White Room
The white room torture is one of the many ways to break a person. White walls, white ceiling, white bed, white fluorescent lights—everything in the room is painted pure white. Lock someone inside and their sense of self, their sanity, slowly shatters. I'm only rambling about this pointless trivia because I'm currently experiencing that very torture.
No matter how hard I pounded and slammed against the walls, they didn't even budge. They say this method was first used in Iran, where it was inflicted on journalists who opposed the regime. So what the hell did these bastards have against me to pull this shit?
Then, a familiar voice came from behind me.
I whipped around, wondering which son of a bitch had the nerve to spout such nonsense. For a second, I thought I was looking in a mirror.
Standing there was none other than Werner.
This bastard was alive. Wait... was he here to punish me for sleeping with Glacia while I possessed his body? Some kind of anti-NTR crusade? Yeah, anyone who tries to NTR someone deserves to have their limbs chopped off and dumped in a field of shit.
But thinking about it, this feels a little unfair. NTR only counts when you steal another man's woman. This bastard Werner is the one who originally abandoned Glacia. He threw her away back then, and now he's throwing a tantrum because he suddenly regrets it? Too good to keep for himself but too precious to let anyone else have? This guy's mindset is straight-up garbage on the level of those NTR-loving scumbags. Trash should be cleaned up by the person who sees it, and trash-like bastards should get beaten by the person who sees them.
I swung my fist at Werner. But he casually stopped it with a single finger. What kind of mage has this much physical strength?
Is this guy claiming he can read my mind or something? What is he, a mind reader?
Werner scratched at his long hair and let out a sigh. That expression that said the entire world was a hassle, that attitude of 'the world's all rotten anyway, so I'll just live however I want'... no matter how I looked at it, this was the real Werner.
I almost challenged him to a fistfight thinking maybe some gelatinous creature was impersonating him, but I held back since it really seemed to be him.
Werner stared at me for a moment before speaking.
"...What?"
"That's enough."
"You fucking bastard."
I broke the arm Werner was using to block my fist, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him straight into the floor. I never wanted to use those techniques I learned back then again, but this son of a bitch had crossed the line way too hard.
"That's the same for you, you bastard."
"How much do you know, you fucking bastard?"
Most of the people who knew about my childhood were dead. No, most of them were people I had killed. There was no way Werner could know. And how could a mere game character even—
"Shut up, you short-lived bastard."
"This fucking bastard..."
This guy really knew everything.
Werner clapped his hands and teleported behind me again. Well, it wasn't so much teleportation as a complex spell that broke his body down into mana particles and reconstructed it wherever he wanted.
I glared at him. Werner glared back with an equally unpleasant look.
"The bastard who died a virgin after obsessing over a married woman."
"The bastard who died a virgin after obsessing over a married woman, trampling on the heart of the girl who loved him."
"The bastard who died a virgin after obsessing over a married woman, trampling on the heart of the girl who loved him, driving nails into his older brother's and sister's hearts."
Invisible arrows were piercing both Werner's and my body in countless numbers. As expected, war only harms both sides. This war of attrition was nothing but a loss for both of us.
Werner frowned and let out a sigh. This guy really has a shitty personality.
"What are you talking about? Spitting in our own faces? Unlike you, I'm not a virgin anymore, you know?"
Don't compare yourself to me, you pathetic virgin loser. I'm a man who shared his purity with a beauty like Glacia. Look at him trying to call it a draw because he's losing the dick-measuring contest. This is exactly why I hate gamblers.
"But the soul of a virgin loser and a real man are different things."
"What?"
I had been absolutely certain I was the reincarnation of some amazing figure, but to think I was the reincarnation of this foul-tempered mage...? There isn't a single real man in the world who would quietly believe that.
"Now that you mention it, that makes sense." Okay, I believe you. I really am your reincarnation. Come to think of it, if I was the reincarnation of a mage, I should've been able to use magic in the real world... With that kind of power, I could've become the god of a new world.
Why are you telling me this now, you damn virgin bastard?
God of a new world my ass. That just makes you a crazy bastard. In the end, you'd spend your whole life suffering as a human pipe organ. Being the president of a department store would be way more fun and beneficial.
Werner pulled out something that looked like a cigar from his pocket and lit it. But no matter how I sniffed, it didn't smell like tobacco or a cigar. Which meant... this bastard, don't tell me...
Was he a genius mage who did drugs?
But did this guy smoke in the original work? He was a kid in the first part, and I don't remember him ever smoking in the second part. He definitely wouldn't have smoked around Airi, right? Secondhand smoke is an unforgivable sin.
"Oh, I see."
I misunderstood. Yeah, secondhand smoke is an evil that should never be tolerated, so the great mage Werner who walks the path of righteousness would never do such a thing.
But he took in Airi when he was seventeen and quit then?
Righteous great mage my ass. This underage bastard was doing everything a delinquent would—drinking and smoking. I was truly... no, I was disappointed.
Classic symptoms of chuunibyou. All things that get better if you just hit them.
"What?"
Oh, that story.
"Yeah. Back then, every single day was pure agony. So I had no choice but to turn to it."
The story never went into this much detail anywhere, but I guess the smoking and drinking issues got censored. As expected, this guy really is a saint among saints. Even though his way of talking makes me want to punch him in the face.
In the second part, it was mentioned that because his mana circuits—which circulate mana through the body—were destroyed, Werner could no longer freely use Grand Magic. Especially the circuit that acted like a coolant in a machine had completely lost its function. But it was explained so briefly that I didn't know the full story. There was only a single line mentioning that he got injured while trying to save Airi.
After finishing one cigar, Werner quietly began to tell his story.
"Yeah, I don't want to hear about some guy's childhood either."
Skipping the prologue is a virtue.