CHAPTER 67
I led the group and moved straight to the Imperial Palace's bar, a space where we could all sit together.
Seeing the pile of empty liquor bottles stacked in one corner, Hames—the culprit behind it—flinched for a moment, but no one paid it any mind.
Everyone else had just gone through experiences that made something like this seem like nothing.

"Sit."

I casually pulled out chairs to make room, but I was the only one who sat down.

"I'm fine."
"I don't mind standing."

Alios spoke while stealing glances at me, and Ares glared coldly at Alios as she replied.
Everyone had a similar reaction, so in the end, I was the only one sitting.
The first person to speak to me as I sat alone was the one half-unrelated to the current situation.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Red crossed her arms, looking around at the others in annoyance.

"They were always crazy bitches to begin with, but their behavior today was way worse than usual. They wouldn't act like this just because they were in a bad mood, so there must be some kind of trigger, right?"

As Red demanded answers from me, Niobe chimed in next.

"My Lord, please explain what happened in a way we can understand. I have absolutely no idea what this situation is about."

Niobe spoke in sheer frustration. Normally, Niobe is someone with excellent deductive reasoning.
Because of that, I could tell she wasn't failing to understand—she just couldn't believe the truth because it sounded so absurd.

"You really don't get it? You heard me talking with the others."

"...Then you're telling me to believe that? This parallel world nonsense!"

Even with the common sense of a Sword Master-level Death Knight, it seemed too ridiculous to accept, causing Niobe to raise her voice.
Hearing the words "parallel world" finally spoken out loud properly, Red put on a blank expression.

"What parallel world?"

"A place very similar to here, but the gender roles and the genders of the existing people are swapped."

"...Such a place exists?" Red asked, dumbfounded. "Then the me in that world would be a woman. And conversely, I'd be a man."

"Exactly."

"...So, you're saying these guys saw what their male counterparts did to the female you over there."

Red was quick on the uptake. She understood immediately after my brief explanation.

"And from the looks of it, the Heavenly God was the one who showed them."

"Right."

"But why didn't he show me?"

Because you were just an extra. Even though you were the one who kicked off the main incident, you didn't even appear in the original novel and were only mentioned by name. There was nothing to show you.

"The male Red died."

While I was debating how to explain it, Alios spoke up coldly.

"On the day I fought you, the day Ceres first used his power—on that exact day, he was killed by the male Alios's hands!"

"What kind of unlucky bullshit is that?!"

"It's true. Originally, the you here was supposed to die too, but you only survived out of pure luck. You weren't a very important existence over there, so there was nothing for you to see."

"..."

Alios sneered at Red as she explained. However...

"Then just how important of an existence was the male Alios over there, that he did such a fucked-up thing to the Ceres over there?"

Alios's face instantly stiffened at Red's immediate counterattack.

"Tell me. Just how great of a person was he, that the female Alios had to deny it wasn't her and try to shift the blame onto innocent me?"

"No, the me here didn't do anything! Shut up with your bullshit!"

Alios immediately flared up like she was having a seizure, but—

"After locking the female Ceres up in the house, he ruined her feet so she couldn't run away and even tried to force her to get pregnant."

The very truth Alios had so desperately denied was blurted out by someone else. Sibylius suddenly interjected.

"Forced pregnancy is heavily frowned upon even here, let alone in a place with reversed gender roles. He was a piece of trash pretending to be kind."

"...And what about you?"

As if to retaliate against Sibylius for suddenly butting in, Alios spat back.

"The male Sibylius seemed to treat Ceres like something to eat. Are you perhaps like that too?"

"I am not!"

"If not eating, then treating him as research material? He conducted all sorts of experiments on her just to keep her from leaving him!!"

"Do not equate me with that murderous bastard!"

"You started it!"

Right in front of my eyes, a pathetic, low-level argument was unfolding as they desperately tried to shift the blame onto each other.

"And if you think about it, our incident happened because of those two, didn't it?"

Realizing the argument wasn't going anywhere, Alios dragged the other two into it.

"Emperor Viol, you! You were the root cause of everything! Things started going wrong in earnest because you pulled all sorts of dirty tricks to keep Ceres tied down!"

Emotions running high, they were now speaking as if they completely identified the original novel's characters with themselves.

"That's true."

As Alios cursed Viol informally, Sibylius agreed.

"If the male Viol hadn't forcibly confined the female Ceres in the Imperial Palace, things wouldn't have reached that point. Emperor Viol, if you saw it, you'd admit it too. Especially accepting Nemeth's claim to subjugate Ceres—that was the decisive turning point."

Viol remained silent. With her usual personality, she would have immediately snapped back with something, but right now, she just kept her head bowed low.
Soon after...

"High Priest Hames, you were a problem too!"

When Viol didn't respond, Sibylius changed her target to Hames.

"When the female Ceres came to the temple for help, who let her get thrown into prison after being framed as a fake saintess? It was you! You did it on purpose so she would only look at you! If the Sibylius over there hadn't broken her out, she would have stayed locked in prison forever. Or she would have had to submit to the male Hames and beg him to let her out."

"...That is true."

Hames, seemingly unable to even make excuses, merely affirmed it in silence.
It was then.

"All of you, shut up!"

Ares screamed, as if she couldn't bear to listen anymore.

"Hearing those things again makes me feel like my insides are going to burst and I'll die! You damn wretches, babbling about your sins like you're proud of them..."

Ares glared at the four of them, especially Viol.
However...

"Honestly speaking, it's not like the male Ares did a great job either, right?"
"He is one of the reasons the Ceres over there died."

Alios and Sibylius turned their cold glares back onto Ares.

"In the end, the Ares over there prepared a rebellion claiming he would take Ceres back, got caught, and ended up imprisoned."
"And then abruptly committed suicide, claiming he didn't want to be a hindrance to Ceres. Leaving Ceres without a single shield to protect her later on."

The two of them took turns pointing out the most fatal mistakes the original Ares had made. Honestly, I thought the same.
The original Ares really did act way too recklessly.

"Even in this world, if things had gone even slightly wrong, that's exactly what would have happened!"

"...Shut up."

"Have you never considered that your actions actually become a nuisance to Ceres?"

"I said shut up!"

Ares, agitated by the two relentlessly cornering her, kept yelling at them to shut up.
Just as it looked like they were all about to start fighting right then and there...

"Stop."

The moment I spoke, they all flinched and froze.

"Looks like everyone enjoyed watching the events of the other world. Seeing how worked up you all are."

I stared coolly at the ones causing the commotion.

"Do you perhaps want to act like your counterparts in the other world here too?"

"N-no!"
"Absolutely not!"

"Then both of you shut up. Don't make an already complicated situation even more complicated."

After silencing the two causing the uproar, I looked over the group and spoke.

"Alright, since we've talked enough, let's end this matter here."

"...What?"

Viol reacted the moment I suggested ending it. She lifted her head and looked at me with eyes full of disbelief.

"You want to just end all those things?!"

"It's a matter of another world anyway. None of it happened here, so there's no need to hold any feelings about it."

That's right. In this world, thanks to my efforts, the tragedies of the original novel never happened.
And from what I've observed, these guys are basically completely different people from the original male leads anyway.
So even though I was telling them to just let it go, everyone's reactions were strange.

"There's no way such things can be forgiven!"

Hames said, covering her face with both hands.

"The God himself showed me all those sins directly, and you want to just move on?!"

"She's right. The events of that world shown by the Heavenly God are absolutely not something we can just overlook!"

Sibylius chimed in as well.

"It's definitely a matter of another world, so if Ceres says to move on, that might be the end of it. But that doesn't mean the events that happened in that world disappear, does it?"

Alios said, looking devastated.

"What about taking action before it happens in our world too?"

Ares asked cautiously.
It was such a headache-inducing situation that I was getting annoyed and was about to speak again when—

"My Lord!"

At that moment, one of the Death Knights under Niobe's command entered.
As everyone's attention shifted to her, she spoke.

"The priests of this capital have arrived. A divine oracle from the Heavenly God has descended, and they say they wish to meet you, My Lord."