I’m Sick of the Kind Protagonist, so I Might as Well Just Die - Chapter 20

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

#20
Perenustus raised his eyebrows sharply—a silent urge to continue. Bilateia swallowed hard and pressed on with greater confidence.
“Aurelia is a quintessential hero. She instinctively gravitates toward the weaker side between strong and weak, toward justice between good and evil, and finds meaning in her life by overcoming the world’s greatest obstacles.”
“Hmm.”
“So Aurelia needs a final adversary to defeat for everyone’s greater good. Someone like Silverdragoon.”
“You’re not asking me to die again, are you?”
Silpi, who’d been listening with growing disdain, flew directly in front of Bilateia’s face. She shook her head firmly in denial.
“The Professor designated a target for Aurelia to pursue. She simply forgot about it while becoming too immersed in the world. That’s why I cautiously suspect the Professor’s current anger stems from precisely that oversight.”
Perenustus, who’d been listening intently to Bilateia’s words, slowly nodded and rose to his feet.
“Bilateia’s assessment is exactly right. Aurelia tends to take my words far too lightly. If she has commitments to me, she shouldn’t become this absorbed in the world’s characters while neglecting me.”
He spoke with genuine exasperation, then approached Bilateia and handed Aurelia to her. As Bilateia instinctively caught her, Perenustus nodded with a slightly softened expression.
“I’m counting on you going forward, Bilateia. It seems my mission will require your assistance quite often.”
With only those words, he left the classroom. Silpi, who’d been glancing between the two students and her master, clicked her tongue and disappeared after Perenustus.
After the door closed, silence lingered in the classroom for a long time. Aurelia’s limp weight in Bilateia’s arms grew heavier with each passing moment.
After a considerable pause, Leonas carefully took Aurelia from her and finally spoke.
“Sometimes watching you makes me think: so this is what maturity looks like.”
“Are you really going to start criticizing me for being older now?”
“No, that’s not what I meant…”
Leonas, flustered, simply closed his mouth and slumped his shoulders. Bilateia walked to a long sofa in the corner of the classroom and patted its cushions firmly.
Leonas, still searching for a response, simply kept quiet and carefully laid the sleeping Aurelia on the sofa. Both of them stared at Aurelia, who slept as though dead, words abandoning them.
“Damn it. Sitting here like this just makes us more anxious. Say something, anything.”
After a long silence, Bilateia finally snapped and urged Leonas forward. He, who’d been rolling his eyes trying to break the awkward quiet, was actually relieved and opened his notebook. The rustling of turning pages echoed through the silent classroom.
“What we’ve confirmed this time is that death doesn’t correlate with the total amount of tragedy.”
“Skip what we already know. I’m the top student too.”
“…And Aurelia possesses a far more distinct sense of self than we realized.”
“Stop being annoying and explain it simply.”
Bilateia shot him a sharp look, her brow furrowed.
“You get irritated when I say something you already know, and irritated when I explain something you don’t…”
“If you don’t want to hear complaints, then you should be perceptive enough to handle things properly on your own. Can’t even the top student manage that?”
Leonas glanced sideways at her and let out a long sigh. Then he turned his notebook around and showed it to Bilateia.
“Look here. The fluctuations in comedy-tragedy totals are entirely dependent on Aurelia’s will. In this world, because Aurelia followed Rowan’s intentions rather than her own, those cylinder changes weren’t as dramatic, right?”
“So basically, we need to properly support Aurelia’s level of immersion going forward?”
“Exactly. As the Professor intended.”
Bilateia’s brow furrowed deeper. An independent world. Aurelia as an anomaly. The comedy-tragedy totals. Silverdragoon’s curse. Every single obstacle was formidable.
“This is frustratingly complicated. If she stays true to her own will, Silverdragoon’s curse prevents it from working out. If she immerses herself in the world, the comedy-tragedy totals don’t accumulate properly.”
Leonas sighed in agreement and gazed down at the sleeping Aurelia.
“By the way, Bilateia.”
“What.”
“What does it mean that a dragon is needed to wake Aurelia? You’re not seriously asking us to create an actual dragon, are you?”
She shook her head and pointed her index finger upward, past the ceiling, toward something far beyond.
“Above us. Above the Professor. The entity that commanded the High Minister to issue the oracle—the one who ordered Aurelia’s death.”
Leonas’s eyes widened. His gaze pierced through the ceiling Bilateia had indicated. Nothing was visible, yet he knew something existed there.
“Don’t you remember the promise the Professor and Aurelia made? You heard it too—why are you acting like you don’t know? They agreed that if Aurelia destroys those above, the villagers would be restored.”
“Wait, you’re seriously saying they’ll touch the Ancient Gods…? Betting everything on a single variable named Aurelia?”
“That’s exactly why the Professor is so obsessed with her.”
“Ha.”
Leonas’s hollow laugh trembled in his throat. The pen in his hand quivered faintly.
“Well, the actual confrontation will fall entirely to Aurelia. The Professor seems fully committed to supporting her, so we’ve simply backed the wrong horse—catastrophically wrong.”
Bilateia’s eyes darkened as she gazed down at Aurelia with a shrug of her shoulders.
She could never bring herself to like this woman. A meddler who had stolen the role of protagonist in the Worlds—a position that should have been hers by right. And now, playing the victim so perfectly that Bilateia couldn’t even vent her frustrations freely. It was infuriating.
“Knowledge the Ancient Gods deemed too excessive for humans to possess—knowledge they discarded. And now there’s a woman who has absorbed it all intact, becoming a glitch that shakes the Worlds. The Professor intends to wield her as a weapon.”
“Honestly, I’m not even sure if something like that deserves to be called a weapon.”
With each exchange between Leonas and herself, the shadow deepening in Bilateia’s eyes grew more pronounced. She turned his words over in her mind, her gaze fixed on the empty cylinder suspended in the air.
“I was wondering why Silverdragoon made such a fuss when the Professor poured the Comedy Cylinder into Aurelia earlier.”
“That’s because he poured the hope that encompasses all the Worlds into a single person…. Wait—”
Leonas, who had been accepting her words with casual indifference, suddenly gasped and drew in a sharp breath. His face drained of color. Bilateia spread both hands, gesturing toward the source of the shadow in her eyes.
“Now that you’ve finally grasped the crisis that has befallen us, offer your proper respects. The hope of all the Worlds, now slumbering. The one we must serve with utmost devotion.”
Mockery laced Bilateia’s voice. Despite her deliberately flippant tone, the fear she couldn’t quite conceal came through to Leonas with crystalline clarity.
‘That insane Professor… she’s turned Aurelia into the very hope of the Worlds itself….’
Leonas stared at Aurelia and Bilateia in turn, his mouth hanging open, before scrubbing his face with both hands in desperation.
“This is insane. Absolutely insane.”
“Right? And we’re the ones who have to carry out every order from that lunatic. We’re the ones who should be losing our minds.”
Bilateia laughed bitterly. Leonas watched her speak as though this were someone else’s problem, then sighed and picked up his notebook again. His hand holding the pen continued to tremble.
“What are you writing now?”
“Stop sprawling around like that and study. In our current situation, data is all we can rely on.”
Leonas began writing something in his notebook, urging Bilateia onward.
“Move your hands, will you? No matter how much the Professor adjusts the difficulty of the Training Stage, as long as she’s like this, I can’t let my guard down for a second.”
“Fine, fine.”
Bilateia merely nodded, with no intention of preparing as diligently as Leonas. To her now, filling a notebook with hypotheticals was just as meaningless as staring at Aurelia, who seemed to offer no answers no matter how long she looked.
“The hope of all the Worlds. A variable the Creator anticipated. A weapon against the Ancient Gods. Doesn’t it all sound impressively grand?”
“….”
“You want to become something that magnificent too, don’t you, Leonas? Rather than bickering and squabbling with me like we do now.”
Leonas’s pen, which had been sliding across the notebook without pause, suddenly stopped. His eyes turned toward Bilateia.
“What. What are you talking about.”
“Don’t you think I’m only persisting in this job I’m unsuited for because I’m focused on you alone?”
Bilateia blinked blankly before her expression crumpled slowly, and she hurled a cushion at him with force.
“Look at you, acting clever and figuring out something important on your own? Let me see! Hand over that notebook!”
Leonas squeezed his eyes shut behind the cushion that had struck him, gazing longingly at the sleeping Aurelia. Dealing with this oblivious woman beside him was torture—he’d rather be dragged into the chaotic Training Stage that Aurelia created a hundred times over.
Sincerely.

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