85. Spilling the Story of the Unkilled Hero (2)
85. Spilling the Story of the Unkilled Hero (2)
The fact that every single person stuck with the label of "Hero" was a brick-headed moron with a broken personality was an open secret among adventurers.
And the moment I truly felt that, ironically, was when I first encountered the bizarre behavior of a Hero who had my back after I got pulled into this world.
'What is the ultimate pinnacle of a Sword Master who carves through all creation? Radiation, obviously! A swordsman who channels radiation through his aura, ignoring defenses and destroying opponents at the genetic level—that's the one true strongest swordsman!'
'Uh... I wouldn't really recommend that, you know.'
'Shut it! I'm a Hero and my power is invincible!!'
Despite my protests, he stubbornly used his ability to forge a blade that emitted radiation and went around slicing every enemy in his path, getting completely drunk on the Sword Master power fantasy.
And the result, not long after, was him getting acute full-body cancer and dropping dead.
Seeing the very first Hero pull a stunt worthy of a Darwin Award candidate made me deeply skeptical of the entire concept of Heroes, so I temporarily gave up on porter work and drifted between manual labor jobs like repairing city walls and rebuilding urban districts.
'Ohhh, hey there, little bro, you're doing a damn fine job with that. You mind coming over here and digging with me for a bit?'
I met Ja-seong about a week into working at one of those construction sites.
Summoned a few years before me, he was one of those guys who, despite being a Hero, focused on helping the Empire through labor rather than adventure.
As a Hero, his abilities had such a massive impact on the construction sites that every project he joined basically had its entire plan rewritten around him.
But that naturally raised more than a few questions about his activities.
People in power would never leave someone with his abilities alone, so why was he working in manual labor without a patron, living content with earnings far below the average for a Hero?
'That's because being someone else's errand boy just doesn't sit right with me.'
One day, out of curiosity, I asked him about it over a meal, and he explained it casually, like it was no big deal.
'The so-called authority a Hero has all comes from their patrons anyway, so no matter how much you wear that Hero label, if you don't get under someone's thumb, you can't enjoy any of that power or anything else.'
'Still, you could benefit in a lot of ways working as a Hero, couldn't you? You'd be treated like a hero by the citizens too.'
'That hero treatment crap is only something you do when the situation allows it. "You're a Hero, so you have to save everything possible and protect everything possible, but this one's politically problematic so push it back, and that one doesn't pay so do this one first..." They meddle in every single damn thing I do, so how the hell am I supposed to find any joy in saving people?'
Just like he said, when you strip it all down, Heroes are basically propaganda tools.
Even though he was rough around the edges in a way unbecoming of a Hero, he had his own sense of justice, so that kind of political atmosphere must have rubbed him the wrong way.
A man who pursued a justice that came with freedom, rather than being a public idol... If I had to label him, I thought the Hero Nam Ja-seong was more suited to being called a wandering champion or a free-spirited giant than a hero.
'Of course, if it's for money, I can grit my teeth and do a lot, but even so, there are some things I just can't stand.'
But the reason he left such an impression on me wasn't just because he had a relatable, human side that was different from the usual Heroes.
Most of the people who walked a different path from the typical Heroes all had their own peculiar quirks.
And he was one of the most memorable oddballs among those Heroes.
'What is it you can't stand?'
'The food tastes like crap.'
'...Excuse me?'
'I'm saying every single dish the nobles eat in this world is utterly tasteless. On top of that, does it make any goddamn sense to sit politely at a table and wait around like an idiot for appetizers and desserts and whatever else to show up one by one?'
'Um, well, I dunno. We did have stuff like omakase back in our world so...'
'Omakase or irasshaimasen or whatever, taking your sweet-ass time isn't a man's meal, damn it! Speaking of which, isn't a real man's meal hitting up a construction site diner, ordering a single plate of stir-fried pork, chugging a bowl of sweet rice punch, and being set to get right back to work?!'
A construction site diner, he said.
I never thought I'd hear that in another world; it was something I only ever heard back when I did weekend manual labor to scrape together tuition money.
'Still, the meals at these sites suit my taste better than what the nobles eat, but man, sometimes I still miss the food from our old world.'
'Ahaha, I get that feeling sometimes too. Eating all this greasy stuff every day, you have no idea how much I miss the kimchi stew from home...'
'Oh, Hyosung, you just said the magic words. Now that you mention it, I was just about to go get some ingredients to make kimchi stew. You mind helping me carry some stuff real quick?'
'Huh? You mean as a porter?'
'Ha ha! Don't you worry! Your big brother here will handle all the dangerous stuff.'
We'd built up a friendship working together, so I couldn't exactly just refuse.
That's how, from the very start of my time in this other world, I ended up tagging along on Ja-seong's culinary expeditions.
No, calling them expeditions makes it sound nice, but the places we usually went were dangerous spots like the Demon Realm or dungeons.
This world didn't have the convenient mass-produced goods or genetically modified foods of our original world, and finding substitutes for them was insanely dangerous.
'Ah, right. So you're saying we came to a forest teeming with man-eating plants just to get some garlic?'
'I munched on these a little while back and they tasted exactly like garlic. I'll pop over and dig some up real quick, so just hang tight, little bro!'
He was probably the only person on the planet who would dive headfirst into a cluster of man-eating plants just to dig up a bit of garlic.
'Why the hell are the barbarians around here putting leashes on cabbages and taking them for walks??'
'From what I've looked into, it seems to be similar to how cows are considered sacred in Hinduism. They believe cabbages are imbued with life, so everyone raises them preciously like pets...'
'There's a limit to how uncivilized you can be. Hyosung, cause a little distraction over there for a sec. We need to clean out all these cabbages if we're gonna make kimchi.'
'...You realize if this goes wrong, we could end up as sacrifices in a voodoo ritual, right?'
He was also probably the only person on the planet who would raid the barbarians' ceremonial garden just to eat a bit of kimchi.
A guy who scooped up lava laced with a special volcanic mineral to make seasoning, just to add a smoky flavor to his stir-fried pork. A guy who fought a desperate battle against an Ice Golem over ten meters tall because he deemed it the perfect ingredient for the ice cream he wanted for dessert...
'Man, what a world where it's this hard just to cook a meal! But seeing how it turned out, taste-wise, it's not bad, right!?'
'...It's just barely passable.'
'A ha ha ha! Right! We risked our lives for that perfectly mundane taste we thought we'd never experience in this world again!'
Even though the reward could be seen as nothing special, Ja-seong found real happiness in the familiarity it brought.
I still couldn't shake the thought that he was an oddball, but when I shared meals with him, I occasionally found myself getting lost in nostalgia for our old world.
The fact that we had to risk our lives gathering ingredients just to catch a fleeting fragment of our previous world really hammered home that I'd never be going back.
'Alright then, since the meal's over, time for a prayer.'
Whenever we finished eating with that bittersweet feeling lingering, he would always pull out a cross in front of me and offer a silent prayer.
A moment where a man who usually acted boisterously and did whatever he pleased revealed a quiet, almost ritualistic dignity.
That was a side of him, separate from his eccentricities, that he could show purely because he was a religious believer.
'Now that I think about it, you said you were sponsoring a church, right, Ja-seong?'
'Not exactly a famous order or anything, but you know, the bigger churches with some power aren't really any different from the nobles, so I felt uneasy joining them. The smaller, nameless orders are way more active when it comes to volunteer work, anyway.'
Rather than becoming a lapdog for the established orders that already had everything and reaping the benefits, he wanted to help the Nameless Order that focused on caring for people even without resources.
Whenever I thought of such actions as fitting for a free-spirited giant, he would occasionally explain why he had turned to religion in the first place.
'I lived my life pretty recklessly back in our original world and did a lot of things I regret. So I started volunteering to get my act together, tried getting into religion... Just because I got dragged to another world doesn't mean my trashy past disappears. I can't exactly stop repenting for it, can I?'
'...Contrary to how you look, you're surprisingly devout.'
'Devout, my ass. It's just something I do to make myself feel better.'
Helping others was his rebellion against his past deeds and a way to set himself right.
In that sense, he considered himself a hypocrite, but at the same time, I also felt that if even that hypocrisy could help someone, wasn't that enough? Especially since I'd encountered so many personality-warped bastards drunk on their own abilities after that.
'H-hiik! Please, please don't kill me!'
But the day you part ways with someone you held in such regard always comes eventually.
The trigger for that was when we'd crawled into the Demon Realm to find ingredients and stumbled upon a demon isolated in the middle of a forest.
'P-please. Don't kill me. I-I'm still too weak, I've never even properly absorbed life force or anything... If you just spare my life, I'll live kindly from now on! I won't go back to the Demon Lord's Army, I'll just hole up in a cave somewhere and live, so please!'
Demons are a species clearly branded as humanity's enemy.
But what Ja-seong and I were facing at that moment was a being who looked far too harmless and terribly frail to be called a demon.
Its appearance was akin to a 'Mongma' that seduces humans to drain their life force, but its actual form was nothing more than that of a roughly ten-year-old girl with absolutely zero sex appeal.
'Hyosung. What do you think I should do with this demon?'
'...I feel bad for her, but she's a demon, so we should take care of her and move on.'
I could feel my heart softening, but a Mongma was still a demon, and demons were a race humanity could never coexist with.
If the pathetic display in front of us was just crocodile tears, she might rip our throats out the moment we let our guard down.
Having seen plenty of adventurers die from letting their guard down, I was mostly hoping Ja-seong, who was holding the reins, would just deal with the demon and we could leave.
'Well, I mean, that's true and all.'
But despite my wishes, he still showed hesitation even upon seeing the young Mongma.
Just as I was getting anxious that he might actually be sympathizing with her, he soon nodded his head as if he'd made a decision and reached out toward the young Mongma.
'I've decided. I'm going to take this kid to the order I'm indebted to and look after her.'
'Huh? Bring a demon to a church? Don't tell me... it's because you pity her for being abandoned?'
'Ha ha, I've got a plan for it all, so don't worry too much. Still, there's a lot of things I'll need to take care of, so I'll probably have to focus on church work for a while. Might not be able to see you for a bit.'
I'll buy you a meal if we ever meet again!
With that farewell, he parted ways with me, and for the two years since then up until now, we hadn't really sought each other out, each of us spending time focused on our own circumstances.
The only thing I could tell was from the rumors that started floating around not long after, saying he was making a name for himself as the 'Shovel Paladin'.
And that the Nameless Order he belonged to began to gradually raise its renown, starting with the 'Birth of the Saint'...
****
"Hyosung! Have you been doing well all this time!? From the rumors I've been hearing lately, you've been making a name for yourself as some kind of Hero Hunter, so don't tell me you're planning on hunting me too!?"
"...Ha ha, well, if you were a Fallen Hero, hyung, then that's how it would go."
I'd been a little worried something terrible had happened to him since that day, but it looks like his boisterous personality hasn't changed a bit.
Seeing him as unchanging as ever was a bit of a relief. Just as I was thinking that, he looked down at me and suddenly tensed up as if realizing something.
"Speaking of 'fallen,' something's catching my attention now. Hyosung, seeing you after a long time, I'm sensing a bit of a sinister vibe from you. Did you go somewhere and get yourself cursed!?"
"Ah, about that. I got cursed not long ago..."
Come to think of it, Ja-seong was officially a paladin belonging to an order.
Since he reacts keenly to malevolent energy, he might be a huge help to me, considering I was looking for a place to deal with this curse.
"Gorgon Zola... it's a miracle you survived an encounter with a minion of the Corpse Lord."
"Thanks for your concern."
"Hey man! After all the meals we've shared, it's only natural for me to worry! Anyway, if you're looking for a place to break the curse, how about stopping by our order to have your condition checked out? It just so happens I also have a lot to tell you about how the Saint has been lately."
"Ah, yes. Now that you mention it, I heard a Saint appeared in your order not long after we parted..."
I was just about to gratefully accept his goodwill and follow along.
But just as I was about to follow his lead, I suddenly felt a prick of doubt at one thing he'd said.
"Wait a minute, 'how she's been'? Did I ever meet the Saint from your order, Ja-seong?"
"Well, of course! I'm the one who appointed that demon kid we saved back then as our order's Saint!"
"...Excuse me?"
"What's with that reaction? Is there a problem?"
Are you even hearing yourself right now, you crazy bastard?
For a religious person, demons and undead are beings you must never associate with, yet not only did he take one to his order, he even went and appointed her as their Saint.
Isn't that just the perfect setup to be mistaken for a cultist if anyone else finds out?
"No, Ja-seong. I get that you're a pretty eccentric guy, but even so, isn't this going way too far?"
"Don't worry, your big brother has a plan for all of this!"
"...Is it really, truly okay?"
"Heh heh, showing you will probably be better than talking. Let's head in and talk first."
Ah, well, fine.
This guy's someone who's survived in this world even longer than I have, so he must have some reliable backing to be pulling this kind of crazy stunt.
Let's not be hasty to judge for now and just stay in neutral gear. With that thought, I decided to follow behind him to get this curse removed.
"Alright, we're here. That place over there is our order's main base... Huh?"
A faint gasp of wonder escaped his lips as we stood before the church we'd arrived at.
I knew the reason for it the moment I looked at the church's front.
Over ten armed knights stationed in front of the church... No, looking closely, it wasn't just any ordinary knight order.
The crest drawn on the banner towering among them indicated that they were a holy knight order belonging to the Empire's state religion, the 'Priga Church'.
"...You weren't part of the Priga Church, right, hyung?"
"I told you. Places with that kind of scale don't suit my temperament."
Right. When we'd last parted, he was a member of a small, weak, nameless order, one far removed from the state religion and barely clinging to existence on the Empire's outskirts.
The fact that the order's reputation began to soar with the birth of a Saint was a relatively recent development.
So naturally, for the Priga Church, the state religion of the Empire, to come armed to Ja-seong's order meant something incredibly serious had happened.
"Hyung, don't tell me, this is..."
"Hyosung, you're an outsider, so just stay back and watch."
After clapping me on the shoulder, Ja-seong immediately strode toward the holy knight order.
"I have to take responsibility for the things I've done."
In his retreating figure, marching forward with a single shovel slung over his shoulder, there wasn't a trace of the hesitation he once had.