35 – Encounters (5)

”Explain.”

”apis····.”

”Explain. Right Now.”

”····”

When wet firewood is thrown into a bonfire, the flames bizarrely swirl and vomit. It was as if he was watching the swarthy fluttering at close range.

If you breathe in carelessly, the dark side of fire, which is sure to squeeze through your lungs and cover your entire body, will soon scorch your entire viscera.

The smoky emotions she sometimes evoked were somehow a lot like those pyrotechnic antics.

”Hee, hee!”

One of the guests rolling around at my feet spilled gok-eup that he hadn’t even bitten yet.

However, there was not a single person who was qualified to reprimand him for his rudeness, at least in this place.

A man lying face down on the floor with his head covered. A man trembling with his bloody arm tied tightly with clothes. Among them was a man who poured out all the contents of his mouth on the floor.

It wasn’t even a crowd.

This must have been the first time they had faced that ferocious intent to kill, as if cold needles had been driven down their vertebrae.

Even I, who have gotten used to it to some extent, has a miasma that makes my facial muscles tremble. What are they going to do?

Rather, it was to the point that I wanted to add words of praise, saying that not fainting was useful.

”apis. I can only vaguely guess what Apis was thinking when he saw my outfit. I swear there was nothing that Apis could misunderstand. I’ll explain step by step when these people’s treatment is over.”

”no. explain Right Now.”

Every time Apis’ little lips moved, cracks appeared in the walls, the floor stirred, and the air vibrated.

A dry tone in which it is hard to find anything human. That bloody breathlessness, which seemed to fill the place where emotions had disappeared, with mighty mana, meant that Apis was warming up for another incantation.

I said it was like talking in a bathroom before, but I got stuck.

It’s a memory.

”apis. Calm down a bit…”

”Calm? Looking at you now, are you telling me to calm down?”

Apis’s red hair stood on end, as if trying to represent her frenzied emotions.

”Obviously, it must have been forced. It has nothing to do with me and I don’t care what the circumstances were. You just have to tell me all the names and characteristics of the guys who instigated you to do it. I will burn them down without leaving a single piece of flesh or even a single strand of soul.”

Suddenly, I felt a sense of deja vu.

Because something similar to this has only happened once before.

It was around the time when the party, which was in the midst of growing up, was just beginning to make its name known to the world.

A pitiful elf girl who was found dead in a cage of stale beasts while Apis and I were carrying out a subjugation request from a group of slave hunters that we had accepted as a pastime.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that she was born and raised in the same place as Apis, and was from the same neighborhood as Apis.

Even if that face had been so mangled with blood and bruises that it was impossible to recognize its original form, it would be impossible for a fellow countryman to recognize the unique color of magic that the Elves always wore around their bodies, like a kind of fingerprint for a human. that there is no

It was because it was the knowledge that Apis, not anyone else, passed it on to me directly on the spot.

The story of how Apis was banished from her hometown for the absurd reason of having a different hair color decades ago was something that Apis brought up whenever she was drinking, so-called her grumbling and side dish.

That’s why everyone in the party, including me, could say with confidence that we had never seen Apis speak favorably about his hometown, and there was nothing to say about his compatriots in his hometown.

A bunch of idiots who define and reject anything different from themselves as wrong. An assemblage of hermits. Maniacs who are obsessed with fundamentalism.

Every time Apis talked about his hometown, I heard it with one ear and with the other ear, and I can remember it this much. I don’t think I need to explain how endless the gossip was.

In fact, the words Apis uttered right after he found her might seem a bit ignorant for a person who had to face the corpse of a compatriot he had met in decades.

‘Looks good.’

But that day I saw clearly.

While I was in the middle of making her tomb and praying, Apis was chewing on her lower lip. The clenched fists were trembling.

She said that when killing a target, hitting a single arrow into a vital spot was the most efficient way, but she made a ridiculous excuse that she was not in a good condition today, and even if she couldn’t, she stabbed dozens of arrows into the body of the head of the slave hunter.

No matter how much a human deserves to die, I had to stop the act of punishment that imposed excessive pain on life.

That day, somehow, I didn’t have the will to work, and I still vaguely remember that I pretended not to see the whole scene.

Well, it was also one of the few opportunities to see the rare sight of a human turning into a hedgehog in real time.

Did you feel somewhat resentful of not being able to utter a proper excuse for the curse of the hedgehog, who sternly urged me to aid in the harsh torture inflicted on him, calling me a man to be punished without even qualifying as a clergyman?

I do not know.

Still, as soon as the hedgehog said that word, he was shot in the middle of his forehead and died.

I wished him well too. I did get a little sleepy along the way.

yes. Obviously, it must have been around that time.

Gradually, I came to realize that Apis was a kind enough person to be truly saddened and angry at the death of someone who had nothing to do with him.

However, at this moment, such kindness of Apis was causing rather bad anger.

”apis····. So it’s a misunderstanding…”

”under! yes! Even in the middle of this, it’s cheap and cheap! Didn’t I tell you once? If you go around covering everyone like that without covering your face like that, it’s likely that sooner or later you’ll be stabbed in the back of the head and die!”

Of course, I remember it, and I even feel the status of the words.

Even in my previous life, I heard stories of unfortunate people who recklessly helped people in trouble and instead ended up in trouble.

Going through it myself, it felt like a real tantrum.

”Sa, save me! No, save me! Namchang hyung! Ooh, we got it wrong!”

”that’s right! Ooh, we just did what the boss said!”

”sorry! Forgive me just once! Namchang hyung!”

While I was in a state of confusion, the men clinging to my pants crotch greatly reduced the will to help in my starvation state.

It seems that I didn’t have the courage to speak to the avatar of destruction across from me, but I felt sorry for them desperately begging for their lives, clinging desperately to me, the only rope.

Because if the sound of male prostitutes rose from my feet one more time, I would kill them. I decided to focus my consciousness on the opponent in front of me.

”There are some people whose lives are in danger without proper action. So first of all, please give me time to heal these people. The explanation is next.”

”Are those worms that important? Did those bastards even try to kill you?’

”I was trying to kill you. I didn’t kill you.”

If they really deserved to die, I wouldn’t have gone this far.

Being treated as a male prostitute was a little bloody, but after all, they were just trying to pay back that their colleague was being treated as a male prostitute by some kind of slut.

What it means to be looked down upon in the world of back alleys is a fact that can be easily understood by reading a few books featuring a male protagonist with a fist clenched on the cover of a comic book store in his childhood.

”you····. Are you ordering me now…?”

”I’m begging you. But maybe it’s something else. If even one of these people suffers casualties, I might not be able to answer all the questions Apis asks me.”

”Kuh! you····!”

Maybe it’s because I’ve been fighting and frying for months with a saintess I can’t communicate with.

A person who can speak. knowledgeable person. In addition, persuading someone with the least sense of discernment was considered insignificant.

Apis is always a person whose head tends to get hot. He wasn’t an emotional person enough to err on basic reasoning.

What would it have been like if it had been the hero instead of Apis who was here right now?

. . . There is no need to imagine such a terrible future.

Cancer, no way.

”Whoa… 10 minutes····. No, I solved it in 5 minutes…”

”thanks. apis.”

Right after he had safely persuaded Apis, he gathered them together in one place to prevent their prayers from leaking out and was preparing for the chant.

Their envying gaze, as if they were looking at me like a mafia boss, felt a little grotesque, but I decided not to pay any attention to it.

Ah, in the midst of their efforts in prayer, Apis said three or four words to them in an indifferent tone.

”There, you.”

”Yes? Me, me!?”

”Take off that jacket and cover it for this guy.”

”Ah, ah, I see! All right!”

I decided to pretend not to know that the pants of the man who was covering my jacket with hands trembling like aspen trees trembled while I was devoutly praying, were wet with an unknown liquid.