True Feelings
"Waaah—that's our Hero!"
"Thanks to you, we won against the Demon King's Army again!"
Throughout the kingdom I was praised as a Hero, and I was loved for it.
My name is Dale.
I came from a fallen rural noble house, but I was a Heavy Knight whose defensive skill with a shield was second to none. Put simply, I was extraordinarily hard to kill. I always stood at the very front, staking my life to hold the Demon King's Army at bay, and that was how we seized our victories.
Of course, I owed a great deal to my companions in the Hero Party as well.
Besides myself, the Hero Party had three other members—and they were the most special people in my life.
My father had earned a baron's title through distinguished service in war. Thanks to that, we governed a modest rural fief and lived in comfort. Then my parents were accused of colluding with an enemy nation, and before long they vanished without a trace. From that moment on, our house began a steep decline.
But I couldn't afford to despair. I still had them—the women who meant everything to me.
When I was very young, my birth mother passed away, and my father remarried. With my new stepmother came a stepsister: Reyna.
From childhood, Reyna followed me as if I were her real older brother. She had a gift for the sword, and we often trained together. I wanted to nurture that talent, and I spared nothing in investing everything I had. Because of that, Reyna was able to join the Royal Knights as their youngest recruit, and she built her reputation at a startling pace through one brilliant feat after another.
Watching my little sister succeed like that, I felt nothing but pride.
And though she was only the granddaughter of a servant in our household, Claire had grown up beside me like a childhood friend.
She was the dearest friend I would ever have in this life, and she possessed a very special power: the power of healing and blessing. It was an ability that suited her pure, gentle nature perfectly.
She had always wanted to become a priestess of the Goddess Cult and devote herself to helping others, but her parents had committed vile crimes and were in prison, which made it impossible. In the end, I stripped our family fortune to the bone to pay every last fine and settlement on her behalf. Claire was able to become a priestess, and she grew into an outstanding cleric recognized throughout the Cult.
Seeing her so respected by so many of the faithful, I felt my chest swell with emotion.
And last, there was my fiancée, Charlotte.
When we were children, our parents had forced an engagement on us for the sake of adult circumstances. Charlotte was collateral royalty, and she had a rather haughty streak—but we lived under the same roof, and I treated her with genuine respect and kindness. Shut out by the royal family for being a mere cadet branch, she gradually began to open her heart, and though she was clumsy about it, she would sometimes lay her feelings bare.
When our house started to fall, however, Charlotte spent her days steeped in gloom. Even so, the royal blood in her veins had not been for nothing: she possessed tremendous talent for magic, and with that gift she was able to enter the Royal Magic Academy, a school reserved exclusively for noble young ladies.
As befit a school for noble ladies, the tuition was astronomical... but she was my fiancée, and I held nothing back. Even her entry into royal high society required a great deal of money and no small amount of lobbying, yet I never gave up. I did whatever it took for her sake.
In the end, Charlotte began to win recognition from the royal family and was treated as true royalty at last. That my fiancée had been acknowledged like that—I celebrated it as if it were my own triumph.
I poured out all my youth and all my passion, and I lost every last scrap of our family's wealth. But watching them succeed, I felt nothing but a swelling pride.
Then, one day, the Demon King's Army began to run rampant, invading country after country. Countless people were sacrificed, and nation after nation vanished into history.
But our kingdom—the Erinas Kingdom—endured.
The reason was none other than our Hero Party.
Once Reyna, Claire, and Charlotte began clashing with the Demon King's Army, I couldn't simply sit still—not when I was so worried for them. I went to the royal palace to protect them. That was how the four of us formed the Hero Party, and we began to distinguish ourselves enormously in the war against the Demon King's Army.
Their fame soared higher with every passing day. As for me... standing at the very front with nothing but a shield, taking every attack—it was truly agonizing. But the sense of justice in helping innocent people, and the knowledge that I was fighting alongside them, filled me with a profound emotion.
As long as I was with them, strength welled up in me even in the most extreme crises, even on the brink of death. That was how precious, how special they were to me.
This one life of mine—I can give it for the peace of the world, for the kingdom, for them.
Those happy days living in the royal palace as a member of the Hero Party felt as if they would go on forever.
But...
Then, one day—
This maid...! She was a spy!!
I managed to catch and deal with a spy from the Demon King's Army who had infiltrated the palace disguised as a maid. While disposing of her belongings, I happened to come across a peculiar cloak.
What is this?
I examined it and found it was a most unusual magical artifact. The moment I draped it over my shoulders, my body began to turn transparent.
An invisibility cloak?
If I moved from the spot, the invisibility would break. Instead, it could teleport me to locations designated in advance.
These places... they're all inside the royal palace!
It was a special artifact that let you spy in secret while remaining invisible.
So she'd been using this to peek inside the palace?
I was checking the various designated locations when I saw her.
Charlotte.
Who is she talking to? Ah—that's Prince Leo.
Charlotte was speaking with her cousin, Prince Leo.
Leo asked her a question.
"A marriage proposal came in from a prince of the neighboring kingdom. What are you going to do?"
"Don't know. I'm not doing it."
"Don't tell me... you're planning to marry that Hero, Dale?"
At Leo's question, I swallowed hard, hanging on Charlotte's answer.
The answer that followed was—
......?
"Why would I marry some nobody from a fallen rural barony?"
Leo's face was openly puzzled.
"What? You two are always glued together. I figured there was something going on."
"So that's all it was?"
"Well, thanks to him I did manage to get the royal family to recognize me. Besides, our Erinas Kingdom has stabilized quite a bit, hasn't it? The royal treasury's in much better shape, too."
It was her true heart—and it was devastating.
"That shield I gave Dale? I told him it was a treasure passed down through the royal family for generations, but it was just a cheap piece of junk I bought at a local smithy. He fought so happily with that thing. It was hilarious."
I had been nothing more than one of the chess pieces the royal family used. She had been using me like a sucker for her own success and profit.
It can't be... everything they showed me all this time was a lie?
Before I could even pull myself out of the shock, another place came into view.
That's... Claire?
Thanks to the Hero Party's outstanding exploits, Claire was now venerated as the Saintess of the Goddess Cult. She was speaking with archbishops of the Cult who were visiting the palace for the first time in a while.
"Lady Claire. Saving all those villages this time has brought a tremendous number of new faithful into the Goddess Cult."
"That's all thanks to the Hero, Dale."
"Battlefield missionary work like this isn't a bad approach, but isn't it rather dangerous?"
"There's nothing to worry about at all. Dale's body is sturdy enough as it is. If he gets hurt, we simply heal him, and that's that."
"And if he were to die..."
The real way she spoke—this girl I had thought of as nothing but pure—was ice-cold. She seemed to regard me as little more than a consumable.
So even if I die, that's all it amounts to...?
I couldn't help but be shaken by how two-faced she was. Every ounce of trust I had placed in her felt as if it were crumbling away.
That's impossible... she thought of me like that?
Then the next location.
There, Reyna's subordinates were celebrating her promotion to Knight Captain—a promotion earned on the back of the Hero Party's exploits.
"Congratulations, Captain! But that Dale guy... he actually seems to think you respect him. He's always throwing himself in at the very front."
"Leave him be. He's convenient to use."
"Well, that's true."
"Give him a little smile and he'll do whatever you ask. Not that he can do anything except stand in front with a shield."
"Can't argue with that."
Reyna seemed to think nothing of the fact that I stood at the very front with a shield, staking my life on every defense. Together with the other knights, they were all laughing at me behind my back, treating me as nothing more than a sucker to be worked.
Even you, Reyna... I believed in you more than anyone. How could you do this to me.
After I had seen all three places and returned to my original position, the invisibility cloak—its mana spent—lost its power.
"..."
For a while, I couldn't collect myself.
The smiles they showed me... the way they acted... all of it was a lie?
I had believed they felt grateful to me—the one who had sacrificed more than anyone, always at the front.
I had believed they thought of me as someone precious, someone they could trust.
I had thought they liked me...
Behind my back, they had only ever treated me as a sucker.
How could they do that to me...
In the end, the betrayal cut so deep that I decided to leave the royal palace—Hero or not.
"I'm done."
Startled by my sudden declaration, they spoke with those disgusting masks still on their faces.
"What are you talking about?"
"What suddenly brought this on? Let's talk about it together."
"You're leaving? Why? For what possible reason?"
Shamelessly, they began grabbing at me.
"Think it over."
"Please, remember all the precious memories we've shared."
"This isn't like you. What's going on?"
"..."
I stripped off the armor I was wearing and the shield I carried, and threw them down at their feet.
I walked away without a shred of mercy, and they seemed so stunned they couldn't find the words to follow.