What a Hero Is (3)
Early game I got stupid lucky and scooped up a guy with the Blessing of Restoration, so I fixed the whole Hero party, right?
And still, the second I send this Hero chick to the front lines she just stands there shaking like a leaf because she’s “scared.”
Bro. I fixed all your teammates. What the hell are you crying about?
I saw the Blessing of Restoration pop and got hyped as hell for the Hero hidden event… and it was complete garbage.
She just feels a little better and that’s it. Lmao what a joke.
This game is brain-dead.
In the Crack Kingdom gallery, people called Hero Eve either “the Hero” or “trash-tier.”
The first group were the ones who still felt sorry for a Hero who no longer had any use. The second were the blackened Hero-stans who had tried every possible method to make her work and finally realized there simply was no proper way to use her.
I belonged to neither camp.
“What do you mean I haven’t been using you, Lady Eve?”
“I-I’m the only one… j-just sitting around doing nothing…”
Instead of the maid uniform she wore every day, Eve had put on the T-shirt and shorts she had arrived in. An oversized pure-white tee, shorts short enough to pass for dolphin shorts, and slippers. Completely different from the armor she had worn as a Hero or the maid dress she wore here—this was the kind of ultra-comfortable loungewear you only ever wore at home.
That outfit, chosen purely for comfort, was proof that her spirit had broken. Because her heart had snapped, she was treating the clothes of a jobless shut-in as everyday wear.
“I… I’m a Hero. I’m strong, and I-I’m useful. W-wherever I went, people asked me for help and needed me. But after… after I failed in the Abyss of Despair… h-huu… n-no one… no one needs me anymore. They just… just worried about me. Gid, Meer, Sharen, Rina… I didn’t even get hurt, but they worried about me.”
Eve kept her head bowed, staring at the floor as she forced the words out with great difficulty.
“But I… I can’t be the one people worry about. Because I’m a Hero. A H-Hero is someone who takes away other people’s worries. So if I become someone else’s w-worry… that can’t be right.”
Just as she herself had said, she was unmistakably a Hero—the sole person in this world chosen by the Holy Sword, the one who carried the hopes of all mankind on her shoulders, who destroyed evil and saved the world.
“That’s why… that’s why I came here. Because I didn’t want to be a burden of worry to my comrades, to people. I came to meet Baron Offen, the one who destroyed a Great Rift. B-because if it was Baron Offen… you could stand me back up again… so I could go back to being someone who takes away people’s worries. Someone who’s needed.”
Eve believed that because she was a Hero, she must never become anyone’s source of worry. That was why she had come to me—the first human to ever destroy a Great Rift—to straighten her broken heart once more.
“I’m a Hero. The one chosen by the Holy Sword, the one who has to be needed by people. But… but when it actually came down to it, Baron Offen… y-you didn’t need me.”
All Eve had done was fill in as temporary maid while Rina was bedridden. After that, I had never once called for her.
“Y-you just kept telling me to rest. I’m a Hero… I have to be needed by someone… but the Baron who destroyed a Great Rift didn’t need me at all.”
Even when she opened her mouth wanting to be of help, wanting to become someone necessary, all I ever told her was to rest.
“Baron Offen… why won’t you use me? I’m a Hero. For the man who is my lifelong benefactor, I would do anything you asked. I could even help Gid with the labor he’s working so hard at right now. So why… why do you only ever tell me to rest?”
That was why Eve had come to me now, to ask.
“Is it because I’m a failure? Because while Gid’s legs, Rina’s vocal cords, Meer’s two hands, and Sharen’s right arm were being torn off… I couldn’t do a single thing? Because I’m an incompetent Hero?”
She wanted to know the reason I refused to use her.
At some point Eve lifted the head she had been hanging and met my eyes as I sat at the desk. Those dull golden irises held not even a flicker of life.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you won’t use me. Because I’m a useless Hero. Because I’m a Hero who already failed.”
The strained tone she had been forcing out flattened into something even, and the voice that had carried such painful emotion turned completely blank. It seemed that while speaking to me, Eve had simultaneously accepted that she was a worthless failure—someone whose heart had broken so thoroughly she could no longer be of any use or help to anyone. A bird with broken wings that had fallen to the bottom and no longer even thought of rising again.
That was how Eve saw herself.
There was only one thing I could say to her.
“What kind of nonsense is this person spouting right now?”
“……Ueh?”
I was so genuinely flabbergasted that I completely forgot I was supposed to use honorifics and the raw truth just slipped out in casual speech. But I couldn’t help it. Every single thing Eve had just listed was worthless garbage not even worth listening to.
“Lady Eve, you’re under a serious misunderstanding. The reason I told you to rest wasn’t because you’re useless. You’re the strongest person in the world. How could someone like that possibly be useless?”
“B-but… everyone’s working, so why am I the only one…”
“Because you’re a Hero.”
“……What?”
The people who still called the useless Hero “Hero” out of pity, and the blackened ones who called her trash-tier. The reason I belonged to neither group was simple: to me, the Hero had never been a useless character.
“Even if you failed, even if your heart broke—you are still a Hero to the people.”
Most Crack Kingdom players only ever looked at the combat side of the Hero’s abilities. From the moment she appeared in the game, everyone praised her as the one who defeated the Demon King, sealed the rampaging Spirit King, and drove off the Demon Dragon, so of course players’ eyes were drawn to her fighting power.
But if you played Crack Kingdom seriously enough, you eventually realized that combat ability was only a tiny fraction of what Hero Eve possessed.
“I know full well that your heart broke after the defeat in the Abyss of Despair. The reason you couldn’t swing the Holy Sword at that pack of ice trolls earlier was because you were afraid after your spirit shattered. It may well be difficult for you to ever swing the Holy Sword again.”
At the start of the game the Hero’s heart was already broken. Even if you restored her comrades with the Blessing of Restoration, even if you smashed the Abyss of Despair that had broken her—she never recovered. Not a single veteran of Crack Kingdom had ever managed to bring the Hero back to the battlefield in a complete state. A trap trash character planted by the developers—that was the prevailing opinion of the Crack Kingdom gallery toward the Hero.
I never agreed with that opinion.
“But even so, you remain an unshakable symbol of hope. Your Holy Sword is still proof that the gods have not abandoned humanity. Simply by living and breathing in this world, you become the hope of all people.”
Because the Hero—Eve—even after failing, breaking, and despairing, was still a Hero.
“You defeated the Demon King. You sealed the rampaging Spirit King and even drove off the Demon Dragon. Beyond that you achieved countless other great feats with those two hands. The number of people saved by the deeds you accomplished is beyond counting.”
Hero Eve had accomplished truly enormous things as a Hero and saved a thousand times more people than that.
“That is why you have value simply by existing. To the countless people you saved, you are still their unchanging hope.”
If you played Crack Kingdom carefully, you noticed one peculiar fact: the mere fact that the Hero was alive lowered the anxiety levels of people all across the world. Especially in the royal capital where the Hero resided, even when calamities pouring out of a Great Rift reached the very walls, panic never broke out. A single Hero became the emotional pillar supporting the hearts of people everywhere.
That was why I never agreed with the idea that the Hero was useless. She was someone who provided enormous help simply by existing.
And yet Eve herself had no idea.
“Lady Eve, you are a person who helps the entire world just by quietly breathing. So please never again spout nonsense about being useless.”
I spoke to her with complete seriousness.
“……Y-yes, yeheh…”
Light had returned to Eve’s eyes at some point; her cheeks flushed bright red as she ducked her head deep.
“Lady Eve, I’m not finished talking yet. Look at me.”
“U-eh?”
But my words still weren’t done. Where did she think she was going, trying to end this on her own? I hadn’t even started the real lecture yet.