“Valter, you’ve made far too much of yourself.”
Until that cruel holy sword pierced my chest.
I had been the hero’s shadow, one that did not vanish even when night fell.
That man called the hero,
Seradion, had always been like that.
The fact that he lacked talent and yet was chosen as the hero.
The fact that, during his tenure, he never once took down one of the Demon King’s great officers with his own hands.
No, forget the great officers.
Even when he struggled against lowly demons who were no more than regional captains…
What he never let go of until the very end was his jealousy toward me, the one who had accomplished the feats of war in his place.
So.
It was only natural that, having succeeded in this perfect ambush, he would wear a ruthless smile.
Though he had lost to me every time, for this one single moment.
If only he had this moment,
perhaps he was deluding himself into thinking he could become complete.
Hero Seradion stared at the blade lodged in my chest,
and did nothing but laugh and shriek.
“Kahahaha, Valter, Val-ter…! I was waiting for this moment, all along!”
“Ggh, urgh….”
“A lowly leech who can’t even wield the holy sword. You let an evil spirit into your body…?! And then you claim you’ll stand on humanity’s side?! Ha. It was ridiculous from the start! How dare you, how dare you lay your hands on the achievements that I was supposed to accomplish with these hands…!”
“…You crazy… bastard…!”
Shunk, shunk, shunk—!!
“Die, die, die, die—! All my achievements were stolen by you, an evil spirit. So as long as you’re gone, I can finally make all your achievements mine…!”
A logic so incoherent that even a passing rat would laugh.
Unbelievable.
Of course it was.
Because while he had harbored such fierce jealousy toward me that he twisted the blade stabbed into my heart again and again,
the only thought I had ever had toward him was nothing at all.
To me, whether he existed for his entire life or not made no difference whatsoever.
Was he not, in a manner of speaking, like a folding screen standing behind me?
For me to have gifted eternal extermination to the demons in place of a hero who could do nothing because he was unqualified, and for him to feel not even camaraderie as a comrade, let alone as a fellow member of humanity…
Choosing now, of all times, to kill me would accomplish nothing at all.
Doing this
would not make my martial strength his.
‘…No.’
More important than that.
The final chapter of my life had turned out like this, of all things.
I had devoted my entire life.
With a frail body, I made a contract with the Sword Demon to gain power.
Even as I fought against the evil spirit’s madness, which could drive a man insane merely by entering his body, I had always tried to stand on humanity’s side.
For someone like me to die here
made no sense.
If only the holy sword clutched in that filthy hand were not the natural opposite of the evil spirit dwelling within me.
I would have noticed long ago and carved that bastard into six thousand pieces…!
But.
What use was any of that now?
I could no longer do it.
Everything was my fault.
Yes, my fault for living my life ignoring that dogshit hero, because I had walked only the single road of exterminating demons.
“……….”
A person’s life, after all,
is like a sheet of paper soaked in water.
No matter how meticulously written the great scenario within it may be, if it blurs and disappears into water in any way, it ends there…
A void intense for no reason.
And so the rain fell.
In that lonely, sodden valley where every sensation in my body blurred,
in the end, there was no one to watch over my death.
……….
…….
….
No.
I thought there was no one.
[“Valter, do not die—!!”]
“What—.”
Alive inside my head.
The blood-soaked evil spirit
that had tried all my life to drive my mind insane.
[“Do not leave me. You must not. You must not die—!”]
That evil spirit, paradoxically, wept over my death
until she revived my soul once more.
[“Only now. Only now do I reveal it. I, in truth… Valter, you… I love you—.”]
Within my fading consciousness,
her final voice pierced my ears.
No, at this point, I do not even know whether I remember it properly.
[“This is all I can do now, Valter. Even this is only something I can attempt. I do not even know how many years later the you who revives will be from! But—.”]
And yet.
No matter how many times I chewed it over and retraced my memories again and again,
she had surely said this.
[“If you are willing… please, seek me again even on the far side of the world. I will always be waiting here….”]
A headache blooms.
***
“Haaah.”
Fuck.
And at last, I woke up.
It felt as though I had been in that unbearably unpleasant, sodden valley only moments ago.
Yet now this base body lay on a bed in some sudden mansion that looked reasonably imposing.
No.
Looking a little closer,
it would be more accurate to call this a sickbed.
The tranquil peace, so utterly comfortable, was making drowsiness pour over me,
but the moment my eyes happened to fall upon the mirror beside me,
a natural question arose in my mind.
Who the hell is this?
“What is this? Why am I so young?”
Not just young, but young enough that one might call it extreme.
Even his appearance was like that.
With red hair and red eyes,
it was a face quite different from mine in my previous life.
Considering all these circumstances,
I could be certain without looking back.
“I’ve reincarnated. No, since it seems I’ve taken over someone else’s body, is this possession?”
At any rate, that evil spirit.
All her life she’d gone on about taking over my body, killing me with madness, and giving me real pain.
Then, at the very end, she confessed her love, which didn’t suit her at all,
and even gave me an opportunity like this.
Thinking of that filled my head with so much confusion I didn’t know what to do.
Still, since things had turned out this way, there was something I had to check first.
“A calendar… Ah, there is one. As expected of a rich household.”
That was,
a calendar.
Crash—!
The moment I climbed down from the sickbed to check it, my body began to hurt as if I were dying.
Pain, as though broken bones were being forcibly squeezed together, pounded through my entire body, begging someone to save me.
But right now, I knew nothing of such pain.
No, it was trivial.
I did say life was like a sheet of paper soaked in water,
but this was a second chance I had obtained after so long.
From the moment a knife was planted in my chest,
I had newly engraved into myself a thirst for revenge, a need to make Seradi, that son of a bitch I had always ignored, pay.
And to do that, I naturally had to know what point in time I had reincarnated into.
However.
The instant I checked that calendar,
my expression stiffened.
“Shit, three hundred and five years have passed?”
……….
…….
….
If that was the case,
then even if I had gone through the trouble of stealing someone else’s body and coming back to life,
wasn’t it completely meaningless?
No, because Seradion, or the party he had built, the ones I needed to show hell to, were mostly humans.
Even if such humans lived long, eighty years would be the limit.
If I reincarnated three hundred years later, they’d all be dead anyway, wouldn’t they?
The moment I thought that, rage surged up inside me.
‘You stupid evil spirit. Stupid to the very end…!’
There had been signs of this long ago.
One day, out of boredom, I had made her do addition in the hundreds place.
When she kept insisting, “I know not such things, inferior human,” I had already realized she was empty-headed.
So perhaps she had meant to send me about thirty years into the future,
but the numbers grew large, she got confused, and sent me here like this?
I had been willing to let bygones be bygones over the fact that she had tried to steal my body all my life,
because at the end she confessed her love and did me one favor.
But if it was like this, then the meaning of coming back to life was…
That fucking…
‘Haa….’
You…
Stupid bitch!
However, before I could even sink into despair over this,
I realized that loud footsteps were sounding from beyond the tightly shut door.
Baaang—.
“Valter……!”
A tall figure, an expansive chest,
fluttering red hair.
Seeing that she looked similar to me,
she was plainly a blood relative of the original owner of the body I had entered.
Well, since this was my first time coming back to life too, I was at a loss, wondering what I should say so as not to seem strange.
But that woman who called me “Valter” also seemed just as aghast, standing in place with her mental functions gone, her eyes trembling in confusion.
And yet, the moment I thought that, an intense sense of incongruity swept over me.
‘She knows my name…?’
The name that woman called me was clearly strange.
Just now, she had called me Valter.
If I had reincarnated, that was the name from my previous life.
How on earth did she know it?
But before I could respond appropriately,
what reached me first was the woman’s ferocious bosom.
“Valter, you’re awake. You’re awake—!!”
“What, let go, let go of me. How dare you…!”
She ran toward me and gently lifted me into her arms.
With my body far from intact, I had no chance to offer any real resistance, and I had no choice but to be hugged against her like a doll.
Just what was so wonderful about me waking up?
Without even caring that I felt as though my entire body were breaking apart, she bounced up and down and shouted.
The original of this body, Valter, who was apparently this woman’s younger brother, seemed to have been lying in a sickbed after some kind of accident.
Well, that was how things had turned out, apparently.
If she learned that the one who had awakened in his place was the Sword Demon Valter from three hundred years ago, sharing only the same name, her twisted expression would be worth seeing.
“You can recognize me, right? Your big sister Yeret. I’m Yeret!”
“……….”
“Mother, Sister!! Valter is awake. Ia, come here quickly too, your brother, your brother—!”
“Yeret….”
Thus, when I unconsciously called the name of this woman who was gathering the entire household,
her eyes widened once more, and she spoke in an excited voice.
“Yes, Valter! It’s your big sister. Big Sister Yeret! Haa, you have no idea how worried I was for the past fortnight after you got hit by that carriage. I thought I’d lose ten years of my life. You, you’re… the first boy born to our House of Count Tark in four generations…!”
Of course, I had not intended to ask that much.
But since she said this much, the sense of incongruity I felt could only pile up another layer.
The place I had awakened was the House of Count Tark.
And I was the first boy in four generations…
‘…Were they even able to continue the line normally?’
Common sense said
that if even one generation was like that, extinction of the house could not be avoided.
How could she speak so calmly about it?
“Wait, Yeret. Was I that precious as a man?”
“H-huh? Yes. All men are precious, of course. Especially a boy from a count’s family. Why ask something so obvious…? Y-you really have something wrong with your head…? Yes, that couldn’t be avoided. You were injured so badly….”
“Ha. All men are precious, of course? Quite the patriarchal wench, aren’t you.”
“C-calling your big sister a wench….”
As I, held in her arms like a small doll,
failed to cast aside my habits from my days as the Sword Demon and spoke in that same fierce tone,
Yeret took on a strange, inexplicable blush
and made a face as though she were melting.
Just as I was about to ask why,
she finally muttered.
“Are you finally seeing me as a woman…?”
Was I finally seeing her as a “woman”?
And hearing that,
I doubted my own ears.
“…What did you say?”
“N-no. I mean, you were never interested in that sort of thing. Rather, you were a child who ran away like the other boys…. H-huhuhu…. Could the accident have changed something…?”
“W-wait. Why is the conversation flowing as though I think of you as a woman? I merely called a wench a wench. You are my sister, are you not?”
“Yes. Why?”
But the obvious awareness I spoke of,
she merely brushed aside as if it had nothing to do with anything.
“W-we are kin! Siblings, at that. Siblings must not do such things.”
“…Why not?”
And so, looking at this entire situation,
I thought it would be best to run away as quickly as possible from a household with such a fucking insane family custom.
So.
I relaxed my entire body and spoke with sincere contempt.
“Do not ask something so obvious, you mad bitch…!”
Not knowing that this was not limited to this household alone,
but was an accepted awareness in a world reshaped over the three hundred years I had been absent…
A world where, for every one man born, sixty women were born.
In short.
It seemed the world was fucked.
And I was soon able to realize that this had happened because I had not been there.
This was a wish that had originated from the hero who killed me,
Seradion.