A Mob Character Who Just Wants to Get Banished and Escape This Death Game vs. The Party Members Driven Mad by the Radiance of His Brilliance - Chapter 12

“What’s with that stare, commoner? Gawking at my face like that—have you no respect?”

“…Yeah. Sorry about that.”

On the usual return trip from the battlefield, riding the rickety trolley, I looked away from the puzzled Isfana.
It seemed she’d completely forgotten what had happened that day.

That day, I had no choice but to follow Professor Alhansen’s orders.

He demanded full access to my body—experimentally, of course—until he could determine exactly why he trusted me.
If I refused, he’d use those bacteria to kill the rest of the party.

Isfana, fortunately, had her memories of the event wiped—drug-induced, not magical.
Which meant she might remember them someday, but if that ever happened, Alhansen said he’d simply knock her out again with one of his weapons.

In other words, every escape route had been sealed shut.

No matter how much I resisted or begged for help, it wouldn’t matter.
Alhansen held all the cards—at all times.

Even now, as we rode the trolley, he stared silently at me from across the car.

“Mikkanen. You understand, don’t you?”

“I do. So don’t get any weird ideas.”

Alhansen smiled faintly in the shadows.
Isfana, unaware of any of it, furrowed her brow at our suspicious exchange.

◆◆◆◆◆

“Mikkanen, you must lie down immediately.
Quickly—on the bed!”

Fresh off another mission, I was whisked into the lab by Professor Alhansen and commanded with his usual cold glare.

I didn’t understand what was going on—but I had no choice but to comply.

Once I lay back, he ran his fingers along my skin.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.
Ethics… regulations… this world is full of things that hinder progress.
But now, at last…”

He pressed my hand to his cheek, eyes dreamy, smiling as if intoxicated.

It terrified me to my core.

For a while after that, I endured what he called “exploration.”

He made tiny incisions to draw bl00d, peered into the back of my throat, and made me take a bunch of strange psychological tests.

“Hm-hm-hmm…”

Humming a tune, he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

“In the past, Mikkanen never allowed me to study him properly.
Now that I finally can, I must make the most of it.”

He smiled cheerfully as he spoke—but everything he said was news to me.
Sweat poured down my face as the unease mounted.

Apparently, Alhansen’s concept of trust ran far deeper than I’d expected.

“I measure everything—length, weight, standards of value—by Mikkanen.
The only thing in this world I can trust without question is Mikkanen himself.”

Unfortunately, this world shares the same metric system as the game Hunters of the Faerie.
Units like grams and liters exist.

But not for Alhansen.

He couldn’t trust any of those “established” systems.
So he started from zero, building an entire theoretical framework around my height, my drinking habits—everything.

“No one in the academic world would listen to me before.
It was frustrating. But I’ve won the grand prize for six straight years.
Someday, they’ll come around. I believe it.”

He was apparently spreading his “Mikkanen Method” throughout academic circles—without my knowledge.

And not just anywhere, either. At elite academic conferences filled with top researchers.

I winced in pure secondhand embarrassment.

“S-Stop it already.
I get that you trust me or whatever, but I’m way more used to the metric system.
This ‘Mikkanen Method’ or whatever… can’t you just let it go?”

“I refuse.
The only thing I can trust in this world is Mikkanen.”

He stomped the lab floor, fuming with anger.

Then, without another word, he resumed his experiments.

I held my head in my hands.
What the hell was so trustworthy about me? I honestly had no idea.

That entire day ended with me being “taught” all about the Mikkanen Method by the professor himself.

◆◆◆◆◆

Just how long is this going to continue?

After Alhansen left the lab—off to fetch something we were missing—I sat in silence, sighing deeply.

How had he ended up this far gone?

Come to think of it, I hadn’t really spoken to him much.
As a superior officer, as a party leader, I’d always kept my distance.

I tried to make myself unlikable—intentionally.
Avoided getting close to the team.
Just ran from one battlefield to the next.

But maybe… just maybe, I had been wrong all along.

What I should have done was take the time to listen to my team—to actually talk to them.
Had I done that, maybe I would have noticed how warped Professor Alhansen’s idea of trust had become.

And that wasn’t even the only thing bothering me.

Day by day, the professor’s “research” was escalating.
At first, he genuinely seemed to be trying to understand why he trusted me.

But now? Something was clearly off.

He’d started bringing up things that teetered on the edge of ethical disaster—or were already far past the line.

Questions like:
“If I remove your brain and copy it, which of you would be the real Mikkanen?”
Or,
“Is a body even necessary for a person to live?”

Chilling, in every sense of the word.

If I so much as nodded at one of those questions, I just knew he’d take it as permission to go full mad scientist.
At this rate, I was headed for a fate worse than any of the game’s bad endings.

I sat on the edge of the lab bed, shoulders slumped.

That’s when I noticed something odd: pale pink petals fluttering through the air.

They drifted softly, more and more of them entering the lab—slipping in through the gap under the door.

I knew that magic.

“…No way. Morglaid?”

“Well, you really are a hopeless leader,” a familiar voice chimed like bells beside my ear.
“Even I had to go through a lot of trouble to sneak into a lab this heavily guarded, you know.”

The petals gathered together, slowly forming the shape of a person.
And there, standing just inches from my face, was Morglaid, wearing his usual exasperated expression.

“Behold! The one and only Morglaid—the man you adore to an embarrassing degree!”

He flashed a sly grin.

“Morglaid, thank you!”

“Guh—wh-what the heck are you doing?!”

I couldn’t help it.
It felt like I’d just seen a single thread of hope descending into my personal hell.
Overcome with relief, I lunged at him and hugged him tight.

Moments later, a ruffled and red-faced Morglaid glared up at me with narrowed, accusing eyes.

“…You really are the enemy of all women. Now it’s confirmed.”

“S-sorry. I was just so happy to see you that I couldn’t help it…”

“Haaah. And that’s exactly how you end up in these messes.”

He sighed deeply.

But then, as if remembering something urgent, his face turned serious.
He grabbed my shoulders, his grip firm.

“That can wait. Do you know what the professor is planning right now?”

“I mean… not exactly, but I’m literally in the middle of being used as research fodder.”

I blinked. Morglaid responded by flicking me in the forehead, hard.

“Ow—hey!”

While I rubbed my head, he cut in coldly.

“Professor Alhansen has already filed a request with Agrastein.
He wants to relocate you to a secure rear-line laboratory.
If that goes through, they’ll ship you off—lock you up—and you’ll never see daylight again.”

Those words crawled down my spine and burrowed into my brain like ice.
A chill prickled across my skin.

Yeah… this was bad. Really bad.