168 164 リスクを無視しリターンしか見なかった結果の末路は (1/2)

Another side

The once quiet forest was filled with a murmur and screams of fear.

The lower-grade spirits fled from the immortals who suddenly appeared, the few middle-grade spirits, some with lower-grade spirits in tow, some challenged the battle alone, and some realized the disadvantage and disappeared from the scene.

As if in response, the dark elves who were guiding them rushed out, confusing the testers, and the demon-prepared troops began to move.

This is the right thing to do, right?

”Yes, enough is enough.

In the midst of the chaos of this forest, if there was even one higher level spirit in the forest, the story would be different, two men in robes were looking down on the chaos of the dark elf forest.

The one nodding with satisfaction at the current situation from an elevated perch is deeply robed and his face cannot be seen, but you can tell it's a man from the quality of his voice.

The other, whose face is uncovered by the uncovered hood, is more visible.

He is young, no older than twenty, or at least close to it.

A young boy-turned-young man with dark hair and a young face is anxiously examining the incident.

Just from this conversation alone, it's clear which side is higher.

”Well then!　Tell me how to get this thing off!

However, the relationship was not a healthy one, the relationship between the threatened party and the threatened party, between the assailant and the victim.

And in the young man's right hand was a dull gray caged hand, and in his hand was a dagger with a muted presence.

At first glance, the dagger looked like something you could find in any weapon shop.

A reasonably skilled blacksmith would see that the blade was forged by a skilled blacksmith.

But that's as far as it goes.

It takes a first-rate blacksmith to recognize the discomfort of the dagger's essential existence, its scarcity.

A weapon is fundamentally something that evokes a multitude of emotions.

A beautiful weapon evokes admiration through beauty, a sharp blade inspires fear, and a mighty power inspires longing.

This dagger does not evoke any emotion.

No, it does not.

To the eye of the beholder, the mere presence of the dagger would have made it even more suspicious.

But the young man who possessed it had a fear of the dagger.

He held out his right hand as if to appeal to the man who was nodding with satisfaction at the scene in front of him, desperately wanting to let go of the dagger as soon as possible, let alone a second later.

I've done everything you asked me to do!　You promised you'd get this off me if I did everything!

Yes, it was.

The man replies without averting his gaze from the scene in front of him, as if the young man's cries and circumstances are worth nothing more than a stone on the side of the road, as if it doesn't matter.

This attitude irritates the young man, but that doesn't mean that he should be so quick to act.

No, it didn't.

The young man understood.

This man could not be hurt by this d*mned sword.

That the youth and the man were so far apart in strength that they couldn't even lay down their lives to take a shot.

So this is how you do what you are told and fulfill your promise with the possibility that you might be able to save yourself.

You tried to solve the problem in such a way, but the man between your eyes refuses to fulfill his promise.

Psssss!

The young man's anger has passed its zenith and is overflowing with the gesture.

Still unable to raise his outstretched right hand.

The man, sensing this figure in the atmosphere, did not have any emotions.

The man and the young man met three months ago.

It was a coincidence that the young man got the job offer from the Mao Corporation.

He couldn't go to college, couldn't find a job, didn't have much time on his hands, and was lightly despairing of life.

Then I encountered a fantasy, which was enough to give me a faint feeling that I was special.

He can use magic and, by chance, meet like-minded people.

The young man was one of the testers, conquering the dungeon with his friends.

It was off to a good start.

It was good at first.

Learning to use magic in training was a life-changing experience for the young man.

In addition, the fact that he had a high aptitude for magic aptitude six among his peers further increased the young man's stature.

Then the young man heard a rumor about a man.

It's about an old dropout before thirty.

He was always falling apart in training and could do little.

I heard from my colleagues that there was such a crushing colleague.

When he heard that, the young man looked down on the adult completely, saying he didn't want to become such an adult and that he was different.

Yes, at that time, I still thought I was special.

But when the training was over and the real battle came, the faint sense of superiority that comes with being unable to properly evaluate oneself was of no use.

The goblins chased me around when I could have easily defeated them, and even if I did, I didn't gain much experience.

The only thing waiting for him was not the image of himself, which was as easy to capture as in a game, but a poor boy who was blocked by the wall of reality.

This can't be it, the young man thought over and over again.

This can't be it.

I could do better.

So he tried to talk to his buddies, but five of them at first said he was boring, then one, then two, and finally the lad was all alone.

Yes, it has happened.

It would have been better if he could have just given up there and walked away too.

A different future might still have awaited him if he could have dismissed it as unsuitable and thought about getting a different job.

But the young man could not abandon the special (fantasy).

Unwilling to leave the ordinary and the extraordinary, the young man made a hard decision and huddled with the other parties to make a fresh start.

At first, every tester's party was willing to welcome him as an added asset.

But in a way, it was a natural consequence of the gap between the ideals of failure and the reality of failure, and his inexperience with frustration, that his relationships were distorted.

Sometimes being young is a positive thing, and sometimes it is a negative thing.

I wonder how he looked to others, who never bent his own will and did not listen to the opinions of the people around him, as he recklessly pushed forward with his recklessness, saying that this is definitely better.

The party that welcomed him described the young man as cheeky and quickly distanced themselves from him.

The young man could not understand their attitude.

He wondered why, and why they wouldn't understand him.

Still, he did not give up.

He even consulted his personnel officer.

Thanks to this, I was able to get an offer for another party.

This time, he tries with all his might, but the result is the same.

The party does not accept a young man who believed in the righteousness of his twisted ideas.

And the person in charge of the party was warned about the consequences of his actions.

The young man's actions were wrong and must be corrected.

From the point of view of the young man who thought the person in charge was his ally, the warning was nothing but a betrayal.

To the person in charge, it was just advice to help a well-meaning and capable young man, but to him, a word of denial sounds like a betrayal.

That's why he distanced himself from the person in charge and thought he was the only one he could trust.

Then he suddenly remembered that he was an old man who had dropped out of school.

There was an old man who had dropped out.

I don't feel comfortable taking on the dungeon alone.

No, I'll be fine on my own in the future, but for now I think it's necessary.

I remembered that I wanted to be the vanguard, so I decided it was better than nothing and looked for the old man I heard about.