Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter 6.1

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WRATH

That old, familiar workshop.

This is my personal room in an online game.

The game I started playing when the new friends I made in high school, Shun and Kanata, invited me to join them.

Since they had already started the game, I chose the blacksmith job, a support role, to round out our party. It seemed like the best way to avoid getting in the way of Shun’s and Kanata’s characters, who were both pure battle types.

Although my intentions were rendered moot, since the two of them were always kind and helpful to me as a newbie.

That made me really happy.

When they fought alongside me and matched my pace instead of just power-leveling me, I knew I’d be able to forge a good friendship with these two.

We went farming for blacksmithing materials together and hunted monsters that dropped items needed to enhance our weapons.

When one of us couldn’t come, the other two would play together, and on the rare occasion that we couldn’t even do that, then I did blacksmithing by myself.

It was a pretty rewarding style of game play.

When the other two used weapons or armor that I made for them, that alone was enough to make me feel good.

Crafting jobs really aren’t half-bad.

My father and grandfather ran a small factory.

When I was little, I didn’t know what exactly they were making there, but I guess it was some kind of machinery parts.

“We make these things because people need ’em, but now that the big manufacturers make ’em, the bastards all go to the enemy side.”

My grandfather often complained about this.

Evidently, a bigger factory had appeared that could mass-produce the parts, so companies that had been buying from my family’s factory ended their contracts with us.

Even longtime customers of many years ended their allegiance, casting aside my grandfather to take their business elsewhere.

My grandfather took great offense to this and turned to drinking when the factory went under, succumbing to liver cancer just a few years later.

My father must have sensed early on that the factory’s days were numbered; as soon as the contracts were broken, he resolved to sell the factory and got a job at another company.

Ironically enough, we lived better off his new salary than when he was running the factory.

Maybe that upset my grandfather, too.

But it’s not as if my father didn’t feel anything when he sold the factory.

Unlike my grandfather, he wasn’t the type to talk very much, but I often saw him gazing at the site where the factory had been with a muddled expression.

That definitely wasn’t the face of a man who had accepted what happened.

I think the reason I came to have such a strong sense of right and wrong is because I grew up watching my father and grandfather.

Both of them felt pride and attachment toward their factory.

But then it was crushed solely for the convenience of the companies who broke their contracts with them.

Yet those companies simply made new contracts with a bigger factory and improved their business as a result.

So unfair.

My father and grandfather silently devoted themselves to making mechanical parts, like warriors pledging their loyalty, yet in return, they were simply tossed aside.

Is there any justice in that?

No.

I’m sure those companies had their excuses, like costs and business practices.

But that was hard for me to accept when it put my father and grandfather through so much suffering, while the companies responsible got off blame-free.

That’s why when I saw something wrong—even if it wasn’t forbidden by law, even if other people looked the other way—I couldn’t just let it slide.

Then again, I guess I was always a bit like that even before the factory went under, so maybe I would’ve been that kind of person even without my father’s and grandfather’s influence.

But that incident is definitely what encouraged me further down that path.

I always tried to do what was right.

And I always tried to correct the things that seemed wrong.

But the real world isn’t so simple.

If doing the right thing was enough to make everything go well, then the factory wouldn’t have closed.

By the same token, even if I did things I thought were right, it often made the situation worse or led to me being thought of as the bad guy.

Part of the problem was that I often tried to solve things with pure violence.

Maybe that’s all right for fights between little kids, but in my case, my methods didn’t change even as I got older.

That’s why people called me the “little ogre” and got mad at me.

Violence isn’t the answer.

Everyone knows that, but I always chose that answer anyway when I wanted to do what I felt was right. I’ll be the first to admit, I was full of contradictions.

It took longer for me to realize that than the other kids.

So in high school, I decided to be more docile.

As soon as I did that, my wild life changed drastically.

I was able to enjoy a peaceful everyday: life without violence.

Just by giving up violence and looking away from things I found unjust, I could have the same life as any ordinary high school kid.

I was even blessed with the friendship of Shun and Kanata and started to enjoy school.

But are you really all right with this? a voice asked me deep down.

I didn’t have an answer for that.

Now, somehow, I’m in my room in the goblin village.

Well, not so much my room as the only room in the house, shared by the whole family.

Goblin architecture isn’t exactly state of the art, and since they live in the scarce environment of the Mystic Mountains, a single one-room home for each family is the best they can do.

In the midst of this ramshackle room, I was making weapons.

A lot changed after I discovered my Weapon Creation skill.

The utensils I made with the skill, like forks and knives, were distributed throughout the village, and I was able to create farming tools as well, making our lives easier.

As the name implies, the Weapon Creation skill can make only things that can be used as weapons, but I was actually able to make a pretty wide variety of farming tools. Maybe it’s because they’ve been historically used as weapons in uprisings and such.

And then there’s the intended use of the skill: making actual weapons.

Once I learned to make good-quality weapons, our hunting efficiency became much higher.

Thanks to that, the hunting goblins brought back more monster meat and lessened the state of starvation in the village, and the range that they could explore and hunt in expanded.

Still, that doesn’t mean everything got better.

Goblins I knew around the same age as me still froze to death or got eaten by the vegetables in the field if they got the harvest time wrong.

You’re probably thinking that doesn’t make any sense, but the only vegetables strong enough to grow in the cold of the Mystic Mountains were man-eating monster plants…

The first time I saw that, I almost passed out from the shock.

And there were other goblins I looked up to like older brothers who never came back from hunting, and so on.

That being said, there were good times, too, like when my older brother luckily evolved into a hobgoblin.

My family consisted of my two parents, four older brothers, six older sisters, me, and one younger brother and sister each, for a total of fifteen people.

For humans, that would be a huge family, but for goblins, it’s pretty standard.

Their pregnancies are fast and their fertility rate is high, so a lot of children can be born in a short span.

That being said, goblins’ mortality rate is high, too.

From what I’ve heard, I used to have four more older siblings, and I had a younger brother who was stillborn.

That was a difficult time.

He was going to be my first little brother.

But he didn’t make it.

Our whole family cried together, and I lost my appetite for a while.

The person who comforted me in that time was my eldest brother, Raza-Raza.

Although I guess I don’t know if you could really call that “comforting.”

What he actually did was punch me.

“You can’t just sit around moping forever. Eat and live a healthy life. That’s the duty of those of us who still live.”

With that, he forced me to eat.

Literally—he pried my mouth open and shoved food down my throat.

From that point on, if I ever seemed depressed at mealtime, he would force-feed me again.

I thought it might actually kill me, but at least it pulled me out of my depression.

Raza-Raza’s word was law, and more importantly, my mother was pregnant with a new child by then.

Goblins have an amazing will to live.

And soon, my little sister was born.

Right away, I swore I would protect her.

For the sake of my little brother who didn’t get a chance to live, as well.

In actuality, I did get a little brother not long afterward, but I still doted on my little sister most of all. It’s not that I didn’t dote on my little brother, too, but because of the vow I made, I paid the most attention to her.

In exchange, she became attached to me, too, and we were always together.

When I was making things with Weapon Creation, my little sister would sit nearby and watch quietly.

And when the weapon was finished, she would clap and cheer as if nothing could make her prouder.

So of course I couldn’t help adoring her.

That encouragement made me even more determined to keep forging things.

Just like when I did blacksmithing in that game, it was fun to create things that were helpful to others. It made it feel worthwhile.

There was nothing more satisfying than having something I made be needed and useful to others.

Maybe that was how my father and grandfather felt when they were running the factory.

The scene changes again.

“Run away!”

My older brother Raza-Raza was one of the best warriors in the village.

He was a high goblin, the evolution of a hobgoblin, so his stats were far higher than any ordinary goblin.

I was so proud of my big brother.

All my other brothers looked up to Raza-Raza.

But now, he was riddled with wounds and shouting for everyone to run.

So I obeyed, taking my sister’s hand and fleeing.

Humans were attacking the village.

There had been warning signs of this. The hunting parties had been seeing humans more frequently lately.

Because of the weapons I made for them, the better-equipped hunters had expanded the range of their exploration.

And eventually, it expanded to the outskirts of a new human village created at the foot of the Mystic Mountains.

The humans were alarmed by that, so they decided to go on the offensive.

As a result of those attacks, most of the evolved goblin fighters, who were in the hunting parties, were killed in action.

And now, the humans were attacking the goblin base, our village.

With the very weapons I had created in their hands.

It was awful.

I had made those weapons for the hunting parties.

They were never meant to be used by humans to attack our own village!

They stole from the hands of the hunters the weapons I’d painstakingly made and turned them against the village, of all places.

That reality was incredibly upsetting for me.

And so was the fact that I was too weak to stop them.

I grew fast for a goblin, but I was still so young.

As an ordinary, unevolved goblin, my only use was creating weapons.

If even the hunters couldn’t contend with these humans, then I wouldn’t stand a chance.

So I ran.

It was humiliating, but my little sister’s life was in my hands, too.

I swore on my own life that I would protect her.

But then one man blocked our path as if to laugh in the face of my resolve.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I threw a weapon I’d made that day at the man and tried to flee in a different direction.

But the man dodged my throw easily and quickly darted around us to stand in my way again.

It was clear from his movements alone that the man’s stats were far higher than mine.

“Hmm?”

I was out of options.

As I tried desperately to find a way out anyway, the man looked at me bemusedly.

Then he put his hand on a stone necklace around his neck and muttered something.

It was in a different language from the one goblins used, though, so I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Still, the chill that ran through my body as if gripping my very bones told me that he was doing something to me.

The man narrowed his eyes.

I didn’t know what he was doing, but this was my chance.

I tried to turn on my heels, but the man grabbed my head before I could move and pinned me to the ground.

“Nnngh?! Guh?!”

A shriek escaped my lips before I could stop it.

It wasn’t just the pain of being pushed down but the strange feeling that was seeping into me from the man’s hand.

What’s going on?!

Pain and unease assailed me, like a foreign substance was flowing into my body.

At the same time, I felt an unfamiliar sensation, like my mind was being tainted by something.

I gnashed my teeth, trying to fight it off.

It was enough to keep a hold of my mind, but my body was starting to refuse to obey me.

I struggled to shake free of the man’s grip, but my strength was quickly draining away.

In the corner of my eye, I saw my sister standing frozen in place.

Run, I wanted to say, but my mouth wouldn’t move.

The man let go.

But my body still wouldn’t do what I wanted.

I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t even lift a finger.

It was like my body wasn’t even my own.

In reality, that’s exactly what was happening in that moment.

And then, and then…

The scene changes.

The inside of a house, far more solidly built than any in the goblin village.

This was the human village at the foot of the Mystic Mountains, the base of the men who had destroyed the goblin village.

There, I was being forced to make weapons.

My sister was no longer by my side.

Instead, I had two new titles: Ally Slayer and Kin Eater.

I had been enslaved by Buirimus, one of the men who had attacked the goblin village.

It was entirely against my will.

I was forced to obey and do whatever he asked.

So unfair.

Why did this have to happen?

As much as I thought about it, there was no answer.

When I finished creating a weapon, Buirimus would look at it with satisfaction and take it away.

The stone hanging from Buirimus’s neck was a high-level Appraisal stone.

There was an Appraisal stone in the goblin village as well, which was how we had found out that I had the Weapon Creation skill, but Buirimus’s was of a higher quality.

My skill is the reason he enslaved me instead of killing me.

It would’ve been better if he had.

My Weapon Creation skill doesn’t exist to be used by the likes of you people.

But every day, I was forced to make weapons, and every single one of them went into those humans’ hands.

I was frustrated.

And more than that, I was angry.

Though hatred welled up inside me, I couldn’t escape from Buirimus’s control, so I kept making weapons.

The scene changes again.

In the Mystic Mountains, Buirimus was forcing me to kill monsters he had enslaved.

It’s called power-leveling.

Weapon Creation uses my MP to make weapons.

So if I raise my level and evolve, I get more MP, which means I can make more weapons of better quality.

As we repeated this process, I soon evolved into a hobgoblin.

This evolution has an important meaning to goblins.

Normal goblins have an incredibly short life span, often less than ten years.

But if a goblin evolves into a hobgoblin, they acquire a life span on par with that of humans.

So goblins will always join the hunting parties for a time in order to defeat monsters, raise their levels, and evolve into hobgoblins.

In a way, it’s also a rite of passage into adulthood.

By overcoming this challenge, a goblin can be seen as an adult for the first time.

Of course, many goblins lose their lives in the process.

So hunting isn’t just a means of acquiring food but a holy ritual of sorts.

And yet, I was forced to evolve into a hobgoblin without any kind of ceremony or emotions.

I had always aspired to someday join the hunting parties and fight monsters alongside my fellow hunters.

But that never happened.

It was an evolution devoid of any sense of accomplishment.

Instead of my sister being there to celebrate my evolution, it was Buirimus who looked on and nodded with a look of triumph.

And by his side was my brother Raza-Raza, the light completely gone from his eyes.

I wasn’t the only one who Buirimus had enslaved.

Raza-Raza was one of his victims, too.

Buirimus’s control over Raza-Raza went far deeper than it did with me; the defiance he had at the beginning soon faded, and now he was following Buirimus like a puppet with no will of its own.

This was once the greatest warrior in the village, my big brother, admired by all.

What would the others say if they could see him now?

Would they find him pathetic?

Or would they grieve and mourn for him?

Would they be enraged at Buirimus for making him this way?

All I can do is wonder.

Because everyone else from the village is gone.

The thought that I might someday end up the same way as Raza-Raza fills me with fear.

But the feeling that occupies my heart most is my hatred of Buirimus and the other humans.

Even if he can control my body, I will never let him have my mind.

The scene changes.

This time, it’s another scene that never should have existed.

I doubted my own eyes at the time.

I thought it must be some kind of joke, albeit one in terrible taste.

Either that or maybe some kind of act in order to throw the enemy off guard.

But it wasn’t. I know that all too well.

My brother Raza-Raza was laughing.

With the monster tamer Buirimus. The enemy of our village.

He looked like he was genuinely having fun.

There was even real respect and affection in his eyes.

That in itself should already never have happened, but what made matters worse was the pressed flowers he held in his hand.

Those flowers are very important to goblin culture. When a goblin goes out hunting, they take one with them as a token of good luck.

To goblins, hunting is a sacred ritual.

So when goblins leave to hunt, the goblins who stay behind give them hand-pressed flowers for good luck.

It’s difficult work to find blooming flowers in the harsh cold of the Mystic Mountains.

But they always give the hunters flower charms.

And now Raza-Raza was holding several of those precious flowers.

Only one flower charm is given to each hunter, so those couldn’t possibly be Raza-Raza’s. Besides, it had already been some time since our village had been destroyed.

Pressed or not, Raza-Raza’s charm should have wilted by now.

Then whose good luck charms was my brother holding?

I didn’t want to think about it, but there was only one possible answer.

The flowers Raza-Raza held must have belonged to the warriors of a different goblin village, not ours.

And the fact that Raza-Raza was holding them meant that he must have attacked that village and likely destroyed it.

My vision went dark red.

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Why? Why? Why? Why?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Why? Why? Why?

He betrayed us.

He dirtied his own pride.

I can’t allow this.

<Proficiency has reached the required level.

Skill [Rage LV 9] has become [Rage LV 10].>

<Condition satisfied.

Skill [Rage LV 10] has evolved into skill [Wrath].>

<Proficiency has reached the required level.

Skill [Taboo LV 3] has become [Taboo LV 5].>

<Condition satisfied.

Acquired title [Ruler of Wrath].>

When I think about it now, I can speculate that Raza-Raza was acting that way only because Buirimus’s control over him had proceeded so far, and that surely he wouldn’t have wanted to do that if he was still in his right mind.

But at the time, I was too enraged to think about things that deeply.

The anger that built up inside me like scorching red heat burned everything else away, threatening to singe even my own body.

At the same time, the monster tamer’s binding spell that constricted me burned away, too.

Ahhh. I’m free.

Now he can’t stop me any longer.

I used the entirety of my strength to create a weapon with as much sheer destructive power as I could muster.

It created a terrifying flame sword, as if shaped by the ugly thoughts within me.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I brought it down hard on the shameless traitor.

Unable to react in time, the one I had once called brother was slashed to pieces and swallowed by an explosion of flames.

I turned to cut down Buirimus next, but as I should have expected, he had already moved away from me.

The other men trampled over to surround me.

Buirimus began to summon a new monster.

As if it mattered.

I don’t care if I die in the process.

These men will know my rage.

And soon…

“So this is the justice I have reaped…”

I looked down on Buirimus in his final moments of life.

He and I were the only two left alive in this place.

I had killed all the others.

The enemy had far more military strength on their side. But I made up for that with Wrath, Battle Divinity, and, most of all, my unique ability to completely heal when I level up.

And killing even a few of the enemy was enough to raise my level, probably because it was so low to start with.

I used my HP, MP, and SP to the brink of death, then recovered by leveling up.

Then I fought until I was near death again and repeated the process.

It helped that at first, they had been holding back so as not to kill me.

My Weapon Creation skill was very valuable to them.

They couldn’t afford to just get rid of that.

Their intentions had been very clear as they attempted to incapacitate me in battle rather than try to kill me.

And I had used that to my full advantage.

“How humiliating.”

Buirimus, the final survivor, was strong.

Both as a summoner and as a warrior.

He was far superior to any of the others in pure strength alone.

But now he was lying on the ground weeping.

“Do you…hate me?”

I didn’t answer Buirimus’s question.

Not because I couldn’t. I had picked up their language during my time as Buirimus’s slave.

But there was no point in answering.

Instead, I simply brought down the sword that I’d held above my head.

“Forgive me.”

With that, Buirimus breathed his last.

His final words were heavy with tenacity, as if he still stubbornly clung to life.

He must have had something he desperately wanted to do, even if it meant eradicating us goblins in the process.

He got what he deserved.

And yet, my heart still weighed heavily on me.

I felt a terrible sense of loss and helplessness.

And a lingering rage that burned beneath it all.

I pulled the Appraisal Stone off Buirimus’s body and used it to Appraise myself.

There, I read the words <Evolution Available>.

I had two options: <High Goblin> and <Oni>.

I made my choice.

At the same time, I used the Naming skill to change my own name to a new one: Wrath.

Goblins take great pride in their names.

I had mostly used my Naming skill to give names to the weapons I made with Weapon Creation, which increased the weapons’ performance. But I could also use it to change a goblin’s name, which would increase their stats.

However, no goblin ever accepted that.

That’s how much importance goblins place on their names.

Goblins’ names are always the same two syllables repeated, after the name of a legendary goblin who had fought and died bravely in battle.

Like Raza-Raza or Razu-Razu.

Razu-Razu was my old name.

But I no longer had any right to call myself a goblin.

My pride and my prayers had all been overwritten by this rage of mine.

So I couldn’t be a goblin anymore.

Now, I would be an ogre.

A simple ogre, controlled by nothing but wrath.

I howled to the heavens until the evolution process made me lose consciousness.

The scene changes again.

I ceased to be a goblin, lost my friends and family, and now even the target of my revenge was gone.

To be honest, I had lost any reason to live.

But I kept living anyway.

I didn’t want to stay in the village where Buirimus had enslaved me, but now that I was no longer a goblin, it didn’t feel right to go back to a goblin village. So by process of elimination, I took the path that went away from the Mystic Mountains.

The path led to land controlled by humans, and now that I had evolved into an ogre, adventurers attacked me with no questions asked.

I kept turning the tables on them and winning, until eventually a large-scale group of adventurers attacked me all at once.

But I staved them off with traps and magic swords I had prepared in advance.

I had lost sight of the meaning of being alive, but I kept fighting and surviving anyway, driven by the anger and stubbornness incurred in me by Wrath.

Then, after I defeated the group of adventurers, my next challengers were what appeared to be an official army. The old knight and old mage who led the army got the upper hand over me, and I was forced to flee.

As I ran away, a mysterious man inflicted the status conditions Fear and Illusion on me, and I ran around driven half-mad.

Next thing I knew, I was right back in the village where Buirimus had kept me.

I obliterated the troops who were evidently waiting there to ambush me, and only then did the truth finally hit me.

I didn’t want to fight anymore. There was no reason to.

Ridiculous, I know.

I had gone on fighting for so long, propelled by rage and stubbornness, without even realizing that.

Then, completely exhausted, I cast all sense of shame and honor aside and tried to go back to the old goblin village. It would be deserted now, with no one else left, but I thought I could try to live there alone in secret.

But on the way there, I lost sight of my goal again.

Wrath had eroded my mind so completely that my thoughts were pulled back toward fighting.

I attacked the monsters that lived in the Mystic Mountains and completely forgot that I was originally there to return to the goblin village.

Then an incredibly strong dragon showed pity on me.

Ah, but wasn’t it actually telling me to die, in a roundabout way?

After that, I fought a little girl who had six limbs, and then a different girl who was small but ridiculously threatening, and a man who was powerful despite his pale-looking face.

And for some reason, Wakaba, my classmate from my previous life, was there, too.

Around this time, I started to find my own memories a little weird and suspicious.

In a world with things like stats, it isn’t that unthinkable for a little girl to be strong.

And having six arms could probably be explained by some item or something.

But Wakaba showing up? That can’t have been real.

It must have been a dream or a hallucination.

And after that, the reality of things got even less clear. The rest must have been a dream or something.

I fought the monsters of the Mystic Mountains.

And a very, very strong old swordsman.

And then the dragon who had pitied me before stood in my way.

Lastly, I faced the girl with two arms and Wakaba.

…Okay, I guess girl with two arms sounds normal enough.

Maybe all this dreaming has gotten my mind jumbled up.

Huh? A dream?

For some reason, I was flying through the sky.

Not soaring freely, like a bird.

No, it was more like I was falling, not flying.

The ground got closer to me by the second.

I felt the terror that I was about to hit bottom.

And sure enough, my body crashed into the ground with a dull thud.

It felt like my body had been battered and broken.

If this was really a dream, aren’t you supposed to wake up right before you actually hit the ground?

Wait, what? A dream?

That’s right.

This is all just a dream.

A long, long, terrible dream.

“Huh?!”

I wake up with a start.

Is it normal in a dream to hit the ground without waking up, realize that this must be a dream, and only then wake up for real?

I feel awful.

My entire body is drenched in sweat.

But I didn’t sit up sharply when I awoke.

Or rather, I couldn’t, really.

“Huh? What’s going on?”

My body won’t move, even if I put all my effort into sitting up.

Confused, I look around, trying to figure out what is going on.

Luckily, I’m at least able to turn my head, so I can take in my surroundings.

It looks like I’m lying in a bed.

I’m covered by a blanket, so I can’t tell what state my body is in. But it definitely feels like I’m being restrained by something.

Next, I look around the room.

It’s a big room, much more impressive than the tumble-down house in the goblin village or even the one in Buirimus’s village.

Is this a royal palace or something?

My confusion only deepens as I try to figure out why I would be lying in a room like this.

Then I lock eyes with a little girl sitting near my bed.

Her almost artificial-looking eyes seem to pierce right through me.

For some reason, she reminds me of the girl with six arms.

Wait a minute.

Girl with six arms?

No, that must have been a dream, right?

There couldn’t possibly be a girl with six arms in reality.

I’m having trouble figuring out which parts of those memories are a dream and which parts are real.

As I think about it, I realize that I have absolutely no idea how in the world I wound up in this fancy room. My most recent memories are hazy, like the moments between dreams and reality, and no use to me at all.

What happened, and why, and how did I get here?

“Uhhh…good morning?”

In my confusion, the only words I manage to muster sound stupid even to me.

But what else am I supposed to say?

In response, the little girl nods silently.

Then she picks up a bell lying next to the bed and rings it rhythmically.

Is that supposed to call a butler or something?

I saw that kind of thing in foreign films in my old life, but I’ve never actually seen one used in reality before.

Still, the sound this girl is producing with the bell is so unsteady that just hearing it is kind of stress-inducing.

In a way, it’s almost impressive that she can display her lack of a musical ear so clearly just by ringing a simple bell.

Maybe that’s a talent in its own right.

Not that I want to keep hearing it, though.

“Riel! Quit making that disturbing noise before it drives us all completely mad!”

The door flies open without so much as a knock.

There stands the girl with the two arms.

…Seriously, why do I keep thinking of her that way?

Oh, whatever. More importantly, I guess this means that the girl who appeared in what I thought was a dream has now shown up in reality.

So does that mean it wasn’t a dream?

“Oh? So you’re awake.”

The girl has two other little girls behind her.

I recognize one of them as the girl with six arms.

Although as far as I can tell, she only has two arms now.

“My dear Sophia, it’s not very polite to barge into a gentleman’s room without knocking. What will society think of you as a lady if you do such things? We’re going to have to double down on your manners lessons.”

Another damn girl…

Starting to get a little irritated, I look at the new arrival.

Immediately, an indescribable chill runs through me.

“Huh?! What the—?!”

She looks like an ordinary enough girl.

A little older than the others, maybe, but still only in her mid to late teens at best.

But for some reason, that girl has the presence of an absolute monster.

Just looking at her makes my pulse run wild.

“Oh-ho-ho. You’ve got some promise if you can tell how strong I am without Appraisal, kid!”

The girl’s carefree smile somehow looks like that of a vicious predator.

My every instinct tells my body to run, but I seem to be tied down at the moment, so I can’t escape.

“Hmph!”

“Guh?!”

Suddenly, I’m thrown to the floor.

“You’ve got some nerve to ignore me!”

As the blanket gets dragged along with me, the culprit who tossed me onto the floor stands haughtily above me.

Judging by the conversation they were having before, this girl must be Sophia.

She’s pretty obnoxious compared to the other little girls, who are standing by quietly.

“Oh, Sophia…”

“Well, he ignored me, all right, Miss Ariel? Me! You think I’d let him get away with just staring at you the whole time without even a glance at me? Of course not. Never!”

“…Well, I guess Envy is already affecting you a little. Oof. Can you just calm down for a second? I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

The girl Sophia called Miss Ariel glares at her blandly.

In response, Sophia twitches and obediently falls silent. This Ariel must be the strongest person here.

“Now then, let’s chat. Can you talk?”

I can’t exactly deny it now.

The pressure she’s exerting on me makes it difficult to open my mouth, so I just nod silently.

“Oh yeah? Glad to hear it. Guess we’ve cleared the first hurdle, then. Congrats on regaining control of your senses, by the way. And since you seem to understand human language, I’d say we’ve cleared the second hurdle, too.”

Miss Ariel smiles cheerfully.

I don’t exactly follow everything she’s saying, but it doesn’t seem like it’s anything bad for me.

“Well, it’d probably be tough to have a conversation like this, so let’s just… Ah, White’s not here, so we can’t actually release you.”

Ariel comes over to me on the floor and touches the thread tying me up. It seems extremely thin, but it’s been wrapped around in many layers, so I’m like a caterpillar in a cocoon.

No wonder I can’t move.

“Yep, no can do. Thread Control isn’t working on it. I don’t think I can pull it off, either, and burning it would be way too dangerous, so that’s out, too. I’m sure White can undo it once she gets back. But she went off somewhere and hasn’t returned yet, yeah?”

“Right. She just disappeared without a word, even though I’ve told her to let me know where she’s going at times like these. How dare she leave me behind!”

Sophia’s voice has a hysterical pitch to it.

“Uh-huh. Right. We’re gonna have to do something about this soon, aren’t we? Merazophis, could you hold Sophia’s hand for now or something?”

“Of course, madam.”

A man steps forward quietly, startling me immensely.

How long has he been in the room?! I didn’t even notice him at all.

Maybe it’s partly because the other people here have a very intense presence, but still, it’s crazy that I didn’t sense him even a little.

“Your hand, if you please, young miss.”

The man called Merazophis holds out his hand, and Sophia obediently takes it.

Not only that, she wraps both her hands around his and even presses closer to rub her cheek against it.

It kind of reminds me of a cat rubbing up against its owner, but I’m just gonna keep that to myself, since I don’t know what would happen if I said it out loud.

“Sorry, but unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we can untie you right now. Hope you don’t mind if we just talk like this for the time being.”

As she speaks, Miss Ariel hefts me up off the floor and puts me back in the bed. She even pulls the blankets back over me.

“Thank you very much.”

For some reason, when I thank her, her eyes widen in surprise.

“Erm, what is it?”

“Oh, uh, nothing. I just wasn’t expecting you to be so polite, that’s all.” Clearing her throat with a cute little “ahem,” Ariel continues. “Anyway, let’s start with introductions. I’m Ariel. The one in lovey-dovey mode over there is Sophia, and the guy she’s clinging to is Merazophis. From the left, these kids are Sael, Riel, and Fiel. There’s also White and Ael, but they’re not here at the moment, so hopefully you’ll have a chance to meet them some other time. In fact, we need White to untie you, so we’ll be in trouble if you don’t meet her.”

It’s so many introductions at once that I’m worried about whether I’ll be able to remember them all, but with a lineup this crazy, I’m pretty sure it’ll stick with me.

Except maybe Sael, Riel, and Fiel, whose names are confusingly similar. Are they sisters, maybe? They certainly look alike, in that they all seem like dolls.

“My name is Wrath.”

When people introduce themselves to you, it’s only polite to introduce yourself in return.

My name now is Wrath.

I don’t have the right to call myself Kyouya Sasajima or Razu-Razu anymore.

“Okay. So let me cut to the chase here. How much do you remember?”

“How much…?”

I can’t immediately come up with an answer.

As I’ve been realizing since I woke up, my memories take on a dreamlike, unreal quality at some point when I think back.

I don’t know how much of it is real and how much is my imagination.

Then again, since Sophia and the other girls who I thought were a dream are standing right in front of me now, maybe all of it was actually real.

I don’t know.

“I’m not sure.”

When I respond honestly, Sophia glares at me menacingly.

“Sophia! Down, girl!”

Before Sophia can say anything, Ariel scolds her, so she promptly stops glaring at me and clings sulkily to Merazophis instead.

“Sorry we keep getting so rudely interrupted. So yeah, I’m sure you’re already aware of this, but you’ve been on a rampage because you lost your sanity thanks to the Wrath skill. I can tell you what we observed of your actions in that time, so try to figure out which parts you remember.”

Ariel goes on to tell me the history of my actions thus far.

I caused an uproar in a place called “the empire,” where they referred to me as a “unique ogre.”

I was chased out by the imperial army, ran into a troop of elves, and wiped them out.

I still remember all of that.

Although this is the first time I’m hearing that the troops I thought were waiting to ambush me after I fled from the old knight and mage were actually unrelated and were also elves.

After that, I fought Sophia and the others in the Mystic Mountains.

Then, after various twists and turns, I fought Sophia again, this time with a person called White, who’s not currently present.

They soundly defeated me this time around, deactivated my Wrath skill to bring me back to my senses, and now I’m here…apparently.

It’s all a little hazy, but I do remember it.

“Huh. So you haven’t completely forgotten everything.”

“In that case, you should let me punch you once! I haven’t forgiven you for what you did to us, you know!”

Sophia sticks close to Merazophis as she yells at me.

I guess if all this is true, I did suddenly attack her and her friends without any provocation.

And on top of that, they nearly died because of it.

I would have no right to complain if she killed me, never mind just one punch.

“Down, Sophia!”

“It’s all right, Miss Ariel,” I say meekly. “I deserve it for everything I’ve done.”

But Ariel is still having none of it. “Yeah, no. If she punched you, you’d probably die.”

…I guess if what Miss Ariel said really did happen, then Sophia was holding her own against me while I had Wrath activated.

The stat boost from Wrath is probably the only reason I was able to fight her then, so now that it’s deactivated, I guess I might actually die if I took a direct hit from Sophia.

In fact, if Ariel is being so serious about it, I definitely would.

“So that’s a no on the punching, Sophia. Merazophis, go on and give her a hug.”

Sophia starts to protest until that last part of Ariel’s statement, which sets her face aglow.

On the other hand, now it’s Merazophis who looks like he wants to protest. But instead he gives up and leans down to silently give Sophia a stiff embrace.

…Seems like these guys have a pretty complicated relationship.

“Uh, so anyway, where were we? Oh, right! We were saying that you remember stuff at least a little. So does that mean you remember what White looks like?”

At that, it finally comes back to me.

The girl who was with Sophia during that fight.

But… Wait, what? Hang on a second.

If these memories are correct, does that mean it was real?

“Wakaba?” I ask hesitantly.

“Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner!”

Miss Ariel’s confirmation shocks me in all kinds of ways.

It’s so shocking that I don’t even know what I’m the most surprised about.

“So if White’s testimony is correct, does that mean you’re Kyouya Sasajima?”

I nod dumbly. At this point, I’m so shocked that it’s come back around to a sort of calm numbness.

“Great. Then you should probably know that all your former classmates have been reincarnated into this world. Although I haven’t actually seen all of them with my own eyes, so I guess this is technically just hearsay.”

Despite the disclaimer, Ariel seems confident that this information is true. It must have come from a pretty trustworthy source, then.

“And little Sophia here is—”

“Miss Ariel!”

“What? He’s gonna find out eventually, so better to just get it over with, right? Sophia is a reincarnation whose name in your world was Shouko Negishi.”

Despite Sophia’s protests, Ariel reveals her secret.

Shouko Negishi.

I remember her, of course.

But this person seems quite a bit different from the old Negishi.

“Waaah!”

Sophia latches on closer to Merazophis, glaring at me resentfully.

I’m not sure why she’s looking at me like that when it was Miss Ariel who revealed her identity, not me.

“But please don’t bother asking me about the other reincarnations besides Sophia and White. I don’t know anything. Oh, there is one thing about the elves we mentioned before, though. Seems like they’re real interested in the reincarnations. They’ve even come after Sophia a few times. So they might have more information on the other reincarnations, but I can’t say I recommend getting mixed up with them.”

“Oh. I see.” I was hoping she might know something about Shun or Kanata, but I guess it won’t be that easy. “Um, may I ask one question?”

“Mm? What’s up?”

“Do you know why we’re in this world?”

It comes out like an abstract philosophical question, but luckily Miss Ariel seems to understand what I’m getting at.

“I guess you could say it was on the whim of a god.”

We are alive.

There’s never going to be a clear reason for that.

At least, that’s what I got the feeling she was telling me.

After that, Miss Ariel tried to keep talking with me, but Sophia finally lost control and started raising a fuss, so Ariel wordlessly grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and dragged her out of the room. Flustered, Merazophis quickly followed them.

After a little while, Ariel comes back alone.

I decide it’s better not to ask what happened.

“I’m sure you’ve got a lot of thoughts to sort out, so let’s call it a day for now. You can stay here as long as you like, so give some thought to what you want to do next, too. Oh, and…” Ariel pauses. “If you want to know about this world, maybe you should ask Taboo.”

With that, Ariel leaves the room.

The only other person who remains is Riel, who’s been in the room from the beginning.

She’s acting like I’m not here or something and keeps occasionally waving at an empty space in the room.

Is something there? I certainly don’t see anything…

Anyway… Taboo, huh?

With all the leveling up and evolving I’ve been doing, my Taboo skill maxed out somewhere along the way.

Like Miss Ariel said, I can get an idea of what’s going on with this world from Taboo.

I should probably take some time to look over its contents in detail.

…Although I get the feeling I don’t necessarily want to know.

But still, I have to look anyway.

It’s about the world that I’m living in now, after all.

Living… Hmm.

If I’m thinking about things like that, I guess that means I still have the will to live, huh?

Ever since I killed Buirimus, I’ve been living solely out of stubbornness.

And that stubbornness led me to kill many innocent people along the way.

Ariel told me about my actions from a neutral observer’s perspective.

They certainly seemed like the actions of a monster.

Rampaging about in anger, disrupting the lives of innocent people and killing them.

It’s unfair.

For the people I killed, nothing could be more unfair.

I committed the exact kind of injustice that I always hated more than anything else.

I’m horrible.

So do I really have any right to live?

Do I still want to live, bearing the weight of those sins, having lost sight of any purpose?

I don’t know.

But I don’t think I want to die, either.

“Hey, buddy. How ya feeling?”

The next day, Ariel comes to visit me again, alone this time.

Maybe she figured we wouldn’t be able to get anywhere with Sophia around.

“Sorry. We still don’t know where White is, so I guess you’re gonna be stuck like that for a little longer. Hang in there, okay?”

Ariel looks deeply apologetic.

I tried a few things myself over the last day to see if I could get out, but nothing worked.

What in the world is this thread made out of? It’s incredibly strong.

Still, while it’s inconvenient to be stuck like this, it hasn’t been that big of a problem thanks to Ariel kindly taking care of me.

As long as you don’t count the embarrassment of being cared for by someone who looks like a little girl.

Or saying “Ahhh” and being spoon-fed by the same little girl.

…Okay, maybe this is a big problem.

“Hrmmm. I mean, it should be weak to fire, so I guess we might be able to burn it off somehow…”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“But it’d still take a considerable amount of firepower, so you’ll probably get burned, too.”

“Still, I’d appreciate it, please.”

Giving in to my insistent request, Ariel burns the thread away, releasing me.

I sustain some fairly severe burns in the process, but I have HP Auto-Recovery, so that’ll heal eventually.

It’s still better than being humiliated like that any longer.

“Thank you very much. I feel like I’ve finally been set free.”

“No problem. I’m, uh, sorry about that.” Ariel must’ve been able to tell how relieved I was, though there was no need for her to apologize. “So now that you’re free and all, whatcha wanna do next?”

“What do I want…?”

“Sure. If it’s something I can help with, I don’t mind lending you a hand. You can also just stay here if you want. And if you’re not sure yet, you’re welcome to hang around until you figure it out. You don’t need to pay or anything.”

“Why would you do all this for me?”

Ariel is being far too kind to me.

Especially considering that I could’ve killed her friends.

“Oh, I dunno. Half out of sympathy, half out of self-interest, I guess,” she replies indifferently. “The first half’s because I’ve got an inkling of some of the stuff you’ve been through, so I feel for ya, enough to understand why you wound up with the Wrath skill. And the second half is because being nice to reincarnations won’t displease a certain god, I guess. Maybe I’ll even gain a little favor for it, although I’m not holding my breath.”

She knows what I’ve been through and feels sympathy for me?

I’m not sure how much Ariel knows about me, but I certainly never talked about what’s happened to me in the past. So it’s unclear how much of her information is true, but whatever it is, I guess it was enough to elicit some sympathy.

Huh. So I guess what I’ve been through warrants being pitied by others.

For some reason, I feel detached from this realization.

And then there’s the self-interest part.

If she’s good to reincarnations, then a god might be good to her.

When I asked her yesterday about why we wound up in this world, Ariel answered that it was the whim of a god.

I thought that might have some deeper meaning to it, but I guess it must have been literal.

Gods really do exist in this world, after all.

Literal, genuine gods who created this system.

So it makes perfect sense that we would be living in this world thanks to a whim of that god.

And evidently, that same god has taken a liking to us reincarnations.

Which is why Ariel says she’s being kind to us.

I guess that logic is fairly self-serving.