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 13

I first learned what it meant to truly doubt during my student days.

Until then, I had been what you might call an exemplary student—a fool who blindly believed everything my teachers said. So when I visited the laboratory that experimented on fairies, I questioned nothing.

The scholars there proudly claimed that the underground containment facility for the fairies was more secure than any battlefield trench. I believed them without hesitation.

But that very afternoon, a fairy crawled out from the toilet, and the lab was transformed into a living hell.

Ultimately, it was all the result of a scholar’s baseless optimism.

It was already known that fairies might escape through the laboratory’s sewage pipes. As such, precautions were taken against slender fairies or small ones that could squeeze through narrow spaces.

But no one had imagined that a large, beast-like fairy would go so far as to tear off its own body, leaving only its head to slither through the pipes.

That I survived was nothing short of pure luck.

I hid in a storage cabinet, trembling as I heard the death cries of my classmates and the professors I had once admired. There was nothing I could do but cower in silence.

The time it took for the nearby hunters to arrive felt unbearably long.

From that day forward, I began to doubt everything.

The friends and scholars devoured in that lab had died in the name of knowledge. To carry the weight of that lesson and keep walking forward, one must be willing to question even common sense itself.

Sadly, I was not so brave.

At university, I often vomited into the restroom out of sheer terror. After each episode, my face looked like that of a corpse.

To doubt everything meant confronting fears one would normally suppress or flee from.

Just as on that day, a fairy might again leap from a toilet. And if there is life after death, perhaps the friends who perished resent me, the one who survived.

One must face such thoughts without turning away, and walk forward armed with unwavering logic.

Embarrassingly, for someone like me—who once ran from a pleading, dying friend—that was a painfully difficult path.

My once-praised black hair, admired by friends, had become dull and brittle—hardly recognizable. My body, reduced to skin and bone, creaked pathetically.

Still, I could not allow myself to stop.

The convention I chose to challenge was the very question: Why do fairies eat humans? It was one of the long-standing enigmas in the study of fairiology.

At the time, the prevailing theory among scholars was that, like beasts, fairies consumed humans as sustenance. But this was a poor explanation.

For instance, fairies never consumed any creature besides humans. If they needed nutrition, wouldn’t it be easier to eat a deer or a dog?

Furthermore, they seemed particularly fixated on the human brain. But is the brain really the most nourishing part of the body? Why not the intestines or the limbs?

And so, I chose to doubt that theory.

I sterilized fairies by burning them with fire, sealed them in jars, and filled the jars with ethanol. I offered them no nutrients of any kind and observed when they would perish.

Three days later, the fairy still glared at me. One month later, still no change. After a full year with no alteration, I concluded the experiment.

So then—what did this mean?

If, as the academic authorities claimed, fairies were just another kind of beast that sustained themselves by eating humans, then how long must one starve them before they die?

At that point, I considered three possibilities:

First, that some bacteria or unknown energy had contaminated the experiment, sustaining the fairy.

Second, that fairies simply do not starve to death even after a year without human flesh.

And third, that fairies do not require nutrients to live at all.

Questioning everything, I continued my experiments. I tried encasing entire fairies in plaster. I continuously drained their stomach contents.

Yet no matter how desperately I withheld nourishment, the fairies refused to die. It was then that a final experiment brought me a revelation.

Besides humans, there exists another species with a highly developed brain: monkeys. I began modifying and raising monkeys for testing.

From some, I removed the motor cortex; from others, the memory region. Some were blinded, others made deaf.

I then observed which of these monkeys the fairies would eat—and discovered something remarkable.

Fairies refused to eat monkeys whose emotional centers had been removed. Conversely, they readily consumed rabbits whose emotional regions had been artificially enlarged.

To make them eat what they once avoided—and avoid what they once ate.

This was an unprecedented breakthrough in the history of fairiology, and for me, an exhilarating moment. I eagerly presented the entire experiment to the academic society.

And in return, I was met with roaring laughter.

“Claiming that fairies eat hearts—what are you, a poet? We are scholars!”
They mocked me, dismissing the very concept of the heart as too abstract.

There was one thing I had never doubted: my fellow scholars, who had stood beside me like comrades-in-arms.

And that, too, proved to be a fool’s belief.

Branded a liar, I was expelled from the university. A formal order followed: I was to enlist in the military as a fairiologist.

At that point, I no longer cared.

After doubting everything in this world, never turning away from fear, enduring the torment as if coughing up bl00d, and finally reaching the fruit of my research—was this all I had to show for it?

If they had at least examined my experiments thoroughly, if they had truly challenged my conclusions and proved me wrong—I would have accepted that.

But I never imagined I would be laughed at so thoughtlessly, so outright.

All of my research came to an end. In the military, unlike at the university, there was no time for experiments—only the constant demands of service.

Naturally, there was no chance to write papers. Even if I did, no one would read them.

And so, after abandoning everything, I ended up assigned to the party of the hero Mikkanen. I wasn’t even particularly devoted to military duty, so I couldn’t understand why I had been chosen.

Still, a soldier cannot disobey orders.

And thus, I became a member of Mikkanen’s party—a man known as a great hero.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Ogd Alhansen.”

“Mikkanen. Nice to meet you as well.”

When I first met Mikkanen, I couldn’t take my eyes off the piece of paper he held in his hand. For some reason, it stirred a deep sense of nostalgia. I simply couldn’t look away.

“This is why I selected you,” he said.

The paper was my thesis on the idea that fairies consume the human heart—mocked and ridiculed by the academic world.

“W-why… how did you…?”

“What’s wrong? This is your paper, isn’t it? I came across it while digging through some research. I thought it was truly brilliant. I knew I wanted you on my team.”

It should’ve been impossible. My paper had been cast out of every journal, buried in the margins of a third-rate university bulletin, accompanied only by ridicule.

How on earth had he found it?

“Your logic is especially sound. You questioned every possibility and silenced each one through methodical, irrefutable experimentation. The conclusion you reached is remarkable.”

Please stop. Don’t say things like that.

If you praise me so sincerely—with such clear eyes and a voice so full of warmth—what choice do I have but to believe you? To believe that you genuinely appreciated and followed my research?

“When I found out you were in the military, I nearly fell over. I assumed you were a university president by now.”

Mikkanen smiled as he held my thesis, which was now marked with handwritten notes in every corner.

The thought that Mikkanen—a soldier, likely without even a university education—had made the effort to understand this paper, filled with difficult terminology and complex logic, made my heart feel as though it might burst.

“Professor Alhansen, if I may—why are you in the military?”

It had been a long time since anyone had addressed me as Professor.

“My thesis was ridiculed by the academic community,” I replied quietly. “No one would read it. The idea that fairies consume the human heart was dismissed as nothing more than fantasy. They laughed it off.”

“I see,” Mikkanen said, falling silent.

Then, he looked straight into my eyes.

“Professor Alhansen, I think it would be a tragedy to let your research end here. Call me an amateur if you like—but I don’t want you to give up.”

“A-ah…”

Mikkanen gave a sly smile.

“I’ll take care of your military assignments. Let’s show those arrogant scholars who drove you out what your work is really worth.”

I had been in pain for so long.

To go on doubting everything in this world was far harder than I’d ever imagined. I’d grown to despise everything—life, knowledge, even myself.

And yet… ah, it’s so unfair.

This man—Mikkanen—chose to believe in someone as broken as I am. With that kind of trust, how could I not lose my mind?

That’s right. From now on, I’ll allow myself one person I won’t doubt.

I don’t know why I trust him so completely. It makes no sense.

But even so—I will never doubt Mikkanen.