I wasn’t sure if I had slept at all. Whenever I closed my eyes, all I could imagine was all the different ways Hiro would kill me. Stabbing me with his holy sword, burning me and all the other demons with his holy light, tossing me into a pot of boiling oil so I can know the feeling of being burnt to death, drowning me in a pool of holy water, tying me up and hitting me like I’m a pinata… And so on.

As morning approached, the time for me to worry had run out. I will have to be extra cautious so I wouldn’t meet him at all, let alone get caught by him.

With my shapeshifting skill activated, I kept my fancy cosplay-esque outfit and my demonic weapons in my inventory, donning only clothes that a normal human would wear and wielding a short sword that a normal human would have.

Here's my cover: I am Nico, a normal human whose village was destroyed by demons, everyone else in the village had died so I have no one else to rely on except for the oh so merciful king of the human nation.

…

Yeah, that sounded legit enough. This is a simple game, after all. None of the NPCs are that smart to realize that it’s a lie.

After bidding goodbye to the demons back at the castle, I began my journey towards the human’s territory. Unlike in the game, it takes more than just a few minutes to get from one end of the map to the other. As I walked through the woods, small animals and creatures were roaming around. Light breeze would blow through my hair occasionally. All these felt way too real. As much as I want to convince myself that I am still in a dream, a majority of my mind has already accepted the fact that these are actually happening. I'm in an isekai.

To say the truth, It wasn't that bad. I have no regrets, maybe except not being able to watch the anime of this game which I'm stuck in. Back in real life, I was a good-for-nothing - jobless, no friends, no relationship, and my only family member was my uncle who thought I was just an unlovable brat who’s abandoned by his own parents. But here, I have a bunch of silly demons who would pester me all day long, telling me about their lives and families. I get to be powerful, being able to read through a book in a few minutes, having washboard abs without trying, and now, I'm going on an epic quest to slay the king.

If this ain't the life, I don't know what is.

As I got closer to the human's territory, the surrounding began to become quieter. The critters were nowhere to be seen, yet it felt like I'm being stared at from different directions. If my feeling isn't wrong, this must be an encounter!

"Hand over your valuables!"

Oop, there it is!

One by one, huge, muscular dudes with bandanas covering the lower half of their faces came out of the bushes. There were exactly eight of them.

"It's your unlucky day, boy! For you have chosen to walk this path that belongs to us - The--"

"Broctopus." I finished the man's sentence as I pointed at them, although I might have appeared to be too excited about this. The rest of the Broctopus stared at me with widened eyes. Being a true fan of the game, how could I not know the Broctopus? After all, they're the only human enemies Hiro will ever encounter in his journey. The eight bandits living in the woods, and would rob anyone who took this path. It wasn't my intention to walk this route, however. I just happened to miscalculate the distance.

"How… How did you know us?! Just who the hell are you?" The biggest of them asked as he pointed a finger at me. It's only natural that they're surprised, because it was said that whoever had seen them had never lived to tell the tale.

"Eh… I'm just a normal human boy heading to the town after the village I lived in was destroyed by the demons." I recounted my so-called miserable backstory. With my current level of charisma, I should be able to leave without getting into a fight with them.

"Your village was destroyed by the demons? Ours was destroyed eight years ago as well!! Those damned demons!!" The brothers jeered. As the current demon king, my feelings are complicated.

"Anyway, give us all your money." One of the brothers held a hand out towards me. "As fellow humans who have been through the same hardship, I'll give you a quick and painless death."

Hm? What happened to charming them with my charisma?

[SYSTEM: An enemy has engaged you in a battle.]

Hmmm??!

"Hey, hurry up!"

Oh, well.

The quickest way to deal with this would be using the AOE skills, but I have to lay low just in case. So my only other choice was to draw my short sword and point them at the Broctopus. The men shot a look at each other, before nodding and charged towards me all at once. What they didn't know was - they're only a level 20 enemy.

Right before I swung my sword, an idea popped into my mind. I slid my sword back into the leather sheath tied around my hips. The difference in levels were obvious from how their attacks felt like they were happening in slow motion to me. Dodging their attacks wasn't the difficult part, the counterattack was. Despite being the demon king here, I have no knowledge of actual martial arts moves whatsoever while I was still alive. Everything I’ve known - I learnt them from video games and anime. All I could do was to hit them at the side of their neck and pray that they were knocked out instead of having their bones broken. After a few grunts, the next thing that was heard was the sounds of Broctopus' bodies falling onto the ground.

This should take care of it. After all, I have better use of them alive than dead. Just when I was about to head over and tie them up, a rustling was heard not too far away. I looked over, but there was nothing. An animal, perhaps? Whatever it was, I doubt they could pose any threat to me. Besides, I'm just taking out a few bandits in the name of self defense.

Taking out a rope from my inventory, I tied up the limbs of the Broctopus. What a sight - having eight beefy men tied together like a bundle of hay. I took a step back and admired my masterpiece. By keeping them alive, I could bring them back to the town in order to meet the king personally for getting rid of the bandits. But on second thought, I was supposed to stay a low profile, so I can’t possibly drag eight huge dudes back with this body and then pretend to be weak.

Just when I was deep in thoughts trying to consider the other possibilities, more rustling was heard. Soft mumbles started coming from behind the trees and bushes as well.

"It's him- I saw him do it!" A man whispered loudly, as if he wasn’t even trying to keep his volume down.

"You're saying that guy took out all eight of them alone?" Another guy replied, his voice was way softer than the other’s.

"He did! See, he even tied them up!"

"I can hear you, you know?" I called out to whoever was speaking. "Just come out."

After a short moment of silence and the sound of one of them being smacked loudly by another, they decided to reveal themselves. Initially, I expected them to be some mob NPC without names, or maybe even stray demons who had been lingering around the human's territory. Instead, the ones appearing before me were a familiar looking brown haired guy, and three more people whom I had vaguely seen before but couldn't place a name on.

"Ahaha, you found us…” The brown haired guy, Dominic, scratched the back of his head as he stepped out of the bushes. “You see, our party was kinda tasked to take down these bandits- but when I arrived and found them, you were already in the middle of a conversation with them, and I'd feel bad if I interrupted, so I just stood by and watched- But whoa! You took them down all by yourself!! That's amazing!"

No, Dominic, you were just too weak. Hiro had to save your ass from a bunch of slimes in the main storyline.

"Anyway, I'm Dominic! And they're my party members - Angelo, Maeva, and [ l - l]!"

"How are you even pronouncing that?!" It felt like my brain registered that as a word, but it’s as if I’m listening to a foreign language which I cannot even begin to comprehend.

"What? Maeva?" Dominic tilted his head.

"No! The one after that!"

"It's just [ l - l]. What's wrong with his name?" He patted the shoulder of the guy next to him who had that funky name. The guy was wearing a box over his head, with only two holes cut out for him to see through. Aside from those two, there's Maeva, the girl with short navy hair, and Angelo, a guy with white hair. If I recall, besides Dominic, the other three were set to be characters who will only appear in the anime. I didn't know they'd actually name a character with emoticons, think of the voice actors who had to pronounce his name!

"Uuuuh, alright. Anyway, you said that you guys were after these bandits too, right?" Actually, the fact that the anime’s characters were appearing was rather worrying. What if the plot wouldn't go the way I remembered it to be? Then my plans would've all been for nothing! What if Hiro is already on his way to slaughter me at this very moment?

"Oh, yeah! We are! But you already got them, so…" Dominic trailed off as he looked over at the Broctopus, who were still limp and slumping on each other.

"You guys can have them." I said, this is not the time to be worrying about the bandits or Dominic and his little gang. After all, my plan was to trick the king into thinking that I'm weak so I can have a chance to get closer to him and end his life, so bringing the bandits back wouldn’t be a good thing for me to do.

Hold on, speaking of ending lives… There's a guy right here whose life I'm supposed to end as well! I was so caught up in the surprise of seeing all these characters that it almost slipped my mind.

The problem is, how should I do it? Of course, I could easily take out the four of them regardless of their skills. But as a fan of the game… I reaaaally want to know what these three new characters are like! Needless to say, they wouldn't stand by and watch me kill Dominic. But if I was to let them leave now, I wouldn't know when I will meet them after this… Or rather, they're not supposed to be here in the first place! They weren't here when Hiro did the same quest!

Wait, quest? The four of them were on a quest, right? Why wasn’t Hiro the one who took it?

"Huh? We can? But we didn't do anything or helped at all!" Dominic said that, but he was already trying to drag the bodies away with the box headed guy helping him.

"Yeah, yeah, just take them. But don't tell anyone that I did this." I paused, then pondered for a bit before asking again, "Do you guys know anyone by the name of Hiro?"

"Hero?" They looked at each other. Angelo shrugged, and Maeva shook her head. The box guy remained still and silent. What an interesting character. "Nope, never heard of them."

"I see." I frowned. That means there are other possibilities to take into consideration here - what if Hiro wasn’t an adventurer in this universe? In that case, who’s the hero of this story?