Chapter 134
Chapter 134
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 134
Chapter Title: Olga Virtus #03
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Seeing the status window threatening me, I was able to firmly make up my mind.
..Of course, it wasn't easy to say it out loud.
Olga's gaze as she looked at me was filled with desperation.
'Olga's such eyes... it's the first time since she asked me to escape with her from the underground prison.'
Even now, if I said let's run away, if we escaped alive, all my comrades would help me—that's what Olga had said. Back then, I...
"—I can't run away. I'm sorry, Olga."
Just like back then, when I'd firmly said I couldn't, I had no choice but to refuse.
"...Why..why won't you run away, Arthin?"
Olga's voice, now choked with sobs, pierced my heart. Back then, too, she'd clung to the bars and cried.
"Back then, and now too. Why do you always choose the path of suffering, Arthin! That's...! That's just stupid.."
Olga clutched at my clothes and began sobbing pitifully. Anyone seeing her would instinctively want to wipe away those tears—such raw, heartbreaking desperation.
But I couldn't change my choice.
"...I can't abandon everyone who loves me and run. No, even if I took everyone with me. I can't run away."
"...Why? Anyway, anyway, the hero is Kaiyen..! You're not the hero or anything.. you're just an ordinary person!"
She was right. I, Arthin Ludwig, was nothing more than a side character who wouldn't survive past the first semester.
And I, Yang Hee-min from reality, was just the one reader who loved this world. Someone who'd been forcibly possessed into it by chance.
So no one could demand that I protect this world.
"..But didn't you say it? This is an incredibly painful thing."
"Yes, we don't know how many more times I'd have to die. So there's no need for you to..."
"I can't leave such a grueling task to my partner alone."
Kaiyen, that damn gay bastard. I didn't have many good feelings left for that ragtag protagonist.
The guy who kept ruining my love life, the one who brought pointless angst events, the frustrating idiot who always said he'd help no matter what I asked.
"...I was the one who reached out to that lonely guy and offered to be his friend."
Our first meeting had been purely calculated.
After the world ended in the 1st round, I'd approached Kaiyen, the one who could save it.
My initial reason was simple. Just to survive.
"If I promise to be his friend, then dump all the painful, grueling work of saving the world on him? That'd be too cowardly."
I knew it well. The feeling of being used, betrayed, and abandoned by the one person you thought was your only friend.
"..If I did that, how would I be any different from all those people who only saw you as a saint?"
"...!"
Yeah, even I thought I was a bit too rigid.
The reason I didn't run away with Olga when she came to save me in the 3rd round? Even I found it ridiculously stubborn.
──A girl not even 20 couldn't possibly be guilty of writing love letters. But those religious tribunal bastards called it evil, claimed it was corruption, and it disgusted me so much I couldn't stand it.
So I stayed there. To show those tribunal scum—and everyone in this world—that Olga was just like them.
In the end, they didn't get the answer they wanted from me and just burned me anyway──
But I don't regret it.
This time is the same. I couldn't tolerate pushing onto Kaiyen something I wouldn't want done to me.
In reality, Yang Hee-min had despised himself, torn himself down, denied everything endlessly. As a result, I had no friends, no lovers, no family. Only a 5000-character novel had been my sole joy.
I couldn't live like that here.
"I'm not running away, Olga. I'll proudly subjugate the Demon King and make a world where my women and friends can be happy."
...And I remembered the vow I'd made earlier. In this round, I'd make that Kaiyen bastard pay.
'If I live peacefully in the countryside, I'll never get the chance to smack him one.'
Betraying a friend and giving a loathsome friend a good smack for his bullshit are different things. It's something you do precisely because he's a friend.
"...I see. Arthin, my husband, is truly a strong man after all. A woman like me... can't even reach you."
Drip.
Hot liquid fell onto the back of my hand and trickled down.
Having heard my words, Olga was crying silently, her shoulders trembling.
Glancing sideways, the status window still lingering in my vision caught my eye.
'Refuse Olga's request and reject her love.'
I'd refused Olga's request. The fact that the quest completion hadn't popped up meant the status window's silent demand to completely reject her love.
"Olga."
I called her slowly, but Olga didn't respond, too lost in her sobs.
"Olga. Lift your head."
"...I'm sorry. I was too selfish, wasn't I? I'll stop crying soon, really.."
Calling again, Olga wiped her tears with her fingertips and raised her head.
Why did she keep apologizing? Her lips, constantly uttering "sorry," annoyed me to no end.
"...Hmph?!"
So I punished those insolent lips by pressing mine against them.
"Mmph..mm..!"
Startled by my sudden action, Olga tried to say something, but I pulled her neck close and continued the kiss.
Her hands lightly tapped my chest, but not hard enough to push me away.
Her struggling slowed to passivity, then she slowly closed her eyes and accepted my lips.
⚙ SYSTEM ALERT ⚙ ─Ding! Ding! Ding! [Quest failure imminent: Forced regression flashing] Annoyed by the status window blocking my view as if asking what the hell I was doing, with the quest failure and forced regression clause blinking wildly, I closed my eyes and kept kissing.
How many minutes passed? When the alert sounds finally stopped, the room was filled only with our breaths and the soft sounds of our lips.
Smack. Satisfied with the quiet, I slowly pulled away, and Olga clung tightly to my clothes, face flushed crimson, eyes still shut.
"Uuu..."
Trembling with a voice between frustration and joy, she looked nothing like the Iron Lady from the original story.
Indeed, the woman kissing me before me wasn't the great saint—just a girl in love.
"..That was my first kiss, husband."
"I know."
"..You were my first love."
"I know that too."
"...You're an idiot, husband. A greedy idiot."
"That, I know very well."
Olga buried her flushed face in my shoulder, playfully scolding me like a spoiled child.
But especially that last "idiot"—I couldn't help but deeply agree.
'...Forced regression.'
Soon, the quest failure alert would pop up. Who knew what would happen after.
Painful death? Or open my eyes to the academy's first day?
Either way, with memories and privileges erased, I might regret this choice.
Seeing Agnes or Violet greet me like it was our first meeting, or Lin Shaomei cheerfully yelling "Boobs!" like she'd never confessed, I might break down crying in secret.
..So what?
'Fuck it all—the status window, the original plot, the system.'
As Yang Hee-min in reality, I'd submitted to society. Discrimination and abuse were just par for the course for an orphan like me, and enduring it alone kept things quiet.
──That's why as Arthin, I'd endured or dodged that arrogant Rexton's outbursts time and again.
I'd rolled over backwards to stick to the original plot, dying alone; I'd stopped injustices before my eyes but never uprooted them.
'That's why I resolved it. No more living like that.'
I'd vowed not to bow to outrages or injustices anymore.
Rebuilding bonds with loved ones and friends from scratch would be terrifying, agonizingly hard.
But what I feared more than death.. was apathetically yielding to some grand will, cowering before loss and submitting to the bullshit right in front of me.
Yang Hee-min from reality lived like that, but now I─
─would never submit to it again.
I'd rebuild memories with my friends.
I was confident I could make all my loved ones fall for me again.
It'd be hard, brutally so... but not impossible.
"Olga, you don't have to be a saint. You don't need grand titles like goddess's proxy."
I wrapped my arm around her slender shoulders. Her delicate frame, not yet muscled up, nestled perfectly into my still-untoned body.
"..But Arthin, you're lovers with Princess Agnes, right? Agnes definitely won't like me.."
"It's fine. I'll take the scolding once. Don't worry about that—just follow me."
I stroked Olga's head as she mumbled in my arms, then looked up at the ceiling.
I didn't know who controlled the status window, but they were probably watching this.
'I won't abandon my lovers or friends. And I won't accept your shitty coercive orders.'
I stretched the hand stroking Olga's head toward the ceiling──
──and flipped off the invisible presence, this world.
'I'm not taking it lying down anymore. I'm not the coward Yang Hee-min.'
Status window, bring whatever ordeals or trials you want using this as an excuse—I don't care.
I'll smash every bastard who treats me like shit──
──with my Blood Punch.
'Demon King, system—bring it all on.'
*
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙ ─Ding!