Chapter 2
A man and a woman were walking through the forest.
They had just formed a two-person party at the Adventurers’ Guild, and the atmosphere was a little stiff.
So, to break the tension, the woman, a Thief, cracked a joke at the man.
“Eek! What are you doing all of a sudden?!”
Most men would either play along with a “Heh-heh-heh” or get angry and snap, “Don’t talk nonsense.”
But the man currently in her party reacted in a way she’d never seen before.
“W-What are you talking about? Out of nowhere?”
An innocent-looking response.
He seemed flustered, as if he wasn’t used to this sort of situation.
Could I make a killing off this guy?
Hearing that a new Hero had been summoned, she’d immediately teamed up with the man who looked like one.
It was to earn the honor of being in the Hero’s party, but if she could just pocket the stipend and run, who needed honor? Heh heh.
Poor thing.
The man had fallen into the hands of a truly vicious woman.
“You just sexually harassed me!!”
Watching the Hero’s face turn deathly pale, the Thief could barely contain her laughter.
Meanwhile, the summoned Hero, Baek Se-on, was utterly confused.
Had I touched her?
Or were the standards for sexual harassment different in this world?
With the mindset of a modern person, the Hero couldn’t deal with sexual harassment gracefully.
The party’s dynamic had changed in an instant, with one of them suddenly holding all the power.
Just as Se-on was stammering, opening and closing his mouth...
“Hoooold on!!”
A mysterious girl burst out from the bushes.
The Demon King had suddenly appeared.
But no one knew this girl was the Demon King.
Baek Se-on looked at the Demon King who’d appeared out of nowhere and thought:
Could she be an angel?
Looking at the beauty of the girl who’d appeared, he couldn’t help but wonder.
Silky black hair and captivating red eyes.
On top of that, black horns on her head and a tail poking out through the slit in the back of her dress.
Uh, well, the more he looked, the more she resembled a demon than an angel.
Could she be an actual demon?
If he was curious, he could just ask.
“You, right now—”
“Hey! Are you by any chance a demon...?”
Ah. He’d accidentally cut her off.
“What? A sexual harasser like you has no right to say that!”
No, I didn’t sexually harass her!
He was deeply aggrieved.
“I-I only asked because you have horns on your head...”
“Oh.”
The girl touched her own head with a somewhat vacant expression.
“I’m not a demon. I’m a beastkin. Beastkin.”
“Aha.”
The Thief girl beside him seemed convinced.
That was only natural, since demons were believed to have gone extinct centuries ago at the hands of a Hero.
The Demon King was the one exception.
And Se-on didn’t know this fact very well, so he took the Thief girl’s reaction at face value.
“But, hey, sexually harassing her is a bit much, isn’t it? Are you okay?”
The girl looked over the Thief as if concerned.
The Thief didn’t let this opportunity go to waste.
“Sob... I trusted him because he was the Hero! He dragged me into the forest and tried to touch me!”
“When did I...!”
Se-on sensed that the situation had taken a bad turn.
The beastkin girl seemed more inclined to believe the Thief than him.
Glance.
He looked at the girl, who seemed somehow dazed.
“W-Wait. What did you just say?”
“That he tried to touch me?”
“No, no. I mean what you said before that.”
“...That you trusted him because he was the Hero?”
Thunk! The girl’s eyes grew as round as saucers.
She looked as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.
Oh, crap!
The Thief realized.
Now that she’d revealed he was the Hero, it’d be hard to make him out as a sexual harasser.
The Hero’s public reputation was bound to be good.
The tale of the Hero who defeated the Demon King and saved the world centuries ago.
It was a heroic legend captivating enough to draw in any child.
For such a Hero to sexually harass someone...
It was as hard to believe as claiming the Pope was an atheist.
Just as she thought she wouldn’t be able to extort any money after all...
“You rapist bastard! You’re so desperate to get laid, you’ll fuck any woman!! People of the village! There’s a rapist here!!”
The Demon King’s furious voice rang out through the forest.
***
The Demon King didn’t really care either way.
In the first place, he hadn’t intervened because he was a busybody.
It was just because it looked fun.
So, whether the woman won or the man did, all he wanted was to stir up a fight.
“...”
Actually, after seeing the man’s handsome face, he leaned a little toward the woman.
If I had a face like that, I’d give blind dating another try...
Gasp! What was I thinking?
Love is all an illusion. An illusion.
A truly wicked thing.
Anyway, all that meant was he’d come to cause a ruckus.
But a Hero? A Herooooo?
What exactly was a Hero in this world?
Wasn’t a Hero someone who learned dozens of erotic skills, eventually turned every woman in the world into his personal fucktoy, and made the world a paradise of sex and debauchery?
A being who could erase this world whenever he felt like it.
That was a Hero.
To learn erotic skills, a Hero had to collect skill points.
The way to do that was to raise a woman’s lewdness or spend a steamy night with her.
In other words, the Hero had tried to rape a woman to gather skill points.
That was the one thing he had to stop immediately.
If he didn’t stop that guy, the world was finished.
So he shouted as loudly as he could.
To stop this horny Hero from gathering skill points.
The Hero’s face was painted with shock.
Heh heh. He was clearly flustered because his true intentions had been exposed.
I’ll get in your way to the very end.
To protect the world I’m going to live in.
***
Hero Baek Se-on was dumbfounded.
The girl who’d suddenly appeared had turned him into a rapist.
He wondered if she was in cahoots with the Thief, but her flustered look seemed to say otherwise.
“No, I’m not exactly a rapist...”
“Hey! We absolutely can’t let that slide!”
The evil Demon King cut off the Thief.
“See, you shouldn’t judge people by their looks. So what if he’s handsome? His character’s rotten.”
The Thief nodded as she watched the Demon King.
The girl’s scheming seemed downright evil to her.
But Se-on thought a little differently.
‘She’s a girl with a strong sense of justice, after all.’ That was what he thought.
Even if she seemed to have misunderstood things badly.
He could calm her down first, then explain the situation slowly.
Just as he was about to speak...
“Hey! Aren’t you going to apologize right now? You’re clearly a criminal!”
The girl spoke before he could.
“N-No. I didn’t do that. There must be some misunderstanding...”
“Tsk! Can’t you see that woman crying? You shouldn’t do things that get you misunderstood in the first place.”
Se-on felt wronged, but she wasn’t wrong.
Maybe I really did make a mistake?
The Hero had only been in this world for a month and still didn’t know its customs well, so he had no choice but to heed her words.
“I-I’m sorry!”
“Sorry isn’t enough, is it? You should give her something, don’t you think?”
Thunk! Thunder rumbled in Se-on’s head.
Wouldn’t this make him look exactly like a criminal being shaken down for a settlement?
As he hesitated, the girl’s glare from beside him felt like a painful prick.
In the end, unable to withstand the pressure, Se-on had no choice but to hand his money pouch to the crying Thief.
“Sniff... Then I’ll be going now... Sob.”
The Thief, having received the money pouch, quickly left.
She felt a little guilty, and it was hard to keep up the act.
Maybe she also didn’t want to get involved with the girl any further.
And so, left standing there, were a penniless Hero and a girl claiming to be beastkin.
The two watched the Thief’s retreating figure for a long while.
“...”
Se-on felt miserable.
Even so, how could he hand over all the money he had!
Of course, he could get it back once he reached the kingdom.
But Se-on had lost his money and his morale.
If you asked why, it was obviously thanks to the beastkin girl.
So Se-on wanted to leave quickly.
“Um, well, I should get going too?”
Just as he started to walk away.
“Where are you going? You have to take me with you.”
The girl stopped Se-on.
Take her with him?
Did she not know the way?
As Se-on stood there bewildered, the girl spoke.
“I’m joining the Hero’s party too.”
“...Huh?”
“What are you doing? Lead the way. Let’s head back to the village first.”
The girl urged him on.
What was this?
Was she a girl who admired the Hero?
Maybe that was why she’d gotten so worked up when she heard the Hero had sexually harassed someone.
But the Hero’s party had the duty of defeating the Demon King.
So he couldn’t let someone join just because she admired him.
Besides, Se-on didn’t want to travel with this troublemaker of a girl.
So he stressed how terrifying the Demon King was and how grueling the journey would be.
He stressed it as much as he could!
The girl seemed to notice what he was doing and gathered mana in her hand.
A moment later, the lump of mana that formed in her hand flew fiercely at a tree, like a pitcher’s fastball.
Bang! Crack! Thud.
The tree couldn’t hold up and toppled backward.
“Whoa.”
It was an amazing feat!
To knock down a tree using pure mana alone.
It seemed the girl was a mage after all.
And a very powerful one.
He remembered being told, when the kingdom taught him common knowledge, that mages were extremely rare.
So the king had urged him to add any mage he found to the party.
Oh, no...
Se-on despaired.
Apparently he had no choice but to travel with this girl.
Meanwhile, the Demon King thought differently.
This is the Demon King?
Too weak.
Maybe she had the strength of a decent mage, but she was the Demon King.
Wasn’t the Demon King supposed to be the strongest in the world?
Still, instinctively feeling like he knew how to draw in mana, he tried it, and something like a Rasengan came out.
Hmph. He’d been incredible back in the Demon King’s castle.
Well, it seemed good enough, so maybe it didn’t matter.
“Hey, do you have something like a skill menu?”
“Uh, y-yeah... I do. How’d you know?”
Seeing the Hero’s wary look, he was sure this guy had played this adult game before.
That’s why he was doing that stuff to gather skill points.
“Just a guess. I learned about Heroes, that’s all.”
“I see. I unlocked a skill since I had skill points, but I don’t know what any of this means.”
Shit. He already had skill points?
Seeing the Hero pretend he knew nothing, he frowned without realizing it.
You perverted criminal bastard.
The best move he’d made was taking all the money, in case the Hero went to a brothel to gather skill points.
I really am smart!
Though, honestly, that’s what I’d done in the game.
“Oh! Why don’t we introduce ourselves first? I’m Baek Se-on. What’s your name?”
The Hero’s mouth continued.
Definitely Korean.
Well, I should introduce myself too.
The Demon King opened his mouth.
But his open mouth made no sound.
Because he couldn’t remember his name.
Huh? My name... Wait, why can’t I remember it?
“...”
“...”
When the conversation stalled, the Hero’s expression turned odd.
Aaaah! I have to say something, anything...
“Yubel! My name is Yubel!”
“Oh, okay. Nice to meet you, Yubel.”
Damn it, I blurted out the name I used in college English class.
But how could I forget my own name? I hadn’t heard it much lately, but could people usually forget their names?
As he walked with the Hero, wondering if he had dementia, the sky began to darken.
“Well, looks like we’ll have to camp in the forest tonight. Is that okay?”
“I don’t mind. But we’re sleeping here? On the ground?”
“No, I brought sleeping bags. I’ll get a fire going here.”
For a horny Hero, he was certainly well prepared.
The Hero was getting ready to camp, using the matches he’d brought to light the campfire.
But aren’t there monsters and stuff when you camp in a fantasy world?
Yubel took a sleeping bag out of the Hero’s backpack.
But why was there only one sleeping bag?
“Uh, it looks like there’s only one sleeping bag?”
“Ah.”
The Hero’s mouth fell open like a nutcracker.
Sigh. Figures. Could they share it?
As he gauged the sleeping bag’s size, the Hero came over.
“Um... You use it by yourself. I’m fine sleeping on the ground.”
“Why? It looks like we could fit in it together.”
“...?”
This was what Yubel was thinking.
Two guys could share a sleeping bag, couldn’t they?
Was he perhaps shy around people?
“Really?”
The Hero asked with a dazed expression.
He’s got an annoying face.
I’ll just use it by myself.
“Never mind. I’ll use it by myself. Thanks for the sleeping bag.”
“O-Okay. Yeah.”
The Hero looked a little disappointed.
So does he want to share or not? Ugh, this is frustrating.
And so the Hero slept on the ground, while Yubel slept in the sleeping bag.
It was a sad sight: one camping, the other sleeping rough.
Tweet, tweet. The sound of birds chirping.
It was a peaceful, lovely morning.
“Huh?”
Until Yubel saw hot liquid gush up from his slit.