"Understood. If I shall do, then I would greatly appreciate it if you did as you wish."
Lily said it without a moment's hesitation.
She lowered her holy staff and looked around at the villagers. Her face was as composed as ever.
It was a simple scale in her mind. Herself, a single priestess, against all these innocent people. Which side should weigh heavier. For her, there wasn't even anything to think about.
The villagers pressed their blades harder against their own throats, their smiles twisting.
"Fuhi! Fuhi! Fuhi! Fuhi!"
"Just as expected! Just as expected!"
"Humans are weak to this sort of thing!"
Damn it. They were acting like they'd already won.
Even mocked to their faces, Lily didn't flinch. She didn't even blink. Seeing her hold her duty like cold iron was honestly astonishing.
"I shall become this vessel1 of yours. In exchange, release the people of the village."
"Of course! Of course! Of course!"
There was nothing but malice in those smiles. They had no intention of releasing anyone.
Vessel, huh. Did that mean they would parasitize Lily too?
If this thing could use its host's power, that was bad. And Lily was a priestess of the Great Goddess Church. There was no better material to abuse.
I tried to stop her, but she answered me in a tiny whisper without moving her lips.
"I would greatly appreciate it if you ran, Lord Haruya."
"Huh?"
"If they need my body, they shall not kill me right away. I shall stall them by moving around the village."
"So I'm supposed to go call for help?"
"Yes. I have already sent word so the Church shall send a search party if I do not return by the appointed time. They may be in a nearby village even now."
Even with no memory of her past life, even with no experience, Lily had already found a way through. That was just like her.
Still, as always, her own life wasn't part of the equation.
It dragged me back to before I came back from death.
When a horde swarmed us on the road to the Dark Temple, Lily had said it in that same unchanging tone. Stay back and hold them here, Lord Hero, you go ahead.
I had believed she and the others would be fine. That was my judgment at the time.
But what if she had already been ready to throw her life away?
I can never check now. That adventure of the Heroes was erased from the world.
A muscular villager stepped toward Lily, grinning.
"Woman! Woman! A young woman vessel is worth doting on! The best!"
Something hot rose in my chest.
I'm angry. I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry. At the parasites. At myself.
And at her, for never changing.
"Woman! Woman! Don't you move-"
"Whoops! My hand slipped!"
I backhanded the big man. He flew more than ten meters, pinwheeled through the air, slammed into the inn wall, and went still.
"Sorry. My hand didn't slip. I meant it."
At that shameless line, the smiles dropped off every villager's face.
They jammed their weapons tighter against their necks.
"Human! Don't you care what happens to the hostages!? We'll kill them! Kill, kill, kill them!"
"Go ahead."
"Huh? What? What did you say?"
"I said go ahead and try."
"Why!? Why!? They're hostages!?"
Thrown by confusion, their control wavered and the villagers staggered.
The most shaken person there, though, was Lily.
"Ha, Lord Haruya!? What do you think you are doing!?"
Her language had gone rough. She was looking at me with pure contempt.
Fine. I never intended to be a convenient hero anyway.
What stood here was just a virgin adventurer - a man furious with the impossibly stubborn priestess named Lily Arsiana.
"How can someone who can't even save himself save anyone else!"
I can't count how many times I've scowled at Lily preaching about Heroes.
But more than that, I was furious at myself for never managing to build anything honest with her.
Lily will never change. So I won't ask her to change.
Then I'll just shove my own clinging, shameless desire right in her face.
"I'll save myself! I'll save myself so overwhelmingly you'll have to watch!"
I raised my sword boldly. The villagers actually stepped back from the pressure.
Determined not to waste the opening, I laid it all out.
"I have a dream!"
What came next was the truth without a filter.
The cry that had leaked out from the bottom of my soul when I stared at myself in front of death. I had already decided I wouldn't look away from it or lie about it.
"I want to build a harem and fool around with girls every single day!"
The villagers looked at each other.
Unable to process the words, they twitched into awkward smiles.
"Harem!? Thrust!?2 Harem!?"
The parasites lost their rhythm. Each villager started panicking on his own.
Yes! Peel back one layer and this is what humans are!
"No-strings fun! No drama, just fun!"
"What is this guy!?" "Scary!" "Gross!"
"And if I'm lucky, no responsibility3, all pleasure, just how I like it!"
At that far too naked confession, the parasites no longer knew how to react.
I also felt an ice-cold stare boring into me.
It was Lily. She had officially classified me as an enemy of women.
Yeah, that last line about responsibility probably did it. But come on. Don't you want to? I do! I really do!
I set my sword like I would cut down anyone standing in my way.
"If you get in the way of good, fun sex! I won't hold back at all!"
Finally seeming to understand what I was, the villagers wore faces of grim comprehension.
"So that's why hostages don't work on him!" "I get it now!"
"This guy! This guy! This guy!"
"He's human SCUM!"
I grinned back at them, defiant.
"Hah! And this scum is going to kill you dead! I'll wipe you out without leaving dust!"
My line made it unclear who the villain was anymore. The villagers turned their weapons away from their own necks and pointed them at me. At this rate they'd die, they must have thought.
Good. They'd taken a stance. Fools. Thanks to that, I could finally see the way out.
Lily was giving me a look that said I should just drop dead, so I closed in and kept my voice low.
"I killed the hostage tactic."
"...Is that what this was."
"The guy I launched isn't badly hurt, either."
"But... still..."
"You're a priestess, remember? Healing is your specialty, right?"
Her eyes said there had to have been another way.
Maybe there was a cleaner answer. Now wasn't the time to argue about it.
"These parasites seem pretty dumb. The second they realized I'd kill the hosts, they showed they wanted to fight back. That type takes damage itself when its host is hurt."
That was also why they'd hidden so clumsily in the village. They couldn't even manage tactics properly. If they'd gained more experience and grown, they might have been dangerous.
I said it to a thoroughly fed-up Lily.
"So, you fighting?"
"...Certainly."
Lily tightened her face and lifted her holy staff again.
The girl standing beside me after all this time told me, barely loud enough to hear.
"Lord Haruya."
"Hm?"
"I shall keep your advice in mind."
More or less, what I wanted to say had reached her.
After that moment of sentiment, I swung my sword in quick flashes. The air hissed, hissed. I cut wind, cut evil, swung as if to slice space itself. At last I threw one wide horizontal cut, and a clear ring sang out, as if the whole world had been cut.
The villagers closing in stopped and went wary.
That one swing told them I wasn't ordinary.
I will not kill innocent people.
But you evil things - let me show you a fraction of the Hero's, of my, true power. Before the light that lights the world, no wicked shadow can stand.
And one more thing.
"Come at me, you obstacles! I'll use you as the foundation for my shining harem!"
The crime of messing with my companion - that's a heavy one, you know?
Trivia:
1. Lily's offer to become the "素体" is calculated less from bravery than from a priestess's utilitarian calculus, weighing her own life against the innocent villagers without hesitation.
2. Haruya's recollection that Lily once told the Heroes to go on ahead before the Dark Temple attack hints that her self-sacrificing nature may have been genuine resolve rather than mere duty, a truth now forever unverifiable since the adventure was erased.
3. Haruya's deduction that the parasite takes damage when its host is harmed reveals his tactical cunning—he exploits the monster's low intelligence by intentionally provoking it into revealing its weakness.
Translation Notes:
1 ↩ In this context, a "vessel" or "host body" that a parasitic monster inhabits. The term carries dehumanizing connotations, reducing the person to raw material for possession.
2 ↩ An onomatopoeia for repetitive hip-thrusting motions. Used here as crude sexual slang, it conveys Haruya's blunt, unabashed lust in a way that is intentionally vulgar.
3 ↩ A censored form of "中出し" (creampie/ejaculation inside). The circled character is a common Japanese censorship convention for explicit sexual terms.
Notes:
• Haruya - Solo adventurer in the trading city of Gran Neal, formerly the Holy Hero who defeated the Demon King Chronova. Maintains a bronze-rank adventurer status deliberately to avoid responsibility and attention. Slim-built young man in plain breast armor with a longsword and a large hip pouch of adventuring tools. Harbors a singular life goal of losing his virginity at a high-class brothel and building a harem, a dream he loudly declared at guild registration, earning him infamy among female adventurers while being well-liked by male adventurers for his candid lewd talk. Secretly a returnee from death who deliberately destroyed his hero-route reputation.
• Lily Arsiana - Priestess of the Great Goddess Church with waist-length translucent silver hair and a slender, small frame. A devout, strong-willed follower whose loyalty to the Hero borders on fanaticism, she possesses strength exceeding Silver-Iron rank and wields a holy staff with healing magic. Orphaned by an evil dragon, she formerly educated Haruya.