Chapter 59
Rustle, rustle…….
“It feels nice.”
“Hehe, I see.”
Of course it feels nice.
After all, whose broad thighs was she lying with her head on?
Sukja had cut off the parts of my legs below the knees, and perhaps she wanted to recapture a bit of her childhood after all this time, because she asked for what people called a lap pillow.
And I wasn’t foolish enough to refuse.
There was no way I’d feel like resisting in front of a monster who could turn people into roly-poly dolls with ease.
‘A lap pillow…… It’s not as bad as I expected.’
A lap pillow was surprisingly comfortable.
I’d heard that lap pillows were usually too high for someone to rest their head on, so most people didn’t actually use them. But now that the parts of my legs below the knees were gone, the height was perfect.
So being legless has its perks, huh? Haha.
I was laughing hollowly, but it wasn’t as if I’d lost my mind.
I could fix my legs anytime.
The parasite had told me that this body had ‘Super Regeneration’ as a passive ability, so as long as I had enough mana, my legs would grow back.
And right now, I was overflowing with mana.
Even so, I didn’t heal myself.
Even if I regrew my legs right now, she’d just dismantle them again.
So I was suppressing my ability as much as possible to keep them from regenerating.
I also used mana to maintain my body temperature and avoid hypothermia. Since the blizzard wasn’t raging here, I could manage without Prea’s blessing.
I couldn’t do anything about my skin sticking to the ice and tearing away with chunks of flesh, though.
[By the way, you imitate my way of speaking rather well, more than I expected.]
“Hehe, my ears are burning, I suppose.”
A compliment out of nowhere.
Imitating the parasite’s way of speaking was easy.
All I had to do was start with ‘Hehe’ and end with ‘I suppose,’ and I had the parasite’s manner of speech down perfectly.
Judging by how Sukja hadn’t noticed, my performance must have been pretty convincing.
The way she was rubbing her head against me made it seem like my acting was quite believable.
What a cute thing.
“Are your ears itchy? Shall I freeze them for you?”
No.
Thinking about it now, she wasn’t cute at all.
I couldn’t understand how the idea of freezing my ears could possibly come up just because I said they were itchy.
She thought I might run away, so she got rid of my legs.
I said my ears were itchy, and she wanted to get rid of them.
Was she the kind of person who thought you should eliminate the cause whenever a problem came up?
So this is when you say, ‘Burn down the house to catch a bedbug.’
At this rate, I’d have to be careful about everything I said around her.
“Hehe, Sukja doesn’t need to go to so much trouble for my sake.”
“But……”
“I said it’s fine.”
Please, I’m fine, thank you.
Just leave me alone.
I prayed fervently in my heart.
Now I understood why priests and nuns recited prayers.
When you ended up in a hopeless situation, you wanted something—anything—to cling to, I suppose.
But here, the only thing I could rely on was myself.
‘Should I just act crazy and fire a spell at this bitch’s head?’
I didn’t know how Sukja would react, but I couldn’t just sit here helplessly.
I could hope the Hero’s party would come, but from their perspective, I’d disappeared without warning. Even if they came looking, it would take a long time to find me.
And I wouldn’t be able to hold out that long.
My heart was already pounding, and I was on edge. It was only a matter of time before something went wrong.
So just as I was gathering the mana inside me, ready to cast a spell at any moment—
“Sex.”
Huh?
A hoarse old man’s voice came from one of the statues outside the cage.
“Be quiet.”
“Like hell, brat. Would you keep quiet if you were me? Locking me up wasn’t enough—you’ve got the nerve to get all lovey-dovey right in front of me, and you expect me to shut up?”
The old man’s voice didn’t falter at Sukja’s words; he kept saying exactly what he wanted to the very end.
Startled by the voice, I craned my neck to see who on earth was speaking.
‘What the hell is that? A sword? Did that sword just talk?’
To my shock, it was shaped like a sword.
The sword gleamed pure white, embedded in one of my statues.
[Good heavens, the holy sword is here.]
The parasite must have seen it through my eyes, because it told me what the sword was.
It was the holy sword.
Was there a holy sword in this adult game, too?
Since I didn’t know about it, it probably wasn’t a very important item.
[That thing is a sword that can kill demonkind—in other words, us.]
Holy shit.
It was a damn important item.
And demonkind? Wasn’t I a demon?
Were those two different things? And what was this about a sword that could kill me?
Did that mean nothing else could kill me?
There were a mountain of things I wanted to ask, and I wanted to scream right then and there, but unfortunately, the situation wouldn’t allow it.
The weight pressing down on my thighs was the reason.
“Mom, scold him.”
Sukja spoke to me in a calm tone, her face expressionless.
Since it sounded like she’d said it because she wanted to act spoiled, I didn’t answer and asked her something else instead.
“Hehe, where did you get that sword?”
The parasite seemed curious about it, too, so I brought it up.
Why did this girl have the holy sword?
“I stole it from down there so I could protect you, Mom.”
Sukja answered and looked at me as if to ask, ‘I did good, right?’
“What? You kidnapped me for that stupid reason? Oh, this is so unfair! Imagine getting captured by a pair of lunatics in my twilight years! I’ve got no energy left after being abandoned by the Hero! You little bastards!”
The old man’s wailing voice echoed through the room.
Was he talking about the Hero who’d died fighting the Demon King two hundred years ago? If so, calling it abandonment was a little off the mark.
‘What a strange personality for a holy sword.’
After that, Sukja said she couldn’t let the holy sword’s vulgar words contaminate me—or something—and froze my ears, making them necrotize in an instant.
Thanks to that, I was temporarily left deaf.
***
The Hero’s party was currently racing across the rugged snowy mountain at breakneck speed to get Yubel back.
Even Riella, who was usually like a child, ran ahead with a grave expression on her face.
And Prea was no exception.
Perhaps she felt guilty for failing to save Yubel. She didn’t care that her clothes were torn by branches or that she was accumulating scratches; all she focused on was reaching the summit.
Under her breath, she kept praying desperately for Lady Yubel to be safe.
Prea’s lips had turned blue, as if she were freezing.
She’d poured all her divine power into speed alone.
‘But why had Yubel been without it then……?’
That explosion just now, infused with demonic energy.
Its force was something the blessing could easily have withstood.
But Yubel hadn’t had the blessing at the time.
I didn’t know why.
The blizzard raging around us had made it difficult to figure out what the two of them had discussed or what had happened.
That was also why I’d realized so late that Yubel’s blessing had disappeared.
It had all happened because I’d been careless as the party leader.
I should have taken responsibility for looking after my party members, but my inexperienced decisions had piled up and led to this situation.
But there was no time for self-recrimination.
Right now, I had to focus all my thoughts on the woman who’d just appeared.
When I ran toward Yubel as she was caught in the explosion, a white-haired woman suddenly appeared.
It had only been an instant, but I’d clearly seen her snatch Yubel away. Who was she?
Was she Yubel’s savior, who’d rescued her life? Or was she just a kidnapper? Or……
‘The witch on the snowy mountain.’
Questions and guesses came and went, but there was no point in speculating based on such uncertain information.
So for now, all I could do was what I could.
Run toward Yubel, who was up there.
It could be dangerous, so we had to get there as quickly as possible.
However.
Someone blocked our path.
“It’s been a while, everyone. Have we met before?”
“You……”
His deep, solemn voice was at odds with his playful manner.
He wasn’t wearing the clown outfit he’d worn last time, but a black suit.
The cat mask covering his face told us who he was.
It was the Masked Cat.
As soon as Riella and I recognized him, we went straight into battle stances.
It brought back memories of what had happened in Edelia.
For some reason, Prea was glaring at the man with bloodshot eyes, too.
She looked like she had a lot to say.
But I had no intention of fighting.
Every second counted right now.
“Move. Or I’ll cut you down.”
“Ooh, how frightening. But I’m afraid I can’t do that. I have to let the mage up there die, you see……”
I didn’t need to hear anything else.
I charged at the Masked Cat and swung my sword, careful not to kill him.
Clang—!
‘He blocked it?’
Sparks flew between our swords, and I stepped back toward my companions.
I was more than a little surprised by the unexpected parry.
Was he a fighter, despite how he looked?
I’d seen the longsword, but I’d struck so quickly that he shouldn’t have had time to draw it.
But the fact that he’d blocked that strike meant……
‘He’s stronger than me. But he’s not overwhelmingly so.’
If we joined forces, we could take him down easily enough.
We just had a time limit.
We exchanged glances and quietly finished preparing to charge.
The moment we wrapped ourselves in combat blessings—
“Wait a moment. I didn’t come here to fight.”
The Masked Cat raised both hands to show he was surrendering.
“I came to make you an offer, Hero.”
Then he slowly brought his hand to his face and grasped his mask.
The mask came off easily.
The face underneath was a familiar-looking middle-aged man, the sort you might see in the modern world.
His expression looked utterly serious.
“Don’t you want to go back to your original world?”
The atmosphere…… changed.