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“What is this?”

Is this a misdelivery? Shouldn’t quests be going to the toilet instead of me? No, wait, have quests even existed? Then why haven’t I seen one until now?

I just can’t stand this from the start. If a quest has appeared, it means either a writer or someone has been watching me, and now they want to meddle after just staying back and doing nothing?

Absolutely not. I wouldn’t do it even out of spite.

“Seriously, what the hell?”

And so, the quest window reappeared. This time, an extra line was added compared to before.

[Main Quest]

Kill the man in front of you. Right now!

Clear condition: L̸̴̴̸̶̷͎̭̒ű̷̶̸̷̸̸̲̽k̶̵̴̴̸̶̩̀͒ē̶̵̷̶̷̸̹̽ is dead.

Clear failure: Death

Huh, so if I don’t kill him, I’ll die? They’re threatening me because things aren’t going their way? Let’s see who ends up winning then!

“Go ahead, kill me~ I’ll just move on to another world~”

I clasped my hands like a clown, looking up at the sky. They seem in a hurry to pressure me after just sitting back all this time. Who would be disappointed if I couldn’t kill that guy? Certainly not me.

Don’t they know that if they have a request, they should do it politely, whether they are a god or a writer? Just then, the quest window popped up in front of me again.

[Main Quest]

Please kill the man in front of you… I beg you…

Clear condition: L̸̴̴̸̶̷͎̭̒ű̷̶̸̷̸̸̲̽k̶̵̴̴̸̶̩̀͒ē̶̵̷̶̷̸̹̽ is dead.

Clear reward: Wish ticket

This feels like how a streamer sounds when begging for donations.

“Luke? Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?”

As I was mumbling to myself while looking at the quest window, Luna asked with a puzzled look. To Luna, I probably looked ridiculous, talking to the sky for no reason.

“Nothing, it’s just that someone’s making a big fuss about killing a demon god.”

“Who is it…?”

“A god? Or maybe a writer? I don’t know. They keep screeching, threatening to kill me if I don’t hurry up and do it, so I told them to screw off.”

Only then did the man’s gaze turn towards us.

[…I thought I wouldn’t be surprised by much anymore, but this is quite innovative. She’s something else.]

He muttered incomprehensibly.

[So, who are you?]

“I’m Luke!”

[Not the name you borrowed. I’m asking for your real name.]

“I’m Luke!”

[…This guy just doesn’t get it.]

A borrowed name? If I’m using Luke’s body, then Luke is my name now, right? Plus, I’m not fond of my previous name anyway.

“It doesn’t matter whether you understand or not; you’re going to die soon.”

I don’t even know who this guy is. But if he was in the Demon Realm, he can’t possibly be a regular human. It has to be a demon god, no doubt about it.

“But, wasn’t the demon god depicted as a woman in the original story? Why is he a guy?”

[Ah… her? I killed her.]

“Total nonsense. There are only two beings in this world who can use the Light Attribute, so stop with the obvious lies.”

[To be exact, I didn’t kill her; I absorbed her.]

Whether absorbed or fused, it’s irrelevant to me. I came here to kill the demon god.

“Anyway, according to the original story, you’re destined to die.”

[You’re very sly.]

“Stop with the nonsense. Is that your dying wish?”

[Who said that? That this world is a novel.]

“Nopia said that, you bastard.”

If I saw it on a novel site, it means it’s a novel, but is it an essay instead?

[…It seems you don’t understand the meaning of a novel.]

“I know better than those bastards who haven’t even developed literature.”

Would anyone from a world where literature hasn’t evolved and novels aren’t common know more about stories than me?

I don’t know the specifics like from NamuWiki, but basically, a story is made up by a writer, based on imagination or reality.

[Even knowing that, do you still think this world is the same as the novels you saw?]

“If you have something to say, just say it directly without beating around the bush.”

[In other words, what you’ve seen is a bizarrely twisted ‘story.’]

The demon god emphasized the word ‘story.’

[Everything you saw with a happy ending was a charade crafted by that so-called god, going off on their own.]

So, you’re saying what I’ve seen is a story filled with dreams and hopes that the writer altered to their taste?

[Anyone can write a story. Whether it’s reality or not, the reader can never know the truth. Instead, humans will blindly believe only what they’ve seen.]

The demon god made a valid point. I often compared things to the original story whenever something happened.

[Did the story you’ve seen have any balance?]

“What balance?”

Are you referring to power balance or plausibility?

[Have you never doubted? The protagonist, who represents the will of the god… If there’s a hero, shouldn’t there also be a demon king representing the will of the demon god?]

Don’t give me such complicated storytelling. It’s giving me a headache. And you should ask the writer about that, not me!

“If there were balance, there shouldn’t be demon kind and S-Rank Monsters.”

[To maintain balance with the monsters, humanity was gifted with magic. To maintain balance with the demon kind, S-Rank Adventurers arose, and the S-Rank Monsters hid themselves to maintain balance.]

“Hiding is nonsense. The Volcano Dragon turned an entire area into a desert.”

[The World Tree was born to balance the Volcano Dragon. With the collaboration of the World Tree and humanity, they successfully stopped the Volcano Dragon. Did you know the whereabouts of the other monsters apart from that?]

Indeed, aside from the Volcano Dragon, I had no information on any other S-Rank Monsters. I only knew they were somewhere on the continent.

[No matter how strong the power, if nothing is done, it’s the same as having nothing.]

So, they hid themselves to maintain balance? Are monsters supposed to have that level of intelligence? Fascinating.

“But, what does that have to do with me?”

[……..]

“Balance is none of my concern.”

I don’t care that this world is actually not a novel or that there was never a happy ending in the first place.

I’m here to kill the demon god in front of me. Other than that, I don’t care what happens.

‘But thanks to that, this got easier.’

Normally, the demon god should have a mechanic in games where I can reduce their health to 1, but they wouldn’t die unless I finished them with a Light Attribute attack.

Conversely, even if he absorbed the power of the demon god, he isn’t the demon god himself, so I can just beat him and he’ll die.

[If you don’t understand what I’m saying, it won’t be bad to see it for yourself.]

After the demon god’s cryptic words, darkness started to crawl up from below us.

“Frost Burst.”

[……..?]

“Honestly, I’m not really interested. This is what you’d call a skip.”

I don’t know what I’m supposed to see, but it feels like it’s going to turn into a long story, so I wanted to avoid it. Not fighting back when attacked is the act of an amateur, right?

But—

“Luke?!”

“Luke!”

“Help me!”

The three of them didn’t expect me to dodge, and they got sucked into the darkness just like that.

“Ah.”

[Don’t you have any sense of camaraderie?]

“Why are you blaming me after sending them away?”

What a weird fellow.

“Now that I think about it, who are you anyway?”

You said you absorbed the original demon god. Then who is this guy in front of me?

[Hmm…]

The demon god suddenly seemed lost in thought. It looked like he was seriously trying to remember something, perhaps even his own name.

‘Could he be senile? How do you forget your own name?’

The lifespan of the demon kin, like the elves, spans hundreds of years. So, it wouldn’t be too strange if an even higher being like the demon god had developed dementia.

[It’s been so long since I discarded my name, but if you insist on calling me…]

The demon god closed his eyes and fell into a brief reminiscence. Soon after, he opened his eyes again.

[Luke.]

“What?”

·

·

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[Main Quest]

Please kill the man in front of you… I beg you…

Clear condition: Luke is dead.

Clear reward: Wish ticket

*

The three of them were pulled into darkness. As if blinking, they found themselves standing in another location.

Unlike the place they were dragged from, this location looked like a blank white canvas.

“Are we… dead?! Is this heaven?!”

Yui was the first to speak, her voice trembling. Luna, however, calmed her down after checking their status.

“Calm down, Yui. We are still perfectly alive.”

“Phew…”

They confirmed that they were alive, but the problem remained: they didn’t know where they were. They could not figure out how to escape or why the demon god sent them to such a place.

Although the entirely white surroundings could have been blinding, they didn’t feel that at all. As Riche scanned the unfamiliar area, something caught her eye.

“Luna, what is this?”

“I’m not sure…”

There were images: a woman smiling while holding a child, a man wielding a wooden sword. It was a series of pictures, as if someone had cut and pasted memories with scissors.

However, the quality of the images was so realistic that it was hard to believe someone just painted them. It felt as if they had been directly transferred from reality.

“Hey! Luna! Riche! Look at this!”

From the long line of images, Yui found a familiar man.

“Isn’t this Arthur?”

There was no way she could be mistaken. It was definitely Arthur, the man they had seen many times.

“Now that I think about it… The demon god explicitly told us to see this before sending us here, right?”

“Does that mean we have to see everything here?”

“I’m not sure…”

Though Riche asked, it was clear that Luna had no idea either. After all, they didn’t even know the true identity of the demon god.

As Riche reached out to touch the image of Arthur—

“……..!”

The picture quivered violently, similar to the portal when they arrived in the Demon Realm.

“Luna, Yui, it seems we have to go into this.”

“Is this… a portal?”

As Luna swept her hand across the picture, she felt her hand being pulled into it.

“We’ll have to go in, won’t we?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any other way.”

“I’m a bit scared though…”

Even if she found it frightening, there was no choice. For now, there seemed to be no good means to find their way out, and the demon god’s command to see something likely referred to this.

With no other option left, the three of them threw themselves into the images they believed were memories.

 

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