Hot blood splattered across my face.
I blinked, dazed. I dropped my gaze to hands and feet that didn’t feel like my own. A black-gloved hand was clamped around a sword hilt, and the blade was buried deep in the man in front of me.
I knew that man.
Rihen. A beautiful cleric with long, glossy white hair and clear blue eyes. A renowned healer, more often called the Saint. He was the playable character I’d used most often on my good-faction runs. But why was Rihen here? He was supposed to be a character inside a game.
My hand moved without any say from me. It drove the sword deeper, then wrenched it out in one motion. Blood that had been dammed up burst free, and Rihen collapsed to the floor. Red stained the cleric’s white vestments without mercy.
Ah. Right.
I know this scene.
The opening scene that plays when you choose Shane on the evil route. The event where Shane murders Rihen, the cleric so celebrated in the human realm. And on a makeshift dueling ground set up for the demons’ amusement, at that. The Saint Rihen, captured while trying to rescue prisoners held in the demon realm, ends his life there for nothing more than a demon’s entertainment.
“Whoaaaa!”
Thunderous cheers and applause broke out. The feeling packed into them was nothing like pure praise.
“He really killed Rihen!”
“Not bad for a half-blood.”
The demons jabbered on. I just stood there, sword in hand, blank.
Through the demons buzzing with the excitement of spilled blood, Kairos, the First Corps Commander, stepped forward. Pointed ears, a black tongue, teeth as sharp as a shark’s. Those were the marks of a demon. Distinctly different from Shane, who had round ears, a peach-colored tongue, and a human’s set of teeth. Shane was a half-blood, born to a human father and a demon mother.
“Cutting down a cleric the human realm had such hopes for. You’re more useful than I expected.”
He said it with a sneer.
“A promise is a promise. I’ll appoint you as the new corps commander.”
Kairos drew a small box out of his pocket. Inside lay a pendant set with a deep red gem. That stone, which looked at a glance like a ruby, was the symbol of a corps commander. He fastened the brooch over my left breast.
“Shane. As of today you are the Thirteenth Corps Commander. And...”
Thwack.
A heavy fist slammed into my gut before I had a chance to dodge. A short groan slipped out of me. I doubled over, clutching my stomach, and went down. Dust billowed up. I squinted, gasping.
“Don’t expect to be treated like a real corps commander. There are no soldiers assigned to you.”
Kairos said it while looking down at me. One corner of his mouth curled up.
“Who would want a commander with worthless human blood in him?”
I’d never been hit that hard in my life. My eyes went hot on their own. I forced my frozen brain to turn over, trying to recall what line Shane delivered next. Nothing came. I’d only played the evil route once, so of course the memory was hazy.
I shoved the bewildering fact that I’d been dropped into a game character aside for the moment and organized my thoughts fast. It was survival instinct taking the lead, telling me my life was in danger this very second if I didn’t.
Shane was a slit-eyed character. Suspicious-looking from the start, scorned for being a human-demon crossbreed, and still grinning through all of it. A character who got under pureblood demons’ skin all the more for it. What would a Shane like that say in a situation like this?
I staggered to my feet. I gave up on remembering and started improvising my lines.
“I never expected it in the first place... Still, thank you for even bothering to advise me. Does that mean you count a half-blood as your little brother? Truly, there’s no one like you, hyung.”
I folded my eyes into a soft crease and beamed.
“Crazy bastard...”
Kairos’s face twisted. Judging by how revolted he looked, I’d probably said something suitably Shane-like. Kairos, his half-brother by the same mother, always shuddered at the mere sight of Shane. A brother with human blood in him was a disgrace to the family.
“In any case, I’ll give you your first assignment as a corps commander. Destroy the statue of Repinal in front of the Temple of Dawn.”
The moment Kairos finished speaking, text almost identical to his words surfaced in the air.
〈MAIN QUEST〉 Destroy the statue of Repinal Time limit: within 72 hours On success: Infamy +200p On failure: No penalty
Lady Repinal...
Seeing her name made me oddly wistful. Repinal was the god I had served. Well, the god that Rihen, the character I used most often, had served. Repinal, Goddess of Dawn. The one who had poured countless blessings and no small number of combat-worthy skills down on Rihen. As a player, I owed that goddess quite a lot.
As it was, my head was already a mess just from having killed Rihen, a character I’d adored. Being dropped into a game with no explanation was confusing enough on its own, and the murder I’d committed without meaning to was driving my mind down to an even lower floor. No matter how I tried to convince myself that this couldn’t be real, that it hadn’t been my will, the sick feeling wouldn’t go away.
And on top of that, now I was supposed to smash the statue of the god he’d served with my own hands. Even if the reality I was standing in turned out to be a dream, that was one thing I really didn’t want to do. If there was no penalty anyway, there was no reason to go out of my way to commit evil. If this really was the game world I knew, sure, I could collect infamy points and get stronger, but I might open my eyes tomorrow morning back in my own reality as if nothing had happened. What would be the point?
Besides, no matter what he did, the demons were never going to like Shane. They openly dismissed him as a half-blood, and the commander’s post was a title and nothing more. If, and I mean if, it turned out I really was stuck in this world with no way home... then maybe I’d be better off announcing at some convenient moment that I was resigning my post, throwing the pendant away, and disappearing somewhere in the human realm. Pick out some country village and live quietly in hiding. Not a bad option at all.
On that front, Shane’s body wasn’t bad either. He was a crossbreed whose appearance barely differed from a human’s, and the demonic energy every demon leaks was unusually faint in him. Even most clerics wouldn’t be able to make out what Shane really was.
Hand in my resignation as corps commander, live cozy in the countryside.
Having hastily drawn up that one contingency plan for the event that I couldn’t get home, I turned and headed for my quarters. I was every bit as confused as before, but I had at least accepted the fact that I’d become “Shane.” Though that was only because not accepting it on the spot meant dying, so I’d cleared the other thoughts out in a hurry. I’d merely cranked my survival instinct to its limit and read the situation coldly. I still needed time alone in front of a mirror to steady myself.
The room was neither spacious nor lavish. The space was excessively tidy, with no sense of anyone actually living in it. An empty bedroom, no different from a vacant one. It felt like Shane’s insides transplanted into a room.
I stood in front of the full-length mirror. Ashen hair, vivid red eyes. Narrow eyes set low, a blank face. Pale skin without a trace of color in it. I creased the corners of my eyes as far as they’d go and tried out a suspicious smile. It was without question a face I’d seen countless times in the game.
Only then did it sink in. This was no longer a world on the other side of a screen. Judging by the vividness coming through my skin, it wasn’t a dream either. I really did have to live in this body.
When I turned my head, a clock on the desk caught my eye. It looked nothing like the clocks from the world I’d lived in. Interlocking stars rotated slowly, a device that let you read not only the time but the flow of the date as well. I dazedly followed the movement of the little galaxy with my eyes.
For the players’ convenience, this game used the same calendar concept as the modern world.
Today was January 24th, Imperial Year 677. The time was nine at night.
Why had Shane gone to the trouble of bringing a human-realm clock, set to the imperial calendar, into this room? Had he missed his human father? I’d taken over Shane’s body, but I still couldn’t read his heart.
I looked at the clock again. That combination of numbers wasn’t unfamiliar.
January 24th, Year 677.
Ah.
It came to me late what that date meant. It was the day Rihen’s companion-raising event began.
On this day, Rihen finds a child buried in the snow. A twelve-year-old boy on the verge of freezing to death: Theo. He looked like an ordinary kid, but he was in truth the twenty-seven-year-old hero of the empire and its finest sword master.
He’d taken a fatal attack in battle against the demons, losing his memories and his abilities, and his body had reverted to childhood as well. Normally the self would have been wiped out entirely, but Theo was strong enough that it stopped at getting younger.
When I played as Rihen, I designated him as my companion. I poured the points I earned from quests into growing Theo. Once I’d spent more than ten thousand, Theo came back to twenty-seven.
But right now...
Rihen is dead.
Which meant there was no one to find Theo. Theo doesn’t appear at all if you choose Shane as your PC in the first place. Shane’s story starts with killing Rihen, after all.
The empire’s hero, this world’s greatest hope, buried in the snow and dead and that’s the end of it? I absolutely could not allow such a pointless development.
I shot to my feet. I stripped off the combat uniform stained with Rihen’s blood and changed into light everyday clothes. There was no time to hesitate.
In Rihen’s place, I had to save Theo.
The snow was deeper than I’d expected. Deep enough to swallow a whole person without a sound.
I dug through the blizzard for a while, and only when the feeling had left my fingers did I spot a small shape. A child half-buried in the snow. So motionless I couldn’t even be sure he was still breathing.
It was Theo.
I scooped the child up without hesitation. He was terribly light. When I put power into trained muscle, my body slid forward even over that deep snow. I pulled off my robe, wrapped him in it, and ran at full speed toward the place I’d set up in the human realm. My breath came short. But I couldn’t stop. Having demon blood in me was useful at times like this. A demon’s body was dozens of times stronger and faster than a human’s.
Cold air pushed inside with me as I opened the door. I laid Theo on the bed right away and pulled the blanket up over him. His whole body was cold. Like a corpse. I threw logs into the fireplace and lit them, but it looked nowhere near enough. His breathing was shallow, and his temperature wouldn’t come up.
Rihen was supposed to be here for this scene. Rihen was a healer. Someone who could restore body heat and hold on to a life with nothing but a laid-on hand. But the only one in this room was Shane. A half-demon corps commander with no healing ability whatsoever.
At this rate, Theo really might die.
I clutched my head and groaned. My breathing turned ragged. What do I do? What can I do right now?
That’s right, items!
“Shop!”
I shouted it. With a familiar flash of light, a window surfaced in the air. The shop screen I’d seen countless times back when I was playing. I asked desperately,
“Is there an item that can fix this situation?”
After a few seconds of loading, a single recommendation came up.
〈Cold, Begone! Potion〉 Restores a hypothermic state to normal. Price: 200 points
I glared holes in that number. A wry laugh slipped out on its own.
Two hundred points.
Exactly the score I’d get for destroying the statue of Repinal that stood in front of the Temple of Dawn.
