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Chapter 18: The Stranger

This parallel world is boring.

I want to go home. I want to meet mom and dad. I want to play games again.

I want to go to school.

I don’t want to see any more goblins, orcs, dragons or dragons.

They’re trying to kill me first anyways.

As soon as they see my face they’ll rush in and attack, trying to sink their fangs into my throat.

It’s because I’m a Hero summoned from Japan.

It’s because I’m the army general.

I am the enemy of every monster, and I am the ally of every humans.

Not an individual, but a public figure.

No, I’m just a public property.

I’m not much different than a public road or a public lavatory.

But that’s the sort of character a Hero is.

It’s like I’m an infrastructure, not even a human anymore.

My failure is grieved by the country, and my success is celebrated by the country.

That’s why I have to be strong.

Stronger, and even stronger. To an even higher limit.

Training myself like that, I became the strongest Hero.

I was moulded into an ideal hero that everyone wishes for.

Every part that can’t fit into that mould were cut and thrown away.

The me who was a kid.

The me who was Japanese.

The me who was a normal, middle-schooler, who had a girl I liked, who wanted to be a game designer in the future.

Those were all irrelevant, so they were torn off and thrown away.

For every one thrown away, I became stronger, yet I turned into someone else.

It’s not just my heart,

but even my body was replaced too.

My arm was cut off by a fire dragon, but it was regrown with magic. The one that fell off was thrown to temporarily blind the dragon.

My legs were attacked by gargoyles, and as expected, I lost them. These, too, was regrown by magic.

At last, my head was taken as well. There was the me who rolled around as I was uprooted from my neck, and there was the me who was regrown into it.

I wondered in which brain my soul is dwelling in.

I don’t quite understand.

The original body that my parents gave birth to has mostly been lost in battle.

A larger part of me right now has been rebuilt by magic.

The total number of magic castles destroyed and rebuilt by me was ten.

The number of castles I protected was six.

I did my best, didn’t I? So could you see me as Nakamoto Keisuke soon?

Not as a hero, but just as Keisuke?

Haven’t you had enough of treating me as a hero that can be used by anyone?

That’s right, what Hero? What do you mean, Hero?

Eat shit!

Don’t you know how much suffering has it been? How painful has it been? How lonely has it been? You don’t even know, do you?

Tell me, where is the real me?

That’s been long gone, hasn’t it? All you have is a hero that’s been remade by magic, right?

Hero-sama, the ladies said with coaxing voices.

Hero-dono, the royalties called with flattering smiles.

“Hero” is an honorary title, so they thought calling me by that word would please me. These otherworlders thought they’re being considerate without knowing anything.

Someone, please call me by my name. The name my parents gave me. The name that reminds me of my homeland.

Please.

Someone.

Before I start forgetting my own name.

—It was then, when I met a certain slave.

???: “Who are you?”

The slave’s name is Elza. Before she was old enough to understand what was going on around her, she was kidnapped to a goblin’s nest.

She was the same age as I was; 17.

The girl had long black hair and a fleeting look. Her eyes seem lonely, and her thin body was full of bruises.

When Elza was kidnapped, she couldn’t escape the den even once.

A goblin’s nest is normally enveloped by darkness. An environment ill-fitted to be raised in.

Yet the cavern where Elza was kidnapped to had a great collapse.

Basking in the light pouring in, she was able to miraculously survive.

Being in an age where she can do menial work, she was enslaved by the goblins.

Not being able to read or write, not receiving any baptism, she was kept for mere hard labor, or a tool to vent their anger.

Because of that, she couldn’t think of herself as a person.

The worst part is that she was convinced that she was a “weird-faced goblin”.

To her, I was simply “Nakamoto Keisuke”.

She probably never heard the term “Hero” ever since she was born.

It was a new feeling when I evaporated the group of goblins in front of her and she didn’t worship me as a hero.

Keisuke: “I’m Nakamoto Keisuke.”

Elza: “Nah-cah-moe-toe Kay-soo-kay? (TLN: She said his name in Katakana, outlining that she didn’t understand names)Keisuke: “It’s alright, the goblins that kidnapped you from your parents had been eliminated.”

Elza: “But I’m also a goblin?”

Keisuke: “You are the same as me, a human.”

Her eyes opened wide in astonishment. I am human, she said, repeating over and over.

Keisuke: “The goblins that has been beating you is gone. I’ll remove your shackles. You’re free from now on.”

Elza: “What is free?”

Keisuke: “If you want to know what that means, come and follow me. We’ll go to a human village together. Do you not want to?”

Elza: “……I want to.”

The two exited the den, and a carriage to pick them up stopped.

Looking at the differences in the looks of me and the coachman, Elza tilted her head in confusion.

What ensued was hectic.

It was because I needed to start the long fight for returning Elza back into human society.

I needed to remove the goblin’s barbaric habits and make a woman out of her.

I don’t need to say how hectic it was.

Everyday from the sunrise to sundown, I taught her letters and table manners.

I was so strict in her training that she might have thought that she’d better off living as a goblin.

Before long, the time Elza spent looking at my face increases.

I thought she resented me.

If only you didn’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, I could have continued living as a goblin.

I thought that was the reason.

But that wasn’t it.

In a beautiful night bright with moonlight, Elza stopped me on my tracks.

Keisuke: “Why is Kaysuke different from the others? Kaysuke’s face is a bit more flat. Skin color is also yellowish. Different from others. Different from me. Where did you come from?”

Facing Elza’s questions, I simply answered, Japan.

Keisuke: “It’s a world different from this one.”

Far away place? Elza asked back.

Keisuke: “Very far.”

Elza: “How far?”

Keisuke: “As far as I can’t get back here anymore if I go.”

Elza: “Do the people in Jah-pan look similar to Kaysuke?”

Keisuke: “Yeah. Everyone looks similar to me…since we’re of the same race. There are a lot of people who look exactly like me.”

But there were nobody that looked like me in that parallel world.

I spontaneously burst into tears.

Why so sudden…? Even though I’m a man, how pathetic.

As I was busy scrubbing my eyes, Elza briskly hugged me.

Elza: “I was the same. I lived thinking that I looked different than the others. I was separated from my family, told to do things I didn’t like, so I understand how Kaysuke feels.”

For the first time in three years I’ve been summoned to this world, I cried my heart out.

Since then, I talked a lot to Elza.

She was interested. She was someone who I could say my true thoughts to. She was an affable girl.

It didn’t take long for us to become lovers.

Keisuke: “Elza is the only one who’s been treating me as Keisuke.”

Elza: “The only one who told me that I’m not a female goblin is also Kaysuke, while everyone else was creeped out by me.”

Keisuke: “There are no place for us in this world.”

Elza: “…there is. When we stay close together, I feel like this is where we belong. Wherever we are together, that place is where we belong.”

Keisuke: “You’re a lot cooler than I am, you know that? If you were living as a human from the beginning, I can’t imagine how successful you will be.”

Elza: “I don’t care about success. I don’t care where I am in society as long as I am with you. I don’t even care if I’m a slave.”

The night I was connected with Elza, I was convinced

that right now in this moment, we returned to being humans. From a goblin to a human, and from a Hero to a human.

Elza. For you, I can do anything.

As long as you’re here, I won’t need anything else.

I’m convinced that I was sent to this world to protect you.