Exit
by Afuhfuihgs
My chest was pierced, and I coughed up blood, barely managing to keep my balance and not fall. The voice coming from behind sounded like a muffled, waterlogged sound. Piercing through that dull noise, I heard Aria’s wail.
“Why, whhyyyy…!”
Without realizing it, I looked over my shoulder at Aria, who was crying. She tried to kill me, but now that I was bleeding from her magic, she was suffering from guilt. Taking revenge for her parents’ death versus hurting me, her friend. Aria was the one feeling the pain and confusion in between.
“Wh-What do you want me to do, dammit…”
I gave a bitter smile at Aria, who had collapsed to the floor as if her strength had given out. It suddenly occurred to me that tears didn’t suit Aria, who always showed only a bright side. I wanted to take out a sweet snack from the space warehouse and comfort her like before, but I knew I shouldn’t.
“Club president… First, let’s get you healed!”
Rakarr still calls me club president? It’s been quite a while since I left the Messiah club. Looking at Rakarr’s face as he approached, I saw many scars and marks I hadn’t seen before. There was even a hideous burn mark on the back of his neck, making me wonder how he had been doing.
But the situation and environment aren’t good for sharing our stories. The fight with the cult leader, the final mastermind who will destroy the world, isn’t over yet.
Rakarr, after checking my wound, took out a potion from his pocket and poured it on my pierced chest. I felt the pain of burning flesh along with a creepy sensation of new flesh growing in the hole. This isn’t an ordinary potion. The regenerative power was incredibly high, like a potion containing the power of a saintess.
Rakarr resolved that question for me.
“It’s a potion Kane made. We were able to get the 4th piece of the scattered Emerald Tablet on the 3rd floor of the labyrinth. As club president said, Kane eventually found a way for Aria to continue living.”
I shouldn’t have… At Rakarr’s words, I smiled brightly without realizing it. The reason for entering the labyrinth was to obtain the pieces of the Emerald Tablet. Anyway, I knew Kane would do it. Kane is the kind of person who can endure any hardship for the person he loves, just like me.
I didn’t want to ask, but now I had to.
“Is Aria okay now?”
Rakarr hesitated for a moment, licking his dry lips with his tongue, and then answered.
“Yeah. Actually, Kane used his alchemical knowledge to share half of his lifespan with Aria. He laughed, saying that dying with the person he loves on the same day would be a blessing.”
I see. If I could save Luna that way, I would have chosen the same method. If I could be with the person I love until the very end of my life, there would be nothing better than that.
“Club president, Aria is…”
Kwaaaaaang―――!
Just as Rakarr was about to continue, the roar created by Lykan and the cult leader awakened us. This isn’t a situation where we can leisurely talk. I pushed Rakarr’s shoulder away and said.
“Rakarr, protect Aria and Kane.”
“…Okay.”
With a look full of regret that he couldn’t fight together, Rakarr headed to Kane’s side, comforting Aria.
Kwaaang―――!
Lykan, who had pushed the cult leader to the other side in the air, landed next to me and said.
“Are you okay? I never thought Aria would attack you from behind…”
“I’m okay.”
Lykan, who didn’t know the details, nodded without asking further at my answer.
「Hehe, so you’re being abandoned, not even trusted by a dummy who can’t even be an extra.」
The cult leader, wrapped in the energy of chaos all over his body, gave me a smile full of ridicule.
「How pathetic.」
“It’s the first time I’ve had the same thought. I also thought you were pathetic.”
「…What?」
The cult leader glared at me with fierce eyes, but I sincerely thought he was pathetic. I never once thought of Aria as just a dummy existing to fill in the weak parts of the novel. The same goes for Luna, Rakarr, and Kane, who didn’t appear in the novel.
Meeting Luna and the Messiah club members was the luckiest and happiest thing in my entire life. I learned true love and true friendship from them. So, I can’t help but feel sorry for the cult leader in front of me. I don’t need to think deeply to know how unhappy Jin-hian’s life was without meeting them.
“You could never have loved Luna, a dummy who had no role in the novel…”
The cult leader scoffed at my words.
「So what? Do you think I’m going to envy you for falling in love with a mere dummy?」
“No, you wouldn’t envy me. You wouldn’t even be able to envy me because you haven’t experienced it.”
It’s an emotion I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t experienced it through Luna. Jin-hian inside me said it was a weakness, but for me, it was the pillar in my heart that allowed me to endure until now and the driving force to live.
“That feeling you can feel when two people who sincerely wish for each other’s happiness meet each other’s eyes… You could never know that, because only Luna can give it to me.”
「….」
“So I sincerely think you’re pathetic. Because I know better than anyone what kind of person I was before I met Luna…”
As if talking to my past self while looking in a mirror, I smiled bitterly at the cult leader.
“We’ve never been sincere to anyone. Because we were born from lies, we can’t understand pure goodwill, and we poke at emotions to uncover the ugly intentions hidden somewhere in sincerity… It was a really unhappy life.”
The cult leader’s shoulders tensed up. He also knows because he is Jin-hian. That I sincerely pity and feel sorry for him. The cult leader, clenching his fist, emitted an even more intense aura of chaos.
I thought he would rush at me right away, but the cult leader chose to find the contradiction in my words.
「So? What did your precious experience with the dummy give you? In the end, it’s not the pathetic me who has a hole in his chest, but you who pitied me without knowing your place.」
“…I was prepared to have a hole or two in my chest. There’s no excuse, I killed Aria’s parents. But it’s okay. Aria is still a precious friend to me.”
I looked straight into the cult leader’s eyes. So that my clear emotions could be conveyed directly through my eyes.
And I smiled.
“You’ll never understand. That if someone is really precious… you can accept all resentment and anger with a smile.”
If it were me in the past, I would have been disappointed and angry that Aria, whom I was trying to protect, had attacked me. I would have said that this was enough as compensation for killing her trash parents, and I might have driven Aria to the edge of a cliff with harsh words. It was a time when there was a boundary to protect myself.
But I’m different now. I try to understand the other person’s feelings and don’t pursue complete truthfulness. It may sound vague, but I’ve decided to ‘believe’ in the moments we’ve had together. Even if Aria gets more hurt and has scars that can’t be erased, the fact that she is my precious friend will never change.
“So I won’t give up to protect and reclaim my precious people. Because doing my best until the end is what I learned from Luna.”
「…That’s a long way of saying you’re stupid.」
As if he wouldn’t say anything more, the cult leader spread his arms and scattered the energy of chaos around him like ink.
Kwaaaaa―――!
“Let’s split up and attack from both sides!”
Lykan shouted that and moved, knocking away the flying crimson sphere with his gauntlet. Following him to the opposite side, I deflected the sphere fired by the cult leader with the World Tree’s Spear.
「No matter how much you struggle, a mere extra, a lump of inferiority complex, can’t kill me, the cult leader of the Chaos Church!」
Kwadedeudeudeuk―――!
The energy of chaos released by the cult leader literally tore apart the surrounding space. The torn space, with chaos and magic raging, condensed everything around it as if it were a black hole.
“We don’t need tricks!”
Lykan slammed his gauntlets together, creating a powerful shockwave that eliminated the ‘phenomenon’ created by the cult leader. When I started to attack the cult leader from both sides with Lykan, the cult leader’s voice echoed in my head.
[Do you know that readers really hate it when villains respond to the protagonist?]
“…?”
[They feel thrilled when a Demon King or a large force makes a big plan and is helplessly defeated by the protagonist who interferes with it, and they expect the villain to try to proceed with the plan again without any learning effect, only to be greatly defeated by the protagonist. If the villain prepares Plan B and Plan C in preparation for variables in the plan and blocks the protagonist’s actions, it won’t satisfy the reader’s expectations.]
Ignoring the voice echoing in my head, I waited for the opportunity to stab the World Tree’s Spear into the cult leader’s heart.
[But I’m not just a villain in a simple novel. To make Roel repeat the same mistake, I have to make you leave here. So, of course, I prepared several things while waiting for you to come.]
The cult leader, letting Lykan’s attack pass and detonating a huge shockwave at me, gathered the scattered energy of chaos like particles in one place and began to drive Lykan away.
[Do you know that countless you repeat the same mistake? You say that you are the only one who uses the contents of the novel. It’s the dilemma of a regressor or possessor. So, I can defeat you very easily. If I touch the information in the novel that you know even a little bit and set a trap, you won’t be able to respond to the unexpected variables at all.]
The cult leader, who was driving Lykan away, turned his head towards me with a sinister smile.
[The illusion that Confession is from number 1 to number 9… is it still going on?]
“What…?”
[Even in a world where discarded settings are revived, you should have been careful about accepting a stranger who didn’t appear in the novel as a colleague.]
At that moment, the chakram on the cult leader’s back emitted a light of chaos. The golden eye located in the center of the chakram stared at someone. I saw Mormot’s body, who was blocking Confession with Ellie, suddenly swelling up like a balloon.
“…!”
[I’ll ask you.]
The cult leader’s sinister voice echoed in my head.
[Is Ellie also precious to you?]
Before those words were even finished, I had already used everything I could to approach Ellie, who hadn’t noticed Mormot’s change because she was confronting the vice-cult leader, to protect her.
Thud―
“Huh?”
Ellie, who was suddenly pushed by my back, lost her balance and fell forward. Thinking she had been attacked, Ellie, even as she fell, turned her body and pointed her staff, but she realized that the person who pushed her was me and widened her big eyes even more.
“Ro―”
[Exit, extra. This is the end of your story.]
At the same time as Mormot’s hugely swollen arm wrapped around me from behind, my consciousness completely disappeared.
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