Even So (2)
In truth, I had already set aside the simple question of whether I was trapped in a capsule. No matter what excuse I dragged out, I could no longer deny that my real body should have starved to death by now.
If some outsider had interfered, it was strange they had never logged me out.
"Hey. System?"
I had also long harbored the suspicion that the system might have a backer of its own.
No. That one was older — a doubt that had been with me almost from the beginning.
"Hey?"
The reason was nothing special. It was just a cliché.
Plenty of novels handed you a system, and plenty didn't. I had idly wondered about it from time to time; that was all.
"Hm. Logout."
"Emergency protocol. Force capsule shutdown."
But the suspicion had turned serious the moment I tried logout and the emergency protocol and felt how off the messages were.
Even when a bug popped up, systems didn't usually refuse you in that tone. They said failed, not this.
And then…
"Options. Settings. Graphics. Change resolution to 24K, 18K."
"Frame rate. Change from 240 to 120."
"Field brightness. Lowest."
"Restart from last save point."
When most of the settings spat that same message back at you, even an ordinary person would feel the wrongness.
"Ha."
And that wasn't the only thing that smelled off.
What about skills whose judgments swung back and forth? Detection skills especially. How many times had they only triggered after I was already right on top of something? For a system that was supposed to be consistent, that was a serious error. Sure, this game was riddled with bugs anyway — but still!
On top of that, the criteria for item descriptions popping up were completely arbitrary, and the same went for HP drops. By pure calculation there had been plenty of moments when my HP should have bottomed out and then some, yet it hung on somehow simply because I hadn't checked — and after the things I had been through, I couldn't write that off as pure luck. Anyone who had lived through incidents like mine would feel the dissonance.
"Hey. I'm just asking for a conversation."
Most decisive of all was the skill I had been given this time.
It was so blatant it almost made me laugh — and pretending not to notice any longer was starting to feel just as absurd.
"Just talk to me…"
I let the unanswered request hang there, sighed, and released the tension from my waist. My back met the rock; my head tipped back against it. Salt-crusted, matted hair brushed the stone and crumbled dryly apart. My skin pulled taut, and something gritty clung to it — salt and sand, most likely.
"…"
And yet my clothes, thanks to their restoration ability, were soft and clean. It left me feeling strangely awkward, like a man who hadn't washed and had only changed his shirt. Sometimes that very detail dragged me back toward reality, and sometimes it shoved me away again.
It wasn't important. A faint resignation still closed around my throat like a hand.
"What the hell are you even trying to do?"
As for the system that refused to answer — well. I wasn't sure if I was angry, or if the hollow exhaustion had simply arrived first. Maybe there was no need to tell them apart.
"Being this obvious about it…"
Still. The questions I wanted to ask drifted through my head like debris.
Whether this place was a game or another world.
Why I had been dragged here.
Who had brought me.
What they wanted me to do in this place.
Whether there was any way for me to return to Earth.
I'm angry.
If the system had been consistent — if it had never made me suspect a backer — I would have simply lived with it. Looking for reasons in a reasonless disaster was one of the most pointless things a person could do. And until now I had been fretting that my body in the capsule might starve. In that state I would almost certainly have treated this life as a second chance. There would have been no room for complaint.
I resent everything.
But if there was a cause, that was different.
If someone had deliberately put me into this character — and if something beside me looked like a means of speaking to them…
Then I could not simply accept it. I could not submit.
I — I wanted it back.
This entire world…
The life where I didn't have to act, where the people who knew me were everywhere, where everything was familiar beyond words.
The entire world?
I blinked. An emotion that did not feel like mine vanished in a heartbeat, leaving only a thin sadness. Thump-thump. I thought I heard the pulse of the bead I had stowed in my inventory.
"If. Just if."
Look. Honestly, whether this is a game or reality doesn't matter that much. As long as I can live without dying, either one is fine. If I accept it, illusion becomes real; if I reject it, truth becomes a lie. That's how the world works.
"If I catch Satan and clear the main story…"
But if I get to choose, I'd rather it be a game. Retries would be possible. My heart would sit a little easier. There are advantages all around.
And above all…
"Would I be able to go home then?"
Games shut off when you clear them. Right?
So — so…
"Please. Please."
Tell me it's all right to leave open the possibility that if I see the ending, I can go home. That I won't be disappointed. That I won't despair. That you didn't put up those quests for nothing.
"Even if you're the one who called me here, I won't resent you."
Please. Can't you just answer that much?
Just this one thing is enough.
"…"
I gritted my teeth at the silent system. The right hand that had been gripping my sword rose and pressed cold metal to my brow and the corner of my eye. I couldn't tell whether the chill made me feel more wretched or soothed me. The rising fury dissolved into every curse I knew, then was crushed back down by the last scrap of reason. The edge of my eye burned, then went cold, then lukewarm.
"…System."
From inside the grief I called again to the still-silent system.
Resentment — no. Not yet. Frustration, helplessness, a sense of betrayal, a little anger — but I had not packed resentment into it. Not yet.
I still didn't even know for certain whether the system had a backer, and there was no guarantee it was the one that had brought me here. More than that, the system was my ally and my helper. From the way it handed me skills in dangerous moments, it clearly held at least some goodwill toward me. Turning on something like that because I couldn't master a single surge of feeling would be the height of stupidity.
That much was clear.
And so.
"Damn it. I'll believe there's a reason you won't speak to me directly."
I swallowed every question and every scrap of sorrow and let the strength drain from my body. A drop slid along the outer corner of my eye, past the flesh between eye and ear, around the ear, and down to my throat.
"I'll take it that there's some restriction — that you're not allowed to talk to me, or something like that."
I lowered my hand and opened the eyelids I had briefly closed. The sky was there. A sky drowning in the Milky Way. A world I did not know.
"So please. When I beat this game, let me go home."
I miss home.
The words I couldn't say caught in my throat and made it ache. I wondered how five little letters could choke a person so completely.
I pressed the piercing sorrow down hard and covered my eyes again — so I wouldn't collapse into despair, so I could grow light again. Brooding over a situation I could neither control nor solve would only wreck me.
And the situation wasn't entirely bad.
I was already half-forced by my concept to follow the story anyway. There was nothing else I could do, and nothing else worth doing. So this latest suspicion was only one more possibility layered onto what I would have done regardless: the hope that something tied to the system might send me home when I saw the ending.
"…I should leave room for the chance that it won't."
But I had never liked disappointment, so I counted the bleak endings in advance. The idea that the system even knew a way back was closer to my wishful thinking than to fact.
"My lord. Do you mean to keep resting there?"
Just as I finished settling my mind, Dev approached at the perfect moment. The village had already gone quiet.
"In exchange for handing over some of the supply aid when it arrives, we've been given a house. Why not rest there?"
I fixed my expression. It was night, so he probably couldn't see well — but you never knew.
"No need."
Why did my voice sound like that? I answered without thinking and startled myself with a tone locked tight as a newly bought drink bottle. At least there was no obvious tearfulness in it. Small mercies.
"They say it might rain tonight…"
Ah. That one stung a little.
Dev hadn't noticed anything; good. I set that aside and weighed sleeping under open rain against sleeping under a roof.
I thought hard. No matter how I turned it, the former still seemed right.
The village didn't have that many houses, and our side wasn't a party of a dozen. Even after twenty dead, we still numbered more than fifty. Could people like that split neatly into rooms? The villagers could only spare a handful of houses at best. Absolutely not. We would be packed in like sardines. My concept would never tolerate that!
"Begone."
Ha. If Dev hadn't stacked those misunderstanding points earlier, I might at least have aimed for an eave. Tragic.
"Then at least a blanket…"
"Did you need another ear-hole?"
Dev, please leave. The Demon Knight will sleep with the sound of waves, the sea wind, and raindrops for company rather than get his skull cracked. Sob.
"…Please do come for the meal, at least. The people we sent out hunting are coming back one by one."
I'm not going because of you. Hmph.
"Still talking?"
"It's finished now."
"Is he coming?"
"Not a chance."
I stayed stretched against the rock and kept watching the night sky. There were plenty of clouds, but the moon high overhead was clear enough.
"I heard. You're not sleeping in the village?"
I heard you talking too. So go away, Baramson.
"More to the point, this place is a total mess. Whew. The stench is something else."
Had there been a stench? While I was thinking of other things I had grown so used to the smell that I forgot. This stretch of sea still hadn't recovered from the black dragon's aftermath.
"The mages say it'll take at least a month to get back to normal… It's going to be hard."
Baramson's sentence had no subject, but I understood easily enough. A month. For the villagers, that would be a long time.
"More importantly — aren't you going to check on your companions?"
"Why would I?"
"Because they're your companions…?"
"Those things?"
"Or not. Right — you said you were only moving together temporarily."
He remembered that, did he.
"Then we can leave first thing tomorrow? If they're not companions, there's no need to wait until they recover."
Remembering it wasn't enough — he was already putting it to use.
"You haven't… forgotten the promise, have you?"
I finally understood why Baramson had planted himself in front of me no matter what. I had thought he came to persuade me like Dev; he had come to say this. He had said he was in a hurry, after all.
"Do you want me to forget?"
"Hardly. So we really can go?"
"It makes no difference."
I answered without hesitation. Whether the conditions for departure — ships, provisions — would work out was another matter, but under my concept, refusal had never been an option from the start.
Besides, I had no injuries worth mentioning beyond fatigue, and even the fatigue would sort itself out if I slept on the ship. Leaving immediately was, strictly speaking, fine.
Of course it would be hard on the others. Especially the Inquisitor and the Archmage, who still hadn't woken since collapsing.
"Good. Hold to that."
But that didn't mean I could back out. Concept aside, a whole city hung on the promise. There was a quest too. Baramson had even lost two companions over this business. Breaking my word now would make me trash. My concept was already somewhat trashy, but still.
So I decided the two of them would somehow manage. There was nothing I could do for them anyway.
As for the reward… if it didn't come through, I'd just give up and leave. I didn't need the money that badly. The dragon's corpse was greed talking — I wanted gear made from it — but it wasn't more important than my life. Breaking character would bring a mace down on my head, after all.
And the story… I kept saying I was following it, but I honestly wondered whether a main quest even existed. Wasn't this just a structure where things advanced as long as I smashed whatever quests came to hand and killed time? The direction had diverged so completely from the original that I couldn't predict a single thing anymore.
"We're back."
"Ah. The last hunting party has returned."
At that moment the sailors who had gone out hunting all came back. From the chatter I overheard, the haul was two deer, three rabbits, and one fox.
Baramson headed that way.
"That's all?"
"We did our best, you know."
"What am I supposed to stick this on — somebody's nose?"
One deer produced a fair amount of meat. But with our numbers… with this many mouths, it was never going to be enough.
"We're sea folk."
True enough — most of them were sailors. Fish they might manage; land animals were unfamiliar. Even the deer they had brought back had probably been the work of the adventurers who went with them, not the crew.
"Strip it as clean as you can for now."
"Aye."
Around then I started fiddling with the food in my inventory — biscuits and vegetable powder. Even if I handed it over, it would barely make ten servings. Still better than nothing, maybe.
But how was I supposed to deliver it?
Rustle, rustle.
Should I go toss it at them? Call Dev over and pass it along? I should have thrown it before Baramson left.
While I was fretting, I felt a presence nearby.
"Meat…"
I turned my head a fraction and saw several children. They seemed to be watching the sailors butcher the deer; their ages ran from early to late teens.
"…I'm hungry."
"That's why we came out to peel bark."
"I don't want this."
It was late enough to be nearly dawn, and I had wondered why they were still awake. Apparently the youngest had been so hungry they came looking for something to eat.
"I want meat too…"
"No. Those people caught it."
Right there, I crumbled without resistance.
I hated kids going hungry. Last time we had at least shared meat and gotten to watch them eat; this time we barely had enough for ourselves, so of course we wouldn't be handing any out!
I sat bolt upright.
With my face twisted as far as it would go, I strode toward the place the children were hiding. The dragon's head? It wasn't as if the dragon's head had feet. Leaving it for a little while wouldn't be a problem. Even the mages who might have been the biggest issue had all gone to dreamland.
So it was fine.
"Come on, kids, just hold on a little longer. When morning comes, people from the castle said they'd arrive. They said they'd share food too."
"So from tomorrow we can eat every day?"
"That's…"
"I'm huuungry…"
And the conversation I overheard was heartbreaking. We had traded supplies for a single night's stay, but there wouldn't be much of them. Days, not a month.
"H-hyung."
Then one child succeeded in spotting me. A small hand tugged at the hem of someone larger.
"Huk — we're caught."
"H-he's not mad, is he…?"
The children trembled in frightened voices. Oddly, none of them ran. Not so much courage as pure terror freezing them in place, it looked like.
"Hic!"
I looked at the biggest of them. When our eyes met, the child shook and asked, very carefully, "W-what is it…?"
I tossed over the sack I had just pulled from my inventory. I hadn't portioned it out because I didn't want it taking up space — which, looking at it now, had been an extremely wise decision. Handing out little piles onto open palms one by one would have wrecked the image.
"…? My lord, what are you doing over there?"
"Uh, uh?"
From the far side Dev craned his neck to see what I was up to, while the girl who had suddenly been given a sack only made confused noises. Naturally I offered no explanation.
"And why do you have the kids with you?"
Dev came trotting over. In that brief span the girl had peeked into the sack; her eyes went round as saucers.
"Th-th-this is—"
"What did you give the kid to make her this surpri— eh?"
"F-food. There's food…"
Good. Food delivered.
From here I would cut straight through the village and into the forest. If I searched all night, I'd catch something. Baramson wasn't going to set out in the dark anyway.
"Is it for us?!"
"Did he give it to us?"
"Really? We can eat it?"
"I'm huuungry."
"N-no. Kids! You can't just eat— aah, stop pulling my clothes!"
"My lord— no."
While the girl was mobbed by the children around her, Dev looked at me with an expression that said what the hell did he eat. I wasn't worried about my skull getting cracked, of course. I already had a track record of handing out items I didn't need to people in a hurry. This wasn't much different. In other words: not breaking character!
"…I'll go with you. Honestly. Would it have killed you to come with me earlier?"
"Begone."
"Aw, don't be like that…"
I drew the two-hander in one fluid motion, turned, and drove it into the ground. The blade sank into the dirt just in front of Dev's toes.
"I'm going, I'm going."
For the record, this was to stop him from following me — so he wouldn't end up dumping two more deer on me like last time. It absolutely was not because I was still sour over the demon-possession incident on the ship. Ahem. Anyway, it wasn't.
My legs carried me deeper into the forest.