The Hero and the Guillotine
The Hero and the Guillotine
Three days had passed since I commissioned Balkun for Siegfried's sword.
Normally, I should have returned to daily life and been enjoying ordinary days, but those damned demon worshippers made that impossible. Sheryl, back at the academy, had begun recruiting trustworthy students to form a team before launching into full-scale activity. Most of them were top-ranked students in practical skills, but for some reason Griwills wasn't included. Unable to contain my confusion, I asked why—and nearly grabbed the back of my neck at the infuriating answer.
"That guy can't be trusted."
"Why the hell...?"
"He always looks like he's scheming something."
Suppressing the instinct to find that a surprisingly reasonable rationale, I flicked her forehead and launched into a lengthy lecture about how you shouldn't judge people by their appearance alone. Only then could I get her to promise she'd recruit Griwills too. When we didn't even know what kind of bastards were out there, leaving out a capable fighter like that over personal feelings—I hoped this would be a chance for her to realize that such shortsighted thinking did absolutely nothing to help you in life.
I couldn't help Sheryl on that side of things. I had to spend my own time busily tinkering with my Magic Organ. The experience of splitting Siegfried's sword in half was enough to dramatically change my mindset, which until then had been neither skeptical nor positive about the Magic Organ. Simply punching through part of the pathway changed its efficiency and drastically boosted my combat endurance, after all.
What finally stopped me from even going home and instead eating and sleeping in the professor's office to save commuting and sleeping time was Seneran.
"Eldmia. Even though you don't use Mana, since you're walking the path of a mage, here's some advice: a mage absolutely has to get proper sleep, unless they've taken special measures."
"Huh? Why?"
"Because if your head explodes while casting magic from sleep deprivation, it'll be too late."
The advice was that since you could never know when or where your concentration might slip, you had to be as careful as possible. When I heard that the number one cause of death for apprentice mages who wrecked their bodies obsessively researching wasn't overwork but literal explosive death, I tidied up my books and prepared to leave without a moment's hesitation.
"Well, you should've told me something that important earlier."
"It's something that realistically won't happen unless you go without sleep for about a week, but we're doing joint research right now, aren't we? Taking care of your body is part of the research, so I mentioned it."
Seneran, who made this thoroughly reasonable argument while yawning languidly, wasn't exactly relaxed either. She was in the middle of producing some kind of core summary document, with numerous Demonfolk texts spread open around her. With annotations and explanations added to supplement my lacking magical knowledge, she was just as holed up in the professor's office as I was, busy making a study guide exclusively for me. It was just that my teacher had less volume than Seneran due to classes and official duties.
"Anyway, get some good rest and let's meet tomorrow. The insights you couldn't see while staring at it forever always come with a clear mind."
"Is that another mage's maxim?"
"No. It's my advice."
If it was advice from the Golden Mage, it was worth taking to heart. I said a light goodbye, gathered my things, and woke Laika, who was too out of it from deep sleep to function, then left the professor's office.
Quite a few people had been harmed by the series of incidents a few days ago, but whether Princess Eselua's speculation had hit the mark, things were flowing in the direction of the academy directly stepping in to smooth things over. Amidst all that, the dean, who made an official appearance, showed an incredibly calm demeanor and responded with logical precision for someone who supposedly wanted to invite people on the grounds of being a fervent believer of the Holy Light Cross Order—it made me harbor the rational suspicion that perhaps all of it had been part of a sequential plan to deal with the demon worshippers and traitors.
Just as I was about to exit the academy's main gate for the first time in three days while entertaining such idle thoughts, a voice called out from behind, stopping me.
"Brother! Where are you going!"
I turned my head to see Siegfried approaching, diligently munching on what looked like small pieces of bread from a paper bag.
At first I'd wondered what kind of scheme was allowing such a long-term stay, but maybe because they'd been invited according to noble etiquette from the very start, the celebratory party honoring their achievements was planned to continue over the course of a week. This was also one of the bases for the conspiracy theory I'd come to entertain, but it stopped mattering either way thanks to the confirmation that the feast of sumptuous delicacies would continue three meals a day for the entire week. I later learned that those splendid dishes were made possible not just by the academy but through sponsorship from the royal family and the Holy Light Cross Order.
"I'm going home."
"Oh, yeah? But what's with all that luggage?"
"I'm packing up some leftovers."
"...Brother, I don't think that's really it... are you short on money?"
Short on money, my ass—I was in a suspiciously flush state. Of course, it wasn't at a level I could brag about in front of him, but it wasn't the kind of sum a 15-year-old could amass. But separate from that fact, Siegfried's reaction was oddly tinged with worry, so a laugh inadvertently slipped out of me.
"As if. But dishes like these aren't something you can eat anytime just because you have money, right? I can't exactly bring Asilie here, so I'm just asking the kitchen and taking some with me."
Since they'd made an overflowing amount and were in a situation where the leftovers had to be consumed in some form anyway, getting the kitchen's understanding wasn't particularly difficult. It was even more so because many students had already made the same attempt as me to save on food costs, and they too had returned with both hands full of satisfying results. The difference between the students and me was that I had a magic tool in the professor's office for maintaining food freshness, so I could pack things up and go home like this, whereas they had no such thing and had to head back to the dorms and demolish it all as a late-night snack.
I was deeply grateful to Seneran, who was so obsessed with magic tools that she practically had a case of gear-acquisition syndrome.
"Hero, where are you going? Running away from another official function?"
"No, little brother, what exactly do you take me for, saying something like that?"
"I take you for Hero who runs away from official functions."
Siegfried wrinkled his nose with a "Hmph," but he'd scattered so many seeds of that behavior that he apparently couldn't muster much of a rebuttal.
"Not this time. I'm on my way to pick up the sword since they said it's finished. Want to come along?"
"Can't you see all this luggage I'm carrying?"
"Hey, what's the big deal. Give it here."
Acting like it was truly nothing, Siegfried snatched the bags from my hands and deployed spatial magic to tuck the food bags away. For a moment the question of whether you could just shove things in like that flashed through my mind, but leading with my faith that even he had some sense and wouldn't do something that would obviously spill everywhere, I reacted as flatly as possible.
"The more I see it, the more it looks so ridiculously convenient it's reaching the point of being aggravating."
"It actually is disgustingly convenient. No worrying about things tipping over, no worrying about spoilage, no worrying about things mixing together—it's a perfect storage space. I've got nothing to do after picking up the sword anyway, so I'll walk you home as a stroll."
So he wasn't a Hero, he was the Coupang Man of Justice. Curious about what the completed sword would look like anyway, I decided to readily accept Siegfried's goodwill.
"It's a place so clean and peaceful it's hard to believe the country's been at war for years. Living in a place like this, you sure did a good job keeping your goals and living your life, brother."
As Siegfried kept pulling bread from the bag and nibbling, offering some to me which I lightly declined, I mulled over an answer to his sudden conversation topic. Well, aside from my own actions, I didn't think there was anything particularly special about it.
"I think anyone would be like that if the village they'd been living well in was reduced to scorched earth overnight."
"I think so too. But people like that usually go wrong somewhere. They become vengeance-obsessed, or they become broken shells, or they develop flaws in their daily lives."
"I've never really met anyone like that, so I wouldn't know."
"Ah, is that so. Most of them do. At least, the people I saw in the inland regions—people worn down by monsters or wars with neighboring countries—they were like that."
I'd thought he was about to spout knowledge picked up from movies in a past life, but an unexpected personal account came out instead.
"Even full-grown adults have their spirits easily crumble, you know. Even just against human armies, ordinary monsters. There are even people who, after their whole family gets killed in a goblin raid, have seizures just from seeing normal kids. Compared to that, brother, you're living remarkably normally, so it's really impressive."
"I think it'd be hard to call it normal to cut off a count's head in his mansion in the middle of the capital just because he attempted assassination."
"Kehehe. The Envelde story, huh? Sure, there are crazy son-of-a-bitch sides like that. But what I'm saying is that including all that, you're remarkably normal."
Having apparently finished the bread, Siegfried, who'd been waving his hand around a few times, neatly folded the empty bag and stored it in his spatial magic. Then he tapped his temple with his index finger and continued speaking.
"When people go wrong, they can't distinguish between targets to direct that behavior at and those not to. They wear down everyone around them too. It seemed like the ones who overcome that become heroes."
It was a novel remark and an embarrassing one at that. As I wondered if there was a reason he was suddenly bringing this up, I belatedly shot a glare at Siegfried with eyes sharp as axe blades. Hero?
"I’m not joining your party as its scout."
It was an answer that was at best half a shot in the dark, but Siegfried looked at me like I was unbelievable and clicked his tongue.
"Ah, fuck. Your intuition's really damn quick. How'd you know?"
Not a chance. Where the hell do you get off trying to set the mood and pump me full of that nonsense?
"My life's already grueling enough just achieving my own long-cherished goal. Tell that elf friend of yours, Entiere or whatever her name is, to try learning something properly."
For all their name as a Hero's party, their elf was only specialized in swordwork—there were limits even to cliché-breaking.
But perhaps judging that persuading me was a more viable path than having an elf learn tracking skills, Siegfried didn't stop his honey-tongued persuasion until the very moment we arrived at the Dwarf District.