Ending Maker Chapter 35
Ending Maker Chapter 35
Chapter 7 - Full Moon #2
The Hero Legend series expanded its scale with each installment.
The first game had five playable characters in total.
The story was also confined to a small kingdom situated between the Saelun Kingdom and the Argon Empire.
'The queen of the Paragon Kingdom, brainwashed by demon worshippers, offers the prince as a sacrifice to summon a demon....'
The summoned demon—Demon Prince Vaikazel—murdered the king and turned the entire royal palace into a demon's den.
Hero Legend 1 was the story of becoming one of the five heroes and defeating Vaikazel, who had occupied the Paragon Kingdom.
"The second game is the story that takes place in the Saelun Kingdom and the Argon Empire......."
"And the third game is the story of settling things with both the demons and the angels in a world devastated by Armageddon."
Inside the rattling carriage.
Inside the carriage heading toward Viscount Norden's territory, Yuder and Cordelia lay side by side on makeshift beds.
Of course, they were not lying in the same bed—there was a low partition between them.
It was a carriage Lucas had hastily prepared for the two of them after they had overexerted themselves in the Witch's Forest.
"Landius of the Crimson Flame."
"One of the five heroes of the first game. Along with the Sword Demon Kamael, he's effectively considered the true protagonist. A warrior of the sun who crushes his enemies with overwhelming physical might. The son of the Paragon Kingdom's knight commander, and after defeating Vaikazel, he wanders the continent hunting the demon worshippers responsible for everything."
"Nice work, Yuder Wiki."
Cordelia even clapped for him, leaving Yuder feeling strangely self-conscious as he continued.
"For now, in the original, the hero who defeated Vaikazel changes depending on who you play as...... but according to the canon route, the ones who defeated Vaikazel were Landius and Kamael."
"Search Kamael, enter."
Cordelia mimed typing in the air. Yuder narrowed his eyes at her, then continued.
"Sword Demon Kamael. The illegitimate son of the Paragon king who was killed by Vaikazel. The true protagonist of the first game, and the only character from the first game who survives and remains active in the second."
Perhaps because letting the already-powerful heroes of the first game remain active would have made it difficult for the new protagonists to take center stage, most of the first game's five heroes met miserable ends by the second game.
"Uh...... Landius gets killed by a Demonic Human, right?"
"Yeah, it doesn't actually appear as an event—it only exists in the setting...... but he's killed by Demonic Human Duke, the top executive of the Devil's Hand."
In truth, the full circumstances behind even that had never been completely revealed.
Players had inferred it because Demonic Human Duke carried Landius's sword, the Solar Blade.
"Either way, he's not dead yet, right?"
"Right, and that's exactly what matters."
Landius was not dead yet.
In the original, neither Yuder nor Cordelia would ever have had a chance to meet Landius at all.
But because the two of them had crushed Devil's Hand's kidnapping plot, the situation had changed.
Lucas had not been kidnapped, and the Count Hraesvelgr Household had asked Landius, who had ties to them, to come escort him.
And so a meeting was about to take place between protagonists of the first and second games who should never have met.
"Can we...... save him?"
Cordelia sat up and turned toward Yuder, her eyes full of hope as she asked.
Save Landius.
Keep alive the physically strongest of the first game's protagonists and let him remain active in the second game as well.
"We can save him. No, we have to save him."
Because Yuder and Cordelia's goal was to create the ultimate happy ending.
The mere fact that a powerhouse like Landius remained alive could be a disaster for the demon worshippers.
So they had to keep him alive.
They had to use this meeting to somehow create a route where Landius survived.
"This is exciting."
Cordelia murmured the words, then flopped back down and smiled.
"I wanted to save Landius."
"You like him?"
"Yeah, he's my second favorite among the first game's heroes."
"Your favorite? Lena?"
"Yeah, Lena."
The sole female among the five heroes of the first game, a young mage.
She, too—the disciple of the Paragon Kingdom's royal mage—met a miserable end in the second game.
"Can we save Lena too?"
"We have to. Compared to the others, we know fairly clearly when and where Lena dies."
He just hadn't told Cordelia the details yet. Yuder already had the rough outline of a plan to save Lena in his head.
'There really is a lot to do in the north.'
The Sunflower Herb event to fully cure the Nine Yin Meridian Blockage.
Completely stopping Yuder's main scenario, the 'Great Invasion of the Northern Barbarians.'
The rescue of Lena, one of the first game's heroes.
And now, at this very moment, a new task had been added: saving Landius's life.
"Landius is strong, so if we just tell him Duke's weakness, his survival odds will shoot way up."
"Most likely."
Yuder nodded, then silently stared at Cordelia. She tilted her head.
"What?"
"Nothing. You just seem way more excited than when we met Lucas."
"Well, because Landius is cool."
"And Lucas isn't cool?"
"Hmm...... he's, how should I put it, more on the cute side?"
"Still, I guess you don't dislike him anymore."
"Because he's cute."
Maybe he was like a puppy.
Yuder gave a wry smile at Cordelia's assessment and looked back toward the ceiling.
This time Cordelia sat up again, leaned toward Yuder, and spoke.
"Hey, but Yuder."
"What?"
"Can I ask you just one thing?"
When Cordelia even added a hint of coyness, Yuder flinched and instinctively leaned away.
"What is it? What are you trying to ask?"
"No, well...... it's nothing big......."
Cordelia trailed off, leaned against the partition, and continued.
"Hey, you."
"Yeah, me, what."
"So... uh... hmm... argh! Hey, what did you do for a living?"
"Huh?"
"I'm asking what you did for a living. Outboxer's job—your actual job. You weren't really a boxer, were you?"
After agonizing over how to phrase it, Cordelia finally gave up and blurted the question out.
"Why my job all of a sudden?"
"Because it's weird. No, I mean, I'm curious."
Cordelia sat bolt upright and continued, counting on her fingers.
"First, your memory is absurdly good."
"Isn't that just because you're bad?"
"Hey, go grab a hundred random people on the street and ask them. Whether I'm normal or you're normal."
Cordelia snorted and continued counting on her fingers.
"You stopped in the middle of walking because the soil had changed. There's a limit to paranoia—who checks the soil when entering a forest, then notices that its composition changed while walking?"
"Right here."
"Are you going to keep interrupting?"
"Fine, fine. Anyway, what else?"
"The outrageous idea that we could just scam them, your incredible forgery skills, and the smooth lies you tell without batting an eye. No matter how you look at it, you're not normal."
Cordelia nodded as if convincing herself with her own argument, then looked Yuder straight in the eyes.
"It's a past life anyway, so it's fine. I'll understand. You were a con artist, right? Huh?"
"No, I wasn't. I was a model citizen who paid his taxes properly—local taxes, national pension contributions, health insurance, all of it."
"Local taxes? Health insurance?"
"What, you didn't pay them? You're the one who......."
"N-no! Of course I know about those! I paid them too!"
Cordelia answered in a fluster, clenched her fist, and banged on the partition.
"Anyway! If you weren't a con artist, what were you? Huh? Tell me. Please?"
"Don't try acting cute on me."
"Pleeease."
"Ugh, fuck."
Yuder cursed without thinking and recoiled. Cordelia leaned closer to him.
Yuder broke into a cold sweat despite himself.
Cordelia was, after all, an exceptionally beautiful girl.
Her attempts at acting cute were far more destructive than he had imagined.
"Haa... Fine. I give up."
"Wow! You're going to tell me?"
"I was......."
"You were?"
"I used to be a spy. Until......."
Cordelia's eyes widened at the sudden English, and then she repeated the words in surprise.
"A spy? An intelligence agent?!"
Yuder said nothing and simply looked at her. Cordelia let out an "Ah!" and nodded.
'It's...... possible!'
The protagonist of a spy drama she'd seen before was like that too.
Outstanding acting skills to maintain a cover identity.
Forgery skills honed to falsify all kinds of documents.
Excellent memorization, focus, observation skills, and so on.
"Ooh, oooh."
Cordelia's eyes lit up once she had convinced herself, and Yuder snorted with laughter.
"A spy? Come on. No. I wasn't, so stop imagining weird things."
"F**k! Then what were you really?"
"Then what were you?"
"Huh?"
"You. What did you do? Isn't this give and take? Tell me about yourself first, and I'll tell you too."
"That's cheap."
"Hey, isn't it cheap of you to demand that only I tell you?"
"Tch."
Logically, Yuder was right. Even so, Cordelia didn't want to reveal her own past.
'What if it turns out he's older than me?!'
She didn't know what Yuder had done for a living, but he did seem older than her.
For now, neither knew the other's age, and reincarnation had even made them the same age, so it was easy to ignore. But if they said it aloud and made it explicit, things would start to feel strange.
Cordelia pouted and lay back down as she spoke.
"Hey, so then, can't you just tell me one thing?"
"If you mean just my job, then no."
"Not that. Your memory."
"My memory?"
"Yeah, your memory. It's seriously ridiculous. Just tell me that much. How does it work?"
Cordelia peeked over the partition again. Yuder frowned slightly, then nodded.
"Fine, I'll teach you that."
"Oh, so there really was a secret?"
Cordelia leaned farther over the partition again, visibly excited.
Yuder spluttered as Cordelia's hair spilled down over his head, then shifted aside and spoke.
"There are two things."
"Like what?"
"First, I'm smart."
"Fuck."
What kind of secret was that supposed to be?
Cordelia reflexively spat out a curse—no, an exclamation—but she didn't deny it.
After all, she had already known even back in the Outboxer days that Yuder was smart.
"And...... do you know what a memory palace is?"
"Memory palace? Uh...... ah! I know that. It's what Sherlock uses, right?"
"Right. It's a mnemonic technique that dates back to ancient Greece."
The memory palace.
It was a mnemonic technique in which memories were stored in an imagined space, then revisited by mentally moving to the corresponding location whenever they were needed. The method had been developed in ancient times, when reliable means of recording information were scarce.
Ancient Greek philosophers were said to have used memory palaces to memorize entire speeches or books. It sounded almost like a superpower, but it was a technique ordinary people could learn through training.
"Of course, there are individual differences, and I happen to be an unusually extreme case, but yes, I use a memory palace."
"Wow...... so do you also have something like a library in your head, like in Sherlock?"
"Something like that. Mine has a bit more of an antique feel, though."
"That's amazing."
Cordelia looked at Yuder with genuine admiration. Feeling strangely awkward, Yuder cleared his throat.
"Want me to teach you too?"
"Really? I can do it too?"
"It takes repeated practice, though. And you're smart too, aren't you, Cordelia?"
"Well, of course...... hey, Yellow Storm is smart too, you know?"
"I'm sure she was."
It was just as Yuder smiled slightly.
"Eek?!"
The carriage suddenly jolted violently. Cordelia, who had been leaning over the partition, lost her balance and toppled toward Yuder.
"Oof. Hey, are you okay?"
"Y-yeah."
Cordelia had unexpectedly buried her head in Yuder's chest and was just groaning out an answer when—
"Are you both alr—... Ah, you're fine. Enjoy yourselves."
Lucas, who had hurriedly opened the carriage door, withdrew with a red face. Rather than get angry, Yuder and Cordelia both sighed.
"You know, whether it's a novel or a comic, scenes like this always happen, don't they?"
"Right?"
The two settled back onto their respective beds, and the carriage continued to rattle.
About an hour later,
The carriage arrived at Viscount Norden's manor.