DAY 25: MORNING

DAY 25

MORNING

If I burn the nerds, will I finally be able to escape from this circle of questioning?

THE LADY FINGER BOUDOIR

 

I GOT ONE HELL of a lecture last night. It started late at night and continued all the way through sunrise and into morning. In fact, this mighty lecture was still ongoing. They surrounded me completely. Maybe I could escape if I torched a few of them. What if I just torched the nerds? They could do with a good grilling—I never wanted to save them in the first place! I’ll just burn them a little; I think that’s fair!

They wouldn’t lay off. I tried to tell them, but they refused to listen. It was the best solution to an awful situation! I really was the only one who could handle him!

They blamed me for everything that had gone wrong. But why? That Kawashita-kun or whoever was the real villain!

Then they confiscated the rest of my funds. That was going too far!

I tried my best to save everyone, and this is how you repay me?!

Class Rep had called one of her meetings to session. The nerds told me that they weren’t planning on rescuing me. Sheesh, can’t you think before you talk for once?! I’d hunt them later. Maybe give their scalps a little scorching.

The meatheads were predictably stupid, and that was fine. I didn’t expect anything else.

“So, what happened?” the Class Rep asked me. “Why couldn’t they touch him?”

“Oh, he meddled with their nervous system, or something.”

Meddle, Illusion, and Inflict Ailment—no one could have defeated that combination normally.

“And how was he stealing everyone’s abilities without Hijack?” Class Rep asked.

I shrugged. “Hmm? Oh, he was using Copycat to copy everyone’s powers.”

That was why no one was on the lookout for him. He was able to plan without attracting anyone’s attention, which is why it all worked out.

“He must’ve had so many skills,” Class Rep said. “He killed thirteen of us.”

“I think he had Magic-Proof, Power Word Kill, Inflict Ailment, and Illusion. Maybe some other things?”

It was the perfect combination to kill our classmates, leveraging their overpowered skills against them. His plan was precise, plotted out so he acquired everything in a specific order. At the last minute, he had to change it up and improvise, and that’s what finished him.

“But why were you the only one who could handle him?” Vice Rep B asked.

They’re swaying—no, nothing! I’m not looking at anything! I swear!

I said, “Isn’t it obvious? He turned himself into a Cheat Slayer, but I don’t have any cheat skills.”

Everyone finally understood.

Cheat skills were automatic, instinctual. They were powerful but not consciously controlled. If you had one, you could use it. But I did everything the hard way, so I had nothing he could copy. None of my skills worked automatically—I had to figure them out myself. His plan never could have worked. He was screwed no matter what.

“We fought in front of the cave, so I think my Shut-In ability protected me, too,” I said. “Come to think of it, that’s probably why I never died in the forest even though I was such a weakling.”

I had to go back to the cave and establish that it was my true home. I wouldn’t have been able to defeat him or even survive anywhere else.

“I thought he was a genius at first, but he was just a regular idiot. He could’ve overwhelmed me if he used up all his cheat skills at once. But if he did that, he wouldn’t have had any cheat skills left to use on the rest of you! The way I see it, he was doomed no matter what he did, right?”

The meatheads put up a good fight and exhausted some of his skills. That’s why he killed his remaining friends and stupidly decided to go after me instead. If he’d killed the meatheads and stolen their skills, or if he had just gone scorched earth on me instead of hoping the odds would work in his favor, he would’ve won.

What’s-his-face tried to overstep his role as a background character by trying to become the protagonist. In the end, he was killed by another background character without even becoming a proper background character himself. We should’ve destroyed each other, but he wore himself out instead.

He didn’t even show up until the story was almost over. We were all minor characters, props for someone else’s epic tale. I was supposed to be Classmate A, messing with goblins in the forest until Classmate B killed me. Then he’d lose his powers and get killed by monsters without ever leaving the forest. That’s what our story was supposed to be.

I was just a minor character, but aristocrats and heroes kept dragging me into important stuff. Even those guys didn’t think of themselves as heroes, unlike him. This story broke because he thought he was the most important person in it. The story snapped apart…but I survived.

 

In this fantasy world, in this world of swords and sorcery, where none of the natural laws were the same, he was foolish enough to believe that one still equaled one.