Weakness was the original sin

After a hard day of grinding Orange Balloon Monsters, Naofumi Iwatani sat alone at a table, weariness showing on his face. As he chewed his food, his brows twitched, and his heart sank.

The food tasted like wax. There was no flavor to it at all.

Was something wrong with my sense of taste?

Although he was somewhat concerned about his sense of taste, he did not dwell on it. Other matters occupied his mind.

Leveling up was far too slow. I fought out in the fields practically from dawn to dusk, and I barely reached LV2. This wasn't even turtle speed. A snail would have been faster.

At this rate, forget dealing with the Waves. Even keeping myself safe would be a problem.

Companions?

I didn't need anything that unreliable. One betrayal was enough. I never wanted to experience that utterly awful feeling again!

Myne's face surfaced in his mind, and a persistent gloom flickered across Naofumi Iwatani's expression.

"Did you come to laugh at me too, Ye?"

Seeing Ye Uchiha approach and sit across from him, Naofumi Iwatani gave a bitter smile.

The customers around them pointed and whispered about Naofumi Iwatani's "crimes," deliberately lowering their voices. Yet every word reached the two men's ears, grating and unpleasant.

Ye Uchiha raised his eyebrows. "That depends on how you look at it."

The two sat at the same table in silence for a while.

"Thank you for speaking up for me at the Royal Palace this morning. I never thought you'd be the only one willing to believe me out of all those people. Those three are completely unreliable. No, I should say they shut me out right from the start." Naofumi Iwatani smiled mockingly at himself.

"You noticed, didn't you? That the whole setup was designed specifically to trap you?"

"...Myne! I'll kill that woman sooner or later. As for those three bastards, Motoyasu, Ren, and Itsuki, that bitch used them as her pawns, and they didn't even realize it. She played them for fools, yet they stood there spouting righteous nonsense and laughing at me. I honestly don't know how they've survived this long. What a joke!"

Naofumi Iwatani's face darkened. His hand trembled around his cup as his emotions surged, and he spoke in a low voice steeped in murderous intent.

Unhooking the flask at his waist, Ye Uchiha tilted his head back and took a drink, then chuckled. "Looks like you still haven't grasped the situation. You're still in the dark, Naofumi."

"Huh?"

Naofumi Iwatani's expression soured. Was something I said wrong? Or had I overlooked something?

"Myne was already gone before your equipment and money were stolen, and the Knight Order happened to come looking for you. So, while you were being taken away, who actually planted the underwear in your room? Who could 'find' evidence in an otherwise empty room? Did Myne, a mere adventurer, have enough influence to make the Kingdom Guards fabricate evidence for her?"

Watching Naofumi Iwatani's expression shift, Ye Uchiha could tell he had already figured something out. He sighed inwardly. Naofumi really did catch on with just a hint, unlike those three idiots earlier. They had the titles of heroes, but their brains were nowhere to be found. He could not carry them.

Naofumi Iwatani's face turned utterly grim, and his body trembled slightly. Overwhelming fury surged through him, and his sharp nails dug into his palms. He growled, "The king! That old bastard! They worked together to frame me!"

"You really are different from those three. My hints couldn't have been more obvious, but they still turned their accusations on you. They blindly trusted some adventurer who'd appeared out of nowhere, without even realizing they were being manipulated."

Ye Uchiha pinched the bridge of his nose. Talking to someone intelligent was so much easier. Still, remembering what Motoyasu Kitamura and the other two had done that morning left him utterly exhausted.

If this had been the Naruto World, I'd have pinned an ally who sabotaged his own side like that to the ground and beaten him senseless, then finished him off. If you didn't have the brains, you shouldn't have acted so damn clever. They nearly dragged my intelligence down with theirs.

No, no, no. In the Naruto World, people that stupid usually wouldn't have survived three episodes unless they were impossibly hard to kill. And their deaths would have been particularly gruesome-the kind where an Explosive Tag blew them apart without leaving an intact corpse.

"Can you kill them? No, rather, could you bring yourself to do it?" Ye Uchiha asked, looking at Naofumi Iwatani's furious face.

Naofumi Iwatani stressed every word, a cold gleam flashing in his sinister eyes. "I'll kill them. Whatever it takes!"

"Suppose that moment really came, and they dropped to their knees and begged for mercy. If they knelt at your feet, lowly and abject, pleading for your forgiveness, what would you do? Would you be magnanimous and forgive them, or would you mercilessly cut off their heads to vent your hatred?"

"I..."

His pupils contracted slightly. Naofumi Iwatani had never expected Ye Uchiha to say something like that. He opened his mouth, repeatedly starting to speak and stopping, unsure how to answer.

"You hesitated just now, Naofumi." Ye Uchiha lightly tapped the wooden tabletop and smiled.

"In the end, you still retain the kindness and compassion you had in your original world. But that kindness doesn't match your strength. The weak have nothing to begin with, just like you, reduced to your current state. Only the strong have the right to offer others pity and charity."

"In the world I come from, two ninja from different countries and different regions might never have had any contact with each other. But an order from their superiors is enough. If someone interferes with their mission, they'll raise their blades and slaughter each other without hesitation. Even completely uninvolved civilians are no exception..."

"There may be no connection whatsoever between the killer and the victim, yet they'll still cut the other person down without hesitation. All because... weakness is the original sin!"

His deep black eyes scrutinized Naofumi Iwatani as Ye Uchiha slowly enunciated those final words, striking straight at his heart.

"You've never killed anyone, have you? That's why you still cling to this spotless innocence. Deep down, you despise and hate the people who abandoned you and turned against you, yet you stubbornly resist hurting others and confronting that frail heart of yours. You're such a conflicted, extreme person.

"Though you grit your teeth with hatred, you don't have the resolve to kill and see it through. All you have is anger and bitter resentment. You never really thought about killing them, did you..."

Naofumi Iwatani was left speechless. Several times, he tried to object, but he had no idea how to answer.

Just as Ye Uchiha had said, Naofumi Iwatani suddenly realized how naive his thinking still was. Having lived in a peaceful age, he was nothing more than a twenty-year-old shut-in who had never thought of hurting anyone.

After arriving in another world and being dragged into a web of conspiracy for no reason, he had initially felt a deep urge to kill Myne, wanting nothing more than to rush over and slaughter her. But that murderous intent had gradually worn away with time. In the end, all that remained was the desire to take vicious revenge on her and trample her underfoot, not to actually take her life.