Unfortunately, I’m Not a Hero. 20 (Patreon)

Unfortunately, I’m Not a Hero. 20

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Commisioned by Shaderic

Wordcount: 2500

…

Apparently, no one respected my privacy, while I was imprisoned by the Empire. 

My office, my place of solitude, and the place where I ignored missives from Roseanne had been altered significantly. The left wall was now conquered in a massive bookshelf where letters and corresponds were to be kept, like a primitive e-mail system, along with an entire book dedicated to recording when the mail was received, read, and closed. It was being maintained by some no-name, thankfully-married clerk who cried if I so much as glared at her. 

Then, the entire right wall of my former-fortress of NEET-dom was taken by my secretary, otherwise known as Tanis. Her desk was pretty interesting, even though she was closer to human size than the rest of her kind, since it needed to be modified for her body. Its chair was connected to it by a hinge, so she raised it to slither her whole tail in, before putting it down and feeding the rest of her below the table. It was more of a shell than desk, or maybe something along the lines of a modified, wooden pot with some drawers and a writing surface on the top. In any case, if I looked at her in the corner of my eye, the interloper of my sanctity and sanity would look like just an normal, average individual who wanted my blood, sweat, and tears to be filed as assets for the town and reported to Roseanne. 

I’d thought it’d be pretty terrible to have a corporate slave job, where I had to wait until the managers left before clocking out myself, but I didn’t even have the luxury to be lazy. While security cameras didn’t exist to catch me being a lazy prick, my Roseanne-approved secretary/administrator did just as well at being an invasion of privacy! Geez, so a Japanese man can’t escape wage-slavery and black company situations even in a fantasy world, huh!? First, you took away my menacing, austere room where the light could perfectly hit my chair and cast me in a menacing shadow, then you introduce filing and employee-monitoring on me? 

What’ve you got against me Roseanne?

Except the fact that I abuse your trust, use all your money, and instigate attacks and attack the Empire without your permission?

Why do I deserve this shitty treatment, huh!?

…

After all the expenses involved in the month, what I expected to come months ago, finally arrived.

“We are immensely in debt and can barely pay interest on all the loans we have taken.” Naturally, Tanis was doing all the math, so I was at her desk and looking at all the work involved and trying to look like I cared. Given her violet, slit glare, it wasn’t working. It’d had been double-checked by Henri, then a copy was sent over to Roseanne. My initial plans were to drive Ylstu so deep in the red that I’d be able to purloin some rival jockeying Roseanne for the wealth, as well as have someone around that wasn’t playing to hear tune. Alas, my projects produced more than expected, so I could merely get my bustling town to being fully exploited, instead of breaking down deep in the red. She’ll probably give me to a wealthy ally of hers now. Ah well, money’s money. “And, Roseanne has sent to me a letter to convince you to be wed, so that your debts may be taken on by a greater house. Just as you planned.”

Just as I planned—Oi.

“You did that on purpose, you little bitch. You took my gloating away from me.” My returned glare at my administrator netted me only a huff, a shuffling of papers, and an idle raising of glasses further up the bridge of a nose. Hah, there was no menacing glint in your glasses, which means I shouldn’t be threatened in the slightest. What do you mean that’s more because it’s almost nighttime than anything else? True, bespectacled individuals can manage the glasses glint no matter the amount of light in the room! “What do you have to say for yourself in your defense for your heinous actions?”

“It was in self-defense against a vile man bereft of morals and lacking any shame whatsoever.”

“Good. You are pardoned for your crimes. Have a nice day.” My words merely made Tanis huff and shake her head again, before gesturing over the paper, a blank sheet, and one of the newer pencils. Magic soon began to plays it part, copying the words of one onto another, while my Lamia administrator can take a moment to relax. In fact, since I’m interested in having some free time, she can let it go for the rest of the night without any issues whatsoever. I’ll happily give her time off… forever. “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off—

“I refuse.”

Don’t invoke Jojo in this world. This world doesn’t deserve such goodness and purity. Keep that glorious saga untouched by the filth of these lands. If those words somehow create genderbent expies of the Jojo characters in this world, I’ll destroy this world and then myself. In fact, just destroying this world would involve the latter too, so I’ll also save time while ensuring the sanctity of an actually decent work of fiction. If any time-stopping, blond vampire exist out there, you should probably end your lives in order to save the rest of your shitty reality. 

What was I doing again?

Right, trying to convince my secretary to not work me to death. 

“Work is fine, but in order o work well, you need rest. In fact, I’ll admit it. I want to rest and goof off. There’s no fucking way I can do that with you piling up paperwork on my desk, while I’m away.” The gist of those words would probably work if I’m respectable individual with good communication skills. Unfortunately, I’m neither of those things, so a Tanis merely took out a letter opener and opened Roseanne’s latest missive and began reading it. I can totally leave the room, but if I did she won’t leave until all twelve of the remaining letters were sorted and on my desk tomorrow morning. “I don’t care about your health, but I care about mine. So, believe me when I tell you that I’ll probably go insane, if you keep piling work on me, especially when all that’s going to happen is more work’ll show up, since we’re doing so well.”

I expected a retort in return, but instead the sound of two small hands colliding atop upon wound drew my attention.

“Be silent! While you may not care for your own life and standing, and have convinced so many others to feel the same, I will not tolerate you doing the same to me!” Tanis reared back, growing in height as she allowed more of her tail to support her instead of merely being laid down. I had to look upward to meat her eyes now, but I wouldn’t have needed to in order to know what she felt. Her brows were furrowed, her teeth grit, and her hands curled into small fists. “I see it. Your insipid, insane desire to die in battle against the Empire is a simple death wish born of guilt and self-hatred!”

Tanis was quick when she wanted to be. The noise of slithering scales upon wound barely reached me, before she was in front of me instead of behind a desk. Even with her status as a runt, with she stood as far up as she was able, she towered over me. She was a like a pillar of white and silver that stretched into the ceiling with a sparkling gaze. 

One that was more perceptive than I expected.

“Do you know why I was chosen for this mission? How I became your advisor? It is because I know more than any other Monster in this continent how precious life is. Born as I am, with my body, I have merely half of what a human has!” The words came as a whisper, but they weren’t an admission of a secret, nor a means to convey shame. Tanis stood taller from her declaration, as though she had pride in the fact that she got dealt a bad hand, while all her sisters and colleagues, as well as their fucktoys, got to enjoy practical immortality. “Yet, I have achieved more than my entire family has in its existence. I entered the Royal Court through merit alone. I became trusted by the Demon Lord herself! Despite all life threw my way, I advanced, I worked, and I gave my life value, despite all the wretched things it heaped upon me!”

Yeah.

I should’ve suspected it.

Roseanne sent me a self-motivated, dying optimist, in order to try and have me rethink my plans. 

As far as plans went, it was so stupid that I forgot to even consider it. 

And, now my personal space has been breached with Tanis’s slim, pale features merely millimeters away from my own.

“And, you outstrip me in everything I’m capable of, Hachiman. Your mind is filled with knowledge of a vast civilization that puts ours to shame.” Tanis’s breath was warm and sweet to the nose, while she pressed her slender and soft form against me.  Amethyst eyes with slit, black irises bore into my own, while slim, cool fingers grasped my face. I could only be thankful that her tail didn’t wrap around me like a vice. “The talents you have cultivated to mere adequacy put to shame dozens of scholars. Then, finally, there is your own, personal merits in administration and battlefield command.” 

Who better to send to try and seduce a psychopath bent on destruction than someone who thinks she fixed herself and wants to fix others? What a fucking joke. In the end, all that mattered was what I could give to other people, therefore people like Tanis was sent my way. I had a better idea. Instead of wasting my life doing shit I’ll never see completed, why don’t I murder the bastards who fucked my entire life? Yeah. That’s all it takes to ruin this shitshow of a plan. A single refusal backed by one thought. Great, shitty plan, Roseanne. I really appreciate having to work a lot less, y’know?

Even if I somehow couldn’t find myself able to retort, that’s entirely because of some magic or something.

“And, we are similar. I see it in your plans, in how you care for the town, and in how you never let yourself be truly without work. If you truly did not care, would you have made all you have created?” Magic. This was all magic. Everything Tanis was saying was outright lies and bullshit of the highest order. The only reason I couldn’t speak was because of some super-special cheat skill courtesy of Roseanne. Or, hell, it could even just be something Tanis cooked up. It’s the sort of thing someone delusional like her would make, just so she could live out her fantasies about helping other people. “Warm houses, plentiful food, and protection for all those who choose to live in Ylstu? Second chances for the natives, rescues for those trapped in Empire territory, and the sparing of someone you could’ve told to end their lives with a single lie?” 

Tanis pulled back and I looked away.

It had to do with her eyes.

Something was happening with those eyes. 

“There is more to life than the past or the future, Hikigaya Hachiman. The present decides the meaning of the past, while changing the future. What you do with the time you have is what matters, even if it is life born from all the terrible things you had to do to gain it.”

No.

That was lie. 

Something that I wanted to hear and nothing more.

For someone like me, who was only alive because of all the bodies I’ve strung together to stay afloat, there’s nothing more to life than fixing what came before, as well as making sure it doesn’t happen in the future.

If I’m irredeemable, then I’ll at least make it so no one else has to be.

Or die trying. 

…

Ylstu was dark during the night, since I didn’t want to give an enterprising mage a clear target of my town in the darkness. More importantly, even if my Amazons didn’t have it, most monsters could see and function normally in the dark. During the night, when humans typically slept, monsters had another advantage in their immensely imbalanced repertoire. However, tonight, that advantage was negligible, since the moon was full and cast a mellow, silver light across the entire valley.

Ylstu, my staging ground against the Empire, was slowly growing into what I needed it to be. The town was growing rapidly. Money and bodies were flowing in. Merchants were taking interest, as well as a mining guild interested in my method, and there was rumor that Roseanne’s equivalent of an Adventurer’s Guild was gaining interest in having a branch here, given the number of feral monsters, skirmishes, and nearby, ancient sites in no-man’s land being potential, lucrative propositions for them. 

Those were all merely aftereffects of the simple fact that I was halfway to the infrastructure I needed to support a small, potent strike force in Empire territory. Not an army, nor even something that can hold ground, but something that can strike critical locations and withdraw with impunity. A destabilizing, cutting force that can force upon the Empire something that they never felt before: fear. 

I’d shown them mass-wave tactics, as well as combined arms with cavalry and artillery, then the counter to that in the form of trenches and fortified positions. They adopted my guerilla tactics and ambush techniques without even asking. I’m sure, now, they’re developing soldiers that can stand on par with Amazons through their own citizens, so they can be used as a vanguard to breach defenses with speed and power. The Empire is innovating and changing because of my actions, therefore they’ll surely catch up one day, if I’m not careful.

So, I’ll be skipping ahead a few wars and decades, until I’m sure that I can hold an advantage they won’t be able to utilize themselves. At least, until they do something on the same scale as myself, and even then, I’ll be progressing and keeping them down as much as possible, so they’ll never have the chance to take it for themselves.

What am I talking about?

Why only the pinnacle of modern-day military achievement jury-rigged to work in this shit world. The ability to turn extravagant amounts of money into speed and, therefore, time by making mountains, valleys, and other physical impediments to transport a thing of the past. It’s only haphazard for now, barely anything more than a functional, air delivery service, but with magic and monsters that’ll change until I have in my hands this world first and only airborne military, at the center of the continent, in a self-sufficient valley surrounded by mountains with only a handful of passes.

Yeah.

It’s going to be a good start.