I'll never forget the first time I killed a Monster.
There were Skills, there was a Status, and on top of all that, my Level went up whenever I killed a Monster.
Born into a world that worked like a game, I'd been living with something of a gaming mindset.
I realized how wrong that was when Natsume tried to kill me.
And again when I took a life with my own hands.
It started after I enrolled in the academy.
There was a practical exercise in fighting Monsters, and for the first time in my life, I came face to face with one.
Since the opponents in an academy practical were meant for inexperienced students, the Monsters that time were fairly weak.
The kind even an ordinary adult who never normally fought could repel — small-creature-level threats.
But Monsters were still Monsters.
Monsters were pests that actively attacked people, and no matter how weak they were, failing to kill them would result in casualties.
No matter how feeble, being a Monster meant they weren't entirely without danger.
If an adult could repel them, that conversely meant they were dangerous for children.
And even for adults, repelling them without injury wasn't guaranteed — in the worst case, your life could be at stake.
In fact, even with such weak Monsters, there were a handful of casualties every year.
The practical exercise served a dual purpose: letting students experience combat with Monsters, and thinning their numbers.
That was why you couldn't hesitate to kill them.
But...
The Monster that genuinely tried to kill me.
There was a living will behind it.
Not like some game program — a mind that thought and acted.
I had been far too naive about what it meant to fight Monsters, or more broadly, to fight a living creature.
Not in terms of combat power disparity.
If that were the issue, my Status was high among people my age, and I could easily defeat weak Monsters.
That wasn't what this was about.
It's hard to put that feeling into words.
But when I faced that Monster, I realized in that moment that fighting was far more real and terrifying than anything I'd ever imagined.
Yes. It was terrifying.
The Monster bearing down on me — the being that wanted to kill me — and the fact that I had to kill it.
In the end, I couldn't bring myself to kill the Monster in that first encounter, and all I could do was keep dodging its attacks.
Then Parton, from my same group, couldn't stand watching and finished it off.
Effortlessly.
"Why..."
I asked Parton that.
I wasn't even sure what I was asking about.
I just blurted out whatever came to mind.
"Oh, sorry about that. You seemed to be struggling, so I just..."
Parton's response to my question sounded like an apology for stealing my kill.
"I overstepped. Come to think of it, there's no way Lord Shurein would struggle with a Monster of that level. Ah, I see! You were observing the Monster's movements, weren't you? Remaining vigilant even against weak Monsters and studying their behavior. That's really instructive."
No.
That wasn't it.
What I wanted to ask, and the reason I couldn't defeat the Monster — neither of those had anything to do with that.
But I understood.
I understood all too well.
This — this was the difference between this world and Japan.
In this world, life was cheap.
Far, far too cheap.
Killing Monsters was just what you did.
The Demon race were enemies, so killing them was just what you did.
Even among humans, killing each other came easily.
And the people of this world were utterly indifferent to the lives they took.
They took lives as though it were routine work.
Parton showed no particular emotion about killing the Monster.
I'm no saint myself. Back in Japan, I ate meat, and I'd killed insects before.
I couldn't say that a life was equally valuable whether it belonged to an insect, an animal, or a human.
I understood that Monsters were pests that attacked people, and that if you didn't kill them, you'd be killed instead.
But I felt resistance — deep resistance — at killing a Monster as casually as swatting a bug.
Even so, in the end, that day I killed a Monster with my own hands for the first time in my life.
Because I was afraid of disappointing the respect in Parton's eyes.
And above all, because I remembered being attacked by Natsume, and how close I'd came to dying.
From that resolve — the resolve that I had to be able to protect myself — I took a Monster's life to raise my Level.
For my own selfish sake, I took a life.
I'll never forget it.
The sensation of a sword splitting skin, cutting through flesh, severing bone.
The smell of blood spraying everywhere.
The death cry.
The moment life faded, burned into my eyes.
It was real death — nothing like CG on a game screen.
In Japan, too, pest extermination was a thing.
More to the point, the meat lining store shelves had once belonged to living cows and pigs.
For humans to keep living, they had to take lives.
Indirectly or otherwise, we humans take countless lives in the course of living.
But I'd never known that taking a life directly carried this much weight.
And so you think about it.
If it's this heavy with a Monster, how heavy must it be to kill a human?
Scary.
Just thinking about it is scary.
How could Natsume have done that?
If she'd tasted the same feelings I had, she could never have thought of this place as some kind of paradise.
This world might look like a game, but it wasn't a game.
Even if life seemed cheap here, its weight on Earth hadn't changed.
It was just that people didn't understand that.
But I did.
In a world constantly wracked by conflict, they had to view life as relatively cheap just to keep going.
They killed Monsters and the Demon race for the sake of their own livelihoods.
I couldn't tell them to stop.
I'd been killing Monsters for my own sake too.
That cross was one I'd carry for the rest of my life.
I understood the desire to think of life as less heavy — anything to lighten that burden even a little.
But I couldn't just accept it as "can't be helped" and change my own way of thinking.
Because even knowing it was impossible, I knew a Hero who had pursued his ideals to the very end — all the way until death.
"It's fine to have a dream. It's fine to be laughed at as an impossible fool. But you should at least aim for it — a peaceful world where everyone can live and smile. I'll keep chasing that ideal. Until the day I die."
The contradiction of fighting for the sake of peace.
He suffered under that contradiction, yet never let me see his anguish, and kept on fighting.
I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Julius-niisama and his ideals.
I was afraid of fighting.
Afraid of taking lives.
Afraid of having my life taken.
I could never become a proper Hero — someone with the resolve to keep fighting, like Julius-niisama had been.
Even my ideals were nothing but hand-me-downs, imitations of his.
A half-baked Hero cobbled together from nothing but pretense.
But maybe, precisely because I was that kind of Hero, there was something I could do.
Maybe knowing the weight of life was the first step.
Maybe the ethics I'd grown up with in peaceful Japan could be of some small use.
Maybe I couldn't eliminate conflict entirely, but I could reduce it, even if only a little.
I was a sorry excuse for a Hero who'd failed the role, but I wanted to find what even I could do.
I wanted to do everything within my power.
That was what I'd believed before Natsume drove me from the kingdom, and after that, I'd been doing what I could right in front of me.
But all of that — my beliefs, Julius-niisama's will — had been mocked by the truth of this world, and I'd become emotional.
I realized I'd said too much from the look on Kyoya's face.
Kyoya wore an expression like someone enduring something painful.
From that expression, I could tell that Kyoya hadn't killed Natsume because he wanted to, and somewhere inside, I felt a small measure of relief.
But the emotions churning in my chest didn't calm from that, and at the same time I couldn't pile on more words. All I could do was look at Kyoya's face.
"...Sorry. I got a little emotional and said too much."
After who knows how much time had passed, I finally regained some composure and apologized to Kyoya.
Somehow, I felt that blaming Kyoya here would be missing the point.
"No. There's no need to apologize. You're right, Shun."
Kyoya shook his head weakly.
"I envy you. The fact that you can stay true to what's right."
That feeble, fragile expression — I could hardly believe it belonged to the same person who'd killed Natsume without mercy.
Something must have happened to Kyoya too, and that much came through clearly.
Kyoya showed that weakness for just an instant, but once he closed his eyes and opened them again, the strong gaze had returned.
"You're right, Shun. But I have no intention of changing the path I walk. And I don't regret what I did."
There sat a man whose convictions would absolutely never bend.
Convictions I could never agree with.