***
The Soul Scale is a resurrection spell that summons the souls of the dead in exchange for one’s own soul.
Since the soul is the master, it was impossible to play tricks such as using someone else as a substitute such as with Holy Devotion.
‘If that trick was possible, it would be overbalanced.’
I smirked.
‘But… why am I thinking this nonsense now?’
I used the soul scale, so surely I should have died. But no matter how much I thought about it, I didn’t feel dead.
I woke up quietly and sat up.
For the first time in my life, I was welcomed by a space I had never seen before.
A huge hall that shone transparently as if it were made of carved gemstones…
I couldn’t remember why I was here, or anything after using the soul scale.
“Is it the underworld… it’s too holy to be true.”
I looked at the situation calmly.
I was transmigrated into a game and lived through the second round, and there was no surprise that I came into the world after I died.
I sat up and looked around. I thought I was seeing the landscape for the first time, but I also felt a sense of déjà vu somehow, as if I had seen it once before.
“… The main building of the Demon King’s castle?”
Unlike the Demon King’s Castle, which was made of black, shiny obsidian, this place was made of gemstones that reflected transparently.
Except for that, they looked exactly alike, as if they were two sides of a mirror. The atmosphere was so heavenly that I could not recognize it at a glance.
But a slightly older sense of déjà vu pinched me.
“No, I think I’ve seen it before… Oh!”
I remembered it belatedly. When “Holy Demon War” started, the background screen of the opening scene, in which Saint Marianne was talking to herself, looked exactly like this.
At that time, someone called out to me.
[You woke up. Hero of another world.]
It wasn’t so much that I heard voices, but more that some wavelength was transmitted to me. I turned my back toward the place where I heard the sound.
A pure white, luminous presence suddenly sprang up in the empty space and looked at me.
“Saint Marianne…?”
[Yes. You recognize me.]
Saint Marianne smiled softly as she said this.
If the Demon King was a dark being with despair in his heart, she was a pure white being with a halo behind her.
[Thank you for saving this world, hero.]
St. Marianne bowed towards me. Her hair cascaded forward like a veil of white foam from a waterfall.
I shook my hand in a hurry in embarrassment.
“I haven’t done much… A hero, I didn’t do anything to be called that.”
[No, I’m sorry and worried about dropping you into this world without any explanation, but you’ve done better than I expected. Thanks to you, peace has come to the continent. So it’s natural for me to thank you.]
“Wait… Don’t tell me, wasn’t it a coincidence that I came here?”
I asked, perplexed.
St. Marianne blinked lazily.
Her blue eyes, clear ones in her white face that shone so brightly I couldn’t even see the shadows, stared at me.
[… It might be a long story, but will you listen to it?]
“As long as it’s alright for me to hear.”
[You are overflowing with qualifications.]
St. Marianne waved her hand.
Tables and chairs rose from the floor under her beckons. St. Marianne said as she sat in a chair.
[The game you played was the world’s potential.]
“Then I didn’t come into the game, a world that existed in the first place was turned into a game… Well, that’s what you mean?”
[Yes, that’s right.]
St. Marianne nodded slowly.
[The “Holy Demon War” was a kind of selection process that was the job of the god of the world you lived in. Trying to discover who had the qualities of a hero… It was the last hope in this world.]
Before I knew it, there was the package of “Holy Demon War” that I had played on the table.
She swept the package with her birch-branch-like hands. When the package became a beautiful particle of light, it solidified into a round sphere in the air. It was the earth.
[This game… It was the aggregate of the most possible future. We ran tens or hundreds of millions of simulations with your help to see how we could defeat the Demon King. Because, unlike the game, we only had one chance in this world.]
The earth began to glow sporadically. Soon the round light dissipated.
If the game was actually a reflection of this world.
I asked what I was curious about.
“I understand. But did the main character of the game have to be Fabian? I defeated the Demon King together with Meyer.”
When I mentioned Fabian, a vague smile came to St. Marianne’s lips.
[The results you produced were something I never would have thought possible. And Fabian Ignis was… He was certainly the one who came closest to being a hero.]
She sighed softly. Her breath sank like a thick fog.
[Meyer Knox was selected for the role of defeating the Demon King in the 1st round, and it was Fabian who was easily eliminated.]
“Pardon? But…”
I furrowed my brow
Not the 2nd round but the 1st round? Fabian was definitely chosen in the first round…
St. Marianne smiled quietly as if she were looking into my feelings. Her subsequent words made my head curl like ripples spreading in the still water.
[In this world that you know is the 2nd round, it’s the 3rd round.]
***
The Demon King, who was defeated a thousand years ago in the Holy Demon War, planted a nucleus in the Knox family, stockpiled his strength, and sought the opportunity to continue to make a comeback.
Then the time came.
The dungeon was opened, and the humans formed an expeditionary force to try to stop the Demon King.
At the end, Meyer Knox and the Black Knights were chosen as the last expedition.
There was no stronger man, no more powerful demon. He was the hope of mankind…
But it was in vain. All attacks of Meyer Knox were ineffective against the Demon King, who absorbed Meyer Knox, his core, and became even more powerful.
Thus, the human race was annihilated and the human world was contaminated to the point of being like the demon world and fell into the Demon King’s hands.
Saint Marianne, unable to interfere directly with the human world, had no choice but to sit back and watch.
However, both the Demon King and St. Marianne were kept in balance by the presence of humans.
Ironically, once the humans were gone, the inhibitions holding her back disappeared.
Now able to interfere with the world, she changed the world’s timeline. However, her authority did not allow her to turn time too far back.
Her limit was a few years before the opening of the Demon King Gate. When she turned back time, the humans also came back to life.
So she could no longer interfere again. Just turning the time back would not do anything. It was just stepping on the same steps as the first round.
Moreover, the Demon King, the counterpart of St. Marianne, would have a memory of time being turned.
This time, she was going to try to protect herself from turning back time twice by leaving a few humans behind to maintain her interference. That was a problem.
This was the only chance.
But all Saint Marianne could do was give human talent to the human race. Even that had its limits in terms of what each human could accept.
It was possible to foresee the future and warn humans, but only for an extremely short, fleeting moment. No further intervention was possible.
It was not possible to prevent the Demon King simply by informing them of a fragmented future.
But…
The story would be different if it was not her world, but an existence in another world.
So she asked the god of the other world to give her information about her world.
The god of the other world processed the information in a way most accessible to humans.
That was exactly what the game “Holy Demon War” was about.
[You need a main character in the game. Who should it be? Specify the most likely person you see.]
Saint Marianne pondered for a moment when asked by the god of the world. But it didn’t take long.
[… Let’s go with Fabian Ignis.]
Fabian, who competed with Meyer in the first round until the last moment, would be a worthy protagonist.
He was not perfect, but he was “the most likely one,” as the god of the other world said.
Thus, the ark of Saint Marianne’s wish was passed on to the people of the other world. Saint Marianne saw numerous possibilities. Countless possibilities she had never thought of were smoldering among the people of the other world.
Among them, there was a person who cleared the game with a character that everyone thought was impossible to the point of obsession.
That was the possibility that ‘Jun’, Saint. Marianne discovered beyond the dimension.
***
[… But before I can bring you into this world, you die in an accident, of all things.]
That’s right…
Memories started popping up.
Up to that point, I had lived by the belief that the specs of a game character were the size of my affections, but the moment I saw Jun, I blossomed as I was.
The fact that Jun was a supportive wizard who was as good as a dummy was no longer important.
I raised Jun with great enthusiasm. A support wizard can do it too! The belief that the production team would never create a completely useless class let me have better items and equipment than the main character Fabian.
Of course, I was not the only one who raised Jun. Besides me, there were often perverted players who raised Jun.
The fact that Jun was the only supportive wizard made everyone raise her with the feeling “Isn’t she a hidden character?”
However, they all had no choice but to remove her at the boss battle gate, where the difficulty level skyrocketed.
I was the only one who took Jun to the gate before the boss.
I even felt a strange sense of pride that there would be no player who liked Jun as much as I did.
How difficult a character Jun was to use was also evident in the numerous letters of attack. If the characters were not resigned to death, they could usually see the first ending at level 60
and the second ending at level 70.
However, in the midst of that, there were many labor-class players.
In Holy Demon War, when you reach the max level, you learn a special skill called the ultimate skill, and the list of ultimate skill was written in the attack forum.
Naturally, Jun’s ultimate column was empty. No one had raised Jun to level 99.
It was me who did.
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