What Value Does Something Like That Have? (5)

But what he resented and raged against most was the reality of his own utter helplessness. If he had been strong, his father wouldn't have died. He wouldn't have abandoned his father so shamefully and run away by himself.

'I want to get stronger... so strong...!'

He wished for it, but his Role as a Villager crushed any chance of that happening.

The monster that had killed his father was a Level 34 Devil Liger. It had demonic purple skin, and it moved the muscles in its back like springs, spreading its front and hind legs wide as it attacked with overwhelming speed and razor-sharp fangs. No matter what he did, he couldn't stand against it.

He needed to become stronger to defeat that monster, but the huge obstacles of being a Villager and facing Goblins crushed even the possibility of getting stronger.

He had no idea what to do with the anger building inside him. Why had he been born a Villager? Why was he a Villager? With nowhere to direct that anger, Kagami unleashed it on Moss Goblins over and over. At the same time, he felt utterly miserable.

There was a monster he truly needed to defeat, but because he couldn't, he kept killing monsters he could defeat for certain. And he did so from a safe place, using safe methods.

He couldn't stand how frustrating it was. So, for the first time, Kagami attacked a Moss Goblin in close combat, prepared to die.

He couldn't accept being inferior to the very monsters he should have hated.

If he couldn't win, he thought, it would be better to die and be reborn with a different Role.

Using the money he'd earned by killing monsters, he bought equipment. Clad in leather armor, he held a buckler in his left hand and a copper sword he'd never used before in his right. Then he faced the Moss Goblin's charge head-on, thrusting the buckler forward as if bracing himself against it.

A moment later, the buckler was knocked from his hand. The charge's remaining force slammed into his entire body, and Kagami was hit with pain as if his innards had been crushed. He spat blood all around him.

Kagami was reminded once again of the overwhelming weakness of a Villager. They were both supposed to be Level 4, yet there was such a vast difference in strength between him and the Moss Goblin.

'...Damn it.'

Even so, Kagami refused to accept it. He wouldn't give up. He got his battered little body back on its feet and charged the Moss Goblin again and again.

His healing potions were gone, his HP had fallen below 10, and his consciousness was growing hazy. Still, he didn't give up. With his final blow, thrown as he collapsed, the Moss Goblin turned into money.

In that moment, Kagami was enveloped by an indescribable sense of wrongness. He hurriedly sat up, his body battered, and opened his status window. A single tear slipped from his eye.

Killing a Level 4 Moss Goblin shouldn't have earned him any Experience Points. And yet, Kagami had reached Level 5. He had stumbled upon one of the rules governing this world.

【Even if you keep killing weak enemies, your Level won't increase】

【Experience Points are, just as the name suggests, nothing more than a value that indicates experience】

【You gain no Experience Points for defeating an enemy of equal strength with the aid of someone stronger】

【Experience Points are only awarded when you defeat an enemy worthy of giving you experience】

There was a loophole in these four principles. No—or perhaps the Role system had been created to close that loophole?

You couldn't gain Experience Points by repeatedly killing enemies of the same Level. That was how the world worked, and there was no changing it. But there was another way to gain Experience Points, separate from that. No, there had been another way.

A second system for gaining Experience Points, operating on a different principle from the one tied to Levels. It was to fight an opponent superior to you. And by 'superior,' it didn't mean in Level, but in terms of the fight itself.

To give an easy example, the Moss Goblin was overwhelmingly strong in close combat and couldn't fight at all from a distance. So challenging it to a ranged battle wouldn't make it a superior opponent.

You had to challenge an opponent who was better than you at close combat by fighting them at close range. Only then did it count as a battle against a superior opponent.

Would a Role other than Villager ever challenge a monster of the same Level to a fight that didn't suit their 【Role】? The answer would be no. That's why no one had ever noticed this system before.

No one would choose to fight at a disadvantage.

The only time someone would choose to fight at a disadvantage was against a monster of a higher Level. They would form a party and make up for their weaknesses by fighting together. They grew stronger by gaining Experience Points from the Level difference.

If a Mage challenged a monster of the same Level that excelled at close combat by punching it, they could probably gain those Experience Points. But who would choose to fight at such a disadvantage? Who would risk their life when they could defeat it with magic?

Fighting a superior opponent meant taking on a battle where you were at a disadvantage—in other words, one with a high risk of losing your life. Even if you didn't defeat them, you could still gain those Experience Points as long as you fought in a way that could be called a true experience. But the risk of death was unavoidable. So was the risk of being left battered and broken.

If you didn't get battered and broken in the first place, then they weren't a superior opponent.

And a Villager, whose Role itself put them at an overwhelming disadvantage, was the Role that could most easily gain those Experience Points—and the one most likely to die.

It was a Role that promised faster growth than any other, but made the risk of death an enormous part of that growth.

That was what it meant to be a Villager.

'Hah... Hahahahahaha! Ahahahahahaha!'

There had been a path prepared for Villagers—a path of carnage that let them fight against the fate of being Villagers.

When Kagami realized that, he laughed uproariously, wearing a grotesque grin. A realm only a Villager could discover, a boon only a Villager could obtain. He kept laughing like a broken doll.

'I'll do it... I'll kill them. The monsters, the demons, all of them... I'll kill every last one!'

From then on, Kagami lived as if sheer determination were all that kept him alive, confronting the risk of death every single day.

As though possessed, as though there were nothing else he could do, every day he fought on with his HP dropping below 10. Sometimes he'd crawl away, escaping at the very edge of death, and steadily build up his Experience Points.

It was simple. Fight a superior opponent, and keep fighting until you were on the brink of death, whether you won or lost.

Every day, he chose opponents who gave him enough leeway to judge how far he could go without dying. He did this until the day he turned nine. There wasn't a single day when Kagami wasn't on the verge of death.

'I did it... I finally did it!'

And on the very day he turned nine, Kagami succeeded in defeating the monster that had killed his father: the Devil Liger. Even when surrounded by three Devil Ligers, he avoided being brought to the brink of death and used his dagger to defeat all three. At the time, Kagami was Level 53.

His hands trembled, and he was so overjoyed he let out a triumphant roar. At the same time, he began to hope in his own potential. If he kept going like this, he thought, he could defeat not just Devil Ligers and other monsters, not just demons, but even the Demon King—despite not being a Hero.

For Kagami, avenging his father was only the beginning. It was the prelude to wiping out demons and monsters. He no longer feared death. He would go as far as he could, and after that, he didn't care what happened. That was what he thought.

But first, he had to tell his mother that he'd finally avenged his father. She had quietly supported his reckless challenge all this time. After defeating the Devil Liger, Kagami hurried straight back to his home village... but he never made it to his house. It was gone.

The village had been attacked by bandits and left in a wretched state.

The village had originally been in a remote region, far from the royal capital. Perhaps for that reason, it had never been attacked by bandits before. The village wasn't wealthy, either, so they thought there was no reason for anyone to attack it and that everything would be fine... and had hired only a few guards.

As a result, his mother had been killed by humans.

When Kagami arrived at the village, he sank helplessly to the ground. He'd been so focused on revenge that he hadn't considered the possibility of something like this happening. If only he had spent some of the money he'd earned on guards instead of equipment... But it was too late for regrets. All he could do was stare blankly at his mother's corpse.

The father he admired had been killed by a monster.

The mother he cherished had been killed by humans.

As he stared at his mother's corpse, every thought raced through his mind. Why had this happened? Who should he blame? Was there no way he could have prevented it?

Then Kagami remembered the first time he had defeated a Green Slime. He remembered how he'd thought that with this power, he could do anything. And he realized that this had been the answer to everything.

'What a joke...'

Those were the last words Kagami murmured in that village.