The Consequences of Aggro (3)
I hate NTR.
No.
To be precise, I was closer to despising it with every fiber of my being.
And of all things, Four Crowns was a game that forced monogamy on you — the player could only pursue one romantic interest at a time.
Which meant…
No matter which playthrough you ran, you had to pick a single heroine to romance and carry the story forward. Every heroine you didn't choose was waiting for a nightmare of a disposal ending — murdered, married off to someone else, or sold away.
Take the name I'd just heard, for example: Burgeng Yuntoa.
That bastard must have read Romeo and Juliet a little too hard as a kid, because he was a complete lunatic who would do anything — anything — to claim Novena Altdorf, the young lady of a rival house.
The fact that he'd picked a fight with me?
Well, I had no idea why, but the world was crawling with deranged nobles drunk on their own sense of divine right. It wasn't exactly rare. For all I knew, I'd already made some kind of mistake since transmigrating into this world — so an unreasonable situation like that was something I could shrug off and ignore.
But!
Novena.
Novena was the one person I would not hand over!
No — not just her.
I had zero intention of letting a single heroine slip out of my wild, lily-white, rose-pink harem.
Damn this game! Damn the developers!
The creators were clearly hardcore NTR enthusiasts. That was the only explanation for forcing players to sit through those grotesque disposal endings.
Sick bastards!
But now that the game's forced systems were gone — now that Four Crowns had become reality — monogamy was off the table. I could pioneer the Grand Harem King route and keep every heroine at once!
That happy future.
For the day I would wake up surrounded by the people I loved, skin against skin with countless women—
I clenched my teeth.
I steeled my resolve.
I was going to start taking this seriously.
How was I going to properly wreck that guy?
Raising my stats was a given, of course. And since he'd dared to come at me and made Novena uncomfortable, I wouldn't be satisfied until I watched him suffer.
But first—
"…Thank you."
Meeting the eyes of Novena, who stood silently at my side, I offered a quiet word of gratitude.
Her cheeks flushed pink all over again, and she turned her head away with a carefully casual air.
"Heh. You don't have to get all embarrassed."
"I-If you've got time to spout that crap, walk faster. Because of you, I'm gonna be late to class too."
At last, I felt like I'd come back into the game — even just a little.
After that, Novena guided me all the way to the lecture hall like a knight escorting her charge, taking my arm to support me and matching her pace to mine with unexpected kindness.
—Rattle.
And so we arrived at the classroom.
"…Novena. Adera. You're late — come in at once."
"I-I'm sorry!"
Even under the professor's pointed look, Novena walked in without hesitation and returned to her seat.
Sitting beside her was a blond young man who could have been called a golden sun — and my mood soured on the spot.
Of all people… that prince had a romance route with Novena too. Just thinking about it was enough to piss me off.
Haa.
Not that I had any excuse to wedge myself between them right now, and I couldn't exactly walk over and kill him on the spot either.
And that wasn't the only problem.
Standing there blankly without a seat of my own, I started drawing the professor's gaze — and the irritated stares of the other students as well.
Look, I would have sat down in a heartbeat if I could just find my seat.
But with nothing left of my memories, I couldn't casually drop into any of the seats divided so cleanly among the four powers.
What was this, a game of capture-the-territory?
Facing the front: upper left for the Kingdom and Empire students, upper right for the Holy Kingdom, lower left for the reds, lower right for the fascists.
"…."
Wow. Where the hell am I supposed to sit?
Am I… actually an outcast?
No — even so, I'd attended classes for a week before the attack, introduced myself, made friends. Surely I'd managed at least one?
"Adera! Over here."
"Whew."
Thankfully, it seemed I did have a friend after all.
A quiet call from someone. Without hesitation, I hurried toward the voice and found an empty seat.
Except this was…
The reds' section. The Republic kids' corner.
"Long time no see! Are you feeling better?"
"Celia. We're in the middle of a lecture."
"Yes'm."
…I really needed to start thinking about how to recover my memories.
Wandering around knowing nothing wasn't doing me any favors either. I couldn't even remember where I lived — I'd been sleeping rough. I couldn't keep starving like this forever.
More than anything, if I was going to save the heroines and handle the crises barreling toward us one after another, I needed to conserve my strength and secure a reliable base of operations.
I needed to find an illusion mage.
"…Furthermore, this week's practical exercises have been cancelled."
"Professor, I have a question."
While my thoughts kept spinning, the lecture marched steadily on.
"If we don't do the practicals, how will this week's performance scores be calculated? Will they be replaced by lecture grades?"
Apparently the decision had been made to cancel all off-campus practical activities because of the attack that had killed the protagonist.
Setting aside the fact that the protagonist had been murdered, everything was unfolding without a single deviation from the future I knew — pure game-story progression.
"I was about to explain that as well. You will be deployed this week for the upcoming suppression operation. This time it will not be group work, but a large-scale activity organized by class and platoon. Further details will be announced once the plan is finalized."
So there was no real need to listen more carefully.
I already knew exactly how the rest of the lecture would go.
Still… the professor had been looking at me with a strangely pointed gaze for a while now.
…Surely I hadn't been marked already?
"All of you, manage yourselves carefully. That is all."
"Huuuuh…."
After a grueling three-hour lecture, the students immediately began pairing off in twos and threes and filing out of the classroom for lunch.
A few of them, having brought bread, simply stayed put and started eating right there at their desks.
And in the middle of all that—
I, who had not a single friend to my name, was spared loneliness thanks to Celia, who had made room for me at her side.
"Seriously, aren't they all going too far? What did our Adera even do wrong for them to glare like that?"
"R-Right?"
She kept up a staring contest with the other students, whose red-tinged eyes were fixed on me, and kept talking.
"Nobody explained the situation to you, did they, Adera? I don't know why that noble — Novena — brought you here, but it's not like you two are close enough for her to fill you in on everything."
"Mm…."
Uh. But.
I'm not exactly close with you either…?
Who even are you?
Whether she sensed my inner monologue or not, Celia kept closing the distance with an almost alarming level of friendliness.
"About what happened Saturday in the plaza. Our Adera was just trying to stop the fight, right? It was a little intense, sure, but you did it with good intentions. Right?"
"Y-Yeah, right?"
What on earth was she building up to, dragging this out like this?
I nodded on reflex and answered, then flicked a glance at Novena, who was still sitting in her seat, still in the classroom.
…Did she have something left to do?
Don't tell me — she wasn't waiting for me, was she?
"And people started spreading weird rumors over it. That our Adera was actually in league with the terrorists, that you made the situation worse on purpose, that you moved with some political agenda — that kind of thing."
Well, that was some creatively unhinged nonsense.
Suddenly Celia's story had my full attention.
"So?"
"Ah, right. So about that…"
Startled by my sudden, direct response, Celia flinched for a moment — then went on, carefully, piece by piece.
"It's the same rumor everywhere. At least the kids from our Republic — 'everyone is equal' and all that — don't buy into it as easily, but…"
The explanation was long, but simple.
The actions I'd taken in the plaza to save everyone — to save the heroines I cared about — had been so extreme that people now believed I'd declared the entire student body potential murderers and terrorists.
"That's completely ridiculous…"
"Exactly! So our Adera, for a while, don't go around alone. Be careful. Everyone's keeping quiet about it, but there are a lot of people looking for a chance to 'teach you your place.'"
Why were there so many people drowning in persecution complexes?
As expected — this world was not right in the head.
Their logic was, quite literally, simple logic.
Something like this:
The Kingdom is not behind the terrorists.
So they stepped forward to root out the real culprits.
Then I showed up and said, essentially, Weren't you just going to end this with force? — and shredded their pride.
Because of that, instead of catching the culprit, every faction lost the chance to investigate, lost face, and started distrusting one another.
And that… was somehow my fault?
It was such a baseless accusation that the words rose on their own — the kind of paranoid delusion only a complete lunatic would entertain.
And yet, on another level, it also made a twisted kind of sense.
This world was a blend of the modern and the medieval. People enjoyed the fruits of civilization, but the people enjoying them were still stuck in the Middle Ages.
Among them, of course, were radicals who put their own faction and their own kind first above all else.
And the main story of Four Crowns itself was built on the horrific terrorism and endless wars that erupted from those radicals' tantrums.
So in the end…
Stripping away the filter: they hated me for getting in the way of their slimy little schemes. That was about it, wasn't it?
"Hah! Hilarious. Really."
"Adera? Wh-What's wrong?"
Startled by my sudden laugh — or maybe, just maybe, captivated by my beautiful smile — Celia showed clear fluster.
She seemed to feel some kind of closeness toward me.
I was genuinely sorry to say it, but even her behavior left me feeling like I was talking to a complete stranger.
And something about looking into Celia's eyes made my skin crawl and sent a chill down my spine. The whole thing felt… off.
"No, it's nothing. Thanks for telling me."
"U-Uh… so what about lunch?"
"Sorry. I've got things to do."
Leaving a visibly disappointed Celia behind, I walked out of the classroom without a second thought.
There was a lot to prepare before the duel.
First priority: recovering the memories of this body.