Prayer (3): The Price of Divinity
The moment my sword swung, the air exploded.
Boom!Rumble!!Crash!!!
Each strike unleashed a shockwave. The sheer physical force whipped up violent gusts that howled like a storm. Whenever the blade clipped a cloud, the vapor burst apart and scattered in every direction. I kept swinging without restraint, pouring every ounce of rage into the motion.
“Kyaaah!”
“H-Hero! Please calm down! Calm down!!”
“Whoa!? That one was seriously dangerous!!”
Every time I attacked, Enen let out a high-pitched whine and zigzagged through the air like a frantic fly. As expected of a goddess—her evasion was on another level. Of course, I had no intention of stopping. Something inside me burned like molten lava. What the hell was this feeling?
The answer came instantly.
Rage. Six months of compressed, overwhelming fury.
That rage was fueling my body, driving my sword path in an endless chain. Until I extinguished the flames blazing in my heart, I would keep swinging this blade forever.
“Just one hit. Come on, let me land one hit.”
“If you hit a normal person with that sword, they die!”
“You’re not a normal person—you’re a goddess!!”
We carried on like we were filming a slapstick comedy. I swung, she dodged with everything she had. I really wanted to cut her at least once… but unfortunately, I was the one who ran out of steam first. After roughly three hundred swings, the fire inside me suddenly sputtered out.
Yeah. What the hell was I doing?
Like she said, beating her up after the conversation wouldn’t be too late. The moment I lowered my sword, Enen collapsed in an undignified heap, gasping for air.
“Haaah… haah… haaah…”
If you only looked at her now, you’d doubt she was a goddess at all. If not for that elegant appearance, she would’ve looked like nothing more than a pathetic, exhausted girl. I stared down at the goddess sprawled on the ground and snapped irritably.
“All right, stop panting. Let’s have that conversation you mentioned. I’ve got a mountain of questions myself, so get up already.”
“…This isn’t how I imagined our meeting would go at all.”
She grumbled as she climbed to her feet. Her pouty lips made her look exactly like a sulking child, but the words that came out of her mouth were surprisingly sharp.
“So. The thing you’re most curious about is this, right? Why you had to become the hero while carrying all those curses.”
“……You really do know everything.”
I couldn’t help but feel a little thrown off. She had zeroed in on the heart of it immediately. She must have been thinking about how to answer me this whole time.
“Since you already know, I guess there’s no need for long explanations. Why did you put those curses on me in the first place? And why did you choose me as the hero?”
There were so many questions. So many things that didn’t make sense. The resentment piled up in my chest was far heavier than I had realized.
“Ask slowly. I prepared this place today precisely so I could answer everything.”
As if she could read my mind, she spoke in a soothing tone, then continued.
“First, about the curses… I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do.”
“…What?”
I ground my teeth. The anger leaked out like poison through my voice.
“Nothing you could do? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me… You’re a goddess. And that’s the excuse you give?”
“…Yes. For me, that really was the best option. To secure the necessary cost, I had to throw something away.”
But when I heard her next words, I had no choice but to swallow my rage for the moment. I needed to listen first. I repeated after her.
“Cost?”
“Yes, cost. To put it in simpler terms—equivalent exchange. Or you could call it a transaction. Like paying a merchant money to buy goods.”
She kept talking.
“When I summoned you, I had already run out of spare change. I wanted to give you power, but the restrictions on me were too severe. So what I needed was… to sell something in order to raise the funds.”
“And what you sold off was my relationships?”
“It wasn’t exactly what I intended. In the end, the price that was paid just happened to be your connections.”
She pointed a finger at me. More precisely, she was pointing at the skills residing inside me.
“Those things you possess. The Heavenly Martial Body, the Authority of Sacrifice, and all the other skills. They’re quite expensive. Even to me, they were precious.”
She looked at me as if asking, Do you understand now?
I scratched my head in irritation and asked, “I get what you’re saying. But I still don’t understand. Why the hell would a goddess be out of spare change?”
The moment I pressed her like that, she hesitated, mumbling.
“That’s… because the previous hero and the one before him caused quite a lot of trouble. In your language, they ‘took a massive shit,’ I suppose?”
She let out a long sigh.
“The hero before last was bad, but the last hero was the worst. I poured everything I had into supporting him, determined to defeat the Demon King this time. Instead, they were wiped out by the first of the Four Heavenly Kings. Sigh… you have no idea how much damage we took because of that…”
She continued in a calm tone.
“At that time, 101 heroes, 130,000 holy knights and regular knights combined, and 1.2 million soldiers all lost their lives to the Demon King’s army’s invasion.”
The civilian death toll was far higher, she added.
Her voice was detached, but I found myself speechless for a moment. The numbers were staggering. Too enormous to even imagine. That was the result of the hero’s defeat against the Demon King’s forces. The burden the hero was supposed to carry ended up crushing everyone else.
“Just restoring the Demon King’s half-broken seal cost that many lives. We only managed to kill one of the Four Heavenly Kings and reseal the rest in the Demon Realm. That was the best we could do.”
The image of that war formed in my mind on its own. It must have been a bloodbath, one slaughter after another. Mountains of corpses piling up, screams of grief echoing everywhere. In the depths of despair, people wouldn’t have been fighting for hope—they would have been struggling just to survive. It was truly a horrific scene.
But before I could feel any sympathy, a question rose in my mind.
“What about you?”
I asked her directly.
“What were you doing during all that?”
“Pardon?”
“You could have stepped in and helped, couldn’t you? Someone of your power should have been more than enough.”
She was a goddess, after all. And she held an overwhelming advantage against monsters and the Demon King. The divine power she possessed dealt extra damage to the Demon King and his lieutenants. Wasn’t the reason we defeated the Gluttonous Preta because of her strength?
When I asked that, her face darkened.
“I… couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“A very long time ago… I made a contract with the Demon King.”
“A contract?”
“Yes. In exchange for sealing the Demon King and binding his forces to the Demon Realm, I cannot intervene directly.”
She asked me a question in return.
“Why do you think the Four Heavenly Kings and the Demon King attack in sequence?”
She sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Doesn’t it seem strange? Why would they deliberately send out one hero-killer at a time to block the path of someone who will eventually become a serious threat? In cruder terms, if all four Heavenly Kings ganged up on you at once, you’d be dead without being able to do anything.”
“So it was all because of that contract you made.”
“That’s correct.”
She gave a light nod. Until now I had simply thought it was how the system was designed. It turned out there was a contract I hadn’t known about. The behind-the-scenes story of this world was more interesting than I expected, but my mind still calmly organized the situation.
In short, I had been summoned to clean up the mess left behind by the previous two heroes. Thanks to that realization, the next connection became obvious.
“So that’s why the Demon King’s army has become strangely stronger.”
“As expected, you’re quick. Yes. Because I expended too much power last time… the Demon King’s seal has loosened a little more than it was supposed to.”
“…So in the end, I got screwed over by bad timing?”
I asked with clear sarcasm. For a second she tilted her head as if she didn’t understand.
“Pardon?”
“It’s true, isn’t it? The previous heroes couldn’t finish the job, so now I have to work my ass off cleaning up after them. Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
It couldn’t be helped. Because of the contract, she had no power. Countless people had died in the last war. She had dressed it up in many words, but the truth was simple. The debt created by all that was now mine to repay.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the sentimental type who would grieve just because many people had died in the past. For a while I hurled every curse I could think of at her. Why did I have to shoulder this burden? Why was she dumping her failure of management onto me? I questioned her relentlessly on all of it.
She didn’t get flustered. She simply listened in silence. After a long time, she finally spoke again.
“Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to do this for free.”
“……”
“The Demon King. Please defeat the Demon King. If you do, I will grant the wish you desire.”
My body twitched. It was a cliché offer, the kind you saw in countless stories—defeat the final boss and receive a reward. Yet the word “wish” still carried an irresistible magic.
“In that case… could you also cure my body? And the curses?”
My voice trembled as I asked her the question.