Capítulo 33: Monster/Savior
A/N: Before we start the chapter, I just want to say that I have finally created a unique cover for my story. I was running this as a side project to the story, so I will admit this prevented me from updating the chapters more frequently. But unfortunately, this trend will likely continue until I can find some way to settle my personal problems. But I will promise you to try my best to keep updating. So I will thank you for your patience and all the support you have shown for my story.
<Swosh><Clatter><Chime>The roads of the starter town looked all the same. The same golden bricks and gravel meshed together to create a picturesque landscape. The buildings looked not different than an interlaced maze of varied colors while the blue sky above glowed dead like a painted canvas. Something different from the monotone of winding cars and blazing lights that he was used to in his previous life.
None of which had prepared him for this world. Hiro had quickly come to love this world like his own and enjoy it fully as much as he possibly could. He was far quicker however to reject it all. The shining carapace of the town had become a blinding glare in his eyes as he saw more and more dissimilarities between the reality that he had already lived through and the one he is forced to go through now.
"Look at him...Wonder what has happened..."
"Must have been in a fight...youngsters these days have no manners"
"You think he's a criminal..."
Hiro ignored them. He was already having enough trouble keeping his mind together through all the chaos. He walked through the narrow street side, into the shadows. He looked down, expecting to see something, anything that would make him believe this world. Nothing. He found nothing, nothing that could speak to him, nothing alive, nothing real. He came across a pair of children playing in the street. He had reached a bustling market before he realized where he was. Where he was supposed to be.
There were crowds of people going about their businesses, thousand miles a minute. They paid him no mind, even when he stuck out like a sore thumb in the cheerful atmosphere. He looked around, searched people's faces, and observed their activities. No one looked back. He kept his eyes down.
Towards the ground he faced. Towards the liminal space and crevices cut into the bricks. He looked between the lines, both literally and figuratively, trying his best to find a glitch. A glitch in the matrix, an error in the code, syntax, in this WORLD!
He was answered by fading slivers of images. The happy faces of the crown quickly turned sad, sad turned annoyed, annoyed become mad, and mad developed into hatred. Hatred and rage glared back.
Pure mindless reflex. He quickly threw himself on his legs and ran towards home. To wherever it was. Away from these machines, capable of only emitting coded emotion, limited by their own nature, commuting in this manufactured world.
And he was a part of it. The middleman of the maker, the savior of human-shaped shells, a shell of his former self. He could feel it-the green grass cracking into itself, the ground folding to reveal terrible black circuitry, and the sky collapsing into fragments of data and consciousness. The world shrinking, horizontally, and perpendicularly, revealing rotten buildings of bygone eras. Memories collapsing into themselves and red neon glowing dead beneath his feet.
Yes. He was the king. King of the terrible manufactured world. With manufactured dreams and ambitions, goals and personality. He had nothing to call his own. Even his actions felt foreign to him as if he wasn't in control. Like a puppet who could only move with the strings attached.
'Like a puppet... a doll... a featureless mask... unremarkable husk... not human...'
He was starting to run again. Run from it all before his mind slows to a halt. Before he comes crumbling down, a nobody who died in an unremarkable gutter. White streaks of light flash as he passes a nearby church. Its white-washed walls are painted smooth and beautiful, and its bell gongs and sings the song of harmony, of his imperfection, and of his failure.
The raw edge of vomit in his throat; He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them. He saw and froze as his mind began its tricks again.
"Come Hiro... We still have much training to do. Stand tall, grab your weapon, and be ready. Strike down in a single motion and end your enemy. KILL Kazuma. MURDER EVERYB-".
He is laughing, not a murderous laugh or that of anger. He is laughing, looking at Him, lips pressed at the corners of his mouth, his smile not reaching his eyes. Not quite there, not quite against himself. He smiles, exhausted, loathing himself and Hiro for nothing.
"Let it go, Hiro. It's so easy to let go. Just let it take over. Don't listen to this fool. We won't harm them. We will heal them for themselves. We will free their souls from their mortal flesh!"
Hiro looked up at their blank faces, devoid of any features. He sees a ray of hope. When one tries to corrupt him, maybe the other will show him his path.
He was wrong.
"We will HEAL them and FLAY them like worms and trap them in an eternal prison, subjecting them to unbearable torture", she said while looking away, as if ashamed she ever spoke about. Yet jesting in abject arousal.
Shadows shifted as he got a good look at them, their faces again. He was already beginning to forget them. Their faces, behaviors, everything now swirls in his mind as an unintelligible mess, a grey goo of important memories that he would not remember. He will not remember.
'They will leave. Just like they left me.'
<Buzz><Crash> Fear begin to knot in between his shoulders as he saw their eyes turn grey with fear. A cold trickle of sweat worked its way down and across his ribs as red streaked across his vision. Blood from Her jugular sprayed in red gout of gore, bone, and splinters dripped down His torso as a fist-sized hole opened itself on His chest. And yet they laughed, hysterical and distraught.
Maybe the operation hadn't worked. He was still there, strapped to an E.R. table, staring at scalpels and knives. No gods waiting for him, no cheering crowd to welcome him, no afterlife. It was all some dream, some pathetic fantasy... his personal hell for his sins.
In the alleyway he found himself in, one he had desperately dragged himself into like a chile, he tripped and fell. The smooth gravel and concrete tore his palms. Hot tears blurred his vision. For eternity he lay there, still and paralyzed, watching them get killed right before his eyes. Over and over again. Even when he tried to avert his eyes, it always came to him as a still image, as clear as a movie stuck in itself.
"That is why you must make your own path. Even if it is laid over a thousand bodies. You must create memories that you will remember fondly and refrain from making the choices you will come to regret."
"You must not forget...Hiro...Hiro...HIRO!"
Suddenly he awakes and comes to his senses. He realizes he has been asleep the whole time. Next to what appears to be a cage of sorts, where he could see Aqua trapped inside. He finds himself on a cartwheel, sitting as a person peers above him. Finally the fog in his eyes shifts and he can see clearly again.
Kazuma and Co. looked down upon him, clearly worried about how he must have been acting in his sleep.
"Hey...are you ok...? It looked like you were having quite a terrible nightmare", says Kazuma as he gently looks at Hiro. He looks at the boy and what does he see? He sees himself, clearly confused and terrified of the unknown world around him. Helpless with no way to protect himself.
"Yeah...I just have a lot on my mind right now...", Hiro tries his best to alleviate all the worries the group may have had.
'I guess this is what happens when you don't grieve. You get literal nightmares', Hiro thought as he resigned himself to basking in the interest of the uncanny party of adventurers.
"If you want to talk about it..." says Aqua as she suddenly joins in from the cage. She must have felt pretty bad about the whole basement incident judging from her nervous eyes that are scanning his whole body, confused as to where to rest, despite the awkward position both of them were in.
"I need a bit more time. I don't think I am ready to share this with someone just yet".
And immediately he could see her eyes turn downcast. Living as a god she must have never experienced rejection and sadness. So all this must have been pretty new to her. But he could already see she was coping well. Cause when he said it, her eyes met his with understanding, not with anger or annoyance.
Hiro lets himself smile. The moment of reprives crashes into him and fades away, already a distant memory. Borrowed time until his final act.
Besides, he's in no condition to help others.
'A path laid over a thousand bodies huh... Why does that sound like a great Idea? If I didn't know any better this would have been my Villain origin story...'
But I guess you have to be satisfied with what you get. If I can't become the hero, I will become the Anti-Hero...or Villain... well, whatever you may call it. A second-rate job for a reject.'
'Hah! I wonder how many times I have gone over this topic. Recently it seems like everybody and everything trying to get me. And it still took this freaking long for my dumbass to get it. It's truly as you say, Old man. There ARE no good or bad sides, just the winning, and the losing ones... And you really don't wanna end up on the losing side in a war like this...'
<Grab>"Hey quit brooding over! Why don't you come with us? We are going to an awesome lake to purify the water. Though I admit it's not the most exciting of missions, you look like you seriously need somebody to take care of you! He can come with us, right Kazuma?" Megumin tried to cheer him up in her own way. And miraculously he felt better. Great even, if he could discount his mental state. Such is the terrifying power of the cute chunibyo.
"Yes. It is my duty as a Crusader to protect somebody in need!", and there goes Darkness talking about honor when the first thing she will do when she sees a monster, is to throw herself in front of them like a raging masochist.
"Yeah, great idea guys! Why don't you join us, Hiro? Our party is in serious need of good party members who are not completely useless", he glared at the other three, to which they sheepishly scratched their faces.
"I...I would love to"
"YEAH! WooHoo! Finally, someone who I can rely on for having my back. Finally, someone who isn't a washed-up drunkard, a loli, or a perverted masochist! Hear me world, my adventure has just begun!", Kazuma screams to god knows where. Though he kind of understands how spending time with the girls can be both rewarding and frustrating.
Hiro doesn't think twice before agreeing. It's not like he needs to think three steps ahead just to go on an adventure.
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As the cold evening breeze sweeps through the buzzing streets of the starter town, brushing my hair as I look ahead. My gaze is transfixed on the approaching shadows, eating up the streets from the sides. The warm yellow of the sun has vanished, replaced by a bloody red. I am walking, limping aimlessly, as a wooden cart draws behind me. The crackle of the gravel beneath its wheels was my only semblance of sanity. Sitting atop it is a mangled metallic cage, torn and stripped. The cage itself now is unrecognizable, a mere shadow of its former mighty self. Its roof now has big chunks missing, seemingly devoured by rows of terrible teeth. Not much remains of the bars, some of them missing altogether, some bent and crushed into one, and some lying sticking out, like jagged spikes, a twisted flowed bathed in guts and gore.
I would have closed my eyes and tried to enjoy the mocking scenery but-
Aqua is still screaming right beside me. I could easily guess that what happened a few hours ago had scarred her. You just do not go from being a goddess to butting heads with monsters. More so when you have no experience to speak of. Even the mid-level experienced adventurers in Danmachi fear level-five monsters. So when a horde of raging Minators get the jump on you suddenly, you just cannot compose yourself.
I think I am equally responsible. I should have stopped myself from going crazy. Should have calmed my nerves... But I didn't...
"SAVE ME! FROM THIS MONSTERRRR-"
"FROM HIMMMM!!!--"
...
...
...
"--AAAARRRGGGHHH-!!!"
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder