Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 4 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Traitor’s Motive

Watanabe’s decapitated head tumbled through the air. His soulless eyes reflected the scene playing out beneath them. Viscous red liquid spurted from his now headless body. The soldiers, knights, and students looking up at him were splattered in crimson.

I could almost hear it. Something I’d once lost, that “wonderful thing” everyone possessed and I envied from afar, shattered ever so easily. It was the sound of the world crumbling to pieces—the moment the mirage one so naively believed in vanished.

The first time I’d heard it remained vividly in my mind. It was just a little over two months ago now. It was when the outrageously powerful cheaters destroyed the Colony, the settlement we had built in the Depths.

Tragedy didn’t occur without a reason. We had suddenly found ourselves inside an unfamiliar forest. Not only that, there were beasts all around us who should’ve belonged purely in fiction. The miserable deaths of our classmates, almost unthinkable in peaceful Japan, greatly affected our minds.

That wasn’t all either. Thanks to the blessing of cheats, we managed to hunt monsters and secure enough food to avoid starvation within a few days. That was merely meeting the bare minimum for life, however. We no longer had convenience stores or supermarkets. Even if we weren’t dying from starvation, hunger remained our constant companion. Our quality of life was basically nil.

Also, with such a large gathering of people forced to work together, even if in small groups, it was inevitable that cliques would form and friction would be born. We students didn’t have the experience or know-how to adjust to such a lifestyle.

Much like sand pouring down an hourglass, anxiety grew stronger and dissatisfaction piled up. Unable to endure the weight of the falling sand, our minds began to crack. It was the countdown to our own destruction.

In the end, when a portion of the exploration team began rampaging, the accumulated stress within us exploded like a lit powder keg. The cornered students turned into rioters. There were no laws, no police, nothing at all to stop the rampage.

“The strong act however they want.”

Kudou’s words were reality. At the very least, they were valid in that chaos. However, we were no longer in a lawless forest with no public order. We were in Fort Tilia. We had set foot within the world of humanity.

“Our hardships are over. We’re saved. With this, such a tragedy will never happen again.”

Everyone had believed so. They’d never doubted it. If the people sent to this world had been nothing more than powerless victims, there wouldn’t have been any problems whatsoever from this point onward. That wasn’t the case, however. We weren’t powerless victims. We possessed far too tremendous a power. Our cheats had to be factored into these calculations.

This world definitely had laws of its own. They of course had the means to enforce and maintain such laws. I didn’t know the details, having only stayed within a military facility deep inside the forest, but they had an army and knights. It wasn’t hard to imagine these forces, or one similar to them, serving such a role.

But if someone were to ask me whether such organizations could suppress the tremendous power of cheaters... The answer was no, they couldn’t. The power of cheaters was preposterous. A deterrence that didn’t work was no deterrence at all. As such, things were the same as they were in the Woodlands. Kudou was right.

“Nothing has changed at all.”

Right here was a future that mirrored the day the Colony fell. The strong did whatever they wanted and revived a tragedy. That “wonderful thing” was smashed to atoms and would never go back to how it was.

◆ ◆ ◆

The deafening explosions and the roaring of collapsing stone resounded far and wide. The very fortress, built for the sake of war, couldn’t withstand the countless fireballs coming from the exploration team’s Juumonji. Just thirty seconds ago, there was a line of soldiers and knights grouped up on the inner walls, but that entire section had collapsed one floor down and was now a tragic mountain of rubble. It was a scene right out of a nightmare.

“Hah... Haha! Hahahahaha! Well, ain’t that amazing!”

A boy stood on the edge of the hole, looking down at the mountain of pulverized rubble as he laughed. The name of the boy with disheveled dirty-blond hair was Sakagami Gouta. He was one of the students. Even with such a tragedy before him, he burst into laughter. His uncontrollable cackling was filled with resentment, expressing his malicious joy at watching those he’d held a grudge against crushed before him.

“They’re minced meat! Minced fucking meat! Serves you right, assholes!”

“Oh, Sakagami...”

A voice put a damper on Sakagami’s joy. Simple wind magic blew away the dust in the air, revealing Juumonji Tatsuya. His magic had caused his own foothold to crumble, so he was caught in the collapsed wall section as well. Having said that, he wasn’t stupidly injured in the process. This was well within his range of expectations.

“Hey, Tatsuya! Wasn’t that a little mean?!”

With the dust rising above him, Sakagami looked down at the gloomy rubble, whose lighting fixtures had been destroyed by the collapse, and began grumbling to Juumonji.

“What’re you talking about?”

“The monsters on the outer walls! Watanabe’s magic annihilated them ’cause you were too slow! You could’ve offed him before he activated it, right?!”

“I feel bad that happened after you gathered so many of them, but just accept it as an inevitable loss.” In contrast to his words, he didn’t seem apologetic in the least. Juumonji patted the dust off his dirty uniform before continuing. “I didn’t want to get injured. Even though his abilities leaned far more toward magic, Watanabe was still a warrior. He might’ve resisted if I got the timing wrong. I had to attack him while he was unleashing his greatest magic to get rid of him for sure. It would’ve been fine if he’d went out with Iino into the Woodlands, but seeing as he didn’t, this was a necessary sacrifice.”

“That may be the case, but ya know...”

“Since Watanabe lost control in the middle of activating his magic, its power should’ve dropped a lot. I guess monsters don’t amount to much. Whatever. More importantly...” Juumonji glared up at Sakagami. “I thought I told you not to come out until I said it was okay. There was what you did yesterday too. Don’t go doing whatever you want.”

Sakagami flinched. “Ugh... M-My bad. B-But, come on. You don’t have to be such a hard-ass, right? Look, we annihilated the main force just like we planned. This fortress is done for. The monsters left inside will be more than enough to kill the rest. Nothing dangerous is gonna happen just from me coming out like this...”

“They weren’t annihilated.”

“What?”

“I’m telling you they’re not all dead. I’m impressed. To so doggedly cling to life in such a situation. Right...” Juumonji turned his attention away from the hysterical Sakagami and looked right at me. “Majima, was it?”

I stared right back at Juumonji’s virile face.

“From what I can see, you manipulate monsters... That’s the same kind of ability Sakagami has. How surprising. So that’s your cheat. I thought you were different from the others, but I never figured you’d be hiding your power. Also, looks like Mizushima there can use magic, huh?”

I was already postured for battle. Asarina was stretching out of my left hand, and Ayame was riding on my right shoulder. Lily had her spear in hand at my side and had her mana ready to shoot magic at any time.

We had somehow managed to survive the grade 4 magic that Juumonji had unleashed. This of course had nothing to do with my own strength. Even if I had managed to bolster my body with mana, I wouldn’t have been able to get away from those explosions safely.

I had instructed Lily to prepare for battle right before we came out of the staircase, just in case. This decision paid off in spades. The moment Juumonji revealed his true nature, Lily’s magic was already set to go, so she was able to counterbalance the fire magic he unleashed at us. If she didn’t specialize in water magic, or if Juumonji’s magic prioritized destructive power over area of effect, we’d probably be lying in a pile of rubble ourselves. Her magic was just barely sufficient, but it did in fact succeed in protecting us.

Lily’s magic had also protected those near us. Kei, who was right by our side, didn’t have much in terms of injuries. The lucky students who had come to talk to us, Miyoshi Taichi and his friends, didn’t suffer any fatal wounds. Shiran, the commander, Mikihiko, and the other Alliance Knights also survived. It had all happened in an instant, so we couldn’t cover them as well, but they likely used magic to intercept the attack in the same way when they realized what was happening. Everyone else, however, was annihilated.

“H-How dare you! My comrades! Unforgivable!”

“You also instigated this attack?! You bastard!”

“Ooooh!”

Three of the surviving Alliance Knights charged forth, shouting stiffly.

“W-Wait! Don’t charge in recklessly!”

The commander’s cry didn’t reach them. The blood rushing to their heads from anger and fear deafened them to her words. The half-panicking knights kicked off the rubble and closed in on Juumonji. A fireball struck one of them. The knight’s body blew back and tumbled across the floor. Flames burst from the openings in his armor like some strange piece of artwork.

“Much too slow.”

“Eep?!”

By the time they’d heard him, Juumonji dashed forward and bisected one of the two remaining knights at the waist. The last knight held up his large shield to protect himself, but a kick sent him flying backward into the rubble with the force of a bullet, leaving him totally motionless. A large puddle of blood began forming on the ground beneath him.

“R-Ridiculous... In just a single instant...?” the commander groaned.

Though I watched it from beginning to end, my spine froze over at the sight of Juumonji’s devilish strength. Using magic required gathering mana so that the user could construct a glyph. Naturally, the stronger the magic, the more mana it needed. Juumonji’s fire magic just now required pretty much no time at all to unleash, yet it had the power of grade 2 magic. It was proof of how colossal an amount of mana Juumonji held within his body.

Even if he couldn’t compare to the Skanda Iino Yuna, his speed was still monstrous. His single slash which had bisected a fully armored opponent was one thing, but beating the experienced Alliance Knights so soundly in close combat was far more terrifying, even considering they had lost themselves in the moment. In truth, if Juumonji had shown even the slightest of openings, Lily was planning to charge him with a do-or-die suicide attack. I could sense it through our mental path. I had also braced myself to support her. But Lily didn’t move. She couldn’t move. He had killed the knights in an instant. There was no time for anything close to an opening.

The most terrifying thing, though, was that Juumonji’s expression didn’t budge. It wasn’t that he was resolving himself for combat or anything like that. His expression was entirely cold. It was as if he was looking at us all like simple objects. In fact, that was probably exactly how we looked in his eyes. That was why he was capable of killing hundreds of people at once.

As I remained conscious of this chilling sensation, I opened my mouth stiffly. “Were you planning this from the very beginning?”

A lot of things made sense if so. Ever since we arrived at the fortress, Juumonji spent a lot of time managing the other students. His behavior was such that even I could admire him, despite having opinions regarding the man himself.

If all these efforts were for his own sake, it was actually rather convincing. He took action to gain the trust of the other students and the people of the fortress so that he could accomplish his own goal. Sakagami was his accomplice in this.

I didn’t know when they started working together, but there was no mistaking this had all been planned out. Sakagami attacked Kei yesterday because he knew what was going to happen to the fortress. So, before it did, he wanted to... Well, that pretty much summed it up. The reason Juumonji appeared back then was to stop the ill-tempered Sakagami from using his cheat to attack me and ruin the plan for today. It still bothered me how strangely good his timing was back then, but that might’ve been purely because Juumonji knew his accomplice was quick to anger and was keeping a close eye on him.

There was one other thing on my mind too. If Juumonji wanted to inspire confidence in him from the other students to pull off his plan, there was another incident that confirmed this.

“The bull wriggler attack right before we arrived at the fortress... You two set that up?”

A monster attack so close to the fortress was normally unheard of. That was why their appearance followed by their immediate disposal was such a vivid scene. It was definitely fabricated to plant the seeds of admiration within the students’ hearts toward the exploration team, revered as saviors of this world. As a result, the students trusted the exploration team to such a degree that the foul-mouthed Mikihiko called them “well-trained idiots.” But that was all a performance—one part of the play. Sakagami had the bull wrigglers attack the students, including himself, and then the exploration team defeated them.

“Yeah. That’s right. I had Sakagami do it,” Juumonji said, staring down at me with a strong gaze.

“Why would you do something so brutal?” I asked.

“Why? Isn’t it obvious? To survive. There’s nothing else to want from this nonsensical world.” Even as he denounced me, Juumonji’s complexion didn’t change at all. “You listening? This isn’t the world we came from. Everything about it is different. Nobody can guarantee you’ll live to see the next day. That’s where we are now. We have to resort to anything so we can return home alive.”

Juumonji spoke calmly, as if he was stating the obvious.

Now that I thought of it, I understood the meaning behind the way he had once said “this isn’t the world we came from,” and “everything here is different.” I had first interpreted this as though he thought everything looked different after obtaining lawbreaking cheats, but in truth, Juumonji didn’t find any relief in his preposterous powers. He sensed danger to his being here in this world.

And this was what brought about the tragedy before me, apparently. Juumonji was planning to stain his hands with whatever inhuman deeds he deemed necessary, all so he could return to the world we came from.

“Hang on... Return home?” I realized I had let something important slide by completely. “We can go back? How...?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Using our cheats,” Juumonji replied casually. “You’ve at least played a game or two, right? An RPG. One where you fight monsters, level up, and learn skills and magic. Anything orthodox like that. It’s the same here. We level up until we’re able to return to our world.”

I couldn’t respond. Was he...serious? This world wasn’t a game; it was reality. We did in fact gain mana by defeating monsters, miniscule as it was, so this was presumably what he was referring to as leveling up... But would he truly be able to acquire the power to cross between worlds like that, and so conveniently too? Was it even possible to gain new cheats to begin with?

Juumonji didn’t really have a reason to lie, however. At the very least, he believed what he was saying. Did he know something I didn’t?

It’s no good. There’s too much I don’t know.

“H-Hey, Juumonji,” Miyoshi suddenly said, still cowering on the ground nearby. “Th-This is some kind of misunderstanding, right? There’s...no way...you’d do such a...” His voice was tragically hollow. He still didn’t believe what had happened right before his eyes. All the blood had drained from his pale face, and his tone was shrill as he tried to deny reality. “I mean, there was no reason to, right?! Go back to our world?! Why do you need to take over a fortress to do that?!”

“You seem to be misunderstanding something.” Juumonji looked down at Miyoshi with an annoyed expression. This was all it took to kill Miyoshi’s vigor. His body trembled violently in fear as Juumonji spoke to him in a blunt tone. “I don’t really give a damn about this fortress.”

“Huh...?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’m leveling up. Pounding on trash mobs takes a ton of time, and it’s a pain in the ass. So at times like these, you aim for rare monsters who give more experience, yeah? For example, the faster and tougher ones. That’s all this is.”

“I-I don’t get it. What are you saying? I don’t understand at all...”

Miyoshi shook his head so intensely it felt like I could hear it. It was like he was refusing to understand.

“You sure are a dumbass, Miyoshi,” Juumonji said with a hint of pity. “We can absorb mana from the souls of monsters by defeating them, right? Stronger monsters give you more mana... So, if we kill these beings they call saviors, how much mana do you think we can gain?”

Miyoshi’s jaw dropped. His eyes shot open. His body shook even more than before.

“N-No way...”

“Yeah, looks like you get it. You’ve heard them say this before, right? ‘The souls of saviors are different from the ones of the humans of this world.’” Juumonji thrust his finger at Miyoshi, who was now pale as a sheet. “Rare monsters who give tons of XP. In short, I’m referring to you guys. Unfortunately, there’s only a thousand of you in this world. I need to get as many as I can before the others snatch them away, or I’ll be at a disadvantage later. It’s a scramble for resources, basically.”

Juumonji’s eyes weren’t even looking at Miyoshi as an object. In his view, all the students, including Miyoshi, were nothing more than experience points. The other humans here didn’t even enter his field of vision.

How many hundreds of people died in the battle today? Counting the ones who were killed by monsters, easily over a thousand had lost their lives. And yet, Juumonji didn’t show a single sign that his heart regretted what he had done.

“Hm, I get it now. I guess my mana went up by ten percent or so? Haha. With this, I’m one step closer to my goal.”

All the loss of life didn’t mean a thing to him. Juumonji simply looked at what he had obtained, and smiled. Did he have this sort of disposition to begin with? Or did the stress of coming to this world change him? I didn’t know, but the one thing I was certain of was that when a human with a horribly grotesque personality obtained great power, tragedy was sure to spread endlessly around them.

“D-Do you really feel nothing from doing something so cruel?!”

“How upsetting, Miyoshi. Of course I do. I didn’t want to do something like this. I wasn’t really on bad terms with Watanabe, either. Yup. I didn’t want to kill him. Really.” Juumonji shrugged. “But I guess some things are inevitable.”

A sound came from Miyoshi’s throat as if his breath stuck. For the sake of personal survival, for accomplishing his own goals, Juumonji would kill people. That was more convenient for him, even if he had to kill someone close to him. He had summarized all of this in one word: inevitable. Faced with such a mentality, no one with normal sensibilities would be able to look directly at him.

Moments before Miyoshi fainted, Juumonji casually said, “Relax, I won’t let your death go to waste.”

After his heroic declaration, Juumonji stretched out his hand. A glyph took shape, and a fireball made a beeline right for Miyoshi’s face.

“Fuck!” I spat out as I threw my body into the line of fire and blocked the fireball with the shield on my left arm. “Ugh...”

I clenched my teeth and endured the shock happening on the other side of my shield. I didn’t receive much damage. I was saved by my equipment and the endurance I had built up until now.

“Hmm? You’re not half bad,” Juumonji said cheerfully.

I clicked my tongue as my left arm went numb. In the end, this was nothing more than a courageous but doomed act of defiance. Juumonji was smiling precisely because he knew I could never beat him. Perhaps his smile also included a sense of satisfaction that things were going exactly the way he wanted them to.

I knew he was buying time right now. Sakagami, who had been looking down on us from above the hole in the ramparts, was no longer visible. He probably wasn’t capable of fighting. Juumonji bought time for him to escape in the off-chance he got caught in the battle to come. All of the conversation he made until now was to buy time for that purpose. If Sakagami were to die, the monsters’ siege would break, and any surviving humans who knew the truth could become an inconvenience to him.

Even though I knew this, we couldn’t act carelessly. Our current deadlock was merely because he was being careful. We knew full well that if it came to battle, he would definitely slaughter us to the last. We didn’t need to go out of our way to confirm this. The situation was exceedingly bad.

A surprise attack had pretty much annihilated what used to be a force of over three hundred people. The only ones I could count on now were myself, Lily, and the twenty or so survivors among the Alliance Knights. Miyoshi and his group had fainted. The only ones aside from them were Mikihiko and Kei.

The worst part was that the hearts of the knights were shattered. Many of their comrades had already died due to the waves of monsters pouring into the fortress. Still, they had gripped their weapons and regained enough morale to carry out a counteroffensive operation. They could do this because their enemies were monsters. They prided themselves on being the protectors of humanity against this exact enemy. With nowhere to run, and surrender out of the question, the only choice was a do-or-die resistance. What supported them most, however, was the knowledge that the saviors were here in the fortress.

Saviors were beyond special in this world. They were hope incarnate. That was what the people here believed, at least. Just by being present, that illusion gave them power. And yet their faith had been betrayed with the worst timing possible.

The knights weren’t in the mental state to fight. As for Juumonji, even if he wasn’t a top-class cheater like Iino Yuna, he was a warrior. And even an average warrior had enough strength to break every rule in the book. What could we possibly do on our own to challenge such an opponent?

“It’s hopeless...”

Someone’s weak-hearted groan reached my ears. I could feel despair steadily creeping up my fingers. It was even nostalgic, in a way. I had tasted this far more than I’d wanted to on the day I ran away from the Colony. I bit my lip and forced strength into my weakened body. I tightened my grip on my sword. If this was enough for me to give in to despair, I wouldn’t have survived back then.

I wasn’t going to give up. I planned to struggle to the bitter end. Fortunately, we had only one enemy. Even if victory was out of our grasp, we could get a strike in, create an opening, and let everyone escape.

I knew this was going to be difficult, of course. But we couldn’t give up. I swore to live in this world with Lily and the other girls.

Like hell I’m going to die to a guy like this.

“Lily.”

“Mm. I know, Master.”

We were of one mind. Lily gripped her spear, and the moment before we charged into battle...

“Please wait a moment.”

A girl’s voice stole our spotlight.