30. Return

I stamped my feet on the ground in pure indignation.

My mouth was still puffing with outrage, but my legs were already carrying me toward the red portal.

The spot where I’d been hit earlier throbbed and tingled.

If I don’t get treatment, I’ll die.

There was no way to get treated here, though, so I figured I’d just ride the portal back.

“No idea.”

I’d said I had no idea, but in all likelihood the trial had failed.

“…I was. Before I found out the Saintess was a demon-worshipper.”

That was when it happened.

“Hey! You crazy bastard!!”

Far off, beyond the collapsed corridor, a roar echoed out of the darkness. It was Beron.

“You didn’t just up and die on me, did you?! Stay right there, don’t move! I’m coming!”

“…Heh.”

A dry laugh slipped out of me. Late as it was, he’d apparently fought his way through the terror that had been swallowing him whole.

“It’s fine. What’s the point of seeing him.”

I turned back toward the portal without a second thought.

“Can’t deny it.”

I shrugged.

“Still — it ended up a much better world than the original history, didn’t it?”

If history had run its original course, Beron and the prisoners would all have died with their blood drained dry.

But now?

The Saintess’s atrocities would come to light, the Blood Lord was gone, and Beron had survived. That was enough; I’d traded a bad ending for a happy one on my way out.

With Beron’s shouting at my back, I threw myself into the red light.

“Eat well, live well, knife-ear.”

Whoosh—!

The stench of blood and the screaming were sucked away into the white light.

“Peek-a-boo?”

The instant my eyes opened, Rose’s face filled my vision, leaning in close enough to be genuinely uncomfortable. Under the brim of her giant conical hat, her purple eyes glittered with curiosity.

“How in the world did you take him down?”

I shoved Rose’s face away with my hand and answered.

“I got lucky.”

I was sitting in a wheelchair. Shifting around a little, I felt a bit stiff, but otherwise fine.

I looked around. Valerian and Elli were nowhere in sight; they must have made it back to reality before me.

“Since when was the Blood Lord in ‘beatable by luck’ territory?”

Rose’s face shoved its way back in. She really was that curious.

“Probably because there wasn’t a guy as stupidly lucky as me before.”

I jerked my chin at the red book Rose was clutching to her chest, The Red Saintess, Astraea.

“Anyway, my whole record’s written in detail in there, isn’t it?”

My assumption missed completely. Rose’s face crumpled into a pout, and she flung the book open to show me. Then she jabbed her finger at one specific section.

Not understanding what I was supposed to be seeing, I read the part she was pointing at out loud.

“He reached the underground altar. There, he saw through the Saintess’s hypocrisy, faced the demon released from its seal — ‘Blood Lord’ — and after a fierce engagement, succeeded in subjugating the demon?”

The desperate, life-or-death fight I’d just survived had been boiled down to a few lines of dry prose. The process was gone; only the result had made it onto the page.

“What is this?”

“Right?! Is this some kind of joke? That’s all there is to it?!”

Rose stamped her feet on the floor in frustration and shouted again.

“‘After a fierce engagement, succeeded’ — that’s the end?! Isn’t the writer guilty of dereliction of duty? All the most important details are missing!”

“Huh?”

“What readers want isn’t the result — it’s the process! The thrill of the blade’s edge grazing skin, the dull crunch when a bone snaps, the catharsis of a comeback blooming up out of despair! How could anyone cut all of that out?!”

Rose’s eyes glittered with mania. Without thinking, I rolled my wheelchair back a step, but she pursued just as relentlessly as I retreated.

“If I’d known it would be like this, I should have just gone in with you!”

She gave her staff a flick.

Snap!

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Then hundreds of books cascaded out of midair like a sudden downpour, drifting around me and flipping their own pages open. Like wild beasts baring their jaws, page after page of dense print thrust itself in front of my eyes.

Rose’s gaze burned with a read it right now or I’ll lose it kind of bloodlust.

Grudgingly, I scanned the page that had been shoved up to my nose.

Reading along beside me, Eve clapped her hands over her mouth.

Eve, overcome with emotion, streamed holographic tears as she gushed her review.

I couldn’t deny it either. Even from that brief read, the prose was so overwhelming that the battlefield rose up vividly before my eyes.

This was no mere record. It was literature.

The moment admiration showed on my face, Rose tipped her nose triumphantly into the air, as if she’d been waiting for it.

“Hmph, finally you get it?”

She crossed her legs on top of her broom and combed her hair back arrogantly.

“You know why House Arne’s history is great? Because the heroes are great? No. It’s because the prose I record it in is insane. Breathing life into a dying history — that’s my role, right there.”

Her pride all but pierced the heavens.

“I’ll grant you that — your writing chops are something else.”

“Right?”

Rose got smug and drifted around me on her broom in lazy circles.

“So given that my standards are this high—!”

Her expression crumpled all at once, and she lunged in close to my face.

“How could a half-assed summary that just says ‘after a fierce engagement, succeeded’ possibly meet my standards?!”

“…”

“How the hell did he dodge that ridiculous AoE?! By what trick did he get through the blood-armor with physical resistance?! There isn’t a single line describing the thrilling back-and-forth of that fight!”

Rose started rolling on the floor again, throwing a tantrum.

Ah, so that was it. Her own bar was set too high, and a summary like mine was simply intolerable to her.

Outwardly I played up a troubled face, but inwardly I let out a deep sigh of relief.

Anyway, that’s a relief.

What would have happened if the book had recorded every single thing I did, exactly as I did it, down to the last particle?

For example…

If something like that had made it onto the page, I wouldn’t be hailed as a successful candidate of the Trial of Wisdom. I’d be branded a monster from parts unknown and dragged to the stake.

Phenomena that the common sense of this world can’t account for.

The word That One the Blood Lord had let slip. The alien sight of his body breaking apart into blue data-particles as it vanished.

Is it that, since these are taboos that can’t be shared with otherworld NPCs, the record automatically censors them out?

That had to be why they couldn’t appear in Rose’s book, the chronicle of this world’s history.

Speculation finished, I said to Rose,

“Trade secret.”

Killer move: index finger to the lips, sly-grin shrug.

“Argh, seriously! I’m dying to know! Tell me!”

Now Rose was clawing at her hair in agony.

Looks like she’s the type who can’t sleep until her curiosity’s been resolved.

For me, though, this reaction was excellent bait. I tossed another teaser to the witch on the verge of losing her mind.

“Want me to tell you?”

“Yes!!! Please! Just give me one solid description! No — even just one of the lines, recite it!”

Rose looked up at me with sparkling eyes and gave my sleeve a gentle little tug.

I deliberately drew out the pause and twisted up one corner of my mouth.

“Before I do — let me ask you one thing.”

“What? Just hurry up and say it, I’m getting dizzy here!”

“What’s the verdict on this trial of mine?”

In an instant, Rose’s expression locked up. She tamped down her excitement, cleared her throat, and slid back into strict-examiner mode.

“Mmm… well, I have to separate the public from the personal here. Speaking purely objectively…”

She crossed her arms in front of her in an X.

“Fail.”

“…Fail?”

“Of course. What was the theme of this trial? ‘Uncover the truth of how Saintess Astraea vanished from history.’ Right?”

Rose tapped the book sharply, pressing the point.

“And yet, far from uncovering the truth, you brute-forced history apart and made up an entirely new ending… well, the outcome was a totally different story, so it was at least entertaining — but I can’t give you a pass.”

That part had been nagging at me too.

Blood Lord was meant to appear as a future raid boss, so the NPCs of this era had been designed with no possible way to defeat him.

And I knocked him out in cleanly satisfying fashion.

“So unfortunately, it’s a no-pass.”

“Oh, is that so?”

The moment her words ended, I clutched the back of my neck, faking severe disappointment.

“Kkrrgh, this is bad. The shock is way too much.”

“…What?”

“Hearing the word fail, my head’s suddenly spinning… how I dodged that absurd AoE, how I cracked through one-hundred-percent-physical-immunity blood-armor…”

I narrowed my eyes and looked at Rose.

“All those memories — feels like the shock is going to wipe them clean.”

“…!”

Rose’s mouth fell open.

What I was running here was, plainly, a shakedown. To her, though, it was a more savage and lethal shakedown than any physical violence.

“Surely — you don’t mean to make a deal out of—”

“A deal! How could you say something so hurtful!”

I made a serious face and waved my hands at her.

“I’m just explaining the fragile state of my mental health! You know — I’m a patient.”

I rolled the wheelchair in place and let out a heavy sigh.

“Haaa… It really was a stunning fight, too. The thrill of slipping into Blood Lord’s openings, the tactile satisfaction… ah, it’s already getting hazy! At this rate, the second I roll out that door I’m going to forget all of it, aren’t I?”

The more I hammed it up, the more her purple eyes shook like an earthquake was rolling through them.

Time for the killing blow.

“Come to think of it, I can just challenge the trial again next time. Forget the failed memories and go in with a fresh heart, fresh mind. Even better!”

I spun the wheelchair without a hint of regret.

Bang—!

A heavy, dull thud rang out in the empty space, like a stamp coming down. From the empty air, a sheet of antique-looking parchment slid into existence, scattering golden dust as it came.

A flashy entrance, like a tome of secret arts permitted only to those who had earned the right.

The problem was that the length of that parchment was not normal.

Unfurl, unfurl, unfurl—.

The scroll, unrolling with every intent of reaching the floor, was packed wall-to-wall with tiny, dense lettering.

“Thou hast faced the false myth of the Red Valley and not been beguiled, and before the bloodstained, blind faith hast preserved a reason sharper than a blade’s edge. Furthermore, before the wave of overwhelming might thou didst not retreat, and exercised the insight to pierce not the shell but the essence of all things… Thou didst unearth a tragedy nearly buried in the back-roads of history, and went so far as to honor the souls of the forgotten…”

My eyes were about to fall out of my head from all the reading. This wasn’t a certificate of passing; it was practically the preface to an epic saga. In a game, when the quest text runs past three lines, skipping it is the unwritten law.

“How is it? The prose is exquisite, isn’t it? Especially that part — ‘reason sharper than a blade’s edge’ — even I think it’s one of my finest…”

“Lady Rose.”

I cut off Rose mid-sentence and pointed at the very bottom of the scroll.

“I appreciate all of the page-by-page praise, but—”

In my head, I mercilessly deleted every unnecessary sentence. A gamer’s eyes don’t register ornate rhetorical flourishes; only the reward I’m getting and the actual result matter.

“So, to summarize this in one line.”

I snapped my fingers.

Snap.

Eve, standing by in midair, caught my intent perfectly and converted Rose’s long-winded panegyric into a clean system window.

Ding—!

A flawless summary, no flab whatsoever.

I smiled with satisfaction and looked at Rose.

“That’s a pass. Right?”