The Second Hero (8)
"No. Go home."
When she said she wanted to hire me for a job, I'd figured there had to be some kind of impressive reward involved.
Well, sure — depending on how you looked at it, the compensation Ria was offering me was impressive. But it still wasn't the kind of payment that held any real appeal for me.
What the hell was I supposed to do with a kid's body like yours, anyway…
In the end, I couldn't take the job.
Negotiations had collapsed. I told Ria to just go home.
"You might really regret this, you know. I'm definitely going to grow up into an incredible beauty… I'm not lying."
"Then come back when you do."
"Ah… please don't say that. Just grant me this one favor."
But Ria was relentlessly determined to foist this commission on me somehow. She threw everything she had into trying to persuade me. She threw tantrums. She even tried to show me her body. She was desperate to hire me.
"I'm going to go farm. Ask someone else."
No matter how hard she tried, I had no intention of granting her request without proper compensation.
Just wasted my time…
I made my refusal clear one more time and turned to leave. Break time was just about over. I needed to get back to the fields.
That was when I walked past Ria and started heading out of the house ahead of her.
"Hero. If you won't grant my request, I'll tell everyone in the village that you used to be the Hero."
Ria said it with a faint edge of anger in her voice, watching me go.
Is she trying to blackmail me right now?
"You were hiding your identity, weren't you? You wouldn't exactly want that getting out… Are you sure it's wise to treat me like this?"
Ria spoke as if daring me not to ignore her — as if she held my weakness in the palm of her hand. Grant her request, or she'd spill everything.
"Go ahead."
I play along a little and she starts crossing the line?
I snorted at her threat. A brat this young, already learning nothing but nasty tricks…
I told her, coldly, that I couldn't care less.
"What?"
Ria looked completely thrown, as if my reaction was the last thing she'd expected. Had she really thought that kind of threat would make me roll over and do whatever she wanted? If so, she'd badly misjudged me for a pushover.
"I don't care if people find out or not. Tell them, don't tell them — do whatever you want. Sure, from my end it'd be a real pain."
I said it clearly. Go ahead and try.
Of course, she wasn't entirely wrong — if she revealed my identity, it wouldn't leave me completely unscathed. I wanted to live here in peace, and I had no desire to have my past dragged into the open. If she talked, things would get inconvenient for me whether I liked it or not.
But it still didn't matter.
"But you'd better be ready. Because like you just said — I'm not the Hero anymore. I have no obligation to do you any favors. Poke me half-heartedly and find out you can't handle the consequences, and that's not my problem. If you think you can take it, go right ahead."
Ria's attempt to blackmail me into being useful left a thoroughly foul taste in my mouth. So I put real weight behind the threat.
It would be annoying, sure — but I would make absolutely certain she paid the price for annoying me. I'd already been banished from the Empire, and I wasn't exactly in a generous mood. Besides, I wasn't the Hero anymore. That old sense of duty about not harming civilians was long gone.
So I sincerely hoped she wouldn't count on me going easy on her. I'd make damn sure she learned exactly what happened when you messed with me.
"…"
At that, Ria fell silent for a moment. She just stared at me — and then, as if the reality of the situation had finally sunk in, she burst into tears.
"…Waaah… I'm sorry. I was just so desperate. There's no one else who can help me except you, Hero… I'm sorry… I won't do it again… waaah."
Ria apologized through her sobs. She admitted she'd been wrong. She begged forgiveness for trying to threaten me.
"Haa."
I let out a sigh at the sight of her. Her words had genuinely pissed me off, and I'd gotten angry — but at the end of the day, I was dealing with a little kid. What was the point of a grown adult seriously losing it at a child like this?
Yeah… well. Kids do stuff like that.
In the end, I decided to let it go.
"Fine. I'll at least hear you out. Why exactly do you need my strength?"
And honestly, I was curious enough to listen. Just what kind of request was this, that she'd go this far? It sure didn't sound like anything simple…
Hearing her out couldn't hurt.
Let's see just how good this Hero party really is.
A monster thrashing about, lashing out with massive tentacles. A Nepenthes was no pushover. Herald had led his knight order against one before, and he knew exactly how dangerous the creature could be.
But that was by a knight order's standards. Against a Hero party, the story was supposed to be different. A Hero party was assembled specifically to face enemies like the Four Heavenly Kings and the Demon King, wasn't it? To people like that, a Nepenthes shouldn't even qualify as a light snack.
Or so Herald had thought.
"Kyaa…! Somebody help me!"
"Ayla! I'm coming right now— Aaagh!!!"
"I'll just blast it myself."
But the situation unfolding in front of him was deeply, deeply wrong. The Hero party was struggling. Against a single Nepenthes, they couldn't even put up a proper fight. They kept taking hits, failed to land clean attacks of their own, and were being dragged around by the monster the entire time.
They looked nothing like a veteran Hero party that had been traveling for over a year. They looked like complete amateurs at combat.
Why is a Hero party fighting like a bunch of greenhorns…?
"Huff… huff… We took it down."
"Thank goodness. It was a much tougher opponent than I expected."
The result itself wasn't bad. Working together, the party members had just barely managed to bring the Nepenthes down. You couldn't call the outcome a failure.
But there was absolutely nothing to praise about it — because the process had been catastrophically awful.
This is supposed to be a Hero party?
They'd faced a single Nepenthes, and all four party members were completely spent. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they'd poured nearly every ounce of strength they had into killing it. And again — it was just a Nepenthes. Watching a Hero party struggle this hard against one was nothing short of absurd.
Individually, their abilities are outstanding… so what the hell is wrong with this party?
And that was the truly baffling part. It wasn't that they were weak. Each of them was clearly gifted — talented enough that even exceptional knights wouldn't dare compare themselves. As a knight commander who had led countless knights, Herald could see it at a glance: the potential of these party members was absurd.
A Saintess, an elf, a beastman, a mage — the techniques they used and the raw potential they possessed were more than enough to justify the title of Hero party.
And yet they were so, so weak.
The way they handle combat is pathetic.
The problem had to be experience. Watching them fight, Herald knew it instantly. They couldn't deploy their skills at the right moments. They didn't move as a coordinated unit. They wasted power on pointless efforts. Their movements were full of the kind of unnecessary flailing you saw in people unused to battle, and they couldn't make quick decisions under pressure.
Their talent was exceptional. Their ability to actually use it was wretched.
To someone who'd commanded a knight order, every single flaw in the party was glaringly obvious.
This is far too strange…
Having seen their skills firsthand, Herald was thoroughly, deeply disappointed. The look he turned on the party members had gone past cold and into something dead. Until now, he'd endured traveling with them purely on the strength of their supposed combat ability. Even if they couldn't cook, couldn't pitch a tent, and didn't know the geography of the Demon Realm, he'd told himself their fighting power had to be extraordinary — and he'd put up with everything else.
But now that he'd finally seen that all-important combat ability, it was garbage too?
At this point, Herald had gone past anger and into genuine curiosity.
"You've all worked hard. However — I have a question."
So why did they have no experience? As far as Herald knew, the Hero and the Hero party had taken down everything from high-ranking demons all the way up to the Four Heavenly Kings. But no matter how he looked at it, he couldn't imagine this group of party members pulling that off. If they struggled this hard against a Nepenthes, never mind the Four Heavenly Kings — they wouldn't even be able to properly handle a single high-ranking demon.
He had no choice but to ask.
"What kind of question…?"
The party members tilted their heads at his words, wearing expressions that suggested they still had no idea what the problem was.
"As a Hero party — have you ever actually fought a proper battle before now?"
Herald asked them directly. Had these members of the Hero party ever truly been active at all? It was a question that absolutely needed answering.