The Protagonist Always Wants to Find Someone to Commit Suicide With - Chapter 17

“Hurry back inside,” Dazai Osamu’s gaze crossed past the girl’s frame, tracking the darkness stretching behind her back. “Isn’t it exceptionally hazardous out here?”

“…” Hearing his words, the young lady suddenly fell into silence, a struggling expression surfacing across her face. Looking exactly as if she wanted to voice something yet held herself back, she lowered her head; her black hair, previously tucked behind her ear, slid down along with the movement to mask half her face.

The night aura remained tranquil as water. Combined with the absolute lack of human activity in this perimeter to begin with, the exterior environment presented an even more desolate, silent image; aside from a scattered handful of windows still filtering a murky yellow lamp light, the entire village sat utterly lifeless, looking exactly like structures frozen solid across a barren wasteland.

“Looks like a yokai genuinely exists right here,” Dazai noted to his system, scanning the young lady’s transparently non-normal expression.

“Your ship is on the verge of overturning,” the system unloosed an exceptionally thrilled note upon catching this piece of parameters. It followed up: “When the juncture manifests where they implore your person to go eliminate the monster, how do you plan to cope?” It looked on with a fair metric of pleasure at its host’s impending struggle to settle the scene.

“Don’t we still possess Tsubaki?” Dazai responded.

“…Garbage host, your action counts as an absolute abuse of child labor.”

Pausing for a long moment, the system testingly opened its mouth: “In truth, a child like Tsubaki isn’t bad either; your person can treat her a fraction better.”

“This counts merely as a minor exercise supplied to my student,” Dazai advanced his strides to draw close to that young lady who was still trapped inside a dazing state.

“If you hold zero idea what to voice, then refrain from speaking for now.” He looked directly into the young lady’s eyes, speaking with total gentleness: “An expression of this metric doesn’t suit a beautiful lady like your person at all.”

“…”

“Return inside.”

The exact split second Dazai Osamu reached the entrance of the hut, a somewhat weak voice transmitted from behind his back.

“Lord Dazai, please depart.”

“Why?” Dazai tracked her with an absolute look of interest. “An exceptionally terrifying entity nests right here; shouldn’t your person be imploring me to assist your group in eliminating it?”

“Your person already caught awareness?!” She looked at Dazai Osamu with absolute shock.

“Our perimeter has recently experienced some highly peculiar incidents,” her voice dropped low. “At the very start, it was adult males heading out to chop firewood who went missing.”

“Then, on a certain day, we discovered across the path tracks leading to alternative locations a person’s…” She paused a fraction, her voice carrying a slight tremble. “…It was a human corpse… though warped to a metric where it lost its shape, it could still be scanned out.”

“Our location has harbored a rancid legend since a long duration ago, so the villagers proceeded out to invite priestesses and monks from alternative places over, hoping to resolve it,” she rested her hand across her chest area.

“But those individuals never returned anew after proceeding to that side,” she was highly likely shivering; the fire strand inside the lantern she held within her hand also flickered along, casting a swaying, unstable shadow panels across the ground.

“Lord Dazai! It isn’t that I harbor zero trust toward your person but if you proceed over, you will genuinely face a death execution,” her emotions turned somewhat volatile. “Please depart this location with total speed.”

Dazai Osamu rotated his frame: “The rancid legend points toward—?”

“It’s an abandoned, desolate location over on that side,” the young lady shifted her frame sideways, looking toward the distant distance with an absolute part of dread. “Legend claims a massive yokai arrived at this location back in the day, leaving a curse behind.”

“A curse?”

“The specific parameters are an item I hold zero clarity on either; the village elders all voiced it to this image.”

“Heading straight along this bearing is sufficient to reach it?”

“Yes,” the girl watched Dazai Osamu walking right past her frame, her pupils contracting a fraction. “Lord Dazai?!”

“This counts as an area falling within my assigned duties,” Dazai shoved his hands deep inside his pockets, tilting his frame toward the interior of the hut. “Tsubaki, your person shall accompany me along too.”

“…” The young girl standing inside the corner behind the door slowly advanced her steps to emerge, speaking with absolute meekness: “Teacher Dazai.” Who knew from what juncture she had already been standing right there to execute a stealthy audition of the conversation tracks.

“Refrain from skipping sleep to this late metric next time,” once Tsubaki drew close to his frame, Dazai assisted her in arranging her somewhat untidy outer garment, extending his hand toward her. “Let’s move out.”

“Lord Dazai!” that young lady holding the lantern clenched her wrists together.

“Dread zero, we shall return anew,” Dazai Osamu fished out those two paper charms once more, waving them toward her bearing.

The system intensely suspected that his purpose for bringing these few paper sheets along from the start was exclusively to execute hoodwinking and fraudulent maneuvers.

“Are you certain your person intends to bring this minor under-age individual along to a dangerous location of that metric?” the system asked. “Furthermore, your person appears to possess absolute zero combat capability; what if a crisis parameter explodes how do you plan to cope?”

This question remained highly realistic. Dazai’s capability appeared unbeatably flashy and matchless against the world, but in truth, facing a mountain of parameters, it held absolute zero utility; not all yokai utilized spell assaults to cope with enemies. What if they ran into the variety adept at raw flesh combat, or whose attack styles were intrinsically savage to an absolute extreme Dazai and his companion were completely proceeding out to deliver themselves to a death execution.

“Don’t we still possess your person?”

Suddenly being gifted with a layer of trust by its host, the system unloosed a mental question mark: ???

“The energy parameters from before aren’t they still executing the preparations for a time-space crossover? Since it can execute a crossover across dimensions, a straightforward spatial displacement remains an item within its execution capability, right? If we collide with a crisis, simply dispatch Tsubaki and my person back here.”

The system decoded his intent within a single split second: “But parameters standing to that image would leave the remaining energy insufficient to permit your return home.”

Dazai Osamu looked exactly as if his words held a hidden direction. “A method will always manifest, won’t it?”

“…” A somewhat non-pleasant premonition rose deep within its core out of nowhere.

“Your person behaves remarkably peculiar~” Dazai shifted his text tracks, spouting words to his system.

“What is peculiar?” the system failed to decrypt.

“Didn’t your person desire for me to act as a good person?” Dazai noted. “But reaching the parameters of right now, your execution performance shares absolute zero connection with that line.”

“Whether it was bringing Tsubaki along to my side or this incident currently, your person appears to lack an overly active metric.”

“In inverse proportion, only after Tsubaki’s favorability index scaled high did your person suddenly direct me to ‘treat her a fraction better’ could it be that once the favorability index hits its one-hundred maximum line, some specific parameter is bound to explode?”

The system had completely missed mentally evaluating this direction; suddenly caught by this interrogation from him, it felt somewhat stuck right in its throat tracks, un-consciously letting out a syllable: “A reward is bound to manifest after all.”

The curve of the smile hanging across Dazai’s lips deepened a fraction. “A reward is bound to manifest? Looks like I caught the audition tracks of a highly grand parameter~”

System: Looks like a leak escaped from my mouth tracks.