Eight Years of Devotion
The sun had long since set, and the moon hung at its zenith in the deep of night.
At a corner table in the Frontier Village's Adventurers' Guild sat a woman with hair like blazing fire. Fiona was drinking alone, tilting back yet another mug of beer. She set the empty mug down and let out a quiet sigh.
"Ahh... how the years fly by..."
It truly had passed in the blink of an eye.
It felt like only yesterday that she'd first met that young, fragile boy, frozen in terror on the street at the sight of a single goblin—and already eight years had gone by.
At first, she'd only meant to help him a little, out of pity. But that boy had far exceeded her expectations.
Less than a month after they met, he took down a rare-breed monster all on his own and earned his adventurer's badge; in barely three years, at the tender age of thirteen, he'd reached Silver rank.
If it hadn't been for that cursed devotion of his, he might have long since gone off to the city and shattered the record for youngest Gold-rank adventurer ever.
His Silver-rank achievement had come within a hair's breadth of the all-time youngest record, after all. Considering his monstrous rate of growth, he surely could have rewritten the Gold-rank record too.
"Tch... no, wait—if that Irene girl had never existed in the first place, he probably wouldn't have given being an adventurer so much as a glance..."
Fiona smiled bitterly. Childhood friend and first love or not, how could anyone be that self-sacrificing? The boy was devoted to the point of madness.
For eight straight years, he hadn't rested a single day, throwing himself into requests and training without pause. All for the sake of one girl.
"Well... thanks to him I got dragged into being busy too, so I suppose... hic...! Ah, great... hiccuping again."
Fiona set down her empty mug, hiccuping against her will. It had already been over two years since that damn disciple of hers left for the capital.
So why was she still lingering in this backwater, moping over thoughts of him? Fiona couldn't understand it herself.
"Ahh... whatever, whatever! It's all that damn disciple's fault!"
She had wanted a quiet life in the first place.
She'd become a Gold-rank adventurer young, earned wealth and fame enough to want for nothing—but the nobles of the capital worked her like a slave, and sick of it, she'd thrown everything away and come down to this rural village.
The plan was to live out her days in peace, taking the occasional small request.
Then that damn brat came along and ruined every last one of those plans.
"Ahh... that damn kid... and yet... I can't help but envy him too..."
Fiona genuinely envied the girl named Irene—the object of Logan's devotion. To have someone at your side who looked at you and you alone, offering everything he had...
"I wouldn't be sitting here alone in this godforsaken corner of the guild drowning in beer, that's for sure... heheh..."
"Ah, that's going too far, even as a joke. The age gap and all... heheh..."
Once she had enough money saved, Logan had left for the imperial capital with Irene.
It was so that Irene's magical talent could truly blossom—so he could enroll her in the Magic Tower Academy, the Empire's finest institution for magical education.
According to the letters that reached her now and then, Irene had proven herself to be a genius of the rarest order.
The Magic Tower prized her talent so highly that they spared no expense on support and scholarships for her.
At that point, the boy could have finally taken it easy.
But that damn disciple, wanting to do even more for Irene, refusing to fall behind her, had apparently thrown himself into ever more dangerous requests and driven himself ruthlessly.
Word from the Branch Guild Master was that just last year, at seventeen, he had finally claimed Gold rank.
"You damn idiot...! That's more than enough already, so hurry up and marry that girl...! Or else I'll... hic...!"
'...Before I pounce on you myself.'
"Ha, that's got no conscience at all, doesn't it. Still, an age gap like ours... heheh..."
Fiona was muttering her nonsense joke, about to raise the mug to her lips once more—
"Everyone! We've got trouble! Big trouble!"
A young guild employee came bursting through the guild doors, shouting in desperation. His face was drained white.
"......?"
Not only Fiona, nursing her drink alone, but every adventurer and staff member still lingering in the guild turned to look at him at once.
In the silence that followed, the employee delivered the unbelievable news in a trembling voice.
"Th-the Demon King...! They say Demon King Belzegor has been resurrected!!"
Crash!
The beer mug slipped from Fiona's hand and hit the floor, its contents spilling everywhere.
The cold beer soaked the hem of her clothes completely, but she didn't have the presence of mind to even notice.
'...That damn disciple of mine.'
He'd only just made Gold rank, only just earned the chance at a stable life.
She'd thought he would marry Irene before long and live happily ever after.
Apparently, that boy's tumultuous life was only just beginning. Fiona let out a long sigh, gripped by a terrible foreboding.
###
A quiet café near the Imperial Magic Tower Academy, on a weekend afternoon. Logan sat across from Irene for the first time in a long while.
Seated by the sunlit window, Irene had grown far more mature and beautiful than she'd been three years ago.
Her life at the Magic Tower and her steady magical training had lent her confidence and an air of elegant refinement.
"Logan... really, I'm fine now. Don't push yourself so hard on my account. It's time you started looking after yourself a little more."
Irene spoke gently but firmly, eyeing the heavy pouch of gold coins Logan had quietly slid across the table.
There was a time she would have accepted his help as a matter of course, but things had changed a little now.
Her exceptional talent and beauty drew plenty of attention within the Magic Tower Academy—but they also attracted ugly rumors about her relationship with Logan.
A woman with talent but no independence, living off a man.
A wicked seductress bleeding dry her kind, capable childhood friend.
And so on.
They were malicious whispers spread by classmates jealous of her, but they had wounded Irene's pride more than a little.
Yet Logan, seemingly utterly indifferent to such gossip, simply smiled warmly and slid the pouch of gold coins back toward her.
"It's fine, Irene. I'm managing just fine on my end, so don't worry. Besides, even with the scholarship you're getting from the Tower..."
"You still need a lot of money for spell components and grimoires, right? And daily life takes its own cut for this and that."
"B-but Logan..."
Irene still hesitated.
He wasn't wrong. The Tower's support was limited to tuition and basic research funding, and the costs of her personal research, her training, and her ever-growing social obligations and appearance were always painfully tight.
She wanted to be noticed not only for her magic but for her looks as well, so she spent no small sum on clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics.
Without his support, maintaining her current standard of research and living would have been all but impossible.
As if he'd read her mind—or as if he, too, knew all about those rumors—Logan looked at her with tender eyes and spoke.
"Irene, don't pay any mind to whatever people say about you. It's all just jealousy. That brilliant talent of yours... and..."
"And...?"
Irene echoed him back, eyes full of curiosity, at his trailing words.
"You're..."
"I'm...?"
"...far prettier than anyone else. That's why they're all so jealous."
Logan said it with a faint flush creeping up his cheeks, looking almost embarrassed.
At his heartfelt compliment, Irene blinked at him for a moment—then burst out laughing, unable to hold it in.
"Oh, Logan, honestly! What a thing to say~!"
She teased him playfully, but the unpleasant rumors that had been clouding her heart melted away like snow at that single remark. A warm, sweet feeling rose up from the very depths of her chest. Logan was, as ever, looking at her and her alone.
In the end, Irene accepted his sincerity.
"Thank you... always, Logan..."
"Mm..."
Logan smiled softly.
And so the two of them, reunited after so long, were about to spend a peaceful stretch of time catching up, exchanging news of their lives and stories of the Magic Tower.
At that very moment.
"Breaking news! Extra, extra!"
A student came rushing into the café, gasping for breath. In his hand was an urgent bulletin that seemed to have arrived only moments before.
Every eye in the café—Logan's and Irene's included—turned to him.
And at the shocking news that fell from the student's lips, the two of them froze on the spot.
"The Demon King! They say Demon King Belzegor...! Has been resurrected after hundreds of years!!!"
###
The resurrection of Demon King Belzegor. The shadow of the Demon King, fallen across the land once more after hundreds of years, plunged the Empire—no, the entire continent—into chaos and terror in the blink of an eye.
People grown complacent in peacetime were thrown into turmoil by the sudden news of calamity, and ominous portents heralding the emergence of the Demon Army began appearing across the land.
But humanity was not powerless.
There were those who had spent long ages preparing for the Demon King's return, and at their center stood the Church, which heeded the Goddess's oracle, cultivated divine power, and had selected saintesses generation after generation.
The Central Plaza of Arcadia, the imperial capital.
Before the anxious citizens and faithful gathered there appeared Sera, revered as the saintess of the current age.
Her pink hair gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight, and her pink eyes held a smile of boundless compassion.
Her beauty and sacred aura allowed the assembled crowds to forget their anxiety, if only for a moment.
"Ah! Beloved people of the Empire! Please, do not be afraid!"
Sera's clear, melodious voice rang out across the entire plaza. Her voice seemed to carry a mysterious power, one that soothed the hearts of all who heard it.
"Demon King Belzegor is unquestionably a wicked and powerful being—but the blessing of our merciful Goddess stands with us!"
"Waaaaah—!"
Cheers erupted from the crowd.
"We have the Saintess!"
"The Church will protect us!"
"That's right! And the Goddess must surely have chosen a Hero for us!"
"Yes! Saintess, the Goddess delivered a revelation about the new Hero, didn't she? Tell us, Saintess!"
At that last cry, Sera nodded, offering the crowd a smile of the utmost grace and sanctity.
"Yes, of course! Naturally! The Goddess has already chosen the great Hero who will save this world!"
Her confident answer sent the plaza surging once more into ecstatic cheers. Sera lingered a while longer, delivering words of blessing to the crowd and offering a prayer, before slowly stepping down from the dais.
The people who had trembled in fear of the Demon King's resurrection drew courage and hope from her address, and they returned to their daily lives with visibly brighter faces.
Left alone, Sera watched the receding backs of the crowd, a meaning-laden smile playing at her lips—something quite different from the one she'd worn moments before.
And then, in a voice so small that no one could possibly hear it, she murmured to herself:
"Yes... as for who the Hero is... the Goddess told me ever~ so clearly... fufu..."