Is It Bad That the Main Character’s a Roleplayer?
chapter-162

Chapter 162 Hasty Excuses (2)

Flash.

The moment I regained consciousness, my eyelids reflexively shot open.

It probably was because the last thing I remembered was stabbing my sword into Moby Dick’s head; before my rational mind could take over, my instincts took over, already assessing my surroundings.

What I saw around me was as follows: white stone walls and ceiling, blue tapestries hanging on them here and there, each embroidered with a unique pattern in gold, a cozy bed, and blankets.

Given my experience from this adventure thus far, there was a 99% chance that I was inside a Temple.

Rustle.

I pushed myself into a sitting position. Seeing as I only had on some bandages and a light shirt, they’d apparently removed a few layers of my clothing to make me more comfortable.

My vest and coat were lying neatly on the side table beside me.

Hmm. This gave me a bit of a déjà vu.

Surely, two weeks haven’t gone by this time, right?

I felt a bit uneasy, but sadly, I had no way of knowing what day it was.

However, my body felt extremely heavy, and my vision was somewhat blurry, so my condition was pretty clearly not the best. Considering most of my injuries usually healed rather quickly, it seemed not much time had passed.

Well, I did find out in Tatara that if pushed to the brink of death, my body still felt heavy even after two weeks, but that hadn’t happened this time, right?

I’d followed White Wind’s advice and made sure to suffer only minor injuries, nothing life-threatening.

Knock, knock.

Just then, I heard a knock coming from the door. It was a very soft sound, probably because the person outside thought I was still sleeping.

“…Who is it?”

Oh, my voice was cracking.

“…You’re awake already?”

I pulled up the blanket a little more when they entered. Just enough to cover my right arm, though. It would’ve seemed weird if I tried to cover myself completely.

“It hasn't even been an hour since your treatment finished. You should get some more rest.”

“What about… the Great Demon?”

It was the Archmage who’d entered the room. Listening to her words, I kept thinking that it always seemed to be her who gave me post-battle reports—even though I was the one who did the fighting.

“It’s dead. You killed it. Don’t you remember?”

I did, but I wasn’t entirely sure I’d dealt the final blow.

Turns out, I had.

“By the way, all of you except Berserk ended up collapsing, so we had no choice but to return to the Temple. Since two of you couldn’t be treated with Divine Power, I also came along.”

So that meant that not just me but also the Inquisitor and Deb passed out, with only Bers remaining conscious?

But why Deb? Had his internal injuries worsened again? No, no, even if they did, why couldn’t he be healed with Divine Power?

The Great Demon was dead, so shouldn’t the Demonic Energy within Deb be gone? Shouldn’t it??

I calmly organized the new information while worrying about Deb and suspecting that Bers might have actually transcended mortality.

My first step should be choosing an action that would fit my character setting.

“Ah, don’t worry. I only had three people carry you here and three guard you. The rest remained behind to guard and Purify the Great Demon’s corpse. Berserk stayed back, as well.”

However, it seemed the Archmage had misunderstood my silence and hurriedly added this explanation. That wasn’t bad.

That Bers stayed back to guard the corpse meant no one had yet to relieve her of that duty, which in turn meant not much time had passed.

Considering that my treatment had only ended an hour ago and she’d followed me back because no one else around could treat me… it seemed it had been half a day at most and a few hours at least.

Factoring in how the Archmage hadn’t even changed her clothes after returning to the Temple gave this theory even more weight. It meant she hadn’t had time to change because she was so focused on healing me.

“I need to see it with my own eyes.”

So, wouldn’t this be the correct response here? I’d usually just say something like, ‘Hmm, I see,’ and let it go, but this was one of my sworn enemies.

It would be more fitting for my character to want to verify it once more. I wasn’t in the best physical condition, but it didn’t seem like there would be another battle for now.

If there were, that just meant something had generally gone wrong, so it wouldn’t be a loss. Probably.

“Are you crazy?”

“…?”

“Ah, no, that was a slip of the tongue. Are you still not thinking straight?”

Sorry, but that corrected statement didn’t seem much better.

“Do you have any idea what kind of condition you were in earlier—?!”

The Archmage, about to raise her voice, calmed herself down by raising her hand instead.

“Demon Knight, did you know that your seal shattered earlier?”

“…What?”

Huh.

“As I thought, you didn’t know, which means you didn’t intentionally break it because you were overexerting yourself, but rather, you instinctively drew on your Arcane Power to recover again.”

No, no, why? I wasn’t that badly hurt.

“…Were you, by any chance, only worrying about your external injuries?”

…Was I supposed to be concerned about the internal ones, too?

I’d been a little worried about altitude sickness before, but did it seriously progress to something like cerebral edema or pulmonary edema to the point where I could have died?

“…Demon Knight, people don’t just die from being stabbed or having their bones shattered. They can die from internal bleeding in the brain or the heart suddenly stopping for any number of reasons.”

I realized something.

“In cases like these, only Divine Power can usually cure them. Some wizards are working with doctors to expand the horizons of surgical procedures, but unless they’re a specialized wizard, surgery and the like are out of the question.”

The raid was a perfect example of me completely disregarding White Wind’s advice while laughing.

“I lack the relevant knowledge, as well. You were lucky that normal healing spells worked this time, but I can’t handle anything more severe.”

Moreover… I needed to be mindful of internal injuries while fighting now, too!

“Fortunately, you don’t have such conditions yet, but… this time was very close. So, don't even think about leaving the Temple for the next two days. Just rest, please.”

But wasn’t this level of difficulty just a bit too much?!

First, I was forced to ascend thousands of meters into the sky, and then they hit me with these realistic illnesses. What did they want me to do? If that’s how this worked, why couldn’t my body be tough enough to just brush off everything like Bers’?!

“We’ll take care of the Great Demon.”

Come on, who's in charge of balance here?!!

* * *

“Achoo!”

Berserk, who was on night watch, turned her head at the sound.

A priest, assigned the toughest shift right in the middle of the night because he was the youngest among the priests, had his ears perked up.

“Did you catch a cold?”

“N-No, it’s not that.”

Perhaps embarrassed by his sneeze, the priest covered his cheeks, which couldn't really be made out due to his fur. However, his round ears continued twitching, giving away his mental state.

“Berserk feels a bit cold.”

“Oh! Th-Then I’ll add some more wood to the fire!”

At her words, the priest quickly shook off his embarrassment and threw some logs into the fire.

Consuming the fuel, the flames grew larger, and naturally, the warmth they emitted spread further.

“Erm, then, would you like a blanket, as well…?”

“It’d get in the way, so I don’t want it.”

She didn’t really feel cold to begin with.

In her hometown, the air was so cold that your breath would become visible and your snot froze instantly, so how could she call this place cold?

“…I want to return to the Eternal Sanctuary.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She never thought she’d miss that wretched place. Home was still home, huh? Or maybe the air she’d encountered high up in the sky while hunting the whale reminded her of her homeland, making her feel a little nostalgic.

With those thoughts in mind, she stared at that thing blocking her view: the corpse of the giant merman, which had retained its form even after more than half a day had passed.

She didn’t mean rigor mortis or the like. It just didn’t feel entirely ‘dead’, but not ‘alive’, either.

“Hmm.”

Despite having repeatedly checked that corpse, she decided to take another look just to be sure.

Berserk grabbed the halberd she’d stabbed into the ground and stood back up.

“Wh-Where are you going?”

“To check that.”

She walked over to the corpse with light steps. Under the moonlight, the Demon’s body seemed to glow faintly, as if covered in silver powder.

Considering its bodily fluids were a non-reflective black, its external appearance starkly contrasted with its internal.

“Hmmm.”

It was pretty yet utterly repulsive at the same time.

It wasn’t because it was a Demon. Demons were just something to kill and sometimes a little entertaining as prey, but she’d never considered them in terms of like or dislike.

It was just… it somehow resembled freshly fallen snow, which she hated. The white hair, the silver pupils surrounded by black sclera, its entire body.

Berserk hated snow. To be precise, the memories it brought back and the things it had taken from her.

All those countless things buried in the snow, frozen in time forever.

Rustle.

“…?”

After staring down at that enormous head for a long time, she felt something.

Ruuustle.

It wasn’t just in her head. Berserk gripped her halberd tightly, focusing all five of her senses. Ruuustle. Something was coming.

Not from above, the sides, behind, or the front.

“Get up—!!!”

But from directly beneath her feet.

“Get out of here quickly!”

She threw her halberd. Boom! As the earth shook along with her shout, those who’d been sleeping suddenly opened their eyes.

“Huh?”

“Urgh.”

“Wha—!”

They really lacked discipline!

Jumping down from the corpse, Berserk grabbed the still-dazed guys by their collars.

Their screams filled the air in response, but the effect was substantial. Even if they hadn’t fully grasped the situation, they still managed to sense some danger and began to retreat.

And just as they barely escaped to the area pointed out by Berserk.

Boooom!

“—!!”

Massive tree roots sprouted from the ground and began engulfing the dead Great Demon’s body.

* * *

While I was confined to the Temple, the Archmage left before dawn broke, using the excuse of investigating the Great Demon’s body more closely.

Of course, I couldn't say anything about that. She was the only wizard around, and there were some things in this world that only a wizard could do.

Clink.

But after she left, the soup bowl I was served at breakfast cracked, making it seem like something bad might happen.

Since ancient times, hadn’t the breaking of dishes and the like always been used as a cliché, an omen foreshadowing the occurrence of something problematic?

“Oh. Are you alright?!”

More importantly, why did it break? Did they pour hot soup into a super cold bowl? Or did the bowl’s natural frequency just coincidentally match the external vibration created when it was set on the table?

“I-I’ll bring you a new bowl right away!”

In any case, what was done was done.

As I set down the spoon I’d just raised, I watched the priest hurriedly clean up the broken bowl and the spilled food.

After the priest rushed out of the dining room, I was left alone.

It had been a while since I’d experienced unintentional solitude, and I was slightly thrown off by it. I was a bit bored, too.

“…”

However, as I thought back to how this boredom was caused by the others fainting, my mood quickly turned serious again.

Well, the Archmage and Bers had gone out to investigate the Great Demon, but the cause for the two dumplings’ absence was different.

One fainted due to the aftereffects of her overexerting herself, and the other fainted due to the worsening of his internal injuries.

Moreover, the latter was difficult to treat because of the Demonic Energy in his body.

This wasn’t a situation where I could say something like, ‘Welp, good luck,’ like usual.

“…Sigh.”

At least I had some faith that the Inquisitor was strong enough and would wake up soon, but Deb… I didn’t know about Deb.

I was sure he wasn’t a traitor—his behavior was too clumsy for that, and he had been occasionally coughing up blood for some reason, so what were we supposed to be suspicious of?—but that didn’t mean I could fully relax.

That’s just how the situation was right now.

I defeated the Great Demon, who we guessed was responsible, but this kid was still full of Demonic Energy.

Deb’s sincerity aside, I couldn’t deny the possibility that he was forced into something. In that case, I wondered how much longer I could keep up my character like I had.

And then there were Deb’s feelings.

Even though we’d dealt with its probable cause, the problem hadn’t been resolved, and even the Sea Dragon pearl I’d secretly given him didn’t work, which made me think that Energy might be something he’d have to live with for the rest of his life.

If that was the case, just how hard would this be for our meat dumpling?

I’d thought he might be okay since he didn’t carry any intense hatred like my character, but I couldn’t help but worry.

Especially since he’d always struggled with an abysmally low self-esteem due to his background, this might have just made it worse. At the very least, it wouldn’t have made it better.

Thud.

I ended up resting my forehead on my hands with my elbows on the table. My head hurt.

“Damn it.”

My head hurt, but my thoughts just wouldn’t stop.

Had I known something like this would happen, I would’ve been more suspicious when I found Deb on that rooftop that time. Could Deb stay with us? Could we even solve Deb’s problems? And if we couldn’t, what then? All sorts of questions were swirling around in my head.

And at the end of all those thoughts was the image of Deb thrusting his dagger at me.

I rubbed my cheek, which was now unblemished.

‘Does Deb even want to stay with us, with me?’

Again, my head hurt.

Knock, knock, knock.

Ah, why was I still suffering like this, even after killing one of the Seven Great Demons?

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

If this was how things ended up after bringing down just the one in the forest, how were we supposed to get the remaining six, no, five? How were we going to kill those five and then Satan?

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.

Damn it. Instead of celebrating our victory, we were just facing one crisis after the other endlessly…

Bam!

“Ah, Sir Demon Knight!”

I slowly lifted my head from my hand, then turned my gaze to the person who’d just burst into the room.

“A messenger from the group watching over the Great Demon is here!”

That broken dish cliché always led to trouble.

____