And the Front Line — 1
Why was he here? After everything we'd been through, that question barely even registered anymore.
In short, it was about time I got used to this sort of thing.
When had the future I knew started twisting and warping into something so completely different from the game? Not recently, at least. The moment I possessed this body, the future I knew had already gone off the rails.
I checked the Hero's expression first.
He didn't look flustered in the slightest. He'd been the first one through the entrance — and he was also the one I suspected of being a regressor. Which meant that whatever past he remembered, whatever previous loop he'd lived through, nothing about this moment had changed.
Maybe the Saintess from his previous timeline had been someone a lot like me. If she really had been the same person — or even just a similar one — I wouldn't need to put on an act at all. How convenient would that be? I entertained the thought for a moment, then let it go.
Either way, it was his turn to speak.
The Hero asked the first question.
"Why have you come here?"
He didn't look surprised at all. If anything, he seemed to already have a pretty good idea of the answer — which made the question feel like either a formality, or the bare minimum of acting required to keep his regression under wraps. After all, if he already knew why Lloyd was here and just sat there without asking, it might have looked a little suspicious.
Lloyd answered the Hero's question without any fuss.
"I always go where the surviving is."
I was still trying to parse what that actually meant when Lloyd opened his mouth again to explain it himself.
"You all know the front lines form a straight line, right?"
Of course we did. I'd seen the place a hundred times in the game. But what did that have to do with "where the surviving is"?
I frowned slightly as he launched into what seemed like a completely unrelated topic. He must have caught the confusion on my face, because he pressed on without missing a beat.
"There are three front lines total."
"North, Central, and South — those are the big three."
"Originally, you lot were supposed to get shipped off to the Central Front and worked half to death. But my master went to the Central Front himself."
"You know what that means? It means you don't need to go to the Center."
He jabbed a finger toward the middle of the map and added, almost as an afterthought:
"Personally, I'm not about to start singing my master's praises."
"But his raw power alone is enough to hold an entire front by himself — which means the rest of us are surplus."
"So where does the leftover manpower go? North and South."
He unfurled a peculiar map woven from pure mana and began zooming in on our current position.
"Right here — the Northern Front. That's where you've been sent."
"And me? I'm no match for my master, but I'm still a Superhuman, so I got dumped here too."
"Two Superhumans in one place is a waste of firepower."
He paused, letting the atmosphere settle, then continued.
"In short — I'm going to make you all into Superhumans!"
"Within one month!"
He bellowed it at the top of his lungs, and I clapped my hands over my ears on pure reflex.
Ugh—
A thin whimper slipped out. The volume was so brutal I half-expected blood to start trickling from my ears. The whole tent seemed to vibrate with the force of it.
People that passionate always turned out to be the type who ground their subordinates into dust in the real world. The most dangerous kind of human alive.
I already knew exactly what kind of character he was. When you devote your entire life to a game, you end up buying the official setting books and reading character profiles that fill page after page of A4 paper. So I could tell he was dead serious about that absurd claim — "I'll make you Superhumans in a month."
I carefully raised my hand to signal that I had something to say.
Inside the cramped tent, Lloyd, Ain, and Jerome all turned to look at me. I unfolded a sheet of paper and wrote carefully.
I'm already a Superhuman, though.
Lloyd froze.
He looked thoroughly thrown. The others seemed a little skeptical too — or maybe they just thought I was being cheap about it. Not that I was any good at reading faces.
What? Got a problem? I didn't say anything wrong.
The Saintess really was one of the Superhumans who had received a name from the stars. Sure, she was a support type with relatively weak personal combat power — but she could still fight the underdeveloped Hero on even footing, and she could crush upper-tier fighters who hadn't even brushed the Superhuman threshold.
I didn't need training!
And no, I was absolutely not going to admit that I just hated the idea of putting this body through intense physical exercise. That would completely shatter the Saintess persona. The moment a Saintess who was supposed to embody perfect, unblemished grace started dry-heaving mid-workout, the act would be finished for good.
I started rationalizing it to myself: dodging training like this was the right call, wasn't it?
Lloyd finally finished wrestling with the problem and opened his mouth. I quietly cheered on the inside.
"Fine. You're out."
The casual way he talked down to the Saintess — one of the highest-ranking figures outside the Holy Kingdom — grated a little, but the fact that I wouldn't have to train or move my body at all filled me with pure, unfiltered joy.
Wait. He still hadn't explained why coming here counted as "where the surviving is."
I was the type who couldn't stand leaving a curiosity unsatisfied, and this was the game I loved most made real. I wasn't about to walk away from hidden lore sitting right in front of me. From the standpoint of someone who had to keep playing the Saintess, it might have been a risky move — but he hadn't done anything as underhanded as cutting himself off mid-explanation, so I decided to ask the rest of the question.
But why is coming here "where the surviving is"?
Lloyd read the words carefully, fell silent for a moment, then answered without hesitation.
"Because the Emperor told me to come here."
"Disobey an order and he'll kill you, y'know?"
Ah. So that was what he meant.
Honestly, it kind of ruined the image.
Lloyd declared the conversation over and ordered us outside. He was the one in charge of this front, so following his lead was only natural.
Once we were out of the tent, he spoke again.
"Welcome to the front lines."
With that announcement, we had finally, truly arrived.
We were going to be heading out on expeditions and adventures disguised as deployments often enough anyway — the main story and the side quests demanded it — but for now, we were here. On the front.
Stepping back out of the tent, the front lines looked a little different than before. Maybe it was just the shift from dark interior to open daylight, but the place felt more like somewhere people actually lived than it had on first glance.
So that was it. Looking from the light into the dark was one thing. Looking from the dark into the light made it feel like a place where people made their homes.
Holding onto that unexpectedly fresh impression, we followed slowly behind Lloyd as he led the way.
Lloyd strolling the front lines in ordinary casual clothes, trailed by the Hero, the Saintess, and a single Holy Knight — it was an extraordinarily rare combination, and one that inspired longing in equal measure.
That was what a Hero's party meant.
Whenever they appeared, they brought victory to humanity. They were living proof that the gods existed and were watching over us. A complicated, surging mix of admiration, hope, and quiet faith washed over them like a tide, and they answered those expectant gazes with small waves of the hand and gentle smiles.
Long ago, the master of the highest tower — who had stood beside the First Saintess — and that master's disciple now stood before the Hero of the next generation, and the generation after that, and generations still further down the line, ready to forge them into something greater.
Lloyd thought to himself.
Whether these people could end a war that had stretched across so many generations, he didn't know. Whether the Demon Realm — which the First Saintess had once purified, which everyone had believed gone forever — would stay gone even if this war ended, he couldn't say for certain either.
But at the very least, he ought to be able to tell the young Superhumans who had died before him a few war stories, a few accomplishments worth remembering. At the very least, he shouldn't die in a way that would shame him. Holding that thought, he began slowly guiding them through the facilities.
A small prayer room — a tent on the outside, but fully equipped within. Lloyd explained that I might be asked to give a morale-boosting speech here at some point. When I wrote back, How am I supposed to speak?, he paused as if that particular detail hadn't occurred to him, then offered a brilliantly simple solution: "I'll just stick someone next to you to read it out."
The mess hall — rows of tents, makeshift tables, and long benches. Even at a glance, the hygiene left something to be desired. Lloyd insisted the supplies came through fine and the food was decent enough, then made a pointed remark about the Southern Front. Both I — who'd played the game — and the Hero — who'd lived it — understood exactly what he meant.
The Southern Front really had been hell.
At last, after touring the entire length of the front and introducing every facility, Lloyd brought up one final matter.
"Come out tonight. There's a welcome party for you."
Only possible because the Northern Front was well-supplied. He told us to make sure we remembered, then turned on his heel and disappeared.
We each scattered to our assigned tents and waited, wide awake, for night to fall.
"Hwaaah—?"
The Hero stammered in alarm.
"Saintess, if you could just step back a little…"
The Saintess was drunk.