The Disciple Knows
…Strange.
“I’ve been sleeping way too soundly these days…”
The most common occupational disease among mercenaries was trouble with sleep. You simply stopped being able to fall into a deep rest. Night was an opportunity for your own side—but it was just as much an opportunity for the enemy. A night raid could just as easily come from your allies as from your foes. That was why any mercenary with real experience learned to stay wary of the dark. In other words, failing to sleep deeply was only natural. Even after retiring, I still couldn’t manage a proper night’s rest. And now that I wasn’t alone—now that I had a child to look after—it was only more natural that I couldn’t sleep deeply.
Yet lately I had been sleeping far too well, almost as if some magic had been cast on me. If magic had forced me into sleep, though, the fatigue should have piled up rather than melted away; that was how forced sleep worked. Sure, an extraordinarily high-level mage putting extraordinary care into the spell might manage something different… but the idea was so far removed from reality that I could only shake my head.
“And you, little one—you seem to get more radiant by the day.”
Every time I woke up, the egg looked glossier somehow. Was it just because it was still growing?
I was doing everything I could to learn, but almost nothing about dragon eggs had been left behind for the present day, so there were hard limits to what I could figure out.
Unbidden, the final conversation I had shared with the soul of the last Dragon Lord rose in my mind.
—A dragon egg is a perfect being. Just stay by its side and care for it with genuine sincerity. Playing with it using magic is nice, of course. Pour affection into the care, then toss in a little magic playtime now and then. That’ll do.
The way he had smiled so breezily, as if to say Easy, right?…
If I could have, I would have punched him right then and there.
It wasn’t strange, really.
He was a dragon, after all.
A perfect being that could use magic just by breathing—of course he would have solved every problem with magic alone. So even if he had wanted to teach a human how to raise a dragon egg, he simply couldn’t have. Still… who in their right mind would call that parenting advice? If you wrote that down as a childcare diary and showed it to anyone, you’d be lucky if they didn’t slap the whole thing across your face while shouting, “You have no right to be a parent!”
“Haa. Guess I’ll just keep doing my best again today.”
Once more I steeled myself—lost as I still was—and resolved to try something, anything, for the sake of that tiny child.
“Welcome back.”
“You should have rested.”
“I’m fine.”
Once again, Grand Mage William was waiting to greet Sera when she returned by spatial magic after spending time with the dragon egg in secret from Jade. Riel had already fallen asleep with William’s daughter Ely, and Leo—exhausted beyond his limits by the training that pushed him past every boundary—had collapsed into bed and dropped off the instant his head hit the pillow.
“Is the dragon egg all right?”
“Yes. It’s a good kid.”
William felt a quiet wave of relief. Thankfully, the dragon egg seemed to have won his lord’s favor. He was genuinely glad it could end without bloodshed. But once the relief settled, a new worry rose in its place.
“But… will it truly be all right?”
“What?”
“No matter how you look at it, it’s a dragon.”
The most perfect beings in this world.
The strongest race—so powerful that even the demonkin, who would do anything to drive the world to ruin, had never dared to touch them. For a human to raise one was clearly no simple matter. It was no joke: a hatchling’s playful magic could kill a person without anyone finding it strange. Remembering the overwhelming presence William himself had felt from the egg, he knew it was anything but exaggeration.
“I figured as much, so I’ve already started educating it. Don’t worry.”
“…….”
William immediately pictured Leo’s training regimen… Sera was the kind of person who deliberately ground a kid into the dirt over and over and then casually called it “training.” And now that same Sera was talking about education… Was it any wonder that trust simply refused to form? Even though she was the lord to whom he had sworn loyalty, William couldn’t help feeling that his own lack of confidence on this particular issue was only natural. Not that he would ever dare voice such a thing to her, of course.
It’s a matter of Master’s safety… so of course my lord will be the most careful about it.
Anything else aside, when it came to her master he could trust her. He had no idea what form the education would take, but at least it would never turn in a direction that harmed Master. That much he could be certain of—and that was enough. He decided to leave it at that.
Dragon education in the first place… Even I, a grand mage, am helpless before a problem like that.
Whatever anyone said, the other party was the strongest race. And the stronger a being was, the higher its pride tended to run. Aside from Jade—who had been acknowledged by the last Dragon Lord—the only human who could even attempt to educate a dragon was his lord. She was monstrously strong, and more than that, she was a “very special existence.”
That was not something he said merely because she was the Hero.
If his guess was correct, his lord was…
“William.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Don’t bother using memory-erasure magic or anything like it. Unless you erase your entire self, you won’t be able to hide it from the demonkin anyway.”
If William had begun to sense Sera’s truth, then Sera, in turn, had already sensed that William was approaching that truth.
“…Then I will do as you say.”
William knew that Sera was a regressor. As a grand mage, he understood better than anyone just how powerful a weapon that was. If his knowledge of that weapon ever reached the Demon King because of him, William was prepared to erase his own self without hesitation. The Sera he had seen was the strongest being in this world. If even she had been defeated and forced to regress… then the Demon King had to be a being on par with the gods themselves. What if such a being learned of the possibility of regression? It would be best if nothing came of it…
But how high were the odds of that? Even William himself, upon learning of regression, had immediately begun thinking “What if? Maybe…?” and spinning out all sorts of schemes. Then what of the Demon King? What of the demonkin? How likely was it that they would learn of regression and simply leave it unused? William was certain the odds were vanishingly low—and that the chance they would find a way to exploit it was anything but small.
If it had never happened once, that would be one thing. But once something had already occurred, there was nothing strange about it happening a second time.
Therefore, keeping the possibility of regression out of enemy hands was the absolute priority. William had reached that conclusion with perfect rationality.
“…….”
“If that truth falls into the hands of the demonkin—more precisely, into the Demon King’s hands—it would be bad, wouldn’t it? That’s why you’ve kept it secret even from Master. In that case, wouldn’t it be better to simply…”
“William.”
“…Yes, my lord.”
“If I were still ‘the old me,’ I might have told you to do exactly that. I might even have drawn your blood with my own hands. Back then I was capable of any wrong choice so long as I could wrap it in the single justification of protecting the world.”
How many lives had she offered up as sacrifices for the sake of saving the world? At first it had not been an easy choice. It had been agonizingly hard and painful. But the more she did it, the more she adapted. The coward who once trembled at the sacrifice of a single person eventually reached ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand… In the end, no matter how many people died, the weight of those lives felt like nothing more than numbers. Adaptation made everything feel light; later it stopped even remaining in memory.
When she came to her senses, she was already calculating efficiency while sacrificing people. She had broken so thoroughly that she could think it was fine as long as she reached her desired goal efficiently, no matter how many lives were lost. Only far too late did Sera realize that another name for adaptation was collapse. And even after all of that, she had still failed to kill the Demon King. She had failed to save the world. She who had spilled so much blood under the banner of saving the world had never achieved the one goal that truly mattered. And she could not even remember the faces of those she had used as sacrifices.
That was why she knew.
You could tell yourself it was good to sacrifice a hundred to save ten thousand… but that was a vicious trap. Because a person adapted to sacrificing those hundred. And once you adapted and repeated the process, the number of sacrifices easily surpassed ten thousand. Having seen the end of that road, Sera could declare it with certainty: humans were mad enough to adapt even to something that insane.
“William. No one follows a person who refuses to carry the burden.”
“…….”
“The moment I sacrifice you for my own comfort, I lose the right to call myself a Hero.”
A Hero was a being who led people.
Walking at the very front was not for the sake of defeating the Demon King alone. It was for the sake of carving a path that others could walk. That was why a Hero had to defeat the Demon King and, at the same time, lead people. If you intended to fight alone, to kill the enemy alone, to stand alone in solitary supremacy—then you were not a Hero. You were nothing more than a Demon King. And that was not the path of a Hero.
That simple, obvious truth—
Sera had forgotten it.
Wandering through endless regressions, she had lost sight of it.
The only reason she could recall that obvious truth again
was because she had met Jade.
Without him, she would still have been wandering, still forgetting that simple fact.
But she had met Jade, and through him she had remembered something so obvious it should never have been forgotten. That was why she could not make William a sacrifice. She must not. More than anything, Sera herself did not want to.
“Taking a father away from his daughter is the Demon King’s role—not the Hero’s.”
She was a Hero.
She was a being who must protect, not one who sacrificed others and led them to death.
That was why she would not kill William. She would not make him a sacrifice. She would not abandon him.
The danger created by William reaching the truth? She would carry that as well. That was the natural choice for a Hero.
“And more than anything…”
It was not softness. It was not greed.
It was simply this:
“I’m strong.”
She was strong enough to shoulder anything and protect it all. Fighting with Jade’s Aura Heart inside her, she was never weak. She was stronger than anyone. That conviction and resolve formed the pillar that held up her soul.
William bowed his head.
His lord stirred so many thoughts and emotions in him… yet the one person in this world for whom the name “Hero” fit most perfectly was, without question, her.
“I will do my utmost to serve at your side.”
“That’s enough.”
Sera walked forward without hesitation, and William followed behind her.
No matter what anyone said, that retreating figure was the most perfect back of a Hero the world had ever seen.