Chapter 12
“Nice to meet you. You’re the adventurers who will be escorting us to Plania, correct?”
An old man in a suit stepped forward and asked us.
I looked around.
It seemed that quite a lot of people had gathered to serve as escorts.
I remembered that this quest was particularly lucrative even in the game, which was why so many NPCs had gathered for it. Apparently, reality was no different, as countless adventurers had come to take on the escort job.
Of course, there was a reason so many adventurers had been gathered.
The Black Night Forest—true to the literal meaning of its name, it was a forest that stayed dark all day.
Because countless enormous trees stood packed together, almost no light reached the ground. On top of that, the region was saturated with demonic energy, making it extremely dangerous. That was only natural, considering it was crawling with powerful monsters.
Under normal circumstances, most adventurers would enter and die without putting up a fight, but we had a Hero carrying the Sacred Sword and a mage known as the Child Upon Whom a Star Descended. Besides, more than a dozen adventurers, most of them C-rank or higher, were accompanying us, so there was nothing to worry about.
Even in the game, only monsters the Hero could handle appeared, so it was basically a tutorial, as I mentioned earlier, but...
I could feel the tension.
But I couldn't let it show.
Lumia was originally a D-rank mage skilled enough to be called a veteran.
Naturally, Lumia had done plenty of adventuring as well, so she had to endure this as though it were nothing. I trembled at the pressure of being a mage, which I was feeling all over again, but soon calmed my shaking body and took a deep breath.
“Lumia?”
Perhaps he had heard me take a deep breath, because the Hero turned toward me.
I shook my head as if to say it was nothing.
Mages were highly valued wherever they went.
A D-rank mage was also considered a veteran, so most parties would be delighted to have one. However, Lumia was only D-rank in name; her actual abilities were not D-rank.
The first reason the Hero had brought me into his party was that, as a Hero, he had seen through the fact that I was the Child Upon Whom a Star Descended. The second was my magical ability. When I used healing magic before, he could write it off because healing magic normally consumed a great deal of mana when used by a mage, but other magic was different.
In other words, I had to demonstrate magical ability at least on the level of a C-rank adventurer for the Hero not to find me strange. The problem was that the Hero, who was worried about me, had ended up becoming the very reason I was so nervous.
If the Hero was a transmigrator, that was a problem in its own right...
No, wait a second.
Why hadn't I thought of this?
Maybe this guy wasn't a transmigrator.
If the Hero knew what would happen in the future and still retained his original personality, there was only one answer, wasn't there?
‘Regression...? He regressed...?’
I turned toward the Hero.
No way. Was it really true?
No, if the Hero really was a regressor, then everything made sense.
His behavior around the carriage, and even the way he seemed to be hiding something about me—it explained all of it clearly and convincingly. Since he was a regressor, of course he would know that the carriage he first boarded was a slave traders' carriage.
No, he would know.
In other words, that meant...
“...”
It couldn't be... right?
Wait, regressing meant that he had experienced a bad ending at least once... But if he already knew how to reach the happy ending, why I always had to sacrifice myself, and that failing to do so led to an ending in which the world was destroyed...
What if he was a genuine regressor who had regressed several times, or even dozens of times?
A chill ran through my entire body.
No, then were all the things he'd done until now just an act?
All of them?
For now, I wanted to believe that wasn't the case.
Could all of it really have been an act?
I'd read and played plenty of novels and games, but even so, the delusion I was entertaining now was beyond ridiculous.
Then again, it wasn't all that different from reality, considering I'd ended up inside a game...
Anyway, that was what I thought.
.
.
.
We entered the depths of the Black Night Forest without delay.
Perhaps because only reserved, unsociable people had gathered, there were no adventurers stepping into the center and trying to ingratiate themselves with everyone. Maybe that was only natural. An adventurer's life was so brutal that betrayals and endless cycles of revenge happened all the time.
The adventurer profession itself prioritized one's own survival above all else, so whenever something happened, they frequently betrayed others, used them as bait, or ran away. That was why adventurers were also the profession with the highest death rate.
The game's setting said that adventurers and knights were sworn enemies because, unlike knights, who valued honor, adventurers prioritized their own survival, making it impossible for the two sides to get along... I was a mage who belonged nowhere, while the Hero was the Hero.
And if things went the way I knew they would, no enemies beyond their ability to handle would appear in the Black Night Forest. The only thing worrying me was whether I could actually use magic to kill monsters myself.
Since we were heading straight to Plania across this forest, we would spend about three days in it—not long enough to call it an especially long stay. The problem was that those three days would be spent not in an ordinary forest, but in this dangerous one.
Of course, if Lumia—in other words, if I—was here, we could coast through those three days.
It wasn't as though it would be entirely effortless, but if I set up a barrier, I could sense when monsters approached. It could also keep monsters weaker than me from entering, making it extremely efficient.
However, I couldn't maintain the barrier while moving in my current state, so there was nothing I could do about the monsters we encountered on the way.
Perhaps that was why.
We hadn't been in this dangerous forest for long before monsters began appearing one after another.
[Kieek?]
[Kieeek!]
Since we were still near the entrance, no particularly strong monsters appeared. But what kind of creatures were goblins?
Not only did they possess a nature vicious enough to be called cruel, but they also had a certain level of intelligence—not human-level, of course—and used tools to attack passing carriages. They sometimes survived on the supplies they obtained that way, and often took women away to use as playthings.
In other words, if I were captured...
I shook my head.
I didn't want to imagine anything like that.
It would all be over before they could attack us anyway.
[Kieek?!]
The goblin looked down at the arrow lodged in its chest with an expression of disbelief, then died on the spot.
Wow...
How could they shoot arrows so accurately from that far away?
Before I could even be impressed, a swordsman who had leaped from the carriage charged ahead and cleanly sliced through the neck of the goblin at the front. Every ranged attacker inside the carriage stood up and shot down the goblins aiming crude bows at us from a distance, each with their own weapon.
Were these veteran adventurers...?
They had made short work of goblins before I even had a chance to step in.
To begin with, S-rank and A-rank adventurers were monsters who could even slay dragons, which were called gods of magic. This was a party made up of the best of the best among veterans, all at least C-rank, so naturally they could respond this easily.
They even chased after the goblins that fled so they couldn't call over more of their kind, showing not the slightest mercy as they did so. I could only marvel.
Watching goblins get beheaded or have parts of their bodies blown away by arrows never became any easier, though. Normally, I used to watch them die in the game and think it would be fine in reality too, but I now knew that was utterly wrong.
Reality was completely different from a game.
“...”
That didn't mean I could vomit simply from watching monsters die.
I forced back the nausea, sat down, and stopped looking outside.
“Lumia, you don't look well... Is your stomach upset?”
I shook my head.
Unfortunately, the screams of the goblins as they died and the wet sounds of flesh being torn drove home to me once again that I had come to another world.
Something... felt strange.
But I had to endure it.
To survive and keep things as they were, the first thing I had to do was make sure no one discovered that I wasn't Lumia. The second was never to leave the Hero's side. The key to defeating the Demon King ultimately lay with the Hero and me.
Without the Hero, the world would be destroyed, and I would die in the end, too.
I couldn't let that happen.
So I had to endure it.