110. Return of the Hero
110. Return of the Hero
Skadi passed the audition.
But I couldn't really say anything about it.
Is it okay for an already-working actor to compete in an audition?
Let's not forget.
The Liam Walker Series started as an academy-led project and a class, with the stated purpose that every student must be given a fair opportunity.
Just because she was a working actor, I had no authority to stop her.
If she had won the audition through her popularity as an actor, that would be one thing, but she took first place fair and square, so there was nothing to say.
I had no choice but to accept her into our studio as the Hero.
'I hope she never has to fight me.'
I prayed her role wouldn't have to fight Ras, just in case.
*
The world was screwing me over by making Skadi my coworker, but my work didn't change.
Casting actors for Part 6, which we would start filming soon.
Nikolai had already laid out the entire synopsis.
Now it was my job as the priest to cast the actors and negotiate their appearance fees.
The actors I planned to cast this time were monumental figures in many ways.
If Agion was resurrected, wouldn't people love it if the Heroes who stopped Agion appeared?
Agion's appearance was partly to resolve the Dean's lingering grudge, but the actors who played the various Vandels, not just Agion, were victims too.
So, to console their fandoms and the actors as well, I planned to bring them into the Liam Walker Series.
Of course, since the protagonist is Liam, they wouldn't have major roles, but I still intended to put them in scenes that deliver some serious fan-service hype.
"The First Vandel goes here. The Second goes here..."
For now, they were all slated to be deceased within the story's timeframe.
Since the original Vandel series was a story where each generation's Vandel passed their power to a descendant or spiritual successor to stop Agion, it was already a cliché that they eventually died of old age.
So how would I bring them in?
'Time travel.'
Time travel was the answer.
Of course, no matter how versatile the magic of this other world was, time travel was impossible.
Besides, the concept of time travel was so versatile that if mishandled, it was like opening Pandora's box and shattering all narrative plausibility.
But at the same time, if you added enough plausibility through cinematic direction and narrative, there was no greater concept.
Nikolai had neatly resolved that dilemma.
Basically, Nikolai had arranged for the souls of thirty-six heinous prisoners, Agion’s Heart, and a fourteen-word chant to open a gate to the past.
He included Agion’s Heart among the materials to establish that the method was unique to him, since he had been a Demon King across countless multiverses.
If you set the conditions this strict, people would naturally accept it as plausible and move on.
The main plot of Part 6 was Agion traveling through time to try to eliminate the past Heroes, the Vandels, who had defeated him, while Liam joined forces with the past Vandels to stop Agion's scheme.
With the concept for Part 6 finished, I did a final check on the status of Part 5.
There wasn't much time left until the release of Part 5, which had already finished filming.
Only after I did a final review to make sure Part 5 had no plot holes or the like could I breathe a sigh of relief.
Normally I wouldn't rewatch a film that had already wrapped multiple times, but Part 5 was a little special.
Part 5 served as the bridge leading to Part 6, which would be an unprecedented level of fan service, but also because the subject matter was...
'Sensitive.'
Actually, the concept of time travel was first introduced in Part 5.
Part 5 covered the incompletely resurrected Agion receiving Morse's help to prepare for time travel.
Agion's resurrection itself was successful, but due to the arrangements of the past Vandels, his body was so weakened that he could barely survive without the aid of a respirator.
According to Agion, each past Vandel had shattered his soul when they defeated him, sealed one fragment inside their own soul, and eventually died when their lifespan ran out.
Since beings whose lifespans had ended could not be summoned even by necromancy, time travel was necessary to retrieve the soul fragments from them.
After hearing Agion's explanation, Morse and his followers immediately began preparing prisoners for the time travel ritual.
In the process, they left a trail, and Liam's party caught on to their scheme and joined forces with a survivor of the Vandel Knight Order to try and stop the ritual. That was the main story of Part 5.
The ending of Part 5, however, was considerably bleak.
Not just bleak.
It was incredibly bleak.
At the end, the last survivor remembered the Knight Commander attacking Agion’s respirator and threw away his life to prove Agion’s weakness.
Thus, he informed Liam's party that Agion's sole weakness was his mask, and died a heroic death.
The deaths of his comrades did not end there.
Judging it impossible to stop the time travel ritual, Ras mixed his own righteous soul among the sinners' souls as an impurity to thwart Morse's scheme.
Liam’s mind shattered after watching his godfather die before his eyes,
and amidst it all, Agion scoffed at Ras's sacrifice.
- I never believed Morse would succeed in the first place.
But Agion had already prepared a Plan B, rendering Ras’s sacrifice meaningless.
Agion used Morse's own underlings as sacrifices instead of the prisoners, completed the ritual, and threw himself into the time travel portal. Part 5 ended there.
Of course, in the post-credits scene, Liam also jumped into the time travel portal and met the First Vandel, which would hint at a slightly hopeful development, but even considering that, it was a story that would absolutely shatter people's minds.
Having already experienced fandoms' over-immersion through the magical girl fandom, I had no choice but to be a little cautious.
For reference, when I tried consulting the Emperor, my father, and my uncle about the current situation...
- Ebeh-beh-beh. I'm not listening to spoilers.
As soon as I broached the subject to consult them in advance about the ending of Part 5, they recoiled and refused.
Where had their ability to separate public duty from private interests gone?
Men remained children even when they grew old, and they stubbornly refused to discuss Part 5.
They said that if something went wrong, they would rather work overtime than have the ending spoiled.
I got that they were happy that a ruined series from their youth was being revived, but wasn't acting like this a bit much for the nation's rulers?
When I pointed that out, they said they hadn't totally abandoned their sense of responsibility, so they'd at least form an emergency countermeasure committee, and told me to consult with them.
The problem was that, while the committee was being formed, the high-ranking officials and the military also refused because they didn't want spoilers, leaving a miraculous team consisting only of Pia, Leon, and Carlos.
Anyway, while the emergency countermeasure committee prepared for the fallout from Part 5, I went around looking for the original cast members for Part 6.
I found most of them in the process.
Everyone except one.
The one called the strongest Vandel of all time, the only Vandel in the series whose popularity rivals Agion's.
The Hero who revived the series when it nearly bombed and collapsed because Agion didn't appear in Part 2.
In royal terms, he was a Second Founder; in religious terms, a saint among Heroes.
The Third Vandel.
I found the First, found the slightly less authentic Second, and even found and cast everyone up to the Eleventh, who just barely got acknowledged as an original member.
But this Third Vandel, there was absolutely no trace of him.
Even when the Impist representative was running wild, it was easy to find traces of the other original members because they and their fandoms had protested, but the Third wasn't even part of that protest coalition.
Even when some fans who felt betrayed by this called him a traitor, he didn't show his face.
He did not even have an agency, so there was no way to track him.
As if such a person had never existed in the first place, the Third Vandel completely vanished from the film world.
Because of this, the option of simply writing it off as a practical issue and not casting the Third also crossed my mind.
But that couldn't happen.
The Third was the real deal among Vandels.
The Third Vandel was the only one of the Vandels who was an overpowered-type Vandel, complete from the very start. Unlike the First or Second, who had pushed their whole bodies to the limit to defeat the Demon King, he was strong enough to utterly destroy Agion in a head-on fight with overwhelming swordsmanship and reflexes.
The battle scenes between this Third and Agion were so tremendous that they revived the dying Vandel series, so he was treated as the absolute pinnacle among the Vandels.
It was undeniably strange that not even the enormous fandom knew the whereabouts of a Vandel who was such a foundational figure.
If he simply lacked affection for his work and was living in hiding, I would have at least understood the situation.
But the Third's acting, which I had seen on screen, was superb, and he had affection for the series.
At the very least, he wasn't someone indifferent to his work.
Can you even tell that from a screen?
Yes, you could.
People with no affection for a series don't immerse themselves in a character to that degree.
He never forgot the identity of the Vandel he was playing, in his gaze, his lines, even his stride.
And lastly, without a deep understanding, he wouldn't have ad-libbed so perfectly for every situation.
The fact that he, unlike the other members, was living in hiding without even using an avatar must certainly have been due to some circumstance.
That was why I wanted to find him.
Part of it was wanting to honor the foundation in my film, but I was also convinced that he, like the Dean, must have had some kind of story.
But even saying all that, in the end, I couldn't find him with my own power.
Ultimately, I decided to use a slightly unconventional method to find him.
Not as an artist, but as a powerful figure.
"Emperor... I’m trying to make a seriously awesome film..."
I broke through his “blah-blah-blah, no spoilers” defense and got the words “the Third Vandel will appear” into his ears. At that, he lowered his guard and showed interest.
"You're not going to spoil anything?"
"I won't. There's just a problem with the casting. The ultimate action where the Third and Agion clash. Wouldn't you like to see that again?"
"....Just tell me what you need."
Abuse of authority?
Swords existed to be swung, and power existed to be used.
I wasn't embezzling taxes or anything; I'd only been trying to find someone, so nobody would get hurt.
Personal information protection laws?
Whatever. This was the Middle Ages.
Allen and the Emperor did not know about things like that.
In any case, I finally managed to discover a trace of the Third.
There was an old saying that when something was not working, you lacked money or power, and old sayings were never wrong.
I took the note listing the Third's residence along with a message asking my uncle in the Counterintelligence Department for a favor, and headed for my destination.
The note had a postscript insisting that I bring Pia, so she came with me.
When I asked her to leave the academy alone with me, just the two of us, her assent came immediately.
Leon, for some reason, cheered her on with an expression that said he had entrusted Pia to me.
'What's this?'
It was awkward to see Leon acting like that, since he normally spent every spare moment teasing Pia.
I wondered what was up and asked Pia,
"Apparently my brother has made a lot of progress with Anna lately. Things have advanced considerably since their cheek-kiss scene in Part 4."
"Ah-ha."
If this were a dating sim, Anna's affection toward Leon would have been around sixty percent.
For reference, Leon's affection rating toward Anna was 330%, and it went up by 1% per day.
He swore he didn't make it obvious, but from the side, it was incredibly obvious.
Whenever Anna made any physical contact with another male actor, he grumbled in the office.
Whenever Anna suddenly called him to the practice room to run lines for the next day's scene together, he bolted out of the office.
Whenever she was even slightly late to the set, he restlessly circled around me, muttering.
Looking at him, the parallel world where he'd live as a bachelor forever if he didn't end up with Anna sounded less like a joke.
Still, it was fortunate. If that regressor, whose romance cells were all dead, had around 60% affection, there was plenty of hope.
"So there was a reason Leon was being so nice to you."
"Well, for my part, I'm just glad my brother isn't talking nonsense at me anymore, thanks to Anna."
"I guess there's a reason you're a priest dispatched from the Temple of Love. I feel sorry for having worried that you were too young, Kenia."
"Heh... but why am I..."
"You're what?"
"No, it's nothing."
Pia hurriedly waved her hands, signaling the end of that topic.
Anyway, we received Leon's cheerful send-off and climbed into the portal bound for the Imperial Capital.
The Third's residence was in the capital.
You might ask how I, being from the capital, couldn't find him, but even if you live in Seoul, a guy with no luck won't run into a celebrity. That's just how it is.
Plus, the capital is so huge and complicated.
It was only natural that I hadn't run into the Third.
In case we lost each other in the crowd, I took Pia's hand and followed the map.
As we followed the map, the streets that came into view were unexpectedly familiar.
It happened to be the area we had wandered around when we secretly escaped Pia's villa, so the two of us slowly made our way to the destination, savoring the memories.
"You remember that alley?"
"I was playing hide-and-seek with you and nearly got kidnapped."
"Hey. No matter how seriously you take hide-and-seek, what were you thinking crawling all the way into the slums?"
"Hehe... I was young back then."
My heart had really dropped when Pia's trail led into the slums.
Thank goodness I had found her without being too late.
Some trash tried to lay hands on Pia, so I forcibly turned them into women.
I broke a few ribs since I was young, but I never expected to feel that dizzying sensation of being shot while wearing a bulletproof vest again in this world.
After that, on top of taking a member of the imperial family outside the Imperial Palace without permission, I was charged with endangering her, and got to see the inside of the underground prison for the first time.
I was supposed to be flogged as well, but thanks to my father's influence and Pia and Leon pleading my case, it was resolved with a one-week underground prison experience course.
Pia seemed to carry guilt toward me over that incident, but I patted her head every time, so she had recovered to the point where she could talk about it as just a memory.
"What would you do if something similar happened again in the future?"
"I'd have to come running and save you anytime, Princess."
Chatting about silly memories like this, we arrived at our destination.
At the destination, I pointed at the shop sign with a stiff expression and muttered.
"What the fuck."
<Godrin's Workshop>
It was the forge of the old man who created the Grand Canyon with a single sword.