To Save My Favourite Character, I Decided To Destroy the Game’s Plot

The endless darkness spread out, and it was an odd world where it seemed impossible to see far into the distance.

Rubbing my arms against the cold, I looked around and saw a huge wooden door and a young man standing in front of it.

　What?

　What is this?

　Just a moment ago I should have been fighting Lucy.

　What am I doing here?

　The young man with short gray hair was slightly surprised to see me, and then slowly opened his mouth.

You're...oh, I see. l. I can tell by looking at you. Nicolas has made the connection, hasn't he?"

　The young man, who hints at his relationship with Nicholas, just stares at me in amusement at my dismay.

"What is this place?"

I asked, trying to cover up my uneasiness, and the weary young man laughed.

'I don't call this place by any particular name, and people call it different names."

". But..."

　The place never appeared in the game , but that does not mean that this place does not have any meaning.

 

　It doesn't overlap with the game, but surely it has some role to play. Nicolas is in on one of them, remember?

How is that possible that it doesn't even have a name?

　What should we do anyway?

　First of all, calm down. ---what should I do?

　How do we get out of here?

　I mean, is this place connected to the world we were just in?

　Or is it an isolated space?

　Is the young man in front of you an enemy? Is he a friend?

　Is he even human?

And how is this place related to Nicolas?

　No. There are so many questions I want to ask, I can't think straight.

"You might want to calm down. You are a qualified person when you come here. Nothing bad is going to happen to you."

"Qualified for what?"

" I don't know. There is no specific name for that either. If I had to guess, I'd say a guide. . That's the best fit. You could be the guiding light of a new era."

I'm a guiding light?

　Huh?

　What?

　What are you talking about?

"I know you don't know right now, but if you want the power, you'll get it someday."

　While I was pondering this, the young man was putting words in my mouth on his own. He apparently doesn't want me to understand the details.

, "at what? If there is someone else who will lead the way' to a new era, it will not be me."

'Who , for example?"

The first name that comes to mind is Arthur, the man who is the protagonist of the game .

He is the stellar figure who brings together the stars of the younger generation. If he is not the guiding light, then who is?

　But I cannot speak his name. I should not say his name before I know if he is an enemy or not.

", it's you, right here."

"Ha-ha-ha. Yes, Yes, that's right. I used to be like that. But not anymore. I'm a loser who barely survived."

　A loser. In other words, this guy's guiding hand is a being that fights against something.

If so, Arthur seems to be the one, even more so, but...

"Hmmm... Arthur. "

What?

"Don't be so surprised. It's a kind of witchcraft to read thoughts"

　"But without magic spells or chanting or anything?"

"That's just the way it goes with age. Oh, sorry. I got off the subject. The Arthur you're thinking of, it's impossible. On the contrary, it's the other way around."

"The opposite?"

Yes. Yes. He's a throwback. He's the opposite of you.

　Opposite? Reversing the times? Wait, no,

　There's so much information, I don't know what to do!

In my dismay, the dark surrounding me began to distort. The world collapsed, like glass shattering.

At the center of it all, a tired young man smiles.

"I guess that's it for this time. I look forward to your return."

'Wait, what about Nicolas...?"

I have so much to ask , and I think I have the answers I'm looking for right here.

　But it seems that the time has already run out.

'The first Arthur was buried in darkness. Veldra succumbed to despair and reversed. Nicholas gave up in the face of the immense darkness and made a choice to move on. What would your choice be, I wonder?"

'The first Arthur? Veldra! Wait, wait a minute! Why--"

"Come on, go ahead. It's your reward for coming all this way. you will be Just a little bit stronger than before."

　With these words, the world of darkness disappeared. And with it, my consciousness dissolved and vanished.

 

️.

The next time I came to consciousness, the first thing I felt was a mental load that made me want to going crazy.

　It's hard, it's painful. I want to get comfortable now and forget everything.

Then the intense headaches, nausea, and loss of magic power hit me.

Ugh, ah..."

　I groaned in pain, looked around, and managed to get an idea of what was going on.

　It seemed that I had returned from the world of darkness.

I was in the arena and Lucy was in front of me, holding a sword.

　So, the mental load is the fatigue I have been feeling.

　I guess I didn't feel it while I was over there.

"what's wrong?"

"No, nothing."

　It's not really nothing, and I'm out of my mind.

Because I've never heard of the first generation of Arthur, and the Veldra he mentioned after that is the name of the head of the Ulgor Evil Order.

　That's going to be deeply involved in Arcue, so why did it come up there?

And who is this Nicolas who is lined up with those men?

　And what is the darkness?

　Remember what that young man said.

'The first Arthur was buried in darkness. Veldra succumbed to despair and flipped. Nicholas gave up in the face of immense darkness and made a choice to move on. What would your choice be?"

If I believe that one as it was, the first Arthur was defeated by the dark being and probably died.

Then again, he said that Veldra succumbed to despair and reversed himself.

　Does this mean that he succumbed to the darkness and became dark himself?

　Since Veldra's purpose in Arcue was to resurrect the evil god Needsheg, does the darkness refer to Needsheg?

　No, that is not right.

Veldra is an unreasonable existence that is called the strongest along with Schneizel. The Evil God is not a strong enough opponent for that to despair, much less for that Nicholas to give up.

　No. There is nothing more to judge, and even if I think about it, it doesn't seem to develop.

　Let's put this aside for now.

Now I must concentrate on the enemy in front of me.

"------Are we done?"

'I'm good. Thanks for waiting for me.'

"------, it''s nothing. It was kind of weird."

I don't know if she' s being nice, or stupid, or just going at her own pace.

 

"Phew, okay."

　I took a breath, calmed down, and was about to raise my spear, still in pain, when...

　I stopped thinking about the impossible.

Now, I was thinking about fighting, and many possibilities came to mind.

　One of them was to create a sword with earth magic and handle it with my left hand.

　Naturally, as if it had been there from the beginning, it floated in my brain, and it still shines brightly.

　Is this the best I can do?

No, no, wait. I've hardly ever used a sword before.

　What the hell was I thinking...

'Ah."

　Again, I remember what the young man had said in that world.

'Come on, go on. You've come this far. You'll be just a little bit stronger."

　Was he talking about this?

If the young man had done something, it would barely make sense.

 

Let's give it a try.

, I created a sword with earth magic (I had already applied to the tournament to create swords and spears, so it wasn't a bad thing), and when I took it, it felt unexpectedly comfortable in my hand.

------?"

　Lucy reacts in a way I have never seen before.

The moment I held up the sword with my left hand, she peeled her eyes and looked at me with hyper-vigilance.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

I feel like I'm fighting with something that isn't mine, and it makes me incredibly sick.

However, this is a different issue.

　If my discomfort is one step closer to saving Crescencia, I'll do it without hesitation.

'Okay."

Again, approach.

First, a spear strike as a check. Lucy did not pass it up, but avoided it only with her body movement.

　Her eyes were fixed on the sword in my left hand, and she reacted as if nothing else was a threat.

　So I swung my sword to test it out.

"------!!!!"

It was a slash fired from my own body, so it wasn't unusually fast or strong. It went at Lucy at a reasonable speed, and just as she was about to avoid it again.

"What?""

　My voice and Lucy's voice overlap.

In the middle of the strike, I let go of the sword and grabbed it again to extend the length of the hilt, giving it a longer reach than Lucy had anticipated.

　I knew this was a common tactic with a spear, but the shocking part was what happened next.

　My sword caught Lucy's and flicked it away in a trajectory that I did not know, and that even Lucy had never seen before.

　Barely perceptible was the snap of my wrist, as if to hook the sword for a moment.

　That was all it took for the sword to fly out of Lucy's hand.

As I looked away in dismay, my mind kept drawing the next move. A spear attack.

　Could I really win? With that thought, I desperately thrust the spear in, and victory became a certainty...

(ah...)

　Ptun, ptun. I flt as if something snapped. After that, the thoughts that had been spinning so much stopped completely, and my body stopped moving again.

I felt a strange feeling of something being cut off.

　I had forgotten that I had been fighting beyond my limits because I had once been in a world of darkness.

　So I couldn't move any further.

Convinced of that, but still not wanting to lose, I thought of Crescencia for the last time, and then I completely passed out.