Who Seeks the Former Hero?
If only we could find the Hero...
Luna, the mage of the hero's party, had posted a guild request to find the Hero — Lee Hansu.
It was an S-rank commission, no less, one that had drained a considerable portion of their remaining funds.
Surely they would find Lee Hansu before long.
She held a quiet flicker of anticipation at the thought of seeing the Hero again.
"But... is this really the right call?"
Unlike her, the rest of the party was far from enthusiastic about the decision. Ayla and the other two members regarded Luna's choice with open distaste.
After Alex had cast them aside, they had fallen in behind Luna for lack of any better plan — but they could not bring themselves to agree with summoning Lee Hansu back.
"I am still opposed. Hero Lee Hansu is not even a believer of the Goddess Church."
And of them all, the one who resisted most fiercely was the Saintess, Ayla.
She still despised Lee Hansu without pause.
The reason was simple: he did not believe in the Goddess Church.
In the past, Ayla had poured every effort into converting him. How wonderful it would be, she had insisted, if the Hero lived according to the Church's doctrine. There was no reason a Hero should refuse to join the faith.
But Lee Hansu had refused, stubbornly and completely. He spoke of freedom of religion, of refusing to lean on gods — every excuse imaginable.
And that had not been the end of it.
As if he somehow knew something about the Goddess herself, he had even claimed she was not nearly as benevolent a being as people believed.
Ayla could not help but be deeply disappointed. As Saintess of the Goddess Church, she had come to regard Hero Lee Hansu with cold eyes.
That did not mean, however, that she had refused to follow him. Public duty and private feeling were separate matters. She was emotional, yes — but she was not a person who let emotion dictate her work. Lee Hansu was still the Hero, and no matter how firmly he refused the Church, she could not simply abandon him. He was the one meant to defeat the Demon King. So she had swallowed her dislike and placed her trust in him.
"And even if we do call him back — the Hero is Alex now. What good would it do? Besides, Hero Lee Hansu is weak."
The real problem was that Lee Hansu's abilities had been truly pathetic.
That was the greatest issue of all.
Saintess Ayla pressed the point hard against Luna, demanding to know what purpose there could possibly be in bringing him back.
"He barely managed to take down the Four Heavenly Kings, and he couldn't even defeat the Demon King."
No matter how little Lee Hansu believed in the Goddess Church, Ayla had followed him because he was the Hero destined to fell the Demon King. She had assumed that, being the Hero, he must at least be strong.
That hope had been ripped out by the roots.
One day he had returned battered half to death, claiming he had fought one of the Four Heavenly Kings. Ayla had found the story absurd. That he had gone without them was already ridiculous — but the most outrageous part was that a mere Heavenly King could leave him in such a state.
A Heavenly King was just a Heavenly King. To ordinary people they were monsters beyond opposition, but not to a Hero. A Hero existed to defeat the Demon King. She had never once heard of a Hero struggling so badly against a single Heavenly King. For a Hero to be reduced to that condition fighting one of them... was that even a coherent story?
Of course it wasn't. From that moment, her expectations had vanished entirely.
And the result had been exactly as expected. Lee Hansu failed to defeat the Demon King and was summoned back to the Empire. When the Empire moved to banish him, Ayla had had no choice but to lend her weight to their decision. He had lacked the qualifications of a Hero. He had lacked the one thing that mattered most: power.
"It won't make any difference. Even if Hero Lee Hansu comes back, I don't believe the situation will change."
"..."
Calling him back, she said, was no solution at all. And at her words, the two party members besides Luna offered a silence that meant agreement.
They shared Ayla's view. From the moment Lee Hansu had struggled against the Four Heavenly Kings, they had stopped expecting much of him. Defeating the Demon King was what mattered above all else — and once the thought took root that their Hero might simply be weak, and once that weakness was confirmed by his failure against the Demon King, they could no longer take his side. They did not hate him the way Ayla did, but neither did they have any reason to oppose his dismissal.
"Th-that... I can't really argue with any of that, but... I'm not certain either..."
Luna could not refute Ayla's words. Everything Ayla had said was true. Luna herself had doubted Lee Hansu's strength. When the Empire moved to exile him, she had not been able to speak up with any conviction.
"Hero Lee Hansu might be stronger than we think."
But now, somehow, her thoughts had begun to shift.
Luna had glimpsed Lee Hansu in combat once, however briefly. He had been overwhelmingly strong. She had only seen a fragment, but calling him a monster would not have been an exaggeration. Even the Tower Master of the Magic Tower — whom she had once believed the strongest of all — would not have stood a chance against Hero Lee Hansu.
Which made it all the more incomprehensible. She had been certain he would crush the Demon King with ease. Instead he had staggered against a Heavenly King and failed against the Demon King entirely. No one had been more shaken by that outcome than Luna herself. There had been nothing she could do when he was banished. She had dismissed her earlier assessment as a misjudgment and concluded that Lee Hansu was simply weak.
But now a question nagged at her.
With Herald dead at the Demon King's hands without landing a single meaningful blow, and with Alex having cast them aside — a stubborn hope had begun to take root. What if Lee Hansu had actually been immensely strong? What if it wasn't her judgment that had been wrong, but everyone else's?
"For now... let's at least meet him."
"...Haa. If that's what you want, Luna, I'll wait."
Luna managed, somehow, to persuade the others. Just meet him. Just talk. And with that, the party agreed. They had already filed the S-rank request with the guild, and for the moment they had no other options — none except seeking out Lee Hansu.
Why the hell is someone looking for me?
What was this supposed to be?
I stared at the freshly posted S-rank mission at the guild and felt my mind go blank for a moment. There was no chance of mistaking it for anyone else. The request clearly stated it was searching for the Hero, Lee Hansu. It was looking for me — the Lee Hansu standing right here.
I had only come to the guild to give Aji her first commission. Running into something like this by pure chance left me more than a little rattled. But I set the shock aside. Right now, I needed to think.
Who exactly is looking for me?
I scanned the S-rank request form for any scrap of information, but it didn't name the client. Of course it didn't. Guild policy never disclosed who posted a request — commissions were only relayed or accepted through guild members. There was no way for me to find out.
The guild had probably designed the system that way to keep itself indispensable, but right now I found the policy deeply inconvenient. As things stood, I had no means of learning who had put out this request.
Whatever it is, it's going to be a pain...
One thing I was certain of: whoever wanted me, their purpose would not be good news for me. How to put it... it just felt like an enormous hassle waiting to happen.
It wasn't baseless paranoia, either. Back when I was the Hero, everyone who came looking for me always had some favor to ask — the kind of impossibly difficult tasks only a Hero could handle. Searching for "Hero Lee Hansu" almost certainly meant dumping some miserable job on my shoulders. Even if it wasn't hard, the odds were high it would be something I wanted no part of.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
Aji tilted her head as I kept staring at the S-rank request, wearing an expression that asked whether I was thinking something unpleasant. I set the form down as if it were nothing.
Aji was with me now. I was already tangled up in one nuisance looking after her — I had no intention of walking straight into another. I left the S-rank request exactly where it was. I would not get involved.
I'll look into it later.
Whoever was searching for me could wait. But still — who was it, really?
The question kept circling as I left the guild. Someone looking for me... someone who needed my power...
Who would that be? And then, in the middle of thinking it over, it struck me. There were people who needed my strength more than anyone.
Don't tell me... the Empire and the hero party?
Right after I left, a knight commander named Herald had taken over as my successor. That Hero, I was told, had failed to defeat the Demon King. A second Hero had been appointed after that. I hadn't heard any news yet, but even if he died trying, that Hero would never bring the Demon King down. She was a powerhouse only I in all the world could defeat.
Had the Empire and my former party members finally realized that? Was that why they were looking for me now?
Have they lost all shame?
Nah... no way.
After betraying me like that, barely a month had passed, and now they wanted me back? They hadn't even pretended to listen when I told them never to come looking for me. I refused to believe it was them.
"Come on."
"Okay."
I set out with Aji for her first commission.
Well... it doesn't really matter.
That the party members had refused to follow him came as something of a surprise to Alex. He had been certain they would fall in line without question, given how much each of them wanted. But it wasn't a serious problem. Losing the Goddess Church's support was unfortunate, but he could gather backing elsewhere. The majority of the Empire's bureaucrats had already lined up behind him. With imperial officials pledging their loyalty, even a coup wouldn't be much of an issue.
"Hoo. So this is the Demon King's Castle."
All he had to do was defeat the Demon King. Once he did, his world would begin.
"The day I become emperor isn't far off."
Alex pushed open the gates of the Demon King's Castle with full confidence — ready to bring the Demon King down.