Chapter 263 – The Hero Awakens
“Do you think I will listen to you?”
I asked the demon god who was smiling at me.
To be honest, there were a lot of things I thought similar to him, but that didn’t mean I had to follow him.
“Do whatever you want. I will respect whatever choice I make.”
“What?”
“As I said, I value the values of achievement, self-confidence and fair compensation. And after defeating the demon king, what you get is all yours.”
I frowned at the demon’s words.
Even though I thought his words could not be sincere, it was because it sounded quite plausible.
“If so, why did you want to meet me?”
“Just as I respect your choice, I also just wanted to tell you my opinion. The choice you make with complete information and the choice you make when you don’t are completely different.”
“Do not be ridiculous. Then, can’t you meet me from the beginning and talk about this?”
I shouted so at the demon god.
If he had told me the truth in the first place, I wouldn’t have to go through the repeated loss of ties I cherished.
“Well, even if I told you this story at first, you wouldn’t have listened.”
“… How do you know that?”
“Because you are a soul chosen by the goddess, and you are influenced by her.”
“Gibberish. In the end, all I can say is that I said it when it was in your favor, right?”
I thought I had stabbed myself in a rather sharp place.
However, at my retort, the demon god just looked at me with a strange smile.
“You can think whatever you like. I don’t have much time left anyway.”
“What? What is that…”
“The goddess is making a fuss.”
The demon closed one eye at me and said so.
As I made that expression with Aaron’s body, I felt my fists energize involuntarily.
It must have been that he also knew how I felt, and he must have disappeared.
Because Aaron was looking at me with bewildered eyes.
“What, what? Why did you come so close? Uh? When?”
Aaron, like Lina, had no memory of the moment her demons were in her body.
I lightly hit him on the head with the back of my sword and said to him.
“Know that you are alive thanks to your brother.”
It wouldn’t be cool to kill him immediately if he recalled the things he had done to him, but maybe it was after the conversation with the demon god, he didn’t really get angry.
Moreover, since he had promised Mary, killing him was even more inconvenient.
‘From now on, I’ll keep harassing you.’
Of course, I didn’t mean to kill him, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t torture him.
**
‘What now?’
I was pacing in front of the house, organizing my thoughts.
I know that Lina is not a goddess herself.
Just as Aaron has no memory of her demon, she is just a vessel for her goddess to stay for a while.
However, the human mind was not something that could be cut off so easily.
I was very angry with the goddess, and I was worried that her feelings would reach the poor Lina.
“Uh, why, why… Are you here?”
I turned my head to the voice from behind me.
And there, I saw Ena looking at me with a surprised expression.
“Ena.”
Come to think of it, she was the person I forcibly dragged to the ecliptic.
Each of the others had their reasons for following me, but I had half-forced them to join my party.
Seeing her surprised expression of her, I felt my head cool quickly.
Maybe it was because I thought that from Ena’s point of view, I would n’t be much different from her goddess.
“Thank you.”
I bowed my head to Ena and thanked her.
“Yeah?!”
As if my actions were so unexpected, Ena even let out her grotesque sounds of her and began to reveal that she was surprised.
But I felt her gratitude her to her her for her sincerity her.
It was my mistake to not think that Aaron would target my family.
And it was also true that her ghetto inspiration her was safe because of her her, so it was nothing compared to what she had done to keep her head down.
“Oh, no. Why is this all of a sudden…”
I scratched my head as I watched Ena staring at me with an expression of unsure of how to take it.
Come to think of it, I thought it might be difficult for her to understand why I was suddenly behaving like this.
“I heard you stopped Aaron.”
“Ah… That’s it. Well, he showed up with a knife without hesitation.”
“It would have been enough for you to run away alone, but thank you for stopping it.”
I bowed my head once more to Ena, who looked like she understood why I was doing this, and thanked her.
“Well, I heard that you’re the crown prince of the empire, so you don’t even use a sword that well?”
Aaron’s weakness was no reason for her to tarnish her work.
As I said, she could have run away alone if she wanted to.
Nonetheless, it was certainly true that she helped her ghetto inspiration her and Lina’s family her.
“Thank you. If you want, you can go back to where you used to live.”
I said that to Anna.
Having forced her into her company her in the first place, now that she would do whatever she wanted was the return her I thought.
And I expected Ena to return to Carcian Kingdom without looking back at my words her.
It was a cold meal here, but she was the one and only princess there.
However, Ena’s answer her was different from what I expected.
“No, even if you suddenly say that…”
“The reason I drew you in from the beginning was that your way of speaking was irritating. That’s why it was my intention to bring him around and make him suffer. It’s childish, but that’s who I am as a human being.”
I told her the truth as I looked at Ena, who blurted out the end of her words.
Perhaps the reason nothing had happened to Ena, unlike the other women, was because her first impression of her was not so good.
No, to be precise, the problem was her attitude after defeating Velikiya in Carcian Kingdom.
“I think I did something wrong then.”
I stared blankly at Ena, who answered with her embarrassed expression.
Because I didn’t know that she would say that she did her wrong.
“And I’m enjoying life in the imperial capital as well, right? I became quite close with Miss Rina, and with others…”
“Therefore?”
“Yes? So what is it? I’m just having fun, but if you suddenly tell me to go back, should I say yes, I will, and go?”
I looked at Ena, who was chattering at me with a dissatisfied expression on her face, and put on a strange expression.
It was because I was curious about her thoughts because I thought it was not very different from my current position or hers.
“Do you not resent me?”
“Resentment? At first it was. To think that I, the princess of a kingdom, would cross the desert. Do you know how hard it was at first?”
“Sorry.”
“No, because you have nothing to be sorry for? At that time, I did something wrong. The point is, it was hard, but not bad.”
I felt a strange echo in Ena’s words in her.
It’s not that she knew my situation, but she felt that her words comforted me too.
“Wasn’t it bad?”
“Yes. Thanks to that, I knew the world was wide and I saw a lot of strange things. If it wasn’t for the hero, how would I have dared to talk to Kamara so casually? And I wouldn’t have been able to make friends like Barasia in my entire life.”
Come to think of it, Kamara, the dragon in Karsian Kingdom, was almost like a god.
But now, even though Ena had seen Camara’s eyes on her, she had been between her and her laughing and chatting.
She furthermore said that it was Ena who she said became close with Lina, but it was Barasya that she got along with the most.
It seemed that being in a similar situation in many ways made them closer.
‘Okay… It wasn’t bad.’
I kept repeating Ena’s words in my head.
Come to think of it, my life this time wasn’t bad at all.
I don’t know what the previous lives I can’t remember were like, but there was nothing wrong with this life.
It was because there were so many beautiful women around me that even the crown prince, Aaron, would envy him, and I was building my own affectionate feelings with them.
But if you think that your previous life was the worst, it wasn’t like that either.
Even though I was betrayed at the end, I was so engrossed in killing the demon king that I had no time to feel that life was painful.
That is why, even if it was a repetition of a boring life to the demon god, it was said that each life would have been precious to me.
I looked at Ena again, feeling her head clear for a moment.
She seemed to have doubled her debt to her to her, but that was no big deal.
“If you don’t want to go back, I’ll grant you another wish.”
“… What is your wish?”
At my words, I saw Anna’s eyes twinkle.
