemist who would starve to death if left alone?

[I’ll grow some fruit around here for you first.]

Mourning the death of my pride, I gratefully accepted the fruit trees sprouting into existence.

I had already been worrying about what I would eat once the preserved food ran out….

[More importantly, have you figured anything out while staying here?]

“…Not particularly.”

Meanwhile, the subject Yukgwi shifted to was problematic in its own way.

I had remained here specifically to think through a way out of my situation, yet no solution presented itself.

“Just in case, I tried converting Demonic Energy into Mana as well….”

If I used enough Mana, Demonic Energy would sometimes convert into Mana without me intending it.

But there was an insurmountable gap between something happening automatically and consciously making it happen myself.

“I could not even figure out how to do it, let alone experience any side effects.”

Of course, along the way I had developed some sense for concentrating Mana into a single point and projecting it outside my body.

But that was as far as I got.

I still had absolutely no idea how to perform the conversion.

Forget the side effects. I couldn’t even get as far as attempting it properly.

[Hmm… then maybe… sealing really is the only answer? I’m not trying to discourage you, Sir Knight….]

“Perhaps….”

But I was sure there had to be a method of hiding Demonic Energy that I simply didn’t know about yet.

At least, that was what I believed.

“For now, I’ll keep trying.”

Because otherwise, there was no way the records of my past actions in those reports could have been so completely free of pursuit.

Read only on MUGEX

* * *

[Where does that confidence come from?]

While the Mountain Lord went around the nearby area creating patches of edible mushrooms, fruit, vegetables, and grains for my meals, Yukgwi—left alone with me—asked the question.

I had no idea exactly what Yukgwi meant.

Even I, someone accustomed to conversations where half the context was omitted, could only think that the question had come out of nowhere.

[You think there has to be some method other than sealing.]

Fortunately, Yukgwi seemed to realize that.

The explanation came quickly afterward.

Only then did I understand what Yukgwi had meant by confidence.

“This records what happened to this body before I came here… that is, the actions of its original owner, not mine.”

There was no point dancing around it.

I pulled out the bundle of documents I had carefully stored in one corner of my inventory.

[The original owner of the body?]

“Yes.”

Then I pushed them up close so Yukgwi could read them.

Can Yukgwi even read human writing?

That question occurred to me one second later.

[This is a record? Huh. Technology really has come a long way… You record things on something this thin and fluttery instead of stone tablets or clay.]

“…It’s called paper. It’s expensive, so it still isn’t widely used.”

[I see… Hmm. But, Knight, there’s a small problem.]

“What?”

[I can’t read human writing.]

As expected, Yukgwi shook the head and admitted to being illiterate.

I awkwardly pulled the papers back toward myself.

“They are records of the original owner’s activities, but there is very little that stands out. Most of them are testimonies saying that he devoted himself to hunting demons, and he did not interact much with those around him.”

Even that only covered five years.

Imagining the records from before then that had simply vanished, I lightly scratched my fingertips over the letters on the page.

An aside: I had to stop almost immediately because the paper threatened to pill beneath my fingers.

The quality was terrible.

There was nothing to be done about it, but still.

“However… he entered cities without any difficulty.”

[Hmm. So that’s why? That’s why you still hope there’s another way and keep thinking about it.]

“Yes.”

[That really is worth thinking about. How did that human hide it?]

Fortunately, Yukgwi grew absorbed in the same opening I had noticed.

Apparently, from Yukgwi’s perspective as well, this was both unnatural and potentially meaningful.

[First, tell me more about what he did. Surely what you just said isn’t everything. There’s that much written down.]

“Hmm….”

His activities, huh.

It would take too long to recite all of this, so I needed to choose a few things.

What should I mention?

The things that had made me wonder, Why did he do that? when I first read through the records?

Or the questions and theories written toward the end of the report?

“For starters, the records only cover the last five years. And over those five years, his appearance….”

[His appearance?]

I stopped mid-explanation and rapidly ran the situation through my head.

I tell Yukgwi that his appearance changed and that I find that suspicious.

→ Yukgwi asks why that is suspicious.

→ I explain that the changed appearance is identical to the character concept I designed.

→ An ordinary person who knows nothing about games, much less hardcore roleplaying, starts asking questions.

→ We all die.

Cold sweat trickled down my spine.

“…He began by dressing so completely covered that nothing could be seen, then gradually replaced pieces of equipment one by one, slowly revealing his face and appearance. Almost like luring a bird with breadcrumbs.”

[That is strange… Why would he do something like that?]

If I looked flustered here, it was over.

Desperately maintaining a grave expression, I tenderly stroked the social dignity that had barely survived.

Seriously.

I would rather die than survive in humiliation….

[And?]

“He primarily hunted demons and criminals, and apparently took every one of their corpses with him.”

[What?]

“The people gathering the information wondered whether he might have had some kind of fixation on corpses….”

[Idiot, anyone could tell those were sacrifices!]

“There was also such a theory.”

Though that opinion had faded after I started traveling with the Hero.

I swallowed the rest of the sentence.

[He took corpses for all five years?]

“For almost all of it, apparently.”

[Then they were definitely sacrifices. No question about it.]

There were things even the Information Guild had failed to uncover, but this was still something we could infer.

I acknowledged that much, and Yukgwi sighed.

[Yeah. I’d been wondering about that too. Even for a Great Demon, pulling a soul from another dimension is by no means easy…. I never expected something like this to be lurking behind it.]

“…Are you saying they used what they killed as sacrifices to bring me here?”

[There’d be no other way to get you here. A Great Demon isn’t omnipotent.]

Suddenly, the file in my hands seemed to grow heavy with the smell of blood.

“…How many would have needed to be sacrificed?”

[Who knows. It isn’t as though I’ve ever offered sacrifices myself, so I’ve got no way to estimate it properly…. Still, I’d say at least several thousand. Breaking through the wall between dimensions is that difficult.]

Several thousand at minimum….

Then again, even adding up only what was explicitly written in these records would probably bring the total close to a thousand.

At twenty a month for five years, the crude calculation alone came to twelve hundred.

And he had hardly killed exactly twenty every month.

Twenty during quieter months.

Several hundred during heavier ones.

If I included the things never listed on these sheets, the number might be higher still.

At least two thousand.

If I estimated more boldly, perhaps three thousand or four thousand.

And on top of that, he hadn’t only hunted humans.

He had hunted demons too….

My grip tightened around the papers without me realizing.

The thick bundle crumpled with a sound as though it might tear.

“…Would the demons he killed have been offered as sacrifices too?”

[No idea. But demons are living beings too, in the end…. If someone wanted to use them as sacrifices, I don’t see why they couldn’t. Look at you—no, look at that thing inside you. What was it? Back in that city, it was happily using its own kind as sacrifices.]

“……?”

I gave Yukgwi a look asking for details, and Yukgwi shrugged the shell and explained.

It was something I had had no way of knowing because nobody else had told me, because intact city walls had blocked my view, and because I had hardly gone sightseeing around the city during my escape.

It was a truth I simply could not have known.