Evade The Hero and Flee!

ood was involved in my case, after all.
“Die!”
“How dare a mere weakling…!”
I bore witness to the demons crossing swords and hurling magic spells at each other from the closest vantage point.
I was told that this test would be a simple demonstration of an individual candidate’s abilities, so how did it morph into a free-for-all deathmatch instead?!
“Senior!”
A blue-haired, red-eyed boy rushed up to me from the sideline.
“Rarel? What happened?”
This boy’s name was Rarel.
“I’ve brought you the message from the great, noble apostle of the Demon God, Lord Marx!”
Rarel’s voice was filled with respect and awe.
So much so that this kid and the wannabe assassin following the Demon God’s wish to kill my instructor once upon a time couldn’t have been the same person at all.
As expected of the metal bat, then.
To think that one could become a loyal servant just from a beatdown!
I asked Rarel.
“What’s the message?”
“He said to observe the proceedings from the side and stop the test if you think we’ll see casualties.”
“Got it.”
I watched my much-younger junior at work bow to me and walk away before shifting my attention to the candidates.
I wanted to find out if there were any ‘dangerous’ looking fellas among them.
“…And there are so many.”
Yup, there were many.
Way too many, if you ask me.

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These small-fries seemed to have gotten full of themselves after thinking that they were chosen to become a demon king.
My instructor’s goal was to train one million warriors… And to think that the candidates would be this boastful for being selected among that one million!
“Not only that, their abilities are…”
…Pretty shabby, actually.
With the candidates amounting to only this much, even the past version of me during the Howling days could’ve had a shot at becoming a demon king, too!
“Fail.
Fail.
Fail.”
My workload had increased to match their low levels.
These idiots couldn’t even tell the difference between their capabilities and their opponents.
As such, they went all-in even when fighting against weaker opponents than they were.
Idiots so weak that even a light little tap could kill them were giving their everything to attack one another.
If I don’t intervene at the right time, I might end up removing corpses later on.
And so, as I began intervening one candidate at a time…
“…Mm?”
How should I describe it? For a brief second there, I saw a very familiar set of movements just now?
“No, hang on.
Before all that…!”
No.1000… No, Mirua!
“Why the heck is she here??”
Rarel asked me in confusion.
“Senior?”
“Hey, there’s something I gotta check out, so take care of these two for me, will you?” I tossed two young demon king wannabes under my arms to Rarel, then began chasing after one of the candidates.
The overall number had gone down a lot, and only around ten candidates needed to be disqualified for this contest to be over.
While pretending to be removing the collapsed candidates, I got close to the suspicious one of the lot!
“Mm… What is your name, candidate?”
“H-hello, sir! I, I’m Kirellia from the Babelest tribe, which is a humanoid horse demon tribe! I’m 42 years old.
The apostle, who chose me as the demon king…” The candidate began a round of non-stop yapping with a surprised look on her face.
Listening to this natural stream of explanations made one think that she was just another demon chosen to become a demon king.
“Mm… I see.
Lady Kirellia, my bad for alarming you.
You resemble another demon that I’m acquainted with, you see…”
“To think that I resemble a demon you know, Lord Swinn, the right hand of our great Lord Marx! I’m honoured!”
The way this candidate looked up at me with those sparkling eyes… Mirua always maintained a poker face that made it hard to gauge her true emotional state, and after considering that fact, this girl came across as a totally different person to me.
And when I was tailing her just now, she behaved just as amateurishly as the other candidates here, too.
However, the most important test was this one!
“Have you ever experienced the Demon God’s blessing yet?”
“N-no, I haven’t had the honour yet.”
“Is that right? Well, it’s fate that you resemble my acquaintance, so come seek me out later in the future.
I shall speak to the demon king and let you experience the Demon God’s blessing.”
“T-thank you very much!”
I came to a decision while watching the candidate hurriedly bow to me.
Right, she merely resembled Mirua, that’s all.
Someone with the first-hand experience of the wooden bat’s powers wouldn’t want to receive a beatdown from the upgraded version called the metal bat, after all!
As far as I know, Mirua has never got a beating from the metal bat.
That’s why she might not know that thing’s true terror.
But Mirua was a very crafty, cunning kid from the beginning.
Sure, the organisation she worked for had a weird name of ‘Kidnap Ast Squad’, but that shouldn’t distract you from the fact that she was still a leader of a small group of incredibly powerful elites.
Mirua was the underling of the Imperial Princess, the most influential individual in the empire.
Her position meant Mirua held enough power to get her name on the list of the top movers and shakers of the empire.
That girl started off as a mere commoner, a tool of the evil organisation no less, yet she still managed to reach an unimaginable height of power.
Someone like that had experienced the might of the wooden bat.
And she was currently carrying out the mission of capturing our instructor.
In other words, there was simply no way she didn’t know anything about the metal bat.
Can a person thank me for the prospect of getting hit by the metal bat even though they knew the truth?

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That would be impossible.
“To commemorate that you resemble someone very close to me, I shall do my utmost.” I smiled benevolently after making up my mind and then patted the candidate on her head.
“Hehe…” The demon girl before my eyes grinned brightly at my gentle patting.
Our surroundings resembled a war zone, yet only our location was overflowing with this gentle atmosphere.
Other demons glanced in our direction and began making dissatisfied expressions.
But then…!
“Yes, yes.
I shall take you to Lord Marx first, and then…”
Crunch-!
“Kkyack?! Uh? H-hey…?”
I grabbed the girl’s horn and roughly yanked it off her head!
“…And then, you shall confess everything after the metal bat does her thing with you.”
“Kkyack!”
The horn stubbornly refused to yield, but I still managed to pull it off her head in the end.
This rather-familiar-looking horn was actually a fake crafted by those despicable dwarves!
“B-but, how…?!” Mirua was staring at me with a panicked expression on her face.
I smiled faintly at her.
“This situation is just too absurd, isn’t it? When I thought long and hard about this, the conclusion I got was… This absolutely can’t be real.”
If one looked at all the evidence available, this girl could not be Mirua – at least, that should’ve been a natural conclusion.
As for the odds of her being Mirua? It’s only around 0.1% or so?
“The ‘Mirua’ I know is fully capable of succeeding even if the odds are only 0.1%, you see?”
Mirua.
When I first acknowledged her abilities, a corner of my heart started carrying this unspoken respect for her.
She leisurely slipped past the empire’s magic bombardment.
She used a method even I couldn’t imagine to survive.
Her actions made her the object of my jealousy and yearning.
That’s why…!
“The moment I concluded that the girl before my eyes cannot be Mirua, the odds of her actually being Mirua went up so much higher.”
“Euhk…!” Mirua frowned deeply after realising that her too-perfect acting got her exposed, but her expression morphed quickly soon afterwards.
“I’m gonna get mad at you later, you know.”
Ah, ahhh… That’s a bit scary.
Now that I thought about it, the first and the last time I saw Mirua get mad at me was back when Ria and I worked together to stop her from eating all those years ago.
If my memory serves me correctly, she… started using the sword aura the following day, didn’t she?
Scary.
Very scary.
“Looks like you’re trying to escape, but do you even have an escape plan?”
“Yup, I’ve already thought about it.”
Suddenly, Mirua’s figure grew transparent before disappearing completely from the view.
“Sure, if it’s you, that makes sense.
The thing is, though…”
If you wanna talk about plans, I too have made lots of them.
Actually, anyone can plan, too.
And the disciples of my instructor had a tendency to come up with lots more plans compared to other people.
“Before you get the taste of the metal bat…!”
“Kuwaaaahng!”
“Hey! I captured a human spy!”
I couldn’t see her, but the moment those two sounds hit my eardrums, I acquired a new fellow slave… Oops, I mean, a comrade who will share the pain with me.
Ria left already, so Mirua was just the right person to fill the void.

[1]: ‘Tonight’s MC is [Pick Me]’ is my poor attempt at translating the name of the opening song for MNET’s idol survival show called Produce 101 season 2.
The song’s official title seems to be [Pick Me] but the actual lyrics during the chorus are: “Tonight’s protagonist is me, just me.” Confusingly enough, though, the female version of the same programme’s theme tune is also called ‘Pick Me’, but they are two different songs.
Also, the ‘pick me, pick me’ part of the lyrics from the girls’ version of ‘Pick Me’ is sung in English.

[2]: Kaku-San-Sei Million Arthur is a series of Japanese RPG games released by Square Enix.
I’m guessing this is the game MC was talking about in the previous chapter…