Obelisk Assault (7)
Right after we took down the jester—Murder Clown—we found ourselves back in Zone C.
The moment we stepped free of the barrier, I could see that everyone was fine. Not a scratch on any of them. Looking at the girls standing there completely unharmed, I let out a hollow laugh.
Real monsters, the lot of them.
They spotted Erinn and me just as quickly and reacted at once.
"Ah, everyone's okay!"
"I'm so glad."
Yeah, lucky. I'd have been in real trouble myself if I hadn't had a monster of a Hero standing next to me. We'd just gotten a reasonably balanced drop, that was all.
That was when Clara hurried over to me with quick little steps.
"…Allen. You were amazing at the end."
"Huh?"
"…I didn't know you'd know all of that."
……Ah.
Thinking about it, I probably should have played dumb. To me, that was just a boss monster I'd run into countless times—of course I knew. But to them, it was something else entirely.
A mere porter knowing the Demon King's army rank structure in that much detail, and even knowing the jester's real name from a moment ago—yeah, that would look incredibly suspicious.
The way Clara was asking me about it almost felt like she was probing me with suspicion, but…
…Am I just imagining it?
It seemed like I was. Her eyes held nothing but genuine curiosity and confusion. Still, I didn't have much of an excuse to offer, so I couldn't come up with a convincing answer either.
"It just… kind of came to me."
Clara tilted her head, but she didn't press further. She seemed to just accept it and move on. Then she offered me her thanks.
"…I survived because of you, Allen. Thank you."
"……Don't mention it."
That was just Clara, though. Ser-Aria didn't seem to think much of it, but the other party members were looking at me with faintly odd expressions.
Especially Freya, the Saintess—whatever was going through her mind, she was staring at me with a deeply suspicious look. Letisia was tilting her head too.
Surprisingly, Erinn only showed a mild puzzlement. She didn't look nearly as suspicious as the others.
But none of them said it out loud. Like Clara, they only offered me kind words.
"Still, we made it through thanks to you, Allen."
"It's a good thing you knew, Allen."
"Uh…"
But I couldn't shake the feeling. The sense that I was under suspicion just wouldn't go away.
……Well, I did do something that warranted it.
There was nothing I could have done. If I hadn't answered those questions, we'd all be dead. I wasn't about to choose death just to avoid a little suspicion.
It had been unavoidable. Sure, I hadn't planned ahead for this—but even if I had, my choice wouldn't have been much different.
When my own life was on the line, what other option was there? It wasn't like I was eager to die right then and there.
I was still feeling the awkward atmosphere when Erinn called out to me.
"Loser~♡"
"…What?"
"You did good~."
"……What?"
Erinn giggled.
"What, you didn't hear me~? Did you go deaf or something~?"
"No, it's not that…"
It's just weird hearing you praise me.
Having this little brat praise me was still deeply awkward, but a compliment was a compliment. I nodded and answered.
"Right. Thanks."
Erinn looked at me for a moment, then spoke.
"We're resting here before we move on, like we said~?"
"Yeah…"
"Then you'd better get the camp ready, Loser♡ That's a porter's job, isn't it~?"
Her words reminded me of something I'd momentarily forgotten. Right—I might have been the commander, but I was still the porter.
"…I'll get it ready in a bit."
Erinn gave a light nod, then looked over at the other party members.
"I'll take night watch with Loser today~♡"
"Pardon?"
"What?"
If I was going to stand night watch, I'd have preferred to do it with Letisia. I could practice magic that way. So why was this little brat suddenly pairing herself with me…?
"…I've been taking night watch a lot lately, though."
"Have you~? Want to go to sleep, then~?"
At Erinn's question, I glanced at the other party members, then shook my head.
"No."
Given the current atmosphere, the thought of huddling up and sleeping among the other party members felt worse than just staying awake.
Crack.
Crack.
The only sound was the crackle of wood burning down in the small campfire. It was quiet. Erinn, standing night watch with me, simply scanned the surroundings in silence—no chatter, no teasing.
I felt a rare stretch of calm myself. Whenever this girl was around, things were always noisy.
……What's going on?
That made the whole thing feel even stranger. Normally she gave me all kinds of attitude and pulled endless pranks… so her being quiet like this was weird.
It reminded me of how she'd been considerate of me earlier, when I'd slipped up. Without meaning to, I got caught up in the mood and snuck a glance at her—and Erinn caught it.
"Why are you watching me for cues, Loser♡"
"…I wasn't."
"Then why were you staring~?"
"Just because you're being quiet…"
"The others are sleeping, so of course I am~? Is there a dummy out there who can't even figure that out~♡"
That was a ridiculous excuse. It wasn't so early that the party members would wake from a quiet conversation.
"…So why did you want to take night watch with me?"
"Hmm~?"
"Normally I'd be standing watch with Letisia… You know that, right? I'm learning magic from her."
I said it plainly.
"So why did you say you'd take it?"
"Just because~?"
Just because?
"…Is this some kind of payback for the bet?"
"Pfft, what~? Why would I do something like that~? How petty♡"
Erinn said it with a small laugh. Then why the hell were you standing night watch with me?
…Is there really no reason at all?
I was starting to think that might be the case when Erinn scanned the area once more.
"Is there something out there?"
"…Nope, nothing at all~."
Just checking, then. I was about to dismiss it and move on when Erinn suddenly rose from her seat.
"?"
Hadn't she just said there was nothing?
"You said there was nothing?"
"Yeah. That's why this is perfect."
I was about to ask what she meant by "perfect" when a sudden sense of wrongness hit me.
I realized too late that Erinn's tone had shifted—gone serious, the same way it had when she'd been calming me down after my earlier slip.
"…Erinn?"
"Hey, Allen."
With a soft shing, the Holy Sword slid free of its sheath.
Why was she drawing that now?
She'd just confirmed there was nothing around us.
A bad thought flashed through my mind. Instinct, unbidden, was already preparing for the worst.
And then.
"Who are you?"
It became reality.
The Holy Sword was pointed at my throat. Erinn had wiped even that mischievous little smile from her face, and she was looking at me with cold eyes.
"……."
Still, it didn't seem like she intended to kill me on the spot. If she'd wanted to, her blade would have taken my head before I even registered it.
I tried to defuse the murderous atmosphere with a bit of humor mixed into my explanation.
"…Who am I? I'm Allen. Loser porter Allen."
"The Allen I know didn't know things like this."
…Hearing that, I finally understood for certain.
I'd been far too careless.
Apparently this girl thought I wasn't "Allen"—that I was something else.
She wasn't entirely wrong, but I also wasn't something other than Allen. Right now, I was Allen.
She was probably thinking I was a Demon King's army spy rather than Allen the porter… something along those lines.
I spoke up to clear the misunderstanding.
"…I don't know what you're thinking, but I'm Allen. And I've never had anything to do with the Demon King's army."
"I never said anything about the Demon King's army."
"What?"
Then why was she doing this?
And then, at the words that came so calmly from Erinn's mouth, my eyes went wide.
"The problem is that you know things even the Allen of the future wouldn't have known."
"……What?"
I went blank and could only echo her.
"The future?"
"…So you really aren't 'Allen.'"
Erinn said it flatly.
"Something else got mixed in."
"……Wait, what are you talking about…"
"There was something off about the way you acted, but I thought it was because you were you from a different time. The differences in personality, the way you weren't as underhanded as I remembered—I figured it was because you'd lived through a different time and a different set of circumstances than the you I knew."
I had nothing to say to that. I didn't even have the presence of mind to figure out what I should say.
"But that wasn't it."
Everything I was hearing right now was so hard to believe that just processing it was taking all the mental energy I had.
The future? Allen from a different timeline?
Suddenly I remembered a certain spell I'd seen in the Estire Kingdom library.
A soul-swapping spell.
The magic I suspected had been used when the original Allen of this body and I were swapped.
And the one who'd used it was none other than…
"You were just a 'different being' entirely."
Was it Erinn?
I felt like I was finally starting to understand, a little late. Why the party members had sometimes just shrugged it off and accepted it when I didn't know things that "Allen" should have known.
If, as Erinn claimed, an Allen from a "different timeline" had entered this body, then of course he might not know things that the Allen of this timeline knew. People forget—we're creatures of forgetfulness. Or he might never have experienced those things at all.
Was that why they'd understood and let it go…?
But here's the problem: a soul-swapping spell literally swaps souls. And one thing you need to understand is that even across different timelines, I am still me.
Would the me at seven in the morning and the me at seven in the evening have different souls? No—same person, same soul.
So a different timeline wouldn't mean a different soul. And yet they'd tried to swap them……
They didn't know that?
No way. As much as these girls pulled stupid stunts from time to time, they weren't that dumb.
Which left only one possibility: someone had pushed them into doing it.
Meaning the situation had driven them to a point where they felt they had no choice—and their emotions had probably been too unstable for clear judgment.
But still…
…We're still only in the early game.
By Dungeon in Evil standards, this was still the early game. With stats like theirs, there shouldn't have been many real crises—so what kind of situation could have put these superhumans through that kind of emotional turmoil?
As I struggled to make sense of it, Erinn asked me with eyes gone cold.
"You felt it too, right? How the others suddenly started suspecting you hard. How their attitude toward you flipped after being so good to you all this time."
Erinn went on.
"You know way too much information that Allen wouldn't have known. Everything else up until now, we could force-fit into the excuses you'd given. I believed them. The party believed them. But this time…"
She bit her lip lightly, for some reason.
"These were things you simply couldn't have known. Especially that last question… even I didn't know that one. It was an answer that 'Allen' could never have given."
…She didn't know the last question?
Which meant Erinn had known the answers to the other questions.
You couldn't chalk that up to her being the Hero—at this point in time, humanity still hadn't properly mapped out the structure of the Demon King's army.
She shouldn't have known the answer to the second question, and the first would have been just as hard to know.
So how had Erinn known?
"I'll ask you again. Depending on your answer, my sword will move differently."
Erinn asked.
"Who are you?"