episode_0011

Something went wrong.

And very firmly too.

I couldn’t understand the situation.

Suddenly going berserk? Didn’t you stop it?

Clearly, both horns were cut off. Very cleanly, without any room for error.

I’ve seen this scene dozens of times in games, so my judgment was definitely correct. If it were normal, it would never have gone berserk.

But eventually the frenzy broke out, and the party was thrown into chaos.

“Warrior, what is this?! Didn’t you say that cutting off the horn would solve the problem without a problem!”

“Of course, it was all a lie! What am I going to do now!”

The sounds of the surrounding party members arguing sound like noise.

As I felt like I was stranded on a deserted island, a memory suddenly crossed my mind.

『Caution! Unexpected variables may intervene during play!』

The last thing I heard before I got hooked on this game.

As I remembered that, I felt a surge of anger rise up in me.

‘이런 개새끼가···.’

I was wondering what the variable was, and it was something like this.

I sensed malice somewhere.

Pure malice, wanting to screw me over somehow.

This wasn’t a simple variable.

In some ways, this is a problem that could have a significant impact on future attack methods.

It wasn’t a word that could simply end with something like a variable.

“Are you okay, warrior? Come to your senses!”

The problem was not small, but there was no time to think about it now.

Because the Minotaur guy is on the verge of going berserk.

I looked at the hand waving menacingly behind me.

I wondered who had pulled me in, and it was Yulysse.

I shook my head a couple of times and then greeted her.

“I came to my senses. Thank you for saving me.”

There were many things to worry about, but now was the time to deal with the immediate problem.

“Warrior! What are you going to do now─”

“Oh, sir, please be quiet while I assess the situation.”

After I got up from my seat, I looked at the guy carefully.

I calm my mind again and force myself to calm my confused head.

I don’t know how they triggered the berserk, but I’ll have to take a look.

[The Demon King and the Hero Party] never gives you an impossible problem.

No matter how difficult or crazy the problem is, there is definitely a way out.

Even though things had come to this point, at least I wanted to believe that it was.

-Goooo···!

I saw two red eyes of a man who had lost his sense of reason and was reeling from madness.

He was originally a guy who acted on instinct, but now he couldn’t even feel a shred of reason.

And the black fog rising in real time from the side…

…black fog?

I tilted my head for a moment.

‘There was no such thing originally?’

The only visible effect when Berserk is activated is a glowing red eye.

There was absolutely no black fog-like effect covering the entire body.

The Minotaur, other monsters, even the Four Heavenly Kings.

There was only one being with such an effect.

Demon King.

The owner of Manma.

A crystallization of the devil that has concentrated the chaos of the world into one place.

‘under.’

As I thought about it, a hollow laugh escaped my lips.

So I was wondering what the hell was going on, and it turns out the Demon King was giving him some power.

The fucking guy was messing around.

It was unexpected, but it was definitely possible given the power he had.

Thanks to that, I was starting to get a feel for what to do.

I muttered quietly to myself as I thought about the game’s setting book.

‘···The horns.’

The guy’s horns don’t just act as a trigger to activate Berserk.

To be precise, the guy’s horns were something that acted as a kind of energy battery.

It collects and condenses any remaining energy into its horns, and detonates them when in danger.

That’s the basic principle of berserk that I figured out after trying hundreds of times. That’s why you have to deal with the horns first.

But the guy used Berserk without any of those extra batteries, simply relying on the power the Demon King had given him.

The power used without the battery was obviously not going to last long.

To put it simply, the guy is currently in a premature state.

If we just hold on, the turn will eventually come back to us.

“···We’re changing the offensive now.”

So I tried to remain calm as I opened my mouth.

Although it was an impromptu deduction based on partial clues, at the moment this hypothesis was the most plausible.

Well then, I guess I should trust my judgment and move forward.

“Saint, please buff as much as possible. Since power is no longer needed, if possible, use blessings that help with defense. Camilla, please help me distract him. Adele, continue with your restraining fire. Lily, instead of attacking magic, please use magic related to defense and control as much as possible.”

“······.”

“···.”

Brief each party member as quickly and simply as possible.

Although everyone had a look of displeasure on their faces, given the circumstances, they seemed to be following my orders for the time being.

That’s fortunate. I was worried that there might be resistance here.

Still curious about what the plan was, Camilla asked with a prickly expression.

“What are you going to do?”

“Looking at it, it’s not normal. There’s no way the berserk light that’s on without horns will last long. ”

“So you’re saying you’ll hold out until he gets tired?”

As expected, she had participated in many operations while living the life of a knight. She was very tough.

I nodded slightly and readjusted my sword.

Now, it was the guy’s turn to rush in.

[Agility increases due to blessing!]

[Blessings increase your reaction speed!]

Knock knock.

I can hear my heart beating loudly inside my body.

Although I was mentally prepared, I couldn’t help but feel nervous.

The first time the guy went berserk and swung his axe, it wasn’t even visible.

Even if it was a sudden blow, it was so fast that it was invisible.

So what is it like now that you’ve received the buff and are ready?

“Coming!”

Fortunately, I was able to react.

As soon as he heard Camilla’s scream, the guy stepped on the ground.

thud!

With a single thud, the guy’s huge body approaches in an instant.

It was a really crazy speed, as if the speed had increased due to the beacon light. It felt like watching a runaway train.

But it was enough to react.

Finally, the one who reached close range with the two warriors swung his axe.

Wheee!

An axe that carries an enormous amount of mass and swings down quickly from above.

I had an instinctive intuition.

‘If you block it, you lose.’

Considering the guy’s brute strength, this wasn’t the kind of attack that could be blocked at all.

The saintess also knows that, so she probably gave buffs mainly to agility and reflexes.

I immediately twisted my body and rolled over to the side.

bang-!!

And at the same time, the sound of the ground bursting is heard.

The ground shattered by the double-edged axe came into my sight clearly.

It’s a good thing the guy lost his mind.

If such an attack came in on an irregular orbit, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to recover even a single bone.

I felt fortunate, but I didn’t have the luxury of sighing openly.

Even though his attack pattern was obvious, his physical strength was still overwhelming.

That was when.

Phew!

An arrow flying from somewhere pierces the guy’s eyeball.

The guy who lost his left eye in an instant let out a roar of pain.

-Gooo!!

Of course it was Adele’s doing.

Okay, now the guy’s field of vision will have shrunk a bit. If we just hold on like this and eat him little by little, that’ll be it.

······Fortunately, the battle after that was a bit easier.

Camilla and I somehow avoid the guy who is running wild and draw aggro.

Meanwhile, Adele fired a defensive shot and gnawed at the guy’s body.

“Take it!!”

In the middle, Lily’s 3-circle magic, ‘Mana Bind’, was combined to make dealing with the guy relatively easy.

After fighting like that for about 10 minutes, the guy’s berserk attack gradually began to die down.

-Gooo···

The giant body of the guy who lost all his strength falls down with a thud.

It was quite a sight to see a muscle monster twice my size fall.

I didn’t even have time to celebrate my victory before I cut off the guy’s head.

It looks like we’ve won for now, but we need to do a confirmation kill just in case.

Crunch!

Only after I had cut off the guy’s tough neck completely was I able to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Sigh······.”

I only fought once, but I felt like I aged ten years in the meantime.

In fact, I almost lost my life once, and then a variable I had never seen before occurred.

I can’t help but feel weak.

Slurp.

Maybe it was because I was relaxed, but my legs gave out and my body slowly sank.

The floor is currently covered in the blood spilled by the Minotaur, but… I don’t know, damn it.

Ask or not.

That was nothing to me, having almost crossed the Samdocheon River once.

[Quest Clear!]

[Check your rewards.]

As I sat down on the floor, a system window appeared before my eyes. A blue window that told me good news.

Now that I think about it, I received a quest right before the battle. It was such a shocking experience that I just remembered it now.

If it were a regular game, I would have checked the reward window with a state of anticipation.

But right now, I don’t even feel like doing that.

‘Let’s check later.’

Because it’s a reward that won’t disappear even if you check it a little late anyway.

As I pushed the system window to one side, a shadow appeared over my head.

Suddenly, I raised my head to check and saw that the party members, including Camilla, were looking at me with displeasure.

‘···ah.’

Now that I think about it, the operation I hosted and boasted about ended up being a complete mess.

I cut off both horns on the premise that the berserk would not explode, but in the end, the berserk exploded.

From their perspective, it wouldn’t have been strange for them to blame me.

I smiled bitterly. Am I destined to never be able to rest?

“Please wait a moment.”

That was when I was thinking like that.

Suddenly, the saint stepped forward and stood between the party members and me.

Two tired eyes glanced back and forth between the two camps.

Then, he sighed and opened his mouth to address the party members.

“I know you guys have a lot to say to the warrior. But in the end, he was the one who fought at the front. And in the end, didn’t he win? So let’s hold him accountable for now.”

I was moved for a moment.

It was only for a moment, but I almost burst into tears.

Even though she dislikes me, she is still a saint after all. She knows how to embrace the poor with compassionate eyes.

Could it be that he didn’t expect her to step forward and mediate the situation?

“······I have a lot to say, but.”

In the end, Camilla was the first to take a step back.

“Let’s talk about it later.”

I was also a bit surprised by this.

Anyway, I thought he would just keep nitpicking and complaining that the plan didn’t work. I didn’t know he would back down so easily.

That must mean that this incident felt unusual to them as well.

The black smoke flowing out of the Minotaur was definitely an alien force.

I thanked Yulis only after I saw them walk away.

“Thank you, Saint. Just like before, I keep receiving help.”

“Oh, no. We’re in the same party, so that’s normal. ”

As I lowered my head, she desperately waved her hands.

I mulled over what she had said without thinking.

‘Because we’re on the same team…’

Well, can it really be called that?

An open traitor, a mastermind.

Am I, who is being treated like this, really qualified to listen to those words?

Were the words she spoke really carelessly, or were they words she spoke after careful calculation?

A lot of negative thoughts float up to the top for a moment and then settle down.

Even at this moment of receiving help like this, I couldn’t help but guess what she was thinking.

At least for me, the word ‘pure kindness’ was completely out of place.

When I thought about my situation for a moment, I felt really pathetic…

‘······.’

I’m grateful for what I’m grateful for, but this was a problem I had to think about separately.

“Then, I’ll go in first. I’m still tired.”

“Oh, yep.”

Of course, I didn’t show it. I just saw her off with a smile.

Fortunately, I wasn’t immature enough to just reveal my true feelings in front of others.

So I waved to her with a smiling mask on until the end.

Then suddenly a thought occurred to me.

‘Oh, now that I think about it, I didn’t ask that.’

How on earth did you save me just now? The battle was over, but there were still a few questions that remained unanswered.

One of them is her behavior earlier.

Obviously, I didn’t react to the guy’s axe. Not even me, Adele who was sensitive to sound, or even Camilla, the knight who was closest to the guy.

It was a blow that no one expected, one that penetrated the cracks of consciousness so perfectly.

But how on earth did she know that?

They don’t have sharp senses, they don’t have great physical abilities, and they weren’t even closer to the Minotaur than we were.

I wonder if I have some kind of incredible reflexes that even I don’t know about.

It was something that my shallow mind simply could not understand.

Because of that, my curiosity rose high above my head, but…

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Eventually I got over this too.

I was too tired to think about such trivial and secondary matters.

Let’s think about this and that, the compensation and the problems, all later.

Right now… I just, just wanted to rest.

I’m tired.

So I fell asleep as if I had passed out on the floor.

*

“···Whew.”

Meanwhile, in a forest a little away from the warrior party members’ lodgings.

The blonde, wall-eyed woman standing there alone, the saint, Yulis von Eugracia, breathed a sigh of relief.

“Somehow… I stopped it.”

I was worried about what to do if the real operation went as planned in the past.

Fortunately, I was able to intervene in time. This prevented one tragedy from the past.

No, to be more precise, I should say it is the past from Yuris’ perspective.

Yuris, she was a regressor who returned after suffering defeat in a battle with the Demon King’s army.

For a moment, her expression turned sour as she thought of the warrior of the ‘past’.

‘···Poor person.’

It wasn’t a very good memory.

She thought about it for a moment.

Blood, bugs, and life. The days of the past, soaking wet with misunderstanding and despair······.