Chapter 33
"Hey."
Leaving Sieg-kun behind, I walked a short distance to the base of a tree and called out to someone.
When he still didn't wake up, I picked up the sword I'd left beside him and lightly prodded him with its hilt.
"......!"
The filthy-looking man tied to the tree woke up.
"What?! You—the guy from earlier...! What the hell are you doing?!"
The man snapped at me as soon as he woke up.
He seemed thoroughly furious.
But honestly, I did feel a little bad about it.
"Hey, sorry about earlier."
"Y-You bastard! You attack someone on a dark road out of nowhere, and then think 'sorry' is enough?!"
The man had a point.
—Because I had
knocked him unconscious with a single blow from behind, tied him up, and left him there.
His name was Bandit A.
He was the tutorial character who, while the main force of bandits was rampaging through Hafen Village, came to scout Rag Village and ended up fighting the Sieg-kun from the original game.
"...Actually, who the hell are you?"
Maybe some time had passed since he woke up, and his eyes had adjusted to the darkness.
Bandit A seemed to have started eyeing me warily.
"I wasn't careless, you know. A gray mask... Never seen one like that. And that outfit... Is that some kind of outfit for a noble's masquerade? No, I doubt there'd be anything like that around here."
"Who knows?"
Though I said that, I was thinking, Hm?
'A noble's masquerade.'
Wasn't that actually a pretty nice compliment?
I was pleased to hear him praise my gray mask. It was just a handmade thing I'd slathered with gray paint, but it still made me happy to get a compliment.
Anyway, setting that aside.
I spread my arms and greeted him.
"—My name is Genesis."
Having casually introduced myself with a false name I would never use again after tonight, I addressed Bandit A.
"Now then. How do I get to your hideout from here?"
—This was where things got troublesome.
There was only one road from Hafen Village to Rag Village, where Sieg-kun was, so if I waited there, I was certain to run into him. And I had.
Easy. Very straightforward.
That took care of Sieg-kun in Rag Village.
But what about Iris, who was also going to be in danger in this event?
Iris, specifically, gets captured in Hafen Village and taken to the enemy's hideout.
There was one problem here.
I had no idea where the enemy's hideout was. The only thing I could just barely remember was that it was somewhere near Hafen Village.
In the original, the knights conducted a large-scale search, relying on their numbers, and Rain, the commander of the knights, found the hideout and led a raid. But unfortunately, Genesis had only come into operation today and didn't have that many subordinates. He didn't, I tell you.
So, while on my way to meet Sieg-kun, I had knocked out Bandit A.
My plan was to get the hideout's location out of him later.
"So, what do you think?" I pressed the bound Bandit A in front of me.
—But...
"Come on, we're just bandits, you know?"
Bandit A opened his mouth with a smirk.
"Why would we have a 'hideout'? You're making it sound like we'd been plotting something all along."
His tone spoke volumes.
He had no intention of telling me anything.
"You really won't tell me where it is?"
"Idiot. Of course not," Bandit A said, grinning even wider.
His "heh heh heh" laughter echoed around us.
"I thought you were a weird guy, but hey, Masked Man. You're one of us, aren't you?"
"One of you?"
I asked back, wondering what he meant.
"Don't play dumb, brother. The way you move, that mask, and the fact you're asking about our hideout... With this much evidence, it's obvious. You know something about our plan. So, what's your goal? Where'd you get that information?"
"...My goal?"
I figured there was no way he'd understand if I honestly told him my goal was to stir up this incident as much as I could, then gradually fade out of the original story, so I kept quiet.
But seeing me like that, the man seemed to realize something.
"See? You can't say it, can you? I know without you telling me. You got your information through the dark channels. In other words, you're cut from the same cloth as me—one of the underworld. Someone who lives in a world apart from ordinary people."
The man laughed, utterly confident.
He looked at me as if to say, You're one of us, too.
But...
"................Hmm."
If you asked me where I learned about this plan, all I could say was: from a video game.
Well, to be precise, since I couldn't wait for this 18+ game, I bought it a few days before my eighteenth birthday, so as far as my source of information went...
"...W-Well, it might not have been entirely aboveboard. Legally, it was borderline, so... if you call that the underworld..."
Maybe so.
But, no, I wanted to say, this was unavoidable.
I mean, the characters were cute... And it had been getting tons of hype even before release...
It had been all over social media, too...
"Right?"
The smug man, however, sneered, "But..."
"If you know that much about us, this'll be easy—you clearly don't know how fearsome our guild, 【Helle Nacht】, is."
"So 【Helle Nacht】 was involved after all."
I muttered bitterly.
I knew that name very well.
—【Helle Nacht】.
It was the name of a massive dark guild that would rule the Lyon region more than a decade from now.
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The protagonist knew about the plan through the hidden (18+) route, so members of a vicious dark guild treated him as one of their own.