Antagonist Protection Service-Chapter 53: The Worth of Three Stars

After that, I walked Lucretia to class before taking a stroll to the academy gardens.

Excluding the wild goose chase around the academy, the morning ritual was practically the same as yesterday.

Ah, except, Lucretia had a different class this morning, so we visited a new classroom, and thus I ended up idling in a garden I hadn’t seen before. It was lush, very vibrantly green, and exceptionally manicured with bunches of various colourful flowers, the names of which I hadn’t the foggiest.

In other words, it was basically the same as the other garden.

’They have a lot of warm colours here. Do they have specific colours for each area? There were pastel ones yesterday...’

Rather absentmindedly, I took a seat on a bench and stared blankly into the fresh open air, letting the tranquil atmosphere of pleasant nature encompass me.

In and out, I breathed deeply.

There were no people.

No trouble.

No 「scenes」.

No Protagonist, no love interests...

Just me―and mother nature.

"Huh..."

I had a feeling that this peaceful time would swiftly become my favourite hour of the day.

That is, if I were even guaranteed an hour of peace each day.

Although, the Tags of this Illusory World did not include #Action, so I supposed that wasn’t too unlikely.

At the same time, I remembered. This was essentially my second day in this Illusory World.

I had a maximum time limit of 3 months, but I didn’t actually think I would be spending anywhere close to that amount of time here. After all, it just didn’t make sense to take that long just for the Protagonist to open up to me about her secret.

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However, whenever I thought about that for more than a second, I couldn’t help but feel a slight seed of doubt begin to sprout, spreading its cursed roots within the deepest reaches of my being.

"Haha. No, no. Surely not..."

I laughed it off and shook my head, but that doubt remained firm.

"..."

Eventually, I gulped, leaning forward with my chin and mouth resting on my hands.

’Like I thought, I should just go ahead and assume I’ll be here for that long, shouldn’t I...’

Honestly, for a 3-star Difficulty rating, this Contract wasn’t looking to be very hard.

Sure, dealing with the Protagonist and the other love interests was going to be incredibly exhausting, as well as traversing all of the 「scenes」 that are bound to come my way... But, was it really worth assigning three whole stars of Difficulty to?

Compared to the other Contracts I’d completed until now, I wouldn’t exactly call this one particularly challenging, even. Just tiring.

In fact, if I could sit and relax like this for multiple hours every day, only taking time off to occasionally charm the Protagonist or ward her from the other love interests, could it even be called a challenge?

Excluding the Protagonist’s yet unknown secret, there might be something I’m missing.

"...Librarian?"

[Certainly! My apologies! Assigning the Difficulty of a Contract is not my responsibility, so I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, either...! If I had access to the Illusory World’s source material, I might be able to figure it out for you, but as you’ve only been here for a short while-- rather, t-the Library’s connection hasn’t strengthened enough to that point just yet, and due to lacking Authority...]

"Okay okay, I get it."

I let out an understanding groan.

Not long ago, the Librarian mentioned that the Difficulty of a Contract was determined through a multitude of factors coming together, essentially mixing and weighing against each other to produce a single, qualitative result in the form of ’an amount of stars’, the limit being five.

Of course, it was possible that the spike in Difficulty this time arose solely due to the presence of the various love interests or the Protagonist’s hidden power.

That was definitely possible, and since there were no clues whatsoever that even hinted at something else being responsible, at least not yet, it may even be the answer that I was overlooking.

It was also very possible that the long length of time it might take to clear the Contract contributed to its Difficulty, but it would take as long as it will thanks to the Protagonist’s hidden power, so I’m not sure I would count that as an individual factor...

The love interests, from what I’ve seen of them so far, also didn’t really seem like much of a threat.

If they really became that big of a problem, I could just shoot them too.

So, once again, the only thing I could see as a proper problem was that mysterious hidden power factor.

Still, the idea of simply chalking it up to that made me uneasy.

Even though it was an easy train of thought I would normally take, it felt uncomfortably wrong this time to say "Oh yep, it’s that hidden power!" and disregard it just like that.

I won’t make any progress by ignoring it, but I also had nothing I could do to stop worrying about it.

Could that single Tag really be such a big deal that it made the Difficulty spike that much all by itself...?

Thinking about it another way, if that Tag wasn’t there, would this Contract instead be 1-star Difficulty?

Was there actually something I wasn’t seeing, or was I just overthinking it for no reason?

I felt like I was going insane.

’Chill out. Deep breaths...’

Let’s take a moment to think a little deeper.

Rather than trying to come up with some ambiguous answer for what the ’real challenge’ of this Contract might be, let’s take a step back to look at the wider picture―focus on the forest instead of the trees, as they say.

Boiling down my thoughts to their most base level, I’ll lay them out clearly.

―What’s wrong?

I am concerned.

―What am I concerned about?

The Difficulty for this Contract seems positively misleading, and if I take my experience thus far to be representative, it feels deeply wrong.

―Why am I concerned about this?

Frankly, I’m not sure. Perhaps because this is my first higher-difficulty Contract and I would like to be as cautious as possible, so I’ve ended up worrying unnecessarily, or else, just maybe... maybe I’ve noticed something that has led me to be concerned.

"Hm..."

Since nothing springs to mind immediately, if there was something, it could only have been something I heard or witnessed but only clocked subconsciously.

’Librarian, do you remember anything suspicious like that? Anything at all, make sure you let me know.’

[Certainly! Oh, well, to be honest, Enki, I thought the strangest thing was that #HidingTruePower Tag!]

"Uh... well, yeah. Obviously. What about it?"

[Erm, in particular, I was rather confused when I saw it as I thought this to be a romance-focused game meant for young girls, because I’m still not quite sure how such a Tag bears any relevance to the story... Perhaps, could there be something to delve into there?]

"...Huh?"

Somehow, the instant following the Librarian’s words, something clicked.

"Wait, that’s a good point. This is a dating game, isn’t it? So why..."

As the end of my sentence trailed off, all the cogs in my head worked together and turned in unison.

Now that the question had been asked, I couldn’t erase it from my mind.

Why would the Protagonist of a dating game targeted towards young girls have such an important hidden power?

Of course, it could simply be the case that it’s for the player to have a bit of a power fantasy, and that could very well be the correct answer... however, when you think about it, is it really all that likely for a game like that to contain a power fantasy element? It seemed to me like a pretty unfitting element for that sort of audience.

Rather, above all else, wouldn’t it be far more likely that the Protagonist’s hidden power existed as a sort of key plot device?

’Even if that guess is correct, it still doesn’t answer what the hell she would need that kind of power for...’

In the end, although no questions were answered, and I was left in an unsatisfying rut.

"Hh... At least the weather’s not too bad."

It was still a moment of tranquility, one I felt should probably be savoured.