The Nameless One and the Dancing Madman

“W-we don’t have a ‘Blind One’ right now. Vaiberon, a hundred years ago, went beyond the river….”

“What? What utter nonsense! The ‘Blind One’ doesn’t die! You’re trying to con me!”

“N-no, no, no, it’s true! A hundred years ago, they relinquished their position! H-however, the next ‘Blind One’ could not inherit the blessing! Since then, we haven’t had a ‘Blind One’!”

The man trembled so pitifully it was hard to watch. Seeing him, my anger only surged.

“A blessing can just be received anew! Why don’t you have one?”

“Because there’s no human worthy of the qualifications! The standard was too high from the start! To receive divine recognition—could any ordinary human achieve that?”

“That’s why I gave them the ‘Twilight Mist,’ just in case someone incapable came along!”

『The Garden』 boasted quite robust life content. Romance and marriage were possible. If one wished, they could buy and decorate a house, or even adopt a child. Children would live for a certain period, grow up, and then become adults to live independently.

Time flowed continuously in this game. NPCs aged and sometimes died according to the passage of time. However, important figures or quest-giving NPCs did not die of old age, though they could perish from monster attacks or other reasons.

In the early days, when I first created my character, I adopted Vaiberon to make the game easier. When you’re with a child, enemies either don’t appear or can be avoided even if encountered. Otherwise, they attack with ridiculously low damage, as the game was designed so that children could never be killed. I benefited from that, but….

Even a dog, if raised long enough, inevitably grows fond of you.

Though it wasn’t much in real-world time, we had constantly traveled together in game-time. I didn’t want them to die. So, I had them inherit the newly created guild. If you become a major character and receive a divine blessing, you can remain in the system indefinitely without dying.

Normally, players wouldn’t do such a thing. Even if just out of annoyance, they’d maintain their position themselves, as it was more advantageous.

Being the leader of a faction was incredibly convenient. You only needed to appoint a proxy to handle tasks in your absence. Most often, this task was given to a companion character who had joined you on related quests. An NPC of companion-level was a named character, after all.

Such a desirable position wasn’t given to a generic NPC with no backstory. Yet, I raised Vaiberon and had them inherit my position.

“Y-you… you’re… the ‘Nameless One’?”

Why such a title? Perhaps because Vaiberon didn’t know my name. There was no need to tell Vaiberon my name. It was just a game, after all. Wouldn’t it be funnier for an adopted in-game child to ask, ‘What’s your name?’ The only necessary title was ‘Dad.’

I’d conceptualized myself as a demon hunter from the start. However, I also wanted to experience all the new expansion content. So, I left no name on deeds that could be considered evil. While an evil alignment could be changed later, notoriety was almost impossible to erase.

I hadn’t imagined it would manifest this way. Since they didn’t know my name, my title became ‘Nameless One,’ the one I had at the time.

“The Ravens of the Riverbank were created by me, so there are no quests for players. That makes sense then. Even as a major character, without quests, they must have been useless. Ah, I see. Even if I had them inherit the position, they could still die if too much time passed.”

The system was blameless. It merely processed according to its established rules.

They had lived longer than other NPCs, but it seemed they eventually died. I hadn’t known. I hadn’t come down to check in about a year or two, busy hunting demons. I was too lazy to do anything else. Dozens, maybe hundreds of in-game years must have passed. I hadn’t checked the game clock, so I didn’t know.

“Bebe… died….”

Suddenly, tears gushed forth. I didn’t even know why I was crying. It was just a game character, so why was I crying over this? I released the man I had been gripping.

“Go. I’m letting you go.”

“Who are you?”

I don’t know why he wasn’t leaving despite being told to go. I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand.

“You don’t need to know. I’m nothing.”

Was this truly something to be so sad about? I didn’t know. I must have liked Vaiberon more than I realized. Perhaps it was because I raised them myself. I knew they were just a virtual character, a randomly generated child, yet my tears wouldn’t stop.

“Go tell them. There won’t be a next time. If they come again, I’ll wipe them all out.”

I had left the Ravens of the Riverbank alive because I wanted to keep Vaiberon—Bebe—alive. Otherwise, I would have gotten rid of them long ago.

I might have cleared my evil karma by destroying them, or I might have done so because I wanted to create something else. You can only create one organization. Even if I wasn’t the leader, I’d have to destroy the existing organization to create a new one. I would have removed it eventually to move on to something else. I had only left it because Bebe was there. But now… Bebe is gone. Ah, damn it.

The man stared at me as I sniffled unattractively, then quickly fled through the window.

I sat there and cried for a long time.

[Jack’s Perspective]

Demons were creatures found only in stories.

All we knew of demons came solely from ancient records. For they were such nebulous entities, and no one had ever claimed to have seen one in the flesh. If everyone died upon encountering one, who would know?

Then, one day, a revelation descended upon us. We were to eradicate a demon named ‘Medusa of the Funeral.’ While divine will was known to be beyond human comprehension, this revelation was even more inscrutable. To suddenly command us to kill a demon—had such beings truly existed in the first place?

Their very existence was doubtful. Yet, following the faint traces left in the records, we found something else in the nest.

“My apologies. I seem to have caught it.”

He was a man with an utterly bizarre appearance. Though his physique appeared well-trained, he wasn’t particularly large, and he was, at a glance, an exceptionally handsome man. With grayish-brown hair streaked with pale light and jet-black eyes, he sat clad in only a single piece of underwear. He was tearing into what looked like a large roasted bird.

While our Captain and he spoke, my comrades and I surveyed the nest’s interior. It was filled with malevolent energy. Even after performing blessings, prayers, and sprinkling holy water to complete a purification ritual before entering, it was still difficult to breathe.

In contrast, the man, who had done nothing, appeared utterly unperturbed. With his carefree smile, his manner of speaking, and his general appearance, who could see him as anything but a madman? He claimed to have caught the demon, and then he showed us a demon’s insignia.

It was something I had only seen in texts. I recognized it, yet that only made it harder to believe. A naked madman like him had caught a demon? Everyone seemed uneasy, yet they chose to believe him for the time being. To trust that man—I simply couldn’t comprehend it.

When we asked his name, the man uttered strange words. We couldn’t understand them at all. When we asked again, he told us to call him ‘Haut.’

Indeed. ‘I Want to Bang Faust’? When had he ever met our Captain to utter such a disrespectful thing? We must have misheard him. He must have said something we couldn’t properly understand. He was a madman, after all—it was entirely possible.

He was a person who only brought torment if one tried to understand him. That was the only way I could think of him.

Everything related to the man was strange, an endless string of absurdities. He didn’t even pretend to listen to others! He only spoke what pleased him, heard only what he desired, and his answers were a complete mess!

The man was truly stubborn. What was most infuriating was that he refused to wear clothes, even when told to. He said what we offered wasn’t pretty? So being naked was fine?

“Because being naked with a fork is a demon hunter’s basic?”

No! As a human, have some shame! Why won’t you wear clothes? Why do you walk around naked with such a perfectly normal face? And where did that dazzling, multicolored underwear come from? Don’t wear things like that!

Faust, our Captain, had to make an earnest plea to finally get him to change into white underwear. The process itself was truly awful, though. Who changes their underwear where everyone can see? Even newborns don’t do that! Four-year-olds know shame!

What was even more infuriating was that he genuinely didn’t seem to care! Where on earth did this madman come from?

That wasn’t all. He kept pulling things out and putting them away, and I had no idea where they came from or where they disappeared to. Everything he said was nonsense, yet strangely precise in odd ways. He spoke of things no one knew—incredible tales.

“Usually, something happens in cases like this….”

No sooner had the man spoken than one of our comrades burst through the door. Demons were swarming outside, they said. The man told us to flee, claiming he would hold them back. We scrambled around in a panic.

It wasn’t just me. Everyone’s faces were grim. The one who had seen the scene firsthand and rushed back to warn us had long since drained of color. When questioned, he just spouted nonsense about them being the ‘incarnations of hell,’ offering no help at all. It was a miracle he could even move.

As it was a small village, gathering the people was not difficult. We couldn’t take anything with us, but fleeing was the priority. No matter how important, nothing was more important than life itself.

“Captain, will he really be alright?”

“He will probably be alright. Probably….”

I was concerned. Could we truly just leave him and go? The man had said he caught a demon and even showed us proof, but wasn’t he human, after all?

The Captain, after much deliberation, handed off the elder he was carrying to another companion and drew his sword.

“Go ahead. According to records, demons cannot cross running water, so you’ll be safe once you cross the river.”

“What are you going to do, Captain?”

“I suppose I can’t leave him alone.”

How foolish. It was truly a stupid thing to do. A considerable amount of time had passed, yet no demons were visible. It meant the man was genuinely holding them back.

Unbelievable as it was, the man truly was stopping the demons. The nearby demons, which were supposed to rush in within minutes, still couldn’t advance. Soul-shattering wails echoed nearby, yet the source of those terrifying screams remained unseen.

All we had to do was go.

“Damn it, I can’t just stand by!”

“Jack, you don’t need to go.”

“How can I send the Captain alone?”

“T-then we too…!”

“We can’t lose any more people. You know that, right?”

Only about two people could be spared. That was the number of villagers who were either infirm or children too slow to keep up. Everyone, without exception, offered to go, but then there wouldn’t be enough people to quickly move the villagers.

Only the one who had seen the demons had recoiled in terror, shutting their mouth and backing away. What on earth had they seen to be so utterly horrified?

It was a fleeting thought. For the demons were so close they became visible the moment we stepped past the village boundary.

“Damn it, this is horrifying.”

They surged forward in numbers that seemed endless. They had been right here, so close, yet he hadn’t let a single one through. The ground was piled high with demon corpses, forming a wall-like barrier at the village’s edge. It was truly hell on earth.

It was my first time seeing a demon. Having seen them in records and received training, I at least knew what they looked like. The actual creatures weren’t much different from the descriptions. The fact that they were alive and moving was terrifying.

The man was rampaging with his sword at the center where the demons were swarming out. No, he was dancing. The trajectory of his blade, flowing as if unimpeded by anything, blossomed like a dance. His entire body was covered in thick, black ichor.

What? Was that truly a ‘human’ like us?