Chapter 261 – The Hero Met the Devil
“You really don’t know?”
I asked Aaron, who looked like he really didn’t know anything.
“I don’t know, I don’t know! If it had been, I wouldn’t have ended up like this!”
Seeing Aaron shouting at me with an unfair expression, I couldn’t help but tilt my head.
Judging by his reaction, he didn’t seem to be hiding anything.
‘Then what was that then?’
I narrowed my brows as I recalled the past.
Marian said that something had obviously prevented her from trying to find Aaron’s stronghold of her.
And that power, he explained, was similar to the one he had against Astaroth.
Of course, her doubts about her goddess were the first to hear, but Marianne also said that she felt a foreign aura similar to but distinctly different from that of the goddess.
“What, what? Why are you sitting there?”
Aaron screamed as I sat on the prison floor, but I didn’t have time to pay attention.
It was because there were too many thoughts in my head.
‘It’s not a goddess, but if she has power similar to that of a goddess…’
There was no law that the only transcendent being in this world was the goddess.
Baal believed that she was willing to help me, but she did not think that she was a goddess.
“Is there a being other than a goddess?”
I murmured like that, as if I was spitting out my own words.
Even thinking about it myself, it was too vague, but there was nothing else to explain this situation.
And at that moment, Aaron’s expression of her, which was looking at me with her frightened eyes of her, began to change strangely.
“What?”
I asked Aaron that.
Because the expression on his face he seemed to know something.
But at that moment, the energy he felt from Aaron was of a completely different kind from what he usually sees.
I held the ebony with a nervous expression, and at that moment I saw his lips his parting.
“It’s the first time we’ve actually met.”
“What kind of bullshit are you talking about all of a sudden?”
I shouted that at Aaron, but I could see that it wasn’t Aaron who was talking to me.
It was because Aaron felt an aura similar to Lina’s when the goddess dwelled in her body.
“Don’t you know that I am a different being from the owner of this body?”
“… So, who are you?”
I asked Aaron, who was curling up the corners of his mouth with a relaxed expression.
It was because I was curious about the identity of the guy who hadn’t appeared in my previous life.
“Well? How should I describe myself? You are on the opposite side of the goddess, so the male god?”
“…”
“I can’t see it with those eyes. It’s just that I don’t have anything suitable to introduce because no one has called me anything. If I had to introduce it, would it be that I drank from an evil spirit?”
I frowned as I watched Aaron talk to me leisurely as if playing a joke.
Although his momentum was unusual, he at least did n’t seem to have any intention of attacking me, so he lowered his sword back to the ground.
“You are the one who disturbed Marian, right?”
“If it’s Marianne, is she the woman who tried to approach me in a strange way?”
I nodded my head at his words.
In reality, it wasn’t him that Marian was after, but it could have felt that way to him.
“Okay. That’s what I did.”
“Why?”
I asked the guy who readily admitted what he had done.
It was understandable that there was a goddess and that there was a god at the opposite end.
In a way, it made more sense that a goddess who originally valued balance was controlling the world by herself.
The problem was, why did he finally show up, and why did he borrow Aaron’s body and appear in front of me?
“I wanted to meet you.”
“What?”
I frowned at the demon talking nonsense.
That would be the case, because what he said was not easily understood.
At least, if he was in Aaron’s body his, he’d had plenty of opportunities to meet me.
Of course, there were too many things that could n’t be explained by his words, including the fact that he revealed his identity at this moment.
“You know I’ve returned, right?”
“Of course. Turning back time is not something that only the goddess can decide.”
“But why now? You never showed up in your previous life, did you?”
I asked the guy who claimed to have drunk himself.
“At that time, there was no point in meeting you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Perhaps because of his peculiar way of speaking his, as if he were talking about Seon dialogue, the more I talked with him, the more frustrated I felt.
“It is literally. Even if I had met you in a previous life, nothing would have changed. Of course, the students before that, and the students before that.”
“A life before that?”
“Ah… Are your memories only from the previous episode?”
He laughed as if he was making fun of me and said that.
For a moment, I could n’t understand what he was saying, but I started to feel his strange sense of discomfort.
“I… Did you regress several times?”
I didn’t ask him a question, but he smiled at me and nodded his head.
Then he kindly began to explain what had happened to me.
“At first you, yes. Together with the saintess named Marian, she defeated the demon king. But I took that Marian from you. As a result, you want another chance.”
“…”
“The next was a young wizard named Karen. You fought valiantly with her, and captured her demon lord again. And of course I took that woman from you. And in the next life, did you stick with the stupid dragon bitch again? No, maybe it was a demon called Lilith.”
I gritted my teeth and glared at Aaron.
The things he said were things I could not remember at all, but it was because tears were coming out of my eyes at his words.
“That’s how I repeatedly took away the human you treasured the most. Even so, you didn’t get tired of it and kept asking me to give you another chance.”
I bit my molars as I saw the guy staring at me with a really tired expression.
If he didn’t do that, he’d run at him before he could hear him.
“The boring repetition continued. If there was only one thing that changed, it was you.”
“I?”
“Okay. Every time you repeat your life like that, you distanced yourself from the women you had a relationship with. What’s interesting is that I felt an instinctive reluctance even for people who couldn’t even remember properly. That was something neither I nor the goddess expected.”
I couldn’t say anything about the guy.
As he explained it, it was because they said that I might be the cause, not them, that kept me away from my companions in my previous life.
Seeing my reaction, he started talking again.
“Then, at last, something interesting happened in the last episode.”
“… Is it interesting?”
“Okay. Strangely, unlike other times, you did not give your heart to any human. Of course, you were involved with the princess of her empire, but unlike her other times, you didn’t have a deep relationship with her. I paid attention to the change, and finally judged that you had changed. You defeated the Demon King with your own power, and I hoped to get another chance just like before.”
“It did.”
I nodded at his words.
What he was talking about this time was, at least, the life I remember.
“I was disappointed with your choice, but as this episode started, you changed completely. Because you, who didn’t have anyone by your side because you were afraid of losing someone dear to you, now carry women around you casually.”
“… What did that mean?”
“I am not criticizing you. Rather, I found it interesting that you were like that.”
I glared at the smiling demon god at me and bit my teeth.
As Baal said before his death his, the end may not have been set, but it was a situation where it was proven that he and the goddess played with him.
“Did you make me a hero just for the fun of it?”
“It’s fun, and for a reason, of course.”
The demon, or Aaron, came closer to me and made eye contact with me.
I could see his golden eyes his staring at me like they were going to pierce me.
“But fun is a trivial thing compared to its true purpose.”
“What is its real purpose?”
I asked without averting his eyes his.
I wanted to cut off his head right away, but there was no guarantee that he would die.
“The purpose is simple. It is to find a goddess, or a substitute to replace me.”
I looked at Aaron with a stunned expression at the unexpected words.
To be honest, I couldn’t even feel my anger anymore, probably because I had heard such nonsense.
