Chapter 60. I'll Kill You!!
Chapter 60. I'll Kill You!!
For me, relationships with women were a means to an end.
Hunted by humanity, I couldn't ask them for help. And the Demon King's army was a cutthroat place where even allies stabbed each other in the back—I couldn't count on them for safety either.
To survive, I had to do whatever it took, and the surest method of all was violating a woman's body.
The physical intimacy shared between a man and a woman inevitably leaves a deep mark on the heart, no matter how little they remember of it.
There had been times when what bloomed from that was love—but that was only ever on their side.
I simply acted out what they wanted. Desperately, to survive. Desperately, always desperately, to hide my true heart from them.
So for someone like me, stumbling upon a young elf far too innocent for the world and doing what I did—I couldn't help but feel differently about it.
Because it was the first time I'd ever slept with a woman on a whim, just to clear my head.
"......Hah."
It was still too early for sunrise.
I poured water from the pitcher in the inn room and stood there staring out the window, the cup held to my lips.
The forest city stretched out beneath the dark sky. The night air had grown cold, brushing against my skin. As the lukewarm water slid down my throat, the heavy weight in my chest lightened a little.
My vision cleared just as I let out the breath I'd been holding to expel that murkiness.
The moment the sun began to show itself over the faint mountains towering beyond the horizon, I started gathering my clothes and gear to handle what I'd planned.
Right. It was about time to head back.
"......Where are you... going?"
A faint voice called out from the bed.
I turned to look and saw Heira, whom I'd left lying on the bed, rubbing her sleepy eyes.
She was awake already, even though dawn was still far off.
Had she broken the hypnosis on her own?
......No, the power was still in effect.
I'd simply given her autonomy because I didn't need the hypnosis to be that strong. She might retain her ego, but that was about it.
"I have to leave now."
I was honest with her.
I could have ignored her and left, but I didn't feel like it. Not that it mattered, since I was going to erase her memories anyway.
"......With you."
But before I could even say a proper goodbye, Heira pulled herself upright in bed.
"I'm going, with you."
She walked toward me, not a shred of shame on her face despite not wearing a single stitch of clothing.
Dragging her body, utterly exhausted from the long night's acts.
"......You want to come with me?"
I couldn't understand the behavior and asked again. She gave me a silent nod, looking up at me.
With that very small body of hers, and eyes that held no malice when they looked at me.
"......."
Well, at the very least.
She must not have thought our earlier acts were so bad.
Even though her consciousness was bound, I hadn't seized her heart that strongly. So this version of her, right now, was likely her true self.
"Is there nowhere for you to go back to?"
The young elf Heira.
She held absolutely no ill will toward me.
I could tell without even ordering her to speak her true feelings. Just by facing her like this, I knew her words weren't a lie.
"Yeah. I've been wandering alone."
"How long have you been on your own?"
"Fifty years."
Fifty years. That was almost twice my entire lifespan spent in solitude.
Elves and their sense of time really were too detached from humans; that was the problem.
"And I only came down from the mountain... six months ago."
But her time in human society wasn't all that long compared to her life.
I didn't know why an elf, who largely stayed in the Great Forest, would talk about a 'mountain' and sneak into this city disguised as a human, but—
"But doing something like that with a person... it was my first time, so......"
Because I'd given her the first real experience in whatever life she was trying to start, she was now exerting her will to follow after me.
Maybe because it didn't feel bad, and she thought she could learn more. Or maybe there was some reason I couldn't even imagine.......
"......Just forget about today."
As it happened, my position meant I couldn't live up to her expectations.
No—I absolutely couldn't.
"Forget...?"
"Just chalk it up to bad luck."
I'd approached her purely out of my own selfish desire.
If I'd left her alone, other men might have gotten to her, sure. But in the end, the one who took her first just happened to be me instead of someone else—that was all it was.
Anyone could figure out that following the guy who stole your unwanted first time and used your innocence to drag you into pleasure was a mistake.
"Don't go......."
Despite that, Heira grabbed onto the collar of my clothes as I tried to push her away, trying to follow behind me.
"......Don't go."
Just repeating the same words.
Was the reason she couldn't give any other excuse because she knew her actions were wrong?
"......It hurt the first time, right?"
"Yes, but it felt......"
"The guy who kept going even when you were in that much pain—was me. I just used you, that's all."
I pushed the cold logic onto her to stop her from following.
"I simply used you."
Yeah. Saying the wrong was okay because it felt good in the end—that was a rapist's hackneyed logic.
I was no different from those bastards. The only difference was that I erased the awful memory and wiped out every trace that I was ever there.
"...I don't care about that."
Even as I tried to make her face that fact, Heira wouldn't let go of my collar.
"Stay with me."
Now it was just stubbornness, a way to hold onto me even if that was all it was.
Yeah, it was closer to desperation than reason.
For whatever reason, she'd given me her heart and seemed to have decided she wanted to stay with the person she'd given it to.
"......You must have your circumstances."
But as I thought, I wasn't in any position to answer those feelings.
"Still, just let this meeting end as a coincidence. Just......"
"......No."
"Because forgetting all about it is better for both of us."
I placed my hand on her head, and the instant I exerted my power, Heira's body swayed.
Soon, her memories would be erased. I caught her body in my arms, laid her back down on the bed, and quietly prepared to slip out of the room.
"Don't go......."
I left behind the muttered laments of a woman who had lived a full century yet still held a girl's heart— fighting against the sleep crashing back down to voice her sorrow.
"Being alone... I don't want that anymore......."
Leaving her by herself, I shut the door and stepped into the chilly streets to return to my original path.
Hoping that she, who had enjoyed her first time with me, would write today off as nothing more than a pleasant dream.
Hoping she would forget it like that.
***
Right. There was something I had to do now.
On the surface, it was acting as a grunt for the Demon King's army and collecting core intelligence on humanity.
But that goal probably meant absolutely nothing to that damn bitch.
She was likely spending every day like a festival now that she didn't have a secretary meddling in everything she said.
And the 'Anti-Human Coalition,' the faction I belonged to, would surely become her plaything after my dismissal, bending to her every whim. That was infuriating.
The one place I thought I could stay—hounded as I was by both humanity and the Demon King's army—becoming a toy for that godforsaken whore who saw humans as worse than dogs... that was something I absolutely had to stop.
Not right now, maybe. But in the distant future, before something truly irreversible happened.
"......A letter?"
When I returned to the base for that purpose, I spotted an envelope in the mansion's mailbox.
Stamped inside was the crest I'd glimpsed on letters before. The one Berdia used to prove her identity.
Come to think of it, Serika was the only one who'd returned to the base.
Berdia had said she had something to take care of in the royal capital. Checking the letter's contents confirmed she'd likely be away longer than planned.
[His Majesty has personally tasked me with a mission, so I will be away a while longer. I shall write down what Serika needs to do while I'm gone. Ensure she accomplishes these objectives before I return.]
I skimmed through to see what these so-called objectives were.......
Whoa. She was assigning some seriously grueling stuff.
Well, I guess even a rookie hero has to handle this much. Given her expected growth rate, she'd unleash enough power to kill an officer within a year....... Or maybe even less than that.
"The timeline might accelerate faster than I thought."
Yes. The more the hero grew, the sooner the time would come to kill that whore.
Making a mental note of that, I clutched the letter and prepared to step into the mansion.
To discuss the tasks Serika and Ymir needed to grow.......
-BOOM!!!
...Wait a second.
What was that noise?
-Crash!
In that instant, a shadow burst through with a violent shattering of glass. I flinched and stiffened up, but the figure paid me no mind, glaring daggers at whoever was inside the building.
"......Ymir?"
It was Ymir.
And the one she was pulling mana into her hands to hold off.......
"You—I'll kill you!!!!"
Was Serika, charging in with a furious roar from the wreckage of the mansion's interior.
...Shit. What the hell happened between those two while I was gone?