Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: 122 (Patreon)

Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: 122

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Commissioned by Shaderic

Wordcount: 2500

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In another life, or rather in my past life, I came across a saying.

When you’re about to confront your death, you’ll know who you truly are.

Before I was stolen from my world, I’d probably just ignore the saying completely. Not because I was an arrogant, young man who thought he was being wronged by society, but because the quote wouldn’t matter to me until I died. In that world, in Japan, in Chiba, I had my entire life before I would have to consider that question.

But, as I fought against the Kindred and the early days when I fought against the Empire, I had my answer. It wasn’t just a simple answer born from the depths of my thoughts either. When I stared death in the face, each time the possibility of death came for me, I was afraid. It made me freeze for an instant that would get me killed with ease by any half-competent fighter. But, after that instant of absolute, petrifying terror, I felt something else entirely.

A desperate wish to not die, because I needed to live, to make my enemies pay, and to make sure that I wouldn’t just die and leave only a corpse in my wake. If I was going to die, then I wanted to die after causing mayhem, destruction, and suffering to those who hurt me, even if it drew innocent people who never hurt me into a war. When I confronted death, I learned that I was a terrible, spiteful man who hated the fact that he froze whenever he confronted death, because freezing at that moment would stop him from hurting the people he wanted to hurt.

Things have changed since then.

I haven’t confronted death for a while, since I’ve gotten A’Bel at my beck and call, along with all the new guards I had.

So, a stupid part of me wanted to confront death again, because I wanted to know who I was again.

But, since I wasn’t insane, I threw that idea out without hesitation.

Still, though, I knew that staring death in the face changed people and revealed them completely. In the face of death, proud Liches with long plans of vengeance surrendered. An Apophis, a demigod, surrendered to me and became my captive when confronted with death too. Some, of course, tried to keep fighting in the face of death, they decided to die fighting, and not give up on the chance that they could use violence to somehow survive.

I never thought that those two reactions were outliers.

That people, in the face of death, could show themselves to be utterly disgusting creatures without any worth.

Until today with the House Vielles.

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Disgust.

I never realized that I never felt it before in my life, until today.

Oh, sure, I felt something close to it when I first realized what the Vielles did, but that stomach-churning, vomit-inducing sensation was nothing compared to what I felt when I encountered them. They had decided to run, they took all their professional soldiers with them, and left all whom they promised to protect behind. If they had decided to fight against me, decided to struggle to live, I wouldn’t have felt the disgust that I felt now.

But they hadn’t.

They kept running, throwing soldiers at me, and ran while their forces were consumed piecemeal in desperate holding actions that had no reason to exist.

They threw away their people.

They threw away their soldiers.

They abandoned their wealth and treasures.

But, even then, I wouldn’t have felt the disgust that I felt if they tried to fight back with just their bare hands, fangs, and claws.

But they didn’t.

They decided to beg in the most horrific, sickly way possible.

“Take me! Make me yours! Don’t you see, I have no one else!” The Vielle’s current head stood in the middle of a clearing darkened by the shadow of my ships. She stood in puddles of blood with hands-stained scarlet. The Satyr looked at me with mad eyes, covered in blood-stained clothes, as she yelled her love and affection for me while her husbands’ dead eyes stared into the skies where my ships flew. “Do you want my daughters? I’ll give them to you! You can have them for whatever you wish! Use them forever, or until they’re dead!”

Two other Satyrs were in the clearing and they were naked and prostrate in blood, amidst the bodies of the husbands they killed themselves too. They shivered at the thought of being killed, but at anything besides that they showed no sign of anything besides supplication.

These people were supposed to be Kindred nobility. People who were my colleagues and who I had to somehow respect. Leaders who ruled over a land, had responsibility over other people, and were supposed to make sure that they and their people prospered. In the face of death, they threw everything that they had away, killed their loved ones, and prostrated themselves naked and without shame towards their killer in hopes of living as servants.

My warriors died because of these people?

Gina, Kin, Rue, Hulse, and Beatrice died because of these people!?

Disgust, I learned, was more than a feeling of aversion that made me want to retch, to look away, and to never think of a person again. Instead, in fact, it was a feeling almost akin to absolute rage sharpened to such a point that it didn’t feel like rage at all. I had no thoughts besides wanted to get rid of the things that I was seeing, to do everything in my power to forget what I was looking at, and fervently wished to never see it again.

Disgust was the desire to completely erase something from physically, mentally, and physically.

I thanked everything that I’ve been through, even the most horrible parts of my life, because at this moment I had the ability to get rid of the things that I was looking at.

“Obliterate them. Make sure nothing of them remains. They don’t deserve anything.” I’d given their soldiers a chance to fight for their lives or surrender. Even their most brain-dead, loyal servants who facilitated their trade with the Empire were given executions by me. I’d planned on drawing this out, chasing these Kindred down from my ships, and hounding them until they gave up, so that I could execute them with my own sword for killing five of my soldiers. But now, the only thing that I felt was the need to wipe them out of existence completely. “Nothing besides the honor of no longer existing.”

A’Bel usually had something lewd to say whenever I gave an order, doing her best to make it sound erotic and tease me, but this time she said nothing and just raised her hand high to be seen by gunners and the signalers. When she swung it down, and the gunners all began to fire on the clearing, I let myself breathe and take in the air that wasn’t absolutely tainted by the existence of House Vielle.

I glanced at A’Bel after a moment.

“Don’t take their souls. I don’t care if they make you invincible. Throw them in the deepest pit you can find.” I grunted and A’Bel gave a curt nod at my words, while I turned to the deck of my ship. I rewired my mind, drowning away the memory of the House Vielles, and turned to their captured, shamed servants and soldiers on the deck of my ship. I’d planned on twisting the knife a bit and making them watch their lieges surrender to me. Now, I could barely look at them, since they were affiliated to those things being excised from reality. “Take these people to the brig and send an order to have the mansion burned, after being combed for any records. Have copies made and burn the originals.”

The closest to me nodded at my words and carried out my orders, while the magical ballet continued to fire. With every salvo fired at the clearing, I felt a little better, so A’Bel made no command to stop it. Sometimes, having a Demon in your head really worked out, even if she tended to be too lewd sometimes.

Still, I made myself busy, and turned to the Draconic-hanger-on that followed me from the Capital and decided to see things through… who looked every bit as relieved at what she was seeing as I was.

“Lord Hikigaya.” Cellphone-lite’s tone carried a hint of respect this time. It wasn’t new. Ever since we rooted out the kidnappers and I’d killed the leader of the Capital operation, she’d been more careful around me. It was a software update that I found very useful, since she listened to my orders without question, and hadn’t brought up the fact that we were riding around in what used to be her ship. “What is next?”

It was a suspiciously easy question to answer, but I answered anyway.

“We secure the territory, make sure no one dies from the mistakes these things made, and comb it for intermediaries.” I already had Ylstu, so I had no interest in keeping this territory. This was just a whole lot more work than I wanted to have, if it dropped onto my lap. “We’ll put in the average ones in charge and take the best for ourselves… out of the kindness of our hearts, of course.”

Ylstu had a lot to offer nowadays, but I was always on the lookout for talented individuals. Having a diverse economy would shield me from any unfortunate events that compromise one or two of my existing sources of tax revenue. There currently wasn’t a problem with jobs, with there being many openings, but as more people streamed in from all over the continent, I knew that wouldn’t remain the case if I did nothing, especially since I had an Undead workforce building up at Henri’s beck and call… and in a few years my students were going to be old enough to have kids and not just be swept away by the Kindred.

I could just steal treasure and assets, but it was better for me to take in people who would increase industry in my lands, and keep it prosperous.

Cellphone-lite was quiet after my statement, but when I turned to look at her, she seemed contemplative on my words. There was a furrow in her brow, probably because she expected another answer, but took her time to think of how to put her question into words instead of just yelling her frustrations out. Her time with Royal Guards was paying off, or was it the time she was forced to protect other people and act responsibly? It was probably both.

Anyway, she spoke up before I lost interest.

“When you fought against me, you were merciful… why is that?”

Ah, now I got it.

She was equating herself to these people when shouldn’t.

“Did you sell Kindred to the Empire?”

“Never.”

“Did you kill one of my soldiers?”

“No.”

“Did you betray Roseanne?”

“I was born and raised to raid the shores.”

“See? Those are the reasons why. You were an enemy. A target of opportunity.” The Dragon did terrible things, killed people, and took what she needed from people who couldn’t afford to give it to her. This person right in front of me caused me suffering, which was why I had planned on making her my subordinate, forcing her to fight for me, and made her hoard of treasure mine. “These people betrayed the Demon Lord, killed my soldiers, and didn’t even have the honor to kill themselves and make sure their people didn’t suffer. As far as I’m concerned, killing them is a public service.”

“And, being rid of a pirate who plagued the coasts of both Empire and Kindred for centuries… means nothing?” For some reason, I felt like was being asked a different question, so I activated one of my 108 Skills: read between the lines. Therefore, what she truly said was: “You have a lot of nerve telling me that I’m less than those people.”

“No. It means that you were living your life, doing what you wanted, until I came along to stop you and make you do what I wanted. If I was tasked to kill you, if I wanted you dead, then you’d be dead instead of here.” I suppose sparing the Vielles, taking them in, and making use of them in exchange for their lives would’ve gotten me a fair amount of assets. However, they crossed the line by working with the Empire, and went past the point of no return when they killed five of my own. “You’re alive because I wanted you alive, and you didn’t do anything that made me your enemy.”

I attacked her purely because I wanted her stuff, and it was possible that she had something I was looking for at her disposal, so I didn’t go overboard and gave her leeway when she was defeated.

That wasn’t the case here.

“…” Dragon-san was quiet for a bit at my statement, staring at the bombardment falling onto the clearing, before speaking again with a swift nod. “I see.”

With those words, she turned and left towards the entrance to the rest of the ship, while A’Bel sided up next to me with the din of firing magical ballistae finally fading after she signaled for the ships to stop firing. The clearing and the surrounding forest were gone, replaced completely by a crater several feet deep, and from above I saw no remains whatsoever in the clearing.

Then, A’Bel held out her armored hand and presented me with the souls of the three creatures without a word. It was a miracle in the palm of the Demon, the manifestation of the soul, which would solve innumerable philosophical questions regarding life. Every philosopher back on Earth would give everything to see what I see, feel what I feel, and write a whole lot of fancy words about it.

I only had one word for what I saw.

“Gross.” I looked away and did my best to have A’Bel’s hand out of my vision. I felt like I had cockroaches being held up near my face. “Get rid of it already, A’Bel. That’s just gross. Wash your hands after dealing with that too.”

I felt a twinge of amusement from A’Bel, but she bowed and moved to follow my commands a moment later, and so I turned to the rest of my task.

The nobility that betrayed Roseanne and the Kindred were dead and gone, after I invaded their territory and hunted them down within a day. That wasn’t enough to terrify the rest of the nobility and have this course of action not bite Roseanne and I in the ass later. The best way to do that was to make the territory that I overtook not want new nobility, celebrate the death of their former rulers, and have the rest of the nobility held in line by their own peasantry.

Unfortunately, that was going to be harder than driving a few ships somewhere and blowing people up.