Chapter 5
――Randall Ultos.
One of the most hated scumbag villains in a game that once took the world by storm.
With his twisted personality, he abused his authority to prey on the protagonist and the heroines, and eventually got a spectacular comeuppance.
He'd racked up an incredible amount of hatred from players. Apparently, videos of his comeuppance were uploaded to video-sharing sites under titles like '【The Worst Scumbags in History】' and '【A Scumbag Who'll Go Down in Japanese Gaming History】'—and racked up staggering view counts.
You might wonder why I had to go out of my way to fight an adventurer as a child.
But I'd secretly found a way to win.
First of all, Kuzutos wasn't just any scumbag.
He was the type who got carried away because he had an absurd amount of talent.
In other words, Kuzutos's natural abilities were actually pretty impressive.
He had plenty of mana, and the magic he could learn was powerful, too.
Well, by the time he enrolled at the academy and met the protagonist, he'd been resting on his laurels for so long that he'd become pathetically weak...
That's right.
At this point, he should be pretty strong.
All I had to do was show everyone what he was capable of and make them see his decent side.
That was my only option.
And so, I...
I looked at the man grinning at me as he asked, "Are you sure about this, young master?"
Enrique.
He wasn't in the game, but I figured he was cut from the same cloth as young Kuzutos.
――In short, he was a scumbag, too.
The reason was simple.
He was still in the service of my family, even now.
Unlike the soldiers who generally served one household for a long time, adventurers were free agents.
They could hunt monsters or earn fame and enter the service of some prestigious house. By joining a guild, they could generally find work.
In other words, adventurers could make it on their own and were generally free.
Adventurers like that had a lot of pride.
Because of young Kuzutos's "busty female adventurers in bikini armor" remark, the conscientious, respectable-looking adventurers got furious and stormed off.
It was basically, "If this place is a joke, I'm out of here!"
But Enrique had stayed.
I figured he had no adventurer's pride to speak of and just wanted to freeload off my family.
Yeah.
In a different way from young Kuzutos, he was a pretty big scumbag.
"..."
I stared at Enrique in silence.
Adventurer ranks ranged from F, the lowest, to SS, which was said to be "the pinnacle."
"What is it, young master?" The man in front of me continued to grin.
Yeah.
He was unmistakably a dud of a scumbag.
I didn't expect an SS-rank adventurer—said to be one of only a handful in the world—or an S-rank adventurer, supposedly as powerful as an entire army, to be here, but this was just too awful.
By the way, when I asked Enrique, "What's your adventurer rank?"
he replied, "The guild actually stripped me of my rank. Ahahaha!"
Ah, so he really was a scumbag.
He practically reeked of loser.
Probably F-rank or something.
"Shall we get started, then?"
I raised my sword as Enrique said, "Come at me from anywhere."
My only concern was whether my body would keep up.
But I wasn't too worried.
I took a slow, deep breath, focused my mana in my legs, and stepped forward.
This was the first step toward living as a proper background extra.
And then.
――The moment I stepped forward.
The scenery before me changed in an instant.