This happened immediately at the start of the incident. Right after forcefully teleporting Majima Takahiro’s group from their room, a boy was writhing in pain on the floor inside a fabricated world.
“Gah! Hak! Hrrrgh...!”
He scattered vomit all over the corridor’s floor.
“Gah... Aaah... Th-The hell?! Why me?! D-Dying...! I’m dying...!”
This was the exploration team’s Almighty Vessel, Okazaki Takuma. He’d allied with the Holy Church and was responsible for bringing Majima Takahiro into this labyrinth. Here, he found himself covered in his own vomit and tears, screaming into the nothingness. The recoil from failing the forced teleportation tortured him in both body and soul. The sight of him squirming in agony didn’t show a hint of his usually heroic act. Unable to withstand the never-ending pain, he continued screaming.
Many monsters prowled these halls. It was extremely dangerous for him to spend so much time here wallowing in his pain. However, the agony easily wiped such thoughts from his brain. He didn’t have the willpower to withstand it. Ever since coming to this world, he’d never so much as suffered an injury. He was just that strong, after all. Having pretty much forgotten what pain felt like, this was enough to shatter his mind.
“Why...? Why do I have to go through this...?”
He no longer had the composure to make calm decisions. All he could do was curse the irrational fate that had befallen him.
“How dare you... How dare you... How dare you...”
Even if he deserved this for enacting the forced teleportation, he didn’t possess the capacity to admit it.
“Majima...!”
His thoughts focused entirely on venting his anger on someone else. He didn’t see it this way, though.
“How low do you intend to drag me down...?!”
Memories of his meeting with Majima Takahiro came to mind. Because of Majima Takahiro, he’d been falsely labeled as the culprit behind the attack on Draconia in front of the exploration team—that was how he saw it, at least.
“I was set up. They have no right...no right to look at me like that!”
Inside Okazaki Takuma’s mind, Draconia didn’t even exist. He just kept making excuses upon excuses to justify his actions. Still, he had a reason to believe this.
“People lived there?! Like hell that’s possible! Nobody said anything about that!”
He wasn’t lying. The visitors who’d attacked Draconia could be split into three groups: the visitors who’d received the dragon subjugation request from imperial nobles; Okazaki Takuma, who’d joined them last; and the ones who’d linked up with the first group, Jinguuji Tomoya and his comrades.
The three groups had split up their roles to an extent during the attack. In short, there was an advance group who’d launched a preemptive attack once the Dimensional Cornerstone that maintained the Mist Barrier was neutralized, and the main force who’d followed after them.
If there was any time to question Draconia being more than a den of monsters, it would’ve been in that first stage, before they blew up the settlement with magic and before the residents revealed their true nature as dragons. Okazaki Takuma had been in the main force that followed after, so he hadn’t been involved during that stage.
Seeing Okazaki Takuma wail on and on about not knowing any of this when Ella confronted him, Majima Takahiro’s group had concluded that he hadn’t taken part in the preemptive attack. They were right in this regard. However, they’d missed out on getting one other piece of the truth because Okazaki Takuma had been so immersed in trying to justify his actions.
“It’s all a lie. Majima set me up. I mean, Jinguuji and them didn’t say anything about that crap.”
Jinguuji Tomoya and his comrades had been the ones to launch the initial attack on Draconia. That had been a natural outcome. After all, faced with a barrier that only allowed dragons through, he’d been the only one capable of breaking through because of his ability to transform into a dragon.
However, if someone more prudent were to hear about this, they would’ve felt something was out of place. For example, the one to bring the tremendously powerful Almighty Vessel into this had also been Jinguuji Tomoya.
What’s more, because nobody had brought translation runestones, it’d been impossible for the residents of Draconia to explain themselves. However, as someone who’d been traveling the world on his own, Jinguuji Tomoya had been in possession of a translation runestone. Nevertheless, the assailants hadn’t realized the truth behind Draconia, and the dragons had been incapable of explaining themselves, ultimately leading to the tragedy.
Had that all been a coincidence? Naturally, it was possible Jinguuji Tomoya’s group had attacked the settlement immediately upon arrival and simply hadn’t noticed that Draconia was more than a monster’s den. However, that would also mean they hadn’t grasped the full picture of their targets, launching an attack so thoughtlessly that they hadn’t even considered any of their targets getting away. Was Jinguuji Tomoya really that careless a person? Or was he...?
“It’s all Majima’s fault. It’s not my fault.”
Still, that didn’t change the fact that over half of Draconia’s residents—intelligent beings who were half-human—had all been killed by Okazaki Takuma.
“It’s not my fault. It’s not my... Hrgh... Gaaah!”
With no intention of admitting his sins, he continued lamenting the misfortune that had befallen him, cursing Majima Takahiro’s name the whole time.
Just then, as Okazaki Takuma wiped his mouth, he suddenly turned around. Footsteps were drawing nearer to him.
“You’re...”
He sluggishly focused on the oncoming presence when his eyes shot open. In the next instant, he was cut down and fell dead to the floor.