Chapter 67
There was a "someone" there, filled with heroic narratives of feats that didn't happen, deeds that didn't exist, and all that kind of stuff.
You never saw them, you never heard of them, you just knew them.
If so–it would be just as "natural" for the humans of this world to forget their deeds.
Could such an unnatural thing really be called the will of this world?
When he awoke, the hero no longer wore his old, tattered quilted armor or clutched his rusting sword.
His armor and sword were dazzling gold.
Somehow, the typical costume elements of an unrealistic fantasy were maximized.
It was an over-the-top, unrealistic piece of armor with no practicality whatsoever.
"Man, that's so blindingly bright it hurts. You should've seen the golden boy's outfit."
Silan shrugs at the hero's outfit.
Unfortunately, not all the members of the troupe are here.
"Ohhhhh, I don't particularly appreciate his aesthetic sense...."
Freya giggles in disbelief when she hears that.
"No matter how lowly a man he is, wouldn't you consider the beauty of a man dressed in such hideous clothes?"
No group of people, villainous or otherwise, is ever going to get along with each other.
Nonetheless, that was the minimum protocol shared among the members.
"Either way."
Chulang Sandalphon flexed the bulging muscles in his suit impatiently.
"What is that, a hero...?"
Additionally, it was the first time seeing the 'emergence of a hero', for Jeanne and Alina, reborn as the Black Saint and Black Sword, respectively.
"But...."
They, too, realized the incongruity of the 'heroic miracle' before them.
Only we were aware of the anomaly.
But even if they are not part of the original members, why weren't they affected by the anomaly, just because they were members of the Black Snake?
"You'd better watch out, cute newcomers."
Jinzo Scarlett shrugged her shoulders in a voice that said there was nothing to be surprised about.
"It's their way of protecting the human world for a thousand years."
"They...?"
Alina repeats. I wait for Scarlett's answer, wondering the same thing as she does.
"─the ones who want this world to stay."
"Goddesses, you mean?"
Jeanne repeated, remembering her voice whispering to her that day.
"She is only their representative."
But even the Goddess is only a part of them. It was a surprising statement, even to me.
Yet I remembered it clearly.
The goddess wasn't the only thing I saw in the mausoleum that day. I remembered the unfathomable stars behind her back, shining in their full glory across the veil of the heavens.
And what were those stars?
"─Clientes." (TLN: this was written in English in the raws)
Scarlet replied.
"That's their name."
"Clientes...?"
Neither Jeanne nor Alina understood the meaning of the word. Neither did I. To me, it was just a proper name I'd never heard before but it was enough.
It was enough to know that the stars in the sky were not a mystery to the Black Snake.
Just knowing that, for me, was almost too much income but it didn't change what I had to do.
As the leader of the Black Snake, here and now, in this moment-
"As the leader of the Black Snake, I hereby declare."
No longer would I take the fair and square approach of one-on-one combat, nor would I take the black curtain approach of watching the hero's actions from afar.
"Kill the hero with all your might."
We just show up as we are, all of us.
"Hoo-hoo, I've been waiting for that!"
Alice laughed gleefully.
Aria, for her part, tears away the black bandages covering her eyes.
Beyond the bandages, Aria's eyes were black, dark, and inky. Two black, dark, starless abysses.
Black Sword, Snake Eyes, Jinzo, Widow, Chulang, Gluttony, Black Saint, Death Sword.
─All eight members of the group are present, unleashing their full power and facing a single hero.
It is a battle that cannot be lost.
It's the ultimate in absurdity, with evil unleashing its full power in front of the hero.
I, as the leader of the group, was part of that absurdity.
"Snipe Shot."
With a chant, magic crackles from my fingertips, and I cast a long-range sniper spell.
As I stood on the ridge, looking out over the horizon, the snow-white bullets on my fingertips raced away toward the nameless hero, the object of faith who miraculously appeared and slaughtered an immortal army.
"─"
With that, the hero's sword swung, slicing through the magical bullets that were meant to pierce him so effortlessly.
When I realized, he was looking at us.
A snipe on a ridge, absurdly far away, but he turned his head in the exact direction the magic bullet had traveled, his expression devoid of any emotion.
His eyes were bleak.
Ashen eyes, devoid of any color, light, or anything else, empty to say the least.
It was frightening to think that such eyes faced this way.
The distance was narrowing and Sandalfon, excited by the sight, shouted.
"Come...!"
When I realized it, the hero came rushing in at a speed faster than the
It was an outrageous charge that defied all reason and common sense.
At the end of the rush, the hero found himself alone, facing the entirety of the Black Snake, not the immortal army he had appeared to protect, or the innocent people of the Holy Kingdom being slaughtered at their hands.
"Kahhhh, this is it!"
Standing in the way of such a hero was Chulang Sandalfon.
Unfazed by the rush that defies common sense and reason, he stood his ground against the rushing hero in a fair fight.
"It's a pity we can't have a fair fight!"
Of course, our fight is far from fair. He's outnumbered and outgunned.
So will the silent "rest of the heroes" step up to the plate to balance things out?
That's what I thought for a moment but the hero at knifepoint, doesn't say anything.
He simply acts, his golden armor so unrealistic even in this world, his face expressionless, devoid of any emotion or color. Doing what? Acting like a hero.
The difference in numbers was overwhelming and we weren't even the type to rely on mere quantity.
For each and every one of us here is made up of men of unparalleled strength.
And yet-
The hero there, if it were just a single member facing the hero in this place, I'm sure he would never be able to win.
He was strong.
From the moment he appeared, the Hero before me was no novice who had just begun to play the game.
He had the strength of a terminator, a man who had completed all things, accomplished all feats and deeds, and ended all stories.
'...what?'
And so, I was baffled.
I had played the game Heroic Century before, and I thought I had raised a hero in that world but the hero that appeared before me now was far from natural in that form.
There is no foreshadowing to their existence, no rationalization, no explanation, just a miraculous appearance in an all-too-intelligible and convenient form.
Is this hero unique, or are the heroes I believed to have raised by my own hands manifesting in the world in the same way? I don't know either way.
At least, I only know one word to describe the way of being in front of me.
Deus ex Machina.
God of Machinery.
And if such a form of god exists in this world.
What kind of fight have the members of the Black Snake been fighting?
Who was Rain Gray leading this organization and who was he up against?
What kind of absurd power did they have to fight against a being that trampled on common sense and reason at will?
I asked myself. Even after asking, I still didn't know.
There is only one thing I can do: follow the clues he left behind, retrace his steps and retrace his tracks.
And it was no longer by sending members out on a limb and sacrificing them.
"The Garden of Original Sin."
Rain Gray's technique that took everything from the man called Roland in the darkness of the night.
The darkness, which could be called a special move, cast a black and dark curtain over me and the hero.