There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 128

Inside the room with the mission paper, I was alone. To escape, I had to drag people in like a water ghost. With just this one window, I had to entice people to enter a completely dark room…

‘This is insane.’

I’m already tired. Can’t I just use a binding spell on someone outside the window and pull them in with telekinesis?

‘Come to think of it, it doesn’t say I can’t.’

Hehehe. Planning a wicked scheme, I waited for someone to pass by.

The reason I didn’t start talking first was that I thought there needed to be a listener for the scary story to count.

In the first place, I had no desire to mumble ghost stories to myself in an empty room, and if it turned out that counting couldn’t be done alone, I might have to repeat the same story twice. Ugh, how horrible. Such a situation must be prevented in advance.

‘But Scheherazade, isn’t that the one? The one who showed the true taste of cliffhanger storytelling to that son of a bitch tyrant who had a hobby of taking a new wife every day and killing her…!’

Ah, right. The oral tradition was a little different ‘here.’

I remember now.

The Scheherazade in this novel was none other than… ‘the legendary Clearer’ herself.

In truth, Scheherazade had not awakened even a faint supernatural ability during her lifetime.

However, she worked a miracle, earning a proper name with a single ‘clearing.’ It was truly an unbelievable story for Cassis de Millang, who still didn’t even have a title, but it was true. She was the first non-Awakened person to be recorded as a sublime Clearer by various organizations, including the World Clearing Association, and her name was also recorded as a holy name in the Vatican.

The reason was that the ‘tyrant’ in the folklore who killed a new wife every day was, in fact, not a human but a Named Yokai. Scheherazade appeared in an era when no one knew that the ‘tyrant’ was a Named. The people thought the ‘tyrant’ was just a mad human. A slaughterer and the scum of humanity—that was the assessment of the tyrant.

And the suspicion of a civilian without any supernatural abilities overturned it all. To end the age of oppression, she stood alone before the Named, and with only the power of the stories she told day by day, she captured the Named’s interest and recorded all of their characteristics.

She had provided humanity with the moment for its next step forward.

Furthermore, with that information, she inferred how significant the emotion of ‘interest’ was to the tyrant, and then, leaving behind a journal entry stating that she realized she was the only one who could help the Named endure the futility of each day, she set out for the final clearing.

That is the last record Scheherazade left behind in her lifetime.

Scheherazade had no supernatural abilities. So, naturally, she could not kill a Named Yokai. Instead, Scheherazade could become the yokai’s only solace and comfort. Betrayal is only possible when there is trust. So, Scheherazade became the most trustworthy person of all.

And then she betrayed him.

“How could you…!”

Scheherazade’s betrayal was a simple assassination attempt. Of course, her blade could not even graze the Named’s skin. But the act itself was Scheherazade’s victory. The Named’s only solace, comfort, and trusted love had tried to kill him. Could a member of the ‘Named’ race, who wanted to perish after destroying humanity anyway, continue to endure wearing a human guise? No! There was no way. Scheherazade knew that her attempting to kill the tyrant was the only way to expose the identity of the Named, who was meticulously and cunningly hidden in human society, to the entire world.

“Now, this is the end of my life!”

With these last words, Scheherazade slit her own throat and committed suicide in front of the bastard who had captured and killed all the women in the village. In her writings, there was a record stating that she didn’t want to give even the end of her life to a yokai.

Meanwhile, the tyrant, whose identity as a Named was revealed, waged a defensive war with the palace as his stronghold, and was eventually destroyed after a desperate clearing by Clearers who had joined forces out of a sense of chivalry. However, a few curious points remain. Although the tyrant was so enraged by Scheherazade’s betrayal, he tried to protect Scheherazade’s palace to the very end. To the point where he walked the path to his own destruction because he didn’t want to see the palace destroyed.

Inside the palace, Scheherazade’s body was preserved in a very beautiful glass coffin.

…Perhaps, even though Scheherazade had betrayed him, the tyrant could not bring himself to kill her. That might be why Scheherazade chose to die by her own hand… who knows. Unless you lived in the same era, it’s impossible to know. That’s how history is. But at the very least, we can know what her life accomplished.

The ‘Storyteller Who Wove the Stars’ first and last clearing, designed to let life be lived, created the first stepping stone to bringing down the Named Yokai, the ‘Tyrant.’

…A rough estimate suggests that the number of humans the <Tyrant> directly killed during his reign was 2,063, and the number of humans indirectly killed through indirect means such as policies is said to be more than twenty times that…

Scheherazade ended the age of slaughter.

She truly was a Clearer.

‘If I had a legend like this, I would have become the Head of House long ago. Without all this petty suffering.’

Of course, Scheherazade is a legend herself. But Cassis de Millang was said to be awesome in this novel too. Ah, you should have made an awesome legend for yourself before I possessed you!

I was grumbling such absurd things to myself when I suddenly spotted someone. That person, the sunbae who was in my year because he was held back. The one who ultimately caused the big commotion with the test paper duel. He was leading a group of three and running around, laughing loudly.

‘Is there any need to hesitate further?’

I immediately decided to become a kidnapper. Hahat, a laugh escapes me for no reason. I took out a leather rope from my subspace, controlled it with blood magic to grab his ankle, and lifted him upside down, moving him with a whoosh. The door, shimmering like a black mist, showed the trick of leading back into the room even if one went out, but the way in was smooth. Of course, the kidnapped individuals did try something akin to resistance, but it was all for naught. Naturally. What could they do, no matter what they tried. I’m Cassis de Millang.

“F*ck! Which son of a— G-gasp.”

“…Hk! Hmph! Mph!”

“Gack…”

The first-year students from Class D, C, and B respectively, who at first were about to get angry, saw me and became completely intimidated, their faces turning a bluish-black. The one who had blurted out the curse, in particular, was visibly contemplating whether to bow his head to the ground right now. I wasn’t angry, but to make them obey my commands well, it would be best to let them savor this fear, right? Or so I thought, but the held-back sunbae who was caught with them said this.

“Ah, it’s the Young Lord. You surprised me. What did you call us for? I’ll cooperate!”

“…”

Aw. I missed my chance to be grumpy. There’s no need to nag someone who says they’ll cooperate, though.

I smiled lukewarmly and glared at the sunbae for a moment before gesturing with my eyes toward the mission paper. And as the rest began to read the mission paper, I had a thought. ‘When I read this novel, a mission like this never appeared.’ That was the thought.

Quite a long time passed after that, but could it be that the abandoned houses were clustered in a secluded alley? Even after thirty minutes had passed since receiving the mission, we still hadn’t gathered ten people. The number of people for the horror ghost story remained at five, including me.

At this point, the held-back sunbae actively asked if he could go first. I nodded readily. I was curious anyway whether the count would start only after ten people were gathered, or if it was okay to speak when a reasonable number had gathered.

But then, someone suddenly said.

“Oh! Over there! There’s someone!”

What? Someone passing by has been spotted? Has the time for kidnapping come! I quickly pushed aside the student by the window and stuck my face out. I did it to identify the target for kidnapping. But as if the heavens were giving me the courage to clear a measly mission like this in one go, two groups appeared at once. Hae Yuna, Lee Hyang, and Shin Myohan on one side, and on the opposite side, Capone, Dietrich, and Ryuseong carrying Logan… did he say?

What, what did I just see? Me? What are you doing there…?

This won’t do. I decided to quickly kidnap them in a lump while they hadn’t seen this way. The blood magic I emitted grabbed Hae Yuna’s ankle and Lee Hyang’s wrist. Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch Shin Myohan. The General God parried my wicked magic with his sword. Phew. Scary. Next to them, Capone, Dietrich, and Logan were caught. But I couldn’t catch Ryuseong, the one I actually wanted. He had shown an extremely pacifistic side by nonchalantly throwing Logan aside at the suddenly appearing magic.

Wow. Does that bastard think it’s okay as long as he doesn’t kill them himself? In the moment I was marveling, the kidnapped students entered the room and couldn’t meet my eyes, instead protesting to the other students. It seemed even Lee Hyang, a descendant of a prestigious family, found it difficult to defy a de Millang. Hae Yuna was fearless, Logan couldn’t open his mouth so it didn’t count, and Capone and Dietrich were too busy watching my reaction, so it was only Lee Hyang who was talking.

“Ah. It’s all ruined. This is the worst. I don’t know any ghost stories. Why did you bring me here…”

…It was right then that smoke began to rise from the middle of the abandoned house…

Very suspicious…