96 – Trash Hero
“hahahahaha! You! I’m really grateful! Thanks to you, I’m alive!”
“Uh… What was that…?”
Mariel laughed and patted my back.
Sylphy still had a bewildered expression, not knowing what had happened to her.
I pulled out Mariel and Sylphy from the rift in dimensions one by one.
It was a bit risky, but ultimately, Mariel’s judgment saved all of us.
“I never imagined that they would use teleportation magic to move all of us there.”
“hehehehe! I, Mariel, the greatest magical researcher. I am first-class at running away from fights!”
“But I saw earlier that you’re also good at fighting.”
“I had no choice. I don’t like fighting. It hurts when you get hit.”
“By the way, where are we?”
I asked Mariel.
It was certain that we had escaped from Bloodstain.
But we had no idea where this forest, which we arrived at through teleportation, was.
“I don’t know either!”
Mariel confidently replied, placing both hands on her hips.
“You used the magic, Mariel.”
From Noble mtl dot com
“Well, in a situation like that, it’s impossible to accurately determine our location, right?”
“That’s true, but…”
“Mariel did her best to ensure the safety of everyone by not letting the teleportation magic fail.
That’s why it was difficult to adjust the destination as desired or create an opening in the exit big enough for a person to pass through.
She poured all her strength into keeping the rift open until everyone safely escaped from the dimension.
As a result, all four of us ended up in a state where we couldn’t leave the dimension in a normal way.”
So that’s what happened.
Even though she was laughing so calmly, the truth was that she had chosen the best option desperately to ensure the teleportation magic didn’t fail.
If I hadn’t been able to reinforce her magical power, the outcome could have been a terrible result with everyone except Mireia, who had forcibly torn through the dimension, trapped and destroyed… But there was no other way.
Anyway, Mariel is like a patron saint of life.
There was no need to argue about where this place was.
“Judging by the types of grass and trees, if we go east, we might come across a road that leads to a village.”
Mireia knelt down on one knee and touched the grass on the ground, speaking.
We all agreed with her words and decided to move east until we found a road, no matter what.
—
Crash!
“……Ah!”
The prayer room of the central church in the capital city of Piphnel.
Selena, who was in the middle of her prayers, opened her eyes at the sound of a cup containing holy water suddenly falling and shattering.
She had become a saint and quickly received the goddess’s revelation to choose a hero.
Even after finding the hero, she continued to pray to the goddess faithfully.
Saint Selena felt responsible for the hero she had chosen, who stayed at the central church and committed various misdeeds.
Perhaps it was because she had chosen the hero too quickly, there was no doubt that the goddess’s revelation was wrong.
Having lived a devout life of faith in the church since she was young, she was overjoyed when she was chosen as a saint.
And as soon as she completed the ceremony of becoming a saint, the goddess’s revelation came to her mind as if a bright light pierced through it.
Selena thought it was the goddess’s reward for her faithfulness all these years.
But the hero she chose turned out to be wicked and childish to an unprecedented extent in history.
Selena even came close to insulting the hero physically.
The hero spat at the face of the captain of the knights and threw objects at the bishop’s head.
They would gather female adventurers and touch them or engage in lewd conversations.
If there was something they didn’t like, they would immediately get angry and demand financial support from the kingdom, living a debauched lifestyle.
However, she firmly believed that there was no way the Goddess’s prophecy could be wrong, and prayed every day for the warrior’s heart to open.
Then one day, the warrior started gathering people to help defeat the Demon King.
At first, she thought that her prayers, which she had been desperately praying, had finally been answered.
It was as if the Goddess had responded and the warrior’s heart had opened.
The warrior embarked on a journey to subdue the Demon King with a famous female adventurer named Mireia.
They were different from the warriors recorded in history, but they were determined to find the Holy Sword and defeat the Demon King.
Among the people in the kingdom who had often been mistreated by the warrior, there were many who doubted him.
Some came to Selena to inquire, as if to confirm whether the warrior’s prophecy was really true.
“Oh, Goddess…”
It had been quite some time since the warrior had left.
Every day, the saint Selena prayed to the Goddess, wishing for the warrior to defeat the Demon King safely.
But as time went on, she felt an inexplicable sense of unease growing in her heart.
And now, the cup containing holy water that was placed on the prayer room shelf suddenly fell and shattered.
She tried to comfort herself by saying it was just a cup that happened to break, but she couldn’t erase the ominous feeling.
No matter how hard she prayed, the Goddess had not answered for a long time.
This was not what she had hoped for.
Was the story of the brave warrior and the saint just a fairy tale from the past?
Like the shattered cup of holy water on the floor, doubt was beginning to taint the faith of the saint Selena.
“What! Is that true? You killed the hero?”
The expression on the demon lord’s face turned grim.
The bloodstained Bladestain, returning from battle, had reported the death of the hero to the demon lord Versella.
Lord Javiel, who heard the report, had a pensive expression on his face.
“Strange, is it really true that the hero is dead? Could it be that the power of fate is not as strong as I thought?”
“Is it really the hero that you killed? Are you mistaken with someone else?” Lord Versella asked again, wearing a suspicious expression.
“Krrr… It’s true. The hero was completely obliterated, and there’s no trace of his corpse… I also brought evidence, my lord.”
Upon saying that, Bladestain placed a dusty sword on the ground.
Lord Javiel’s eyes widened at the sight of the hero’s holy sword.
The sword that could defeat the demon lord.
The legendary holy sword that only the hero could wield properly, according to the legend.
Upon seeing the holy sword, Lord Versella instinctively turned her head, feeling a sense of repulsion.
“Ugh… Remove that from my sight. Just looking at it makes me sick.”
“It seems like we really did kill the hero,” Javiel said to the demon lord.
Bladestain put the holy sword away, out of sight, and spoke confidently.
“Now, there are no heroes left. There is no one who can harm you, my lord. This is an opportunity. We can eradicate humanity from this land and create a world for the demons.”
“Uh-huh….”
“We must start the war immediately. Let us unite all the demons and wipe out humans from this land….”
Blutstein’s argument was very demonic.
But somehow, King Bercella’s reaction seemed indifferent.
“Um… Do we really have to do that?”
When Bercella asked, Blutstein looked taken aback and raised his head.
“Krrr… What are you talking about….”
“Well, the hero is dead, right? If the hero is dead, there’s no one left to come and kill me. If we go to war, many demons will die. I don’t really want to attack the human kingdom at the expense of such sacrifices.”
“My Lord, what on earth….”
Blutstein was shocked and lost his words on the spot.
To hear such words from the King’s mouth, it was as if the devil had jumped up and the first King of the demons would rise from the grave.
Blutstein, who had a horse’s head, trembled with fear.
On the other hand, Javiel, who had been listening to the entire conversation, thought to himself.
“Indeed, if the hero is dead, there is no existence that can threaten the King. As Blutstein said, attacking the human kingdom now would require a lot of sacrifice. Even if there is no hero who can harm the King, there are many humans who can harm the demons.”
The demons are the people of the demon world.
As the King, it is not strictly wrong to value the lives of the people.
But there was also a concern.
“The hero may be dead… but can we guarantee that the next hero will not appear? If the King wants to maintain the status quo like this, I may need to hide in the human realm once again and see if a new hero appears or not.”
If a new hero does not appear, Javiel also wanted to support Bercella’s judgment.
After all, if there is no hero, the power of the demon soul embedded in Bercella will infinitely strengthen over time.
When that time comes, I thought that we could easily drive humans out of the continent without unnecessary sacrifices from the demons.
“Anyway… the hero really died… Now I don’t have to worry about dying horribly like the previous Demon King….”
Bersella murmured, still unable to grasp the fact that the hero had died.
War held no interest for Bersella, who had escaped the fear of death.
Now, she wanted to leave behind the anxious days of not knowing when the hero would come and do the things she wanted to do in the demon realm.
“….”
But Bloodstain, who had killed the hero, silently turned around and left the room, quietly watching the Demon King. He didn’t really like the Demon King’s decision to let go of the opportunity to exterminate humans.
***