by Okina Baba
Coughing up blood, the man rolls out of the way of the falling tree.
Its leaves scatter, and snow flies into the air from the ground.
The snow glistens in the air, blocking the man’s vision for just a moment.
So I pierce through the curtain of snow as I strike.
“Ngh?!”
I can see the man’s face stiffen.
He’s still half sitting up, in the midst of trying to stand.
One of his hands is on the ground, and while the one holding his sword is still free, he’s in no position to swing it with any amount of strength.
In this moment, he cannot dodge or block.
His life is as good as mine.
I can see that he knows this as well as I do.
But instead, I stop, pulling myself back.
An arrow whizzes past me, cutting through the air with a sharp, shrill sound.
Following it with my eyes, I watch as it bores a large hole straight through a tree.
If it had hit me instead, that hole would be in my body right now.
That was close. If they’d waited a moment longer, they might have actually hit me.
Although the man’s life would have been forfeit if they had waited.
It was the best possible timing as far as saving the man’s life, but considering the overall situation, I don’t know if that was the best option.
Really, I shouldn’t be analyzing this like I’m casually looking on from the sidelines.
I’m the one fighting these men, after all.
“Rukusso! Run for it!”
The man stands up and shouts.
Didn’t he learn from his mistake of letting his guard down while yelling a moment ago?
But seconds later, another arrow comes flying to cover the man.
In order to dodge, I have no choice but to move away.
“Rukusso, forget about me! Just go!” He continues shouting at the boy who’s firing arrows.
Taking my eyes off the man for a second, I glance at the young bowman he called Rukusso.
Standing a short distance away, the boy was clearly uncertain what to do about the order to leave.
Should he run away, or should he stay here and fight me?
“Run! Go and tell Gotou or Regg that this—this is no ordinary ogre!”
At that, the boy named Rukusso reluctantly turns around and starts to run.
As I watch him sprint away, it’s my turn to hesitate.
Should I let him go, or…?
“Not a chance!”
Lost in thought, I realize my reaction was a second too late.
I duck my head, barely dodging the sword as the blade passes in front of my face.
But the man’s doesn’t stop there as he follows up with another sharp swing.
It’s not fast.
And I can’t say it’s terribly precise.
But there’s so much determination in his reckless swing that I can’t help retreating from it.
“Hff! Hff!”
His shoulders heave.
I can tell that attack must have been taken the last of his strength.
On top of that, blood is trickling from his mouth as he gasps for air.
Looks like he wasn’t able to completely recover from hitting that tree before.
“Ha! I might be some second-rate adventurer, but I can at least use my last moments to buy enough time for my junior to escape with his life! Come at me!”
The man roars defiantly, as if to shake off any fear that might be taking root.
In reality, I can already see a slight waver in his eyes that he can’t quite hide.
As he grips his sword, his hands are shaking, and not just from the cold.
Some part of me feels strangely detached while I continue watching him.
But I’m unmistakably the one fighting him, and now my body moves on its own to kill him.
It’s as if my body and mind are working independently of each other.
How did it come to this?
I just wanted to live out a quiet, peaceful life as a goblin…
“Take this!”
The man charges toward me.
He called himself an adventurer, which means he’s made a living of defeating monsters.
In this world, there are creatures called monsters, considered a threat to humans everywhere.
An adventurer’s job is to fight these monsters.
Which means that by fighting me right now, this man is simply doing his job.
Because from a human’s perspective, I’m just another monster.
It’s no surprise, really.
In the fiction of my old world, goblins were almost always the villains of the story.
Although I’m not even a goblin anymore.
I’ve evolved all the way into an ogre, which is far stronger and larger than any goblin.
From a human adventurer’s perspective, I’m sure a monster like me should be killed on sight.
And yet…
“You damn scum!”
“Who are you calling scum?”
“Wha—?!”
Evidently surprised that I can speak, the man slows his reactions.
Leaving me the perfect chance to sink my blade into his chest.
“Guh?!”
“Who’s the real scum here? You’re the ones who came after our village. You forced me to do those horrible things!”
Images of the past flash across my mind.
The houses of the village, all aflame.
The goblins fleeing, the humans chasing them down.
My little sister squeezing my hand as we ran.
The human who caught up and seized me.
And then the order.
That horrible command.
“Wh-what…?”
“You humans are the worst scum of all!”
The memories send fury coursing through me.
I let that violent passion take control, sending MP into the blade still deep in the man’s chest.
The MP activates the blade’s special effect, surrounding it in flames.
In an instant, the flames swallow the man up and destroy him.
Damn.
I gave in to my fury and killed him in an instant.
Shouldn’t I have made him suffer more first?
…No, wait. That’s not what I should be regretting here.
This man was just an unrelated adventurer who happened to be passing through.
Of course, they’re the ones who attacked me first, so I was just defending myself.
But it was probably wrong to take it this far.
As that thought passes through my mind, a self-derisive sneer rises to my lips.
Wrong or not, as soon as I took a life, things like good and evil likely lost all meaning.
I never had to think about good and evil, not when I was in the goblin village anyway.
And yet, now…
Why did things end up like this?
I’M A SHUT-IN
Good morning.
The sunlight streaming in through the window is so bright and annoying.
Damn you, sun…
Fortunately, the sunlight doesn’t reach my bed thanks to the layout of this inn.
At least I don’t have to worry about waking up with the sun right in my face.
Still, just because it’s not directly touching me doesn’t mean I can let my guard down.
You can’t underestimate the power of the sun.
That bastard affects us in all kinds of ways just by existing.
Pretty scary, right?
Why am I so afraid of the sunlight, you ask?
Because I’m an albino, of course.
Yeah, I know.
If you were going to point out that I’ve been that way for a while now, please don’t bother.
I mean, considering how my whole body is pure white and I’ve got red eyes to boot, it did cross my mind that it might be albinism, okay?
But I didn�
�t experience any of the side effects, so I figured I just happened to have a similar coloration.
But since deification, I’ve learned that I was wrong.
If sunlight touches me directly, it hurts.
Like, a lot.
Albinism is a condition in which the melanin pigment isn’t produced properly, resulting in white skin, hair, and so on.
The eyes are red because the blood vessels are visible through the irises.
And it so happens that the presence of melanin is important for reducing the harm caused by ultraviolet rays, so if you don’t have much, those UV rays become a serious problem.
If sunlight hits me, I get sunburn-like symptoms immediately.
You might think sunburns aren’t a big deal, but you’d be wrong, okay?
Sunburns can increase your risk of skin cancer. Plus, they hurt like hell.
And this stupid world doesn’t have sunscreen or anything sensible like that, so it’s actually kind of a huge problem for me.
Of course, there is Healing Magic in this world, so I guess it’s all right in theory, but that doesn’t mean I want to be in constant agony.
In fact, the Demon Lord’s already treated me with Healing Magic plenty of times over the past two years.
Ideally, I’d just avoid doing anything in direct sunlight, but it’s hard to keep that up over such an extended journey.
I seem to remember that albinism can also affect your eyesight, but my eyesight doesn’t seem too bad.
Sure, it’s not as good as it was before this deification business, but I’d say I can see about as well as the average person.
Is it because I’ve got ten pupils?
Your guess is as good as mine, buddy.
Still, it’s better than walking around half-blind.
Anyway, I’m guessing the reason I never suffered these symptoms before is thanks to my super-high stats.
My defense was so high that ultraviolet rays didn’t affect me.
Pretty crazy, right?
Guess all I have to do is raise my stats.
Except that I don’t have them anymore!
Please, stats, come back to me!
…Nope, didn’t work. Still don’t have any.
Looks like UV rays are just one more thing I’m gonna have to deal with.
Turning away from the sunny window, I look around the room.
Wait, there’s somebody crouching in the corner!
That scares me for a second, until I look closer and realize it’s just Sael.
She must have stayed behind to look after me.
No one else is in the room, and I don’t hear anyone outside the door.
I guess everyone else went out.
Wait, even the bloodsucker duo? Why are you guys going out in broad daylight?!
What kind of world is this that I have to be more afraid of sunlight than freaking vampires?!
It’s all because their stats are so damn high!
Gimme those stats, dammit!
Okay, there’s no point in taking it out on the bloodsuckers.
It’s not like Mera and the kid got those stats without any effort.
They used to be nothing but a baby and her caretaker, but they’ve been training hard over the course of this journey and they’ve come a long way.
Without my Appraisal skill, I can no longer tell how strong they are.
But according to the Demon Lord, they’re still coming along quite nicely.
It’s kinda like training has become part of their daily routine.
I guess it was me who got them into that habit, but it’s impressive that they’re keeping it up even though I can’t teach them anymore after the whole turning-into-a-god thing.
Is this how it was with Pavlov’s dogs?
Or are they just a couple of weirdos?
Well, I guess I get why Mera wants to keep training.
In the past, he wasn’t able to protect the baby bloodsucker’s parents.
I understand all too well the feeling of wanting to be stronger after suffering because you were too weak.
When my home went up in flames and I had no choice but to run away, I was frustrated beyond belief.
Mera must have felt a similar way, or probably even worse, since he lost the people he cherished.
He’s probably training now so that he’ll be able to protect the person he cares about if anything like that happens again.
Even if the person he’s trying to protect is kind of a monstrous vampire… But let’s just ignore that part.
Ahem. Anyway.
The baby bloodsucker, huh?
Her training regimen has taken a weird turn.
Most recently, she’s been training by having mock battles with Ael.
And that’s kind of what’s so weird in the first place.
I know Ael looks like a little girl, but she’s actually a super-strong monster with stats over a thousand each, y’know?
She could probably destroy a whole town on her own, maybe even a whole damn country.
And this kid is having practice battles against her?
There’s definitely something weird about that.
I mean, Ael isn’t going all out, of course.
If someone wants to fight Ael at her full strength, they’d better have an elder dragon or something on your side.
But even so, it’s crazy that Vampy can hold her own against Ael in a mock battle.
Not to mention, those battles get so intense that they can’t even have them in front of people.
You ever been in a carriage when two of the people just up and vanish, and then you hear a bunch of booms and crashes echo in the distance?
We’re talking comic book–level sound effects here.
If their fights are that crazy, I guess I can see why Ael would agree to them.
I bet some rando monsters wouldn’t even stand a chance against Vampy anymore.
Those are some scary little girls.
By the way, Ael is the only one who participates in these mock battles.
Why, you ask?
Because the other puppet spiders don’t know how to hold back.
Sael might accidentally kill the baby bloodsucker.
Riel, on the other hand, might accidentally kill the baby bloodsucker.
Fiel, you guessed it, might accidentally kill the baby bloodsucker.
So by process of elimination, Ael is the only one who can do it.
With the others, the only outcome I can see is Vampy accidentally getting killed.
And one of those who might accidentally kill someone, Sael, is currently lurking in the corner glancing at me.
Sael almost never acts on her own without being told what to do.
Sometimes her total lack of independence gets on my nerves, but that also means that she’ll faithfully carry out any orders you give her, which means she ends up on guard duty like this a lot.
Unless an emergency arises, she doesn’t have to do anything, so it’s perfect.
Although if an emergency did arise, I don’t think she’d be much help.
I can’t even picture Sael staying on her toes and adapting to a situation on the fly.
She can probably make the most basic decisions as a bodyguard, or so I’d like to think, but this is Sael we’re talking about, so…
At least I don’t have to worry about her doing something totally unexpected like Riel, but it’s still a little anxiety-inducing.
Other than that, she’s just as strong as Ael, but…having power and being able to use it are two very different things.
Putting these rather rude thoughts aside, I sit up slowly in bed.
I’ve been lying around for a good five minutes or so since I woke up.
Back when I had the Thought Acceleration skill, I could dwell on pointless thoughts as long as I wanted and only a few seconds would pass in real time, but that’s not the case anymore.
Time doesn’t conveniently slow down for me when I get lost in thought.
> In other words, while I’ve been making this pointless, rude analysis of Sael, she’s just been sitting timidly in the corner of the room the whole time.
That’s pretty impressive in its own way.
If it was Fiel, I’m sure she would’ve gotten impatient and jumped on me by now.
When you think about it that way, maybe Sael is actually well suited to this kind of job.
For the most part, the only thing she has to do is sit still.
Riel is decent at sitting still, too, but in her case, I feel like there’d be a real danger of her forgetting that she was supposed to be a bodyguard in the first place.
I guess this is what they mean by choosing the right person for the job.
Although there is one more reason she ends up staying behind on guard duty pretty often.
Unlike her other limbs, one of the left arms that’s hidden by her long sleeves looks just like a puppet’s arm.
For the most part, the puppet spiders’ bodies are almost indistinguishable from humans thanks to my magical modifications.
Not only their appearance, but even the feel of their skin is similar enough that you wouldn’t know at a glance or a touch.
However, Sael’s left arm got destroyed by an enemy tank right before the UFO incident two years ago.
And since I got deified, I can’t produce thread anymore, which of course means I can’t make puppet parts with thread, either.
The Demon Lord has the same Divine Thread Weaving skill, so I casually thought she might be able to reproduce it, but she said, “Yeah, no, I can’t,” and threw in the towel immediately. I guess what I was doing was actually kinda crazy.
The Demon Lord did help me at the time, but I guess she couldn’t quite reproduce human skin like I could.
So Sael’s left arm is currently in an incomplete state, and while it functions just fine, it would probably look pretty strange to most people.
People might even guess that she’s a monster if they saw it, similar to how my eyes might give me away.
Which is why Sael often ends up being a shut-in like me.
I stand in front of the dresser in the room, then beckon to Sael.
When she hesitantly shuffles over, I gesture to her to help me get dressed.
Sael and the other puppet spiders love dressing me up, so I have them help me fairly often.
Heh, it’s so nice of me to offer to be these little girls’ dress-up doll for their entertainment.
It’s definitely not because doing it myself is a pain.
Nope, definitely not.
