Father Doesn’t Understand His Daughter’s Heart(4)

I sat down hesitantly on the chair at Iriel’s gesture inviting me to take a seat.

Although I had thought many times in my heart that if I met her I would hit her, in this situation where I was face to face with her right in front of me, there was no way I could carry out that thought.

It was just something I had only thought about, after all.

Since Iriel was essentially the being who sent me to this world, although a myriad of questions were swirling in my head now that I was face to face with her, I couldn’t bring any words to my lips.

[Take your time to organize your thoughts. I have enough time to wait for you.]

Perhaps my eyes were trembling along with these tumultuous thoughts, as Iriel, looking at me, said this with a relaxed smile.

Feeling Iriel’s consideration just from her words, I gently nodded and then organized my thoughts with a light deep breath.

There were really several things I wanted to ask, but the first thing I needed to question right away was naturally the reason why she sent me here.

When I first came here, Iriel said the reason she sent me here was to stop the Human-Demon War.

To stop the Human-Demon War, which was the worst future for her.

At the time I first heard those words, I had let it pass due to the bewilderment of suddenly falling into the world of Formcolor and the reason that seemed to match up in words, but now that time had passed, I had one question.

“Why did you choose me as the one to send to this world?”

Why am I the person sent to this world to stop the Human-Demon War?

If we’re looking for strong people in the game, there are thousands above me who are stronger right away. If we add overseas users too, it would easily be tens of thousands.

Yet with so many strong people, why me out of all of them?

“I’ve only played Formcolor for half a year at most, and I only have five max level characters. So why me? There must have been plenty of people stronger than me.”

If she had truly been looking for someone to stop the Human-Demon War, Iriel should have brought the #1 ranked user here instead of me.

No matter how strong my Aria is, having reached max level and spent a lot of money, she’s only strong within normal limits.

If we compare my strength to the #1 ranked player, there would be at least a 3-fold difference.

In the first place, even though Formcolor is a game that doesn’t induce cash spending, there’s bound to be a difference in strength between a character with 10 million won invested and one with 1 billion won invested.

And to my rapid-fire questions, Iriel, who had been keeping her mouth shut, opened her eyes slowly and answered.

[It’s not a difficult question. If you ask why I chose you, the reason is obvious. It’s because you were the ideal person I was looking for.]

“Ideal?”

I unconsciously murmured at Iriel’s words.

It’s not that I didn’t know what the word “ideal” meant. The reason I murmured was that I thought that word “ideal” didn’t suit me at all.

But perhaps my thoughts were completely revealed on my face, as Iriel tapped the table with her finger and said:

[You look like you don’t understand.]

“Of course, because there’s no way someone like me could be an ideal.”

[Why is that?]

“It’s obvious. I have desire for wealth as a human, sexual desire, and desire to show off. In other words, I’m no different from ordinary people, so there’s no way I could be an ideal, right?”

I couldn’t imagine becoming someone’s ideal no matter how I thought about it.

Even if someone saw me in a good light, I’m no different from an ordinary person A at best.

I’m just an ordinary person who liked to do what I wanted to do, earn money, and play games.

For someone like me to be the ideal Iriel was looking for? I shook my head at these words that I could assert were absolutely nonsense, but to my words, Iriel raised the corners of her mouth as if she had expected this.

[The ideal person I’m looking for isn’t just someone kind and pure. The ideal person I was looking for is someone who knows how to cherish the people of our world. I thought such a person would be most suitable to bring to this world, so I was looking for one.]

“Are you saying that person is me?”

[Yes, out of the tens of millions of people enjoying what you call a game in our world… you were the closest to this ideal of mine.]

Someone who knows how to cherish the game. As Iriel revealed that this was her ideal, I looked at her silently for a moment.

More precisely, I fell into thought while looking at her.

‘Cherishing the game…’

Certainly, it’s true that I enjoyed Formcolor a lot.

I enjoyed it so much that on the first day I played, I got completely absorbed in Formcolor and stayed up for 3 nights straight with caffeine, and even after pushing myself like that, I still played over 12 hours every day without fail.

On top of that, I didn’t neglect even the design of each individual character and gave them everything I could possibly give.

However, I didn’t hesitate to run dungeons with all my characters every day, use stamina to the extreme, and do death-respawn starts. Can this really be said to be cherishing them?

As I was falling into deep contemplation thinking such thoughts, what pulled me out of my impending contemplation was Iriel’s firm exclamation.

[Gods never lie. Especially for me, who oversees choices, lies are absolutely not allowed. And you may think you pushed your characters excessively, but that’s the same for other people too. However, among them, only you thought of the characters as living beings.]

“In what way?”

[There are many reasons I could give to that question, but just now, didn’t you refer to your characters as five ‘people’ rather than five ‘units’?]

You called your characters with a term for counting people, not objects. Iriel said this and smiled brightly at me.

As if she was truly happy, a bright smile.

A smile so bright that even I, who had been half-doubting, was made to think “Is that so?”

However, before I could nod unconsciously at that smile, Iriel erased her smile with a snap and lowered her gaze.

[But I still feel guilty that the mistake I made after bringing you here ruined you. And the reason I called you here today is to get rid of my guilt.]

As Iriel erased her smile, the air around suddenly changed color.

And Iriel chewed over her words about guilt several times, then raised her lowered eyes and met my gaze.

A gaze that seemed to pierce through me, the human inside Aria, is transmitted through the eyes.

I swallowed an uncomfortable breath at Iriel’s gaze that seemed to turn my insides upside down with just her eyes, but the next moment, Iriel’s words that were uttered:

Were enough to pierce through Aria and stab my heart.

[You still think this world is a game.]

The outside after Aria entered the library to look for the students said to be inside.

Watching over Idea who was face down on the ground with her hands and feet bound by handcuffs and shackles, Mu did not take her wary eyes off her for even a moment.

Mu glaring at Idea without wavering even a bit, though 30 full minutes had passed since Aria went in.

And at Mu’s gaze that seemed like it would stab her to death, Idea shrugged her shoulders while face down and said:

“Hey~ You’ve been looking only at me for 30 minutes now, aren’t your eyes hurting? Don’t you play or rest even for a moment?”

“Of course not… Big sister’s words are absolute…”

Mu herself had received orders from Aria to keep watch over Idea.

It is the duty of a homunculus to obey and follow their master’s words as an ordered tool.

And for Mu, who longed for Aria’s praise after properly completing the order like this, there was absolutely no thought of taking her eyes off Idea.

Only by properly completing the order would she be able to receive praise from Aria, from mother.

Perhaps Mu’s will was felt through her eyes. Idea, who had spoken playfully, let out a deep sigh and clacked her jaw.

“Really, your vigilance is so extreme that I can’t even see a chance to escape. And I can’t use curses because of these things.”

“It’s better to just be caught quietly… Your little sister is here too, after all…”

“……”

At Mu’s words about her little sister, Idea’s eyebrows twitched for a moment.

It was a movement that clearly showed emotional fluctuation, anger even, but Mu continued to look at Idea with the same vigilance as before.

This was because she knew that even if Idea tried to use curses by burning with anger, she wouldn’t be able to break the sealing tool Mu had created.

Although she was doing this now because she had received orders from Aria to be vigilant and watch, Mu had confidence in the magic she had cast.

After all, her current body was Mother Meiyel’s body.

Mu was confident that magic cast with Mother Meiyel’s body would absolutely not be broken by Idea.

There were only two ways to escape from these handcuffs and shackles.

Either Mu herself, the caster, directly releases them, or life ends and the magic power and demon energy in the body disappear.

Therefore, Mu just stared at Idea vigilantly with a relaxed expression.

Idea seemed to be quite angry at the mention of her little sister, now not just twitching her eyebrows but struggling with her hands and feet.

But of course, the handcuffs and shackles were immovable. Far from coming loose, they didn’t even show signs of cracking, and Idea seemed to realize this too, as she soon stopped her useless resistance.

“Ah, really, they’re too solid~”

Then Idea muttered to herself in a playful tone again, as if she had hidden her anger from just now somewhere.

Idea muttering and whining. The end part was so small that it didn’t reach Mu’s ears, but soon after stopping her muttering, Idea went limp.

“Looks like she’s finally given up…”

She’s really persistent. Mu added, still fixing her gaze on Idea who had gone limp like a powerless fish.

Like that, 1 minute passed.

3 minutes.

5 minutes…

“…?”

And it was just as 8 minutes had passed that Mu felt something was strange.

Like a flickering light bulb, the sealing tools binding Idea’s hands and feet repeated becoming translucent and reappearing, and the fishy smell of blood lingered at the tip of her nose.

Not the musty smell of blood soaked into the floor, but the smell of fresh blood.

At this, Mu felt something was off and got up from where she was sitting to approach Idea.

It wasn’t even ten steps, but her steps gradually quickened with an uneasy heart.

“Hey…!”

Mu arrived at Idea with quick steps as if someone was pushing her from behind, and called out to her as she turned over the body that had been face down.

“Hey…?”

Idea’s body, turned over by Mu’s hands, had already become a cold lump of meat.

Grab──

“Gotcha~!”

And the next moment, that lump of meat returned to being a demon again, grabbing Mu’s arm with a terrible smile.

Like the Demon King.