The Crystal Ball's Revelation
Meanwhile, at that very moment, the Hero's Party (3)
"I must refuse!" Apis furrowed her brow, finally understanding why people used the phrase "flat-out rejection" when the human race expressed such firm refusal. "I don't understand why you're making such a foolish suggestion to me! Have you hit your head or something?!"
"Anyone else, maybe. But I never wanted to hear those words from you······." The Hero responded to Apis's abrupt retirement recommendation with a bright smile, though it was clear that intense emotions were boiling just beneath that innocent facade. No one understood the Hero's position in the current party better than the Hero herself—she was the team's core, its pillar, its very center. To her, Apis's suggestion that she leave the party was no different from telling her to snap a perfectly good sword in half.
"I'm not telling you to disappear completely. Just take about a month to cool your head. Thanks to a certain someone who keeps charging headfirst into hordes of monsters without thinking, we've got enough breathing room to handle things ourselves for a while."
"Oh! I see! In other words, you're telling me to take a short rest!"
"No, that's part of it, but that's not the main point······."
"Then I refuse even more! Who knows what peaceful village those monsters' fangs will turn toward while I'm laying down my sword! Rest is unnecessary for me to begin with! I am the Hero!"
"Haa······. That's not what I'm saying······."
Because I'm the Hero. Ever since that man disappeared, the Hero had always been like this. The tactical impact of his absence on the party couldn't be called insignificant, even as an understatement. His capabilities as a priest amounted to little more than the Miracle of Healing, which he could only use once a day. Back in the early days when the party struggled with even a single sword or piece of armor, it might have been different. But now, with sufficient financial resources, top-grade holy water and potions could easily fill his void—and then some. If anything, the absence of that bothersome presence had actually expanded the range of risks they could take and tactics they could employ. Potions didn't need protecting, and they didn't faint in the middle of battle.
It was the moment she truly realized that the man's constant grumbling about the "enormous benefits of kicking him out of the party"—which she'd never really listened to at the time—hadn't been mere nonsense after all. Every time the man passionately argued about his own uselessness, the Hero would retort that "a true hero never abandons their comrades, no matter the reason," rejecting his declarations of withdrawal. Those trivial exchanges had eventually become something of an annual party tradition.
Is this what having family feels like? Even Apis, who possessed a more realistic perspective than typical for an elf living in the forest, had found herself thinking that whenever she got caught up in those silly conversations. Amid the raging waves of war where blood and flesh flew, in the middle of dungeons where death lurked from every direction in unknown forms, that third-rate daily drama centered around the man would loosen the tension they'd worked so hard to maintain. Yet none of the party members could deny—and none tried to deny—that it was precisely that trivial daily life which provided an indescribable sense of comfort that kept their struggle and ordinary existence in balance.
Perhaps it was due to the special nature of dungeons themselves. Dungeons—distorted spaces where the world's natural flow of ley lines had condensed in specific locations for reasons unknown. The sticky, humid air clinging to the inside of one's lungs. That nauseating pressure that felt like something unidentified was crushing down from above. And the hideous hordes of monsters hiding within that ominous atmosphere, waiting only for foolish prey to show an opening. These were the fundamental reasons why young people who boldly declared they would become adventurers and explore unregistered dungeons were treated as the greatest unfilial children in the Capital.
The probability of an adventurer who entered an unregistered dungeon returning alive and well was, at best, only ten percent even under the most generous estimates. Even that ten percent would inevitably suffer from severe mental illness by the time they escaped, so calling it "returning alive and well" was somewhat of a stretch. That was why it was only natural that a party which had conquered fifteen registered dungeons and a staggering thirty-two unregistered ones without any abnormalities in body or mind would be granted the honorable title of "Hero's Party."
"Everyone! From today onward, please call me the Hero when addressing me!" Apis was confident she could vividly recall the Hero's cheerful face as she raised her sword high, smiling innocently as if she'd obtained a favorite toy—even hundreds of years later.
Since Apis already knew well that humans had a tendency to care for their elderly parents with utmost devotion once they reached adulthood, she couldn't have been unaware that the Hero had been overjoyed at the thought of treating her comrades who had followed and trusted her to a grand reception befitting all their hardships. However, on the day the girl became the Hero—on that auspicious day when all party members had been smiling and chatting brightly—Apis hadn't been perceptive enough about human emotions to notice the feelings hidden beneath the man's awkward smile, nor did she know much about the man himself.
A few weeks after that, once the man suddenly vanished without a trace, the party's morale visibly darkened. Victim, who was already taciturn and seemed to lack any immunity to conversing with women except for his sister the Hero, began spending all his time outside the dungeon sleeping, having lost his only male comrade. Apis and Dawna, whose relationship was like oil and water drawn from a painting, had never been compatible in personality or nature to begin with. Without someone to mediate between them, even simple communication frequently escalated into heated arguments.
It was around that time that the Hero began obsessing over the title of Hero. An unease, as if they were aboard a ship with slightly misaligned wheels. Though all the party members unconsciously sensed it, they had been biting their tongues, afraid that voicing their bad premonition might make it reality—and that premonition was gradually growing larger with each passing day.
And so—
"We'll handle the dungeon conquests ourselves for the time being. You, Hero, go find that bastard as quickly as possible and bring him back here." Apis, possessing the most resolute personality among the party members, was the first to reach a decision. This was partly thanks to the difference in time perception stemming from the vast lifespan gap between humans and elves. To Apis, an elf, an absence of merely six months was nothing more than a half-day runaway.
"Huh·····?" The Hero's body and thoughts froze completely, her expression still bearing that bright smile as if she'd been struck on the head with a hammer. She looked exactly like someone who was realizing for the first time that such a method even existed, her unfocused, dazed face desperately trying to organize the thoughts rising in her mind in order—like a cat that got the cream.
"Go bring that bastard back. The party can't function without him. I'm getting tired of your brother sleeping all day, and I'm sick of having to argue with Dawna every time we need to talk. Bring him back as soon as possible."
"B-But!"
"What."
"But! That's—!"
"So what."
Bring him back. So such a method existed. But was it really okay to do that? As the Hero struggled to find her next words for a long, long time under the weight of such an obvious doubt, Apis spoke as if even that brief hesitation was displeasing.
"Don't want to find him? Do you think you can manage without him?"
"N-No! That can't be true!"
"You want to go find him, don't you?"
"O-Of course!"
"You want to go find him. So go find him."
"B-But the priest might have had his own circumstances······. Above all, pursuing someone who clearly stated through letters that we shouldn't look for him again would be somewhat unreasonable······."
"Unreasonable? The one who should be eating those words is that bastard who scribbled a single letter and disappeared without a trace. People like that deserve to have their tracks followed."
······Was that so? The Hero, whose mind worked quite sharply on the battlefield but tended to be somewhat clumsy in other areas, was gradually being swayed by Apis's persuasive words when—
"This is bad! This is terrible! Everyone, listen!" Dawna burst through the door with an unmistakably flustered expression.
"Dawna? What's wrong?"
"Ah! Can't you see I'm having an important conversation with the Hero right now!?"
"N-Now is not the time for that!"
What Dawna held up before them was a crystal-type magical device engraved with a detection magic formula she had independently developed. It was a magical tool that incorporated advanced techniques to visualize the target being tracked through spirits, but for some reason, it would always go dead whenever they tried to find that man. Everyone except Dawna had been convinced it was broken and had erased it from their minds.
"Th-The magic that had been dead until now suddenly started working properly! There was some unknown white energy interfering with the magic's activation, so it wouldn't trigger, but for some reason it's working normally now!"
As Dawna poured more magical power into the crystal ball to enhance the vision's clarity—
"Look at this—!"
Immediately after, Apis and the Hero's expressions twisted in shock. It was understandable. Inside the crystal ball was the clear image of a very familiar man being dragged somewhere by a collar around his neck.