It Becomes an Entirely Different Story
A high-pitched whine cut the air—
One of the spirits shot straight toward the assassin.
BOOM!
A shockwave rolled out as if the very earth were trembling. This time, though, the strike went wide. Through the swirling dust, a silhouette stood firm.
He dodged it in that instant?
No ordinary opponent, then. A nuisance.
“...Hah.”
The man gave a crooked smile and casually tossed aside the goblin’s stone axe.
In the next breath—
Swish!
He drew a hidden dagger and lunged for my arm.
CLANG—!
The armor kept the blade from severing the limb, but the impact jolted all the way up into my shoulder.
“...So you’ve given up pretending to be a goblin.”
“Figured a stone axe wasn’t going to cut it against someone like you. Whew, this is getting tense. Crisis mode, crisis mode!”
He pulled a second dagger from his belt and shifted into a dual-wield stance.
Whoosh!
In a blink he was behind me. A moment ago he had been right in front of my eyes.
“When was it... I’ve fought a Holy Knight before, you know. Said one little thing about the Goddess and the guy drew his sword and came at me. Seriously, can’t even take a joke?”
He was needling me about the Goddess, fishing for a reaction. I ignored it. I had never been particularly devout to begin with.
“Even with his ankle cut clean through, he still got back up on pure momentum. Holy Knights are tough, I’ll give you that. But that’s all you are. Tenacious—and slow as hell.”
Whoosh!
He shifted position again.
“See? Clumsy.”
He dropped low and drove in. The dagger streaked toward the back of my knee.
CRACK!
In that split second I twisted and deflected the blow with an armored plate. A fraction slower and the leg would have been gone.
“Tch.”
He opened the distance as quickly as he had closed it. The back of the knee was one of the few spots plate could not cover. He knew exactly how to dismantle an armored opponent. The claim that he had fought Holy Knights before was no lie.
Clang! Skrrrt!
The daggers scored the gauntlets on my arms and the greaves on my legs in turn—showy cuts meant to prove he could carve wherever he pleased. Nothing had punched through yet, but it was only a matter of time. He fixated on the joints, faster now than on his first approach.
“In the end you’re no different from the rest of them. Our matchups just don’t work. I thought you might be a little special, but you’re still well within expectations. Against someone as fast as me—”
Here he came again. The thought had barely formed when—
“You can’t do a damn thing!”
The dagger flashed for my throat.
In that instant—
Flash—!
Light erupted from my palm and stole his vision. A basic light-orb spell, the kind priests demonstrated in the monastery.
“Gah! You dirty bastard!”
He clapped one arm over both eyes and flailed wildly with the other.
“And you still call yourself a noble knight...!”
“Was an impure Holy Knight outside your expectations?”
A low hum answered. The spirits had finished preparing. Four of them drifted at my side, each under a stacked buff of heightened detection—an enhancement magic that maximized the senses. Normally it was used to track hidden enemies or residual mana. Layered thick enough, it could do more. It could, for instance, read the speed of a fly like him.
Shhk-shhk!
The moment he recovered from the flash and began to move, the spirits’ gazes locked onto him. They twisted their bodies in perfect unison with every shift of his direction, as if invisible threads bound them. While I caught the daggers on my armor, the spirits adapted to his velocity with their sharpened perception.
I layered on more buffs.
Defense up.
Accuracy up.
Movement speed increased.
CLANG!
When he thrust again, one spirit hurled itself into the path and knocked the blade aside.
“What...?”
Buff magic was a Holy Knight’s identity. Under the effects, the spirits’ roles shifted. They read his movements while growing harder, more precise, faster.
In short—from this moment on—
the spirits became living shields.
The assassin reversed his grip on both daggers and charged once more. He closed in—
Shhhk!
—only for a spirit to plant itself in his path. He had no choice but to throw himself backward an instant before colliding with the hardened construct. He staggered, face twisted in shock, then tried again. The daggers struck only spirits instead of my neck. No matter how quickly he moved, the spirits matched him and were already waiting at the point of impact.
“Using the Goddess’s own spirits as suicide bombs, turning them into meat shields... the more I learn, the less faith this Holy Knight seems to have. I’d love to know why you haven’t been defrocked, but hey—this is fun. I’ll have to tell the kids when I get back.”
“You’ve got a lot of friends waiting for you in the afterlife, I take it.”
“Ha. And you? Planning to just keep blocking forever?”
He tried to sound casual, but his breathing had grown ragged.
A soft hum. The spirit that had intercepted him drifted back into formation at my side.
“From what I can see,” I said. He fell silent—or perhaps he was simply catching his breath. “Your talent lies in closing distance fast and swinging. But my spirits have already adapted to your speed. You’re right about one thing.”
The spirits slid into a tight line, facing him.
“You and I are a terrible matchup.”
The corner of his eye twitched the moment the words left my mouth. This time I was the one who stepped forward. Naturally the spirits followed.
Shing!
I drew the sword at my hip and settled into stance. A third-rate longsword that had been lying around the house. I was the sort of man who blamed his tools rather than his skill, yet it would be more than enough to take a head.
Time to end this.
Shhhk—!
I swung. He bent backward at the waist, an acrobatic contortion that slipped past the edge, then fired a reflexive counter—
WHAM!
—only to be stopped cold by another spirit. The flashy counter that failed left him in nothing more than a ridiculous posture. That very reflex became a liability, breaking his balance.
In pure close-quarters calculation I held the advantage. The spirits handled defense; I needed only to attack. The fight became almost convenient. Like this.
Slash!
Wait for the opening, then cut. Simple.
“Kh—!”
A vertical stroke. The blade scored both jaw and throat, but the cut was shallow. I had meant to take the head clean off; he had twisted away by a hair’s breadth. Instead the tip sliced through his mask, and the cloth slid free.
The face hidden beneath hood and mask began to emerge. The instant I saw it, my breath stopped.
A shaved head. Green eyes. That loathsome expression.
...He was the leader of the guild Lucia belonged to.
So the hint had been buried here all along. The clue that this world was a game had been waiting inside the Subjugation Festival. His name was...
Karma, was it?
By skipping the Subjugation Festival I had lost more than just my second brother. Because of a single wrong choice, I had thrown away the chance to realize the true nature of this world far earlier.
I had believed the festival had nothing to do with relationship events—no choices would appear, no affection values would shift. But perhaps everything was about to change.
“Is Lucia here as well?”
“No, Lucia’s... wait. What the hell are you?”
“Never mind, then.”
The Laward–Lucia route began with Laward killing Karma. In other words, if I put this bastard in the ground first, Laward and Lucia would never be linked. The very premise would vanish.
“Perfect.”
Now that I knew the assassin’s identity, I no longer needed to worry about him falling apart before I confirmed his backers.
I snatched one spirit out of the air and pressed it against the blade. My hand moved as if spreading oil, forcing the spirit into the steel. The buffs transferred with it; the sword hummed and glowed orange. The remaining spirits moved as well—two locked onto my right and left greaves, the last onto my left gauntlet.
I recalled the way he had carved through the ground to close distance earlier—
CRACK!
—and copied the motion, appearing right in front of him.
Whoosh!
At the same instant the spirit fused to my left hand drove the sword forward at blinding speed.
“Wha—”
He never finished the word.
Slice—
Sword aura and steel took his head in a single clean stroke. The body dropped to its knees and collapsed with a heavy thud. The third-rate longsword could not withstand the mana the spirit had carried; it melted and dripped away. A hastily grabbed house sword had been good for only one spirit infusion.
I turned and checked the corpse. The empty neck stump pumped blood onto the blue grass, staining it red.
“...Mm.”
Rummaging through a corpse was unpleasant, but loot still had to be claimed. If memory served, this mid-boss paid quite well. Without a certain status threshold, Laward could never defeat him and the Lucia route would hit a hard wall. Kill Karma, however, and multiple Lucia endings opened along with extra rewards.
There should be a key somewhere. I flipped the body and searched the pockets until something snagged against my fingertips—paper.
Not the key I had hoped for, but I pulled it free anyway.
Upon successful assassination of Romons Hasgard, a substantial sum of gold shall be paid.
Issuer: Death God Cult
The paper was a murder commission. It promised vast gold for the assassination of Romons Hasgard. The sender: the Death God Cult—fanatics who followed the Necromancer. Their mark was stamped clear as day.
They had gathered under the name Death God Cult, the polar opposite of the Goddess’s faith, and gone into hiding. In my previous life I had only learned of their existence after the war had already begun.
Until now I had assumed the mastermind behind the Hasgard family’s destruction was one of the neighboring territories bordering Hasgard County—that someone had simply wanted the land. I had been wrong. Those who targeted House Hasgard were followers of the true black curtain. We were prey for something far larger.
It becomes an entirely different story.
I had been an extra, yet apparently not a mere walk-on. Because no one remembers an extra’s face, an extra can become anyone. Passerby Number One. Villager A. A tree. While the protagonist stands in the spotlight and delivers his passionate performance, the extra hurries behind the curtain, changes costume, and steps back onto the stage as someone else.
This time, it seemed, I might claim a role with real weight.
My fist clenched tight around the contract.
Now I knew. The Death God Cult had been active earlier than expected—and that knowledge meant I could reverse the trail. I could strike back.