Chapter 172 – Chapter 172. The Warrior Who Wants to Be Sold (2)
An attitude that can be said to be light and fair.
That’s why I felt the coercion towards me intensify.
The reality is that even though all the party members are worried about me and look at me strangely, I have no choice but to play with the person in front of me.
“It would be fine if you came all the way here. Because the personalities of the three of us won’t do anything like tailing.”
When the distance was widened, Celica, who was sitting on the ledge of her rock, started looking at me with her footy smile.
Taking actions that I don’t understand at all.
“It’s nice to be back in the old days~ I get to meet my old colleagues.”
Good?
An old colleague… About the subject you just said you would kill Heira?
“Heira is cute, Yumir unnie is ticklish but takes care of people, and Verdia unnie pretends to be strong but she still gets confused when you call her unnie…”
But Celica was just telling her own story.
Just as the murderous intent he had revealed toward Heira before was a lie. No, it’s like saying that I heard it wrong in the first place.
“Yes, they are all good people.”
Recalling the memories of the girls I didn’t know, she smiled mischievously and put her hand to my mouth and said.
“If even one of them died at my hands, how would your face change?”
Poof, her outstretched hand pulls her shoulder and pulls Celica in front of me.
She did not resist the action. Even though she was dragged right in front of me, the composure on her face did not disappear.
Even though I know what expression was drawn on my face.
“Serica.”
Even though you will feel what kind of emotion is contained in the name you are calling now.
“Yes, Celica. Celica, the lover you love.”
She just smiles and responds to my words.
But now, even that seemed like a pretense.
The true face of the person in front of me is not the innocence shown in front of the party members, nor the coldness he pretends to be in front of me.
“Are you insane?”
Because I couldn’t get rid of the thought that it was nothing more than a sculpture built on top of madness.
“Sanity?”
“Are you serious about what you just said?”
Yeah, she’s not normal either.
What does it mean to have a stable attitude and a perfect personality? The Celica I knew was never one to say such things.
Even if she had experienced 10 years of time, even if she had experienced something that no one else, including me, had ever done.
“How does it look to you?”
I, too, this unstable existence in front of me.
I couldn’t accept him as someone I love.
“… It’s not normal.”
“Then you were hoping for things to be normal after seeing that?”
Celica seemed to like that kind of denial…
A madman in the form of Celica shrugged his shoulders and said.
“Everything collapsed. In the first battle with the demon king, all three of them died.”
The shocking truth that followed.
Perhaps the outcome that might happen in the future, she was speaking casually.
“I was defeated so horribly from the first battle, and it was so shocking that I stayed in my room for several years. Since I didn’t do anything like that, everything disappeared.”
“What…”
“People living in such a world vomited their resentment towards me. You are a warrior, why didn’t you save the world? Why?”
Celica, who continued her words until that point and burst out laughing, soon lowered her head and spoke in a low voice.
“… It was noisy, so I killed them all.”
Really casually.
“Yeah, I killed them all. Everyone who annoys me.”
A warrior who was destined to save the world.
She said she killed all the people she was supposed to protect.
“What…”
“And, and… How did it go?”
She couldn’t believe it and tried to ask, but she just tilted her head still holding her finger to the corner of her mouth.
After a while there was silence.
“What happened?”
She ended her story hastily, as if replacing the story that was to follow with silence.
“That’s right…”
“After that, it became what you saw. In her first defeat, she is the end of a miserable hero who has lost everything she loves.”
After finishing her story like that, Celica burst out with a smile on her face, and she started looking into her eyes again.
“I told you this far, but you wouldn’t understand it, would you? I think the probability is enough.”
Probability…
Yes, going crazy over shocking facts is common. If you are a warrior, you have a heavy responsibility, so it might be.
“Then you can change it.”
However, even if she was not normal, she couldn’t be said to have been driven into madness.
It’s just a different point of view, but it’s a body that can judge.
She probably felt that the madness she saw at the time was gone because she realized she didn’t have to be distracted like that either.
“If you go back to the past… If you know everything about the future, can’t you deal with it?”
So, you can change it now.
Although she spoke common sense anyone could think of in her mouth.
“What’s different about going back to the past?”
It’s as if she didn’t even answer the conclusion I came to.
“Can you bet that the second time will be successful?”
Even that common sense was casually expressed in denial.
“… What?”
“Even now, looking at you, I don’t think so at all.”
Is it just because it’s not a normal accident?
No, she was serious.
Even though she still had her finger on her lips, the seriousness on her face this moment as she faced me taught me that.
“Yeah, I still don’t feel that way at all.
“Even if I knew the future, I would fight the demon lord again and win… There’s no way that would be possible, right?”
I don’t know.
It was because he tasted a deeper, darker despair than the loss of his comrades in the fight against the demon lord he saw in the future.
“… Celica.”
“So, if the only thing waiting for is ruin.”
Celica stood up from the rock, not paying attention to my call.
Afterwards, she looked back at me and smiled brightly, talking about her realization.
“Rather than building up happy memories and being tortured with hope until that time comes, wouldn’t it be easier to destroy everything with my own hands?”
As if that was the only answer she gave.
“What do you think, Dave? If you were me, the same conclusion…”
-Thud!
Fuck the dog
That can’t be the answer.
“You…”
The moment when a punch made in anger was driven into a tree.
Celica, who was locked in front of me as it was, stopped at the spot and met her eyes with me.
“You are not Celica.”
“…Do you still think I’m fake? Even after listening to everything you say now?”
“It has nothing to do with whether you’re from the future.”
First of all, she wasn’t normal.
Just because a new personality was formed in an abnormal state, she wouldn’t be able to say that everything she said was the truth.
Even the memories of the future may have been created by plausibly framing them in the process of mental collapse and being corrected again.
“The Celica I know, she would never say that.”
She said, confident in such vague expectations. No, it had to be.
A woman who, pierced by her despair, casually said that she killed her comrades with her own hands, and who still looked at me coldly as she blamed him.
Because she couldn’t possibly think of anything like her.
“…”
But does she feel something when she hears what she is saying now?
She, who had been talking nonstop before, started staring at me, erasing a smile from the corners of her mouth.
“… Mask.”
And at the end of that silence, a word that is spat out.
“Don’t you want to take off your mask?”
“… What?”
“If you go, I don’t have eyes to see, so I guess I can take them off.”
“…”
Why are you talking about something like a mask all of a sudden?
Are you going to turn around? Because it is difficult to answer the remarks now?
No, isn’t that the guy who said it was not a big deal that he would even kill his comrades?
As long as everything I’ve said so far isn’t bluff, my words won’t shake your heart. Rather, it is not known if he changed his attitude because he was displeased with the current remark.
“Are you planning on not taking it off until the end?”
Whatever it is, he wants me to take off the mask.
Even in order to know her reason, she would need to tune her rhythm to her.
-Click.
The moment when the seams of the mask were undone after keeping cool. Eventually, facing my gradually revealed face, she put strength on her neck as if she was trying to say something, then lowered her head and let out a deep sigh.
“… Are you stupid or are you kidding me?”
“What…”
“I told you I was handsome.”
She evades her words and reaches for her hand to my face.
“Yeah, he looks good even now.”
After that, her touch on my cheek felt soft, but as much as I knew its nature, her skin only grew chicken.
“… Don’t play around.”
Celica backed away before she could even get her hand away.
“Are you kidding me?”
Afterwards, as she kicked a twig that had fallen on her floor and inspected the surface, she didn’t think much of it.
“None of the things I’ve done so far have been a joke. It was because I thought the attitude I showed in front of the three of them was also necessary.”
Afterwards, the twigs she held in her hands swayed in the air seemed like a child pretending to be an adult.
She is like an immature child who often imitates a hero who defeats monsters.
“So, did she mean to kill Heira?”
From that lightness, I could feel her sincerity disappearing.
I can feel the persuasiveness fading away from every word that comes out of her mouth.
“It would have happened if you hadn’t followed.”
“Then, the two of you…”
“Yes, the two of you too.”
Still, she said it without hesitation.
As if she was okay with my feelings, Heira, as well as Verdia and Ymir, talked nonchalantly, as if they were objects worth killing for her.
“I used to love you, but now it’s only good for you.”
As she continued to say such empty words, Celica put a bitter smile on my lips.
I knew right away that it wasn’t a lie.
Because the current she is based on the memories I saw of her.
In a world that has already been destroyed, it would be strange that her human feelings remained in her, who was driven by her madness and searched only for the object of her obsession.
Really, sincerely.
If I didn’t follow her, she was going to kill everyone there, starting with Heira.
“… Then why?”
But isn’t it strange?
“Why do you want me…”
Why did she dare to come to me last night when she sees everything in the world as meaningless, in despair she can’t resist in the future?
Why did she dare to hold three people hostage and have a private meeting with me?
No, before that.
Why did she choose me as the object of her future obsession?
– Kwaaa!!
At that moment, a cry was heard from behind.
As soon as he noticed it, a sense of crisis began to attack him from behind.
Something is coming. It’s something huge.
-Paang!
As soon as I felt it, something was swung next to me, and the air around the area began to be pushed out along with the explosive sound that exploded from it.
It was after everything had already ended that I realized what it was.
The branch that had been whipping in front of me swung forward at some point, cutting off something coming from behind me.
It was a monster. A perverted creature that exists innumerably in this forest.
The moment it secretly came out from behind and tried to attack me, the power emanating from the branch in her hand split the body in half.
Really neat.
It was so neat that even the blood that was supposed to split and burst out only flowed out after the severed corpse fell to the floor.
-Kooung!
As the corpse crashed into the ground and made a roar, Celica picked up the branch she was holding in her hand and stared across from me.
“… People are talking and they interrupt without even noticing.”
Yes, attention was already withdrawn from me.
His gaze was directed at the crooked creatures hiding in every corner of the huge trees built around them.
Their size alone is several times bigger than humans, and they form a group and only aim for the two humans who exist here.
A dangerous situation where even running away is unthinkable if you think normally.
“Wait a little bit there.”
Celica was slowly moving her steps towards the group of monsters.
“It will be over soon.”
She casually held a single branch in her hand.
She didn’t lose her composure even when she stepped on each limb, as if she was trying to teach her that a situation awaited her that would only lead her to despair.