He Wouldn't Want to Wake Up
"He wouldn't want to wake up."
"?"
It was right around the time the heroes were deep in their mana training. I tilted my head at the strange change unfolding in Haring.
Just moments ago, she hadn't shown a scrap of progress. Now something was unmistakably different.
"Puhuhu… huha…"
The circulation and flow of her mana had stabilized by leaps and bounds. Mana moved evenly through her body, inside and out, and her circulation speed had roughly tripled. It wasn't raw speed alone, either — there was a genuine balance to it.
I'd been about to scold her for grinning to herself like an idiot, but now she was more stable than even Nya-nya or Ka-zen. At this rate, she'd hit the conditions for creating a star in no time.
She's entered a kind of "object-self unity" state…
"Interesting."
To go beyond intense concentration and faintly assimilate with the surrounding mana just by smiling at empty air — was that an ability the Goddess had given her? Or something unique to Haring alone?
The other heroes simply shut their eyes and focused. She had found her own method through this peculiar little ritual.
Figuring it was a rare chance to praise her, I walked over. Just then, the state of unity seemed to break; she was whipping her head around with startled eyes.
"Huh? What just happened…"
"Well done."
Pat, pat.
I stroked Haring's head, and her eyes went even wider as she stared up at me.
"Huh?"
"Just keep doing what you're doing. At this rate, you might even make one before Nya-nya."
"???"
"You're doing well, so keep at whatever that was."
"…That gallery browsing?"
"What?"
"Ah — no. Um. You mean keep doing what I was doing?"
"Yeah."
I had no idea what her method actually was, but it clearly suited her best. It might work for the others too — or it might only work for Haring.
If everyone starts grinning like that, it'd be weird.
Training ought to have a certain solemn weight to it. One person was fine, but a whole group snickering at empty air would be a bit much.
Haring muttered something about how this actually worked and went back to staring blankly into space, picking up her breathing again. It was a little grating, but since it was effective, I'd leave her to—
"Ah! I got blocked!"
"……"
Maybe I should just make her do it the normal way.
Heroes are the saviors of the world.
Champions who stand against the evil Demon King raising demonic armies to conquer everything, and who restore peace to the land. Whenever the Demon King ran amok, the Goddess selected heroes, granted them suitable power, and set them against him — a struggle said to have continued for a very long time.
A war that had been raging long before I was ever reincarnated.
The battle between heroes and the Demon King had stretched on for ages, until eighty years ago, when one hero's appearance flipped the board entirely.
Bahamart Legion.
The strongest hero across every generation, and the one who severed the Demon King's head. After that day, the Demon King's forces dwindled sharply, and the world found a peace without precedent…
"And yet heroes have started showing up in droves again."
Not one or two — hundreds of them.
"The Goddess must have sensed a crisis."
"That's right. That's right."
"I and the rest of the heroes will defeat the evil demonic forces."
Deep inside the nest, I lay comfortably on my side, munching grapes the heroes peeled for me as I talked. In front of me, a cluster of heroes listened with bright, eager eyes.
This was supposed to be mana training time, but they'd hauled in a mountain of tribute and begged me for old stories. I hadn't particularly planned on storytelling, but endless training every single day got old. And today I especially wasn't in the mood to supervise practice, so I figured a few words wouldn't hurt.
What a pain…
I was always lazy about moving, but today was worse than usual.
"Nah. That old hag doesn't pick heroes because of any sense of crisis."
"Huh? Then why?"
"Hmm… She just wants to pull a strong hero like Bahamart. Figure if she rolls the gacha a few hundred times, one of him might drop."
The Goddess's strategy of flooding the field with mass-produced heroes was pretty bold, but it wasn't unprecedented. Intoxicated by Bahamart's strength, she had once summoned ten heroes in a single batch. Normally she picked one or two at a time and left a gap between summons.
She even kept summoning after the Demon King was already dead, which I truly could not understand.
Why summon heroes when there's no Demon King?
Even the legion commanders — aside from the lower ones — were mostly dead or sealed. If the Goddess had been born in modern times, she would've dumped her entire fortune into gacha games. Then she'd march down to the company headquarters, throw herself on the floor, and whine about why she couldn't pull an SSR.
I'd be lucky if she only went after the game company.
Why she came whining to me — someone who had nothing to do with any of it — was beyond me.
"Beats me."
The Goddess's way of thinking was completely incomprehensible.
Haring, who had been diligently peeling fruit, raised a hand.
"Lea-nim! Question!"
"Give me an apple."
"Here!"
She brought a neatly peeled apple to my mouth. I chewed.
Tasty.
"Can I ask?"
"Yeah, go ahead."
"You said Bahamart was the strongest hero. And a former emperor, too."
"Yeah."
"How strong is he? Compared to us?"
"You guys are ants. He's an insanely powerful dragon."
"Ants is a bit much."
"It's true, though."
When Bahamart appeared, those so-called famous legion commanders trembled in their boots. I wasn't joking — that actually happened. There's a well-known anecdote about one commander who, the instant he heard Bahamart had shown up on the battlefield, abandoned his entire army and tried to run. He fled so fast they briefly lost track of him entirely.
Then he got caught and died with the rest, of course.
There was a reason the man took the Demon King's head.
And that was exactly why I remained half-skeptical even while training these people. No matter how many mass-produced heroes I drilled into something strong—
Could they ever surpass Bahamart's stature?
Looking at it honestly, I didn't think so.
"Bahamart inscribed eleven stars in his heart. They say he was the first hero to ever create that many."
"…Eleven???"
"Holy crap."
"Even making one is hard…"
The heroes murmured, hands drifting to their chests. Among them, the furthest along were Nya-nya, Ka-zen, and Haring — and Nya-nya had managed to form about half a star. A little more mana and focus, and she'd complete a perfect one.
Nya-nya stuck out her tongue in disbelief and asked,
"I've heard that the more cores you create, the harder it gets. Is that true?"
"About twice as hard with each one."
Ultimately, a star was a warehouse — a place that stored mana and aided its circulation. And continually expanding warehouses packed with unstable explosives was never easy work. If any of them collided, it would be a catastrophe.
"People dying from their hearts exploding after botching a star wasn't uncommon. Ordinary heroes usually stop around seven."
"…Seven?"
"Seven is insane."
"Wait — that star is almost half the size of a heart. How do you fit seven of them?"
"Yours needs to be smaller. At your level, five would already be doing well."
I hadn't expected much from mass-produced heroes anyway. If they managed about five stars and overwhelmed with sheer numbers, lower legion commanders should be beatable. Upper ones were out of the question — but most of those were dead or sealed, so they probably wouldn't show.
I said as much and opened my mouth. Haring and Nya-nya immediately leaned in and popped cookies between my teeth.
Munch, munch.
They did it automatically now without being told. The way they casually clung to me was a little annoying, though.
"Lea-nim is a dragon, but she's so soft and squishy…"
"Hehehe… Lea-nim is so cute."
"Can I hug you just once?!"
"Don't push it."
"Aww~ Just one hug. Just one tiiiny hug!"
"Nope."
Not a chance.
I waved both hands and shooed the two female heroes away. They retreated with dejected faces. Training together had clearly made them close. The other heroes were chatting freely among themselves too, no walls left between them.
Behind the group, Ka-zen — looking rather serious — nodded and pushed up his glasses.
"So the legion commanders can be defeated even at our level."
"If a few hundred of you pile on, it shouldn't be impossible."
"Then what about the Demon King?"
"I told you the Demon King is dead."
"But he might come back, might he not? If someone were to resurrect him, for example…"
"Hmm?"
The Demon King being resurrected…
I tilted my head and thought it over. Resurrection magic wasn't entirely impossible. It simply demanded ridiculously rare materials and dragon-class mana — and even that only applied to ordinary humans or demihumans. Bringing back a being as powerful as the Demon King would require conditions far more extreme.
Of course, since his corpse hadn't been completely destroyed, the possibility wasn't zero…
"He wouldn't want to wake up."
His last memory was getting beaten like a dog by Bahamart and having his head cut off. Even if the demons tried to resurrect him — wouldn't he just refuse?