I blink, suddenly level with the gobling’s quickly escaping feet. I’m still standing, though. So, that would mean that I got beheaded. Well, that’s…

I move to pick my head back up, but something—someone—pushes me down, and stabs something sharp and heavy through my back, and right through my heart, forcing all of me onto the floor. By deftly wriggling my neck, I’m able to look back at what’s happened to my body. So, yeah, the girl who was in the doorway is now kneeling onto my back, repeatedly stabbing my chest with a familiar-looking sword.

Only now does Rice snap out of the shock, pulling her revolver from within her vest and pointing it square at the girl’s forehead.

“Drop it!” she says, but the girl clearly doesn’t understand it—either that, or she isn’t especially inclined to follow it. “Drop it, or I shoot!”

Ah. Isn’t that a bit much?

I open my mouth to speak, but since I’m in sore lack of a throat and lungs, I can’t express myself. Hm. That’s a bummer. Well, only one thing to do.

Putting my palms against the ground, I push myself up, forcing the girl to go tumbling off of me, losing her grip on the sword’s hilt. By standing up, I’m also able to position myself between them, separating the murderous Rice from her would-be victim. Seeing my own body move feels weird, but I’m still able to hold up my hands—one to Rice, stalling her from pulling the trigger, and one to the random girl, showing that there’s no use. The two of them, in return, very logically, choose to stop moving. Great.

With those two separated, I lean down, the movement making the sword slide further inside my chest, though not all the way down to the hilt. I pick my head back up, ensuring that the sword doesn’t scrape on anything, and then I put it back on my neck. Since slicing wounds are fairly simple compared to maimings and various other types of damage, the decapitation heals fairly easily. The hardest part was putting my head on the right way, getting the neck and spine aligned and everything. And then, finally, I reach back to try to pull out the sword, only to find that my arms aren’t long enough. It’s not like I want to just let it drop down and get damaged, so…

I give Rice a pleading look. After a few seconds, once she mentally recovers enough to move, she approaches me and pulls the sword out of my back—not unlike a certain British king.

“New king of England, everyone,” I mutter jokingly, taking the sword from her hands. With the sword secured and my chest and heart well on the way to healing fully, I turn back to the girl, who’s still on the floor. I frown at her, unwittingly making her flinch. Man, how jumpy can you get? Sighing, I hold the sword up. “I’ll give you your sword back,” I say, “but only on one… No, two conditions. Firstly,” I hold up one finger, “don’t attack me again. It’s no use. Secondly…” I squat down in front of her. “Why did you attack me? I’m not trying to be accusatory, and I’m not exactly mad, but I am really curious. Most people don’t attack me on sight, even though I look like, well, this. So, why?”

Unfortunately, my speech is kind of wasted, because her eyes are completely glued to my chest. Unusually enough, it’s not my brand she’s staring at, but rather my quickly healing wound.

“Why aren’t you bleeding?” she asks breathlessly, completely flipping the conversation. “Last time, you bled. Last time, I could still…”

“Last time…?” I frown. Hm. Hang on, don’t I…? Leaning in, I give her a sniff. Yeah, I recognize her. Not exactly her own scent, but the smell of her fear is familiar. Not her face, though. I lean back away from her. “Have we met before?”

Where she sits, breathing faintly, eyes wide and trembling, a surge of indignation suddenly rears up within her, and she draws herself up, ready to attack, or maybe to shout, or…

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There’s a rush of footsteps. On the other side of the lounge, coming down the grand but atrophied staircase, another human approaches—another girl, holding the hand of the gobling who had ran away earlier. She’s dressed in a nightgown, but she’s carrying a sleek, ivory staff. “Glyph? Is everything—”

She freezes on the last steps of the staircase. I didn’t even do anything and they’re reacting as though I personally killed their grandma. What the heck is—

While I’m distracted by the arrival of another human, the girl—Glyph, apparently—snatches the sword from my hands, rolls backwards with surprising agility, and takes a stance in front of the new girl and the gobling. “S—stay back!” she shouts at me. “I’ve gotten much stronger since we last fought, so this time, I won’t let you kill me!”

Ah. Hm. Wait, so…

I slowly rise to my feet. Paradoxically, it feels like my brain is working at both lightspeed and a snail’s pace. Still, I think I might have figured this out. I point to Glyph, which makes her flinch. Angling my head, I ask, “Aren’t you that one from the tutournament?”

“The tutorial tournament,” she hisses. “Yes. I am. And you… you…!”

“Right, right, we fought in the group tournament, and then we fought one-on-one in the solo tournament, and…” An unusually positive memory returns to me—one of few that makes me feel genuinely proud. I grin at her. “I spared you! Yeah, I remember now! Man, that was a while back, huh? Honestly, I can’t recall a lot from that, so I’m surprised that I remembered you, but…”

“I’ve never stopped thinking about you,” she growls, sword clutched in both hands. The tip is trembling. “I wasn’t ready then. But I’m ready now. This time, I’ll survive. I won’t surrender. I’ll live, and I’ll…”

“What are you even talking about?” I ask, shaking my head. “Ready for what?”

“For you!”

“For me?” I parrot. “For me to… what?”

“To… to attack, obviously!”

“Why would I attack you?”

“You’re a monster,” she says. “It’s what you do.”

“I’m not attacking you, though.”

“Not yet,” she says, as though that’s a clever argument. “Not right now, because you’re trying to make me lower my guard. Then, you’ll leap at me, and tear me apart, and…”

“If I wanted to do that, I would have done so already,” I say. Since my point is flawless and completely sound, there’s nothing she can do but bite her tongue. “Exactly. Now, if we return to my initial question—the very first one—would it be okay if we spent the night? I have a quest to do for the goddess of children, but we kind of need to rest before doing that, so…”

Now, finally, the other girl speaks again. “Why are you alive?” Unfortunately, she has no good answers to give. Damn it.

“Because I’ve ascended into being a demi-god of hope and so the world won’t let me die,” I say plainly. “Now that I’ve answered your question, would you mind answering mine?”

“That wasn’t an answer,” Glyph says, waving her sword. “That was just…”

“The forums said you’d been executed,” the other girl says, her voice weirdly hollow. “I was so happy. I thought we might finally be able to move on and not have to worry about being attacked by you, but…”

“Sorry about that,” I say, “but dying’s no longer on the table for me. So, to recap for you two—I can’t die. I don’t want to fight you. So why don’t you just put down that sword and we can talk like normal human beings?”

Reluctance seems to be the name of the game for these two lovely ladies.

Behind me, Rice finally puts away her revolver, stepping inside the lobby with her hands raised. “Come on—you heard him. Let’s just calm down, alright?”

They frown at her, clearly able to understand her intent even if the specific words are lost. Above that, though, they seem to be considering some other detail. The other girl leans closer to Glyph, and without knowing my hearing is good enough to eavesdrop, whispers, “Isn’t that Angel? The one who killed him…?”

“I think so,” Glyph whispers back. Making a determined face, she turns back to me. “Who is she?”

“My friend,” I answer simply. “We’re traveling together while I clear the quests.”

“Didn’t she kill you in the tournament?”

“Well, sure, but…” I shrug. “It’s not like I actually died, right? Sure, it hurt like the dickens, and the nothingness wasn’t exactly pleasant, but I woke up in the end. So, it’s okay.”

Glyph seems to want to retort with something, but the other girl puts her hand on her shoulder and shakes her head. Reluctantly, clicking her tongue, she lowers her sword. “Fine,” she spits. “Sure. Let’s talk.”

“Great!” I say, clapping my hands. “So, can we stay? It’s really late, and we’d rather not try to find an inn at this hour—or, even worse, sleep in the forest.”

The two of them look at me, and then they look at each other, and then they look back at me.

“Yeah, no.”

“No fucking way.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Seriously. No.”