Chapter 90. Senior and Junior
Crunch, crunch.
Right now, I had pulled a table and chairs out from the pile of furniture that had fallen everywhere, placed some cookies in the middle, and was happily munching away.
There was just one problem.
This was supposed to be a test to become a hero.
I sat across from Esset, the woman who called herself the Indomitable Great Witch and claimed she had once been the Great Witch of Madness.
Just what exactly was she testing me on?
My patience?
We sat on top of the collapsed wall of the tower in the middle of a desert, calmly eating cookies beneath the moonlight while the cool night wind blew past us.
Seriously, what was this situation supposed to be?
“I don’t know what you’ll think of me saying this now, but don’t you think the Hall of Heroes’ system is pretty amazing? Somehow, it always sends an examiner who walked a path similar to the examinee’s. They could at least bring in someone who’s still active and has nothing better to do.”
“Aren’t you dead?”
“I am! And I died pretty horribly too, so my memories are a little fuzzy. But if you think about it, would busy people like active heroes or Great Heroes really bother working as examiners?”
“I don’t understand why you’re still working here even after dying.”
“Ahaha! Neither do I! This job is a little... forced, you know! It’s a secret, so don’t go telling everyone, okay?”
She was much more cheerful than I had expected.
From beginning to end, she kept talking as if everything were some kind of joke.
It made me wonder how someone like her had become Madness, and then how she had later become Indomitable.
Considering that the actual Great Witch of Madness from four hundred years ago had managed to return with her mind intact even after dying and becoming a servant of Destruction, she certainly deserved the title of Indomitable.
“How did you die?”
“Hm? You don’t know? Ah, right. My name was erased, wasn’t it? Ahaha! Hmm! You see, I tried to give monsters intelligence equal to humans, and they branded me a heretic for it. Then they said they were going to punish the heretic, brainwashed my friends, and had them tear me apart! Ahaha!”
“Uh... hmm... I see....”
“They called me a heretic, but then they used the magic of a heretic themselves! Isn’t that hilarious? What was it they said? Something like, ‘To kill a monster, you must become a monster’? Just look at me! What part of me looks like a monster?!”
Thump.
She lightly smacked the table.
What she had tried to do was insane, but the way she died was somehow even more insane.
Was that simply what Madness was like?
Well, the story was different from what I had heard about the past four hundred years ago, so that was enough to make my head spin.
Still...
A plan to give monsters intelligence.
That actually sounded incredibly tempting.
At the moment, the playable races were mostly races that looked similar to humans, and even among those, there were only a few exceptions like the fishmen.
If Esset’s plan succeeded and monsters became a race players could choose too, that would be pretty fun.
“What a waste. Those people really ruined something interesting. It would be incredibly fun if monsters gained intelligence.”
“Right?! Seriously, people don’t understand anything! What era do they think this is? They actually believe only humans have limitless potential! They’re the crazy ones!”
Ever since Mallang had been revealed through Kim Inbang’s broadcast, cases of people taming monsters had been increasing.
Even if intelligent monsters suddenly appeared now, I doubted the players would have much trouble accepting them.
My companions already knew about Mallang, so they probably wouldn’t think it was a big deal either.
But among the NPCs?
Yeah.
There would probably be a massive controversy.
Not bad.
I still didn’t know exactly what the Chairman’s goal or plan was, but if the people living in this world started fighting among themselves, turned their backs on one another, and ultimately destroyed themselves with the blades they pointed at each other rather than because of Destruction...
The Chairman would be veeeery happy about that, wouldn’t he?
“So how do you give monsters intelligence?”
“First, you need to be able to communicate with them, right? And the best power for that is Madness! When they’re infected by the power of Madness, they can suddenly evolve. Sometimes they even learn how to speak during that process!”
“Ohhh... I think I’ve actually experienced something like that.”
“Then you let them build up experience over a long period of time. Give them experiences similar to humans and let them gain knowledge. Once monsters gain intelligence through evolution, they’ll begin gathering knowledge on their own and passing it down to future generations. Eventually, an entirely new civilization will be born!”
“Oh... And then?”
“And then... we kill every human who opposes it! Once those people shut their mouths forever, there’ll be no problem at all, and monsters and humans can achieve complete unity!”
“Wow~! What a brilliant idea!”
Such pure chaos hidden behind those innocent eyes...
Wasn’t this exactly the kind of thing I needed for my plan?
Chaos, huh?
Did that mean I might eventually have to cooperate with fanatics too?
Hmm...
I didn’t really like that idea.
I hated that Chaos bastard.
“You’re surprisingly easy to talk to, aren’t you? You’ve got some kind of aura of Hope around you, so I thought we wouldn’t get along!”
“An aura of Hope? Why would I... Ah! That cookie!”
That Hope Cookie or whatever it was that I had received after looking through memories from four hundred years ago?
Wow.
I hadn’t expected that cookie to actually leave some kind of aura around me.
But I only received it because I acted differently from the original history, didn’t I?
Then...
Was this some kind of hidden route?
Ohhh.
Did that mean there could be a hidden ending too?
“You’ve got something good there. Eat it while you still can! Cookies go bad if you keep them too long.”
“How am I supposed to eat something when I don’t even know what it is? It’s an item with absolutely no explanation. What if I eat it and something goes wrong?”
“Come on! Trust your senior for once! There’s an old saying that nothing bad happens when you listen to your elders!”
Hmm...
Well, I supposed there was no harm in trying.
Taking the advice of Esset, whether she was currently Indomitable or Madness or whatever, I cautiously ate the Hope Cookie that I had received after witnessing the past of the Great Hero of Hope and somehow satisfying him.
Maybe because it had been made by the same person, it tasted almost exactly like the cookies I had just eaten.
So I didn’t feel much resistance to eating it.
“Well? How is it? Don’t you suddenly feel power surging through your body or something?”
“Nooo... Nothing at all.”
“Really? Since it’s a cookie containing the power of Hope, I thought absorbing it might cause some kind of change to your body... Though I also wondered if you might explode since you’re already a vessel containing the power of Madness!”
“You really are a garbage human being.”
Hahaha.
Our laughter echoed through the ruined tower.
A thought suddenly occurred to me.
Surely this woman hadn’t made me keep climbing the stairs and then pressured me into eating the cookie simply because she disliked the aura of Hope around me, right?
Thinking about what happened four hundred years ago, when she supposedly died fighting the Great Hero of Hope...
Actually, she seemed completely capable of doing exactly that.
“Well, Hope is basically like a natural disaster. You never know when, where, or how it’ll suddenly appear. So let’s just believe it’ll have an effect someday.”
“Sure. And I think it’s about time we finally started the test.”
“Hmm... The test, huh.... What do you think the qualifications for becoming a hero are?”
The qualifications for becoming a hero?
Hmm...
If I thought about it from a game perspective, maybe you had to kill a certain number of monsters, collect a certain number of items, and complete certain quests to gain the qualifications of a hero?
“Personally, I think a hero is simply someone who does the things other people don’t want to do. Things like killing monsters, finding items, or helping people with their requests. Keep doing that, and honor naturally piles up along the way. Then people start calling you a hero.”
“You make it sound like it’s nothing special.”
“It really isn’t that special. Hmm... Then why don’t we do something similar? I do have to test you somehow.”
I still couldn’t understand why she looked so unmotivated.
I was simply happy that the test was finally beginning, but why was this woman even acting as an examiner?
Was she truly being forced?
Was becoming a hero, and then dying, enough to have your soul trapped inside the Hall of Heroes?
Had everyone here agreed to this?
“Then, since doing nothing would be boring, how about this? First, you face the person you least want to meet. Second, you help me find the thing I’m searching for. And lastly, you fulfill one small request of mine. Do those three things, and we’ll call the test complete.”
“Nice and simple. Let’s start.”
I had never planned to stay here for long.
Kim Inbang already knew the Empire had placed surveillance around this place, and there was a chance Erol had prepared something outside the palace as well.
I needed to finish this quickly.
Get permission to enter the Forest of the Labyrinth.
Find Pie’s remaining half and Hayangi.
And after that...
I could finally begin making plans to truly bring this game crashing down.
“One who lives with the power of Indomitability must always stand firm, no matter where they are, when it happens, or whom they face. They must remain unchanged, so that everyone can look at their back and follow them.”
Esset spun her huge staff around several times before slamming it against the ground.
Boom!
The sand in the middle of the desert began rising.
It slowly gathered together, forming the shape of a humanoid figure nearly twice my height.
A gigantic, intimidating body.
Muscles so massive that I honestly wondered if the guy weighed more than a cow.
A huge club resting on his shoulder...
And one hand touching the stump where one of his horns had been cut off.
He had evolved again and again, so he looked somewhat different from how I remembered him.
But there was no doubt.
Absolutely no doubt.
It was One-Horn.
“Wow~! You know a Fragment of Pride? What a strange coincidence!”
“W-Why the hell are YOU here?!”
“...And why have you still failed to become even a hero? What exactly have you been doing for the past twenty years?”
“?!! E-Esset! He can TALK!”
Wasn’t the usual cliché supposed to be that something like this was created from my memories and therefore wasn’t exactly the same as the original?
Something like...
The One-Horn standing before you merely resembles the one from your memories. He is not the real One-Horn.
Wasn’t that how this kind of thing normally worked?!
“Pride has such an overwhelmingly powerful presence that once something reaches the level of a Fragment, only one can exist in the entire world.”
“Then shouldn’t that mean you can’t summon him here?”
“What was I supposed to do? He came willingly instead of refusing.”
“How many beings in this world could refuse the summons of the Great Witch of Madness? What business do you have with me?”
As always, the system went completely crazy the moment I encountered One-Horn.
Seriously.
Every time I met this guy, I had gotten considerably stronger than before.
So why was he always even stronger than me?
Wasn’t this too much?
“My junior here is going to kill you! He’s an Indomitable and Madness junior of mine!”
“Oh?”
One-Horn’s eyes lit up.
My courage shrank to almost nothing.
So I shouted loudly.
“NO! My senior over there is going to kill you! Hahaha! Sucks to be you!”
“Huh? Me?”
“Twenty years have passed, yet you have not changed at all. That is reassuring.”
He said it was reassuring, but the expression on One-Horn’s face looked more like he was staring at something pathetic.
He untied the bundle strapped to his back and threw it in front of me.
Clatter.
It landed with a heavy sound.
The instant it hit the ground, the cloth wrapping burned away, revealing blazing chains covered in fire.
Wait.
He had kept these things all this time?
These?!
“These are the chains that woman left behind while traveling throughout the world. I cannot guarantee that this is every single one, but it should be most of them.”
“Wow... You’ve been working really hard to become my friend, haven’t you?”
“What an impressive delusion. Without those, even if you become whole again, you would still remain incomplete. If I fought you in that state, you would undoubtedly provoke me afterward by claiming you were not at your best.”
Well, obviously.
There was no way I could beat One-Horn through fighting.
So naturally, I’d have to talk my way around him until I somehow made him think, Maybe he has a point.
