The Hero Chosen by the Goddess
Clang!
BOOOOM!!
In the grand ducal manor of House Freezid, the Hero and a maid collided head-on.
Wreee-wreee-wreee!!
The magical alarms installed throughout the estate shrieked in frantic chorus, and the whole manor erupted into chaos.
While every soul inside the mansion reeled in confusion, far away — no, from an entirely different dimension — someone watched it all with deep satisfaction.
"Incredible!"
It was none other than Goddess Rabinus, the one who had summoned the Hero to this world.
"The Hero's growth rate is simply extraordinary!"
Right now, the goddess was watching the Hero's performance with pure delight.
At first, she had been somewhat uneasy.
The girl had lived on ordinary Earth — a place with no mana, no inner energy, no ether, nothing resembling supernatural power at all. Could she truly adapt once summoned to this world? Rabinus had never been completely certain.
Even so, among all the Hero candidates she had scoured across countless dimensions, this girl had been the most suitable. So she had summoned her.
A Hero who would topple the Demon King — the one who had plunged the world into chaos — without ever being influenced by the goddess's own power.
When Rabinus selected such a Hero, she weighed the following conditions.
The first was potential.
Anyone unfamiliar with this world's Hero-summoning might ask: Why bother with potential? Why not simply summon someone already complete and powerful?
A fair question, of course.
The problem was that summoning a finished powerhouse demanded an enormous price.
The forms that price could take were many, but the easiest to pay was the life force of the living creatures dwelling across this world's continents.
The stronger and more exceptional the person, the steeper the cost — doubled, redoubled.
That simply didn't add up.
The damage the Demon King inflicted on the world.
The cost of summoning a Hero to subjugate him.
It had to be efficient.
From the goddess's perspective, even at her most generous, the price could not exceed one one-hundredth of the world's value.
Anything beyond that violated the constraints of the world itself — and even a goddess could not simply ignore those limits.
So what if she gritted her teeth, paid more than a hundredfold, and still came up short of the strength she needed — only to turn around and summon a Hero for roughly one percent of the cost instead?
Obviously, a Hero summoned under those terms would never be able to defeat the Demon King.
And even that one-percent price was no light matter.
Which was why the single most important requirement for summoning a Hero was not immediate strength, but potential.
On that point, Lee Hye-yeong had been perfect.
Not in a world like Isania, where women held the advantage, but on Earth — a world of reversed gender power — she had, in a frail woman's body, cut down countless enemies.
First she had slain a man stronger than herself.
He never even had time to react; he fell helplessly to Hye-yeong's blade.
Next came women of her own sex.
After that she stopped distinguishing by gender at all, cutting down every enemy around her.
Cowards before her momentum, they collapsed without even managing to resist.
The goddess never learned why the girl had ended up facing so many foes alone.
She had not been watching from the beginning — only from the moment the girl took up the knife. And she had not heard whatever words were exchanged, so she could not know the reason for the fight.
But the detailed motive behind her battles did not matter.
The way she swung that blade made her look like the very incarnation of the battlefield.
Watching her fight, the goddess could only marvel.
Every time an enemy fell to the sword the girl brandished as she charged alone, Rabinus felt a thrill run through her.
This is the one!
The goddess was certain.
With no mana, no supernatural power of any kind — relying solely on her own flesh — and in a world where women were at a disadvantage, she had fought against so many.
Of course, one person's strength had its limits. Exhausted from the fighting, she had collapsed and been captured. But that was fine.
Even surrounded by a host of enemies after her capture, she never lost herself; she resisted to the very end.
In the end, numbers won out, and she was bound and locked in solitary confinement.
From the goddess's perspective, that was ideal.
A tiny room, minimal interference from others — summoning her had been extraordinarily easy.
And the cost of bringing her over had been next to nothing.
Truly, because she possessed neither mana nor any other supernatural force, the expense was almost zero.
How efficient could one get?
Once she arrived in this world, awakened to mana, and began to grow — how far might she climb?
Even if she failed to adapt properly, Rabinus had summoned her for so little that, from the goddess's standpoint, there was no real loss either way.
Once the condition of potential was satisfied, the second requirement for summoning a Hero was the price of the bargain.
In truth, one could not simply snatch a being from another dimension on a whim.
Everything followed procedure. Permission was required.
To obtain that permission, the goddess proposed a deal.
In the distant past, Rabinus had summoned many Hero candidates to defeat the Demon King of that age.
And the prices they demanded?
Make me master of the world!!
Heh heh… if you become my wife, I'll do it!!
Give me every man in the world!!
Ah… it had been enough to scramble her mind.
How were their demands any different from the Demon King's?
She had sent every last one of them straight back to their own worlds and cancelled the summons.
After countless repetitions of the process, she had finally found a proper Hero candidate.
If you'll just send me home, I'll do whatever you want — Demon King or otherwise! Please, send me back!
Desireless.
If they wanted nothing of her world, she could have returned them free of charge simply by refusing.
But this kind-hearted candidate, believing that wanting nothing would leave the goddess burdened, had offered as his condition only a return to his own world.
Rabinus had been moved — yet she carefully pretended otherwise and proceeded with the bargain.
Afterward, that Hero candidate had grown diligently, subjugated the Demon King, and returned to his world.
She needed another Hero like that now. Naturally, finding one was never going to be easy.
What I want? Come down to this world with me and receive my blessing!
Gender-bend every man in the world for me!
…Lunatics, the lot of them.
Once again they had demanded absurd things as payment, and she had sent them all back.
The Demon King had already been revived for some time; she needed to hurry.
True, he had not yet shown himself to the world, nor begun actively destroying it.
But there was no telling how events might unfold — so when she summoned Lee Hye-yeong, Rabinus resolved that even if the girl demanded a somewhat steep price, she would grant it.
And then—
Send me to where Hyeonwoo is!
Hyeonwoo? Curious who that might be, the goddess peered into the girl's inner self.
And she accepted at once.
Even as a goddess, she had never believed in fate.
But this time, she could.
This — this was destiny itself.
For at that very moment, the soul of the man the girl desired had been reborn in this world.
So the bargain was struck, and the Hero, overjoyed, was summoned to Isania.
What a proper attitude she had shown.
Not a trace of fear toward another world — only a face full of hope.
Rabinus believed that this girl would, without fail, subjugate the Demon King.
Afterward, so long as Tenesa — the Pope she herself had chosen — supported her well, they would be able to defeat the Demon King without any real difficulty. Or so she believed.
Goddess Rabinus watched the summoned Hero's progress with high expectations.
But contrary to those expectations, the Hero failed to adapt well to Isania.
For one thing, she spoke so little that she conversed with no one except Tenesa.
Rabinus still judged that acceptable enough.
She had come to this world to defeat the Demon King; there was no real need for her to get along with people.
If anything, mingling too freely risked dirty conspiracies and betrayal that might get the Hero killed — and that could not be allowed.
The problem was that the Hero did not train nearly as hard as expected.
It's heavy!
I'm getting blisters on my hands!
This is hard!
She never trained for more than an hour, and even that she did halfheartedly.
Tenesa and the people of the Church coaxed and coddled and helped her along, but her behavior never changed.
Hyeonwoo… where is Hyeonwoo?!
So she was talking about the man she had named as the price of the bargain.
She had already arrived in the world where he had been reborn — which meant the goddess had fulfilled the condition the Hero had set.
Ordinarily, one was supposed to subjugate the Demon King first and only then fulfill the condition…
But because the world of his reincarnation and the world where the Demon King resided happened to be the same, she had already received what she wanted without ever defeating him.
All that remained, then, was for the Hero to simply subjugate the Demon King…
Yet from the way she spoke, it seemed she had wanted to meet him as well.
She had never said so at the time, so it could not be granted.
From the goddess's perspective, that much would have been easy enough to arrange…
But the bargain was already closed. The Hero was obligated to defeat the Demon King.
And yet, day after day passed with no sign of growth from her.
Did I make the wrong choice?
She had already bestowed the Hero's blessing; the selection could not be undone.
Watching a Hero who had already collected her payment in advance and then refused to focus on the Demon King's subjugation…
Rabinus began to wonder whether she ought to summon one more Hero, even at a heavy loss.
Her worries deepened by the day — and it was precisely then.
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
The Hero exploded in rage.
Ah… that look!
It was the same expression Rabinus had seen through Earth — the look the girl had worn when she was at her most brilliant.
Even without properly learning how to handle mana, the Hero wrapped her body in fierce Aura, and the goddess felt that thrill surge through her once more.
Yes! Yes! This is it!
When the Hero swung her sword, enemies went flying even though the blade never touched them.
"Haaah!… Haaahk!… That's exactly it! Hero♥"
Watching that spectacle, the goddess reached a peak of ecstasy.
Perfect.
Afterward, of course, she had suffered a painful defeat at the hands of a half-dragon knight — but that was fine.
It had not been a one-sided thrashing, and the mere fact that she had exchanged even a few blows with a dragon's descendant — a being who could be said to share a portion of divine power — filled the goddess with joy she could barely contain.
As long as she did not die, it was all right.
Even if an arm was severed, even if a leg was cut off, even if she went blind — it was fine.
Rabinus had granted the Hero's blessing, and so long as the Pope remained at her side, she could be healed.
Growth inevitably came with hardship.
This, too, was pain for the sake of growth.
And looking at the Hero fighting the maid now!
She had not crumbled after defeat; she had risen again, grown even further — and that made her shine more brilliantly than ever.
Just as expected of the Hero whose potential she had marked from the start.
"Haaah… haaahk…! Just as I thought — the Hero I chose! You're simply magnificent♥!"
The Hero…
was shouldering the full weight of the goddess's expectations.