The quiet forest was stained with clamor and screams of terror.
As the undead suddenly appeared, the lower spirits fled in a panic. The few mid-level spirits, some leading lower spirits to fight back, others challenging the battle alone, and still others sensing their disadvantage and disappearing from the scene.
As if in response, the Dark Elf guide dashed off, the Tester was bewildered, and the troops prepared by the demon began to move.
“Th-this is right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s quite enough.”
In the midst of this chaotic forest, if there had been even one high-level or higher spirit, the situation would have been different. Two men in robes were looking down at the Dark Elf forest, which was filled with confusion.
The one who nodded with satisfaction, observing the current situation from a particularly high vantage point, was deeply hooded, his face hidden, but his voice indicated he was a man.
The other, his hood off, revealed his face clearly.
The first thing that could be said was that he was young, perhaps not yet twenty, or just turned twenty.
The young man, with black hair and a boyish face transitioning into manhood, was nervously confirming the events of this time.
This conversation alone made it clear who was in the superior position.
“Then! Tell me how to take this off!!”
However, their relationship was not a healthy one, but rather that of an abuser and a victim, one who threatened and one who was threatened.
And on the young man’s right hand, a dull gray gauntlet was equipped, and in his hand, he held a short sword with a faint presence.
The short sword looked simple, as if it could be found in any weapon shop.
A moderately skilled blacksmith would recognize that the blade had been forged by a highly skilled craftsman.
But that was the extent of it.
One had to be first-class to notice the subtle sense of faint existence, which was the essence of the short sword.
Weapons generally evoke a variety of emotions.
For exquisite weapons, admiration for their beauty; for sharp blades, fear; for great power, longing.
This short sword evoked no such emotions.
Or rather, it did not allow them to be evoked.
To the discerning eye, the mere existence of the short sword, as if it were just there, would have made it even more suspicious.
However, the young man who possessed it felt fear towards the short sword.
He thrust his right hand forward, as if pleading with the man nodding with satisfaction at the scene before him, wanting to get rid of it not in an hour, but in a second.
“I’ve done everything you told me!! You promised you’d take this off if I did!!”
“Yes, so I did.”
The man replied, without averting his gaze from the scene before him, as if the young man’s cries and circumstances were worth no more than a stone by the roadside.
The young man’s irritation grew with his attitude, but he did not act rashly.
No, he couldn’t.
The young man understood.
That this man was someone who could not be harmed even by using this accursed magic sword.
That the power gap between the young man and the man was so vast that he couldn’t even sacrifice his life to strike back.
That’s why he did what he was told, fulfilling the promise that might save him.
Yet, the man before him did not intend to fulfill that promise.
“Tch!!”
At that gesture, the young man’s anger passed its peak and was overflowing.
Still, he could not swing his outstretched right hand.
The man, sensing this with his aura, showed no emotion.
The encounter between the man and the young man happened three months ago.
It was by chance that the young man applied for a job at Mao Corporation.
Unable to go to university and unable to get a job, he had too much free time and was slightly despairing of life.
Encountering fantasy at such a time was enough to nurture a faint hope that he might be special.
He could use magic, and serendipitously, he had met friends with whom he got along well.
The young man was challenging a dungeon with his friends as one of the Testers.
It could truly be said to be a smooth start.
It was good at first.
The practical training session using magic was a life-changing event for the young man.
Furthermore, having a magic aptitude of six, a high aptitude even among his peers, further boosted the young man’s ego.
During this time, the young man heard rumors about a man.
The story of a washed-up old man in his late twenties.
He was always in a mess during training and couldn’t achieve any decent results.
He heard from his friends that there was such a freeloader of a colleague.
When he heard this, the young man’s inner feelings were that he did not want to become such an adult, that he was different, and he completely looked down on that adult.
Yes, at that time, he still thought he was special.
But when the training ended and it was time for actual combat, his fleeting sense of superiority, like a thin plating he couldn’t properly evaluate himself, was of no use.
He was chased by goblins he thought he could easily defeat, and even when he did, they didn’t give him much experience.
What awaited him was not the easily conquerable appearance of a game, but a pathetic boy blocked by the wall of reality.
The young man thought many times.
It shouldn’t be like this.
I should be able to do better.
So he tried to consult with his friends, but first there were five companions of the same age, but they left saying it was boring, one by one, two by two, and finally, he was left alone.
Yes, he had become alone.
It would have been better if he had given up there and left this world.
If he had resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t suited for it and found another job, perhaps a different future awaited him.
But the young man couldn’t give up on being special.
Disliking being separated from the extraordinary that was different from his everyday life, the young man, under bitter circumstances, attached himself to another party to make a comeback.
At first, every Tester’s party welcomed him readily, as his presence increased their combat power.
However, the gap between his ideals and reality, and his inexperience with failure, distorted his relationships with people, which could be said to be a natural consequence.
Being young can be a positive factor at times, but it can also be a negative factor.
How did his unyielding drive, not listening to the opinions of others, and pushing forward relentlessly, appear to others?
The parties that welcomed him all judged the young man as arrogant and quickly distanced themselves from him.
The young man couldn’t understand their attitude.
Why, why don’t they understand me?
Still, he did not give up.
He consulted with his assigned personnel.
Thanks to that, he was introduced to other parties.
He challenged again with full spirit, but the result was the same.
The parties did not accept the young man who believed his distorted ideology was correct.
And he was also warned by the person in charge about his actions.
He was told that what he was doing was wrong and that he should fix it.
To the young man, who had considered the person in charge his ally, that warning was nothing less than a betrayal.
To the person in charge, it was merely advice offered with good intentions to help a capable young man, but to him, words of negation could only be heard as betrayal.
That’s why he distanced himself from his handler and thought that only he could be trusted.
At that time, he suddenly remembered.
There was indeed one washed-up old man.
Challenging a dungeon alone felt insecure.
No, in the future, he would be sufficient alone, but he felt he needed it now.
He also remembered that he had aspired to be a frontliner, and judging that he was better than nothing, he set out to find the rumored old man.
He hadn’t heard that he had quit the company, so he assumed he was diligently fighting in an inefficient way by himself. What he found was a scene that defied the young man’s expectations.
He did find the rumored old man.
He emerged calmly from the dungeon exit.
When he saw him, the young man’s mouth formed a happy smile.
But that smile didn’t last long.
Following the old man, a man slightly younger than him appeared, and behind them, a man and woman younger than the young man followed, and then two women around his age argued as they came.
Then, as if greeting the old men, a Dark Elf woman approached him.
The woman’s face showed her joy that the old men, or rather, the old man, had returned safely.
Her affection for the old man was also evident in her expression.
Harmony.
A scene of close connection.
Such words flashed through the young man’s mind.
He wanted to cry out that it was a lie.
He wanted to shout, why are you smiling when I’m suffering so much?
But in the end, the young man could do nothing.
His emotions went out of control, and he became confused.
And then, when his emotions calmed down even slightly, he was left with nothing but to run away from the scene with all his might, surrendering to his emotions as if to avert himself from being able to believe anything anymore.
He deluded himself into thinking the whole world was against him.
From then on, the young man had no choice but to cling to this world where he was supposedly special.
He acted solely alone, desperately trying to create a place for himself in the company.
However, even that action wore down his spirit.
He challenged dungeons as if he were engrossed, only returning to the room he rented with his part-time job money to sleep and eat.
He continued to challenge dungeons day after day, like a shut-in engrossed in an online game.
It was back and forth, three steps forward, two steps back.
The dungeon challenges didn’t go as the young man wished, and he just accumulated frustration from his failures. He ignored the advice from his handler and began to pursue only strength. Then one day.
As he was challenging a dungeon as usual, a man appeared before him.
“You’re quite strong.”
At first, he thought another Tester had spoken to him.
Clad in a black robe, his entire figure was hidden.
The young man found him suspicious.
However, since the young man had never met an enemy who could speak in a dungeon, he was wary, but judged that the person before him was a colleague he had coincidentally met in the dungeon.
The fact that the man praised his fighting style, having watched him, also contributed to reducing the young man’s wariness.
That was the encounter between the young man and the man.
And the young man’s mistake.
In an environment where only words of negation were uttered, the presence of the man who offered words of affirmation became a lifeline for the young man.
It was only a matter of time before he became close with such a man.
A few days after they met, the young man, feeling a sense of kinship with the man who said he wasn’t on very good terms with his current party, secretly met him in the dungeon and they began to challenge it.
It wasn’t every day, but challenging it two or three times a week was extremely valuable to the young man.
Furthermore, the man’s actions, perfectly coordinating with the young man’s and trying to let him shine, made him an ideal comrade.
From then on, his challenges became as smooth as if his previous struggles were a lie.
The young man thought that all his previous hardships were for this day, and his face, once stained with frustration, brightened with joy, and he began to challenge dungeons with delight.
The young man, showing results and changing his atmosphere, was also well-received by his surroundings.
The warnings from his handler also ceased as if what had happened before was a lie.
Everything improved; it was a golden age for the young man.
Every day was fun.
It was a day when he was reveling in his days, as if he could wash away the past.
The man gave the young man a gift.
The man said it was an item he found in a treasure chest while challenging a dungeon, and that since he, who was not good at close combat, had no use for it, he wanted the young man to use it.
Thus were presented the gray gauntlets and what appeared to be an ordinary short sword.
They looked like items easily obtainable in shallow floors, and although they seemed cheap, they were sturdy. The young man thought it might be good to be able to engage in close combat as well, and accepted them.
And encouraged by the man, who said he wanted him to do his best, the young man began to wear the gauntlets and short sword from that day on.
And the good things continued, much to the young man’s delight.
The items the man had given him were both magical weapons.
The gauntlets, along with the weapon held in his hand, could disappear with a single thought, with a convenient function to reappear when he wanted to equip them.
In addition, the short sword had the effect of masking his presence, and contrary to its appearance, its sharpness far exceeded the young man’s expectations.
He could attack without being noticed by the enemy.
It was truly the moment the young man gained the greatest power.
Before that power, the monsters in the dungeon were no match.
So the young man didn’t realize.
The man’s malice, and his true intentions.
What seemed strange was immediately after parting with the man.
He left the dungeon and tried to sell his dropped items at his usual equipment shop, but the shopkeeper didn’t notice him.
Even when he clicked his tongue and shouted, there was no reaction.
His good mood ruined, the young man kicked the counter hard and left the shop.
As he walked through the underground facility, vowing to write a report about the shopkeeper’s behavior, he encountered a Tester party he had worked with before, coming from the opposite direction.
He wanted to make them regret their attitude just now by boasting about his recent heroic deeds to get rid of the frustration from the shopkeeper’s attitude. So the young man boldly stood in their path and called out to them, but the Testers didn’t stop and collided with the young man.
The young man became angry at this attitude.
But his angry shouts were not heard by the Testers.
The Testers, who touched the empty space and looked up with question marks, and who were amused by those who tripped on their own, did not see the young man.
“Don’t ignore me,” the young man shouted, but it wasn’t heard.
What’s more, the men walked away, scratching their heads and muttering that something was strange.
There was no unnaturalness in their movements.
He didn’t feel the malice of being blatantly ignored.
The young man found their actions strange as well.
Like the shopkeeper earlier, and these Testers, something was strange.
A trickle of cold sweat flowed along with a bad premonition.
The young man tried to shake off the imagination that flashed through his mind, talking to anyone and everyone, but no one recognized him.
Loneliness struck the young man.
No one looked at him.
No one heard his voice.
With each movement, the young man’s body temperature dropped.
And so, the young man ran.
Thinking that the man, the man would surely see him, he ran to the plaza with the distinctive rocks of the Oni King’s Dungeon, without arranging to meet.
The man was there.
Relieved that he was still there, the young man, while feeling anxious that this man might not recognize him either, suppressed that anxiety and slowly walked towards the man.
“Well, how do you feel about having gained that special power?”
As if to dispel that anxiety, the man easily noticed the young man and spoke to him.
However, his voice was not the gentle voice of the man he usually heard.
“You fool, Nameless-kun.”
It was all in his hands, the man said with a smile, uttering the name by which he called the young man who had lost everything.
This is all for this time.
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