Chapter 11
Sadly, I wasn’t even allowed the leisure to figure out whether I was in physical pain or emotional pain. Because the moment the daggers pierced my body, everything stopped.
I let my hand, which had been covering my heart without me even realizing it, fall limply and stared vacantly at the frozen world.
Me, in a world where even the villagers, the high priest, and even the dust floating in the air had stopped. Me, bleeding, pierced like a hedgehog by the knives held by the people I trusted most.
“What are you standing there staring at like it’s something good!”
Vilatea irritably grabbed my arm and yanked me toward her. As if her scolding was a signal, Leonas stepped in front of me. Vilatea kicked Leonas’s shin, who always moved a beat too late, and called out to Silphy.
“What are you doing? We have to go back right now!”
“Uh……?”
“We’ve already done the assignment the professor gave us! We all saw what kind of books she got, how she got them, and how much she read!”
Pressed by Vilatea’s momentum, Silphy nodded hesitantly, saying “Uh, uh.” But I shook my head. I had believed this was my world, and there was something I wanted to see with my own eyes in this place called a ‘world’.
“I’m not going now. Even if I go, I want to check one more thing.”
“What? What more do you want to see?”
Leonas looked back at me with a flustered expression. I looked up at the man, who was a head taller than me, like a high mountain, and answered.
“Where you lived.”
“…….”
“You said my villagers and I ended up like this because we did something we shouldn’t have. I want to see what you, the ‘real’ hero or saintess, were doing at this time.”
Leonas and Vilatea bit their lips and glanced at each other. After looking at them for a moment, I turned my body completely toward Silphy.
“Silphy, you guide us. Before your curse interferes, let me add: this isn’t my will. Your master’s order was to check how much of the books I read I actually understand, right?”
“Uh…….”
“Check how I react after seeing what I want to see now. As your master intended.”
It looked like Silphy wanted to retort, but after thinking for a moment, it eventually nodded.
“Alright, well. I like it because the more you figure out, the more interesting it gets.”
Compared to its long hesitation, the answer was quite light. At the same time as that answer, the surrounding scenery changed again.
“Wow…….”
It was a temple so huge that the palace we had been standing in just moments ago couldn’t even compare. It was so splendid that I was speechless and could only let out a long, stupid admiration. The pure white marble pillars soaring high into the sky, and the golden decorations sparkling in the sunlight, were more beautiful than anything I had ever seen in my life.
I was mesmerized by the light, passing through the colorful stained glass, shining onto the intricate carvings densely engraved on every surface and casting faint shadows. The candlelight flickering in golden candelabras added a soft ripple to the shower of dazzling light and color.
> “This is the Empire’s Central Temple. It’s effectively the pinnacle of power.”
After Silphy’s explanation, Leonas added in a small voice.
“I was… inside there.”
His long index finger pointed deep into the temple. Urging the hesitant Leonas with our eyes, we silently walked down the corridor following him. The further we went, past the splendid main sanctuary and into the sparsely populated inner area, the more luxurious our surroundings became.
“Hmph.”
Looking at the thin layer of gold over the carvings of saints that filled every inch of the walls and ceiling, reflecting off the pure white marble floor, I let out a hollow laugh for some reason. When we finally reached Leonas’s room, I pushed past the hesitant him and opened the door.
> “Let’s see how the real hero lived.”
Behind me, I heard Vilatea groan, “Ugh,” but I didn’t look back. I had vowed not to be vulgarly surprised no matter what came out, but reality wasn’t that easy.
“No joke. Is this just one room?”
Leonas’s room was larger than the entire inn where I had lived. The sunlight pouring in through the huge window, and the way it softly scattered over the gold covering the high ceiling, was like a dream.
The reflected light, as if it were only natural, added a milky-way-like sparkle to the ivory and ebony carved bedposts and the embroidery of the canopy spread like an altar.
Even the bookshelves lining the walls surrounding the bed were luxurious. The books with premium leather covers and gold leaf decorations looked like objects from another world, unlike the old, worn-out books I had read until they were ragged.
The desk, made of some material I couldn’t even identify, the reading lamp on it that emitted light by magic instead of a candle flame, the ink bottle that changed color whenever light hit it.
“It seems like even if you added together ten places like my village, you couldn’t buy this one room.”
Feeling intimidated for no reason, I lowered my head, and a soft carpet came into view. It was a carpet so thick and dense that even if I screamed, rolled around, and thrashed here, no sound would escape. Only then did I notice the faint scent of fine musk permeating the entire room and the fresh floral scent coming in through the window crack.
> “Living in a place like this would probably make anyone’s personality better.”
I glanced briefly at Leonas, who smiled awkwardly, then approached a unique greatsword leaning against the wall next to the desk. The name engraved on the blade sparkled mockingly.
*Basilect.*
“Oh! I’ve seen this sword in a book! It said it can cut anything in existence with a single blow, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you use it? Why leave such a good thing unused?”
“The sword hasn’t accepted me as its master yet.”
“Why? Aren’t you the warrior who was supposed to cut the Silver Dragon?”
> “They say a revelation came down on the day I was born that I was the destined warrior to cut the Silver Dragon. So I’ve been living here ever since, not in the palace—”
“Wow. So you were even a crown prince.”
After looking around the real hero’s life, I turned my head and looked at Vilatea.
“He was the hero, and you were supposed to be the saintess, right? So did you also live in this temple?”
“The timing isn’t right yet; I haven’t awakened as a saintess. I was a novice priestess and the lonely crown prince’s childhood friend, and then I go on an adventure with him to defeat the dragon… something like that.”
I listened to Vilatea’s words and quietly thought about why I kept snickering. The answer wasn’t that difficult.
> “So, you got to enjoy all this environment, and your only complaint is that you didn’t get to be the hero? That one thing made you so dissatisfied and wronged? For my villagers, it was a matter of survival.”
“…….”
> “You, who have no problem eating and living like this, you treated me like a criminal who deserved to die?”
“Hey, no matter what you say, you always end up doing it again…….”
Silphy quietly tried to stop me. As if I had been waiting, I confronted the neckless dragon.
“I’m saving worse words for your master. Hey, look at my village, which ended up like that, and look at this place, side by side! People who struggled to survive in a place like that, and you’re saying their problem was trying to live, even if only like that? How do you expect me, who just got stabbed to death by knives, to take that?”
Silphy, Vilatea, and Leonas all quietly avoided my eyes.
> “Of course, I know that what I’m saying right now is something like a child’s tantrum. But hey, what am I supposed to do about feeling wronged? You, who have such a good sword and didn’t come to kill the dragon nimbly, taking your time – don’t you have any fault? Not even a little? Really?”
Honestly, I had tried to come to terms with the fact that I was in the wrong, that I had to balance something even after dying. The world was originally a strange and unfair place.
But even if I could accept that for myself, there was no reason to make my villagers do something so cruel. That was the reason for my anger now.
Having come up with a fairly plausible excuse for my frustration, I reached out my hand more confidently and pointed to the bookshelf.
> “Why can’t you answer? Should I hold you to the high standards of all you learned people who’ve read so many books? Answer me whether you have the right to criticize the choices I made for survival due to economic inequality of resources. You, who neglected the opportunity cost.”
Honestly, from this point on, it was the domain of that person in charge, Perenustus or whatever. Not these kids who hadn’t even graduated from the Academy.
> ‘If you went out of your way to show me how I died, isn’t cleaning up after me as I throw this fit also the administrator’s job?’
My index finger, carrying even more blatant dissatisfaction, pointed back and forth at Basilect and Leonas.
> “If you want to get rid of an error or a bug, you should have ordered this real hero to eliminate me with that great sword. Not put knives in my villagers’ hands and force them to stab their comrade. Wouldn’t it be much more efficient to create a plausible frame-up, like treason or something, and get rid of me?”
“Right. I understand your unfairness from openly comparing where you lived, and that you’re super shocked from witnessing your own death—”
> “What do you understand? Do you want me to show you, asshole, just how fatal a fatal error can be?”
“Yes. That is precisely what I want to see.”
From Silphy’s mouth, which was frantically shaking its head, came Perenustus’s voice.
The moment I heard that annoyingly calm voice, anger rose to the top of my head. I grabbed Basilect and swung it like a club.
