I Quit This Party (4)
The party had slain the Demon King and his Four Heavenly Kings. But they had not shattered the Demon Realm’s entire military power. Jain had been desperate to escape this world as fast as possible, so he had speed-run the story, hunting only the targets required for achievements while ignoring every side path. As a result, the Demon Realm had lost its king and its four lords, yet its armies remained terrifyingly strong. The main force, the Destroyer Legion, was still intact. The brilliant Demon Generals were in peak condition, and all seventy-two candidates for the next Demon King were brimming with vitality. Every last one of those nightmarish monsters was now an enemy of the hero party. The list of tasks still left for them stretched endlessly.
And if the so-called hero, Park Bongpal, was actually this pathetic, and even Jain—who had been carrying the party’s real burden—walked away, the problem would no longer be the party’s future. It would be humanity’s future with no answer in sight.
I have to step up. With my angelic face and devilish acting skills!
Elaine, now frantic, jabbed her own eyes to force out tears, then slammed her enormous breasts against Jain’s arm as she clung to him.
“Stop it. I was wrong. I’m truly sorry. It must have been so hard for you all this time, right? I’m sorry I never noticed.”
“Let go. You’ll infect me with non-virgin bacteria.”
Jain’s response was ice-cold. When he tried to shake her off as if she were nothing but dust, Elaine only pressed her chest harder against him, dangling from his forearm as she cried out.
“Actually, I’m a virgin!”
It was obviously a desperate lie. Her dress had such an extreme side slit that the strings of her panties were clearly visible; claiming virginity in an outfit like that was laughably empty. Yet the other heroines seemed to share her desperation. They grabbed Jain’s sleeves and shouted over one another.
“I-I’m actually a virgin too. I was just embarrassed before… and I didn’t realize how important this was, so I couldn’t say anything.”
“Me too! I have no experience at all! It was just… during a fight with a monster, I got hit in the lower belly and it tore. That’s all! I swear it’s true!”
“I was attacked by an incubus… or, well, I was comforting myself alone… but I’ve never slept with a man! I swear on my guild’s honor!”
“I-I… anyway, it’s not what you think. Please believe me.”
Yet the colder Jain’s gaze grew, the more his affection for them withered. His eyes were frostier than the Arctic Ocean drifting with square icebergs under eternal snow. Nausea swirled in his stomach. He closed the portal and made a show of retching.
“Ugh. Smells like a chicken coop full of used rags.”
Having witnessed their ugliness firsthand, Jain remembered something his little sister once told him: non-virgins lie when they’re cornered.
“Just how far are you willing to drag me through the mud with these disgusting excuses?”
“Believe me. It’s really true. If you don’t, I’ll kill myself right here.” Ren clutched his sleeve, tears shimmering in her eyes.
Jain looked down at her face and let out a sigh so deep it seemed the ground might collapse.
“Then if you’re all virgins, why won’t that door open?”
The mere fact that he had closed the portal and bothered to talk made Ren’s face brighten for a moment. But his next words wiped the hope away again.
“Huh?”
“The purity that door judges isn’t some insanely strict unicorn-level standard. It takes unfortunate accidents into account—breaking it while riding a bike, getting your stomach smashed by a monster, being mind-controlled by an incubus, that sort of thing.”
In other words, if one were to classify the door’s philosophy under virginity theory, it belonged to the moderate school that valued both mind and energy. That was how it had worked in the original game, so there was no mistake. Jain himself subscribed to the same school.
“If everything you said is true, then two of you lost it the normal way and the other three lost it through accidents. So all five of you should be pure. Why isn’t the door opening?”
“That’s… why?” Naelle muttered blankly.
Karin was the first to understand the implication.
“Then, out of the five of us… at least one…”
“Is lying.”
The five heroines turned to stare at one another, eyes full of suspicion. They looked like they were doubting each other—or perhaps pretending to doubt each other.
How can they be this disgusting?
Even though at least one of them had to be lying, every single face remained perfectly natural. The realization twisted Jain’s stomach.
Little sis, you were right. Non-virgins were once human, but they aren’t anymore.
His little sister—the one who had shaped his entire worldview and understanding of humanity in this new life, the one he would never see again. Just thinking of her made emotion surge up his throat. The very fact that he had to deal with this pathetic, sordid situation filled him with unbearable irritation.
“Did I ever ask you for anything outrageous?”
“Woong, even if you try to force it with power, true love cannot be stopped yong.”
Park Bongpal, who had been crumpled against the wall, seemed to have recovered enough to start grating on Jain’s nerves again. Jain picked up a rock and hurled it straight into the middle of the idiot’s forehead.
“When the fuck did I tell you not to love? I just told you not to fuck, you son of a bitch!”
Park Bongpal’s speech had a special talent for scraping the very bottom of a person’s soul. Emotionally provoked, Jain flew into another rage and began stomping on the fallen man.
“What the hell did I ever do wrong to you people? I saved your lives! I completed every mission you cried was too dangerous! I rescued your families! I saved your friends! I cooked for you! I sang for you! I played with you, translated for you, indulged your tantrums, took the blame for every failure—I did everything!”
“Woong, ugh, love isn’t something you can buy with those things yong.”
“While doing all of that, did I ever ask for money? Did I ask for your bodies? I never once told you to love me instead of this bastard! You damn animals! All I asked was that you protect the hymen you were born with for free. You couldn’t even manage that one thing, and this is the mess we’re in?”
Jain spun away from the half-dead Park Bongpal and spat his next words like poison.
“Don’t you feel even the slightest bit sorry toward me? Ah, of course you don’t. You never saw me as a human being in the first place.”
“N-no, that’s not—”
“It’s a misunderstanding… everything is a misunderstanding. Please listen, Jain.”
Naelle panicked and reached for his hand. Jain brutally slapped it away, his face filled with pure contempt.
“Don’t say my name. And don’t you dare say the word ‘misunderstanding.’ It makes me sick.”
The reaction struck Naelle like a hammer. This was the same Jain who had carried her on his back without a single complaint even after she had gotten blackout drunk and thrown up all over herself. Yet now he was looking down at her with an expression she had never seen before—utterly frigid.
She thought she would rather he get angry. Anger at least meant emotion and affection still existed. But in the face he wore now, she could not find even a trace of feeling.
Until a moment ago, she had still clung to a faint sliver of hope. No matter how harsh his words were, Jain was kind to a fault; surely he would forgive them in the end. That contemptuous look, however, shattered the hope more thoroughly than a hundred speeches ever could.
She had never seen him wear that expression even when facing demons or monsters. Now it was aimed at her. It meant she was more repulsive to him than a living corpse whose guts were rotting and swarming with maggots.
The moment the thought hit her, her eyes burned.
Hold it in. You have no right to cry.
She told herself that, but willpower could not stop the tears once they started. Sniffling, Naelle soon broke into open sobs.
“I’m sorry… I really am sorry. I never realized… how hard things were for you… You always helped me, but I never once asked if you were struggling… I don’t even deserve to call myself your friend.”
The tears spread like wildfire. In seconds the throne room of the Demon King’s castle became an ocean of weeping. Apologies, pleas for forgiveness, and jumbled excuses hammered at Jain’s ears, but he simply stared at the ceiling.
Amazingly, none of those tears stirred even the slightest emotion in him.
Little sis, you really were right. When cornered, non-virgins lie, then they cry. They’re lower than vampires. Their tears can’t prove purity at all.
Jain simply kept replaying the words his sister had once spoken.
So this is how worthless a non-virgin’s tears are.
He decided they were worth less than a virgin’s spit.
After standing in that sea of tears for a long time, Jain finally scratched the back of his head and let out a long sigh.
“Haa… Fine. The milk’s already spilled. What’s the point of getting mad at you now?”
Naelle, who had been crying with completely dead eyes only moments earlier, looked up with a faint spark of life returning to her gaze.
“Are you… forgiving us?”
“Yeah, I’ll forgive you. On one condition.”
Naelle frantically clutched at his clothes. “What is it? I’ll do anything!”
But Jain’s answer crushed even her final remaining hope.
“From now on, let’s just live the rest of our lives without ever seeing each other’s faces again. Pretend we never knew one another and never met.”
“What?”
“Consider this the end. I’m leaving.”
Once again, a round door of light appeared behind Jain. The portal.
Karin rushed forward in a panic, trying to grab his arm. “Jain, no—wait!”
“Don’t touch me. It’s filthy.”
He knocked her hand away instantly. This time he stepped through the portal without hesitation and vanished.
Ren collapsed to the floor, staring with unfocused eyes at the completely ruined cake.
This was the full story of how the hero party fell apart.