I’m Sick of the Kind Protagonist, so I Might as Well Just Die - Chapter 11

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

#11
Sadly, I wasn’t even granted the luxury of discerning whether my body ached or my heart did. The moment the dagger pierced through me, everything froze.
Without conscious thought, I let the hand that had been pressed over my heart fall limply to my side, gazing blankly at the crystallized world around me.
The villagers, the High Minister, even the dust suspended in the air—all frozen in this moment. And there I stood, bleeding like a hedgehog pricked by the blades held by those I’d trusted most.
“What are you staring at so intently?”
Bilateia Fernichiosa Venisike seized my arm irritably and yanked me toward her. Taking her rebuke as a signal, Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis stepped in front of me. Bilateia kicked his shin—he was always a beat too slow—and called out to Silpi.
“What are you doing? We need to leave right now!”
“Huh…?”
“I’ve already completed the assignment the professor gave me! We’ve all seen what books this person obtained, how they read them, and how much they understood!”
Silpi nodded hesitantly under Bilateia’s momentum, stammering agreement. But I shook my head. I had believed this was my world, yet in this place called the ‘world,’ there was something I wanted to verify with my own eyes.
“I’m not leaving now. Even if I do, I want to confirm one more thing first.”
“What? What else do you want to see?”
Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis turned to me with a bewildered expression. I gazed up at the man whose head towered over mine like a great mountain and answered.
“Where you lived.”
“…”
“I ended up like this because I and the villagers did things we shouldn’t have. I want to see what you so-called ‘true heroes’ and ‘saints’ were doing at that time.”
Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis and Bilateia Fernichiosa Venisike bit their lips and exchanged cautious glances. After observing them briefly, I turned my body fully toward Silpi.
“Silpi, you guide me. Before your curse interferes, let me add this: it’s not my will. Your master ordered you to verify how much I understand the books I’ve read, didn’t she?”
“Uh…”
“After I see what I’m about to look at, observe how I react. According to your master’s wishes.”
She seemed about to protest, but after a moment’s thought, Silpi nodded.
“Sure, whatever. I actually enjoy it more the more you discover things.”
A surprisingly light answer came back despite the long hesitation. With that response, the scenery around us shifted once more.
“Wow…”
It was a temple of such colossal proportions that it made the Royal Palace I’d been standing in seem insignificant. The place was so magnificent that I could only release a long, foolish exclamation, my words failing me. The towering pillars of pure white marble reaching toward the heavens, the golden ornaments glittering brilliantly in the sunlight—I had never witnessed such beauty in all my life.
I was mesmerized by the way light filtered through the multicolored stained glass, casting delicate shadows across the intricate carvings that densely covered every surface. The flickering flames in golden candelabras added gentle undulations to the dazzling shower of light and color.
“This is the Central Temple of the Empire. It’s essentially the pinnacle of power.”
After Silpi’s explanation, Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis added in a small voice.
“I was… in there.”
A long index finger pointed deep into the temple. Urging the hesitant Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis forward with my eyes, I silently followed him down the corridor. As we passed through the ornate main hall and ventured into the sparsely populated inner sanctum, the surroundings grew increasingly luxurious.
“Huh.”
Seeing the thin layer of gold that covered the sculptures of saints carved seamlessly from wall to ceiling reflected in the pristine white marble floor below, I couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh. When we finally arrived at Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis’s chamber, I pushed past his hesitation and opened the door.
“Let me see how the true hero actually lived.”
I heard Bilateia Fernichiosa Venisike groan behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I had resolved not to be vulgarly shocked by whatever appeared, yet reality proved unforgiving.
“This can’t be serious. This is just one room?”
Leonas Hagpethar Yuletanis’s chamber was larger than the entire Inn where I had lived. The sunlight pouring through the enormous windows, the way it scattered softly across the golden ceiling high above, felt like a dream.
The reflected light naturally adorned the bed posts carved from ivory and ebony with a shimmer like the Milky Way across the embroidered canopy draped like an altar.
Even the bookshelves lining the bed were luxurious. The books with their fine leather bindings and gold-leaf decorations seemed like objects from an entirely different world compared to the worn volumes I had pored over until they were threadbare.
A desk made of material I couldn’t even identify, a reading lamp on that desk that glowed with magic instead of candlelight, an inkwell that changed color with each reflection of light.
“Even if we added ten more neighborhoods like ours, we still couldn’t afford this single room.”
Feeling oddly intimidated, I lowered my gaze and noticed the plush carpet beneath my feet. It was so densely woven and thick that even if I screamed and thrashed about here, no sound would escape. Only then did I become aware of the subtle fragrance of expensive musk permeating the entire room, mingled with the fresh scent of flowers drifting through the window cracks.
“Living in a place like this, one’s temperament would surely improve.”
I glanced briefly at Leonas, whose smile seemed awkward, before approaching the distinctive longsword leaning against the side of the desk. The blade’s name, engraved upon it, gleamed as if mocking me.
Basilect.
“Oh! I’ve seen this sword in a book! Isn’t it the blade that can sever anything in existence in a single stroke?”
“…Yes.”
“Then why haven’t you been using it? Why let it gather dust?”
“The sword hasn’t accepted me as its master yet.”
“Why? Aren’t you the hero destined to slay Silverdragoon?”
“On the day I was born, a revelation came down declaring me the fated hero who would slay Silverdragoon. That’s why I’ve continued living here instead of in the Imperial Palace—”
“Wow. And you’re even the Crown Prince.”
As I surveyed the life of a true hero, I turned my head to look back at Bilateia.
“He’s the hero, you’re supposed to be the saint, right? So you must have lived in this temple too?”
“Chronologically, I haven’t awakened as a saint yet. I’m playing the role of a lonely crown prince’s childhood friend as a novice priestess, and then we go on an adventure to defeat the dragon together and… well, that’s how it happens.”
I listened to Bilateia’s words while quietly pondering why I kept smirking. The answer wasn’t difficult to find.
“So what you’re saying is, you all enjoyed these privileges and lived comfortably, and the only thing that bothered you—the only injustice you felt—was simply failing to become heroes. For the people in my village, it was a matter of survival.”
“….”
“People who could live and eat without any hardship, and you treated me as though I deserved to die as a criminal?”
“Hey, no matter what anyone says, you always twist it that way….”
Silpi gently tried to stop me. I pressed on as if I’d been waiting for this moment, turning to the decapitated dragon. “I’m holding back the harsher words I want to direct at your master. Listen, compare the state of our village to this place side by side! People who struggled to survive in such conditions, and you call it a problem that they tried to live however they could? How am I supposed to accept being killed by a blade just now?”
“I’m holding back even harsher words for your master. Hey, think about it—compare our Village to this place side by side! You’re saying it’s a problem that people who struggled to survive in such conditions tried to live however they could! How am I supposed to accept this when I just died, exhausted by the sword?”
Silpi, Bilateia, and Leonas all quietly averted their eyes from me.
“Of course, I’m not unaware that what I’m saying right now sounds like childish whining. But what am I supposed to do about this sense of injustice? You have such a magnificent sword, yet you didn’t come swiftly to kill the dragon—you leisured about. Don’t you bear any responsibility for that? Not even a little? Really?”
In truth, I had tried to accept that I was at fault, that I had to balance something by dying. The world was inherently strange and unfair, after all.
But even so, there was no reason to inflict such cruelty upon the people of my village. That was precisely the source of my anger now.
Having furnished my irritation with a rather plausible excuse, I pointed more confidently toward the bookshelf with an outstretched hand.
“Why can’t you answer? Let me frame this to match the level of such distinguished scholars who’ve read so many books. Do you have the right to condemn choices made for survival due to economic inequality? You who neglected the opportunity cost. Answer me.”
In truth, from this point onward, it was the domain of that administrator, Perenustus or whoever, to handle. Not these mere children who hadn’t even graduated from the Academy.
‘If he went so far as to show me how I die, then isn’t it the manager’s job to clean up after this mess I’m making?’
My index finger, now carrying a more blatant grievance, jabbed toward Basilect and Leonas in turn.
“If you wanted to eliminate an error or a bug, you should have ordered this real hero to remove me with that magnificent sword. Not hand weapons to the people of my village and force them to stab their comrades. Wouldn’t it be far more efficient to fabricate some plausible false charge—treason or whatever—and eliminate me that way?”
“Right. I get it—comparing where you each lived side by side makes you feel wronged, and witnessing your own death shocked you deeply—”
“What do you get? Should I show you just how fatal a critical, catastrophic error can truly be?”
“Yes. That is precisely what I wish to see.”
Perenustus’s voice flowed from Silpi’s lips as she shook her head urgently.
The moment I heard that infuriatingly composed voice, rage surged to the crown of my head, and I seized Basilect, swinging it like a club.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————