There was a voice I sometimes heard faintly.
‘Samael, you must become a good person…….’
A voice that still sounded vivid even now.
‘You must become a good person…….’
I heard it so many times because she'd told me so many times.
‘Samael…….’
Mother wasn't a strong person, but neither was she someone who cried.
That was the first and last time in my life that I ever saw her cry.
Why had Mother said those words?
Probably because Father had been executed for being a bad man, and she hoped that I, who shared his blood, wouldn't become the same.
‘Samael, you must become a good person…….’
Those words were also her final wish.
Following Mother's words, I became a guard.
Because I wanted to become a good person.
To step forward and protect the weak.
To give bread to the hungry.
To keep my promises and my conscience.
And to never turn my eyes away from injustice.
“…….”
Around then, I woke up.
I felt terrible.
EP6 ― At the Military Parade (1)
If there was one fortunate thing, it was that I'd diligently kept my hood on.
My glasses were back beneath the hood as well.
At present, Parthenon was the only person who knew my bare face.
And I could say with certainty that no one had seen me with my glasses off and my hair swept back.
‘I've already got enough problems. Let's not get dragged into something even bigger for no reason.’
I made a firm decision.
I would treat my resemblance to Leader Bael as nothing more than a minor incident and move on.
And I would absolutely never remove my glasses and sweep my hair back.
‘Still, once today's event is over, I probably won't have many reasons to stand in front of crowds anymore.’
The military parade of the Northern Count's army.
“Everyone, rise!! Elder Ermasa of the Spider Society is entering!!”
Hundreds of gangsters and soldiers had gathered across the vast parade ground.
And I entered among them, limping along with my cane.
“Waaaaaaaaah!!”
“Waaaaaaaaah!!”
An explosive roar of cheers erupted in an instant.
“Ermasa! Ermasa!”
“Ermasa! Ermasa!”
“Ermasa! Ermasa!”
Thousands of people began chanting my alias.
‘…….’
It was the first time in my life I'd received such overwhelming attention.
I walked leisurely toward a bench near the reviewing stand, as though their fervor didn't faze me in the slightest.
“Welcome.”
To my left sat Count Hamuan.
His loyal adjutants.
High-ranking officers of Eden.
And the bosses of various gangster organizations in Gesenna.
To my right sat Black Knight Parthenon.
Once again, I sat in what seemed to be a special seat and watched the regular army of the Count's household and the organization members of the Republic of Evil display their strength.
“The Venom Assassination Squad.”
“Whoa. What the hell are their bodies made of, cotton candy?”
“Get caught by bastards like those and you'd reach the afterlife before you even realized you were dead….”
More than 10 masked assassins stepped through empty air and flew across the sky.
“Bakitan! That's the Bakitan that blew away the gates of Heydin Fortress, right?”
“Incredible…! I never imagined a cannon that enormous could exist!”
BOOM!
One of the largest magic tools on the continent shuddered before firing a ceremonial blast into the sky.
“L-L-Lemegeton…!!”
“Uwooooh! This is insane! Those are supposed to be the most beautiful women in Eden?!”
Beautiful women with their mouths covered appeared and began dancing.
Lemegeton was an overseas performance troupe composed of Eden's beauties, and the crowd's reaction to their dancing was explosive.
“Uwaaaah!”
“That's insane!”
The earlier performances had been spectacular too.
They didn't even seem to have prepared that much, yet simply doing what they normally did was impressive enough to make my eyes widen.
But the real spectacle began afterward.
― Regional Public Enemy ‘Dark Mage’ has entered!
The announcer shouted.
The greatest fighting forces possessed by each organization in the Northern Alliance began appearing.
A mage dressed entirely in black stepped forward and created a pitch-black sphere in the air.
“It's 「Black Hole」 magic! Terrifying…!”
From this point on, even I began admiring them sincerely.
To think I'd ever see ‘Regional Public Enemies’ I'd only encountered through rumors and reports from this close….
It was as shocking as the first time I'd met a Count.
“Isn't that the ‘Lightning Mage’?”
“Those Hermode bastards. I wondered how they won so easily, but they had the ‘Ghost’…. To think a human can actually turn invisible….”
“That's the Regional Public Enemy ‘Necromancer.’ Good God! Never thought I'd live to see this many Regional Public Enemies in one place!”
Criminals with individual bounties ranging from 1,000 to several thousand gold appeared one after another.
Each stepped forward when the announcer called them and demonstrated their martial might.
I glanced over.
The Count's eyes were gleaming.
Apparently he coveted them.
Obtaining even one Regional Public Enemy like those would enormously strengthen his position.
“Waaaaaaaaah!!”
“Uwaaaaaaaah!!”
The gangsters and soldiers of the Northern Alliance went wild, their morale multiplied a hundredfold.
That was probably exactly what this military parade had been prepared for.
‘What is this….’
Meanwhile, I felt awful.
‘Something about this feels fucking wrong….’
I'd been impressed when they first appeared.
But in the end, weren't all those Regional Public Enemies criminal bastards who had plunged civilians into suffering?
‘The Lightning Mage is a bank robber. I don't know about the Ghost, but the Dark Mage is a murderer who's killed a whole lot of people.’
Now that I thought about it—
they were all complete bastards.
So why the hell was everyone cheering so happily?
The culmination came at the end.
― Aribel of Diablo now enters!
At the announcer's words, a woman wearing her uniform crookedly appeared in the center of the parade ground.
Small in both height and build.
Short pink hair.
A liquor bottle balanced on top of her head.
And finally, a face wearing the ‘Mask of Diablo.’
She wasn't a Regional Public Enemy.
She was the Enemy of the State, ‘Witch’ Aribel of Diablo.
A member of ‘Diablo,’ the guardian organization of the Republic of Eden—
and one of Eden's strongest Asymmetric Forces.
In other words—
Sitri's comrade.
“Hmm,,,@ Hm-hmm@@♬”
Aribel staggered in as though drunk, waving at the crowd.
A bright smile was plastered across her lips.
Then she raised her staff and shook it with a jingle.
Wind suddenly poured down from the sky, pushing against my skin.
And something enormous descended and settled onto the ground.
THOOOOOOM―
It was an unbelievably huge reptile.
“An Imugi!!”
“A-An Imugi!!”
The roughly 10-meter-tall Imugi raised its head toward the sky and roared.
ROOOOOAR―!!
The thunderous sound rose high into the heavens, bringing fear crawling across the skin and sending shudders through everyone who heard it.
“Yaaaaaaaaah!”
“Waaaaah! Aaaagh!!”
Not a Regional Public Enemy—
an Enemy of the State.
One of the vilest villains alive, someone who had spent her life killing countless people.
Yet even when a demon like that appeared, the crowd did nothing but cheer.
“Tear the southern bastards' flesh apart and crush their bones!”
“Twist the Public Security Agency's necks off!”
“Kill them! Kill them!”
Suddenly, I felt an intense sense of alienation.
It felt as though I'd stepped into a place where I should never have come.
What the hell was I doing here?
‘What is this?’
Until recently, I'd been nothing more than a crippled low-ranking guard getting chewed out by my seniors for being bad at my job.
I put on the wrong clothes once—
and somehow became a gangster.
I followed the wrong person once—
and somehow became the owner of a meat-noodle shop.
I struggled desperately to survive—
and somehow got mistaken for an Elder of the Spider Society.
And now I was sitting here putting on airs among thousands of criminals.
Something was wrong.
Something……
Just as I thought that, an incident occurred.
― The next event is the execution of Guard prisoners.
At the announcer's words, the organization members shouted.
“Kill them! Kill them!”
“Tear those fucking bastards apart!!”
The execution of Guard prisoners?
I was seriously flustered, stumbling over my thoughts.
They're executing guards?
Why?
The gangsters sitting in front of me chuckled.
“Those shitty Guard pig bastards. They think they're the only ones who know how to hold executions?”
“Things were fucking miserable for 3 months after Brother Tir got his head chopped off.”
“Good. Let's cut all the Guard bastards' heads off while we've got the chance!”
Right.
Execution ceremonies were events held by the Guard.
And they were events enjoyed by civilians all across the world.
Just like when my father had been beheaded on an execution platform.
The criminals had apparently held a grudge over that.
And with the Civil War underway, they'd decided to hang the Guard in return.
‘These fucking bastards…….’
Slowly, anger began boiling up inside me.
― Guard prisoners are entering.
At the announcer's words, 5 guards were soon brought onto the guillotine platform.
They wore familiar clothes.
The standard Imperial Guard uniform I had always worn.
Every one of them looked terrified.
― First. Dog of Gesenna. Mid-Rank Guard Olaf. He killed 3 members of the Haman Bandit Gang.
“Boooo! You fucking bastard!”
“Kill him! Kill him!”
The Mid-Rank Guard looked around at us with a face steeped in terror.
― The sentence will now be carried out.
Amid the shouting organization members—
the guillotine fell.
Something soon rolled across the ground.
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”
My breath caught.
Goosebumps rose along my arms.
What is this?
What the hell is this?
Why am I sitting here watching an event where guards are being killed?
Only then did my current position truly sink in.
In the end—
I'd become a villain.
And not merely a villain.
A high-ranking villain revered by all these countless villains.
I'd ended up in the exact same position as the father I'd hated.
I didn't want this.
This was exactly what I hated.
This was why I'd become a guard in the first place.
― Second. Dog of Gesenna. Mid-Rank Guard Dmush. Captured after launching a surprise attack on Kurshapa.
― The sentence will now be carried out.
Another man's head was severed.
It's fine.
Just accept things as they flow.
I kept telling myself that.
But at some point, I abruptly stopped and faced the question rising from inside me.
「 Who am I? 」
Once, I'd tried to let the question go.
If I didn't know who I was, then perhaps I could simply accept that I was ‘someone who doesn't know who he is.’
In the end, that had only been avoidance.
The tangled mess was dizzying and complicated, so I'd merely put a lid over it because I didn't want to look.
At another point, I'd decided to think of myself as ‘something like a chameleon,’ changing myself to fit whatever life demanded at the time.
Wouldn't that be enough?
Not everyone had to live proudly and magnificently while knowing exactly who they were.
Somewhere in the world, shouldn't there also be people like me, who simply lived by changing colors from place to place?
‘No.’
I wasn't a chameleon.
I'd never disguised my colors because I enjoyed it.
I wasn't born as someone who had to live by changing colors.
It wasn't natural to me.
I'd simply lived that way because, at every moment, it felt like I'd die if I didn't adapt.
And now—
watching these guards die before me—
that old question brought me intense pain once more.
「 Who am I? 」
I still didn't know the answer.
― Third. Dog of Gesenna. Mid-Rank Guard Hikan of the Gesenna Fifth Provincial Guard. Captured while attempting to flee.
Huh?
That was when a familiar name was called.
The Fifth Provincial Guard—
that was the Guard unit I'd belonged to.
And Hikan…….
“P-Please spare me!!”
It was my immediate senior.
‘Hikan Redrock.’
The bastard who used to torment me every day, calling me a cripple and worse.
Why the hell is he here?
I was startled.
But I didn't show it outwardly.
Then the very fact that I wasn't showing it startled me all over again.
A guard had been captured by criminals and was about to die—
yet another guard watching him had to sit there without reacting.
“Please…! Just spare my life…!”
Hikan's screams amplified the pain inside me.
Then—
his eyes landed on me.
WHOOOOSH!
A powerful gust of wind blew through.
My hood lifted for just a moment.
Perhaps because he knew he was about to die, every one of his senses had begun working desperately.
Hikan's eyes widened.
“Huh?”
Oh, fuck.
“Huuh―!?”
Hikan pointed straight at me and screamed as though having a fit.
“You, you!”
The entire audience fell silent.
“You! I know you!! Why are you here!?”
At those words, every gaze in the audience—
and every person participating in the military parade—
turned toward me.
I reflexively turned my head toward Parthenon.
“???”
Parthenon flinched.