“...A choice?”
His eyes glinted with venom.
The thought he had worked so hard to suppress had just manifested through action. Now, he could no longer hide it.
“You're saying... you're giving me a choice?”
“What did you say to Adele Mouin when you tried to bring her into your group?”
“I said... let’s save the world together.”
“What I want to say to you now is similar. The coming Demon King War. Humanity’s preparation for it. That’s the only thing I live for.”
“......”
“But you and I aren’t the same. I don't care about the means. If necessary, I’ll ally with demons. I’ll support a hero who kills.”
I squatted in front of the would-be hero. Cross-legged, facing him directly.
“I truly agreed with what you said. The freedom you seek—it's an ideal. But... unfortunately, that idea is utterly wrong. Do you know why?”
“Because I'm already bound? Because hanging myself proved your point?”
“No.”
Just because you don’t reach an ideal doesn’t mean it has no value.
It’s precisely because an ideal is unreachable that it is ideal.
Glory trying to escape reality the moment he recognized his own contradiction—that’s not the issue.
The real problem is:
“...You can’t save the world that way.”
I said it with a heavy voice.
“What do you mean?”
“The moment everyone becomes satisfied with what they have—humanity’s history ends. Humanity cannot survive in a world of freedom.”
Throughout history, countless religions, sages, and thinkers have declared it:
To be happy, one must be content.
To be free of anguish, one must free oneself from desire.
You’ve heard of the concept of “non-possession”—having nothing.
“Assassins are often likened to sewer rats. But even those poor bastards never wanted to live in filth with their wives and children. Wild rats roamed forests and marshes, breathing clean air.”
“......”
“But the world’s resources are always finite. Not everyone can have abundance. There’s no room in a warm human lap that cradles three cats for a family of rats. In industrial cities, rats have nowhere to go. So what should a rat do?”
“...It finds the sewers?”
“That’s right. Because no one else was there. But what if something already lives in that sewer?”
“...Then it has to fight?”
“Exactly. It must fight. It must take the space by force. Otherwise, it—and its family—will have no place to live. For sewer rats, the world has never been free. The moment they’re born, they’re already not free. And you and I are no different.”
Non-possession is like a tiny form of communism. It's admirable precisely because it’s unattainable. Discipline toward that end is fine. But the chosen few who must save the world—they cannot afford such ideals.
Glory and I—we lead this massive, daunting group project.
“We must struggle.”
“......!”
Glory’s eyes widened.
“The rats who didn’t fight? They died and vanished. The ones who found contentment, freedom, non-possession. Maybe they lived peacefully in the moment, but if only rats like that existed, the species would’ve perished.”
“......”
“So the ‘freedom’ you preach—on a species-wide scale—is nothing more than a slow, painless extinction.”
His gaze faltered.
It clashed with the words he once used to recruit Adele Mouin—“Let’s save the world.”
Even knowing sad days are coming.
Even knowing we’ll be wounded, broken.
Even if we suffer each day.
We must fight.
That is my conclusion.
“I don’t like secrets. If you agree to follow the path I show you—if you promise to trust me—I’ll share one with you.”
People like Glory—absurdly sincere people—have a kind of honesty radar.
It’s like an antenna sprouting from their heads.
They instinctively recoil from people armed with lies and deception.
And unfortunately for him—
I’m nothing but deception and lies.
So just this once, I decided to try being honest.
“Does that secret have to do with saving the world?”
“It’s a secret only for the purpose of saving the world.”
“......”
After a long hesitation, Glory finally spoke.
“...I’ll follow you.”
Snap—I flicked my fingers.
The [Concealment Veil] dropped, revealing the figure who had accompanied me all along.
From afar, she stepped forward.
It was Eve.
While Glory looked at her in puzzlement, I reached out and pulled back her hood.
The drooping rabbit-ear hood fell back—revealing two horns.
“......!!!”
Glory jumped to his feet, startled.
His hatred toward demons rivaled even mine.
And in the same instant, his eyes exploded with shock. Because Glory knew—Eve had wielded the Holy Sword.
“This girl is both a hero and a demon.”
“......”
“If she swings the Holy Sword for more than 10 seconds, her organs start to burn from the inside out. The pain is unimaginable. And yet she still chooses to stand with me. Because you can't wield the sword—someone else is suffering in your place.”
“...Since when?”
“From the beginning. I told you, didn’t I? I don’t care about means.”
Glory shook his head in disbelief. Then, expression blank, he dropped to his knees.
“...So what should I do? Just kill the wicked? But I...”
“I expected you to be confused. I’m not here to force you into anything. I’ve prepared something for you. After that—it’s your choice.”
With that, I pulled out a sword from my [Inventory].
And tossed it into his cage.
“This is...”
“A cursed sword.”
Glory’s fangs bared instinctively.
It was a cursed blade. A disgustingly, irreparably cursed weapon. Even the Empire had deemed it too dangerous and sought to dispose of it.
♠ Curse Attribute: Warbringer
[Legendary I, Stigma]
Once drawn, the blade demands blood. If the wielder does not kill a person, it devours their life instead.
Each kill stacks power. The blade levels up, enhancing the user’s stats. Up to 60× base ability.
At its peak, it's the only weapon that can stand against Peacemaker†.
But simply possessing it erodes the user’s mind. Only those with extreme mental resilience can endure.
That was the path I envisioned for Glory.
“The rest is up to you.”
After parting with Glory, I returned to the mansion.
Say what you will, but I still believed Glory was necessary. Because Eve couldn’t function properly as a hero.
Even setting aside social aptitude and her demonic identity—her potential as a hero was fundamentally low.
For example: when she met Adele Mouin, she didn’t even care whether Adele was the cleric of the Hero’s Party or not.
Maybe her transformation into a demon had closed off part of her hero’s power.
‘That leaves the assassin.’
The Hero’s Party had four members, and now three were gathered: Glory, Rebecca, and Adele Mouin.
And for some reason, I had a gut feeling the assassin would be male.
‘If we're going by potential rating, it’s probably [2.9]... so it’s not someone from the Dormant Dragon Cadets.’
Both Rebecca and Adele Mouin were [2.9], after all.
In any case, it would be up to Glory to find that person.
He needed to keep moving forward—not rot in some underground auction cage.
That evening—
“If you gaze into the kitty...”
Ran lifted a cat in her arms as she spoke.
“The kitty gazes into you.”
...Huh?
Something’s off here...
“You know, Professor.”
Ran and the cat both turned to look at me.
“What.”
“Your delivery arrived.”
Oh?
“Where is it?”
“Here.”
She held up the black cat toward me.
“That’s it?”
“This is it.”
It looked like the one that used to hang around near the professor’s dorm—but on closer inspection, this one was different. That one ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ had white socks on its feet. This one was black to the toes.
“Meow.”
Unlike modern cats, which usually meow with calculated deceit, this one meowed purely and approached me.
As I held it in my arms, the cat closed its eyes.
At the same time, I sensed lingering magical energy.
“Yeah... it’s the one.”
“How is it?”
“He hasn’t drawn the cursed sword yet.”
This cat was linked to the cursed sword Warbringer♠. It was the communication device.
A kind of [Homunculus] I’d commissioned from Ezekiel. Put simply, the sword had a phone installed.
But the path I offered Glory had one flaw:
‘How is he supposed to know who to kill?’
Glory still only wanted to do good. If someone had to die, there had to be a just reason.
‘Then ask the sword.’
Meaning: I’ll be the one who answers.
“Hmm...”
I sniffed the cat.
No hint of recent use. Not yet, huh?
And just then—
“Meow.”
The cat opened its mouth.
But what I heard in my ear was entirely different:
– Are the people in this auction house okay to kill?
Glory was asking the cursed sword.
“Yes.”
I answered.
And the cat closed its eyes.
That will passed beyond the border—
And was delivered to the Glory who held the sword.
***
After Dante left, Glory sat alone in a daze, staring at the sword sheath placed in front of him. His mind was blank.
‘I...’
Since when had it been like this? Glory’s mind had always been shrouded in fog. The world was blurry. His thoughts even more so.
Perhaps it had started from the moment he knelt before the graves of the people of Wonderland Village.
The graves of those who had raised him—whom he had killed with his own sword, without even knowing why.
Amid those hazy thoughts, the only thing he could hold onto was his single-minded determination to save the world. There was nothing else left for Glory.
But he had known it instinctively. That he was not worthy to wield the Holy Sword.
And now, that instinct had become reality.
Even though the destination at the end of the road called life had vanished, Glory’s path continued on.
‘I should have died.’
When he tried starving himself for days, hoping to die of hunger, he’d find himself stuffing rotten bread crusts from a garbage heap into his mouth.
When he tried to drown, his body would move on its own, dragging him back out of the water.
When he stabbed a blade into his own gut, the flesh imbued with fierce vitality would heal itself.
His thoughts were never fully coherent in that hazy state. And so, whenever he came to, he found himself still alive.
‘...Why won’t it even let me die?’
For the time being, he decided to live as he always had. Helping the poor and the weak. Protecting the powerless. Defeating evil. For years.
Thinking he had no value, he treated himself harshly, sleeping on trash heaps, surviving each day on discarded booze and cigarette butts.
Then, one day, a professor appeared.
They met several times.
Many conversations were exchanged.
And then, the professor threw a cursed sword before him.
‘The rest is up to you.’
And turned away.
At that moment, Glory fought through the fog in his head, rushed forward, grabbed the bars with both hands, and said:
‘I will kill people.’
The professor stopped in his tracks. The demon hero beside him also paused and looked back.
‘I’ll kill people. But not for evil. I’ll kill only to save the world. I’ll kill only those who try to kill. Is that correct?’
To that, the professor turned his head and looked at Glory.
‘Correct.’
And in that moment, it felt as if the fog in his head suddenly cleared.
‘I...’
His trembling gaze landed on the cursed sword. Just then, people came. The slave merchants from the auction house. “Hey. Get up. Get ready. Fix your face.” One of them frowned upon seeing the sword case lying by the bars. “Hey. What’s that?” The moment someone reached through the bars—
Clack.
Glory grabbed his wrist. The slave merchant screamed, caught in a grip like his hand had been jammed in a machine. Slave merchants nearby came running in a panic, goosebumps crawling over their skin.
“......”
Glory was smiling.
...
...
The next day, the Kreutz press went into a frenzy.
The underground auction house in the Umben Barony, as well as the entire baronial estate, had been annihilated overnight.
The guard unit dispatched in haste identified the culprit as a single swordsman soaked in curses and continued their investigation, but no trace was found.
Among the 477 confirmed dead, there was not a single survivor.