Chapter 248 - Will It Mean Anything? (2)

["Enough, enough explaining. I get how much you like him."]

["Awww."]

["Who on earth did you take after to turn out so frivolous?"]

As the relentless rain continued to beat against me, the owner of the voice recoiled from the Mountain Lord's praises of me and ordered him to stop. Beneath that voice, the dislike for me remained.

But regardless of how that sentiment made me feel, I agreed with putting a stop to it. The Mountain Lord's effusive praise embarrassed me, too.

["Aw, what did I do?"]

["You aren't seriously asking because you don't know, are you?"]

But who did that voice belong to? Judging by the respect the Mountain Lord showed, it couldn't be a being of low standing...

I tried to gauge the speaker's location from how far away the voice sounded. They didn't seem very far off. Close enough that, even with darkness veiling them, I should have been able to make out a vague shape.

["... Never mind. You're not the only one who thinks well of him."]

Yet all I could see was the Mountain Lord's sleek body. Nothing else was visible at all. It was puzzling.

["I do have my misgivings, but... I'll let it go for now."]

Ah. Or could this being melt into thin air like the Mountain Lord...?

Entertaining that possibility, I refocused on the conversation I had missed.

I'll let it go for now. I turned those words over a couple of times in my head: despite finding me objectionable, the speaker had decided to tolerate me. Whatever my feelings, it wasn't a bad outcome.

["Of course, of course. You really can trust Sir Knight."]

["You wouldn't say that if you knew what that thing did."]

["Pardon?"]

["Never mind. I've already decided to let it go."]

Still, the more I listened, the more I felt... that the speaker knew me. Even if not well, they seemed to have been aware of my existence before this...?

"... Do you know me?"

I exhaled a breath both cold and hot and searched my memories, trying to recall when I'd encountered someone with that voice.

But there was no one, at least within the range of what I could remember. This was someone I didn't know. So why did they know me?

... Could they have known the real Demon Knight?

["You don't seem to remember me... Well, I do look rather different now."]

A faint hope had made me ask without thinking, and the answer swelled that hope further. Faced with this unexpected stroke of luck—not yet certain, admittedly—my heart pounded rapidly... No. If anything, it was thudding slower than usual.

["Oh? Have you two met before?"]

["Yes."]

["When on earth was that?"]

["Not long ago. That place where you were playing the sucker a few days back. We met while the city there was falling apart before our eyes."]

["... Huh?"]

But no matter how I considered it, the setting of that account had to be Bemurhen. With my hopes shattered in an instant, all I felt was a hollow sensation in my stomach. My tense muscles slackened and cooled.

["Thanks to him, my other half stopped committing atrocities, and my body was freed from being a puppet. But I never expected him to take the whole thing for himself... Oh, right. This is good timing. Any chance you'd give my old body back?"]

That emptiness lasted only a moment before the speaker's words left me puzzled.

The other half's atrocities? A body freed from being a puppet? Taking it and running?

No, putting all of that aside, what did they mean by their old body...?

I tried to make my sluggish mind work through what they'd said.

After all, I remembered only two things about Bemurhen: fighting the lava demon, and waking up to find myself facing execution. Neither had anything at all to do with the picture the speaker was painting... Ah. Could it be?

"I don't remember."

["You don't want to give it back?"]

I shed the raindrops that kept gathering on my eyelashes and added,

"I mean exactly what I said."

That didn't really change anything.

Perhaps I had spent too long acting out this unkind, curt persona. Even my clarification was a terse answer that demanded considerable interpretation from the listener.

I was probably going to have trouble communicating once I got home.

["... Would that have something to do with the core of demonic energy inside you?"]

If there was any good news, it was that the speaker was fairly perceptive.

Before I could add, "I wasn't the one who did that," they understood my meaning and responded with an appropriate question. I blinked again to shake the water from my lashes.

"... Yes."

["Then I won't be getting my power back."]

"... Your power was stolen?"

["More or less, from my perspective. Though I can't really argue if you say the victor merely claimed the spoils he was due."]

More importantly, just who was this being? From the sound of it, the demon had robbed them of their body or power while controlling my flesh in my place...

Was the reason I couldn't see them now that they'd lost their body? But could someone live after their body was taken? Or, since they'd called it their old body, did they have a new one?

Before any of that, though, how powerful had they been for the demon to personally steal their power? How had they never been sighted with that kind of power?

Where had the demon stashed what it stole?

["If I can't get it back, never mind."]

The questions only kept piling up the more I heard, tangling my thoughts. Then words tinged with a sigh and resignation reached my ears.

DRUM-DRUM-DRUM.

The words spread dully through the distorted sound of rain, and I only understood them after turning them over exactly three times.

"... You give up easily."

["Clinging to what's already lost is only ugly. And I wasn't entirely blameless in losing it."]

Surprisingly, the speaker didn't seem particularly regretful about being unable to recover that power. I hadn't expected that. Given how much they disliked me, I had thought this would offend them as well.

["If there's nothing else to say, let's go."]

["Aw. Are you done talking?"]

["Yes. Why? Did you have something more to say?"]

["Well, there's a little I'd like to say."]

Of course, I was grateful they hadn't forced responsibility on me simply because we used the same body. Things would have been quite difficult for me if they'd insisted on that unreasonable demand.

["Like why Sir Knight's here, where he's going, why he's left all his companions behind. Things like that...?"]

["You certainly have a lot of questions. Do what you want. It's not as though I can leave on my own."]

["Hehe."]

Anyway, was that being finished with me? I still had plenty of questions.

I started to stop the speaker from withdrawing from the conversation, then held back, conscious of the Mountain Lord's presence.

The Mountain Lord probably wouldn't try to smash my head in just because I acted a little strangely... but you never knew. I wouldn't need to act as rigorously as I did around the Hero's party, but it would be better to maintain the bare minimum of my persona.

["Then, Sir Knight, what brings you here...?"]

Honestly, it was nothing short of a scarlet letter. This persona kept preventing me from doing what I wanted, making me take the long way around things that should have been easy...

["Sir Knight?"]

Huh? Oh, right. The Mountain Lord was talking.

Chiding myself for getting too lost in idle thoughts—strange, I really hadn't been that absorbed—I shifted my focus. Seen through my gritty eyes, the white serpent's outline looked somewhat blurred.

"I'm listening."

["Uh, yes. So how did you end up here? I'm on my way back to the Great Forest, but shouldn't you be heading north, Sir Knight?"]

Still, I could hear his voice. After going over the muddled sounds several times, I understood the whole sentence.

"That's..."

But how was I supposed to answer? The Mountain Lord didn't know my persona in detail, but he would at least know I was obsessed with hunting demons.

Should I simply conceal the fact that I'd escaped from Bemurhen? Could I even do that with someone who knew about the Bemurhen incident right beside him?

"That's..."

... Still, it would be better to evade the question entirely. If I said goodbye immediately afterward, they wouldn't be able to object even if they found it odd.

["That's...?"]

So.

"..."

I worked my throat, strangely parched despite the rain. But no sound emerged. In that brief moment, my vision had blurred even further, until I was seeing two Mountain Lords.

["... Sir Knight?"]

... Wait. Seeing an object—well, not an object, but whatever I was looking at—split into two wasn't normal, was it?

["Huh?"]

Not only had the Mountain Lord split in two, the whole world was tilting. I wondered why. Why was the world spinning? It wasn't supposed to spin. Seriously, what was this? Why was the world... Ah.

Was I the problem?

["Oh nooo! Sir Knight's dying!!"]

With the Mountain Lord's voice echoing in my ears, my eyelids slid shut.

I'd thought the ringing in my ears was unusually bad today, but that wasn't the problem.

That was my last thought.

* * *

["Wh-what do we do!!"]

Barely catching the falling man, the Mountain Lord cried out in utter panic.

The tail he'd wrapped around the man to protect him conveyed his body temperature, cold and hot all at once. It wasn't the temperature of the humans he knew.

["I-isn't he going to die at this rate?!"]

Had he possessed feet, he would have stamped them by now, laying waste to the land. But the Mountain Lord had no feet, and his tail was occupied with holding the man. Thus he succeeded in keeping his surroundings perfectly intact.

["Is he dead?"]

["Ancestor!!"]

["No, he isn't."]

Unlike the Mountain Lord, however, Yukkwi clicked his tongue. Wouldn't it have benefited the world if the man had simply died? That cold thought came as an added bonus.

["Why all the fuss? It's only one human who's collapsed, and one harboring a demon at that."]

But was that thought truly nothing more than coldhearted?

Yukkwi crawled along the Mountain Lord's body and positioned himself where he could look down at the unconscious human. The first thing he saw was a face so pale it had turned bluish.

["What? A demon?"]

["So you didn't know, just as I thought."]

Yet the sight stirred fear before pity. It couldn't be helped. That thing, which appeared merely to contain a little demonic energy, was in fact a vessel harboring a Great Demon.

["What's inside him is a Great Demon."]

["Whaaaat???"]

He didn't know how a Great Demon had come to live parasitically inside a human body. Nor did he know why, far from having driven the human out entirely, it had left the human in control instead.

["... How about killing him now?"]

["A-Ancestor?"]

He knew only one thing: the power that Great Demon would display upon awakening.

["It was already a powerful demon, and it swallowed my other half and my body besides. It took all the power the Black Serpent and I possessed for itself."]

... To begin with, he knew that thanks to that thing's intervention, the corrupted Black Serpent had died before it could wreak further havoc. His body, defiled and made into a nest for demons, would likewise have caused every conceivable nuisance far and wide had it not been for that thing's flames.

So, therefore, he could be said to owe that thing a small debt.

["Can you even imagine it? How powerful a Great Demon could become after swallowing the full power of a primeval beast?"]

But did that mean he truly ought to thank it?

He might have burned up with his own shell if he hadn't desperately clung to a human body. And even if the Black Serpent's betrayal had left all his power in the serpent's possession, power that had originally been his had still been torn away wholesale.

For instance, it was like this. A human broke a leg in an accident and was permanently disabled, but consequently avoided being drafted into a war. Should that human be grateful for the accident that broke their leg, or not?

["I understand that the dragon in the west, and you as well, think well of this human. But that's one matter, and this is another."]

The answer would be no.

["Besides, that human... He probably fled all the way here because he didn't want to die..."]

["What? He ran away because he didn't want to die?"]

["While I was in that tent, I heard the humans talking about executing him or some such. Then he vanished in the dead of night without a word. Isn't it obvious he ran away because he didn't want to die?"]

["Normally, yes, but..."]

And so Yukkwi urged the Mountain Lord on. It certainly wasn't out of personal resentment over that thing nearly driving him to his death, or killing what had still been his other half, corrupted though it was. It came from the conviction that this would be better for the world.

["... Can't we not do that?"]

Yet after hearing all of it, the Mountain Lord hesitated, then quietly offered his opinion.

["... Am I being too selfish?"]

It would have been one thing if he'd shouted protests at the top of his lungs. But when the usually chattering youngster suddenly wilted and murmured timidly, Yukkwi found himself at a loss for words.

["It is... selfish, yes..."]

["I suppose it is... But I don't want to do that..."]

["..."]

Seriously, this brat was normally so heedless of others' opinions. Why did he have to act this way now...!

Yukkwi was utterly dumbfounded, but in the end, he didn't reprimand him. He was the one who wanted that thing dead, but the Mountain Lord would have to carry it out—and would also be the one looking after Yukkwi for the rest of his life.

["I give up. Do what you want."]

Well. Frankly, the ones who would suffer if that human lived were humans rather than themselves, so it wouldn't matter if he stood by. After that shrewd calculation, Yukkwi finally gave his permission.

The Mountain Lord's drooping face brightened in an instant.

["Then let's hurry home! There's a typhoon coming, and we need to get Sir Knight treated right away!"]

It was time to set off again.

Is It a Problem if the Protagonist Is Obsessed with Staying in Character? (Serial)

Author │ Hae Inseol

Publisher │ Kim Juhyeong

Publishing House │ Jple Media Co., Ltd.

Marketing │ Han Jaehyeok

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