My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's

※Contains scenes depicting corpses.

If you're sensitive to that or have just eaten, please check your condition before reading.

At last we arrived at the Morte Slum.

Even though it's called a slum, a single street away is a glittering shopping district, and a little further on are the Adventurer Guild and a labyrinth. The reason Morte is called a "slum" is probably because stranded members of other races get gathered here. With no money and no weapons, you'd starve waiting. Even if you were lucky enough to wash ashore with a weapon, the labyrinths in the Demon Clan territory have higher-level demonic beasts, so the chances of Humans or Beastmen surviving are slim. Either way, death is what awaits.

And the Demon Clan will never help them. Even Lattice Nail and Night, who are friendly to us, already treat them as if they don't exist. To the demons, these people are likely no different from trash thrown by the roadside.

I swallowed hard when I noticed that someone who yesterday had their stamina stat blinking at 1 — barely alive — had been transformed into an object in the exact same spot. Small demonic beasts, like slugs that feed on carrion, swarmed over the body. If I listened closely I could faintly hear the sound of the creatures crawling and chewing. Perhaps yesterday the shock of the scene had been too great for me to really see it.

A chill ran down my arms; gooseflesh prickled my skin. Not fear of death, but a visceral disgust. I'm not good with insects in the first place.

"...This is awful."

Covering my nose with my sleeve against the pungent, nausea-inducing stench, the hero, Kyousuke, Hosoyama, and Tsuda — who were visiting for the first time — all frowned. They couldn't see stats like I could, so they probably couldn't tell who was alive and who was dead.

So they tried to save them.

"...!!"

Before Night and I could stop him, the hero dashed over to a person nearby who was lying listless on the ground, gasping and wheezing. He lifted the body and, without hesitation, gave from his water container. He'd used half his canteen on the way here and still needed water for the return trip, yet he shared it because someone was near death. Even if everyday magic could produce water, it wasn't infinite. He was handing it out to others purely because a life was at stake.

I just stood there watching.

If the me from when I first came to this world had been here, he would have laughed at the hero's actions.

This is hypocrisy. In this place there are already too many people on the brink of death to count with both hands; our strength alone can't do anything. If there's no way to save everyone equally, you have to rank lives. You absolutely cannot save them all. Then you should never give false hope; you should turn a blind eye. If you can't save everyone, at least protect yourself from the stress of watching people die.

That was what I did yesterday.

And yet Kyousuke, Hosoyama, and Tsuda followed the hero and rushed to those lying on the ground. I felt nauseous at their goodness, and at the same time I envied it. Even now people in my field of view were disappearing from the status screen. Even if they could see the same things, they would act the same way.

"Master, what do we do?"

I couldn't find words for Night's whisper in my ear and answered only with silence. I didn't know how to move.

"Akira! Give me the water you have!"

I handed my canteen to the hero as asked. He took it without looking at me and gave the contents to the person he had propped up.

"...It's like putting water on a hot stone."

"I know that!!! Still, if we use everyday magic, if we use small Demon Stones, there are lives we can save!! We're short-handed! Help us!"

The hero pulled out a pouch filled with small Demon Stones. If gathered together they'd amount to about the size of two fists — roughly the size of the Demon Stones Ria uses in her staff. It was enough that an ordinary Human selling them at the guild could live for five years. The hero and his companions had painstakingly earned these stones in Yamato Country without labyrinths, and they were going to spend them here.