The Hero Who Defeated the Demon King
Every now and then, as I made my way across a battlefield, I would come across them—people who made me wonder how on earth they were still alive.
I'd seen it before: someone charging in with a hole punched through their lung, or someone still lunging at me even after an entire leg had been blown clean off. They say that when death draws near, a person can summon superhuman strength, and I knew better than anyone that you must never let your guard down until you've actually ended a life.
That was why remarks like there's no way they survived those wounds or how are they even still alive? had never been necessary for me. If someone was alive, they were alive. That was all there was to it.
This time, though, I found myself thinking it anyway. Or rather, I couldn't help but think it.
A third of her head is gone. The heart's been pierced through, too.
She should have been dead already. Judging by the wounds, the blow that had taken her head and the one that had run through her heart both looked like arrows, but the arm had been taken by a blade. The cut was ragged, the kind of work you'd expect from someone not particularly skilled with a sword—or else from someone who had carved it that way on purpose, to make it hurt.
Either way, she should have died then and there. Even as I treated her, the Hero's condition was so dire I caught myself wondering whether I was holding a corpse. I was keeping alive a life that, by every reasonable measure, ought already to have ended. If this was working at all, it wasn't because I was especially gifted. It was because the Hero, enduring wounds like these, was extraordinary.
My healing had never been what anyone would call fast, and yet even in this moment she still had breath in her. That her life was holding on at all was nothing short of astonishing. She was supposed to be the same human as I was, and yet this absurd vitality was almost impossible to look at and still call human. A third of her head gone, a heart run clean through—how was she still alive?
The wounds are almost fully closed. That should stop the bleeding, at least.
The problem wasn't the wounds.
"Hh—nngh…!"
The Hero let out a sound of pain. That voice alone was what told me she was still alive. A wound that took this long to treat even with the power of spirits should have killed her before I ever laid a hand on her. That she had survived wasn't because I was remarkable. It was because the Hero was something other than human.
This poison… it can't be the God of Death Poison, can it?
Even I was seeing it for the first time. But if it was the God of Death Poison, then what had been done to the Hero suddenly made a grim kind of sense. The God of Death Poison forcibly paralyzed the Mana Nerves that ran through a person's body. Its effect was overwhelming, but it was even harder to produce than it was potent—and above all, it was a poison that worked only on the living. The rumors said it always killed whoever it touched, and that it didn't even leave a corpse behind. And yet the Hero, somehow, was still holding on while poisoned with it. A poison that could kill a person with a single drop.
This poison, at least, is beyond me. Even if she drank an Elixir, I doubt it could be cured.
It wasn't that there was no method at all—but it wasn't something I could afford to think about now. That would be a problem for after the Hero opened her eyes. There was every chance she would never open them, and would simply let her breath go as she was. No—that was the most plausible outcome. The chance that she would wake at all was the smaller one.
That they used the God of Death Poison, I can accept. They must have decided that nothing else would kill her. The problem is that this is human territory.
Had we been in the Monster Realm, I could have believed that the monsters had laid a trap to poison the Hero with the God of Death Poison. But this was human land, and the Demon King was already dead. The monsters had been weakened with him. So how?
…She had been done in by a fellow human.
That's the most realistic explanation, at least.
The Hero had never shown monsters any mercy, so the idea that they had caught her off guard and slipped her poison didn't hold. In the worst case, she could even have shielded herself with a blessing. Which meant the poison could only have been given to her by someone she would let her guard down around—and that someone could only have been human. Someone very close. Someone who could administer it as naturally as breathing.
Best to assume it was someone from the same party.
At the same time, a question rose. After I left, the Hero's party had gone on to slay the Demon King, and they had succeeded. The Hero had been a somewhat violent person, but she hadn't been a villain. Eccentric as her temper was, her nature itself had been good, and she had been, in her own way, kind to anyone she was certain belonged to her. Unfortunately, I had never been one of those people.
If they'd simply returned with the Hero, they could have lived in wealth and glory. Even trying to kill her carried an enormous risk if they failed. Was there a reason they had to kill her badly enough to take that risk on?
That they had gone so far as to use the God of Death Poison meant they had been determined to kill her, no matter what. The Hero I knew had not been a bad enough person to warrant that. She had been difficult, yes—but in the end she had saved a great many people, slain the Demon King, and saved the world. Being a little cantankerous, throwing a tantrum when the mood took her, didn't seem like reason enough to murder the person who had saved the world.
Was it just my idle speculation? Or was there a reason she had to die, and I simply didn't know it?
And looking at the Hero's wounds, they weren't that old. And yet even in a little village like this, rumors had already spread that the Hero might be dead.
Something was off.
"Whatever else is true, if the Hero never opens her eyes, all of this is nothing but empty muttering."
I sat down in the chair and looked at the Hero lying on the only bed. I didn't have a single good impression of her—but it was a fact that she had saved a great many people, and it was equally true that she was the hero who had slain the Demon King and saved the world. I didn't particularly want to watch someone like that die this way.
If a person had worked hard, I wanted them to receive a reward that matched that effort. I hated the thought of someone who had labored to save the world, and to save people, going unrewarded. Even if she was the woman who had banished me from the party.
I've done everything I can.
All that remained now was this.
"It's in your hands now, Hero. Your vitality, and your will."
A sensation like sinking into a lightless abyss took hold of me.
I had believed that even if I hadn't been perfect, I had done well. I had believed I had given people hope. If I slew the Demon King and saved them, they would praise me. They would revere me. I thought the small mistakes would be washed away. I had imagined a future worthy of the title of Hero—one where the mere mention of the name Olivia Reinhardt would put people at ease, and monsters and criminals would tremble at the sound of it alone. I had hoped that absolute power would become a deterrent, that people would live righteously, that no one would have to be hurt.
I had known the world wasn't purely clean. Even so—was that a reason to kill me?
Did I do something that unforgivable?
Had I committed a crime that grave? I had risked my life going all the way to the Demon King's Castle. Together, we had slain the Demon King. Even if no one could deny that my share of that victory was the largest, I had never intended to criticize them. I had never once thought of them as anything other than my comrades. I had trusted them. And because I had trusted them, I never imagined they would betray me. That was why I let my guard down.
I didn't know. Was I supposed to despair right now? Or was I supposed to be angry? Should I weep because I was sad?
What is a Hero supposed to do in a moment like this?
If I was a Hero. If I called myself a Hero. A Hero—
What decision was I supposed to make in this situation? What conclusion would make me a Hero?
The questions had no answers, and they kept echoing through my mind. As much affection as I still had for them, anger and sorrow seemed to well up in equal measure. I couldn't begin to understand why they had gone this far. Was it simply because I wasn't an absolute ally of the kingdom that they would kill a person like this? Someone who even had the achievement of saving the world?
It was revolting.
"…!"
Everything that had been dyed pitch-black swirled in on itself and vanished, and then an unfamiliar ceiling came into view. For a moment I entertained the happy thought that all of it had been nothing but a nightmare—but half my vision was gone, and I had no sensation in one arm. The pain and heat that came flooding through my whole body told me that none of what had happened had been a lie.
"Uh—ghk."
I forced myself upright. It was heavy. It was agony. Even breathing hurt so badly it felt as though my head might come apart. I wondered, myself, how I was still alive. My ruined body was screaming. The skin I could see had visibly changed, and I knew at once that it was because of that poison—the God of Death Poison, or whatever it was.
Did someone save me?
I looked around, and saw someone lying on the sofa. There was only one bed, so they had laid the patient—me—on it, and gone to sleep on the sofa themselves.
"That person…! Lois?"
The sleeping face was clear from where I was, and I knew it at once as someone I recognized. Lois. The Spiritist I had banished. Come to think of it, I thought I might have seen Lois's face right before I lost consciousness at the end. Which meant this was Lois's house, and Lois was the one who had treated me?
The fact sent a wave of confusion through me, and I clutched at my head without meaning to.
"Mm… nnh?"
Lois opened his eyes in the meantime, slowly sat up, and his gaze met mine as I sat there awake. He checked the clock, then laughed as if he couldn't quite believe it.
"Waking in three days with wounds like those. I suppose I should still call you a monster… or perhaps you've become even more of one."
He came toward me as he spoke.
"Do you remember me?"
"Wh-why…"
"Pardon?"
Lois looked at me with an expression that said he couldn't make sense of it.
I couldn't make sense of him.