Circe’s proposal made Ex’s eyes widen.
He had never imagined she would make an offer like this.
But he couldn’t accept it.
“You already know. The restriction…”
“I know the restriction makes things difficult. But there’s a loophole. As long as you don’t tell anyone yourself, it’s fine.”
“…You figured out that much already?”
“If what you told me is true, then I won’t fall for the restriction again. Whenever there’s information you need to share, you can just tell me and no one else.”
She had reached that conclusion from nothing more than a handful of fragmented clues.
Circe truly was the wisest person in the world.
A Sage in every sense of the word.
“I won’t be able to ignore you anymore. I know too much now. Whenever something happens, I’ll find myself looking for you. Even if nothing happens, you’ll still be on my mind.”
Circe took Ex’s calloused hand in hers.
Her touch was faintly cool, almost refreshing.
“If there’s one thing my previous life taught me the hard way, it’s that no one can shoulder an enormous ordeal alone. You’re still young, so maybe you think you can handle everything yourself… but you can’t. No one can.”
“…I’m not that young.”
“From where I’m standing, all of you are children. I hate pulling this card, but if you count my previous life, I’ve lived at least twice as long as you have.”
Circe had been around twenty-two when she died.
Counting her current life as well, that made her thirty-nine.
Even then, Ex was still older.
‘That’s really not something I should have to hear from someone younger than me…’
Circe, however, had no idea what he was thinking.
She was simply trying to persuade him in complete sincerity.
“If this world weren’t someone else’s story, then the Hero of this generation, the protagonist, would’ve been you.”
“No, that’s…”
“Everything you’ve done proves it. Even we never stopped anything in this life that came close to destroying the Empire. At most, we happened to kill a few demons and some Demonkin along the way.”
“Well…”
“I’m worried you’re going to keep burning yourself up until there’s nothing left of you. That wouldn’t be fair to humanity, to us, or to that little girl. So I’m going to ask you one more time.”
Circe let out a quiet sigh and looked straight at Ex.
“Can’t you trust me?”
Ex was left speechless.
He hadn’t expected Circe to change this quickly.
In the original story, she had been the kind of irritable attack dog who snapped at everyone around her.
There had been a good reason for it.
‘The world she risked her life to protect ended up like this…’
Brilliant students obsessed over immediate profit and political influence instead of pursuing the fundamental truths of magic.
Religion, which should have served as a pillar of faith, had devolved into an organization that pressured people for donations and raised armies.
Meanwhile, the Demonkin, humanity’s natural enemies, grew stronger by the day, and no one seemed to care.
She hated all of it.
And once again, she believed she would have to deal with everything alone.
She would have to save this hopeless world all by herself.
Under pressure that immense, how could she not become high-strung?
There was only one reason she had changed so much now.
‘Because she joined Leon’s party.’
She could finally breathe.
She had found companions who would share her burden.
People who believed in the same cause she did.
‘That was when she started mellowing out.’
And that wasn’t all.
Her hostility toward Ex had disappeared when her memories were sealed.
The first time she got involved with Ex after losing those memories had been at the demon mansion.
Back then, Ex had been someone doing everything he could to stop a disaster.
From Circe’s perspective, Ex was simply a younger comrade whose goals happened to align with hers.
If Ex hadn’t pushed her away so strongly afterward and she hadn’t joined Leon’s party, she probably would have made this offer much sooner.
When Ex remained silent for too long, Circe stepped closer and grumbled in dissatisfaction.
“What are you thinking so hard about? Is this really something you need to agonize over?”
“Of course it is…”
“Was anything I said wrong?”
Not a single word.
Any information could be spread through Circe.
If he did that, the Plausibility Penalty wouldn’t activate.
After all, Circe would be the one revealing it, not Ex.
There was no real reason to refuse her.
And yet Ex hesitated.
This wasn’t a question of whether her proposal was right or wrong.
The problem was something far more fundamental.
So Ex decided to change the subject.
“First, could you back up a little…? You’re standing really close…”
“Oh, sorry…”
Circe hurriedly stepped back, then pouted at how firmly he had said it.
“I didn’t expect you to draw the line that hard in a situation like this.”
“It’s better not to do anything that could give either of us the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea? About what?”
“You like Leon, don’t you?”
“What?!”
Circe shrieked as though he had just said something completely absurd.
“Why the hell would I like that freak?!”
“…Huh?”
In the original story, Leon and Circe became a couple in the end.
Circe was one of the four main heroines.
She had even been attracted to him since her previous life, so it had seemed like the most natural development in the world.
“…Didn’t you go adventuring with Leon because you liked him?”
“What kind of bullshit is that?! I already wanted to go adventuring! I only followed Leon because he was useful and pretty easy on the eyes! The only girl crazy enough to actually like that weird personality of his would be Frey…”
Then Circe suddenly realized something.
Her face drained of color.
“D-Don’t tell me… I end up dating him later…?”
“Well… You two made a pretty good-looking couple…”
“Eeeeeek-!! No! Absolutely not!! I refuse to accept that!! Who the hell came up with such a garbage story?!”
Ex quietly looked away.
The person who had pushed for the original story to include a romance subplot was none other than Ex himself.
“Hey! Listen carefully!”
THWACK-!
Circe, now furious enough to see red, kicked Ex in the left shin.
“My shin again…!”
“Fine! I admit I care about looks! But only because I appreciate attractive faces the same way I appreciate nice artwork! My ideal man is not some stubborn jackass who refuses to listen to anyone!”
“B-But in the future…”
“The man I marry is going to be someone who listens to other people and knows how to be flexible enough to function in society! And it’d be even better if he had the backbone to stand his ground when something actually matters…”
Circe was in the middle of her impassioned speech when someone abruptly came to mind.
She froze.
Then, after a brief moment of blank staring, her brain apparently arrived at a conclusion she didn’t like.
Circe squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head as if physically rejecting the thought.
“No. No way. That can’t be it. Absolutely not.”
“I get the feeling you just thought something incredibly rude about me…”
While the two were still talking.
“CIRCE!! You’re alive!!”
A door opened far off to the right, and a group came rushing through.
There were five of them in total, and every face was familiar.
The moment Circe saw them, relief washed over her expression.
“Leon! All of you! Is everyone okay?”
Leon, Frey, Diana, Rosaria.
The Hero Party they had been separated from didn’t seem to have suffered any major injuries.
“Wait, the guy next to her is…”
“That’s him…!”
Diana and Rosaria recognized Ex immediately and became wary.
Leon frowned when he saw Ex standing with Circe.
“Why are you two together?”
“We ran into each other when the rooms shifted. Didn’t you guys meet some girl back then? Where’s that kid?”
Circe immediately started looking for Lola.
She had been just as worried about the girl as Ex was.
“…What happened?”
The instant Circe saw the answer for herself, her blood ran cold.
“Leon, what the hell did you people do?”
“Wait, Circe. Let me see too, I need to…”
Ex slipped past Circe to get a look at Lola.
And the instant he did, his breathing stopped.
The girl had been reduced to a miserable wreck and bound with rope.
Her entire body was covered in marks from a beating she hadn’t even been able to defend herself against.
One side of her normally bright, confident face was horribly swollen.
“Ex…? You’re alive… Thank goodness…”
The girl, Lola, smiled happily the moment she saw him.
The sight of that heartbreakingly innocent smile on her battered face brought Ex’s thoughts to a complete stop.
Circe spoke in an icy, razor-sharp voice.
“Explain what you did to her. Right now.”
“Calm down, Circe. We had a disagreement.”
“A disagreement? So you beat a kid half to death?”
“We didn’t have a choice if we wanted to restrain her. We were in danger too. She was throwing explosive magic everywhere…”
“And that somehow makes treating a person like this the ‘right thing’ you’re always preaching about?!”
“Will you just listen to me…!”
Leaving the argument behind him, Ex walked forward.
Diana and Rosaria moved to block his path.
“Move.”
Before either of them could even raise their weapons, vicious swords of white light materialized in the air.
The white blades rippled violently as their points settled against the women’s throats.
“…Control Blade?”
“…No. It’s something else.”
But the two women were warriors who had survived countless hardships themselves.
No matter how guilty they might have felt, they were fully prepared to fight under the circumstances.
At least until Frey spoke from behind them.
“Please move.”
Diana and Rosaria reluctantly stepped aside, their displeasure obvious.
Ex stopped in front of Frey and the bound Lola.
“I’m sorry.”
Crushed beneath the weight of her guilt, Frey managed only those few words.
“…You weren’t even going to treat her?”
“…”
“…Okay. I get it.”
Ex carefully untied the ropes around Lola and lifted her into his arms.
She was too light.
They obviously hadn’t given her food or even water.
Ex slowly carried her toward a safe spot farther away.
He took out a sleeping bag, made a place for her to lie down, and carefully lowered her onto it.
Now a little more comfortable, Lola murmured to him.
“Ex… I lost… They even took my magic devices…”
“How did this happen?”
“They said you weren’t a decent person…”
That was all Ex needed to hear.
At some point after Lola joined them, the conversation must have turned to the rumors about Ex.
Lola would have fiercely insisted they weren’t true.
That would have led to an argument, and Lola had turned out to be stronger than they expected.
Strong enough that they had decided this was how far they needed to go to subdue her.
“Drink this.”
Ex took out one of the high-grade healing potions he kept for emergencies and slowly poured it into Lola’s mouth.
It was worth five million El, but all he could think about now was how stupid he had been not to bring something better.
At least the potion seemed worth its price.
Her wounds began healing almost immediately.
“I’m just gonna rest a little… I’ll be up again soon…”
“Just rest.”
But emotional wounds couldn’t be healed even with an Elixir.
Ex knew that, which only made the weight in his chest heavier.
The argument was still raging behind him.
“You beat the hell out of anyone who gets on your nerves, and what exactly makes you different from a tyrant or that goddamn Demon King?!!”
“I went too far at first. I admit that. But watch what you say, Circe. You weren’t there, so you don’t know what happened.”
“And if I don’t watch what I say? What then? Are you going to beat me half to death too? And if I still don’t listen, are you going to kill me next?!!”
Leon fell silent for a moment.
After thinking it through, he answered with a hardened expression.
“If that’s what I have to do, then I will.”
Something inside Circe snapped.
“You should never have said that.”
“…”
“You should’ve lied to me.”
Her voice was dangerously close to breaking.
She wanted all of this to be some horrible lie.
Leon met that desperate hope with his head held high.
“I don’t lie.”
As always, he was the upright and honest Hero.
“…Right. What was I even expecting? Like an idiot…”
The warmth vanished from Circe’s eyes.
She was no longer looking at the companion who had fought beside her in her previous life.
The man before her wasn’t Protego.
He was just Leon.
“…Circe?”
“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep traveling with you.”
Only then did Leon realize from the coldness in her voice that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Circe… No, Aerial! What’s wrong with you!”
“Don’t call me that anymore.”
“Aerial! We don’t need to tear ourselves apart over some girl we don’t even know! Fine, I’m sorry. I was wrong…!”
Again.
Another excuse.
Another apology offered only because he wanted the situation to blow over.
Circe had finally had enough.
She raised her hand.
“Those words aren’t for me…!”
Her open palm swung toward Leon’s face.
Leon, a martial artist, simply closed his eyes and prepared to take it.
If he let her slap him once, maybe Circe would calm down.
“You should’ve said them to Lola, you fucking bastard.”
But what came flying at him wasn’t a palm.
BAMMM-!!!
It was a rock-hard fist packed with crushing force and seething rage.
A devastating blow driven forward with every intention of smashing his face apart.
“Ghaaaak-!”
The strike, loaded with highly condensed internal energy, sent Leon flying in an undignified heap.
Caught completely off guard by the sudden attack, Leon bounced and rolled across the floor several times before finally coming to his senses and breaking his fall.
One side of his vision had gone blurry, and half his face was swelling rapidly.
His cheekbone and nasal bone were probably broken.
Coincidentally, it was the exact same side of the face they had struck on the girl.
“What the hell are you doing…!”
There was never any question who had attacked him.
“Sometimes the only cure for a bastard is a beating.”
It could only have been Ex, the man famous for clinging to life like an unkillable weed.
“But a beating isn’t enough for you.”
Ex drew Lung’s sword.
As aura flared from the blade, Leon’s party immediately shifted into combat stances.
“You need to be put down.”
Ex spoke slowly, forcing his fury back under control.
“Circe. I’m sorry, but there’s absolutely no chance I’ll ever be joining your party now. Not today. Not ever.”
After this, he and Circe would be forced onto completely opposite sides.
That would make everything far more dangerous in the future.
After all, he would be turning against Circe despite having already told her everything.
But right now, Ex couldn’t care less.
Someone was going to pay for what they had done to Lola.
He didn’t give a damn whether Leon was the Hero destined to save the world from destruction or anything else.
“Sorry about that. I finally invited you, too.”
As Ex steeled himself for what came next, Circe answered from behind him.
“But there is no ‘my party’ anymore. I just quit.”
Circe opened the Book of Eibon and stepped up beside Ex.
The future Ex had expected shattered into pieces before his eyes.
He didn’t care.
–TL Notes–
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