Chapter 32
—The protagonist collapsed.
“There we go.”
I carefully caught him in my arms.
I let out a sigh of relief.
“Man, protagonists really are scary...”
Gazing absentmindedly up at the star-filled night sky, I thought back to the fierce battle I'd just fought.
The gentlemanly fight, where Sieg-kun came at me and I fought back, was over in a mere ten minutes.
In the original, the bandit who was Sieg-kun's first opponent was the sort to go, 'Hyah-ha!' But I couldn't possibly act that way.
As politely and amicably as possible.
After all, Sieg-kun was the savior, the future hero.
The game called “Last Aka” is difficult.
People even say the latter half is downright brutal.
The difficulty in the latter half is so high that you need combat strength on par with an S-rank adventurer just to barely keep up.
It's a savage world where famous S-rank adventurers appear only to become jobbers in an instant.
Incidentally, despite the game already being brutally difficult, there are plenty of routes where Kuzutos's stupid interference leads to a game over. He even sparked a minor controversy on message boards: 'I know he's a game character, but he's the one guy I can't forgive. He's so unpleasant.'
...W-Well, putting that aside, our Sieg-kun is the one who survives this post-apocalyptic, medieval-style fantasy world with a top-tier mentality.
He's amazing.
Because it's an 18+ game, you can do this and that with the main heroines around him. But he's the kind of guy who can calmly get a dialogue option like, 'Well, I like both of you,' even after his two-timing gets exposed and a yandere heroine holds a blade up to him.
Of course, the players were horrified.
'Uh, is this okay???'
'I mean, that knife's practically in him. Is this really okay????'
And while Sieg-kun may be less distinctive than the other characters early on, the farther you get into the game, the more extraordinary his evolution becomes.
By the time he finally awakens, he can take out an S-rank adventurer with one hand. I don't even understand how that's possible.
“All right...”
I couldn't just leave the future hero lying around, so I looked for somewhere he could sleep comfortably. I wandered around searching for, well... somewhere that looked nice and soft.
Then I remembered something and muttered.
“...That last part was scary, too.”
To be honest, I'd been pretty optimistic.
My body as Ultos was physically gifted. On top of my natural talent, I'd trained with Enrique many times.
So I'd thought,
“Well, even so, I probably won't have to use mana.”
Mana is like a kind of booster. Just channeling mana into physical enhancement raises your combat ability by several levels.
Sieg-kun was still just a villager who admired heroes.
That's why I hadn't planned on using mana.
But...
I couldn't help using mana to enhance my body against Sieg-kun's final attack when he sprang back up.
—Those bloodshot, beastlike eyes.
He'd completely entered the zone. Those were a warrior's eyes.
They weren't the kind of eyes a child should have, at least.
In the story, he was a natural-born berserker of a protagonist who grew stronger the more cornered he was in battle, and that hadn't changed here, either.
...Yeah.
Actually, it was pretty close.
If I'd taken that punch and gotten knocked unconscious because it landed in a bad spot, he would've just beaten me to a pulp.
My spine went cold.
As expected of the protagonist.
To think he could make me break out in a cold sweat despite having the bloodline of a privileged noble and all those advantages—that was insane.
“Maybe around here.”
I cautiously laid Sieg-kun down on what looked like a tree stump I'd finally found.
I gazed silently at the adorable-looking boy for a while.
Incidentally, this game...
You could choose a female protagonist, but her appearance barely changed.
However, choosing a female protagonist meant the main heroines simply became close friends with her, a perfectly ordinary development. So the overwhelming majority of players chose a male protagonist: Sieg-kun.
Sieg-kun slept peacefully.
But seeing such a beautiful boy, I swallowed hard.
What's more—
“With this much talent, and he's still got so much room to grow.”
That's right.
If you look at this world through the lens of “mana,” people fall into three tiers.
1. People with no mana (Sieg-kun)
2. People who can wield mana but can't use magic (Enrique, the shitty mayor, etc.)
3. People who have studied at the academy and can use magic, mainly the nobility (me, Iris, etc.)
That's more or less how it goes.
By the way, Extra-Domain Magic is an exception even within the third tier, but... well, let's leave that aside.
In short, people are pretty much unable to change their tier.
Because mana is innate.
That's one of the laws of this world. An absolute rule.
But...
There was a monster who transcended that rule.
And that was none other than Sieg-kun.
Unbelievably, this defeat in his childhood prompted Sieg-kun to take scraps of knowledge he'd picked up from some passing traveler and, through sheer insane obsession, start deliberately depleting and amplifying the mana inside his own body—a deranged training regimen that would make any mage who heard about it go, 'Huh? What, are you trying to die??? Are you suicidal???'
Of course, he hadn't learned how to convert mana into magic, so the result was a monster of a villager with abnormally high mana who couldn't use magic at all.
“...Man.”
Even looking at him again, it's insane.
Amateurs are really scary.
Just to test it, I asked Carla-san,
“Is this kind of method viable?”
“Th-That kind of thing would kill you...!!! I'll help you with anything, I'll do whatever you ask, I'll stay by your side whenever things get hard...!!! So please, don't do something like that...!!!” She teared up as she said it. That should tell you how dangerous this training was.
Kuzutos had gone and mocked an insane amateur he absolutely should never have made an enemy of.
After laying Sieg-kun down, I started walking toward Hafen Village.
The person I was looking for should be sprawled a little farther ahead.
Still, even just remembering that fight was embarrassing.
“I got carried away and said something like a haiku...”
I'd been so fired up from fighting the protagonist that I blurted out some painfully embarrassing phrase: 'Sleep, future hero.'
Not good. Yeah, not good.
Had I said something so chuunibyo because the protagonist's strength had swept me up, or was it because of that former F-rank troupe actor I'd been spending almost every waking moment with lately?
Wondering if maybe I should reconsider spending so much time with the latter, I headed over to see the bandit I'd knocked out.