Change (4)
"...Isn't that a little too primitive?"
The response from that suspiciously knowledgeable commenter left me with a distinct sense of hesitation. It had been promising at first—he had laid out complex concepts I knew nothing about in terms simple enough for anyone to follow—but the punchline ruined everything. Punch her in the face? Really?
Of course, my aversion was not just about the absurdity of being told to deck an unconscious girl. More than anything, it came down to where I was reading it: the Demon Lord Gallery. In an online forum populated entirely by Demon Lords, placing blind trust in a stranger was the quickest way to end up dead. Aside from announcements verified by the moderators, pinned guides in the Information Archive, or posts from trusted veteran handles like OneEyedGeezer, reliable information on the gallery simply did not exist. I had read more than enough grievance threads from users who fell for deceptive bait or bad advice and paid for it dearly. A healthy dose of paranoia was just basic survival.
I posted my skeptical reply and waited. Within minutes, the anonymous user returned, accompanied by several familiar names.
Even with the anonymous poster putting his entire online existence on the line with an account-deletion bet, my skepticism refused to budge. I had been burned far too many times over the past couple of months to drop my guard over internet posturing. Whether aware of my doubt or entirely indifferent to it, the anonymous user announced he would write a full post in the Information Archive and promptly vanished from the thread.
A considerable amount of time passed. Just as I was beginning to suspect he had used the promise of a guide as an excuse to slip away, my notification bell chimed. A new thread had appeared in the archive.
...Did I misjudge him?
Offering a silent apology to the unexpectedly generous stranger, I opened the link. The post was staggering. It went far beyond the brief summary he had provided in my thread, reading less like a forum guide and more like an academic dissertation. It cited contributions from various notable figures, listed specific anomalies reported by different Demon Lords, and referenced verified field observations. It took me quite a while just to read through the whole thing.
At its core, the underlying mechanics matched what the anonymous poster had summarized: Heroes received Causality Correction across distinct tiers, each conferring a specific degree of metaphysical protection. What the full write-up provided, however, were exact metrics, historical frequencies, and documented case studies—concrete statistics that made an immense practical difference.
The first crucial takeaway was the rarity. The absurd, cheat-like protections of Stage 5 and Stage 4 were virtually mythical. Across endless eons of cosmic history, a Stage 5 Hero had been recorded only once, and Stage 4 a mere nine times. Even sightings of a Stage 3 Hero amounted to a few dozen across all existence. The overwhelming majority of Heroes lingered at Stage 0 with no luck enhancements whatsoever or Stage 1, with only the exceptionally rare case attaining Stage 2.
The second key factor was maintenance. In short, even if a Hero possessed Stage 2 or even Stage 3 protection, the correction naturally degraded over time as they grew and regained agency. Applied to my current situation, it meant that even if the girl lying before me possessed Stage 2 protection, her Causality Correction would plummet the moment she woke and recovered. The reasoning was simple: Causality Correction was inversely proportional to a Hero's safety and inherent strength.
"Complicated as hell."
Regardless of the cosmic principles behind it, the takeaway was clear. I needed to determine her exact correction tier and act accordingly.
Having reached a decision, I minimized the gallery interface. Sitting hunched in the corner browsing forums for hours had left my joints stiff. I stretched as I walked over to the bed where the girl lay, stopping just beside it. Lifting a hand, I focused my mind.
Keep it steady. Nice and gentle.
What I intended to use was the most fundamental application of psychokinesis. I had no intention of hurling heavy furniture, nor did I harbor any desire to harm her. I simply reached out with my invisible force, gripped a weathered wooden plank lying on the floor, and snapped it in midair. I broke it softly, deliberately keeping the kinetic force low so that a direct hit from a flying splinter would cause nothing more than a superficial scrape.
There was a clear method to this apparent madness. When wood shatters, the fragments scatter at random, dispersing outward toward surrounding objects and people. The operative word was random.
If the Hero before me possessed Stage 1 correction, the splinters would miraculously miss her almost entirely. If she had Stage 2, the probability distortion would expand to keep her immediate environment, including the bed, entirely unharmed. If she were at Stage 0, she would inevitably be hit by a stray piece or two. And in the virtually impossible event that she possessed Stage 3, the splinters could strike her dead-on without leaving a single scratch, repelled as though she were encased in an untouchable barrier.
"Here goes."
Crack!
With a faint flick of will, the plank snapped. Splinters burst in every direction. A fair number peppered my own clothes, while others lodged into the walls and nicked the furniture I had worked so hard to scavenge. But when I looked at the bed...
"You've got to be kidding me."
The girl lay entirely untouched. Not a single fragment had come within an inch of her, and the white sheets beneath her remained as pristine and gleaming as ever.
There was no need for elaborate explanations. The girl in front of me was currently shielded by the rarest of anomalies, something barely whispered about even on the Hero Gallery.
She had Stage 3 Causality Correction.
Stage 3.
The situation raised a mountain of bizarre questions, but the reality remained stubbornly unchanged: she was under absolute physical immunity. Just to be certain, I repeated the experiment twice more. I even directed a deliberate kinetic strike straight at her leg, but the force dissipated into thin air without leaving so much as a crease on her clothes. The conclusion was undeniable.
"Why of all things..."
Why did it have to be Stage 3? The words kept swirling in my throat. When she crash-landed, she had been covered in wounds, which led me to assume she had Stage 1 at best. Why on earth had it suddenly spiked to Stage 3?
What am I supposed to do with this?
According to the anonymous guide, any Hero who currently possessed or had ever manifested Stage 3 exhibited a terrifying rate of growth compared to normal Stage 1 Heroes. In other words, if I simply left this girl to her own devices, my head might end up rolling across the floor within a few years.
"This is driving me insane."
Killing her now was completely off the table. How was I supposed to finish her off when a cheat-tier defense was actively shielding her from physical harm? As if sensing my murderous intent, the universe had doubled down—a syringe needle that had slipped into her vein without issue days ago snapped cleanly against her skin when I tried it again. Taking a blood sample was out of the question.
No wonder they wouldn't stop screaming about the Scales.
Recalling the fierce debates among Solomon and the other Demon Lords in the grand assembly hall of Pandemonium, I finally understood their fury over the cosmic balance. The Scales gave Demon Lords nothing, yet handed Heroes every absurd blessing under the sun. It was no surprise people claimed the game was rigged from the start.
"Haah..."
A heavy sigh escaped me as I mourned my chronically rotten luck. My life was truly something else.
"Isn't there anyone on the forum I can talk to about this...?"
Backed into a corner, I desperately needed advice from someone with real experience. Odin, Marquis Wolf, old man Moses, or even Leon—anyone would do. Driven by sheer desperation, I finally opened the gallery's private messaging interface and started reaching out to several high-profile users I felt I could somewhat trust.
Before long, following a series of mutual recommendations, I was pointed toward a specific user handle.
The account bore the registered handle [I'm Not a Hero Sympathizer]. As it turned out, this Demon Lord was famous for having married a Hero. When I messaged her, she sent back replies so exhaustively detailed and gentle that it caught me completely off guard. Her tone read far more like a polite, soft-spoken Hero than a fearsome Demon Lord, skewing distinctly maternal, but the substance of her advice was what truly mattered.
And every piece of guidance she provided converged on a single conclusion:
If you aren't confident you can defeat a Hero, simply raise them yourself.
The message explained that Causality exercised almost no control over a Hero's genuine emotions. As long as our first meeting went smoothly and I maintained a healthy, caring relationship with her throughout her development, there would be nothing to fear.
"Is that really the only way?"
Of all the paths I imagined walking, becoming a Hero's guardian had never once crossed my mind. From humanity's celebrated vanguard to humanity's greatest traitor, from traitor to Demon Lord, and now from Demon Lord to foster parent? My résumé was becoming a joke.
Letting out another weary sigh, I began tidying up the mess of splintered wood scattered across the floor. I collected the jagged shards embedded in the walls and swept up the debris in the corners, eventually making my way back to the bed to clear the dust around her. But as I reached out to pluck a stray wood shaving clinging to her silver-white hair—
"...!"
The porcelain eyelids that had remained shut for eleven long days fluttered open.
My breath hitched, my entire body locking in place. But unlike my frozen posture, her movements were slow and deliberate. She began to push herself upright.
Pure white hair cascaded over pristine fabric like liquid silk. The eyes that opened to meet the world were impossibly clear and transparent, holding the vibrant blue of a lost, nostalgic sky that Earth could no longer see. The moment stretched into eternity. The soft rustle of shifting linen, the gentle sway of her pale hair, the faint specks of dust catching the light as they drifted off her shoulders—every detail etched itself into my mind.
Once she was sitting upright, the girl parted her lips. Her voice was terribly thin, fragile as spun glass, yet the words pierced the silence with painful clarity.
"...I'm sorry."