Tyrant.

Catch the audience off guard. If the twist succeeds, you’ll hear shrieks of laughter, cheers, and applause.

—From the godfather of comedy, from Autobiography of Ridicule.

“……”

An uncomfortable, awkward silence settles in.

I can feel the members quietly edging away from me, as if saying with their whole bodies, ‘We don’t know each other.’

“Y-you dare! How dare you!! You dare mock me! N-no more! No more mercy. Attack!”

Perhaps only now realizing he’d been mocked, he roars like a snarling beast and orders the doppelgangers to attack.

Be that as it may, seeing my own face spit out, ‘Do you dare insult me!’ makes me want to beat him to death. My hands and feet curled so badly it felt like my hands were about to disappear.

Meanwhile, the members began fighting the doppelgangers surrounding them.

Naruan against the Naruans.

Hazel against the Hazels.

Lee Hyo-ju against the Lee Hyo-jus.

And—

Arun against a whole horde of Aruns.

“Aaaah!!”

The battle began with Arun’s shriek.

Since they looked identical, helping someone else wasn’t easy. So the way to help the members was simply to deal with the doppelganger wearing your own face.

And just like that, the battle with the doppelgangers bearing their own faces began in earnest.

The four Naruans were in a frenzy.

The four Naruans ran here and there, and their ‘heeheeheehee!’ laughter came at me like a quartet.

I thought then: what a relief, that there’s only one Naruan.

In the end, the battle didn’t last as long as I had expected.

Crucially, the Naruans couldn’t match the combat sense of the Naruan who had absorbed the soul stone of the battle fiend.

The difference between the genuine and the fake isn’t something whose value shows only in luxury bags.

The unquenchable flame of ‘True Flame.’

The moment Naruan brought it out, the Naruans burned away all too hollowly.

“Geez, Naruan’s weak.”

The Naruan battle ended first, with Naruan saying out loud that Naruan was weak, then tilting his head and biting a finger as if something felt off.

The showdown between Proy and the Proys was brutal.

Proy had almost none of those special powers bestowed by the gods. He was someone who had reached this point entirely through his own strength.

On top of that, his skill ‘Training’ wasn’t even ‘Ex’ rank, so all four doppelgangers had a high chance of copying ‘Training’ and turning into human zombies.

‘Of course, the level would be different.’

Proy is all fists. The martial star of his previous life used a sword, but the Proy of now uses both fists and his whole body as weapons.

“Hup!”

Proy hurriedly dodged. The ‘Proy’ plunged down where he had just been standing.

Kuuung—thud thud—

Three Proys dropped in sequence, turning the hall floor into a mess. Three. Then where was the remaining one?

“Keh!”

The ‘Proy’ who had approached from behind hurled himself at Proy, his fist wrapped in a heavy aura, aiming for Proy’s spine.

Thwump—!

Instead of the expected crash, there was the dull sound of something being caught.

The startled ‘Proy’ turned to find Proy smiling faintly as he gripped his arm. The moment the two identical faces met eye to eye.

Kuuung—

The fake ‘Proy’ smashed the floor with his back and was half-buried.

It didn’t end there. He lifted the half-buried ‘Proy’ and used him like a shield to block the ‘Proys’ charging at him.

Thuk—thwack! Pwoook—

The ‘Proy’ had become a rag. And the ‘Proys’ came rushing in, tearing at the bodies of their own kind. It was like a scene from a sci-fi movie where robots swarm in hordes.

“Hahaha! Good! Come at me!!”

Laughing like a textbook macho old man, Proy continued the dogfight without a hint of pretense.

If he used the function of the gauntlet Proy was wearing right now, this would have been over already, but as if he’d forgotten it even had such a function, he became engrossed in the dogfight.

If the clash between Proy and the ‘Proys’ was an exciting dogfight, the most beautiful and worth watching battle was the fight between the duo of Meo and Mishel and the horde of Meo and Mishels.

Meo and Mishel. Individually, they might not have recognized each other, but they paid it no mind and were slicing through the doppelgangers.

They didn’t know one another by looking closely. They attacked with everything they had every single moment. They even occasionally thrust their swords at each other, but dodged so easily.

By instinct, by intuition.

The two had originally wielded a pair of twin blades. Naturally, the doppelgangers were holding twin blades as well.

In the confined space, so many swords clashed and fell again and again that it was impossible to tell how many times they met in a single instant.

They block, twist, swing, and thrust by instinct, not technique.

A dozen or so swords collide and vanish as they dance wildly. It is truly a riotous dance.

It is as dazzling and beautiful as a rapid display of flowers blooming and falling.

“Ja-ryong.”

“Gyaa?”

Ja-ryong’s voice was full of sulking. I patted its head and placed the recording crystal orb in Ja-ryong’s hand.

Then Ja-ryong looked at me with bright eyes, a whole load of question marks floating above its head.

“Use this to go up there and film for me. So I can show the old men later.”

“Gyaa!”

Maybe because I’d given it an interesting task, Ja-ryong nodded firmly and fluttered its wings up to the hall ceiling.

With a serious expression, as if a seasoned photographic artist waiting for sunrise, it devoted itself to filming with the communication crystal.

“Oh my! Hoho.”

“Hohoho.”

Meanwhile, Lee Hyo-ju and Hazel, having finished their fight, were at a loss for how cute Ja-ryong looked, and Naruan came over too, waving enthusiastically at Ja-ryong.

Like children who spot a TV camera and crowd around to enthusiastically make V signs with their fingers.

“Is it over?”

“Yes.”

“Hoho, of course.”

“Mm-hmm!”

Starting with the three women, they began to return one by one.

While the tyrant, still mumbling to himself, was lost in thought, the only member still engrossed in battle was Arun.

If it wasn’t ‘Ex’ rank, it could be copied. The reason Arun was having such a hard time was the ten mid-tier water spirits that had suddenly appeared.

It was Arun’s own summons of the mid-tier water spirits for his own convenience that caused the trouble.

The doppelgangers also summoned mid-tier water spirits all at once, and began combining their efforts to block Arun’s specialty, water magic.

Given Arun’s nature as a battle mage, he was moving violently all over the place, to the point that at a glance it was no longer possible to tell who was Arun and who was the doppelganger.

“Ugh! Help me!”

“Help me!”

“I’m Arun!”

“No, it’s me!!”

The Aruns kept saying to help them nonstop even while flinging magic. Whether the original or the doppelganger, they’re equally stupid, aren’t they?

“Mr. Kim Han, what should we do?”

“Help them.”

“How…?”

“Attack them all, but make sure Arun only ends up half dead.”

“What?”

Lee Hyo-ju and the members were shocked. And the eleven Aruns firing magic from one side all objected at once.

“No!!”

Arun really did have perfect chemistry even with such useless bastards.

Shaking my head, I spoke so all the Aruns could hear.

“Transmute.”

“Ah…!”

Only one Arun in particular let out a deflated-sounding gasp of admiration. There was no way the other members wouldn’t have seen it.

The members began to move.

Naruan’s flames burned one Arun to a crisp.

Lee Hyo-ju’s hidden weapons cut two Aruns into sixteen pieces.

Hazel split the space and trapped one Arun.

Proy grabbed one Arun by the nape and dragged him to a corner, then began beating him just short of death.

Cecil’s arrows pierced Arun’s neck, heart, and head.

Inex’s greatsword split Arun in half from the waist.

Ostum’s great saber cut Arun cleanly into two lengthwise.

The moment Hippoly’s halberd danced, Arun’s head fell.

With twenty-one of Liru’s arrows embedded all over Arun’s body and exploding, only one Arun was left.

“Aw, damn it!!”

Even though they helped him, the first thing heard was Arun’s complaint-filled shout, not thanks.

“You guys don’t like me, do you?”

Lee Hyo-ju openly chided him, as if saying he only just realized that now, and most of the members nodded in agreement.

Unexpectedly, only Soria shook her head and gave a timid gesture of denial. Most of the members didn’t see it.

The playful time, more like a prank than a battle, passed, and still unable to come to his senses, the tyrant groaned in my body while endlessly muttering, ‘There are still two days and twenty-two hours left!’

Apparently fed up with the tyrant, who was lost in his own world without a care despite the gazes of seventy-five people, Arun picked up a pillar fragment rolling on the floor and threw it at him.

Thuk—

“Huh? How…?”

Were the words left out after that meant ‘How are you still alive?’ Or did they mean ‘How did this end so quickly?’

The tyrant repeated only the word ‘how’ with a visibly flustered face. As I’ve said before, that’s my face.

Seeing such a dazed expression on my face suddenly reminded me of my pathetic self in the early days of the Battlefield of the Gods in my previous life.

“Tsk!”

I hurled ‘Predator’ with all the irritation I could spit out.

‘Predator,’ transformed into a short spear, was trembling as it pierced the bastard’s heart, as if it had always been there, just like the hidden weapon Lee Hyo-ju had thrown.

“A-an insignificant commoner… h-how…?”

Thud—

The tyrant fell straight down and did not move. Relief that it was over filled the faces of the Rebound members.

“Get up.”

Both the arch-lich last time and this bastard now—it was impossible for the undead among undead to die this easily.

At the very least, dying from a thrown short spear that hadn’t even been coated with a breaker? Even if it hit near the heart, that made no sense.

“Do you want to live that badly? You even became an emperor…. Tsk tsk.”

Arun’s taunting skills were improving by the day. ‘Predator’ had already slipped out of the bastard’s chest and returned to my hand.

The bastard flinched at Arun’s taunt. Finding the sight ugly and embarrassing even to himself, he sprang up and instead started blasting murderous intent everywhere.

“They say the one who took a dump is the first to complain about the smell, so why are you the one getting mad?”

‘The one who took a dump, what?’

Proverbs and sayings would naturally differ by region and dimension, but that was unmistakably a metaphor only Arun could make. But why was Arun suddenly stepping in to pick a fight with the tyrant?

“You’re suddenly working hard?”

“Of course! When else would I get to curse at Kim Han’s face like this…! Ha, hahahaha.”

So that was it. I knew he was taunting too enthusiastically.

Arun vanished to the very back of the group in an instant and kept mumbling awkwardly while looking this way.

“Y-you bastards, how dare you!! How dare you insult me!!”

Perhaps resentful at not getting attention for a moment, he shouted so loudly that stone chips from the old hall fell pattering down.

And just as it seemed he was being swallowed by mist again, the mist gradually gathered more densely and began forming a round sphere in midair.

“Hm?”

Just as I was about to raise ‘Predator’ and attack at the slight change, it vanished like a snake shedding its skin, leaving only the shell of the ‘other me’ behind.

Before I could even feel curiosity, a mass of black mist was rapidly approaching me.

I swung at it imbued with Deicide, and it seemed to scatter for a moment before covering my face all the same.

“Companion!”

“Kim Han!”

“Boss!!”

“Captain!!”

I heard the members’ voices, and my vision went dark.

As I fainted, a strange thought flashed through my mind: wasn’t I losing consciousness too often lately?