The Hero and the Saintess
A quiet stretch of forest near Kubel.
Mireia stood before a massive boulder, her longsword drawn. I sat on a small stump behind her, watching her demonstrate her swordsmanship.
A peculiar sound rang out—a clear, high ping—as Mireia's blade flashed. She brought the sword across the boulder in a single, powerful horizontal slash, then slid it home into its scabbard.
The rock stood unmarked. Not a scratch.
Then she turned around and counted to three. A beat later, the boulder split with a sharp crack, cleaved cleanly in two.
"The important thing is the way you control your mana. Regulate the mana in the blade with enough precision, and you can make the cut land whenever you choose, like this. In theory, you could even slash a monster today and have it die tomorrow."
"So you can delay the cut?"
"That's right. And once you can do this, you hold a considerable advantage even against an opponent using the same kind of sword. The attack they see and the moment they actually get cut don't line up."
Just thinking about it was dizzying. If someone could wield Mireia's technique at will, they could cut five times and set a kind of timer on every stroke, so that all five slashes landed at different moments. From the receiving end, it would be a nightmare—you'd have no idea what to guard, or when. My own mana control wasn't remotely close to replicating it. For now, watching was the best I could do.
After we reached a certain understanding, her bizarre stalking thankfully came to a stop. Instead, she started showing up every day under the pretext of seeking advice, timing her visits for when I came to the guild to report a finished request.
I had told her, quite clearly, to come only when she actually needed advice.
Mireia came every day. She asked me what route I should take for my morning walk. She asked me what I ought to eat for dinner. Utterly trivial things. At this point I could no longer tell whether I was giving her "advice" or simply keeping her company.
Before she knew it, Mireia had come to enjoy conversation with Yunoa for its own sake.
For a woman who had gone so many years without anyone she could speak to at ease, talking with Yunoa had become something close to addictive.
The picture Narration was painting of Mireia's condition felt a little more dangerous than before, but at least she'd stopped materializing out of thin air in completely unpredictable ways. I'd take it.
In any case, having her teach me swordsmanship was a genuine windfall. No matter how much money I threw at the problem, finding a sword instructor as powerful—and as reliable—as Mireia would not have been easy. I threw myself into making her techniques and her tips my own. She walked me through everything from the fundamental stances to techniques I had no hope of copying anytime soon, demonstrating each one herself. I ran through it all again and again in my head so I could keep practicing on my own later.
Mornings spent clearing guild requests, afternoons spent training with Mireia. That was the rhythm, until one day she said, out of nowhere:
"Tomorrow, I intend to leave Kubel."
So she was finally going back to her real job. She did have a goal, after all—the subjugation of demons.
"So, today, there is something I would like to ask you in earnest."
"Please, go ahead. I'm your advisor, after all."
Not that a single piece of "advice" I'd given so far had been anything more than idle chatter. She hadn't been coming to me for counsel. She'd been using counsel as an excuse to come see me.
Today, though, the air was different. This was a woman who wore the same blank expression through joy, grief, rage, hunger, and exhaustion alike—but I had seen her often enough by now that I could read her mood, at least a little, from the atmosphere around her.
"The truth is, I have been investigating a certain demon for some time."
Mireia began.
"The reason I once suspected you of being a demon and drew my sword on you is not unrelated."
"What do you mean?"
"According to the information I have, a demon has been hiding in this area, disguised as a human."
She went on to tell me about the demon that had slipped into the human world. The Demon King had direct subordinates known as Lords. Among them were especially powerful demons—like Bloodstain, the Lord of Blood, who had burned Mireia's hometown to the ground. Mireia had obtained information that one of them, a demon called the Lord of Deceit, had been living among humans for a very long time.
Her goal was the subjugation of every last demon, so she had gone hunting through every place she expected that one to be hiding. Whenever someone looked even slightly suspicious, she had gone so far as to dig into their background. No matter what she tried, she had never been able to find the demon concealed among humankind. And then she had met me, and decided I might be the one.
"How did you even find out a demon like that was in hiding?"
I asked, curiosity getting the better of me as I listened.
"I tortured another demon. Shall I go into detail? Would that help with the advice?"
"No. I don't think I'll be needing that level of detail."
Familiarity or not, Mireia was still terrifying sometimes.
She pressed on, laying out everything she knew about the demon she was hunting. She was trying to give me as much information as possible so I could advise her properly, but honestly, none of it was sticking. She went on at such yawning length about every scrap of intelligence she had gathered that my brain simply filled up.
Information overload. I was starting to think I wasn't cut out to be a strategist.
"…That is everything I know. Which is why I wanted to hear your thoughts as well."
Having finished what felt like a general-education lecture on demonology, Mireia looked at me and waited.
"Well…"
I had nothing. My concentration was already in pieces. The only thing left in my head was, roughly: There's a demon hiding among people.
"You may see something I cannot. The way you did in Daina Village."
"…The Church?"
A memory surfaced, unbidden. The Church of Freya in Bainar, where I had worked as a janitor. Come to think of it, Bishop Xavier there had wanted the Hero and the Saintess dead. He had also mentioned serving some suspicious "master."
If a demon was hiding among humans, it had to be that bastard. I already knew from Narration that he was shady.
"The bishop of the Church of Freya might be the demon you've been looking for."
I said it to Mireia at once. She stared at me in silence.
Ah. I just blurted it out without thinking. I had learned it naturally through Narration, but from her side it would have sounded like it came from nowhere. I really should have tacked on some kind of reasoning, even a flimsy one…
Then Mireia nodded and spoke.
"As expected… your insight is remarkable. I was right to seek your counsel."
"I… is that so?"
"It fits every condition. Seize one of the dioceses of the Seven Goddesses, and watching the Saintess and the Hero becomes considerably easier. The Freya diocese is the smallest of the Seven Dioceses, so it would also be the easiest to take over."
Fortunately, she had talked herself into it. So this was what they meant by someone who could take a half-baked guess and hear a stroke of genius. It felt a bit like stumbling ass-backward into the right answer, but Xavier was definitely a bastard, so I wasn't going to complain. With this kind of thing, the result was what mattered—process be damned.
"Yunoa."
Mireia said my name, watching me with a look that was almost meaningful.
"Yes?"
"Won't you come with me after all?"
Still on that? And this time she was going off to fight a demon. Why would she even want to drag me along?
I answered without a second's hesitation.
"No."
The Hero and the Saintess.
In the old stories told to children, the Saintess is merciful and the Hero is just. The Demon King is wicked, and always bent on ending the world. And in the end, the Demon King dies by the Hero's hand, and peace returns to the world.
Mothers joke that the Demon King will snatch their children if they keep crying. Boys play at being Heroes with wooden swords. Girls talk, sweetly, of growing up to marry a dashing Hero.
That was what a Hero and a Saintess were, in the old stories.
"So you're the Saintess? Scrawnier than I expected."
Cain, the Hero, lifted Saintess Selena's chin with one finger, his voice thick with mockery. His gaze was on her chest.
Selena was at a loss. The Goddess's oracle had clearly designated this man as the Hero.
Could even a Goddess make a mistake?
Or had this world been abandoned by her altogether?
"Strip."
"…"
Cain said it with a grin. Selena did not move.
"Hero, I am a Saintess. I cannot do such a thing."
"You were just some ordinary girl before they pinned that title on you."
"…"
"I'm the Hero chosen by the Goddess. Everything in this world exists for me. Nobody can stop me."
"If you are the chosen Hero, then please—at least try to have a heart befitting one…"
But even as she pleaded, the finger at her chin traced slowly down the line of her throat, coming to rest at her collarbone. Selena squeezed her eyes shut, her body trembling at the crawling, sickening touch.
Cain liked being the Hero. Liked it very much. So long as the Demon King existed in this world, there was not a soul who could lay a hand on him. Even that high-and-mighty Knight Commander had been forced to swallow his anger the moment the word Hero was spoken.
"Think it over. If you people want me in a mood to play Hero, you'd better start making it worth my while."
"…You can't mean to abandon a Hero's duty?"
Cain stroked her cheek as he answered.
"Let's be honest. No Demon King, no need for a Hero, right? So why should I bother killing the damn— GAAAAH!"
He never finished the sentence. A sudden, staggering agony crashed over him—pain as if every limb were being torn to shreds.
"Hah… hah… Wh-what the hell?"
Cain dropped to one knee, gasping, with no idea what had just happened. He checked his hands. He checked his feet. There was nothing wrong with his body.
"Damn it! What was that?!"
He roared at Saintess Selena, the veins standing out in his neck. She was no less bewildered than he was.
He had only been about to say that he had no particular reason to kill the Demon King. Leave the Demon King be. Enjoy a Hero's power and privilege to his heart's content. That had been the plan.
But Cain did not know.
The countless Heroes who appeared in the old stories. The Hero always, without fail, defeated the Demon King.
Because the Hero was righteous.
That wasn't it.
The Hero had never had a choice.