I Reincarnated into a Game Filled with Mods – Chapter 52

Chapter 52
‘Cute.’

Rize, with half-closed eyes as if she couldn’t understand the current situation, looked at the newcomer with a delighted smile. Poke, poke, her index finger poked his cheek.

It was her first time seeing the newcomer so flustered. He was a man who never even blinked an eye, as if he had predicted everything that would happen.

Except when it was related to women. Every time she tried to seduce him by showing her breasts or bare skin, he would be extremely embarrassed.

“Th-that… Th-that’s, wh-what…”

“Oops, be careful, newcomer. You’re going to fall.”

Claudia caught the newcomer’s body as he tried to get up from his seat and stumbled sideways.

The weight of a healthy adult male was entirely focused on one arm, but Claudia was a human who could easily drink a whole barrel of wine and wield a greatsword bigger than her own body.

There was no way she couldn’t hold up a single person.

“S-since, wh-when…?”

“We reached an agreement before this banquet, so it hasn’t been long. At first, I don’t think they had any intention of doing this? They said they saw how the situation was going and thought it would work.”

“Th-then…”

“It started with the lord and Iris, Iris tipped me off, and I told Erika and Claudia. Iris said the first suggestion came from the lord?”

Aurora nodded, agreeing. Since it was something she had suggested, there was no need for her to make excuses.

Claudia carefully sat the newcomer down on a chair. As the hand supporting his shoulder fell away, his body slumped onto the chair like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Don’t be too afraid of us digging up your secrets, newcomer. It’s just a figure of speech, the questions will be simple.”

Erika carefully opened her mouth.

“Newcomer, you said when you first met us that you had lost all your memories due to a curse. And that you’re gradually regaining your memories due to something. We even confirmed with the ability-checking orb that all your stats are 1, so there was no reason to doubt your words.”

The problem was what happened after that. Erika let out a small sigh.

“Of course, we still fully trust newcomer. This feeling will never change. However, we keep thinking that there’s something you’re not telling us. Not that you lied, but that you hid the truth from the beginning. You know that these two things are different, right?”

“The fact that you were cursed must be true. But that’s not what we want to know.”

Iris continued. The newcomer’s eyes were still hazy from the alcohol. It seemed like he was trying to rack his brain, but the alcohol was preventing him from doing so.

“Who were you in the past?”

Yes, this question was the core of the current situation. Who was the newcomer in the past?

There were a mountain of other things they were curious about, but the source of it all was this question. If they could just get an answer about who the newcomer was in the past, they would have achieved their goal.

“The things you’ve said ultimately mean that you were able to come up with all those solutions because your old memories returned, right? Then, the key is what kind of person you were in the past. We think you can explain it to us now, can’t you?”

What kind of past did he have that he could figure out all the actions of monsters he’d never heard of, grasp the internal structure of rune dungeons, and even handle demons without a problem?

If all those actions were truly based on past memories, then he must have been a great hero.

But no human in the Empire, not even the Emperor, had achieved such feats. The Emperor had solved problems by overwhelming her opponents with her power.

She was fundamentally different from the newcomer, who had overcome difficulties with abilities that were nothing more than the bottom of the barrel.

Especially when it came to handling demons.

They couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of past he had, what kind of experiences he had gone through in the past, that he could dismiss the descent of a demon as nothing and calmly make plans to use it to kill the lord.

Demons were far from being something you could just catch because you were skilled. They were beings that even the priests of the Holy Kingdom had to make terrible sacrifices to deal with.

Yet the newcomer was perfectly calm. It was from then that the Knight Commanders began to be truly curious about his past deeds.

“Can you tell us what you’re hiding from us?”

Even at Iris’s polite request, the newcomer kept his mouth shut. His tightly closed lips showed no sign of opening.

There’s definitely something there. The Knight Commanders and Aurora exchanged glances. Silence is consent, they say. If he chose silence instead of denial, it meant there was definitely something he couldn’t talk about.

Aurora, who was right next to him, stepped forward and gently cupped his cheek with her hand, making eye contact. His hazy black eyes and her golden eyes filled with strong will met.

“Listen, I don’t know what kind of secret you’re trying to hide, but we’re not trying to do anything to you with it. We’re trying to help you, you know?”

“…”

“Whatever you did in the past, whatever kind of person you were, we have no intention of finding fault with it. Even if you really committed a crime and were imprisoned, it’s the same. You might have been like that then, but not now. You can just dismiss it as something from the past and start anew.”

“…”

“Look here. This is a place where you can achieve anything you want. We have plenty of money, we have a decent amount of power, and… most importantly, we have women, right? If you want, you can have them right now.”

“Wait a minute. Lord. What did you just say?”

Rize cut Aurora off. Her blue eyes were directed at Aurora with a growl. She looked very wary of her.

It seemed like she had been looking at the newcomer strangely ever since they first met at the mansion because of the demon summoning incident, but she hadn’t thought she would actually have such feelings. Her level of wariness rose to the maximum.

At first glance, one might think it was simply a word referring to Rize, spoken after seeing through her heart.

But Aurora’s eyes said otherwise.

Those were the eyes of a female, the same eyes Rize herself had when she looked at the newcomer. At the same time, they were the eyes of someone who felt sexual desire for the man in front of her.

So, it was clear who Aurora was referring to when she said “women”.

“Oh my, why? Did I say something wrong?”

“I think you said something very wrong. ‘We’? He’s a member of our Silver Dawn Knights. You shouldn’t be saying things like that so carelessly.”

“You guys have to obey my orders in the end. Then your subordinate will soon be my subordinate.”

“You’re using the same logic as that pig bastard?”

“Her Majesty the Emperor said so from the Imperial Palace, so it’s only natural, right? Both that pig bastard and I used to live in the Imperial Palace. Or are you perhaps saying you won’t follow the Emperor?”

Flinch, Rize faltered at those words. Not following the Emperor was something that couldn’t happen to the Silver Dawn Knights. In contrast, Aurora smiled triumphantly.

Rize, who had faltered for a moment, soon found a clue to counterattack, glanced at Aurora’s chest, and then smirked, gesturing that she had no choice but to back down.

Now it was Aurora’s turn to be angry. She immediately understood what that look meant.

Although Aurora’s breasts weren’t small, they were undeniably lacking compared to Rize, whose breasts were as big as her head.

The newcomer had also been constantly staring at Rize’s breasts since he started getting drunk, so it wasn’t hard to guess what his preferences were, which made it even worse.

“Now, now. Lord, let’s stop there. Rize, you too.”

Claudia quickly intervened before the atmosphere could get any more heated. This was a place to uncover the newcomer’s secrets, not a place to fight amongst themselves.

Both of them knew that, so it didn’t lead to a second round. They knew that even if they bickered here, the ones who would ultimately have the power to choose weren’t them.

“The story went off on a tangent, but anyway, what we want to say is this. Who were you in the past?”

“I, ca-can’t, sa-say, th-that…”

“You can’t say that? Then that means there’s something, right?”

“…”

He seemed to realize his mistake and closed his mouth again, but the damage was done. The eyes of the Knight Commanders and Aurora changed.

His words just now meant that there was something he couldn’t tell anyone. And that would be related to his past actions.

Their job now was to find out what it was.

The next day, I woke up energetically in an unfamiliar place.

‘This is ridiculous, really.’

I immediately remembered last night. I had expected them to be curious about my past, but I never imagined they would try to find out by resorting to such measures.

I was planning to reveal it someday, but that time had almost been brought forward considerably.

I felt more dumbfounded than angry. If we were to talk about who was right or wrong, the problem started with me, who had shamelessly lied to their faces. They were just trying to find out what my lies were.

The method was absurd, that’s all.

I wondered if the Knight Commanders would have felt this way if they had heard that I had used a demon to kill the lord.

‘Did I answer the question?’

My head was already spinning from the alcohol, and I could clearly remember the situation where I had been tricked by Claudia’s wordplay and ended up admitting that I had a secret.

But I couldn’t remember what happened after that.

It was a mystery whether I had answered the question or managed to keep my mouth shut. My memory was completely blank.

‘Wait. Where am I?’

I hurriedly looked around. Antique wallpaper and a carpet on the floor. A bed big enough for five or six people to lie down comfortably. It was probably one of the rooms in the lord’s mansion.

A chilling sensation made me check beside me. Fortunately, there was no one there. The bed was also neat, and there were no signs of my clothes being taken off or torn.

‘…I hope I wasn’t violated or anything.’

It seemed quite possible with Rize, which made me worry even more. Maybe she had seduced me while I was blacked out and made me sleep with her, or maybe she had even taken the initiative herself.

Neither of those scenarios was far-fetched.

‘What happened after that…’

“Oh, you’re really awake? How did that guy know about this kind of thing?”

While I was desperately trying to recall my memories, the door burst open and Rize walked in with a bright smile on her face, carrying a tray.

She wasn’t wearing the see-through dress from the banquet, but her usual white sleeveless top and blue dolphin shorts.

“Hey, you got me drunk to interrogate me? All five of you conspired together?”

“You remember. What a shame. I can’t use it twice.”

I had thought I should at least give her a piece of my mind, even if I wasn’t angry, but seeing her nonchalant attitude made me speechless. And I owed her a lot in many ways.

‘Is this why Rize came out of all the people?’

Rize walked over casually and sat down on the edge of the bed, putting down the tray. On it was a plate with a steaming bowl of soup.

I wasn’t particularly hungry or anything, but I felt like I should eat something since the timing for getting angry had passed, so I reached for the soup bowl.

Slap, Rize swatted the back of my hand with a pouty face.

When I looked at her with a question mark above my head, Rize picked up the soup bowl herself and held out a spoonful to me.

“…”

My attempt to show that I could eat by myself was completely ignored.

After I gave up resisting and obediently took the soup, Rize finally smiled and put the spoon down on the tray, opening her mouth.

“How much do you remember about what happened yesterday?”

“How much do you think I remember?”

I returned the same behavior she had shown me at the beginning of the banquet. I thought I had gotten her back, but then I saw Rize looking at me with a very meaningful smile.

What’s with that face again?