153 – I Told You I’m Not the Enemy – 3

Biche, who had dealt a triple blow to the party members with her truly shocking appearance, shocking activity… and even her shocking relationship with Gi-jun, sat quietly inside the room of the lodging he had rented without exchanging a single personal word with them.

Although he had roughly explained to the party members about Biche’s identity and the process by which her relationship with Gi-jun had been formed—there was no way they could accept Biche with just that.

In fact, Biche did not particularly feel like getting close to them either.

There was a limit to the time she could stay in Leta, and during that time, she only wanted to focus on Gi-jun.

“Biche, have you been here this whole time?”

“Jun!”

Biche, who had been sitting blankly on the bed swinging her legs, welcomed him with a bright smile when Gi-jun returned from his conversation with the dwarf and opened the door to enter the room.

Gi-jun shrugged his shoulders as he looked at her and asked.

“It’s all noisy outside with festivals and parties, so what are you doing alone in the room?”

“I don’t really like crowds. It draws unnecessary attention.”

Biche boastfully brushed down her side hair as she spoke.

If it had been the past, he would have scoffed at that, but unfortunately, Gi-jun could now empathize quite a bit with the emotions hidden behind her playful attitude.

Just the gazes poured upon Gi-jun on his way back to the lodging after having a discussion with the king in the royal palace were enough to make his head spin.

Being a hero meant something like that.

He had to endure not only the threat of the enemy he faced but also the burden imposed by those who placed their expectations on him.

Since Biche was said to have been the Hero of Light in the past—though he did not know for sure, she had probably suffered from it even more than Gi-jun.

“Right, I think I can understand at least a little bit of the feelings of a celebrity who detests paparazzi.”

Gi-jun let out a sigh, sat next to her, and took off his mask.

Biche reached out with one hand and patted his shoulder.

“Good job. If it’s too hard, you should give up on going to the Empire. If you become the Hero of Light, you’ll have to move while receiving even more attention than now, and everything you do will be evaluated one by one.”

“I don’t particularly want to become Fatum’s successor either… but whether I become a hero or not, it feels like what I have to do won’t change anyway.”

“Mmm, I suppose so. The Dark Faction won’t leave you alone now.”

As Biche mumbled while swinging her legs wildly, “I can’t believe you actually succeeded in the Grand Quest like this—” Gi-jun replied in a dumbfounded tone.

“I succeeded thanks to your help.”

“What are you talking about? I merely stopped the enemy’s cheating. I didn’t lower the difficulty of the Grand Quest. Moreover, you remember too, don’t you? The god intervening at the end to complete the Lord of Thorns’s magic.”

Truthfully, if Biche had not mentioned it, he would not have even known that cheating had occurred, but in any case, he clearly remembered the Lord of Thorns casting a spell that surpassed his remaining strength.

As Gi-jun nodded, Biche smacked her lips and confessed.

“If I hadn’t been there, the gods wouldn’t have intervened to that extent. So to speak—it was a plot to fail the Grand Quest, and at the same time, a warning sent to me.”

“A warning not to cross the line of the Dark Faction?”

“Exactly.”

Indeed, Gi-jun had thought he would not be able to endure if external intervention occurred like that every time something happened, but there was an internal circumstance of its own.

…But the reason Biche was able to interfere in the first place was also because the vampires had broken the rules, wasn’t it?

He had known Leta was an unreasonable world since the moment they kidnapped people living perfectly fine lives out of nowhere, but hearing her story made him truly sick of it.

“Anyway, what I’m saying is you don’t need to be too grateful to me.”

“What does it matter? In the end, the Grand Quest would have ended in failure if you hadn’t been here.”

“Well, I wonder about that. Thinking back on the things you showed… maybe even without me.”

Gi-jun’s light mana as a Light Human, Lucy, Ur, the Unfailing Body Clock, the Silver Moon of Contradiction…

Although she had intended it to some extent in the process of helping him grow, Biche felt a renewed sense of wonder at how Gi-jun had truly been completed as the perfect adversary of darkness.

Moreover, since Gi-jun had become even stronger than before in the process of killing the Lord of Thorns and completing this quest—if he fought the Evil Dragon once more, the outcome would change significantly again.

Gi-jun had achieved overwhelming growth in less than a few months since crossing over to Leta.

Although Biche could confidently say that it was she who had laid the foundation, would the current Gi-jun really need Biche’s help?

If she tried to interfere in his affairs in the future, would she just needlessly draw the attention of the gods like this time and cause even more troublesome things to happen?

“Speaking of which, since you mentioned the intervention of the gods, Biche.”

“Huu…”

Actually, she had wanted to appear at a more dramatic moment to give Gi-jun dramatic help and score many points with him.

Gi-jun had grown beyond imagination and had already secured strong companions.

While that itself was a happy thing, she was secretly crestfallen because she felt like she hadn’t been of much help.

“Biche?”

“Ah, yes?!”

“What is the Sanctuary? I obtained something called an admission ticket to the Sanctuary as a reward for this quest.”

“That is…”

Biche, who had been thinking about Gi-jun’s abilities, narrowed her eyes at the words that came out of his mouth.

“You don’t need to think about it right now. It’s in a place you can’t even go to immediately anyway… and that place is still dangerous for you. I will let you know when the right time comes.”

“Alright, I understand.”

“So… is that it? Don’t you actually have more things you want to ask?”

Biche said.

Hesitating for a moment at those words, Gi-jun chuckled and stood up from his seat.

“Have you eaten? If you haven’t, I’ll cook for you.”

“Eh?”

Biche, who had made up her mind to give him a proper answer no matter what question he threw at her, inadvertently let out a blank voice.

When Gi-jun laughed at her reaction, Biche frowned.

“Doesn’t it bother you that I was originally in the Light Faction, or that I was the Hero of Light?”

“Of course it bothers me, but it’s not like I want to hear it as if I’m interrogating you. Tell me when you return to the Light Faction.”

Gi-jun remembered the moment when Fatum was almost eroded by the curse of the Dark Faction.

Through that, he was finally able to understand how the Dark Faction could continue to sustain itself on this continent belonging to the Light Faction, where the Letans ruled more than half of the land.

From the system’s perspective, there might have been a need to maintain the war between light and darkness, and it might have been a method chosen to balance it—but for the individuals caught up in it, nothing could be more unpleasant.

Gi-jun, who remembered the back of Fatum leaving in confusion after realizing the truth, had no desire to pry into the past of Biche, who had not yet completely escaped from the Dark Faction.

“When I return to the Light Faction… I see.”

Biche blankly repeated his words, then eventually wore a small smile on her lips.

Thinking of the time after that, when she would be able to be completely together with Gi-jun.

There had been times when she thought all of her things had disappeared, leaving only emptiness.

It was no longer the case.

Surprisingly, she realized anew that it had been that way for quite a long time.

She quietly reached out her hand, grabbed one of Gi-jun’s arms, and said.

“Yeah. Then first, I must take my medicine.”

“Medicine?”

“I mean the sparkling food you make. You probably know by now, but it’s really medicine to me. A medicine that suppresses the darkness.”

“Alright.”

Although it was also clear that it was a device to weaken her.

Rather, Biche seemed to wish for her own power to be weakened.

Perhaps it was because that was not the power she wanted.

Realizing his heavy responsibility, Gi-jun nodded and asked her as he was about to stand up.

“I’ve been thinking about this since a while ago, but do you really have to add ‘sparkling’ like that?”

—Isn’t that the demon’s own way of acting cute? Though it’s not cute at all.

Lucy, who had been staying out of it after reading the atmosphere between the two, finally chimed in and teased.

Biche scowled fiercely at those words but could not refute them—yet when she saw Gi-jun keeping his mouth tightly shut, she made a sullen expression.

“What, did you think so too? Do you think that this great self of mine, who reigned as the Demon King and was called the symbol of fear, used such words just to act cute clumsily in front of you?!”

“Calm down, Biche. I just… I just thought that you didn’t need to go out of your way to act cute.”

While Gi-jun, who had inadvertently blurted out exactly what he was thinking, was blaming himself, thinking it was far too early for a confession, Biche unexpectedly lost her temper and shouted.

“What does that mean! Are you saying that no matter how hard I try, I’m not cute?! Sure, I was mature enough to hear people ask if I was an adult around the time I turned ten! And it’s true there wasn’t anyone brave enough to dare call me cute around me!”

—…Sometimes I think the demon is just as clueless as our contractor.

Lucy, who had almost blurted out, “Is that why the two of them look so good together?” quickly let out a gagging sound and forced herself to swallow those words.

Had she not almost said something that would ruin her appetite when she had to eat the delicious food made by her contractor soon?

“So, when would you like to go on a date?”

“Making fun of me and then suddenly saying something like that… Huh? Be prepared. Tomorrow, I will make you realize the correct relationship between you and me with your whole body all day long!”

—Talking in such an annoying, roundabout way just to say she wants to date all day long—Ouch! Contractor, the demon hit me again! Again!

* * *

It was something she really did not want to do.

Even with a rough estimate, the number of people who wanted to join the guild Ye-min was creating had already exceeded tens of thousands.

As people invited other new people, and because Ye-min’s image within the expeditionary force was exceptionally wonderful, the number was growing more and more—at this rate, a super-large guild exceeding 100,000 members could truly be born.

Of course, most of them were not very outstanding humans, but even so, numbers were a great source of power.

This was even more true for Earthlings who gained power through the civilization skill Gi-jun had obtained.

However—managing a large group would be ridiculously difficult.

She thought it would take at least a year to establish a rough framework for the guild and secure a stable footing.

Naturally… she could not even dream of traveling with Gi-jun during that period.

Ye-min was starting to regret honestly confessing to Gi-jun about the state of the expeditionary force.

‘Should I tell Oppa honestly even now… even now? That I don’t want to manage a guild. Oppa has become incredibly strong anyway. Even with a small elite, we will be able to survive well enough on the Leta continent.’

However, even as she had those thoughts, anxiety was settling in her heart.

It was a feeling of wondering whether there would be a place left for her to enter Gi-jun’s party, which had chosen the method of a small elite.

Gi-jun was no longer a person who silently did everything she wanted and filled the position she desired.

Many people were gathering by his side as he stood up and walked on his own.

Learning that even the Demon King, who was once an enemy, had dedicated herself to him for ten years, Ye-min thought she would faint.

Although the Demon King was putting on airs as if she weren’t, Ye-min knew very well the emotion contained in the Demon King’s gaze as she looked at Gi-jun, and its meaning.

A romance between a Demon King and a hero might be fun to read as a story, but from the perspective of watching it from the side, was it not an utterly unacceptable nonsense!

‘She is not someone I can force away either. At this rate, she might share a relationship even deeper than the bond I have built with Oppa…’

No, could the relationship she had built with Gi-jun really be said to be that deep?

In the past, she could have been certain that she knew Gi-jun the best among the million people summoned to the tutorial—but now she could not understand Gi-jun’s heart very well.

Perhaps she had simply been under an illusion since a long time ago.

If that was truly the case…

“No, no.”

At the dizzying sensation as if the ground beneath her feet was collapsing, she shook her head to brush away her thoughts.

Anyway, she wanted to see Gi-jun quickly right now.

She wanted to speak her mind honestly, and even if the returned answer was not positive, she wanted to hear the words he would say as he worried about her.

She wanted to make the relationship between herself and him even a little deeper.

“…A date…”

“…All day long…”

However, there was already a guest in Gi-jun’s room.

The two of them, who did not seem to have any intention of hiding their conversation, were talking in voices that were not small.

The deep feeling of affection contained in the voices of the two flowing out of the room was clearly felt even by Ye-min, who was an outsider.

If voices could be materialized, the voices of those two would have been flowing down as thick and sweet as honey.

“…Sigh.”

She quietly let out a sigh.

That woman said she would disappear in three days.

But the feelings the two had built would not disappear.

If Ye-min were to work in the same party as Gi-jun—even if she could fill the Demon King’s physical vacancy, could she fill his heart as well?

No, was there even any room left for her to enter in the first place?

‘She is truly… a formidable ambush.’

She had been relieved because the women in the same party as Gi-jun seemed to have no chance, but she had never expected that the Demon King, who had threatened everyone so much in the tutorial—would now threaten her again in a way that was the exact opposite of what she could have imagined.

But she could not lose.

In any story in the world, there was no hero who had their lover stolen by a Demon King.

‘I have no choice but to become the Guild Master.’

They said the Demon King had appeared at the moment of crisis and saved Gi-jun.

Apparently, she had easily grabbed and torn apart the Evil Dragon, which could sweep everything away.

To compete at the same level as the Demon King, it only made sense to be able to accomplish at least that much.

Naturally, Ye-min did not have such power.

If it was the ability to manage and grow a huge group, maybe enough to make a hundred thousand people rush in and deal with the Evil Dragon—she might be able to achieve it.

‘Anyway, even if I say I want to be by Oppa’s side right now, I would only be a nuisance. Let’s do what I’m good at. …Let’s do what Oppa expects of me.’

If what Gi-jun expected of Ye-min was to be the master of a super-large guild, she had no choice but to become one.

‘So that Oppa will need me. So that he keeps… keeps needing me, and cannot separate himself from me.’

After finishing her firm determination in a brief moment, Ye-min turned around.

Just then, the door opened, and Gi-jun, who came out, discovered Ye-min, welcomed her, and said.

“Min-i, you’re here. You’ve worked hard. I was just about to cook, so let’s eat together.”

—Contractor, are you an idiot?

“Jun is indeed an idiot.”

“Oppa, idiot.”

But it was a relief that he was an idiot.

That was why she liked it.

It was truly a relief.