**Day 25 Morning Inn White Weirdo Pervert**
The lecturing has been going on nonstop—well, since midnight straight through to early morning, and it's still going strong right now. It's a full-on group effort. An all-star cast. A total encirclement.
A linked chain of doom. I wonder if I could just set them on fire and escape? The otakus, I mean? Yeah, burning them would be fine, right? These guys have zero intention of helping me anyway. If anything, they'd probably cheer while I get roasted.
I've been getting yelled at endlessly.
But come on, there was no other way, was there?
They kept lecturing me so earnestly.
I mean, that situation—I was the only one who could handle it, right?
They scolded me so passionately.
Hey, isn't that really Kawashimo-kun's fault, though?
And now I've lost my allowance!
That's just too much!!
I tried so hard, you know!? I was seriously giving it my all!?
The meeting starts. The otakus clearly have no plans to bail me out. Read the room, guys! I'll hunt you down later. And after that? I'll burn you.
Those idiots were just idiots. Fine. I had zero expectations from you lot anyway...
"So what was the deal in the end? Why couldn't anyone—no one at all—win against him...?"
"Uh, something like messing with your mind or nerves? Kinda? Sorta?"
It messes with your nerves directly. Plus you get hallucinations and status abnormalities thrown in as a bonus. You can't even fight properly.
"And what about that plundering thing?"
"Eh? Like copying? Mimicking? Something like that?"
That's why nobody noticed. Nobody stayed on guard. He didn't get seen as an enemy, so he could prepare without interference. And then he pulled it off.
"He had a ton of skills, right? Like, thirteen people's worth..."
"Hmm? Nullify magic? Instant death? Status ailments with hallucinations attached? Or something?"
It was a build designed to crush cheats. A setup to kill cheaters. The perfect sequence created specifically to keep killing cheaters forever. But he stuck so rigidly to the order and held back on using everything... and died because of it.
"Why was it you, Haruka-kun~?"
Ooh, that jiggle—... Uh, never mind. Nothing. Seriously, nothing.
"Because he was a cheat-killer. I don't have any cheats? So even if he took my skills, it wouldn't hurt me? Something like that?"
"""Aaaaaahhh~~~!!"""
Apparently he did have a cheat-killer-killer skill. A reverse cheat. That's just a straight-up punishment game! Where the hell would you even use something like that?
Even if he used every skill he had to kill me and steal mine, just having my skills wouldn't let him kill the class rep and the others. So no matter what, he was screwed from the start.
Heck he can have my jack of all trades.
"Well, it's because it was right in front of the cave. The hikikomori's home base is protected, after all. Just like how I never died in the forest despite being weak... or something?"
That's why he was trying to get back to the cave. It had to be his home base. That was the only place he could fight. The only place where he wouldn't die.
In the end, though...
"He thought he was a genius, but he was just an idiot? If he'd dumped every stolen skill at once and kept overwhelming everything, he could've won? But doing that would mean he couldn't fight other cheat-holders later, so he held back? And that's why he died? Kinda like that?"
He really was an idiot. The idiots messed up his timing, wasted his skills, and because he held back against me, I killed him.
If he'd just killed the idiots and taken their stuff, he wouldn't have lost. If he hadn't held back against me, he wouldn't have lost. A side character trying to steal the spotlight from heroes and protagonists ends up not even qualifying as a side character—and gets killed by another side character. It was supposed to be a mutual destruction fest, but he wore himself out first.
You could tell from the very first page—no, from the character introductions before the story even started. We're all just side characters. Background mobs in the epic hero saga that's about to begin. Classmate A and Classmate B. My role? The weak guy who stays in the forest, tames some goblins or whatever, and lives in that cave. Then Classmate B comes out of the forest, kills me, but loses his power and gets killed by monsters before he can leave. End of story.
And yet here I am, a mob, constantly getting dragged around by the protagonists.
That guy thought he was the protagonist. But he was a mob, same as me. So the story broke. It shattered. And... I survived.
In this isekai world of swords and sorcery, even now...
He was the kind of idiot who still believed 1 = 1. Well, not in an isekai. Rules don't apply simply like that in an isekai world.
**Day 24 ended—or rather, Day 25 has already begun.**