I Became a 6★ Gacha Character

Chapter 521: A Predictable Story 1

The witch's trap that greeted us was cliché, if anything—twisting and injecting painful memories from the past to make us lose our minds. It was an effective way to subdue superhumans who were nearly perfect physically.

Even superhumans who could endure three days and nights without eating, drinking, or sleeping as long as they had mana couldn't strengthen their mental faculties with mana alone.

Unless you were some emotionless chuunibyou character, having a grip strong enough to crush rocks like tofu or muscles comparable to steel didn't free you from emotions like sorrow and regret. ...That is, if you weren't just a spectator watching someone else's life like me.

But Grace seemed to have broken free from the sorcerous illusion before I did.

"Not as... impressive... as I... thought—"

"Your... pathetic... lover... is... gaining... awareness—"

"Have you... too... swallowed... the sorcery... and... gained... insight... child?"

Grace's arrows flew with gentle wind mana, but their rapid-fire trajectory and targeted locations were brutally vicious—forehead, temple, eyes, open mouth, uvula, heart, axillary artery, lungs. Thanks to this, the witch's attempts at speech were constantly interrupted.

Behind me, Roland's parents' death screams repeated like a broken radio, while in front, the mad witch's image rolled her eyes with interest as she gradually transformed into a porcupine.

"Child? In this... amusing... situation... surely not—"

"Amusing... fucking bitch, how could this be amusing to you?"

After confirming the camera wasn't around, I spat out a satisfying curse.

At the same time, I felt intense holy power gathering in my grip as I flexed my muscles. My body strengthened with mana, holy power concentrated in my hands. Using the brutish method of operating them separately if they couldn't be mixed, I summoned the holy sword.

Only then did I realize I had broken free from the illusion and was standing alone in a dim fog.

The illusion shattered from the mere ripple of the holy sword flickering in my grip—perhaps the sorcery wasn't that grand after all. With no camera or companions around me, even the dark forest had likely been an illusion. Like a dream within a dream or an illusion within an illusion, we'd been caught in the sorcery from the hillside.

Grace had awakened from the spell before me and was still firing arrows. Seeing arrows flying continually from the darkness even after the burning ruins' illusion disappeared, I gripped the holy sword with both hands.

"Your lover is... breaking... her shell—"

"It's not her shell she's breaking, but your fucking head."

I employed the Imperial swordsmanship I'd absorbed from the fragment, not wielding the sword like a baseball bat. Perhaps thanks to the illusion the witch had shown and Roland's awakened memories, it felt more natural somehow.

One half-step forward, inhaling, both hands on the hilt, pommel before my chin, blade tip toward the sky without wavering—

The Imperial stance from Roland's revived memories. Recalling the genius knight's memory of swearing to hold his sword without shame before the Goddess and the Empire, I held the holy sword vertically. As if chiding me that I was finally using it properly, the holy sword pulsed with holy power in response.

The holy sword, growing enormous on its own as if declaring it would fill the dark space with light, soared skyward.

Arms horizontal, sword vertical, then both hands up. My hands gripping the hilt naturally rotated into a full-force downward slash. Though it was a simple downward cut without grand swordsmanship principles or flashy techniques, the perfect stance combined with a superhuman body and glowing holy sword produced a result that was anything but simple.

SCHWAAANG!!!

The dark space shattered from the holy sword's downward slash. Whether the sorcery broke or twisted, I could see Grace in the distance. Like my false memory, her hometown village had been ravaged by an army of monsters gathered by wandering orcs.

The small girl we had rescued in a quest had been brutally murdered, Grace's parents were being devoured by monsters, and beyond that horrific scene, hungry monsters were feasting on the villagers' corpses.

And Grace stood atop a burning hut, firing arrows in every direction.

"...?"

She seemed completely disinterested in the monsters eating her family and villagers. Her arrows flew wildly—sometimes high toward the clouds, sometimes piercing through building debris below.

As one viewer had guessed, her fingers drawing the bowstring became increasingly difficult to see as her mana consumption grew with each shot, but her firing speed increased.

Those arrows flying in all directions weren't hitting empty space, clouds, monsters, or village ruins—they were striking the mad witch's illusion chattering beside me. Every arrow had found its mark, making her look beyond a porcupine, more like the straw dummy Zhuge Liang used to collect arrows.

"How... is... this... possible?"

"Hey, your voice is cutting out. Got some kind of error?"

"What... do...?"

Her form so corrupted she no longer resembled a witch, her voice couldn't transmit properly either, making only unpleasant static sounds. It seemed her meticulous nature meant her actual body was nowhere near here.

Unknown sorcery that had swallowed a natural 6★ and a 5★ party whole. Thinking it dangerous, I'd drawn my holy sword to swing it recklessly while practicing my swordsmanship, but the sorcery was surprisingly weak.

I didn't understand how the sorcery worked, but once I realized it was an illusion, I was sent to a dark space, which shattered immediately when I struck it with the holy sword. It was an anticlimactic conclusion for using such an incredible skill with a 24-hour cooldown and only 5 minutes duration.

I briefly regretted not using it to just stab the flying witch with the enormous holy sword. That kind of regret was probably an incurable disease of RPG users—hoarding elixirs only to see the ending with them unused, the disease of not moving to the next map without revealing 100% of the current one, and the disease of not using ultimate skills while aiming for critical hits and damage.

"...Were you there, Roland?"

"What, you can see me now?"

"Of course I can see you. If I couldn't see something that big, I'd fail as a hunter."

While I was considering whether to raise hell with the holy sword that still had some duration left, Grace came toward me, leaping over the ruined village.

Though seeing her parents die vividly before her eyes must have been somewhat shocking, she buried her head against my chest as if seeking comfort, unlike her usual self. Deciding the holy sword's duration wasn't important in this situation, I dispersed the holy power and embraced her, feeling her warm body temperature even through my armor.

"Roland, aren't you suspicious?"

"Of what?"

"That I might be the witch's illusion? Like, what if I pulled out a dagger and, while pretending to be in your arms, stabbed your side!"

"Did you go from seeking comfort to feeling embarrassed in an instant?"

"...Even if you notice that, don't point it out."

She mumbled with her head buried in my chest. As I was about to pinch her cheeks that had turned red with embarrassment, I glared at the gauntlets on my hands, then noticed something familiar floating toward us from beyond the ruined village.

"Wow, what's this? Why are Grace and Roland together?"

-The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter!

-Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon!

-LOL you think the first woman is the winner? What if her stats and skills fall behind? She's the party's true mistress, you idiots LOLOL

-Ignoring the witch's sorcery completely? Archer is OP AF, why even have a staff holder LOLOL

-Archers taking advantage of the situation, typical: shoots allies in the back more than monsters LOL

Han Se-ah's broadcast, which I secretly checked when her translucent camera approached and started a 360-degree recording of Grace with her face buried in my chest, was chaotic as usual.

Han Se-ah, being a game player without memories of this world, must have done some kind of check. Pretending to bury my nose in Grace's hair, I moved my hologram window to check the fan accounts and the eat-sleep-cheat accounts I had bookmarked, and roughly figured out what happened.

There were no nightmares shown to the player, but they couldn't let her completely bypass such traps either, so they probably made her roll some dice. Not luck-based dice rolls, but rolls based on abilities.

And while Han Se-ah had her awkward moments, her mana control rivaled that of the Magic Tower's geniuses.

Roll, roll, roll—

In the dark space where pale forms flickered like ghosts from 80s classic films, Han Se-ah rolled holographic dice through mana. In a 60-second short video, she succeeded in throwing the dice five times in just three attempts, rolling four 6s and one 5, then immediately turned the camera away.

Judging by the chat—half crying out that it was impossible and half mocking with choking sounds—she must have even opened betting in that short time.

As I embraced Grace but looked elsewhere, the perceptive woman noticed and questioned me.

'Her mana control is really fucking good.'

"What are you looking at, Roland?"

"I thought I felt Hanna's magic. Was I mistaken?"

"Hmm, I don't think so. I can feel it a little too."

No, I just made that up.

How the hell did she find a way to break the sorcery?

Enjoy the chappy!