Chapter 21

The Status Window Opened on My First Day of School (5)

There is a term called confirmation bias. It refers to the tendency to selectively accept information that aligns with one's own beliefs.

In other words, once he started suspecting something, he couldn't stop.

That was exactly Enrique's situation.

"That lunatic looks dangerous."

Four days.

For four straight days, the bastard had been lying in wait, chewing on dried rations.

When Enrique had first accepted disciples into the assassination corps, the first thing she'd taught them was patience.

No matter whether it rained or insects crawled over them, they were to remain perfectly still and observe the target.

That wasn't what she'd meant by it.

Unlike her, a vampire, he was human.

She only needed to avoid sunlight and holy blessings, while he had actual biological necessities.

(And Enrique was an Elder vampire who even possessed resistance to sunlight.)

Sleep.

Food.

Rest.

The bare essentials of living.

Enrique narrowed her eyes at Ivan for a long moment before letting out a deep sigh.

At my age, I have to babysit an old bastard like him? That's not even a funny joke anymore.

"Hey, disciple."

Ivan remained motionless like a stone statue.

He was concentrating so intensely that he didn't even notice her voice from this distance.

Judging by the movement of his eyes...

Lip-reading?

He's been doing that exhausting crap for a ridiculously long time.

Enrique shrugged and slipped a hand into her sleeve.

Click.

Bang!

She fired her pistol.

A flawless draw.

Not a hint of wasted momentum.

A perfectly steady shot aimed squarely at the back of his head.

Ivan tilted his head just enough for the bullet to pass by, then leaped down from the tree with his axe in hand.

"...Enrique?"

"Yeah, it's me. First things first—we're leaving. That gunshot's bound to attract all kinds of annoying pests. Let's head to your place."

"Now's not exactly a good time."

"It is for me. If Elise finds out about this, she'll chew me out again. Besides, I might as well take a look at your orphanage."

Enrique grabbed him firmly by the scruff of the neck and dragged him along.

Ivan glanced at her face before putting away his axe.

His Grandmaster was a frivolous woman who was slightly insane...

But she wasn't someone who spoke nonsense.

Fine.

Let's hear what's so urgent.

He naturally slipped free from her grip and took the lead.

"The place may be a little untidy."

"Yeah, yeah. Just get moving."

***

A short while later...

Enrique stepped into Ivan's orphanage for the first time.

Her first impression...

Was sheer bewilderment.

"...You're not actually raising an assassin organization here, are you?"

"That's a misunderstanding."

"...Seriously?"

She looked around blankly.

From tiny children to teenagers on the verge of graduation...

Children ran everywhere...

Yet not a single footstep could be heard.

Even her own organization struggled to enforce discipline to this extent.

What the hell has this bastard been doing all this time?

She let out a hollow laugh.

"If you've got a copy of your training curriculum, send it to me. Even I couldn't raise my kids like this."

"Provide a balanced diet and maintain a regular daily routine."

"What kind of insane nonsense are you spouting, you little punk?"

Chuckling, Enrique continued walking—

Then suddenly stopped.

"...What's that?"

"Isn't that a demon?"

"It is."

"...You've got to be kidding me!"

"You do realize that if anyone finds out, you, him, and everyone here is dead, right?"

"I know."

Ivan merely shrugged.

Off in the distance, Eiphelos was teaching the children something.

One child suddenly sprinted forward and drove a fist into Eiphelos's side.

It was an astonishing feat.

After all, he'd successfully landed a close-range sneak attack on a centurion who had survived roughly thirty years on the battlefield.

"Yay!"

The child cheered before dashing away again.

In an instant, he disappeared from sight.

"Everyone deserves a chance to live like a human being."

Enrique narrowed her eyes as she listened.

So you embrace demons...

Yet at the same time, you're training students to launch surprise attacks.

"We're here."

Ivan silently opened the door to the director's office.

The curtains were drawn, leaving the room dimly lit.

Enrique took a step forward—

Then froze.

A thin booby trap wire stretched across the floor just inches from her foot.

There were dozens of them.

The strands caught the narrow rays of sunlight filtering through the curtains, forming a web of glittering threads.

"...What is all this?"

Even in complete darkness, vampires possessed night vision.

Blackout curtains couldn't hide an indoor space from her.

Booby traps?

Fine.

She could dismiss those as the security measures of an overly paranoid man.

But this...

"...What kind of life have you been living?"

Without answering, Ivan began disarming the traps.

One by one.

After clearing them all, he reached into a corner of the office and switched on a mana lamp.

Fwoom.

Blue light flooded the room.

The office was a complete mess.

Dozens of stacks of documents.

Profiles written in neat, meticulous handwriting.

Slips of paper bearing people's names, connected together by red strings.

Every intersection of those web-like threads was covered with handwritten notes.

Reading them, they appeared to be nothing more than ordinary conversations.

Conversations that should never have been analyzed this thoroughly.

Records reconstructing conversations people had once held.

Predicted speech patterns.

Hidden meanings inferred between the lines.

Estimated shifts in tone.

Lists of probable regions of origin based solely on speech inflection.

Even the Counterintelligence Command wouldn't devote this much effort when hunting an internationally wanted criminal under a Red Alert.

And he had done all this...

For students.

Alone.

Without sleeping.

For days on end.

Enrique's face gradually stiffened.

This room.

These records.

This behavior.

She knew them all too well.

These were traces of mental illness.

The kind that bordered on panic attacks.

Perhaps something even older.

The sort she occasionally saw in soldiers who had spent far too long on the battlefield.

Not especially rare.

Yet as unstable as a ticking time bomb.

Even now, veterans like that wandered throughout Pritchenkaya, ruined by drug addiction.

Enrique took a deep breath.

"Ivan."

"Mm."

"Sit down."

His face remained expressionless.

Yet beneath that wretched beard...

She could almost see exactly what expression he wore.

As though it were the most natural thing in the world...

He genuinely believed nothing was wrong.

"When was the last time you slept?"

"...About six days ago, I think."

The last time he'd fallen asleep...

He'd been surrounded by files, trapped in a nightmare.

It had been utterly horrifying.

Since then, he'd deliberately refused to sleep.

It was willpower beyond ordinary human limits.

But Enrique only looked at him with bitter eyes.

"Talk to me."

"What is all this?"

"When Dmitri asked me to keep an eye on you, I thought you were just trying to protect the children."

Naturally.

He'd only seemed to be following around the children of the Hero's Party.

And she'd even been grateful.

It meant that even after retiring, he still cared enough about the kids to protect them himself.

But these traces told a different story.

"Who are you trying to catch?"

"The terrorist behind the Yansk University attack?"

"No."

"Just tell me."

"Honestly."

"By now I know what you're like."

"You're absolutely terrible at explaining things."

"So start from the beginning, disciple."

Enrique clasped Ivan's hand tightly and looked straight into his eyes.

A monster who had lived for over a century carried a weight of persuasion that only time itself could grant.

Ivan stared back into her earnest eyes...

Then sighed.

A moment later...

He began to speak.

It was an immense confession.

Suppose...

Just suppose...

There was someone like this.

Someone who left behind everyone and everything they'd ever known...

Only to be dropped into a completely unfamiliar world.

Say...

They loved a novel so much that they stayed up all night reading it...

Then drifted off to sleep...

Only to wake inside that very novel.

No matter what they did, they couldn't wake up.

The world continued to feel like nothing more than the story they had once read.

Not wanting to die...

Or desperately wanting to return home...

They tried everything they could.

Fortunately, they happened to possess enough talent to adapt and survive.

Then...

After living through everything up to the novel's final page...

Perhaps they'd begin wondering...

Why isn't it over?

Maybe there was another condition.

Perhaps suicide was the real solution.

So they spent years observing the situation instead.

Then one day...

Someone else suddenly appeared.

Perhaps another outsider from the same homeland.

And now they couldn't help wondering...

Was this world really just the setting of a novel?

Were all the events I'd lived through merely the prologue?

Does my name appear somewhere in the novel that person read?

And if it did...

Then what awaited him in the end?

A tragedy?

A comedy?

No...

Before even asking that—

Were my life and everything I'd experienced nothing more than a prehistory?

Was I merely a character frozen outside the real story that was about to begin?

Those thoughts...

Became increasingly disjointed.

Yet his eyes only grew more certain.

Looking directly at his master...

He explained everything as gently and carefully as he could.

Enough that even an old-fashioned fossil from another age could understand.

***

"...So."

"To summarize..."

"You're saying you're actually someone who transmigrated into this world."

"Mm."

"And you've recently confirmed there's another one."

"Mm."

"And you've decided you need to kill him."

"...Mm."

"That's... surprisingly logical, disciple."

Enrique let out a long sigh and rubbed her face.

Leaning back against the sofa, she stared silently at the ceiling.

Damn it.

There were notes stuck to the ceiling too.

She honestly couldn't imagine how he'd managed that.

"There are a lot of things I want to say."

"But first..."

"I owe you an apology."

"I always assumed you'd climbed the Demon King's Tower with us."

She'd spent so much time with him that she'd naturally believed he'd been there alongside them.

It had been her mistake.

In truth...

It had been everyone's mistake.

Excusing themselves by saying they hadn't known his condition meant nothing.

They had taken him in as a disciple...

Only to leave him alone.

"The Demon King's Tower?"

"Yeah."

"For some reason, all of us just assumed you were part of the same party."

"But thinking back..."

"You never actually were."

"We all thought you already knew the story, so nobody ever bothered bringing it up."

Enrique paused before slowly shaking her head.

"Max wasn't from Thales."

"You mean he came from another country? But..."

"No."

"Listen to me first."

"Max..."

"Maximilien."

"He wasn't from this world."

Looking straight into Ivan's eyes...

She enunciated every word as though engraving them directly into his mind.

"You weren't the first."

"And you won't be the last."

***

You've been calling people like yourselves transmigrators, because that's the easiest way to explain it.

But to be more accurate...

They weren't transmigrators.

They were the Ones Who Were Brought Here.

People who would suddenly appear from somewhere whenever the balance of the world shifted.

Not common...

But every century or so...

One or two would inevitably appear.

As though someone wanted to spice up a chaotic world...

They would suddenly emerge...

Cause something...

Then disappear.

Enrique knew people like that.

She had even met a few herself.

Maximilien.

He had been one of them.

An ordinary man who missed his homeland.

Yet one who still chose to walk onto the battlefield.

Even she...

A vampire...

Had found herself following behind him.

He was that kind of person.

Standing at the front.

Smiling.

Making everyone else want to follow him.

A hero.

The Hero.

The slayer of the Demon King.

And...

An ordinary man.

A lonely outsider until the very end.

Now gone forever.

That was how Enrique remembered him.

The brave stranger who had drawn his sword in Thales to protect a commoner girl who had taken him in.

"That's why we never say the Hero was born."

"We say..."

"He appeared."