Because I Always Repay Kindness
Clang—!
The bullet the man fired struck Iris’s wing and ricocheted away by a hair’s breadth.
“Kyaaah—!”
“S-sorry… ugh…!”
“Still got the leisure to apologize like an idiot, huh? Looks like you’re not desperate enough yet!”
Iris was doing nothing more than the bare minimum of counterattacks as she tried to put distance between herself and them.
Behemoth’s forces were far stronger than she had imagined. Every single one of them possessed power beyond that of an ordinary villain, and they knew how to put their unique abilities to use in combat.
Excluding those whose unique abilities had never awakened, ninety percent of people were born with one—yet the proportion of abilities that could actually be applied aggressively in battle never exceeded one percent. That was why most mercenaries, just as in the real world, preferred firearms. Those who made their unique abilities their primary weapon were guaranteed the highest treatment among mercenaries, and whether they operated legally or not decided whether they were classified as heroes or villains.
And yet look at these people.
Every last one of them is a villain. They came here ready for a real fight…!
“Harrington! Fire that thing!”
“Firing authorization confirmed. Attempting suppression.”
Bang!
The crack of exploding gunpowder was followed by a long chain of mana wrapping around her body.
“Nngh…!”
Ordinarily she would have snapped it with ease and fled, but the aftereffects of Judgment she had used not long ago still lingered in her body.
Oh no—my sense of balance…!
The equilibrium of a body that had been moving on pure instinct collapsed in an instant, and Iris tumbled across the ground.
“Finally got her!”
“Blind as a bat, yet she moves like a monster. What the hell is this girl’s unique ability? Physical enhancement for sure, but…”
With the enemies right in front of her, Iris tightened her grip on the spear. Yet with the power of the Holy Spear sealed, what she held was nothing more than a somewhat sturdy, sharp polearm. Iris knew that perfectly well—but there was nowhere left to retreat.
Please…
“Just give up already. This whole area is our territory. Even if you run, you’ve got nowhere to go.”
Why am I even here? All I wanted was an ordinary life.
“You were running errands for a criminal organization, weren’t you? You should’ve just kept doing that. Why go and make a big mess by fighting back?”
I wanted to live with my head held high. If this life was something I’d already lived once, then at least the second time I wanted to live without shame.
“Not that any of that is our business. But the explosion you caused did serious damage to our company. If I don’t bring you in, my boss might kill me.”
I want to live. No—I don’t mind dying. But I never wanted to die like this.
Every time their words and her thoughts crossed, Iris whispered the things she had wanted to say deep inside herself.
“Whatever. Nothing left to talk about. Boys, tie her up. Take the spear if you can, and where the hell did those wings come from?”
Someone—anyone—help me. If you help me right now, I’ll give you everything I have. So please…
Iris poured the last of her strength into gripping the spear, determined to make one final stand.
And in that moment, something extraordinary happened.
Crackle—!
“Huh…? What’s that sound…”
“W-wait, that—!”
BOOM—!
An artillery shell plummeted from the sky and exploded, swallowing dozens of Behemoth personnel in the blast.
“Huh…?”
A hollow sound slipped from Iris’s lips.
“Why the hell is there artillery fire…!”
“The U.S. military…? No, why would they show up at a time like this…”
Even if this was a slum, it was still a civilian residential district. Deploying artillery in the middle of a civilian zone—inside their own country’s territory, no less? It was an unprecedented incident, something no one had ever seen or heard of.
Yet even in a situation like this, there were always a few quick on the uptake.
“The blast radius isn’t as wide as I thought. It came from an unmanned turret!”
No matter how deep in the city you were, monsters could appear anywhere. That was why cities around the world had installed unmanned turrets that responded the instant a monster showed up, buying time until a hero could arrive. Their purpose was suppression rather than elimination, so the firepower wasn’t overwhelming—but it was more than enough to kill people.
Of course, plenty of questions still floated to the surface.
“Why would an unmanned turret target us…? Recognition error?”
“Is it because of that girl’s wings?”
“No way the AI is dumb enough to flag someone as a monster just because they’ve got wings stuck on their back.”
Iris was just as bewildered by the situation as anyone else.
In that moment, a phone that someone must have dropped began to ring on the ground.
This is…
At first she thought of ignoring it, but an instinct she couldn’t suppress made her pick it up. The instant she answered, a digitally distorted male voice flowed from the speaker.
“Aaah, can you hear me?”
“W-who…”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re Iris, right?”
“H-how do you know my name…”
“That’s not important right now, is it?”
“…”
“You want to live, don’t you? Then do exactly as I say. Don’t do anything stupid and get caught by those guys.”
His words were somehow suspicious, yet Iris found herself nodding without realizing it. The owner of the voice on the other end seemed satisfied with her reaction; his tone brightened as he began issuing instructions.
“First…”
“Turn right there. No obstacles ahead, so you can just keep running.”
“Haa… haa… And after that?”
“There’s an abandoned building. The door’s locked, but I’ll open it for you right away.”
“How on earth…”
“Knowing would only get you hurt.”
With Laplace’s assistance, I tracked Iris’s position in real time.
Pursuit numbers… not many left.
Thanks to hacking the nearby unmanned turrets, I had neutralized the bulk of the pursuers without much effort. Since they were Behemoth personnel currently at odds with Leviathan, I could act without any real worry about the aftermath. Besides, anti-monster shells weren’t exactly designed to kill people easily even if you tried.
American retaliation is a bit scary… but I’ll just have to block it well enough.
At this point, no human hacker could stand against Laplace anymore.
Anyway, did the remaining pursuers all duck into the alleys?
The turrets had been built for anti-monster combat rather than anti-personnel, so their lethality was low to begin with—and once someone entered an alley, further bombardment was impossible. They had already served their purpose, so there was no point wasting more shells. Time to hand control back.
While I was adjusting the situation, Iris had already slipped into the target building. I quickly locked the entrance and guided her down into the basement.
“Where is this?”
“There’s an abandoned subway line under this building. It cuts straight through the entire TK-07 district and connects all the way to the downtown area.”
Having made it this far, Iris could be considered to have saved her life from Behemoth.
“U-um…”
“What is it?”
“Why… are you helping me?”
Her question made me pause for a moment. Learning that her name was Iris had been pure luck—a brief entry among the information registered with Leviathan about the ringleader of the TK auction house incident. That had also let me roughly understand why the criminal organizations were hunting her.
Now that my curiosity about her identity had been satisfied, the proper course would have been to wash my hands of the matter and leave, as I usually did. I was a third party, after all, and one of the principles mercenaries lived by was not to interfere unless they had been commissioned.
And yet the reason I was actively intervening to help Iris was the possibility that she might be the hero the Goddess had spoken of. Now that I was deeply entangled in the relationship between the Demon God and the Goddess, a hero was an existence I would inevitably encounter someday. In that case, wouldn’t it be far better to recruit her to my side in advance and use her to grow my own power?
That thought had driven me to search for the hero for years, yet I had found nothing. The only clue I possessed was a short passage from a letter I had skimmed as a child, and that alone made any real deduction difficult. But when I first came into contact with the records about Iris not long ago, my instincts had stirred.
Come to think of it, the Goddess said she summoned me as someone who would support the hero, didn’t she?
Perhaps the reason I felt drawn to her was that very Goddess I had resented for so long. Of course I couldn’t explain any of that to her, so I mixed truth and fiction into a suitable answer.
“Because I saw potential.”
“Potential…?”
“You seemed to be struggling with money. Nowhere decent to live, either.”
“…”
“How about accepting my patronage for a while?”
The moment she heard those words, Iris’s body flinched. I was only watching through a CCTV feed, yet even that was enough to let me imagine the shock she must have felt in reality.
“P-patronage…?”
“Simple. I’ll guarantee you financial support until you become an adult. I’ll arrange a place for you to live as well.”
“W-why would you even…”
“I already told you. I’m investing because I see potential. In return, once you’ve grown into someone who no longer needs anyone’s help, you help me. How does that sound? Seems like a pretty fair deal to me.”
The value of a hero surpassed that of any other existence. She was the only one presumed capable of killing the Demon King, and her latent potential was extraordinary—something I had confirmed through the Goddess’s letter. If I could earn the goodwill of such a being, a little financial loss was more than worth it.
“But I don’t deserve something like that…”
“Why do you think you don’t? You’re more than worthy of patronage. Not just you—anyone in this world is. It’s stranger not to have it.”
“Th-that’s… uuh… uuuh…”
Listening to my words, Iris simply sank to the floor and began to cry.
Leave her be. She needs time to collect her emotions.
…I don’t really get it…
You absolute T… never mind. Nothing.
“…?”
After crying on the floor for a long while, Iris wiped her tears and asked me in a voice thick with sobs.
“Your name… could you tell me your name?”
I considered it for a moment. Well, a patron’s name was something she ought to know.
“In the underworld they call me Lucifer. Beyond that, you don’t need to know.”
“Lucifer…”
She repeated the name several times, then rose to her feet.
“You.”
“?”
“I… I’m someone who always repays kindness. Just so you know.”
“…? Well… fine. More importantly, we need to move. I’ve taken measures, but we can’t hold out inside this building for more than an hour.”
That day, Iris left the slum where she had been born and raised for the first time in her life.