The Hero Diana (6)
I gripped the holy sword, and with nothing more than a wish, I could tell whether the person before me was lying or telling the truth.
I never used this power on people I trusted—people close to me. Because I believed in them, I thought it would be rude to test them with such an ability.
That must have been why those high-and-mighty bastards used the Blossom Mercenary Company against me. The lies from people I had let inside my walls struck me harder than anything else. Only they could deceive me so completely.
I questioned every single knight in the order that had brought my father back. I demanded to know exactly what had happened.
There could not be even the slightest fault on their part.
According to them, the house where my father and I had lived was empty. They had used a skilled tracker to follow his trail.
It seemed my father had left home to come to the capital in search of me. They had discovered those traces.
But on the way, he had unfortunately run into a band of robbers. More than a hundred of them, a full-scale bandit group. No matter how numerous the bandits were, and even if my father had grown older and weaker, he should have been able to slip past them easily.
The knights claimed they had subdued the entire group and interrogated them. According to the bandits, when they had blocked my father’s path and threatened him, he had looked utterly indifferent. Of course he had. To him, nothing mattered except me. They wouldn’t have even registered in his eyes. Besides, he had the skill to shake them off.
But while they were threatening him, they had mentioned a young girl they had captured the day before. My father, mistaking her for me, had attacked the bandits. No matter how strong he was, facing over a hundred enemies in his aged state had been too much. That was how he had ended up like this…
Since the bandits had harmed people, summary execution was the rule. Every last one of them had been put to death on the spot.
There was not a single lie in the knights’ words.
My father…
My father had suffered again because of me.
Why had I left him with nothing but a single letter? It was obvious that he, who loved me so desperately, would come looking for me. Anyone could have predicted that.
You idiot!
Why!
Why does my father have to go through this again? Why?!
My companions tried to comfort me, but I shook them all off and came straight to the cathedral.
That was when it happened.
When I held the holy sword and prayed, I was sent back to the past.
Let’s do it again. I’ll pray again and return to the past!
I stayed in the cathedral for an entire week like that. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t go back.
Is this the end? Was that one time all I got? You cheap god! How stingy can you be! After making my father so miserable, what the hell are you doing?!
…No. I must have wasted the chance the god gave me so carelessly…
……
Let’s make a deal, God. I’ll kill the Demon King one more time.
So please send me back to the past again. I’ll kill the Demon King as many times as you want!
With that resolve, I rejoined my party members.
They worried about me, but the only thing on my mind now was killing the Demon King.
We advanced at an incredible speed.
With all my accumulated experience and abilities from the past, plus the holy sword in my hand, the demon race couldn’t even put up a fight.
About a month later, we had slain every demon legion commander and the Four Heavenly Kings, and finally reached the Demon King’s castle.
And there he was—the Demon King.
“So you have made it this far, Hero. This generation’s hero is absurdly strong. This breaks the balance…”
It was the same Demon King I had killed twice before.
“Y-you! Aren’t you that strange hero who forced an incomplete descent on me last time? Why do you look younger?”
So the time I spent with my father hadn’t been completely erased after all.
I was the one who had raised him!
“This is an affront to balance! What in the world has the Chief God done?! If something like this happens, the very order of—”
Clang.
Boom.
I sliced the Demon King in half with a single stroke.
“I… I curse you, Hero… The person you love most will suffer for all eternity…”
As the Demon King turned to smoke and vanished, he spat out his curse.
I had become strong enough to kill the Demon King with one swing of my blade.
But what did that matter? I was still the worst daughter imaginable—the one who couldn’t even protect her own father, the one who had caused his death.
Come to think of it, the Demon King had said something similar the last time I killed him, hadn’t he?
Could it be…?
Could it really be that my father’s suffering was caused by the Demon King’s curse?
……
Hey. God.
I killed the Demon King.
So let me meet my father again.
I don’t care about some stupid curse.
If I can go back. If I can see my father again! I can kill the Demon King ten thousand times. Just let me go back!
That was what I was thinking when…
Huh?
“Diana, are you okay? Do you feel sick today?”
D… Dad?
Before I knew it, I had returned to my childhood self.
I threw my arms around him and burst into tears.
“W-what’s wrong? Did something happen today?”
Father. I’m so sorry.
I won’t ever let you suffer like that again.
But now that I think about it… something feels off.
What is this? Why didn’t I return to when my father was young? Why did I come back to some vague point in my own childhood?
I wanted to see my tiny, squishy little dad again.
And now that I’m his daughter, there’s no way he’ll do those things with me!
I have zero intention of doing that with any man who isn’t my father!
Aaah. I want to do those beastly things with Dad.
Still… at least the god sent me back to the past!
He sent me back after I killed the Demon King. Thank you, God! Wait, is that blasphemy?
Anyway, who cares about the Demon King’s curse? From now on, I won’t let my father get hurt or die ever again!
That was what I thought.
No—I was certain of it. My childhood self was weak, but I knew I could grow strong quickly through training. And until I became strong, the future wouldn’t change. There would be no danger to my father. By the time the future could be altered, I would be strong enough to stop everything.
And at first, things went smoothly.
Through relentless training, I proved my strength to my father.
He believed in me.
If only things had gone this well in the previous round.
With his recognition, I set off for the empire together with him. That was how I became a hero right before his eyes.
After parting from him briefly to meet those high-and-mighty bastards, I brought him back so I could introduce him to my party, but…
The capital’s trash gangsters…
They…
Why?
This doesn’t make any sense.
We were only apart for a little while?
And they didn’t even know who my father was.
Why? In that short time?
I hunted down every single organization in the capital and slaughtered them all. Every last one.
Worms who didn’t even deserve to be alive.
…I’m sorry, Father.
It was my mistake. I shouldn’t have let us be apart even for a moment.
From now on, I will protect only you.
As for the Demon King, this time I’ll kill him before he can even utter his curse.
This round, it took us only two weeks to reach the Demon King’s castle.
I couldn’t wait any longer.
I was going to see my father as soon as possible.
This time, I tore the Demon King into pieces before he could even speak.
I killed him before he could curse me! This should be fine now, right?
Hey, God! Send me back to my father right now!
“Diana, are you okay? Do you feel sick today?”
When I came to my senses, I was back in my childhood once more.
Whew. Thank goodness I was able to return again.
But why can’t I go back to when my father was young?
I want to do it with him.
This time, since the Demon King hadn’t even managed to curse me, I thought that as long as I was careful, my father would never have to suffer again.
When the holy sword chose me and I had to go meet those high-and-mighty bastards, I threw a tantrum and made them bring my father along.
After becoming a hero, we stayed together in the palace, but…
While I was training with my party members, someone sent assassins after my father…
Why?
There’s no reason to kill him! If they wanted to use him as a hostage to control me, I could understand, but there’s literally no reason for this! What the hell?!
And wasn’t the Demon King’s curse supposed to be over? Could the curse from the first round still be in effect?
N-no way.
I killed the Demon King again.
This time I made him suffer as much as possible, tearing him apart cruelly and viciously.
I had planned to force him to submit and lift the curse if it still remained.
He refused until the very end.
Since I had to kill the Demon King to return to the past, there was no option to spare him.
And so I returned to the past once more.
But no matter what choices I made, my father always died.
He always suffered in the most miserable ways.
I lost count of how many times I tried again.
After the thousandth attempt, I stopped counting.
Even so, the amount of time my father survived gradually grew longer.
Every time I witnessed his death, every time I saw him in pain, my heart ached unbearably, but little by little, hope began to appear.
And so I created the best possible round.
I killed the Demon King. I killed every last one of those high-and-mighty bastards.
Together with my father, I unified the entire continent and became the emperor of the unified empire.
In the process, my father had died countless times, but in the end I protected him and accomplished everything.
I truly believed that this time, everything was finally over.
I thought we could live happily together, just the two of us, in our own little house.
But then…
This time, even when time rewound, I could no longer meet my father…
Why…
Why is this happening…?