Chapter 32
I couldn't keep lying there forever with the Hero's lap as my pillow, so I rose to my feet. As soon as I stood up, the Hero looked at me as though disappointed, but I couldn't keep lying down just because he looked at me that way.
There were people watching..
Of course, doing this would have the unexpected advantage of showing the others how close I was to the Hero, making it a pretty effective deterrent.. But if I did things like this, I'd die of embarrassment..
No, wait, this is strange.
Normally, someone would find it difficult when another person used their lap as a pillow because of the weight, so what was wrong with this guy that he actually looked disappointed? And if he was going to make that disappointed expression so obvious, how was I supposed to react?
Was he always this perverted..?
I don't remember him being this bad in the game's setting.
Could something have changed when he regressed?
This is all I can think of for now.
The most plausible explanation was that something had changed when the Hero regressed. After all, if you kept repeating the past, it was only natural for something to become twisted somewhere along the way.
I wasn't the Hero, so I didn't know what hardships he had endured, but judging by his ability to handle situations, there was no way this was his first regression.
That meant he had regressed at least two or three times. If I'd been in that situation, I might have gone a little crazy too.
Of course, I couldn't be certain.
That meant he was actually pretty pitiful..
If he really was someone who had gone through multiple rounds, he must have been mentally exhausted.
Thinking about it that way, he suddenly seemed truly amazing.
I'd often read stories in which the protagonist mentally deteriorated after going through countless rounds, but seeing the person himself right in front of me made me realize just how incredible it was.
I found myself wondering whether I could do the same if I were in his place.
Wait a second.
Why go back at all?
If he had gone through multiple rounds, then he would have had no choice but to know that I was bound to sacrifice myself. Normally, when a companion sacrifices themselves, you choose to bury them in your heart and keep living, rather than return to the past to save them.
So did he do this to save Lumia..?
Maybe I was being self-important, but if the Hero didn't like me and only regarded me as a companion, wouldn't he simply consider my sacrifice noble rather than return to the past to save me?
He couldn't have returned for no reason, so he probably also knew how to defeat the Demon King. If he knew that and still returned to the past, didn't that mean only one thing..?
No way, really..?
The more I thought back on the Hero's actions, the more I felt as though I understood why he had behaved that way.
Did that mean the Hero already liked me..? The more one suspicion led to another, the more certain—and anxious—I became. Come to think of it, he had treated me unusually well even when we first met.
I had no idea how many times I'd gone through these suspicions, but the Hero's actions were so bizarre that my guesses kept missing the mark, making me think through one possibility after another.
However, this suspicion was almost certainly correct. Normally, when someone stopped using your lap as a pillow, you should look relieved, but he had looked disappointed instead..
That reaction could only come from someone who really liked me. I wasn't so oblivious that I could fail to notice something like that. If the Hero had returned to the past because he truly liked me and wanted to save me, then I no longer had to worry about the immediate problem—but what came next was the issue.
That meant seducing him might actually make things worse. Until now, I had seduced him because I was afraid he would fall for one of the other girls. But if he had returned to save me because he liked me, there was no need for that, was there?
He was a madman who had returned to the past just to save me. Even if I didn't seduce him, wasn't his favorability toward me already maxed out?
If his favorability was already maxed out and I seduced him on top of that, even the Hero would have a hard time holding himself back.
Then what had I been doing all this time..?
Didn't that mean I'd been seducing someone who was barely managing to hold himself back?
Wait, had he really been enduring all of that this whole time?
Of course, none of this was certain, so I shouldn't jump to conclusions. But given everything he had done so far, I couldn't help suspecting that he liked me and had returned to save me.
If that was true, had he really endured the advances of someone he liked that much..?
Could a person really do that..?
I looked up at the Hero, who was looking down at me with an expression that seemed to say I was incredible. Nothing was certain, and I was trying to piece everything together from guesses alone, so it left me feeling rather strange.
Right. The Hero still hadn't told me anything, so it probably wasn't a good idea for me to make all these guesses on my own.
“Huh?”
Perhaps he had noticed my gaze, because the Hero tilted his head. Since I kept doing nothing but speculate without actually knowing anything, I had no idea how I should treat him.
Even though he was sitting down, how could there be such a difference in our heights..? It really drove home how tall the Hero was. It also made me realize just how short I was.
I suddenly wondered whether magic could make me taller.
.
.
.
Several days after meeting Ruril, we finally arrived at Kapra Village. One thing was certain: events were unfolding just as I remembered them. I could tell just by looking at the undead that had appeared around the village.
“There are a lot of undead..”
The Hero muttered.
Just as the Hero had said, we had encountered so many undead on the way here by carriage.. Cecilia looked quite exhausted from putting them all to rest.
“There are quite a few undead.”
The Hero nodded at Cecilia's mutter. Since the necromancer was currently running rampant, it was only natural that there were so many undead. To be honest, I didn't want to meet that necromancer.
He might be called a necromancer, but he was really nothing more than a complete pervert..
As if to prove this was an adult game, all the monsters that appeared were ridiculously lewd.. For example, despite being a necromancer, he used tentacle-like things to torment people.
When he wanted to humiliate someone, he would have skeletons or zombies forcibly rape them.. If you were captured, you would even have to endure all sorts of experiments, so he was someone we absolutely couldn't let catch us.
The game's cutscene was so disgusting that anyone who wasn't into that sort of thing would refuse to watch it.. Naturally, even I—someone who would usually deliberately die just to see a sex scene—found it so disgusting that I didn't watch it at all.
It went without saying that nothing good would come of dealing with an undead opponent.
We need to be careful..
“I think we should meet the village chief first..”
At the Hero's words, Ruril told us to wait a moment and went into the village ahead of us. After a while, an old man came walking out alongside Ruril. Judging by the situation, he seemed to be the village chief.
“Are you the people who have come to help us..?”
The old man, presumably the village chief, asked us that. When the Hero nodded, he finally bowed deeply to us with an expression full of gratitude. He must have suffered terribly at the hands of the undead created by that necromancer.
Then again, Ruril had told us that several people had even disappeared.. The village must have been extremely anxious. But if this involved a necromancer, there was no way the Holy Kingdom wouldn't have taken action. What had happened?
It was something I had been curious about even in the game.
In the game, we had simply been asked whether we wanted to accept the quest and received a reward after completing it, so there was no way for me to know the details. The fact that he was acting as though he had been waiting for us meant that no matter how many times he had called for help, no one had come, didn't it?
“Could you tell us more about the situation?”
The village chief nodded at the Hero's question.
“I’ll show you the way.”
The Hero and I both knew where the necromancer was, but for now, it would be best to pretend we didn't and listen to what he had to say. Once we started looking for traces later, I could pretend that I had found the trail with magic.
...
Come to think of it, what I knew was the necromancer's location in the game, not his location in reality.. In other words, I couldn't assume he would definitely be there just because we went to the place I remembered from the game.
I looked back at the Hero.
There were still plenty of things I was suspicious about, and I didn't know whether he really liked me.. But for now, I needed to focus on resolving the village's problems rather than on that. I shook my head to stop thinking about the Hero.
Get a grip.
It probably wouldn't happen, but if I let my guard down, I could end up suffering something beyond words.