I'm Quitting the Hero Business

What is a Hero?

One who takes up an honorable, exalted blade and stands between the world and the wicked, vile evil that would stain it in darkness.

That is a Hero. The object of everyone's envy. A beacon of hope. A radiant being who will gift the world new days and usher in a beautiful future.

"Hngh—!"

Flames licked the air. A fierce wind slapped his cheek, a sting that left the skin trembling. The Hero named Kristi flicked the dust from his sword.

A great struggle had just ended. Name that struggle, and it was a battle against the king of monsters—the Demon King.

He had skill enough of his own, and no talent whatsoever for getting along with people, so he hadn't taken a party. Even so, he had won.

"Phew. One slip and my head would've gone flying. I don't particularly want to die here."

The method for a solo Hero to take down a Demon King vast enough to blacken the sky was, in fact, simple.

Kristi had always had a hobby of collecting antiques, junk left on the roadside, that sort of thing. He'd reassemble them in his own way and make something newly useful. Sometimes he'd sneak into dungeons that had sprung up nearby and collect the artifacts hidden inside.

A Hero whose hobby was collecting things. Well, one of those was bound to turn up now and then, wasn't he?

Seeing that the blade he'd been so careful with had gone dull, Kristi pressed his lips together. He'd used it a long time. He'd grown attached.

"Ah, well. What am I even thinking."

There were no more Demon Kings left to slay, and the title of Hero would fade on its own soon enough. No reason to fuss ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over something like this.

"Hmm... still, I might need it someday, right?"

What if, just maybe, there really was a use for a dulled sword. Having answered himself, Kristi nodded in satisfaction and carefully tucked the sword away in his Subspace Pocket.

This was how it always went. Even when he was pretty sure he'd never need something later, he kept it anyway. He was full of that sort of thing.

It was only possible because of the Subspace Pocket he'd received as a Special Perk when he was chosen as a Hero, long ago. The other Heroes around him had mocked him for it back then. Thinking about it now, it felt like the best choice he'd ever made.

It had the property of following him even unto death, even across dimensions, and that had come in handy more than once. "Other dimensions," in this case, meaning dungeons, or dragging things into his own subspace—that sort of thing.

"Alright then, Angel! I did everything you asked."

Kristi turned his gaze. Where the fallen Demon King's corpse should have been, an angel was descending from the sky. Fluttering cloth, a backlight of pure white radiance that kept stealing the eye. Even at a glance her beauty was striking, her smile gentle, and from her softly closed eyes there radiated a warmth he had never felt before.

"You have done well, Hero Kristi."

The angel's lips curved, just slightly.

"How is your body? That was quite a formidable opponent."

"Well... I'm fine, for now."

Kristi tilted his head and rolled his shoulders. They creaked, but they still moved pretty well.

He hadn't actually needed to push himself this hard. The problem was that the Demon King's Castle had been packed with too many ancient relics. Even after setting out on his adventure, he'd always taken detours to gather artifacts, and before he knew it he was sitting on relics no other Hero possessed even one of.

"Oh my... are you truly all right? Even I, who have no trained eye for such things, can see the strain on your body is considerable..."

The angel looked at his shoulder with worried eyes. Kristi flinched under that sacred gaze, shrugged, and reached into his subspace. Then he slowly wound a pure-white cord around his shoulder.

"It's a relic called the Sacred Wave. Wrap it like this and you're healed in a few seconds. See? Fine, right?"

In the blink of an eye he wound the cord, then unwound it just as fast. When he rolled his shoulder after that, there wasn't a hint of discomfort. Even to the angel's eyes, there was no injury left.

She stared at him, speechless and incredulous. Kristi grinned and shrugged.

"See? No problem. I told you everything has a use."

"...I cannot deny it. I understand your heart well, Hero."

Kristi laughed in a playful voice. The angel nodded with a resolute face and spread both arms wide.

Eyes closed, floating in the air, the angel recited sacred words. At the same time, even the ground beneath ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his feet bloomed with a pure-white, holy atmosphere. An alien energy wrapped his whole body. Kristi glanced around.

With every cadence of her voice, the air on all sides trembled as if turning into musical notes.

So this is the end.

A sensation of his own body lifting gently. Kristi let the corner of his mouth curl. He hadn't expected this kind of ending, but so what.

Right. He was supposed to make a wish.

In that case, he spoke aloud the goal he'd dreamed of in the innocent days before he became a Hero.

"Could you send me back to the past and give me a bit of money? I just want to sell some stuff to adventurers. Simple."

"...Pardon?"

The angel tilted her head, as if something were off about Kristi's words.

"Y-you staked even your life to slay the Demon King, and you said what?"

"I'm thinking of opening a little general store. Oh, and if possible, could I set it up on the frontier? Have a bunch of dungeons spawn nearby too. Gotta source inventory somehow."

Kristi shrugged. If they were suddenly offering to grant a wish, wasn't it right to say what he'd actually dreamed of?

"No! A wish! The wish of a lifetime! You could become a billionaire, or if you wanted, the emperor of an entire empire! So why in the world..."

The angel asked in a fluster. Kristi looked at her with an expression of genuine distaste.

"I never liked Hero work that much to begin with, and I'm not big on living with people either. And if I had a pile of money, who knows what people would try to pull on me."

He'd been through it enough times to know. Close the distance even a little and they put their hands on you. Keep it absolutely distant and ugly rumors start circulating behind your back. So he just wanted to live doing only what he had to do.

"That's it. Why?"

"Th-then... p-please, say just one more thing! If I send you off like this I won't be qualified as an angel! You protected the peace of the world!"

The angel waved her arms in a panic and cried out. Even so, to grant such a paltry wish to someone who had staked his life—what would the senior angels say? The thought made her blood run cold.

A senior angel in charge of another dimension had turned a Hero's women into ten and then become one of those women herself. What would she become? That thought made her shout.

"Hmm... alright. I just have to say one more thing, right?"

At that voice the angel beamed and lifted her head. She nodded as if she'd grant anything, right this instant.

"You."

"...Yes?"

"Want to run a general store together?"

"What do you mean... w-wait, why is the wish being registered..."

Whether nodding just now had triggered it, the air crumpled, and a space different from the present began to come into view. The angel, who always kept her eyes closed, snapped them wide and shook her head hard.

"N-noooo...!"

With those words, the two figures vanished as if they had never been there at all.

Bellacross. The name of the vast continent that supports this world.

Countless things happen on this continent. Magic and shamanism, curses and the undead, of course. Countless monsters and plants and animals and humans... do not exactly mingle. They exist as one world by being hostile to one another.

Worlds like this exist in countless number, and angels oversee them one by one, maintaining the balance. The balance between monsters and humans. If the monsters grow too strong, they bestow blessings upon humans. If humans grow wicked, they take their power away.

But at their core, angels want a peaceful world—a balance that holds even without their hands upon it. That is why they choose the Hero who has slain the Demon King as the protagonist of a new ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠era. They want to found a nation around that existence and, in the end, cultivate a complete world that is not unstable.

To such an angel, the Hero she herself has chosen is without question a figure of the utmost importance. The number-one contributor to building a world is none other than the Hero. The angel merely watches over that Hero from behind and offers support.

This is one kind of balance. The relationship between Hero and angel.

"Urgh... my head..."

Kristi, once a Hero, clutched his head. A dizziness like something rummaging through his skull; he kept groaning of a headache. Forcing his heavy eyelids up, he looked around.

Oh.

A faint wood-scent tickling the tip of his nose, cozy air, and even through hazy eyes a brown-toned outdoor view with a certain rustic charm. His chest kept thudding. He quietly let out a breath.

Was this the cabin he'd only ever dreamed of?

His parents had both died when he was young, and from his mid-to-late teens Kristi had lived by his own strength. There'd been the job of mopping floors with a musty rag whose smell never came out at some inn, and plenty of times he'd had the money he'd scraped together by begging stolen by the local punks.

If you asked what had been the most miserable and hardest of all, it was that he'd had no place to store the sundries he'd so carefully collected, and if he piled them in some alley corner, the beggars took the lot.

So he'd wanted a house. And now, at last, he had one. At last he could store his precious treasures in bulk.

Kristi trembled with rapturous emotion and stretched, luxuriously.

First I should figure out what point in time I've come back to.

With that thought, he was just sitting up.

Squeeze.

"Hm?"

Something heavy seemed to be gripping his leg. Kristi tilted his head and lowered his gaze a little.

"Huh? My hand..."

A hand as small as a baby's. Recalling his days as a Hero, the scene before him made no sense. The thought of clenching and unclenching a few times, and it naturally opened and closed again. Definitely his own hand. Kristi let out a few hollow laughs and shook his head.

If it's obvious, it's obvious. I went back to the past, so of course I got younger. I just didn't think I'd get this small.

Kristi nodded as if he understood, then lifted the blanket covering his body.

"Zzz... zzz..."

"...Angel?"

"Zzz... huh? Wait... I-I'm the angel, yes... but why is it a child's voice..."

The angel's face slowly rose. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eyes she always seemed to keep closed went round, and before them was reflected a small, cute black-haired boy.

"Ah... hello...?"

A little confusion ensued.

Kristi, whose body had returned to childhood, and the angel, whose body was the same but whose halo and wings, which she'd always possessed, had vanished. The two of them sat perched on the bed, passing an awkward stretch of time.

"I-I really didn't think it would actually happen..."

"Even so, how could you actually pick me! How much the seniors will... how much they'll tease me..."

Kristi turned his head with an awkward look, avoiding her. The angel shouted, fanning her bright-red face with her hands.

"If you'd wished for something like becoming a billionaire and we'd come to that kind of world together, I could understand. But just this ordinary, utterly ordinary... a general store...! This kind of case isn't even in the previous angels' experience!"

"S-sorry about that, okay! You should've just quietly granted it..."

Kristi scratched his cheek and apologized. He really hadn't thought this would happen, and even if he'd gotten younger, he hadn't thought the angel would come along.

"Even if it's a general store, you need things to sell! With a body that young, can you even enter a single dungeon?"

"...Yeah."

Kristi hung his head, gloomy. Coming to this so suddenly, he might have been too casual with the wish. He should've asked to keep an adult body. Or at least to bring his things along...

"Hm? Wait."

In that moment Kristi thrust his hand into empty air. And there it was, spreading as familiar as ever: the subspace. He rummaged inside, and what his fingers found was the sword whose blade was completely gone.

"Holy shit."

He hadn't thought that property would follow him into the past.