Chapter 20: Just Be Honest

Chapter 20:
Just Be Honest

 

I’VE HEARD PEOPLE SAY that “names and natures often agree” before, but it didn’t really seem to be the case here. Good Guy’s occupation was “thief.” Was he one of the group of the thieves tormenting the village?

I wasn’t really sure what to do, so I quietly consulted with Emma and Luna.

“What the?! We need to tell everyone.”

“Shh, Lady Emma, we need to play it cool.”

“O-okay. So, Noir, what do we do?”

“Let’s approach nonchalantly and grab him.”

Emma and Luna nodded at my proposal. I was over Level 60 already, so Good Guy didn’t pose much of a threat. He didn’t have many skills at his disposal to get the upper hand either, but still, we needed to approach with caution. It’d be extremely annoying if he took a hostage.

“Chief, I do have one question for you.” I pretended we had something to talk to the chief about to get closer to Good Guy. I made an effort to keep my eyes on the chief, but Good Guy was pretty sharp. He was already trying to get away from us.

Had he figured us out? His eyes were guarded and his right hand was on the hilt of his sword. Not good. I was going to have to make my move. When Good Guy was away from the villagers, I pulled a knife from my Pocket Dimension and threw it.

“Guh! You noticed?!”

I aimed the knife at his feet, but Good Guy jumped out of the way. He was used to combat. You could tell from how he drew his sword with his right hand while firing off a Stone Bullet with his left.

“Take that!”

I wasn’t copying him, but I wasn’t going to take that nonsense lying down either, so I fired off a Stone Bullet of my own. I had the undisputed upper hand when it came to that duel. My shot easily knocked his off course and kept going in its trajectory toward him. Though of course it did, as my bullet was three times the size of his.

“What is that?! I’m not going down that easily!”

Good Guy readied his sword and raised it over head, slamming it into the stone racing toward his chest. He timed his strike just right and knocked the stone to the ground. I had to admit, my enemy was impressive.

Good Guy seemed surprised he’d pulled the maneuver off, but the surprise was quickly replaced with a smirk. Then it transformed into abject despair as—ka-pow!—Luna’s shot knocked Good Guy’s sword from his hand.

“You should never get too cocky.”

“Dammit all to hell…”

Good Guy tried to run, but he didn’t get one step before he tripped and fell flat on his face, thanks to Emma rushing in to trip him. Luna and I lunged forward to pin him down, and thus ended the battle.

It was at this point that the villagers started to freak out.

“Wh-what on earth is the meaning of this, Noir?!”

“Just calm down and hear me out, guys. I have an ability called Discerning Eye, and according to that, your Good Guy here is actually a thief.”

The crowd erupted into concerned chatter. I couldn’t blame them. I mean, someone they trusted had turned out to be a spy. Good Guy had seemingly given up, so he didn’t resist at all. In stark contrast, the village chief couldn’t believe it.

“Tell me it’s a lie, Good Guy. Were you deceiving us this whole time?”

“Ugh, they’re right, I was. I was sent to keep an eye on you. I’m one of them…”

It was a clever idea. The thieves were already checking on the village daily, so the villagers didn’t even consider there could be a second layer of surveillance. Good Guy conveyed information that his fellow thieves couldn’t get from the outside.

“Everything was an act to get you to like me.”

“Then why, Good Guy, why is your head hung in shame?!” the chief shouted, gripping Good Guy’s trembling shoulders. “You may be working as a thief, but…I know it is not who you are! Because if it were, you would have known of my act with the back medicine! Yet you didn’t report that to the other thieves!”

“I—I…”

Hey, that was right. If the chief got permission to leave the village, it must’ve been because Good Guy didn’t report any of his suspicions. So maybe the chief did have a point. Could Good Guy actually be supporting the villagers?

“We believe in you, Good Guy.”

“Yeah, you always did so much for us.”

Good Guy shut his eyes and shook his head. “No! No! No! No! No! I’m an evil person. I don’t care about you at all!”

“Good Guy, we know you aren’t a bad guy. I can’t believe all the days we spent together were a lie.”

“Like I said, I—”

“I’ve heard enough,” I said. “Let me handle the rest.”

I wanted to get the truth out of Good Guy. I also wanted to get intel on the enemy. I was going to Get Creative.

 

Speak From the Heart — 100 LP

Prevents the skill holder from lying, forcing them to voice their true feelings.

 

The only question was how much it would cost to Bestow it on him.

 

Good Guy + 200 LP

 

That was a lot less than I thought it would cost. Interestingly, it would have cost 300 LP for a number of the other villagers, and for some, the cost was well over four digits. Good Guy was probably never a very good liar to begin with.

I had close to 900 LP, thanks to Luna and Emma’s help, so I spent the 300 to Bestow the skill on him. That done, I came at him again: “Now, Good Guy, I’ve Bestowed a skill on you that prevents you from lying, so why don’t you tell everyone how you really feel?”

“Look, I already told you, I—I was always all alone… I had no family to speak of… About a year ago, I was wandering around and the head of the thieves asked me to join them. I became one of them so I could eat, but…I wasn’t suited to being a thief. So about six months ago, when they started talking about having someone keep watch on the town, I volunteered.”

Once someone joined a band of thieves, it wasn’t easy to extricate themselves. So, out of desperation, Good Guy became a spy.

“And once I started living here, people depended on me for the first time in my life. And it made me…happy! So happy! I had spent so much of my life alone, but everyone here was so kind to me. They called me a friend! Before I knew it I…I started to love this town and everyone in it!”

“Good Guy, Good Guy! We all feel the same way!”

The village chief hugged him and other villagers joined in. They were all absolutely dripping with tears and snot. People can be quick to cover up how they really feel with words, but sometimes, you just need to be honest.

I’d ask Good Guy about the location of thieves’ hideout later.

“Tigerson, are you crying?”

<Raarrr… Good Guy… I understand. I understand too well how you feel.>

“So it got to you too, huh?”

Tigerson had been alone for several hundred years. It wasn’t surprising that he felt pangs of sympathy for Good Guy’s plight.

Somewhat more surprisingly, Luna was also down on all fours, sobbing uncontrollably. “I could feel his emotions pouring into me. I’m so glad he found friends he could actually trust…”

“You were adventuring on your own for a while too, weren’t you, Luna?”

Both Luna and Tigerson had something in common with Good Guy. Emma, on the other hand, seemed unaffected.

“You’ve always been popular, haven’t you, Emma?” I asked.

“Oh, come on. That’s not true.”

“At school, not a day went by that you weren’t swarmed by boys.”

“That was just because of my chest.”

“I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s your innocent, cheery, and honest personality.”

“You’re no different, Noir!”

“I dunno, I have a pretty gloomy disposition, and I’m a coward. I’ve spent plenty of time alone, too…”

Changing classes at my old school had always caused me a lot of pain. I had no friends to begin with, so I could never feel comfortable in the classroom, and I struggled to figure out how to talk to the other students. While I was floundering, they made other friends and it got even harder. I’d gotten a lot more sociable since then, admittedly.

“I have some darkness in my heart too, you know,” Emma said.

“Sure you do.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?!” Emma puffed out her cheeks and immediately began to regale me with “dark” episodes from her past. They were all pretty light nonproblems, but I pretended to agree with her.

Once everything calmed down, Good Guy approached us, looking refreshed. “I haven’t felt so free in ages. Did you really give me a skill that stops me from lying?”

“Yup, I did. And I’ll erase it if you tell me what I want to know.”

“No! I don’t want to get rid of it. I want to live the rest of my life like this.”

I suppose the most important thing is to live true to yourself. Although, if you were as faithful to your own needs and desires as my master, you’d probably run into more than a little trouble. In any case, I listened closely to what the painfully honest Good Guy had to say.