Decision
I approached the Hero Party's hideout accompanied by only two young knights.
At my left walked Katie, my junior from the Imperial Guard. To be frank, she lagged far behind the rest of the pursuit squad in martial prowess. Like any member of the Guard, she was an Expert Intermediate—and fairly skilled among that tier—but she was hardly equipped to take down a Hero. At my right was Holan, a young paladin who had been attending to the bishop and the elder priest. He was even weaker than Katie. But we weren't marching out to face demons—we were hunting a bastard who had wrought damage dozens of times worse than any demon horde. Even so, I was heading toward the hamlet with only these two in tow.
It wasn't that the older men had collapsed from exhaustion. They were trailing just a short distance behind us, their presence concealed by the court wizard's invisibility magic. It was a calculated precaution to keep the Hero from bolting the second he laid eyes on the true makeup of the pursuit squad. One might wonder what good running would do him at this point, but Kwon Hee-jin had always been a man who defied expectations in the worst ways. He was the kind of fool who would run first and delude himself into believing he could sort out the mess later.
"...Um, Senior?"
Katie spoke up, cautiously gauging my mood. With her soft, rounded features, she looked somewhat like a fluffy baby bear. We hadn't had a spare breath to talk during the grueling forced march, but she was still my junior. Back when I had been taking endless flak over Kodana, she was one of the few colleagues who had neither shunned nor antagonized me. That was why she still addressed me as "Senior" rather than "Baron" or "Inspector."
"Speak, Katie."
"I was just wondering what happens once we secure custody of the Hero. Are we escorting him back to the imperial capital first?"
"Naturally. Why do you ask?"
"A lot of the seniors in the Imperial Guard are feeling anxious."
Folks whose only talent was swinging a sword, anxious about the future. In a way, it made complete sense. An era where they would have to face the Demon King's army without a Hero was rapidly approaching, which meant the knights would inevitably be worked to the bone.
"They'll just have to prepare," I said. "It looked like you all felt a sense of crisis already."
"...That's true."
Word had it that under Commander Wainwright's stern direction, the Imperial Guard barracks were filled with daily groans and wails during brutal sparring sessions and mental visualization drills. Even 'Starcatcher'—another of the Empire's Sword Masters, who had once served in the Guard before leaving to head the Emperor's personal intelligence agency—was reportedly arranging a return to active duty in the knights' order. It wasn't because an immediate war loomed on the horizon. It was simply preparation—honing their blades in advance for a world where humanity had to endure without a Hero.
Even so, we have to bring him back alive for now.
I had no intention of killing the Hero with my own hands. There was far too much work for him to do if we were ever going to clean up this catastrophic fallout. Naturally, he might suffer a few crippling injuries in the process of his capture, but whether that happened was entirely up to Kwon Hee-jin himself.
"If he behaves himself, he'll be escorted safely to the capital to face formal accountability," I said.
"And if things go poorly?"
"He'll be dragged back as a cripple."
Take his beating now, or take it once we reached the imperial capital. The answer would be decided very shortly.
Ahead stood a cozy hamlet enclosed by a wooden palisade, and just stepping out of the gates were five figures: one man and four women. The man had an unusually prominent jaw, while the women were all young, striking beauties. Across the entire continent, only one party traveled in such an arrangement.
"Looks like we aren't too late."
The Hero Party spotted us a heartbeat later. The moment Millia saw Katie and me, she froze as though struck by a petrification curse, while the Saintess flinched and shrank back the second her eyes locked onto Holan. All of this unfolded precisely as I had anticipated.
The elf twitched and reached toward her quiver, though unfortunately for her, her bow wasn't there. As for the mage, she wasn't even worth being wary of, so I didn't spare her a glance; she wouldn't get the chance to cast a spell anyway. Finally, the Hero wore an expression of sheer, dumbfounded disbelief.
Looking straight into that smug face, I delivered the proclamation without hesitation.
"Hero. I have received an imperial decree to escort you back to the capital."
"...Fuck. Fuck."
Perhaps a minute had slipped past in the standoff. The only sounds reaching my ears were the muttered curses spilling from the Hero's lips and the Saintess's shallow, frantic breathing. Aside from a handful of villagers peering curiously over the wooden palisade, a tense, suffocating chill hung over the clearing. With his party positioned behind him, the Hero rolled his eyes in restless agitation, while I stood with my hands clasped behind my back, watching him impassively.
The Hero was the first to speak.
"Eric... As you can see, I've been in the Demonic Realm until recently—"
"Hero. We have already secured sworn statements from two innkeepers and a village chief. A perception-altering spell was all well and good, but if you went that far, you should have at least concealed the Holy Sword. Or failing that, you should have reined in your lavish spending."
"..."
"We also received reports regarding your missing fingers. I had hoped it was a mistake, but it seems it was true after all. In a sense, that is even more shocking than your false reports."
"You... you knew all that?"
"Yes. That is why I advise you to come quietly."
The Hero flinched, but no meek submission followed. The future awaiting him once dragged back to the capital was far too obvious, and that stark reality gave him pause. He knew better than anyone that the Empire wasn't about to pat him on the back and gently urge him to resume his heroic duties.
If he surrendered right now, there might be a slim chance he'd get off with public humiliation, a savage flogging, and asset forfeiture. Of course, that's only in the absolute best-case scenario.
Yet the Hero remained true to form. Watching him chew on his lower lip, I could tell the gears in his head were grinding through another pathetic scheme.
After gauging my expression, the topic he brought up was a "harpy nest."
Harpies were a force within the Demon King's army that demanded serious vigilance. Their ability to take flight gave them tremendous tactical versatility. Needless to say, the Hero wasn't offering some brilliant stratagem to wipe them out in a single blow. What he brought up was the supposed mound of gold stashed inside their roost.
"I heard there's a massive fortune," he stammered. "Of course, it might not cover every last loss suffered by the Kodana investors, but without having to march all the way to the Demon King's Castle..."
"You mean we can secure gold relatively safely."
"R-Right?"
"Tell me, Hero. Where exactly did you acquire that intelligence? No human intelligence network operates within the Demonic Realm."
"I went into the Demonic Realm myself to fight the Underworld King, didn't I? That's when I got it. I captured a harpy and tortured it."
At his brazen lie, I nodded as if humoring him. "Is that so?"
The Hero's face brightened, and he opened his mouth to press the advantage, only to snap it shut a moment later. The cold, unyielding look in my eyes must have told him that I hadn't bought a single word.
"So what do you propose we do?"
"Well, I..."
"Should we organize a massive expeditionary force to plunder this supposed gold from the harpy nest? Would several dozen Experts, a dozen mages, and a dozen priests suffice? We'd probably need to throw in a Sword Master as well."
"..."
"To my ears, it sounds like you're asking for another holy knight order. More meat shields to bleed and die in your place."
The Hero clamped his mouth shut once more. He didn't look flustered; if anything, a strange stillness settled over him. Drawing a long, deep breath, he surveyed me and the two young knights flanking my sides. Having apparently made up his mind, he took a firm step forward.
One of his hands was already resting on the hilt of the Holy Sword.
"Did you say you're a baron now?"
"Yes. Along with the title, I serve as the frontier inspector."
"Quite the rise in the world. ...Though for a high-and-mighty baron, your retinue seems a bit sparse. Just three of you?"
Having lived by the blade my entire life, I had no trouble divining his train of thought.
He's thinking of silencing us permanently.
Using brute force against an imperial envoy bearing a royal decree was sheer lunacy, yet given the Hero's desperate circumstances, it was the kind of extreme measure a cornered rat would jump at. Beastman territories sprawled across the borderlands, and scouting parties from the Demon King's army occasionally prowled the vicinity. It would be child's play for him to slaughter us and pin the blame on an ambush—or simply stash us away somewhere as captives.
"...Hero. Fifty knights requisitioned from the Black Iron Knights are maintaining a wide cordon around this area," I warned evenly. "Do not harbor foolish thoughts."
It was a lie, of course. But it was also the final chance I was offering him.
Yet upon hearing those words, a triumphant grin spread across the Hero's lips. The number fifty seemed to trigger a smug epiphany in his head.
"Fifty knights? Do you take me for an idiot? If you mobilized that many men, every noble in the Empire would know about it! There's no way you'd blow this wide open. You might as well claim you brought a Sword Master and the Master of the Magic Tower along while you're at it!"
"...Regardless, discard any notion of fleeing."
"Nah," the Hero said, giving his head an arrogant shake before drawing the Holy Sword. His party members blanched in terror, but his mind was already set.
"Who said anything about running?"
"..."
In the end, he had chosen to fight.
It was true that I had baited him. Appearing with only two young knights at my side had planted the idea of silencing witnesses in his mind in the first place. Not that this granted him any absolution. With this, the Hero's fate was sealed.
"Understood, Hero. Or rather—Kwon Hee-jin."
I drew my blade in a single, fluid motion. Lowering my stance, I held the hilt close to my chest and leveled the gleaming tip at the Hero. Beside me, Katie tore a signaling scroll before drawing her sword, and Holan assumed a combat stance as well. They were preparing to face the fabled Hero Party.
"You're really going to—"
The Hero started to sneer, but the mockery died in his throat. He seemed to realize that I wasn't foolish enough to engage the Hero Party in an outnumbered frontal assault. Of course, given that the Hero Party was packed with near-useless non-combatants, a three-on-five clash wouldn't have been entirely one-sided anyway, but...
It wouldn't do to rob those gentlemen of their moment after they raced all the way out here like madmen.
A moment later, the pursuit squad began revealing themselves one by one, each bearing the grim, terrifying countenances of vengeful fiends. Three veteran knights who had fallen just shy of the Master realm, two archmages standing at the pinnacle of the 6th Circle, and two high-ranking clergymen wielding holy power rivaling the Pope himself. Even under normal circumstances, their martial and magical might was formidable, but right now, stoked by sheer, incandescent fury, they radiated an incomprehensible, monstrous ferocity.
"...You said... you said Black Iron Knights..."
"One of them used to be among the Black Iron Knights' finest," I replied calmly. "Though I hardly think you're in any position to lecture me about lying."
"..."
"Whatever happens to you from this moment on is entirely your own doing."
With those words, I lunged straight at the Hero.