Otherworld Company Chapter 141.1: Just the Way the Heart Is

　Side Himiku

~Himiku’s Perspective~

　It was dark.

　It was just dark.

　It was only darkness around me when I was sealed up.

　I remember the time when I was sealed.

　I took it upon myself to protect the heroes from that demon.

　An attack that was unleashed with a burst of powerful magical power, an attack that even I, one of the highest-ranking angels, would have lost my life and disappeared if I had not done my best to defend against it.

　I solidified my defenses to protect the hero from that attack.

　There was no emotion there.

　I simply sacrificed my body to fulfill the mission told to me by the Lord God.

　I did so because I decided that if I did not protect the heroes, the Demon King would be able to win.

　That was all.

　The only reason I traveled with the hero was because I followed the words of the Lord God who wished for the stability of the world.

　To put it plainly, I followed the instructions of the heroes because it was my job.

　There is not a shred of love or romance in that.

“I’m ****, Nice to meet you!” (Hero)

　That is why I did not know his name.

　No, I could not recognize him.

　I didn’t want to recognize him.

　We, angels, don’t base our feelings of love and hate on looks, power, or physical strength.

　It’s through the soul, we angels can sense the quality of the soul with our own innate sensitivity.

　I can feel it like feeling the heat.

　The soul of the hero who was given power by the Lord God and with whom I was to accompany was a cold soul with a sticky sensation.

　To a human’s senses, his face was fair, his smile gentle, and his words thoughtful.

　But to my eyes, they were like cold slime.

　I could only see such a being smiling wickedly and clinging to every woman.

　The hero acted as if it was natural for him to treat the woman he was traveling with at the time as if she were his.

　As if to embody this, the women in his party tended to be princesses, church saints, or former bandits, and he tended to choose the opposite sex, either by design or by accident.

　It was natural for such a hero to eventually have relations with these women.

　The princess sought power, the saint blindly believed in love, and the former bandit wanted to protect herself, and their love was nurtured based on differing feelings.

　I watched from afar.

　I thought that human beings are such creatures.

　And of course, the hero made such an offer to me as well.

　But I refused.

　The relationship between the hero and I was only business, a relationship that only served the purpose of keeping the world safe.

　If necessary, I might have had to offer myself to him, but at the time, there was no need to do so.

　So I refused.

　That is why I did not call him by his name but continued to refer to him as “Hero”, his title.

　That was my line.

　In response to my attitude, the hero complained that I didn’t have enough flags, and started talking to me more than necessary.

　He talked about the weather, delicious food, beautiful scenery, and adventures in which he had played an active role.

　To all of these, I continued to reply in a nonchalant manner.

　Even when the slime spoke to me, even if it was a slime that was trying to defeat the Demon King, I did not feel any emotion.

　Gradually, the hero stopped talking to me in response to my simple response, and by the end of our journey, he began to call me Iron Mask.

　Since we had such a relationship, of course, the hero would never have put me in the party if he had his way.

　In the past, when male knights and mages complained about the hero’s attitude, the hero used his power to throw them out.

　I wish I could have done the same, but my power as an angel amplifies the power of the hero.

　Knowing this, the hero would never let go of me.

　We were not even friends, only I amplified the hero’s power and he wielded it.

　It was a one-sided relationship, in which we were not equals, but only lent each other our power.

　A tool and the master who uses the tool was the relationship that finally settled down between me and the hero.

　For me, that was fine.

　I was in a comfortable position where I could fulfill my purpose by simply doing my job.

　The stories my sisters told me about the heroes unfolded in a more exciting way.

　A hero with a temperament similar to that of our Lord God, with enthusiasm like the sun; a hero with a narrow but indomitable pillar of courage; a clumsy and gentle hero who was twisted but could never abandon anyone; a hero who was not good at thinking, who made many mistakes, but never faltered.

　I had some expectations when I heard about these sisters, but when I saw the reality, my heart remained cold all the way to the end, as I had dismissed it as something that just is.

　When was the last time I gave up on saying anything when I saw the hero who moved from one place to another, from west to east, from north to south, rampaging about the world as he pleased, not listening to my complaints about his unacceptable attitude and not doubting that he was the righteous one?

　I realized that instead of holding the reins of power, I was simply guiding them by baiting them and letting them wield their power for the sake of the world’s peace.

　Ah, it was boring.

　Oh, it didn’t feel worthwhile.

　All I had in my mind was a sense of duty to my work, born of a frustrated desire not to be abandoned by the being who had given me only unilateral power, whose face I could hardly remember, the father who had created me.

　When a village is saved, the hero is thanked, when a city is saved, the hero is thanked, and when a country is saved, the hero is thanked.

　After repeating this work, I ran out of strength before the decisive battle with the Demon King.

　I ran out of strength because I had conserved the Hero’s strength for the decisive battle against the last guardian who protected the Demon King.

　I was defeated by that demon.

　I was no longer of any use to him, and the hero took advantage of the situation to ask me if I wanted him to save my life, but I shook my head.

　The wound would have been fatal if left untreated, but fortunately, I had confidence in my vitality.

　I told him that my role would end here, and he simply accepted it without hesitation, leaving me there and going off to defeat the Demon King.

　Without seeing him off, I went to sleep to use my remaining magical power to create a barrier to heal myself.

　Thinking that I had done my job, I went to sleep, feeling that a weight had been lifted from my heart.

　But the demon’s curse was more serious than I had anticipated.

　It took a long time to heal, and once I fell asleep, it was difficult to wake up.

　If everything went normally, my life would have ended there.

　I would have been eaten alive by the demons that noticed the barrier, or torn to pieces by the demon tribe, or at the very least, I would have had no good future awaiting me.

　Or there might have been another possibility.

　Among these possibilities, being captured by the power-hungry demons was a bad outcome, but not the worst.

　As I slept, most of my five senses were sealed off, and the seals were placed on me until I could not even move.

　The only thing I could do was to work on my magic so that my body would not deteriorate.

　I had to constantly experience the sensation of the magical power I had regenerated being sucked out through the seals, and if I did not create more magical power than that, I would not live.

　Therefore, I continued to produce more magic power than could be sucked out.

　Even though it would have taken a human being a long time to feel faint, I, as an angel, could do it without a care in the world.

　I just kept generating magic power to survive.

　After ten years of no outside interference, I somehow understood what was being done with my magical power and was able to gather information to understand my situation.

　That is when I learned that I had been made as a substitute for a dungeon core.

　After another ten years, I was able to interfere in the dungeon, albeit only slightly.

　I repeated this process for several years.

　When even I, an angel, had trouble counting, I was finally able to interfere with the dungeon’s control system.

　From there, it took several more years to break my seal without the administrator noticing.

　Finally, I escaped from the seal.

　Although I could not release the sealing device that clung to my body, I thought that I could force it off by taking an attack if the need arose.

　I was unable to move around quickly due to the sealing equipment that blocked most of my five senses, and the only means I could use to escape the dungeon was detection using magical power, which was a lousy situation.

　I could not wield my full strength if my magical power was suppressed to such a degree.

　My limbs were attached to some kind of weight, and I was unable to move my body.

　Even so, I was able to defeat the monsters, so I aimed for the exit by repeatedly defeating them when I came in contact with them, partly to check my physical condition.

　The only thing that helped me was the fact that I could tell that I was getting closer to the exit when the monsters became weaker, which is a characteristic of dungeons.

　I can’t see, hear, speak, smell, or feel the temperature or the air.

　All I could do was think while I moved around and grasped the shapes of my surroundings with my magical powers.

　I think about the meaning of my existence and future.

　Returning home was of secondary importance to me at that time.

　I was thinking about the possibility of losing my life in the hostile environment of the dungeon, and at that time, I had a somewhat optimistic thought that I might be okay.

　Returning to the Lord God was only a return instinct, just a vague thought that I had to go back.

　That instinct fades away when I think that if I return, I will again be entrusted with a job by my eldest sister, who claims to be doing it for the world.

　I think I must go home, but even if I do, I wonder if it would be okay to go back a little slower.

　While I was moving around with these thoughts in my head, I found myself fighting demons again.

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