The Hero and the Saintess
One otherwise ordinary day, as I was going about the comfortable routine of a Bronze Rank adventurer, word reached me that Mireia — Gold Rank — was looking for me at the guild.
I hadn't exchanged a single word with her since that pointed conversation in Daina Village. A fair amount of time had passed since then. So why was she looking for me now?
Having once been interrogated at swordpoint, I couldn't say her summons filled me with delight. I could only hope she wasn't about to pin some bizarre charge on me and start grilling me all over again.
If rumors spread that I'd snubbed a celebrity of her standing in this business, it wouldn't do me any good. Reluctantly, I had the guild work out a time, and we set a meeting.
Mireia called me to her house in Kubel.
An adventurer who spent so much time on the road, keeping a house in a place like this? The thought struck me as odd. Apparently, though, once you hit Gold Rank, renting out an entire house as a base of operations every time you passed through a city was simply how things were done.
"I've been waiting."
Aside from a weapon rack and a single bed, there was scarcely a piece of furniture in sight — a room that made no secret of existing solely as a place to sleep. That was where Mireia was waiting for me.
The room was fairly large, but without so much as a table or a chair, I was left standing there blankly, looking at Mireia perched on the edge of the bed.
"Did you need something from me? I thought we'd already said everything there was to say."
The blank look she fixed on me made the words come out sharper than I'd intended. The memory of her pressing a blade to my throat was still vivid.
"I'm sorry."
"Pardon?"
"I am apologizing."
Well, I could see that much.
More than a week had already passed since that day. Calling me out now just to apologize felt a little off. And the expression she wore as she offered those words of apology was identical to the one she'd worn with a sword at my neck.
I knew she had a poker face, but that ice-cold, frozen expression kept making it feel as though she were hiding some other motive.
"Right. Apology accepted. Was there anything else?"
I wanted out of there as fast as possible. Even now, a pile of sweet five-gold commissions was waiting for me. Taking on one more job beat getting tangled up with a dangerous, unpredictable woman like this.
Mireia, however, showed no sign of letting me go.
"Yunoa, do you know the fastest way for an adventurer to succeed?"
The question came out of nowhere.
Success, huh... Honestly, I was already satisfied with life as a Bronze Rank adventurer. Compared to the days I'd spent wandering the streets in rags with a hole worn right through over my left nipple, getting chewed out by an apprentice priest half my age while I scrubbed the church floors, scraping by like a mayfly that had to worry about room and board every single day — my life now was downright bourgeois.
"I don't know. Raising your adventurer rank?"
Mireia shook her head.
"Power. Overwhelming personal power. Strength so great that no one would even dare to oppose you — that is what an adventurer's success comes down to."
"I see."
Internally I thought she was stating the obvious, but arguing the point would only wear me out, so I played along.
"A long time ago, a certain village met its end when it was attacked by demons."
"..."
"It is an incident known as the Tragedy of Sinsi. Have you heard of it?"
"No. First I'm hearing of it."
Was she looking to vent? I was just a rookie who'd barely made Bronze Rank. What was she trying to tell me?
All I could do was stand there quietly and listen.
"The Lord of Blood, Bloodstain — a servant of the Demon King — attacked the village called Sinsi. Hundreds of people died, and the village vanished without a trace."
Mireia spoke with that same impassive face.
"I am the sole survivor of the Tragedy of Sinsi."
I looked at her with a flicker of surprise. The way she could recount a tragedy of that magnitude without so much as a twitch, her expression unchanging from start to finish, felt strangely off.
Mireia continued.
"I had to become strong. Stronger than anyone. Stronger than anyone in this world, so I could hunt down the demons, kill Bloodstain who destroyed my hometown, and in the end... kill even the Demon King with these hands. That is how I have lived."
The air in the room seemed to grow a little colder. In Mireia's eyes, I thought I could see a fanatical obsession with strength.
"But living with my eyes fixed only on what lay ahead, I eventually forgot how to look back."
"..."
"This was the first time. The first time a Novice adventurer had ever given me such a stinging rebuke."
"I'm Bronze Rank now, actually."
Serious was serious, but facts still needed correcting.
Anyway, I understood well enough that she carried a pitiful past. What I still couldn't figure out was why she was telling me all this now.
"The person I am today needs someone who can set me back on the right path. Someone like you, Yunoa."
The atmosphere was taking a strange turn.
I had only spoken up to clear her suspicions and defend myself. I'd thought the Narration's words back then had an oddly loaded ring to them — and sure enough, Mireia seemed to have taken my desperate self-defense as some kind of courageous counsel.
A nobody of a Novice, delivering home truths to a Gold Rank adventurer with a sword at his throat. Even I wasn't sure what had possessed me to say those things at the time...
"I'm just an ordinary Bronze Rank adventurer."
"Wait, that's—"
Her blunt proposal left me flustered.
Having risen to the pinnacle of the adventuring world, her strength and fame known across the entire continent, Mireia was a lonely woman.
And her excessive power cowed those around her. To fellow adventurers, her word was law.
No matter how reckless a decision Mireia made, not one of them dared contradict her.
Then Narration's voice echoed through my mind.
To Mireia, who had lived trusting in nothing but her own strength, Yunoa's words had been a shock beyond anything she could have imagined.
A woman whose hometown had been erased by a demonic assault, she was horrified to realize that her own flawed judgment had nearly brought about something similar.
Mireia needed an advisor who could clear her clouded vision.
Was that why the subjugation force she'd led had used that brainless frontal-assault strategy for monster extermination?
Then again, piecing together the talk among adventurers coming and going through the guild, Mireia was an untouchable existence. Among adventurers she was treated as something close to a living legend. Among Gold Rank adventurers, if a rank above that had existed, Mireia would have been the first to reach it, without question.
None of it had anything to do with me, so whenever those rumors drifted my way I'd just shrugged them off. But to think that no one even dared offer her advice...
It still didn't feel real, having someone like that sitting right in front of me.
An advisor who could deliver unvarnished truths without hesitation... I understood why she wanted to take me with her.
Understanding, however, was not the same as agreeing.
I had only been defending myself to stay alive. I hadn't offered that advice because I wanted to be of any meaningful help to her.
Of course, if I went with her, some of the benefits might trickle down to me as well. But the pressure of it was far too much for someone who'd only just started finding his feet as a Bronze Rank adventurer.
Humans, especially, are creatures of envy and jealousy. If I — someone who'd only just crawled out of Novice — suddenly caught Mireia's eye and started traveling with her, I could only imagine the looks I'd get. There were any number of problems with accepting her offer.
Besides, I was doing just fine as I was. If I was going to make a name for myself as an adventurer and climb the ranks, I wanted to do it on my own ability. Not as her supporting act.
And more than anything else...
I was still afraid of Mireia.
"I'm sorry, but I'll have to decline."
I kept it short and firm. Mireia's cold expression still didn't change in the slightest.
"Why?"
She asked. I answered at once.
"..."
"I'll be going, then."
And with that, I turned down Mireia's peculiar proposal and turned my back on her. When you refuse someone, it's better to be clear about it than leave things vague. Give them an opening and you're just asking for a headache later.
A few minutes after I left her house, however, Narration began to speak inside my head.
Yunoa rejected Mireia's offer to travel together without a moment's hesitation.
Mireia was bewildered. In all the time since she had come to reign at the summit of the adventuring world, not a single person had ever shaken her like this.
Wh—what?
The more Mireia turned Yunoa's words over in her mind, the less she could stop herself from wanting him at her side.
Any other adventurer would never have been able to refuse her.
But now, having been turned down, Mireia's withered emotions were stirring.
Perhaps she had been too hasty. Quietly blaming herself for her own clumsiness, she...
H-hold on.
She resolved, once more, that she would keep Yunoa at her side — no matter what.
Ah.