The Retired Supporting Character Wants to Live Quietly

[Translator - Peptobismol]

[Proofreader - Demon God]

Chapter 168 - Human Warmth (4)

Mom, I’m sorry.

Please forgive me for continuing to write in this diary.

It’s your keepsake, and I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

I was a slime.

I don’t remember it clearly, but that’s what they said.

Now I’m a golem, a magical creation artificially brought into existence by my mother.

My mother was a dark mage.

She had black hair cut short, pale skin, and looked very much like me. She was incredibly beautiful.

But death always seemed to linger around her.

She said it was because of her dark magic. That cursed power was slowly eating away at her body.

Still, I loved my mom.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was her. She was the one who gave me life.

And since no one else existed in our stone house, she was my entire world.

I loved her.

But it didn’t seem like she felt the same about me.

“Can’t you do even this one thing right?!”

If I failed to cast a spell properly, she wouldn’t hesitate to hit me.

Being a golem, I didn’t feel physical pain.

What worried me more was whether her hand hurt from striking me, and the fear that she might discard me altogether.

At least, I realized, she wouldn’t destroy me entirely.

Because part of my "father" was used in my creation.

That “father” was someone who had come before I was born and hadn’t returned since. Mom couldn’t get more of his hair.

As long as he didn’t return, I wouldn’t be discarded.

Knowing this, I worked hard to please my mother until that “father” came back.

I read stacks of magic books day and night, trying to understand the attack spells she taught me.

She told me, over and over, that I needed to master attack magic to be of use to my father.

Fortunately, I was lucky to have a sharp mind.

There was no one to compare myself to in our isolated stone house, but since my mom said so, I believed it.

“It’s because your father is an extraordinary man.”

Whenever she mentioned him, she would smile.

It was the only time she ever smiled.

Except once.

When I first called her “Mom” right after I was created, she had hugged me tightly with a radiant smile.

When she hugged me, I felt happy, unbelievably happy.

I was grateful that the first emotion I ever experienced was happiness.

But that was it.

After that, the smiles she wore weren’t for me. They were always for him.

She no longer held my hand, patted my head, or hugged me like she had when I was first born.

Even so, I loved her.

She was the only one who had ever been by my side since I opened my eyes.

# # # # #

One day, soldiers from the Demon King’s army came.

They said they were here to take me.

My mother refused, blocking their way.

Not because she didn’t want to part with me.

She wanted my father to come for me himself.

She planned to use me to bring him back.

But the soldiers refused, so she killed them all.

After that, she went mad.

She could no longer control her bowels, ranting endlessly about overturning the world.

As I cleaned up after her, she grabbed me and spat.

“We have to overturn the world! With even stronger magic!”

“I understand, Mom. I’ll do it.”

Not long after, more soldiers came for me.

I killed them all since my mother was too incoherent to act.

“Mom. It’s done.”

There was no response. When I turned, she was lying on the ground.

I touched her nose and felt no breath.

The dark magic had finally consumed her completely.

Looking down at her lifeless body, I slowly leaned forward and embraced her.

But I didn’t feel that warmth from before.

Of course, she was dead.

The books said people became cold when they died.

I used magic to burn her body and ground her bones, scattering them around the house.

My beloved mother was gone. What was I supposed to do now?

Should I go to my father?

But the memory of his expression that day stopped me.

He wasn’t my father.

He was someone who had used my mother.

No sane mage would ally with the Demon King’s army, so he must have manipulated her, a dark mage, into his service.

This was the conclusion I reached after years of reading and analyzing.

Should I kill him?

But I didn’t even know where he was.

Then, something came to mind.

My mother’s words, repeated like a final wish:

“We must overturn the world.”

So I decided to start with that.

It was her wish, after all.

And besides, I was already an enemy of the Demon King’s army. I couldn’t stay here any longer.

I opened a dimensional gate, throwing in my books and the mementos of my mother. Then, I stepped through.

# # # # #

My second home was on the slope of a dormant volcano.

A place untouched by people, for fear of the volcano erupting again.

It was the perfect place to research destructive magic capable of overturning the world.

There, I built a house from gathered stones, much like the one before, and secluded myself to focus on my work.

Many years passed.

Around that time, I became interested in illusion magic.

A spell that could distort the senses and make the unreal seem real—a truly wondrous form of magic.

On particularly cold and dark days, I would use it to recreate my mother.

In my illusions, she was kind and affectionate, always holding me close.

But I wasn’t skilled enough to replicate her warmth.

Human warmth—perhaps it was beyond me. I could barely even remember it.

Many more years passed.

One day, strangers came, saying the demons had risen and that a great war was brewing.

They said they needed my help to kill the Demon King.

For a moment, I considered killing them.

They were interrupting my research.

But they weren’t so easy to deal with.

Their priest’s barriers blocked my attack spells, and arrows rained down, making it hard to focus.

Two of them charged through my magic with sheer brute force.

One of them eventually broke through everything and entered my home.

He was tall, strikingly handsome—like my father.

But unlike my father, there was something different about him.

His eyes held a gentle light.

Without a word, he looked around my home.

The low ceiling, crudely woven from branches.

The drafty walls, full of holes. The rough, volcanic stone floor littered with rubble.

The pile of books and scattered junk.

The filthy, tattered clothes I wore—the ones my mother had dressed me in when I was born.

After taking it all in, the man finally spoke.

“How could…?”

Looking at the sword in his hand, I thought, He’s going to kill me.

I had attacked them, so it was only natural.

Would I see my mother if I died?

I didn’t know. The books hadn’t said.

As a golem, death would probably just be the end.

I spread my arms and smiled bitterly.

I’m sorry, Mom. I couldn’t fulfill your wish.

But it couldn’t be helped. These people were too strong.

Yet the man didn’t kill me.

“How could a child like you be in a place like this…?”

He dropped his sword and knelt, pulling me into his arms.

“Come with us…”

I didn’t understand why he did it.

The books hadn’t taught me anything about this.

But I didn’t ask for an explanation.

It was the first time, besides my mother, that someone had held me warmly like this.

Something I had longed for but thought I would never feel again.

Human warmth.

How could this happen to me?

It was a miracle.

Perhaps my mother had fallen for my father in the same way.

[Translator - Peptobismol]

[Proofreader - Demon God]