The Mission
The mad dash of the pursuit squad I led finally ground to a halt at the milestone marking the threshold of the Imperial Capital.
It was already past midnight. Far too late for any sort of triumphal parade.
"...If we'd arrived even an hour earlier, the mob might have pelted us with stones right alongside him."
The muttered complaint came from Garland, the senior Imperial Guard knight who had performed the amputation on the Hero's wrist. He looked half-dead on his feet.
A man who had lived at the peak of the Expert rank for well over a decade wasn't actually terrified of a few stray cobblestones, of course. What he dreaded was a riot. Given what had transpired when Matthias was dragged out of the palace, his apprehension was entirely justified.
"I wouldn't worry, Senior. It won't turn into a riot. For things to spiral that far, the commoners would have to take to the streets, and the common folk don't share the nobility's sensibilities."
"Hmph. Even so..."
"Naturally, they know the broad strokes—that the Hero did something terrible and fled, only to be hunted down. The commoners living in the capital are relatively well-informed compared to the provinces. But very few of them have felt the true savagery of his misdeeds in their own flesh."
"......?"
Garland cocked his head, looking unconvinced. His expression made his thoughts plain enough: How could anyone fail to loathe such a vile bastard?
Yet the blind faith commoners placed in the Hero surpassed all reason. To begin with, their miserable lives offered almost nothing else to revere aside from the heroic exploits of the Hero's party. Many among them even considered slandering the Hero to be an act of direct blasphemy against the Goddess.
"Inertia is a frightening thing. Even here in the heart of the Empire, people don't let go of their illusions so easily."
"...If that's true, then at least we don't have to worry about immediate chaos. A small mercy."
Whether it was truly a mercy remained to be seen. That very same hollow faith was the poison slowly rotting the capital from the inside out.
Before long, a detachment of palace guards waiting near the milestone came into view.
I handed over the Hero's harem to them, bound securely just as they were.
"Transport the Hero's women separately. Confine them under provisional detention."
"Separate from the Hero, My Lord?"
"Yes."
The three women of his entourage looked up, their eyes flickering with curiosity. They seemed bewildered as to why I was intentionally isolating them.
It went without saying that I wasn't doing this out of the goodness of my heart.
I was merely pulling them aside because their psychological states had deteriorated to an alarming degree.
The mage Yuni was gnawing her fingernails to the quick, blood smearing her lips as she exhibited severe signs of acute panic. The knight Millia choked back tears, muttering incoherent, broken syllables under her breath. Even the elf Silvina, though holding her spine rod-straight, stared ahead with glazed, deadened eyes.
There was no need to place them beside the Hero for the spectacle I had orchestrated. A entirely different circle of hell was waiting for them anyway.
"Keep them alongside the Hero, and one or two of them will almost certainly commit suicide. If one bites off her own tongue, it only creates more paperwork for us."
"Understood, Baron. We will proceed as ordered. Where should they be secured?"
"Inside the Imperial Palace. Confine them in separate quarters, and maintain a strict watch."
"Sir!"
The guards took the three bound women and departed into the dark.
Now, only a single prisoner remained.
Was he lamenting the departure of his harem? Or had he overheard my instructions to the guards?
The Hero stood in an awkward, hunched posture, nervously reading my face while clutching his crudely bandaged right forearm with his remaining hand.
"Move, Hero. You have work to do."
"...E-Eric. T-This isn't what you..."
...promised.
The Hero mumbled the plea through a mouthful of broken, slurring syllables. He was clearly terrified of another beating—Garland was already tapping him impatiently with the scabbard of his sword—and held up his good arm in a defensive posture. Yet he stood his ground stubbornly, as if refusing to budge until he received an answer.
"What exactly did I promise you?"
"That."
Looking thoroughly suffocated, the Hero jerked his chin toward the mages. Only then did I recall what empty assurance he was clinging to.
"Your hand, you mean."
"You s-said... if I behaved, you'd put it back on..."
To think he was still holding out hope for wrist reattachment in this state. I could have barked at him to read the room, but instead, I decided to grant his wish.
Just not in the way he imagined. The elderly priest and the bishop who possessed the requisite divine power had long since parted ways with the pursuit squad.
More to the point, the Hero's hand was in no condition to be stitched back onto anything.
At my nod, the mages retrieved the severed appendage.
"Here it is, Hero."
The hand was already blackened and shriveled like dried jerky. The mages had indeed halted its decomposition through magic, but their method had been desiccation, not preservation.
Beholding the shrunken, mummified relic that had once been his right hand, the Hero's eyes bulged so hard it looked as if his eyeballs might pop from their sockets.
"......!"
Paying his horror no heed, I looped a length of cord through the withered fingers and hung the ghastly trophy directly around his neck.
I had expected him to thrash and scream, demanding to know what I was doing, but his entire body locked rigid. He accepted the gruesome necklace without a word of resistance. Yet the shock ran deep; his face flushed a violent, mottled crimson, and his limbs began to shudder uncontrollably.
"Hero."
"...Hk... *sob*..."
Perhaps the crushing reality of his predicament had finally pierced his thick skull. A wet, phlegm-choked sob escaped his throat, and his knees buckled, dropping him into the dirt.
Once a man shattered this thoroughly, no amount of beatings would compel him to walk on his own. That didn't mean I intended to feed him false hope, either.
"Katie. Drag him."
"Yes, Sir."
Katie fastened a lead rope to the Hero's manacles, took the slack in her grip, and spurred her horse forward from the saddle.
With a low snort, the mount eased into a measured walk. Unable to withstand the steady pull of the beast, the Hero was wrenched to his feet, stumbling haphazardly as he was dragged along.
His pace was agonizingly slow.
The closer we drew to the capital, the more his feet dragged. It was as though weights were tied to his ankles; he took three or four ragged gasps of air between every single step, and several times he attempted to backpedal, nearly pitching headfirst into the mud as the horse pulled him relentlessly forward.
I made no effort to rush him.
I knew that every second spent taking these leaden, agonizing steps was a form of torture far more excruciating to him than any blade.
Riding alongside, I began to speak in a low, measured voice directed at the crusted blood clinging to the back of his head.
"...Hero. Word has reached us that every cleric in the Holy Kingdom is gathering at the Grand Cathedral of the Holy Papal Palace. They say the nave is packed to bursting, and the crowds spill out into the plaza beyond. Cardinals, bishops, priests, nuns, paladins. Even ordinary pilgrims seeking audience."
The Hero offered no reply.
"They intend to fast and conduct an unbroken plenary prayer vigil until the Goddess herself strips away your divine blessing. The Holy Kingdom has never before held a plenary vigil of this magnitude. In truth, an entire nation is beseeching their deity with one voice."
Still, silence.
"Can you fathom it? From venerable cardinals on the brink of death to downy-cheeked novices, tens of thousands praying for a single outcome."
Perhaps it wasn't my imagination; the ragged breathing scraping in his throat seemed to grow thinner, more erratic.
"Frankly, I have no idea whether the Goddess will deign to answer. Perhaps dozens of clerics will collapse from exhaustion and the whole affair will end in a hollow whimper. Or perhaps the Goddess will take offense at mere mortals daring to issue her an ultimatum. Regardless, the Empire has agreed to respect the Holy Kingdom's final gambit."
And if the Goddess miraculously responded?
Then we could dispose of the Hero with a clean conscience. It would also go a long way toward shattering the lingering delusions of the naive commoners who had thrown their life savings into Kodana.
Of course, stripping the Hero of his divine mandate wouldn't magically banish the hell he had unleashed.
To me, the fallout of Kodana was infinitely more terrifying than a so-called Hero who crumpled in a one-on-one duel. If an army of the Demon King marched upon us, we could at least take up steel and fight. You couldn't run a sword through an economic catastrophe. Even now, the full scale of the devastation remained impossible to measure.
"To cushion that impact—even by a fraction—there is a task you must perform."
"W-What... kind of task...?"
The question wheezed from his lips as he struggled to keep his footing behind the horse.
Why he had suddenly switched to formal honorifics was anyone's guess, but I didn't bother answering. He would understand soon enough.
Moments later, we passed beneath the towering gates and stepped into the damp, chill air of the Imperial Capital.
A sprawling metropolis boasting a population larger than the entire Holy Kingdom, the beating heart of humanity where all the wealth and talent of the continent converged.
Given the ungodly hour, the broad thoroughfares were desolate. Aside from the occasional squad of patrolling guards and black-clad undertakers hauling the day's corpses out toward the potter's fields beyond the walls, the streets were entirely deserted.
A proper homecoming for the savior of mankind ought to have drawn a crowd of at least a hundred thousand cheering citizens. But there was no need to feel slighted by the empty streets.
The venue where he would carry out his duties was elsewhere.
The Kodana Exchange.
"...Huh?"
Having trudged step by grueling step until we arrived before the exchange, the Hero let out a dull, foolish noise.
Resting directly before the entrance was a hexagonal iron cage. It was barely large enough for a grown man to stretch his legs, and the iron bars were spaced wide apart.
It was the sort of cage used to transport capital felons to the labor quarries. Naturally, I had requested it from the Court Department in advance.
"Get inside, Hero."
Here, the Hero would carry out his very last duty.
Dawn the following morning.
Though the sun had yet to crest the horizon, the first signs of movement stirred around the exchange.
In a metropolis of this scale, there were always those who began their day well before the rest of the world. These were the laborers, hauling crates and goods through the chill pre-dawn gloom.
Yet even the most hurried laborer could not simply pass by the bizarre spectacle staged before the Kodana Exchange.
An iron cage—a sight virtually unheard of in the center of the capital—held a man bound tightly in heavy iron shackles.
His battered body was a tapestry of cuts and bruises, and one of his hands had been severed cleanly at the wrist, leaving behind a pathetic, bandaged stump.
Judging solely by the way he darted his eyes about in shivering panic, he was unmistakably a condemned criminal. Yet strangely enough, his single remaining hand clutched a glass potion bottle.
"Tsk, tsk. What a hideous sight to wake up to."
Some clicked their tongues and hurried along their way, but others stopped in their tracks.
"Wait a second. Isn't that guy...?"
Curiosity drew several onlookers closer, their suspicions piqued by the prisoner's unmistakable features.
It did not take long for the first voice of recognition to ring out across the stone paving.
"Wait... isn't that the Hero?!"
With five hours remaining until the trading floor opened, the Hero's mission had officially begun.
At that very moment within the Imperial Palace, imperial edicts were mobilizing every organ of state power to brace against the cataclysm about to engulf the capital.