Let’s put on our thinking caps. First on my list was obviously Ighnoa. He was the previous previous demon king, who had also been considered the strongest. According to the stories, he hadn’t been able to kill the heroes who kept getting summoned, so after hundreds of years of plundering and invasion, he’d finally died of old age, and peace had descended upon the world.
Magic tools had existed back then, but they’d only begun to be really produced after his death, bringing about the kinds of magic tools that existed today. Ighnoa had left a deep mark on history. Apparently, when the previous demon king had risen to power, humans had remembered Ighnoa and fell into despair. They’d wanted to surrender immediately without even summoning heroes. The only country that had summoned heroes was the Maccad Empire. The previous heroes had taken out the demon king by themselves, and had then been revered for it. To this day, Ighnoa was still spoken of as a symbol of death and despair.
Now, though, he was apparently a hood-wearing, alcohol-drinking, guild-hated adventurer. But what was he? Was he friend or foe? I couldn’t tell. If he was just as bloodthirsty as he’d been in the stories, then there was no point in him being here. There was no need for him to hide. He could easily crush country after country. All the same, it was hard to think of him as completely harmless, or as an ally.
If he wanted to live in peace, there had to have been better ways. He didn’t have to tolerate an adventurers’ guild that hated him. And there was a part of his stats that had bothered me. I recalled his stats with Photographic Memory.
Yep, there it is. “Reincarnated” and “Salaryman.” Was it possible that he’d been reincarnated from his life as a salaryman in Japan? The term “salaryman” wasn’t an English word; rather, it was a Japanese one. Maybe titles didn’t really have anything to do with language, though. After all, people in this world used words like “ex,” so it was possible that the etymology wasn’t significant. Either way, it was a great possibility that he was formerly Japanese.
It was hard to imagine a former Japanese person becoming a ruthless slaughterer. How could he keep his Japanese values and become a tyrant? Getting pleasure out of slaughter was already hard to imagine...but going as far as to become a tyrant on top of that? Hm? What about me? Well, I can see myself doing it. So there might be other Japanese people like me. Then again, there was no guarantee that he was also Japanese.
The next thing I wanted to think about was that elf...Furuth, or whatever her name was. She’d approached me once, so I could probably expect her to approach me again—hopefully at night. If she did, then at least I could hypnotize her. If I could manage that, then everything else would be taken care of. I had to wait for her to make contact with me again, though. I’d decide what to do after that.
Then, there was the Hero of Lust (my nickname for him). I decided to skip thinking about him, though, even if Sister Sensei was in danger. After all, her problems weren’t my problems.
The bigger thing weighing on my mind was what to do against the gods. I could slip into the church at night and examine the rock again. Maybe I could even use Conqueror on it. Appraisal had worked on it, so maybe Skills from other worlds would work on it too? The probability was high, and all I had to do was get the eyes of the church off the chapel. But could I get around the eyes of the heavens? Probably not.
Now that I had my thoughts in order, I could finally sleep. I felt my consciousness drifting away.
I could tell that night had fallen by the way that my body immediately perked up. Even though it had been pining for sleep mere minutes before, it now rejected any further thought of it. I was beyond pissed.
I was in the process of begrudgingly opening my eyes and getting up, but stopped when I sensed an unusual presence in my room. Had I left the door unlocked? That was entirely possible, considering how out of it I was and how much I’d been struggling to fall asleep. It was conceivable that, because of that kerfuffle, it’d slipped my mind to lock the door. How could I have messed up this badly?
As soon as I started freaking out about a potential intruder, however, I recognized the presence in my room. It was Ariya. Jeez, way to scare me! I used Clairvoyance to look at her while keeping my eyes closed. It felt kinda weird having eyelids when one of my abilities basically circumvented part of their reason for existing...but whatever, that’s not worth talking about right now.
Ariya, for her part, was simply standing in place, looking at me. Neither making an effort to move closer nor away, she continued to stand at an awkward distance and watch me sleep. She seemed to be thinking about something. Uh, seriously, what is this about?
No matter how long I waited, though, she didn’t move a muscle. It was like she was frozen in place. Maybe it’s time for me to wake up.
“What’s up, Ariya?” I asked, opening my eyes. She jumped a little, and I could tell from the look on her face that she was both surprised and flustered. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
It’s obviously not nothing. She’d been staring intently at me while I was “asleep,” but now that I was awake, she couldn’t look me in the eye. The change in her behavior hadn’t happened overnight either. We hadn’t been around each other as much over the past few days, and somehow things had gotten kind of weird with her. More specifically, she’d been acting strangely towards me. I had a feeling I knew what she was being weird about, but if I was wrong...it’d be so embarrassing.
“So...are you still hung up on what Sister Sensei—I mean, Fanatique said? You shouldn’t be. Just forget it.”
“What she said...?” Confused, Ariya didn’t seem to grasp what I was getting at.
“When she said that you liked me.” It felt awkward being the one to say it.
Ariya froze for a second before blinking and turning as red as a tomato. “I told you, I—”
“I don’t know how you’ve felt about me up till now, but you’ve been acting weird around me ever since she said that.” It was the only explanation I could come up with. Ariya’s face turned a deeper shade of red. “Romance and lust go hand in hand—they feed off of each other. Plus, we’ve been together every day for the past month. It’s not weird for you to have started being conscious of me as a guy.”