Did I Look Like a Pushover?
Did I look like a fucking pushover?
“What? Who the hell is supposed to apologize to who? Have you all lost your goddamn minds? You wanna die?”
“……!!!”
It had been about three years since I first met Werther. Excluding Cynthia and Leonhart, the rest of the party members had been with him from the moment they joined. So what kind of person did they think he was?
From the very first day, he was the one who took on all the dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs. He was the kind of guy who would step up and say he’d handle the dishes, the cleaning, carrying the luggage—anything others didn’t want to do—just to be useful to the party. A good-natured, naive person who couldn’t even say a harsh word to anyone. In a way, he seemed like a fool who only ever got the short end of the stick… That was the impression they had of Werther.
At least, in all that time, Werther had never once gotten angry at the party members. Not even once.
“These motherfuckers. I was just going to disappear quietly, but they had to come find me and piss me off. You really wanna go at it? What? Apologize? Did you seriously think I’d go, ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry, great Hero~ Oh mighty comrades~ Please just forgive me this once~’?”
Of course, living, eating, and sleeping together for three years meant there were bound to be a few small arguments. But somehow, Werther had always been the one to step back and show consideration for the party. It was like a manager carefully avoiding upsetting the singer right before a concert, or a coach trying to boost a player’s morale in the locker room before a match. He chose harmony over conflict because these people were the vanguard that had to fight the Demon King. He had looked after their mental state so they wouldn’t get upset.
Of course, all that effort had been in vain. The party had never once fought the Demon King.
“I seriously want to kill every last one of these bastards. Fuck. What a bunch of dogs.”
Werther’s rage was a completely foreign experience for the party members. No, it wasn’t just foreign—they had literally never seen him like this before. It was the first time they had ever heard curses come out of his mouth. So naturally, everyone was thrown into a panic.
A single bead of cold sweat trickled down Theresa’s cheek—the very person who had directly demanded he apologize.
“Hey, Theresa. What exactly am I supposed to apologize for? Go on, tell me. I’m listening.”
“W-well… The Hero is the one chosen by the gods, the hope of humanity. So beating and humiliating such a Hero… at the very least, an apology is necessary… isn’t it…?”
“You crazy bitch.”
The curse flew out without hesitation. Werther strode forward and jabbed a finger viciously at Theresa. His fingertip nearly touched the bridge of her nose.
“Hope of humanity? Yeah, sure. Only the Hero can kill the Demon King, right? But does that fucking idiot even have what it takes to get near the Demon King? In your eyes? A party that makes the porter tank even a single goblin—what kind of ‘hope of humanity’ is that, you lunatics? You’re nothing more than the Emperor’s political tools. At best, you’re just a vigilante group helping with safe patrols in Lydorphia. That’s it. Hope of humanity my ass. Even retired knights with nothing better to do could manage that much.”
“Th-that’s too harsh. Just think about how many of the Demon King’s army we’ve slain. The legendary defeat of the Four Heavenly King Bael has even become history taught in schools—”
“Don’t you dare mention Bael in front of me. I’ll really kill you.”
Theresa swallowed dryly. Suddenly, she remembered the extent of the injuries Werther had suffered back then—injuries that even her full arsenal of healing magic couldn’t touch. Just how brutally had Bael tortured him that it took Werther two whole months to recover?
…She had forgotten. All this time, they had only thought that they had defeated Bael through their own strength. They had completely, utterly forgotten how much pain Werther had endured.
Theresa suddenly realized something strange. As a Saint, one of her duties included hearing confessions, and her comrades often came to her for counseling. The Hero who trembled in fear at the thought of fighting. Cynthia, who complained that her relationships never went the way she wanted. Sharon, who felt alienated as the only elf among humans. Jeanne, who doubted she could ever become a proper knight and showed her weak side…
But strangely, she had never once heard Werther’s confession.
Only once had she asked him—someone who didn’t seem particularly devout—why he fought. He had given a short answer: “To meet my little sister,” and refused to speak any further.
Maybe he had his own circumstances too. Only now did that thought occur to her. No human could be without loneliness, pain, or worries, yet Werther had never once voiced such things. So they had simply assumed he was fine.
“…………”
“Got something to say? Huh!!!”
“N-no, I don’t.”
A powerful conviction that pressing any further would only make things worse. Theresa became as mute as if she had swallowed a whole jar of honey in front of Werther.
“Don’t back down, Theresa! That man is a traitor who betrayed our lord’s grace!”
“Grace? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“In our lord’s name, I shall punish you!”
“Try it, bitch.”
“Huh?”
Jeanne, who had charged at me with the clear intent to cut me down, had her sword snatched away with ridiculous ease and stood there with a dumb look on her face. She probably thought I had used some kind of magic, but no. I simply overpowered her with raw strength and took it.
So why was Jeanne, the party’s main combatant and a knight, so much weaker than me?
The answer was simple. This bitch was originally so pathetic she shouldn’t have even been able to become a knight. A crybaby, a weakling, a self-pitying, self-loathing loser. After somehow joining the party, she had grown rapidly because her compatibility with my skills was good. That was all. Now that the skills were gone, she had simply returned to the pathetic Jeanne of old—a complete idiot who got utterly crushed even by an ordinary man like me.
“Wh-what are you doing? Give me back my sword!”
“What grace did I ever receive from that bastard? Tell me.”
“G-give me back my sword… Werther.”
“I said tell me!!”
“Kyaaaaaack!!”
I grabbed Jeanne by the back of her neck and slammed her face into the fountain. The oh-so-noble knight flailed desperately to escape, but the difference in strength was overwhelming. Bubbles rose to the surface from her frantic breathing, and Jeanne frantically slapped at my thigh. It wasn’t an attack—it was clearly a plea of save me.
Theresa looked like she wanted to say something and raised her hand, but eventually gave up and lowered her head.
“Gurgle… gurgle…”
“You wanna drown like this?”
“!!!!”
Jeanne desperately tugged at my pants leg. Guess she didn’t want to die. Fine, I’ll pull her out for now.
“Pwah!!”
“Speak, Jeanne. What grace did I receive? From that son of a bitch?”
“Huu…!! Uhh…!!”
“Can’t talk? Want another swim?”
“I was wrong! I was wrong!!”
I had only made the motion of grabbing her neck again, but she immediately switched to formal speech. The terror on her face was obvious. She looked like a teenager getting shaken down by gangsters.
“Please stop now… I-I was wrong…”
In truth, this pathetic side was Jeanne’s real nature. It made me lose any desire to keep tormenting her.
“W-Werther… That’s too much… W-we’re friends, aren’t we? We’re all the same friends…”
“Friends? Fucking friends?”
“W-Werther…”
The elf bitch was pissing me off again.
“Friends my ass. When I was getting the shit beaten out of me by monsters, you bastards were just sitting in the back roasting meat and leisurely analyzing the situation. Those are your friends? Then when I was being tortured by Bael, you weren’t my friends, so you all just went off on a new adventure by yourselves, huh?”
“Th-that’s… because Bael was too strong, we thought you must have died…”
“Then since I’m apparently too strong, it’d be fine if I killed Jeanne here, right? You can just go off on another new adventure.”
“Hic.”
A frightened whimper escaped from Jeanne.
“Th-that’s not what I meant! We’ve been comrades adventuring together for a long time, so saying you’ll kill someone… And please stop swearing. It doesn’t suit you, Werther.”
“What? Then what does suit me? Being your damn servant, carrying all your luggage and getting treated like a pack mule? Tanking for you, getting my teeth knocked out, eyes gouged, nose broken, limbs severed—that’s what suits me?”
“…………”
Suddenly, the sorrow exploded out of me. The Rune of Immortality only prevented death. It didn’t erase the pain.
“Did any of you ever think about how much it hurt? Have you ever had your neck snapped by a demon? Had your fingernails pulled out one by one? Do you know the despair of having both eyeballs ripped out and not being able to see anything? And while that was happening, your so-called comrades were standing in the back planning their next move—do you know that feeling of isolation?”
“……….”
“Let me ask you something. Am I really your comrade? In my opinion, you can’t treat a comrade like this. If it were me, I would have been worried and helped. But you didn’t. Why? Because you thought it was only natural for me to get beaten half to death and destroyed. To you, that was my role. Isn’t that right?”
“Even so, that was something you agreed to! Don’t act like a victim now!”
The Hero bastard, who had been quietly listening, finally cut in. Leonhart, whose face was still swollen and bruised from my earlier beating, looked quite a sight. The guy really knew how to earn a beating.
“That’s right. But what did I say back then? Didn’t I beg on my hands and knees, ‘I’ll tank, so please let’s defeat the Demon King. Please, let’s head east to the Demon Continent’? Didn’t I bow at the waist and ask very politely? But now we’re at the far western end of the continent? Like you said, we’ve been traveling for a damn long time. But we haven’t even gotten close to the Demon Continent. We’ve just been circling the country farthest from it. How are you going to explain that?”
“The one who decides our course is me, the Hero. A mere porter dares to—”
“Exactly! You fucking idiot.”
I drove an uppercut into his stomach. Then a left hook and a knee strike slammed into his face. I heard the sound of his cheekbone shattering.
“In the end, because of you, three years have passed and we haven’t even seen the Demon King’s shadow. What are you going to do about it? What the fuck are you going to do, you bastard!”
“Th-that’s nonsense! Urk! Why am I the one getting beaten by you… ugh!”
“You don’t train at all and then act like this, you pathetic piece of shit.”
The party members could only watch helplessly as the porter beat the Hero. It wasn’t just that Werther’s rage was too terrifying to intervene… It was more that they simply couldn’t understand what was happening.
‘Why can’t the Hero even fight back?’
Everyone had silently acknowledged that the Hero was a coward, even if they never said it out loud. But they didn’t think he was actually weak. At the very least, they believed he was far stronger than Werther.
So why was Werther one-sidedly beating the Hero?
The way Jeanne’s attack had been neutralized earlier was the same. It was truly incomprehensible. The Hero was getting hit so hard his facial structure was changing.
“S-stop!! Stop it!!”
“What is it, Saint Theresa? You skipped the healing magic when it was me, but now that the Hero’s getting beaten you’re all worked up?”
“It’s true that we took your sacrifices for granted and failed to keep our promises. For that… we are sorry.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“B-but we’ve been steadily growing stronger, and we’re still young, aren’t we? In just three years we’ve become several times stronger, so in ten or twenty years we’ll surely be able to defeat the Demon King! Then your wish will come true too, so why are you in such a hurry? Beating the Hero now is the wrong choice. It’s like extinguishing the very flame that could light up the future, all because of your impatience! We all share the same desire to eliminate the Demon King. So please forgive us and let’s go on another adventure together.”
“The flame’s already gone out.”
“…What?”
“I said the flame’s already gone out. You goddamn pieces of shit… You really are the worst. I told you so many times to hurry up and kill him… You fucking bastards.”
Werther stopped the beating. Instead, he began to cry.
That sight delivered yet another shock to the party members.
Werther… was crying?
Had he ever done that before? Even when he had been captured by Bael, he hadn’t shed a single tear. And now he was crying.
The atmosphere in the plaza sank even deeper.
Werther spoke like a man who had given up on life entirely.
“My little sister… the one who says she won’t even eat if I’m not there… What are you going to do about her…? What the hell are you going to do!!”