episode_0041

-Squeak…

The tattered door opened with a creaking noise from old hinges.

I’m sure I donated quite a lot of money in my past life, but I didn’t get paid. What did I do?

No, if you think about it, they are people who only spend money on research, so they would have spent it all a long time ago.

“…”

Surprisingly, no one called me an intruder, a witch, or a whore.

To be exact, it would be more accurate to say that I don’t even have the mentality to do that.

It forms a barrier strong enough to stop the Demon King Abel.

At the same time, a spell is cast to bring the goddess down to the empire.

Even if you borrow the power of the goddess to do both at the same time, the magic power of the magician of the magic tower alone is not enough.

Therefore, they bring in slaves from the empire and use them as magic potions.

Barriers, summoning, and tuning of magical power. The higher the level of the wizard, the more burdensome it becomes, and even if an intruder comes, you can’t even open your eyes. Because the moment your concentration breaks, a gear will fall out. That crack will spread in an instant, and everything will be in vain.

Rather, the ones who would react to me are… yes, the slaves. Slaves who have their magic extracted in real time have nothing to do with great magic.

If they were a group of people so stupid that they would ask for help from people who might intentionally ruin the work, even if it was just because they held a grudge for being made to work as slaves, then the Magic Tower would have been a cradle for the crippled and the foolish, not a cradle for scholars and magicians.

In fact, that doesn’t mean that the slaves would risk their lives to stop Leah.

“…Cowards.”

Yeah, because they’re literally cowards.

Blood dripped from the silver sword in Leah’s hand.

Whose blood is that? Just a moment ago, the guards were screaming outside.

There was no fool who couldn’t produce results. They didn’t have any good feelings towards the magic tower that had exhausted them anyway, so why would they jump on a woman who had slaughtered a guard unit that was also full of experts?

If they had been that altruistic in the first place, they wouldn’t have committed the serious crime of becoming slaves.

For them, the best they could do was to stay in a corner and tremble.

“Leon…! Do you recognize me? It’s Belle, your childhood friend, Belle!”

I thought so.

He’s crawling out of there trying to see the blood.

“Get out of the way.”

He pushed Belle’s body hard with his foot and spoke clearly enough to be heard.

“Don’t do that! It’s been so long since we last saw each other…!”

“Yeah, how long has it been since I saw you flirting with that Smith kid? I’ve never seen you act so cute before.”

“That, that was… a mistake!”

Should I just kill him?

Even though Belle was a cripple, her magical power was enormous. Otherwise, she would have been kicked out of the warrior party a long time ago.

All that magic power is probably supporting the magic circles floating in the sky, so if we kill them, things will be a little easier.

And I didn’t have any feelings left for Belle. Even if I had feelings left for Enaya, who killed her parents-

…ah.

You left the bell there too, right?

A good idea occurred to me.

*****

Any response?

Belle looked at Leah’s face first. In this situation, Leah was the only lifeline.

I called him Leon on purpose to remind him of past memories. We were quite close when we were young, so he might feel sorry for me. If I can get out of this pitiful situation, anything is fine!

Belle’s head was already spinning.

Beldo Leah knew that Abel favored her. It was understandable, because wasn’t that fact featured in the news? Even Bel, who was locked up in prison and had his magic extracted, heard it from the guards.

And Belle actually hated Leon from the beginning. There was no particular reason.

Belle herself was neglected and treated poorly by her parents because she was not a man, but Leon, who she hung out with, was loved by her parents and the townspeople for no reason. She felt bad because hanging out with him felt like she was looking down on him. And she was annoyed by his stupidly kind personality.

So Belle has always wanted to bring Leon down to the bottom and climb up herself.

It was an inferiority complex that was nothing special. No, to say nothing, it might be so dark that it was suffocating.

Belle pretended to love Leon just for that one thing.

I learned magic. I was able to join the warrior party because I had talent. But I didn’t develop it further. It was already enough to bother Leah.

I deliberately let Anna’s nonsense go. Since your own family was not good, you should lose your family altogether.

And, as Gabriel had told him, on the day Leon was banished, he showed her the extramarital affair he had created (for the sake of wealth, fame, status… things like that. It wasn’t a deep love, so it wasn’t that important anyway.) and completely ruined her by showing her the deaths of her parents and the townspeople.

You should have been completely destroyed, so why are you resurrecting like a cockroach? You should be unhappy, even if it’s happiness gained by clinging to the Demon King!

So the plan he’s making now is, as always, to just drool over power for ridicule, assuming that Leah rescues him and then turns to the Demons…

“Then I make some mistakes too, okay?”

Kwak.

Before he could finish his thoughts, Lena grabbed Belle’s mana heart tightly with her hand.

The only thing wrong with all of Belle’s assumptions was that Leia was still the same helpless, good-natured girl she knew as a child.

“Ugh, ah. Aaaah!!! Huh, what are you doing…”

“I’m interfering with your mana heart with my magic power. Since your magic power is being sucked into that magic circle, I think it’s possible to use that to interfere in reverse. Of course, you’ll be in a lot of pain in the process, but are you my part-timer?”

“Ugh, childhood…! We were friends… We used to run and play together, and we even said we’d be warriors… I was the only one…! I was the only one who cheered for you! How could you… Gyaaah!!!”

In that situation, Belle shamelessly put on her mask and hung on to Leah’s leg. Her eyes dazzled for a moment, but she was sure that Leah would be shaken if she appealed to her feelings like this.

Of course, blood was already dripping from Leah’s silver sword. Once a line was crossed, there was no going back.

The magicians of the Magic Tower frowned. They must have immediately noticed the interference with their magic.

And unfortunately for Belle, she had figured out that the intention was to save the magicians of the Magic Tower. That’s why she didn’t notice that Leah had gone all the way to the tipping point and had ultimately crossed the line.

Not knowing that Belle’s actions were actually provoking Leah’s limits.

“Childhood friend…”

“Yeah, childhood friends! Our friendship, hib… we have it..!”

Now Belle’s mouth was really full of blood and she couldn’t even speak properly. The burden on her body was too much. She had to convince him quickly!

Belle lifted her head from the floor and looked at Leah’s expression. The expression was so different from what she had expected.

“Kick, ha… hahahahahaha!”

Because no matter where you looked, that expression was clearly a mockery.

*****

I can really express myself in many ways.

The person Abel loves.

A person who loves Abel.

A person who tried to save all mankind.

And then in the end, he was a failure.

brave.

The bamboo eventually broke due to its own stiffness.

And, someone’s close friend.

But that someone… wasn’t exactly Belle. If anything, it was Elle, if anything, closer.

“If you were going to beg like that, why didn’t you just kill my parents in the first place, you idiot.”

Bell, you were the one who gave up on being my friend first. I don’t know how long ago that was.

First, you need to interfere with the magic circle that summons the goddess. The barrier is ultimately just for buying time.

Matapju frowned. I honestly think it would be a good idea to use the focus on moving the facial muscles to block me.

“Warrior…! Why did you betray humanity? And the human you’re using as a medium to interfere with magic is your former comrade and childhood friend! Did you even abandon the last of your human feelings? I don’t know about other warriors, but why did you, the most upright one!”

The angry roar of the tower master was heard. That old man, even though he speaks like that, he is one of the few good people among humans. The tower master below him…

…I spent money like water, I didn’t know anything about the world and I was completely shut out, but I wanted to make excuses because he treated me well. It was a feeling I didn’t have with Belle.

“Well, let’s talk about her one by one. She left her parents to be killed by a monster, and when she was unfairly cut off from the warrior’s career, she bragged about cheating on him right in front of his eyes, and on top of that, she was almost raped, and if the Demon King hadn’t saved her, she would have been found dead. The newspapers wrote about her as a prostitute who sold her body to the Demon King, and the Demon King took great care of her until she got better… If I were to tell you all about it, it would take a whole day. ”

“…”

Matapju was silent.

“Just keep doing what you were doing. Honestly, if you were a human, you would have done something like that, so it would be a bit much to stop you, saying things like it’s human nature… Instead, can we try to resolve it through conversation after the problem is over?”

“Yes.”

The negotiations are over.

“Bell, are your ear holes open?”

“Hey, get out of here!”

All I did was throw and catch the silver sword, but Belle, with her quick wit that she used when she was in the wind, seemed to have noticed my determination and what was about to happen, and glared at me with bloodshot eyes.

“Cursed brat, it’s all because of you that my life has fallen to this point! If only you weren’t here, I could have been loved and grown up normally! I wish I hadn’t been born!”

Belle, who had revealed her true colors, cursed at me with a voice that seemed to tear apart and the blood in her neck rising. So your true colors were just this ugly human being?

“Do you think you’ll be happy? You traitor to humanity. How far do you think that favor will go? You’ll be abandoned soon too! You were a man to begin with, but now that you’ve become a bit of a slut, you’re flirting with men- Ugh, ugh…”

More than any urgent battle, more than the previous battle, I stabbed Belle’s neck more painfully. Until I was sure she couldn’t say anything anymore.

I broke off another bad relationship, but why is my expression like this…

“Why, did you get stabbed? Did the topic that was always buried in your mind get dug up without you even preparing for it?”

“Shut up, L.”

I muttered to the hallucination.

Congratulations, Belle. Your last dog trick was quite successful.

The expression on his face was so distorted that it was beyond repair.