I'll Protect You
The blade sang as it tore through flesh.
She cut, and cut, and cut her way through.
Her vision swayed, staining itself red. Even the remaining half of her sight grew unstable — and yet her heart, conversely, grew calmer.
A wet, rending slash.
"You're the one from earlier...!"
"..."
It was the soldier who had saved her before. He was alive, thankfully. But he couldn't speak. His mouth was full of blood, so she merely bowed her head and pressed forward. Slash. Slash. Slash. Lower Demons they may have been, but she carved through them without stopping.
If the God of Death Poison became dangerous the moment one activated their Mana Nerves, then the solution was simple: fight without activating them at all.
Even without using mana, the years I've spent training do not lie.
From the moment she was born, she had been a Hero. Raised as a Hero. Fought as a Hero. Her body had been trained without a single day of rest. She had pushed herself to a degree that would have broken an ordinary person — and her flesh possessed the toughness to endure that training and grow stronger still.
An innate physique. That was the only thing she had been born with.
She had not a shred of a Hero's heart.
A fake Hero who had become one simply because she happened to occupy that seat. The Goddess's eye for people was, without question, abysmal.
No anguish in the power she swung. No sense of duty toward what she protected. No responsibility in the fighting. Her Holy Sword had been far too light. Even without something like the Goddess's Orb, she had been a Hero who never deserved to hold it.
"Cough!Khah... Ah, damn it. ...There's a limit to how frail a body can be."
She spat blood. How little had she even moved, and she was already coughing it up?
"Lo...is..."
If they could just deal with the High Demon Lois was fighting, they might be able to put an end to this chaos.
You saved me. Not me the Hero — me, the person. You always see me as a person.
To the me of the past, that was something I hated. Something I recoiled from. I believed I had no choice but to become a Hero, and I couldn't accept someone who refused to see me as one.
But you are a good person. Someone who knows how to believe in human goodwill. Someone who can place hope in human nature. Someone who wants human kindness to be properly rewarded.
But I'm not as great a person as you think I am. Nor as noble.
I just picked up a sword because I had no other choice. Even if I saved countless people — even if I slew the Demon King and saved the world — there's no weight to any of it. So light that a gust of wind could scatter it all.
How can someone who fights without knowing the weight of their own weapon call themselves a Hero?
Maybe I didn't want to save people as a Hero. Maybe I just wanted to die quickly as one. Not living — trying to end everything through death. A roundabout, thoroughly tiresome death wish. That was my journey.
"Kraaah!!"
"Kraaah!!"
Slash. Slash.
Your words and your actions became a mirror for me. A mirror in which I could see my own face. A foolish woman who never once took off the Hero's mask could, through that mirror, finally see Olivia Reinhardt.
And what she saw was a truly filthy, stupid, self-righteous, arrogant woman's face.
And still you call me noble. Is it because I've saved more people than I've hurt and insulted? I think it's a little different from that.
"Th-thank you..."
"Thank you. Thank you."
When the people thanked her, she managed the faintest of smiles through the pain. In this sensation — her face so numb it felt on the verge of paralysis — she couldn't tell whether she had given them a smile they could actually take comfort in. For all she knew, she might have worn an expression that only made them more afraid.
I hope Olivia Reinhardt can be kind to herself.
Did your goodwill reach me? I hope it did. That I can hold a sword now not as a Hero, but as Olivia — I hope that's because your goodwill found me. That a fake Hero, stained so black she could see nothing at all, has been stained even a little white by that kindness.
"Cough."
She spat blood. Her vision swayed past the point of usefulness; she could barely see. Cutting by instinct alone was one method — but she might cut down a civilian that way.
She would reach Lois soon.
"At the very least."
She smiled.
I owe you my life. So I should pay with my life. Right?
A thunderous crash.
"Ah, seriously... I can't do this anymore."
He tumbled across the ground and simply lay there, muttering. God. It felt like he was the piece of meat being grilled over a low flame. At this rate, he was going to die first.
"What, giving up already? ...Well. It was pretty fun. I'll kill you now."
"..."
The wounds weren't severe, and he hadn't been hit directly — but a direct hit would almost certainly be the end of him. There was no one in sight, but someone was bound to see. Coming up with an excuse afterward would be a pain, but a little inconvenience was still preferable to dying here. If luck was on his side, Madame Florence might even sort it out somehow.
A rattling of chains.
"...!!"
The High Demon suddenly stepped back and dropped into a guarded stance. For all that it had aged in reverse, its instincts were still sharp.
He hadn't wanted to use this. Using it wouldn't benefit him in the slightest. But this was no time to be picky. If he kept fighting without it, he'd die of old age before the thing even took damage from the burns.
He gripped his chest hard. He couldn't sustain it for long. He had to end this immediately.
"Spirit Fusio—!"
A tremendous crash rang out as someone burst into the ruined park.
Reinforcements?
The speed of the arrival was staggering, and it didn't take him long to recognize who it was.
"Livia!"
She was covered in blood. But those weren't wounds from being attacked. They were the traces of a body that had been driven past its limits — of a sword swung until existing injuries tore themselves open. She had used some amount of mana, too; blood was streaming from her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her ears, all of it at once. The degenerated patches of her skin pulsed with a grotesque rhythm, as though they belonged to some other living thing entirely. She looked enough like an undead that he would have believed it. And the Hero said:
"I'm going to fight."
"No — what are you talking about in that body?!"
"You said it yourself! You'll save people who were murdered, but you won't save people who want to kill themselves! It's my life — I'll use it how I want!"
"...!"
Well. He had said something along those lines, yes. But that had been a form of persuasion — a way of telling her he wanted her to live.
"A walking corpse throwing itself into the fight changes nothing!!"
"Livia!"
The High Demon lunged at the Hero, fist driving forward. She slipped inside the blow and carved in deep — and as the wound opened across its body, the High Demon reeled back in shock, scrambling to recover its stance.
"You... cut me?"
"Never seen a sword before? Of course it cuts, you idiot. ...Hah. Hah. Come at me already. Or would you rather take an ugly win by waiting for me to die?"
He'd thought this since their party days — she had a talent for trash talk, if you could call it that.
"Khah! Hahahahaha!! Finally — someone worth fighting! My name is Saja!! By killing you and devouring you, I will join the Seven Great Demons!!"
"You have a name?"
"So you're a Named. What a pain."
Named. Monsters typically had no names, referred to only by their species. But a monster that grew past a certain threshold would bestow a name upon itself. And for reasons no one fully understood, a named monster became an entirely different being — its strength elevated to another dimension altogether. There was a hypothesis that a name was the binding of a soul, but the precise mechanism had never been proven. All that was known was this: a monster with a name, even a lower one, was never something to take lightly.
Saja declared his name, drew up even more mana, and charged. The Hero's condition deteriorated so rapidly she coughed up blood — and Saja, unwilling to let the opening slip, dove in.
They only talk about martial pride when they have the advantage! God! This is why monsters—
Flame roared up behind him. He sprinted, caught the Hero — and then a sickening crack as he took Saja's blow on his arm. The arm bent in a direction no arm was meant to bend, and before he could even find the timing to scream, he and the Hero went tumbling across the dirt together.
"Lois!"
"...If you're going to do this, could you do it properly? Is dying together your wish?"
"...!"
The arm was completely broken. Given Saja's strength, the fact that it was still attached at all was something of a miracle.
"I'm... sorry... my body... can't..."
"You're the Hero."
"No. I was a fake. I..."
"Shall we put it to the test?"
"What?"
"...!"
He had no choice but to bet on this now. Fighting a Named High Demon was suicide — he had a trump card of his own, but there was something he wanted to do first. If this didn't work, he would simply wipe the thing out himself.
But she had come to him. Those legs that had fled in terror had found the courage to return to this place. If that wasn't a Hero, then what was?
If something like the world's will truly existed — if the Goddess was truly watching over everything — then she had a duty to answer, here and now.
If you truly exist, you have an obligation to answer this woman's courage and every noble thing she has done. Not to look down from above and act superior — you have to acknowledge her nobility. You have to praise everything she has done until now!
Even if no one else will — shouldn't the Goddess who has been watching it all be the one to do it? In a dream, in a vision, I don't care. Appear and say something decent. 'You've done well, my Hero.' Anything.
If you are truly a good Goddess — choose this woman one more time.
"I don't want to die, you see. Hero — please. Save me."
"..."
The Hero's eyes went wide.
If this still doesn't work, I'll just kill that demon myself. I have no idea what kind of face she'd look at me with then. Not that this is the time to be worrying about that.
"Whether you're a Hero or Olivia Reinhardt...! You saved people! Fake Hero or whatever — none of that matters!"
"I—"
A heavy thud as Saja launched himself into the air.
"You save people because you're a Hero!? That's wrong! Completely wrong!! Everyone calls you a Hero because you've saved countless people!! Olivia Reinhardt!!"
"Even if I'm a fake Hero."
The Hero smiled at him.
"...!"
No response.
"DIE!!"
So it didn't work after all? Fine. Then I'll—
A detonation of wind pressure exploded outward as if a bomb had gone off, hurling both him and Saja through the air. He didn't stop until he slammed into one of the park's remaining trees. He lifted his head as fast as he could and looked forward.
"Whoa."
A pillar of golden light was rising into the sky, so high it seemed to touch the heavens themselves. A hole tore open in the ashen gray above, and through it, blue sky shone through.
And there, before the Hero, stood a holy sword.
The blade most familiar to her in all the world — shining as if to say, take me up once more.
He looked at that scene, and through the agony of his broken arm, he smiled.
"It actually worked."