The Protagonist in the Game Was a Clear-Eyed Madman (4)
The boy named Cain resembled me more and more the longer I watched him. On the surface he was nothing but a frail, weak-bodied kid, but Alex could sense it clearly. Madness lurked in that boy’s eyes.
Born as the son of Orphe Village’s chief, Alex had grown up without a single thing to fear. No one ever dared say a word to him. Even after his first murder as a child, the entire village—including his own father—had shielded him, claiming the victim “deserved to die.”
Under the chief’s protection, Alex beat and crippled anyone who so much as annoyed him. No one questioned it. No one criticized it. “Don’t go against Alex” became the village’s silent, ironclad rule.
The noble brats he ran into right before the semester started were no different. They’d clustered together in groups, giggling and laughing like idiots right in front of him. So he fixed their attitudes.
When they whined “Why are you doing this?” and claimed they didn’t even know who he was, it only pissed him off more. They didn’t recognize Alex of Orphe Village? After he was done with them, the little shits were coughing up blood.
That’s right. You noble fuckers laughed at me. You looked down on a commoner. That’s why you got beaten.
“Mister, do you have a Toto dog plush?”
“Toto…? A Toto doll… If you mean a dog plush, it’s right here.”
One day, a kid who called a dog plush by that weird name caught his eye.
“Thank you! Uh… ah…”
The boy had thanked him with a genuinely bright smile, then dug through his pockets and muttered a quiet curse. With a look of utter despair he handed the plush back. When he showed the shopkeeper his empty pockets, he turned around like a wilted plant and started to leave.
“You really want that doll?”
Cain. The guy who, during the first mark exam, had faced a broken magic weapon, still managed to win, and brought back the mark. Alex watched him with curious eyes.
A doll? Did he need a doll? There was a stubborn resolve in those eyes. The same eyes Alex had seen during the fight with the magic weapon—eyes filled with desperate tenacity.
Alex liked people like that. He understood better than anyone else in this academy how fun it was to drag someone who had clawed their way up from the bottom and throw them off a cliff.
He even thought they might be the same kind of person. Someone who used any means necessary to deal with their enemies.
The boy cursed at empty air, talked to it, and laughed. When he spoke as if having a conversation with nothing, wind would blow and flames would surge.
A mage? But no magic circle was visible. Could he cast spells with just the chant?
Even while bleeding, he never stopped cursing and talking to the air. That was real madness.
Alex liked Cain’s desperation, his willpower, his tenacity. He felt like this boy would understand the path he wanted to walk better than anyone else.
“Um~ You do realize how ridiculous it sounds to claim nobles looked down on you, right…?”
Dorothy Gale read the incident report with a blank face and tossed the words out like it was nothing. Her tone suggested she was looking at a mental patient.
“…It’s your first offense, and you’re a brand-new freshman, so we’ll assume you didn’t know any better and settle for a verbal warning.”
Dorothy’s hazy eyes briefly sharpened as she glared at him.
“There won’t be a next time, Alex.”
The academy’s rules were full of things he couldn’t understand. I hit them because they made me uncomfortable. Because they displeased me. So why is it my fault?
He stormed out, still fuming over the verbal warning, when a familiar figure walked past him.
Cain. The only person who could ever understand him.
Alex decided to use the fact that Cain had no money. He would buy his favor and slowly reach out until the boy became his ally.
Until that bitch Eve Abraham showed up, everything had been perfect.
She sat beside Cain with a pouty face, warily eyeing strangers like a jealous cat in heat. It was fine. Yeah, it could be a fucking hassle. It was okay.
But his patience didn’t last long.
Deeper in the forest there were more slimes, yet the guy kept brushing him off as if his words weren’t even worth hearing. That was when Alex finally felt his patience hit rock bottom.
“Hey. I get that you’re some insane genius who can use magic without chants or circles. But with that kind of power, why won’t you go any further? At least give me a reason. I don’t want to beat your ass.”
The boy clearly had restrictions. His ridiculously weak body had been obvious during the fight with the magic weapon.
No matter what Cain said, Alex planned to crush him under his heel and find their common ground.
“I have to go train, you son of a bitch.”
“…”
It felt like something inside him went tick and snapped.
Son of a bitch? Son of a bitch?
He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t remember what he’d said or what that bitch Eve beside him had spat out.
He simply stood there, blankly holding the portion of slime mucus that was his share.
He barely managed to grind out a curse.
“You fucking bastard.”
So that’s how it is?
Alex realized he was smiling.
If you bother me, I’ll kill you.
The twisted hero.
Hiding his dark expression, Alex headed toward the commercial district.
. . . . . .
“Ah, fuck, my ear itches.”
Someone must be cursing me out. My ear’s been itchy all day.
I scratched my ear with my pinky and let out a huge yawn.
After I safely finished the slime extermination request, Alex didn’t ask me to do any more requests with him for the next few days.
Yeah. That son of a bitch. He must’ve realized he acted like an asshole.
After the slime request, I kept steadily taking and clearing commissions from the commercial district. When I returned to the dormitory I jogged, and I never skipped training.
My stats weren’t skyrocketing like everyone else’s, but I had one completely broken skill: The Chosen One.
If I summoned two spirits, my experience gain doubled. Of course, the higher my level got, the more experience I needed, so leveling up had become harder than before. That was the only problem.
“Right, that concludes today’s lecture.”
The professor’s apathetic voice signaled the end of class, and the students immediately started packing up and heading out.
What day was it again…? I thought back to the date and carefully checked whether I’d missed any in-game events.
Ah, right. Those damn fanatics.
The main god, Arpa. The god of balance and destiny. The one who had chosen Eve Abraham as the saintess, the very foundation of the Holy Kingdom, and the god who wanted to reset the world.
This weekend, those lunatics who worshipped that insane god were going to infiltrate the academy and carry out a terrorist attack.
Why terrorism all of a sudden? Their target was Eve Abraham.
The fanatics planned to kill the saintess in order to correct the tilted scales of balance according to Arpa’s will, then pin the blame on religions that followed other gods. Their goal was to spark a war between nations, create chaos, and rebalance the scales.
Of course, in the game, Alex would coincidentally run into Eve Abraham, accompany her, and encounter the fanatics. The cultists, thinking they were just helpless students, would try to kill both of them. But thanks to the treasure Alex possessed—Dainsleif—their plan would be foiled.
“The problem is that Alex currently has zero connection with Eve, and that he’s a complete psycho.”
That was the biggest issue.
The game’s protagonist was a crazy bastard.
Dainsleif. That sword was actually a demonic blade. On a proper righteous route you’d naturally abandon it and obtain a holy sword instead, but on the massacre route, nothing was better. The more blood it drank—especially from people close to you—the stronger it became. There was even a strategy called “killing your loved ones” where you maxed out everyone’s affection then murdered them all.
Of course, it showed the player nothing but regret and despair, so only the truly rotten or truly insane ever went for it.
And right now, Eve hated Alex. Not a little—she fucking despised him.
I let out a sigh so deep it felt like the ground might cave in.
I’d wanted to ride the protagonist’s coattails as much as possible, but with him like this, I couldn’t trust him at all.
I couldn’t solve this incident together with Eve Abraham. Who the hell would believe that Arpa’s own followers were trying to assassinate Arpa’s saintess?
I already knew their infiltration routes and the exact date. What I needed now was a reliable helper—someone who would actually believe me.
“Hmm? Cain. What are you doing standing blankly in the middle of the hallway?”
“Panzy…?”
The pink side-tail-haired girl tapped my shoulder with a curious look on her face. The two swords at her waist were pristine and orderly, perfectly reflecting her personality.
Panzy Vlad.
This girl, with her overflowing sense of justice, would definitely help me. I had zero doubt.
With the brightest expression I could muster, I grabbed both of her hands and lifted them all the way to my chest.
“C-Cain?! W-what are you—!”
“I’ve been waiting for you! You showed up at the perfect time!”
I was so fucking happy. Seeing Panzy’s flustered face made me feel a tiny bit guilty, but there was something far more urgent.
I kept holding her hands, shaking them up and down as I spoke in an excited voice.
“I need your strength. Soon, some very bad bastards are going to show up at the academy.”
Of course, hearing such sudden nonsense made Panzy Vlad’s expression shift from embarrassment to complete bewilderment.
But I didn’t care in the slightest.