30. Return

I stamped my feet on the ground in sheer indignation.

My mouth was still huffing with outrage, but my legs were already carrying me toward the red portal. The side I’d taken that hit on earlier throbbed and tingled.

If I don’t get treatment, I’ll die.

And there was no treatment to be had here, so I was riding the portal back.

“No idea.”

That’s what I said, 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!!”

A roar echoed out of the darkness, far off beyond the collapsed corridor. 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. He’d taken his time, but he’d apparently worked through the terror that had been swallowing him.

“Nah. 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?”

Had history run its original course, Beron and the prisoners would all have died with their blood sucked 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 swapped out a bad ending for a happy one before leaving.

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

“Eat well, live well, knife-ear.”

Whoosh—!

The reek of blood and the screams were sucked away into the white light.

“Peek-a-boo?”

The instant my eyes opened, my whole vision was Rose’s face, leaning in so close it was actually 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 her face away with my hand. “I got lucky.”

I was sitting in a wheelchair. When I shifted around a little I felt slightly stiff, but otherwise fine. I looked around, and Valerian and Elli were nowhere to be seen, so they must have made it back to reality ahead of me.

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

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

“Guess nobody as stupidly lucky as me ever came along.” I jerked my chin at the red book she was clutching tightly to her chest: The Red Saintess, Astraea. “Anyway, everything I did is written down in there, in detail, isn’t it?”

But I’d assumed completely wrong. Rose’s face crumpled into a pout, and she flung the book open, showed it to me and pointed a finger at one specific section. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be seeing, so I read the part 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-and-death fight I’d just been through had been summed up in extremely brief, dry prose. The process was stripped out, and only the result was left on 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?!”

Her eyes were glittering 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’d be like this, I would’ve just gone in with you myself!”

She flicked her staff, snap!

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Hundreds of books cascaded out of midair like a sudden downpour, then drifted around me, flipping their own pages open. Page after page of dense print thrust itself in front of my eyes, like wild beasts with their maws gaping wide. And in Rose’s gaze burned a read it right now or I’ll lose it killing intent.

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

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

She was so overcome that she was streaming holographic tears as she gushed her review, and I couldn’t deny it either. It had only been a brief read, yet the prose was so overwhelming that the battlefield rose up vividly before my eyes.

This wasn’t a mere record. It was literature.

The moment admiration showed on my face, Rose tipped her nose triumphantly up 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 very nearly pierced the sky.

“I’ll grant you that — your writing chops are something else.”
“Right?” Smug now, Rose spun around me on her broom in lazy circles. “So with standards this high—!”

Her face crumpled all at once, and she lunged it up to mine.

“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?! What trick got him through the blood-armor with its physical resistance?! There isn’t a single line describing the thrilling back-and-forth of that fight!”

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

Ah, so that was it. Her own bar was too high, and a summary like that 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, without missing a single particle? For example…

If something like that had been written down, I wouldn’t be hailed as a successful candidate of the Trial of Wisdom. I’d be treated as a monster from who knows where and dragged to the stake, for all I knew.

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, they get forcibly censored out?

That would 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, playing coy.

“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.

But for me this reaction made her easy prey, so I tossed another teaser to the witch who was about to lose her mind.

“Want me to tell you?”

“Yes!!! Please! Just give me one solid description! No — even just one line, 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 keep business and personal separate here. Speaking purely objectively…” She made an X with her two hands. “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 fail.”
“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.

As you can see, what I was running here was a shakedown. But to her, it would be more savage and lethal than any physical violence.

“Don’t tell me you’re trying 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 way it felt in my hands… 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, as if an earthquake were rolling through them.

Time for the killing blow.

“Come to think of it, I can just take the trial again next time. Forget the memory of failing 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 empty space, like a stamp being pressed, and from the empty air a sheet of antique-looking parchment slid into existence, sprinkling golden dust as it came. It was a flashy entrance, like that of a tome of secret arts permitted only to those who had earned the right.

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

Unfurl, unfurl, unfurl—.

The scroll unrolled with every intent of reaching the floor, and it 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 just from reading it. This wasn’t a certificate of passing. It was practically the preface to an epic saga. And in a game, if the quest text runs past three lines, skipping it is the unwritten law.

“Well? 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 her off 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 all the unnecessary sentences. A gamer’s eyes don’t see ornate rhetorical flourishes. Only the reward I’m getting and the result actually matter.

“So, to summarize this in one line.” I snapped my fingers, snap.

Eve, who had been 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?”