The Savior Confirmed
"Y-you know the future?"
"Of course I do. You can see it all with those eyes of yours."
I gave the corner of my eye a couple of playful taps and grinned. Bianca stared straight through me, her Dragon Eyes blazing bright as she sought to confirm it once more.
"I'm telling you, it's real."
"How? How can this possibly be the truth?"
Bianca asked, looking at me as if the very idea were absurd. Shock and disbelief filled every line of her face.
"Because I'm the most important person who will save this world."
That, too, was the truth.
"Wh... who in the world are you...?"
Bianca stammered, her Dragon Eyes flaring even brighter.
"President. Please, calm down. That 'truth' just now might only be a truth that applies to that one man alone."
Rebecca looked shaken as well, but she kept her composure and pointed out the loophole to Bianca.
She was right. What the Dragon Eyes revealed was my truth — and that left room for a certain amount of wiggle. But what about this?
"I've already killed the king of the demons once. The Demon King."
"What the fuck?!"
Rebecca spat out a curse. She dismissed it as complete nonsense and turned to Bianca, but—
"I-it's real... That man... everything he's saying is nothing but the truth, Rebecca..."
Tears rolled down Bianca's cheeks as she gazed at me, her face overflowing with emotion.
"President! That doesn't even make—!"
Rebecca's words died in her throat. The Dragon Eyes never told a lie.
"You... just what are you?"
Even Rebecca seemed to have decided to accept the facts. She asked me with a look of utter defeat.
"I already told you. I'm the most important person for saving this world."
That's right. In other words — a Player.
"All right, then. Let's talk about the trials headed our way."
I hopped down from where I'd been perched and walked over to Rebecca and Bianca.
"I look forward to working with you."
Then I flashed them a dashing smile and held out my hand.
Bianca. In Ero Ability Shooters, she was the beautiful heroine with blonde hair and blue eyes, and the feature that stood out above all else was her chest. Players on the community boards worshipped those swaying H-cup breasts and dubbed her the Blonde Dairy Cow. And as if a generous bust came with a generous heart, she was kind, warm, and overflowing with maternal affection.
The way to capture this perfect heroine was simple: wield more influence than Bianca herself. Why that worked became obvious the moment you looked closely at her personality. Blessed with extraordinary talent and a gentle heart, Bianca treated self-sacrifice as a given. With Dragon Eyes that could grasp every scrap of information, she understood better than anyone how precarious this world truly was — and so she believed that dedicating herself to it was her duty.
Never mind that Bianca was just a student like anyone else. She wanted to hang out with her friends. She wanted to sprawl out and take a lazy nap. She wanted to window-shop for pretty things and enjoy a little peace. Bianca longed for that kind of ordinary life more than anything — but because her abilities were simply too outstanding, she kept herself locked down and worked herself to the bone for the world's sake. That was the kind of heroine she was.
The one who could lift that burden from her shoulders was a Player who surpassed her. After surviving countless trials and devouring every stroke of fortune along the way, if the Player looked Bianca in the eye and chose the line "You can rest now," she fell for him on the spot.
Yes — that capture only became possible after countless scenarios had already come and gone. But this Hell Mode was crawling with too many variables to wait that long. If a girl with Dragon Eyes joined me from the earliest scenarios, those variables would shrink dramatically. So why on earth would I leave her sitting on the sidelines? This was reality now. The choices didn't split into neat little routes the way they did in the game.
I already carried the fact that I had killed the Demon King three times across Easy, Normal, and Hard Mode — and the fact that I knew this world's future. That alone meant Bianca had no choice but to fall for me starting from the second scenario, right at the very beginning.
"Savior. Savior. Then... are you a regressor?"
Bianca slipped her arm through my right one and pressed her chest firmly against me. I sucked in a breath. That soft, overflowing swell against my elbow was a sensation straight out of heaven.
"Mm... I'm not a regressor, exactly, but I suppose you could say it's something similar?"
I'd cleared Hard Mode and crossed over into this world, so from their point of view, maybe I really was a regressor.
"Wooow~"
Bianca's eyes sparkled as she pressed herself even closer, and the surface area against my arm grew that much larger. Oh, holy hell. I'd expected to earn some goodwill from her, but I hadn't imagined the favor would run this deep. Now that Bianca had accepted that I knew the future and had killed the Demon King, she was wearing her affection right out in the open — skinship and all, without the slightest hesitation.
"How? How did you kill the Demon King?"
"Hah. Well now."
I stood up from the picnic mat, pressed a hand to the scabbard at my hip, and struck a dashing pose.
"With this sword. I cut him down in a single stroke. Heh."
"Kyaaaa!"
Bianca squealed and dissolved into delighted giggles, for all the world like a girl who'd just spotted her favorite idol. Damn, her reactions were fantastic. Maybe it really was true that a big chest came with a warm heart.
"President, perhaps we should start discussing the Otherworld he mentioned..."
That was when Rebecca cut in, utterly tone-deaf.
"Tsk."
It had been the perfect moment, too. There was always someone like that, wasn't there? Someone with absolutely no sense of timing.
"Aww... you're right..."
Bianca looked up at me, reluctant to let the moment go. I had already laid out the outline of the second scenario for her and Rebecca, back when they'd first accepted my truth — that within a week, or at most a month, this academy would be swallowed into the Otherworld, and that the only way out was to smash every last window.
Blink. Bianca squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, and those blue irises ignited into burning gold. She frowned in concentration for a moment. Then she blinked once more, and her eyes returned to blue.
"I just checked the information on the Otherworld one more time. Breaking the windows in advance won't stop it from happening."
Well, that would have been too cheap a clear.
"A space large enough to swallow this entire academy was probably converted into the Otherworld at least two months ago. So even if we smash the windows now, nothing on that side will change."
Damn it. So the scenario had been set up two months in advance? Typical Dragon Eyes. Information I never could have gotten on my own just kept pouring out of her.
"Which means there are two ways to stop this Otherworld."
Bianca held up two fingers.
"The first is to find the 'condition' required to enter the Otherworld — the same way breaking the windows is the condition for getting out — and destroy that."
She folded one finger down, the gesture almost cute, and went on.
"The second is to catch the caster who planned this Otherworld and kill them."
"Nnngh..."
Both conditions sounded brutal. Which meant that making Class 1-5 wipe down every window in the school had been completely pointless. Sorry, Class 1-5.
"Still, with this much information, we should be able to eliminate the damage from the Otherworld entirely."
"For real?"
She could pin down both of those conditions for certain? Dragon Eyes really were something else!
"We just tell every student that school is on break for a month, starting three days from now, to be safe. Then we take our time looking. There shouldn't be any casualties at all, don't you think?"
"Th-that would work?"
"Yes."
Bianca smiled softly.
"My mother is the principal, you see. And my family is the one that founded this academy."
Blood ties for the win. The strongest ability of all — even greater than Dragon Eyes. I never imagined there'd be an option as simple as just don't come to school. Recruiting Bianca really had been the best decision I'd ever made. I could have cried.
Ding-dong-ding-dong~!
The bright, unmistakable chime of the lunch bell rang through the campus. Unfortunately, that meant it was time to head back to class.
"Ah, I should get going! Thanks for the help."
"Not at all, Savior."
Bianca smiled faintly.
"Would you be able to have lunch with us tomorrow?"
"Sure, I'd like that."
"Kyaaa!"
Bianca lit up at my answer. So this was what it felt like to be a popular guy? A smug little sense of superiority came bubbling up inside me.
"If anything comes up, just text me."
"Yes, Savior~!"
I needed to get back to the classroom in a hurry. Class started in five minutes. I hopped lightly off the heater unit behind the rooftop, landed on the ground below, and strode into Class 1-5 — my hardworking homeroom, who'd spent the entire lunch period laboring away.
"Everyone! Great work out there!"
I clapped as I walked in. The entire class shot me looks of pure, unholy resentment, as if to say and just where the hell were you?
Hey, I didn't do all that for my own sake — it was for you guys! Not that it had ended up meaning anything... But the intention was good, so that counted, right?!
"Excuse me! Where exactly were you while the rest of us were cleaning?"
Violet shot to her feet from the front row and glared daggers at me.
"Working diligently. For this class. For this academy."
I was innocent. Don't glare at a man who'd been busting his ass to stop the Otherworld. I loved these people, damn it!
Faced with my utterly shameless gaze, Violet let out a long, exasperated sigh and flopped back into her seat.
"I shouldn't even try to understand..."
She grumbled and glared, but that kind of thing couldn't touch me. Haha! I'd actually been working, after all!
I walked past my staring classmates and made my way over to my beloved desk partner and class vice rep, Alice.
"Alice, you find anything?"
"Mm... not really? The window on the far left of the second floor is a little dirtier than the others? That's about it."
Yeah. Figured. Making everyone inspect the windows really had been a waste of time.
I pulled out my chair with a scrape and sat down beside her. Alice studied me with an odd look, then slowly leaned in.
"Jojun."
"H-huh?"
Those catlike eyes narrowed into sharp slits as she closed the distance — and then she started sniffing my right arm.
"Which bitch was it?"
"H-huh?"
"I said, which bitch."
"Wait, what are you—"
Alice's small hands seized me by the collar. She looked up at me with smiling eyes and spoke, soft and even.
"I won't say it twice. Who. Was. It?"
Her eyes were smiling. The thing glittering in her pupils was not smiling at all. There was no getting out of this one. I had to talk.
"Th-the Student Council President!"
"Why did you meet her?"
Alice-nim's next question arrived in that same quiet, measured tone.
"There's a huge incident about to blow up, so I went to get some advice on how to handle it!"
"For real?"
She leaned in even closer, her face nearly touching mine. Oh, hell. It was an unbearably lovely face — but right now she might as well have been a little demon. Still... this unfamiliar expression of hers might actually have been cute?
"I said, for real?"
The truth was that recruiting Bianca as a heroine had been part of the plan, but saying that right now felt like a death sentence, so I went with a crisp, "Yes, ma'am!"
Alice-nim's hands slipped from my collar.
"I'll believe you, Jojun."
She smiled sweetly and gave the front of my shirt a gentle pat, right where she'd been gripping it a second ago.
Yeah. This was a problem. Alice clearly had a pretty serious possessive streak. That was going to make things messy with all the heroines still to come...
Another issue, freshly added to the pile. But this was a pretty adorable version of Alice in its own right, wasn't it? If she was that obsessed, didn't that just mean she liked me that much? It'd work itself out somehow. Haha!
And with that thoroughly irresponsible thought, I let the whole thing slide. It'd work out. One way or another.