Elysia's Resolve
“Mmm….”
What was I doing in the dead of night like this?
What else? Walking the streets alone, all by myself…!
“This was not the plan…!”
The original plan, after the date ended, had been to barge into Luna and Rina’s place and sleep in the same bed with both of them…!
But something urgent had come up for the two of them, and so I’d ended up heading home alone.
I’d even messaged Cecilia saying I’d skip training today — all for the sake of sleeping with those two — and yet…
I’d momentarily forgotten just how busy they were. Busier than I could have imagined!
Especially now that the main story of How to Become a Hero was about to kick into full gear…
The Mors Family carried major weight in How to Become a Hero, so of course they’d be even busier.
And for good reason: the organization that first uncovered Eclipse’s existence and moved to oppose them was none other than the Mors Family.
Eclipse might still be shrouded in secrecy, operating deep in the underworld… but the Mors Family and the Shamash Family had the underworld in a stranglehold of their own.
When an organization grew large enough, no matter how carefully it hid, someone was bound to step on its tail.
The silver lining, at least, was that the Mors Family had been the first to catch that tail.
Even if a fair number of the Mors Family’s powerhouses had died in the process of our adorable Luna becoming boss…
the Mors Family still didn’t yield an inch to the Five Great Organizations.
No — if anything, you could say their influence surpassed the other five.
And the reason they could stand so tall was Luna herself.
Luna was a LV.8 Awakener.
Reaching that level at the tender age of twenty-one was almost unbelievable — but if Luna had been merely an ordinary LV.8, the Mors Family never would have held the position it did now.
LV.8 powerhouses weren’t common, true, but each of the Five Great Organizations had at least one.
Even so, not all levels were equal.
Someone who’d just stepped up from LV.7 to LV.8 and someone on the verge of LV.9 could hardly be said to possess the same strength.
Yes — Luna was the kind of person who was about to become LV.9.
She was even someone people watched with a mixture of expectation and wariness, wondering whether she might one day reach LV.10 — a realm treated as almost legendary.
“Luna really is something else….”
Maybe strong women had always been my type?
The fact that Luna — destined to become the strongest in this world — looked this cool was doing things to me!
And now that I thought about it, everyone around me was strong.
Tania and Adele alone were both LV.7, and Cecilia was the same irregular case as me — LV.11.
“And… Siyun was LV.11 too, wasn’t she?”
Of course she was. The abilities protagonists held in stories were almost always special.
Carmen still only had a relatively modest LV.5, but she’d grow stronger step by step as she went through everything alongside Siyun.
And Rina… she was LV.4, if I remembered right?
But for Rina, level barely meant a thing.
“Because she has Luna….”
The moment Rina so much as looked like she might be in danger, a certain magnificent older sister would go wild-eyed and come running!
Just being someone Luna treasured was enough to put you in the running for “second-strongest in the world,” wasn’t it?
By that logic, I was basically second-strongest material myself…!
And it wasn’t just combat ability — everyone’s specs across the board were absurdly stacked…
Was I… already living a successful life?
How were all my friends like this?
There was an old saying: birds of a feather flock together.
People who were alike recognized one another and formed groups — and that fit my situation perfectly.
I was this pretty and this strong, so other pretty, strong… and filthy rich girls naturally flocked to me…!
Not that I planned to ditch the Academy and everything else to go sponge off my friends’ houses forever.
How to Become a Hero was never a bright, cheerful story.
The early atmosphere had been light enough, but it darkened sharply as it went on.
The author’s signature sensibility and comedy still popped up here and there, but there was no denying the world itself was bleak.
Why was the title How to Become a Hero?
Because it was the story of the protagonist, Siyun, overcoming every hardship and adversity to become a true hero.
And of course, a “true hero” didn’t mean the same thing as the ordinary heroes scattered all over this world.
From the mid-story onward, Eclipse’s existence burst fully into the open, and from the mid-to-late stages the all-out war against them began.
Before Eclipse’s overwhelming power, countless organizations fell to their knees, and the heads of heroes beyond counting were severed.
The Shamash Family was the first to collapse. Next, the Lucia Guild vanished from the world.
Neither Tania nor Adele had ever properly appeared in How to Become a Hero.
Even if they had, it would have been so brief — a mere brush past the frame — that I wouldn’t have remembered.
And without a doubt, both of them would have shared their organizations’ fates.
The Mors Family, the first to start fighting Eclipse, had also been the last to fall.
They fought until the Five Great Organizations had become a single Great Organization.
And in the end, they bought Siyun time to escape — and were destroyed.
Luna and Rina never properly appeared in How to Become a Hero either.
Early on, the story had tangled with various organizations and introduced a number of bosses, and Luna and Rina had made brief, impactful appearances of their own…
but ultimately, they had been nothing more than tools to hammer into the readers just how powerful Eclipse truly was.
The reason the Mors Family had thrown everything away to save Siyun was simple.
She was the only hope capable of standing against Eclipse.
Without her ability, there was virtually no means of facing Eclipse’s boss.
Call it the protagonist’s destiny, if you like.
In the end, fighting the final boss was the protagonist’s job.
And in that final war, still more people died.
Carmen was one of them.
Even so, the protagonist — Yi Siyun — never gave up. She fought to the very end.
Because she was people’s only hope. Their light.
Because she was a hero.
And at last, she claimed victory over Eclipse and became a true hero.
That was the story of How to Become a Hero.
It was a beautiful story. Genuinely entertaining, and popular for a reason.
But whether I — having entered this world — could accept that story was a completely different matter.
If my goal had simply been to survive, I could have tucked myself away somewhere quiet and lived in peace.
It would take a while… but eventually Siyun would defeat Eclipse, and peace would come.
But my goal was never something as small as surviving alone.
I would protect beautiful things. More than that — I would claim them. Make them all mine.
Even if, to obtain the flower, I had to tear the stem free.
Tania. Adele. Luna. Rina. Cecilia. Carmen.
Every last one of them was beautiful. Kind, lovely people.
Sometimes they felt so far above me it almost hurt.
Whatever being had dropped me into this world had given me things far too generous.
The name Elysia. A face and body so beautiful they defied belief. An ability that crystallized tears into something exquisite.
Every single one of them was more than I deserved. All of it. All of it.
So why had that being given me these things?
Just for fun? Because it suited some god’s tastes?
None of that mattered.
There was no force compelling me, after all.
I would simply take these undeserved gifts and use them to achieve what I wanted.
I was a very greedy person. I wanted every pretty thing to be mine.
Which meant I could not forgive anything that ruined what belonged to me.
The only one allowed to ruin my things was me.
Anything that tried would simply be killed.
I’d cut off their hands, cut off their feet, cut off their heads.
And if that wasn’t enough, I’d plant flowers in their bodies — shred their lungs, their organs, their muscles to pulp and paste.
If I had to, I’d offer up my own arms, my legs, my heart.
I’d just kill them all.
That didn’t mean I planned to lock my pretty friends away by force.
Do that, and the world would collapse in an instant.
What was the point of gathering the most beautiful flowers if the ground you planted them in had already rotted through?
So what I had to do was already decided.
To make everything mine, I would have to offer up everything I was.
For Tania, who would die first. For Adele, who would die next.
For Cecilia, whose death I couldn’t even predict. For Luna and Rina, who would fight to the last and fall.
For Carmen, who would die in the final battle. And for Siyun, who would be left standing alone at the end.
To make the most beautiful flowers in the world mine and mine alone, I had to be ready to offer up even my own life.
They were worth that much.
And this was only the beginning.
Eclipse’s disappearance would be nothing more than the first step toward making them mine.
To have them…
I would need more. So much more preparation.
“Ah….”
I couldn’t wait.
Just imagining it made my heart race.