The Second Hero (9)
"So what is it you want to ask of me?"
I asked Ria what she wanted.
What could she possibly want badly enough to borrow a Hero's strength to get it?
Whether I granted her request or not was a separate matter. For now, I figured I might as well hear her out.
"Well… please take me to the Artes Kingdom. I'm begging you."
In answer to my question, Ria told me what she wanted.
She wanted me to take her to the Artes Kingdom — a kingdom that lay a little… no, quite far from here.
The Artes Kingdom, huh…
At first glance, it seemed like a rather modest request. Nothing particularly special about it.
Simply asking to be escorted somewhere was hardly a difficult favor.
But if that somewhere was the Artes Kingdom, the story changed.
So there was a reason she was asking me specifically…
The Artes Kingdom was currently in the middle of a civil war, from what I'd heard. Something about a succession struggle for the throne sparking the whole mess.
I didn't know the details myself, but at the very least it was no place for a powerless young girl to wander alone.
That was why she was asking me.
Traveling with a former Hero, she wouldn't run into any real danger.
I could understand, at least to some degree, why Ria had been so desperately trying to get this favor out of me.
"Why do you want to go somewhere like that? It's dangerous there."
"Well… there might be someone I know there… That's why I want to go."
"Someone you know?"
"Yes."
Ria seemed to have someone she wanted to meet.
"Who is it?"
"Um… well, just a relative."
"Just a relative?"
"Yes… someone I met a little when I was young…"
She didn't offer much detail about the person.
But hadn't Ria said she was an orphan?
Having relatives wasn't strange in itself, but having them in the Artes Kingdom — quite a distance from here — was a little curious. If she had family, why was she relying on a church in this remote village? A faint suspicion stirred.
I gave Ria a look that asked her to explain a bit more.
But she tried to avoid my gaze, as if saying any more would be difficult.
Is she hiding something?
Looking at her, I could tell that what she'd told me wasn't the whole story. It was obvious she had circumstances she couldn't talk about.
Should I ask what they were? Watching her manner, I was curious about what she was keeping back.
Forget it. Prying into someone else's family affairs isn't a cool thing to do.
I decided not to press.
If she didn't want to talk, she didn't have to. Whatever.
I was hiding the fact that I was a Hero banished from the Empire myself. Everyone has at least one thing they'd rather keep buried.
I could understand Ria's feelings well enough.
The Artes Kingdom… I do have business there myself…
Talk about a remarkable coincidence.
The Artes Kingdom Ria wanted to reach was a place I had quite a connection with as well. I'd planned to stop by once I retired as a Hero — I still had one piece of unfinished business there.
It wasn't particularly urgent, so I'd meant to take my time getting there. But stopping by on this occasion didn't seem like a bad idea.
I could just take Ria along while I was at it.
"Alright. I'll take you."
"Huh…? What?"
"I said I'll take you. I was planning to stop by there later myself anyway. It's a bit different from my original schedule, but it doesn't matter."
In the end, I simply accepted Ria's request.
No — more precisely, it wasn't a request. I wasn't receiving any payment. It was more accurate to say I was granting a favor.
Might as well do a good deed. Whatever.
Not getting paid was a bit of a shame, but it didn't particularly matter. I wasn't that stingy a person.
I wasn't one now, but I had been a Hero once. I could certainly afford this much kindness.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I'll let you know when we're ready to leave."
Ria lit up at my words. The look of someone who'd already half given up on me taking her transformed in an instant. The expression on her face as she asked if I was serious seemed truly radiant — as if she owned the whole world.
"Yay! Hero oppa is the best! I'll definitely repay this kindness when I grow up."
And she was so happy she threw her arms around me.
Ria, swearing she'd repay the favor…
"When I grow up splendidly later, you can ravage my body however you want. I promise."
What…? Ravage?
I can't believe I've come to the point of hearing something like that from a little kid. How absurd.
Sorry, but I don't have that kind of taste.
"No thanks. I wouldn't need a kid like you even if you came by the truckload."
I peeled Ria off me as she clung tightly.
Being adored by a little brat like you has absolutely no meaning.
"Instead, don't bother me until we leave. Got it?"
"Yes. I'll keep that in mind."
I told Ria we'd be heading to the Artes Kingdom soon, so she should stop stalking me now.
She nodded her head with excessive vigor in agreement.
Leaving her behind, I went back to finish my farming.
Herald got a look at the Hero party's abilities.
Party members with truly pathetic skills for anything calling itself a Hero party.
Beyond mere disappointment, he had to ask.
How could they have so little experience after a full year operating as a Hero party? Had they truly defeated the Four Heavenly Kings alongside the Hero at all?
"Well… we were there when the Four Heavenly Kings were defeated."
"But we never fought them directly. We were in charge of evacuations…"
"By the time we finished the evacuations and came back, Hero Lee Hansu had pretty much already taken care of everything."
"When fighting the Demon King, too, Hero Lee Hansu fought alone."
At Herald's continued questions, the party members hesitated briefly. Then they began answering honestly.
Just as he had expected, they had almost no real combat experience. Lee Hansu had defeated the high-ranking demons and the Four Heavenly Kings all by himself.
So they weren't veterans at all — they were complete novices?
And that meant the party members were useless as combatants.
What good was a year of operating as a Hero party when they had no proper combat experience to show for it…
"Well, I did fight alongside the Hero a few times…"
"Haa…"
At least Luna, the party's mage, seemed to have fought a handful of times. Indeed, when they'd faced Nephenthus, Luna had performed a bit better than the others.
But even that was woefully insufficient. She was only better relative to the rest of the party — she herself didn't look like she had much combat experience either. In Herald's eyes, she was just as much a novice as the others.
Herald couldn't help but sigh heavily at what he'd just learned.
To think the Hero party members he'd believed were something special were these useless hangers-on…
"Well, still. You need people to handle evacuations, right?"
One of the party members spoke up with a hint of anger toward the sighing Herald. Ayla, the party's Saintess, spoke as if there was simply no helping it. People to handle evacuations inevitably had to exist, she said. If you didn't evacuate people, innocents died — you couldn't just leave that alone, could you? She was trying to argue that the situation had been unavoidable.
"That's right… We just couldn't fight because we had no choice."
"That's true too. We wanted to fight, but Hero Lee Hansu told us not to…"
And the other party members were the same. The elf Karne and the beastman Nafira agreed with Ayla. They simply hadn't fought because the previous Hero, Lee Hansu, had insisted on fighting alone.
"…"
Of course, Ayla's logic was somewhat correct. People to handle evacuations were certainly necessary.
But did the entire Hero party need to handle them?
Even if they argued that way, there was no chance Herald would be convinced. No — even if he were, the fact that the current Hero party members were useless wouldn't change.
They didn't know the geography here, didn't know how to make camp, and most importantly, they had no combat ability. They were complete dead weight, pure and simple.
Why on earth did Hero Lee Hansu travel around with party members like these?
At this point, he desperately wanted to know what the previous Hero had been thinking. Why had he brought people like these along?
Lee Hansu had been a Hero with quite a lot of compassion. He may not have defeated the Demon King, but his reputation hadn't been bad.
But even so. Surely he hadn't dragged these useless party members around out of sheer kindness alone?
"For now… let's just set out."
Pondering what the previous Hero had been thinking wouldn't yield any answers. Swapping them out for other party members was already impossible.
Find the Demon King's Castle first, then think.
Herald moved his heavy footsteps while worrying about what to do going forward.
The Demon King's Castle, huh…
And while walking like that, Herald finally discovered it.