And the Front Lines - 2
I lay alone on the bed.
Not long after we arrived at the front, the sun began to sink past the horizon, spilling a soft yellow glow as it painted the sky in a riot of colors.
The tent was so quiet it felt almost funereal, a faint gloom clinging to the air. The thought that I might be sleeping in a tent once used by someone who had already died in this place—where people died every single day—sent a small chill through me.
But then I reminded myself that the dead who had given their lives for others would never turn into ghosts just to torment their comrades. Even the most vicious joke wouldn't go that far. That thought settled me a little.
Still, the fear was real. My body trembled, just slightly, with it.
If something really does show up, I'll send it to rest myself.
With a frail body, a fraying mind, limited time and resources, and the constant need to plan and act while dodging everyone else's eyes and suspicions—it was impossible. At first I'd had a plan so simple it was almost childish: gather my companions myself, kill the Demon King, and go home. But this wasn't a game. The people I'd once thought of as NPCs had their own reasons for acting, and I couldn't just point at a map and declare exactly where they were or what they would do.
Now that I was already at the front, there was no more recruiting to be done. The Hero's party—meaning the Hero, me, and Jerome the Holy Knight—was all we had. Two frontliners and one cleric. A bizarre composition, to put it mildly. If I'd managed to bring Akan and Lloyd in succession, everything would have fallen into place.
If we ignored the cost in other people's lives and just punched straight through, crossing the marshlands and taking the Demon King's head wouldn't have been that hard. After all, three Superhumans who had touched the stars—myself included—were already gathered here. Four, if the Hero reached a star of his own.
But indulging in hopeful fantasies wouldn't change the present I'd been handed. I'd already been refused, and clinging on after that wasn't in my nature or my taste.
So I had to look for another way.
If Lloyd really was as good at training people as the stories claimed—good enough to forge the Hero and that Holy Knight Jerome into Superhumans—then there might still be hope. Three Stars. That was enough firepower to take down a single Season one by one.
But that was the optimistic view. Looking at it darkly, I had to assume that becoming a Superhuman in a month was impossible no matter how hard anyone tried.
Superhumans—humans who had received names from the stars, monsters whose aging had all but stopped. And among them, a handful stood alone.
In the game, they were called first-tier companions.
The friends who had stood with the first Saintess and watched the sky itself crack open. An alchemist, a mage, a swordsman, a brawler, and a Star. Six of them in total. The Saintess was gone. The Star had ascended to the heavens. The alchemist had secluded herself in the Great Forest. The mage had locked himself away in the Tower. The brawler had followed the mage back there.
Two of them had already shown themselves after being persuaded by the Emperor, even without me lifting a finger. So there was a hopeful reading: the rest might appear on their own without being called.
But that, too, was a dream.
In the end, the problem was raising the party's specs. Solving it meant I needed freedom to act. Freedom meant suspicion. Suspicion brought me right back to square one.
Damn it.
Lying alone on that bed, one thought chased another in an endless loop, but no real solution crawled out of my tiny brain. Just as I was starting to think that resting was better than stressing myself further—
A bell rang.
The sound that announced the sun had fully set and night had fallen.
It was time to go out.
Yeah. All right.
My first impression of the mess hall was so poor I genuinely wondered whether people actually ate here. In a word, it looked awful. Sorry, but I'm the honest type. And it's not like anyone was listening, so what did it matter?
But once night fell and they started drinking and making a racket in our honor, I felt it—this place, too, was somewhere people lived. Human warmth clung to every corner of it, and something about that struck a chord. Even with people dying every day, they were still living with tomorrow in mind.
I, on the other hand, would start thinking about tomorrow only to measure my own limits and decide it was impossible. Because I'd be suspected. Because I might die. Better to take the safe road and coast along.
Maybe I'd been thinking that way without even realizing it. Was it the confidence of already knowing the future? Or the arrogance of believing that even knowing I would die, I could still pull it off?
Maybe the people grabbing food however they liked over there—the ones some noble might call crude—were thinking more decently than I was.
I needed to change that.
Lloyd spotted me the moment I arrived, even in the dim light, and called out.
"One of our main characters finally shows up!"
"All right—time for the boss nobody wants to look at to make himself scarce, yeah?"
He lightened the mood with easy cheer and slipped out as naturally as he'd arrived. The soldiers left behind laughed and talked and drank as much as they wanted. It was exactly the atmosphere you'd expect from the northern front, where supplies came easy.
I walked forward slowly.
Still no sign of the Hero or Jerome?
Neither of them was anywhere in the mess hall. For a moment I worried they'd forgotten the arrangement, then dismissed it—neither of them was the type to break a promise or forget one. I decided to wait.
Sitting awkwardly at a nearby table, I felt eyes flicking toward me and flinched. Being stared at this much still wasn't something I was used to. I'd rarely drawn that kind of attention in the first place. In a dozen small ways I was reminded that I was the Saintess, that I meant something different to these people—but the heat mixed into those stares was starting to get under my skin when the Hero appeared behind me.
A hand settled suddenly on my shoulder and made me jump. He draped a black blanket around me—I had no idea where he'd gotten it—and spoke.
"It's cold out."
It was spring, but it was also night, so the temperature really had dropped. Still, not enough to need a blanket.
Ah. He was being considerate.
I realized it a beat late. Being looked after didn't feel bad, exactly, but it left a strange, ticklish sensation behind. A little uncomfortable.
We sat at the table for a while, looking at each other awkwardly, until I noticed the others drinking. Honestly, I was curious. Before the possession, I'd been someone who enjoyed a drink—and even putting it kindly, I couldn't claim I'd ever been light on the alcohol.
So I wrote on a scrap of paper and held it out to him.
I want to try a drink.
Playing the Saintess properly was honestly the last thing on my mind. A drink after this long mattered more. Call me an alcoholic if you want—I wouldn't even argue. Half of that would have been true. Either way, I was having a drink tonight.
He looked at the note, hesitated, then asked,
"Are you sure you'll be all right?"
I wrote back at once.
Yes!
Hmm. Maybe the exclamation point was a bit much.
He seemed to wrestle with it for an absurdly long time, then came back with exactly one cup.
I poured the whole thing straight into my stomach—and blacked out on the spot.
"Hwaaah—?"
The world was spinning.
The Hero looked at the Saintess, drunk right in front of him, and sank into thought.
What do I do.
He had never imagined one cup would put her under. In a previous cycle, when he'd gone to the battlefield with the Saintess, a knight had thrown a welcome party at night. He'd been so exhausted he'd dozed off and only slipped out late—and that was the first time he'd seen her drunk.
That was why he'd deliberated so long when she asked him for a drink. But even in his wildest dreams he wouldn't have guessed she both loved alcohol this much and got this wrecked off a single cup.
Anyway, this was a problem.
Her drunk behavior wasn't the worst he'd seen, but—ugh.
It had started.
The Saintess latched onto him at once.
"I—ah, if you could just give me a little space—"
He tried to refuse gently and ease her off, but she only pressed closer, spilling sounds that refused to become words. In the end there was no stopping it. He gathered her up and carried her back toward the tent.
Jerome, left alone to nurse his drink in solitude before eventually retreating to his own tent, only realized the celebration had quietly fallen apart a little while later.