“Goddammit, what exactly am I supposed to do then?!” I demanded, glaring at the dungeon’s walls.
Even if I put aside the moral implications of leaving a party of young adventurers to die when I had the power to save them, the entire world of Braves and Blades might collapse if someone as important to the story as the protagonist ended up dying.
There’s only one true option open to me, I realized after a while. I have to stop the protagonist from unsealing the demon.
I’d visited the Cavern of Trials on multiple occasions when I’d been playing the game, so I still had a pretty good idea of its layout. And...
If I rush straight to the Room of Seals, I might be able to get there just before the protagonist and his party do.
If I did that, there was still a risk that I’d fuck up the story, to be frank, but at this point I didn’t care.
Sorry guys, but I’m no hero—I’m just a regular office worker. I’m not cut out for fighting demons or saving the world. But actually...that leads me to a great idea. After I stop the protagonist from breaking the demon’s seal, why don’t I just teach him everything he needs to know about this world? If I do that, he can save it for me!
Suddenly, things really felt like they were looking up.
First things first, I thought, I’ve gotta find the protagonist.
Fortunately for me, I’d already gleaned my exact location within the Cavern of Trials. The open treasure chest I’d been staring at ever since I’d woken up in this dungeon was the perfect landmark.
There’s only a single room in this whole dungeon that has a treasure chest, I thought. When you first enter the dungeon, the path splits into three different directions, and you reach the treasure chest by going down the center path. Which means...that that little crevice over there is a shortcut that leads directly to the Wyvern’s Promenade. And that means the shortest route to the protagonist is...that way!
There wasn’t a moment to lose. Trusting my memories, I dashed through the dungeon at top speed.
❈❈❈
“This isn’t good...” I muttered a few minutes later.
I hadn’t run into any traps along the way to the Room of Seals, or any monsters for that matter. Unlike many other games, in Braves and Blades monsters didn’t respawn after they were killed. Which meant that the protagonist’s party had already gone through the portion of the dungeon I was traversing.
Are they moving faster than they normally do in the game? I wondered.
I might have been just a regular office worker in my past life, but now that I’d reincarnated into Rex’s body, I was in peak physical condition. And yet, despite the fact that I’d made record time racing through the dungeon, I’d still yet to see hide or hair of the protagonist’s party.
It wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of puzzles and hidden doors in the Cavern of Trials to occupy a player’s time—it might be a tutorial dungeon where the risk of dying was low, but traveling through it could still be a time sink. Knowing this, I’d thought I’d be able to catch up to the protagonist’s party pretty much immediately. I mean, I was already fully aware of all this dungeon’s tricks. But the truth of the matter was that all I’d managed to do so far was pass by room after empty room.
If they’re not in the next room, the only one left is the Room of Seals, I thought.
Doing my best to keep my impatience in check, I flung open the door to the last room in the hall. As I’d expected, it was just as empty as all the others. There were, however, traces of combat still lingering in the room, so it was clear the party I was looking for had battled monsters here pretty recently.
“Shit!” I muttered.
They got here way too fast! Could the unleashing of the demon be one of those events that the game forces to happen no matter what?
Hoping against hope that that wasn’t the case, I sprinted across the room and into the twisting corridor on the other side. I raced my way down the winding path at such a high speed that the me of my past life would have never been able to even come close. And then, finally, I rounded a corner and reached the open space at the end of the corridor.
There they are! I shrieked internally, my eyes locking on to the two boys and two girls who stood in front of a wall covered with incomprehensible murals. The two boys were standing in front, their hands stretched out in front of them as they reached over to run their fingers over the seal.
“Stoooooooop!” I yelled as loudly as I could.
But unfortunately, my warning came too late. Though my shout startled the boys, their hands still finished the journey toward the seal. The seal that, upon being touched by one who possessed the correct nature, would shatter. I cringed internally. Any moment now, it was going to break, unleashing an ancient demon upon the world. Except...it just didn’t.
“H-Huh?” I stammered, my dazed eyes stuck on the sight of the two boys’ hands pressed against the seal. “Wh-Why isn’t it breaking?”
Naturally, there was no answer. The group of four just stared blankly at me like I was a weirdo.
Wait, I thought, mind spinning. The seal’s supposed to shatter the moment the protagonist touches it! Why isn’t anything happening?! One of those boys has to be the one who matches the qualifications to be a hero, which is what triggers the demon to break free!
And yet, despite the fact that the boys’ hands had touched the seal right before my eyes, it remained utterly unchanged.
Did I miss something? Am I forgetting how the event goes?
My eyes scanned over the two girls and two boys in front of me, looking for clues. From what I could tell, the group of adventurers in the Room of Seals were of the exact same number as the protagonist’s party, and had the same party composition—there was a female archer, a male magician, a female healer, and a male swordsman, who should be the protagonist himself.
In which case, the moment that young swordsman touched the seal, it should’ve been all over. Unless...he’s not the protagonist?
I hadn’t considered that, but it was a possibility. The true protagonist of this version of BB’s plot might not be the character that started with the backstory of being a young boy who dreamed of being an adventurer. Even though I’d woken up as Rex in a location that matched the progression of that storyline, that didn’t mean that this particular boy was the protagonist.
Maybe the protagonist of this particular rendition of Braves and Blades is from one of the other six possible backstories, I mused. Now that I think about it, Rex would still appear in the young boy storyline even if the player didn’t choose that backstory for their character. The player might not get to experience it, but Rex and the fledgling adventurer’s story arc would still go through the same series of events. They’d just be happening in the background of the main plot.
The world suddenly felt as if it had righted itself. As long as I operated under the assumption that this boy was just a regular adventurer and not BB’s chosen protagonist, everything still made sense. But...it also made things a lot more annoying. If this boy wasn’t the protagonist, it had to be one of the other six characters, and they all started in completely different locations. Plus, once they finished their introductory stories, there was no way of knowing what any of them would do next. I would literally have to travel around the world looking for someone with protagonist-y traits.
I guess I don’t have to find the protagonist, strictly speaking... I thought glumly. But I can’t help but feel slightly freaked out that I don’t know who they are.
As I was agonizing over what to do next, one of the adventurers stepped forward and snapped, “Hey, old man!”
“O-Old man?!” I exclaimed reflexively.