Sir, Do Not Cross That River.

Inside Kim Han’s consciousness.

As if the gods were watching the representative’s movements, what Kim Han saw and heard was being displayed like a movie on one side of the hut.

And accordingly, the five heroes ‘enjoyed’ the screen while eating popcorn and cola, no one knew where they had gotten them.

“Just as I thought! There’s something about Kim Han’s punching! Something you can’t explain in words! Look, it’s different from the fist-fighting of that brutishly rampaging boy over there, isn’t it?”

The one who marveled without fail yesterday, today, and probably tomorrow too was one of the five heroes known as ‘Holy Touch.’ Her class was priest.

A beauty clad in pure white sacred vestments and wearing a holy tiara on her head, she was an action fanatic and martial-arts fanatic who, incongruously, loved rousing action movies.

“Huh?”

Holy Touch, who had been watching with great excitement, suddenly sprang to her feet. Because the screen—Kim Han’s field of vision—had gone dark.

The five heroes almost simultaneously felt the strange sense of incongruity creeping into Kim Han’s consciousness world.

“We did get a heads-up from Sophia, but who would have thought something like this would really happen.”

Holy Touch muttered in a pitying tone as she left the hut.

Once outside the hut, the five heroes could spot a middle-aged man with skin so pale it was nearly gray, glancing around with a lecherous grin.

The bastard, having just spotted the five heroes as they appeared after opening the hut door, asked loudly in surprise.

“Who the hell are you!”

“You lunatic. This is our home, and you’re the one who broke in! That’s our line to say! You idiot!”

As expected, the hero who shouted in anger was Holy Touch, who claimed to be Kim Han’s fan.

Her manner of lecturing, dressed and posed like a pure white nurse, was so overpowering that even the tyrant who had invaded Kim Han’s mental world flinched and stepped back.

“Who are you?”

“What? You? Did you just call this body, the emperor of the empire, ‘you’?”

“Be grateful I didn’t call you ‘you bastard.’ More importantly, who are you?”

“Grr!! How dare you!! How dare you! You filthy lesser spirit!!”

The tyrant concluded that the five beings in Kim Han’s consciousness world were ghosts.

That was partly because the five heroes existed as spirit bodies, and partly because, by the tyrant’s judgment, they didn’t seem to possess great power.

Unlike when he fought Kim Han, here in the consciousness world the tyrant clearly showed a different side. At his will, the energy trembled with a rumbling sound, and even the surrounding scenery warped.

“What a load of crap, idiot.”

Pffft—

It’s ‘pffft.’ Not ‘whoosh.’ What sound am I talking about? The sound of the tyrant’s raised aura vanishing like a candle before the wind.

The laughter of the five heroes mocking the tyrant’s bewildered expression followed.

That only made the tyrant even angrier. Unheard-of lowly things dared to mock him. He thought it impossible.

Wasn’t he the one whom everyone feared in life, and who, after rising again, was revered by the Archlich, Elder Death Knight, and Skeleton King?

Though he had been defeated by a monstrous human, he had ultimately succeeded in entering the consciousness world. He didn’t know what it would be like outside, but in this mental world, he was confident he would lose to no one.

‘I am the emperor!’

Around the tyrant, energy takes on form. In this mental world, where consciousness rules, one can even cause natural disasters through imagination, will, and mental strength.

When the imperial palace and the capital became lands of death, many parties came claiming they would deal with him.

Now they had all become undead, but back then he had taken over their living bodies as if it were a game.

Crack— crack—

A series of bone-breaking sounds rang out, and the tyrant’s body began to grow larger and larger.

The tyrant’s body, grown immensely huge, now had a single finger bigger than the five heroes.

“Whew~! Big, huh. A pig’s bladder or something? Why’re you puffing yourself up like that, you idiot!”

If it were up to Holy Touch’s personality, she would already have smashed him to bits and made him vanish. Not only had he invaded Kim Han’s mind, the annoyance from the video she had been enjoying being cut off by a sudden blackout(?) was still lingering.

And if the cause of that blackout was the idiot in front of her? Staying alive was a miracle.

She was only keeping him alive because the opinion Sophia had suggested was reasonable.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t torment him. She couldn’t kill him, but conversely, as long as she didn’t kill him, that was fine.

“Now… here I go?”

Holy Touch issued a warning in a coaxing voice. All the while, she thought of herself as such a kind and feminine woman.

And then she lifted her dainty little foot. Compared to the vastly enlarged tyrant, Holy Touch’s tiny foot, no bigger than an ant’s, came down on the tyrant’s instep.

Crunch—

“Huh? …Aaaaaaaaaaah!!”

A giant—no, the tyrant had grown so huge he could be mistaken for a god’s incarnation. Even looking up from below, his towering height had no visible end.

And he was screaming that he was being trampled to death by Holy Touch’s tiny foot.

Some might call it exaggeration. But if they saw the instep the tyrant was clutching, those words would vanish.

A gigantic, enormous foot. A pit as deep as its size had formed. On the instep, that is.

“Aaaagh!! H-how!!”

“You brat, quit whining.”

A rough, coarse way of speaking spilled out, completely unlike Holy Touch’s appearance.

Since he was a spirit body, he should be able to recover, but the tyrant wasn’t doing so. No, he couldn’t. Along with the immense pain, no matter how hard he struggled, the grotesquely dented wound where Holy Touch had stepped did not heal.

That was proof that her attack, simple to the point of absurdity, was special.

“First, since it’s hard to look up at you, let’s shrink that size down.”

Holy Touch, casually uttering the sound of growth plates closing without the slightest guilt, lightly leapt up and daintily struck the tyrant’s knee.

Crunch—

“Aaaaaah!!”

“Hyah! Hyah-hyah!”

Snap— thwack—! Crunch—! Thud-thud—! Crunch—!

“U-uaaah!! Aaaahhhhh!! Aaaagh!!”

In front of the quiet hut on the green meadow, the horrifying sounds of bones breaking and flesh bursting, along with the frail woman’s battle cries and the tyrant’s shrill screams, continued without end, forming a strange melody.

The tyrant, who had been a giant, was forcibly made smaller. To be precise, his body had been torn to shreds and broken apart, scattered everywhere, with only his head left in front of the hut…

Though I say ‘only the head,’ the head itself was enormous. Holy Touch sat on it as if it were a chair, her two feet dangling in the air.

“You brute of a woman.”

Unbothered by Cry of the Sword’s biting assessment, she hummed and vigorously pedaled her legs in the air.

Just looking at her like that, you couldn’t imagine that she had been laughing while tearing the tyrant’s limbs apart moments ago.

Even now, if not for the tyrant’s body parts scattered all around, one would think it was a mistake.

Holy Touch, humming to herself in leisurely fashion, suddenly stopped pedaling. Her face lit up as she sprang down from the tyrant’s head.

“He’s here!!”

She raised her voice and greeted him, looking in one direction. A blurry figure wavered where she was looking, and then Kim Han appeared.

“Welcome!”

“Yes. Hello, Holy Touch. But…”

When Kim Han noticed the head behind Holy Touch—one even larger than her own height—he cautiously asked what it was.

Then she smiled pure and bright, tapped the tyrant’s head lightly, and answered like this.

“A training scarecrow? In the words of your dimension, Kim Han, a sandbag?”

“Pardon?”

The moment I lost consciousness, my first thought was that I was fainting too often, and that I had been far too complacent.

After fainting and before opening my eyes, the strange condition of remaining conscious continued. I already knew from experience what this was. It was the process of entering the consciousness world.

In the meantime, I thought about the complacency I would never have shown in my previous life. The reason was obvious. I had become too strong.

In my previous life, it was no exaggeration to say each day was for survival. Even after reaching Seven Stars, I still had to struggle to stay alive.

This life was different. It was the complete opposite. I had gotten to the point where I could guide spar with Frey and look down on Violentia.

It’s easy. Everything is so easy that I often indulge in the luxury of carelessness, something unbefitting the freak star Kim Han.

‘Being strong is a problem too. Tsk. I’ll have to think it over on the way back.’

Gradually, my surroundings brightened, and when I opened my eyes, I was inside the familiar consciousness world, with the five heroes out to meet me.

But the scenery around me was a little strange.

It was only after Holy Touch greeted me as usual that I realized what was strange. Unidentifiable lumps were packed all around.

A bizarre, grotesque sight.

Wasn’t that thing visible behind Holy Touch at a glance like a human head? Though it was a little too big.

So I asked what it was, and Holy Touch nonchalantly defined it as a sandbag.

“That thing?”

This woman sometimes gives me as much shock and terror as Naruan does. Especially her macho-holic tendencies really are creepy at times.

“Mm-hmm. Look at this, it makes a perfect target for me to hit… Huh?”

Something that had been a gigantic head twitched. The sight looked extremely familiar.

“The tyrant?”

Right. It was the same form the tyrant I had just fought took when transforming into me. Then that black smoke must have been this…

I thought he was really an unlucky bastard. Of all places, why here…

It was like running from a wolf only to find yourself in a place where a cannibal had gone hungry for ten days and was clutching his starving stomach.

What’s more, that technique he’s using now—no, that power. It’s a power that has already tasted blood by mimicking me.

As time passed, I felt like I’d be able to tell who he had copied.

‘Hey, hey, don’t do that…’

When the squirming tyrant stopped squirming, I had no choice but to turn my head.

“Grr! You bitch!! I’ll kill you!!”

The tyrant had turned into Holy Touch. No, I should say he had copied her appearance.

The five heroes were unimpressed by the sight.

“What, is this that imitator bastard’s power?”

“What are you talking about? You tore that pervert apart and killed him yourself, you bitch.”

I couldn’t easily follow the conversation between Holy Touch and Cry of the Sword. An imitator? Tore him apart and killed him? A priest?

“Then what is this?”

“Why are you asking me! Deal with it quickly. Two female macho freaks is a disaster.”

“Hmph!!”

Crunch— crunch—

The sound of bones breaking resumed. But this time it was different.

The tyrant, having copied Holy Touch’s ability, could use her Healing art within the consciousness world.

“Wahahaha! Die, bitch!!”

The tyrant burst into wild laughter, proud of his own form.

The tyrant, watching his body recover in an instant with satisfaction, threw a confident punch.

He had no doubt that the woman before him would soon writhe in pain just as he had moments ago. In the consciousness world, he was the strongest.

Tick—

“Hm?”

This wasn’t right. There should clearly have been a brisk sound like ‘crunch!’ or ‘snap!’ But instead, this pitifully weak gesture?

“You’re weaker than the imitator? The imitator was exactly like me, right? What, did you only mimic the Healing power?”

“…Wh-what!!”

“Now that I look at it, this is a thoroughly stuffed sandbag, isn’t it? Worried it might burst, so it even mimics the Healing power. Good! I like you! Let’s start with a performance test!”

Crunch— crack—! Thud-thud—! Crunch!!

“Aaagh!! Aaaagh!! Aagh!!”

The scene was extremely bizarre. At the fist blows of one of the twins who had the same face, arms broke and legs dangled.

The one being hit naturally screamed in agony, while the one doing the beating smiled happily.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

The struck side’s body quickly restored itself. It recovered cleanly, as if someone had pressed Ctrl+Z.

It was so fast that by the time the broken arm and dangling leg were seen, they had already reattached properly.

“Ah… she’s gone crazy after all this time. Looks like she won’t be easy to stop.”

“Leave her be. How are you supposed to stop that? Mr. Kim Han, let’s go inside.”

In response to Cry of the Sword’s concern, the Disturber of Rest shook his head, came over to me, and linked arms with me.

Feeling the touch of a full bosom, I moved toward the hut in this truly ideal mental world.

The beautiful tyrant kept screaming at the top of her lungs until the hut door closed.

“That’s why I told you not to cross that river…”