The Incompetent Hero and the Sacred Sword Awakening (6)
"Hero. Please choose. I'll do whatever you wish. Will you save Baekho by making her a vampire's blood kin? Or will you leave her to die as she is?"
"Haa..."
What was so amusing about this?
Lucy beamed at me with a bright smile. That mischievous expression of hers drew a sigh from me before I knew it.
She looked genuinely excited to hear what I'd say, so I raised my hand quietly to meet her expectations.
"?"
"Even bullshit has its limits if you want it to count as personality."
Thwack!
"Kyaah?!"
"Cut the crap. If you can heal her, then heal her while I'm still asking nicely."
"Aww... you're no fun..."
Lucy, after taking a solid smack from me, trudged off toward the royal infirmary with a pouty face.
Seollin watched her go with an uneasy, worried look and spoke up.
"I-Is that okay?"
"How should I know?"
"What do you mean, how should you know? You're the one who told that woman to treat Lady Baekho!"
"I said to heal her if she could. I never said to force it. She's going because she can, right?"
Seollin stared at me in shock at my somewhat irresponsible words. Then she hurriedly grabbed my sleeve.
"Sh-She's a blood fiend! What if she actually turns Lady Baekho into her thrall?!"
"...Huh? You know about vampires?"
"Um?... Ah, no, it's just... I, uh, read some novels from the Western Continent that were translated into Yeom..."
Seollin averted her eyes, cold sweat beading on her forehead.
I fixed her with a long look. Novels from the West, huh... Maybe she'd read something like modern romance fantasy.
"Anyway! Making a Sacred Beast into a thrall would be a disaster!"
"It's fine. She can't."
"??"
Seollin looked at me as if she had no idea what I was talking about.
"Basically, for a vampire to create a thrall, they have to be stronger than the target. Does that girl look stronger than a Sacred Beast to you?"
"Um... no?"
"Right? She can't."
And there was another problem on top of that.
"Do you know the traits of a blood fiend?"
"Traits? Well..."
"The classic ones are weakness to sunlight and weakness to holy power. And what did that girl call herself again?"
"Uh... a priestess of a Western religion... ah."
A vampire and a nun was never a combination that could work in the first place.
Vampires were weak to holy power and sunlight, yet that one was strolling around under the sun without a care in the world. She must have just been talking nonsense.
Even if she had some resistance to sunlight, a vampire's weakness to holy power was common knowledge across countless fantasies. The Queen of Jo had personally said that Lucy had healed her after an assassin's attack, so the use of holy power was an established fact.
In the meantime, Lucy had squeezed her way between the Queen, Baekryeon, and the physicians.
"Pardon me."
"? What brings you here?"
"There seemed to be quite a commotion since morning, so I stopped by out of curiosity. Your Majesty. I hear the Sacred Beast our Hero brought is in a rather dangerous condition... might I take a look?"
"Hmm..."
The Queen's gaze shifted from Lucy to Baekryeon.
Baekryeon, steeped in despair, looked at Lucy with a pitiful expression.
The thread of hope had already snapped. To rejoin a severed thread of hope would take a miracle far greater than ordinary.
"Will it be all right? According to the royal physicians, her vessel has been destroyed and her power is leaking out."
"It'll be fine. To channel a bit of the exposition spirit for a moment—in our homeland, which you call the Western Continent, healing through holy power is the norm. Of course herbal treatments aren't unheard of, but holy power is the standard."
Healing by holy power was essentially a form of restoration—returning a damaged body to the original form remembered by the soul. In other words, holy power acted directly upon the soul itself.
"A vessel of qi is ultimately an invisible spiritual force as well. That being the case, holy power has the exclusive patent on it, wouldn't you say?"
"Confident, aren't you. Are you certain you can heal her? If she worsens, even as the one who healed me, I cannot simply let it stand."
"If it goes wrong, I'll just die to make amends."
"You say that so lightly."
The Queen looked at Lucy's nonchalant declaration with something like disbelief, yet still followed her into the royal infirmary.
"If you're worried, go in after them."
"Huh? You're not going in?"
"Me being there wouldn't help anything anyway... and I've got something to look for..."
"Something to look for?..."
No matter how I thought about it, the Brush Sword was equipment too good to give up on. So even if I couldn't find it, I planned to keep searching little by little while we stayed here.
That evening.
"In the end, nothing to show for it."
I'd failed to find any leads on the dungeon where the Brush Sword was sealed.
"We can't keep staying here forever..."
The Sword Demon's words still weighed on my mind. Of course, with Juzaku around I didn't think there'd be major damage, but you never know. It was about time we started moving anyway.
"May I come in for a moment?"
"?"
Lucy's voice from outside. I had no idea why someone who should be in the infirmary was showing up at this late hour, but I opened the door anyway.
There stood Lucy, looking thoroughly exhausted.
"Why are you here abandoning Baekho?"
"I managed to heal the cracks in her vessel somehow. However... if she overexerts herself, the vessel will collapse again. Faster than before. And when that happens, even pouring elixirs into her to keep her alive won't be an option."
She sure said some blood-chilling things like it was nothing. But seeing that she'd actually managed to heal it, this girl really was competent. Well, she had to be competent to be wandering this far on her own.
"So why come to me?"
"Because as a future companion, I wanted to ask about our next schedule."
"Since when are we companions?"
"From the very moment we first met, of course."
She said it so brazenly that I actually had no comeback.
"And you'll need to undergo the rite of ownership for the Sacred Sword again. As things stand, the Sacred Sword won't function properly."
"...You knew?"
"The Sacred Sword chooses its owner based on the user's soul. A Hero with a soul different from the original would naturally trigger a rejection response. So..."
In that instant, a bewitching light began to gleam in her crimson eyes. At the same time, a foggy sensation washed over my mind. It almost felt like drowsiness was creeping in.
"Have a nice chat with Lady Sacred Sword~"
"You little..."
With those words, my consciousness completely slipped away.
No—saying it slipped away was a bit off. After a brief blackout no longer than a single blink, the space I stood in had become a pure, completely white void.
And standing before me was a little kid who looked thoroughly displeased. Cheeks puffed out, golden hair in twin-tails—a little brat.
"Hah, you're seriously ugly..."
"Wow, leading with a roast on my looks right out of the gate."
"You really don't compare to Leon."
"..."
Leon, out of nowhere. I mean, I was possessing Leon's body, sure.
...?
Somehow my hands looked different. Leon's hands had more calluses on the palms—evidence of the effort he'd put into training with the sword, even if his skill had been lacking. But these hands had nothing. Something I hadn't seen in a very long time...
"My real body?"
"Obviously. This is the mindscape. You manifest not with your physical body, but with the form engraved on your soul."
Ah, then I had to concede the "ugly" comment. Leon might have gotten NTR'd, but he'd at least been decently handsome. Me? I was a genuine, textbook ugly male character.
Anyway, as I was examining my body for the first time in ages, the golden twin-tailed brat from earlier looked at me with contemptuous eyes and spoke.
"I don't understand why the Goddess chose a guy like you. You've got power, but you're completely unsuited to be a Hero. Give Leon's body back right now! Give Leon's soul back too! You fake Hero! Idiot! Hikikomori! Virgin who just sits in his room playing on the computer and jerking off!"
"..."
This little bitch?
More importantly, how did she know words like "hikikomori" and "computer"?
As I stared in confusion, the golden twin-tailed brat stuck out her tongue at me.
"Bleh-bleh-bleh, you're a total loser who can't do anything in his original body~"
"..."
What was I going to do with this little brat?
As I seriously pondered it, I felt a strange vitality surge through my body. Or rather, was "vitality" the right word? More like a throbbing. Looking down, I could see that "thing" of mine was standing at attention.
...Wait, what's wrong with this body?
"A-Are you insane?! Getting lustful over a cute, adorable, lovable little girl like me?! You're the worst kind of pervert!"
"...You're hopeless."
I'd been planning to let it slide, but this mesugaki of a brat needed a proper punishment. And come to think of it, with everything going on because of Baekho, I'd been too busy to take care of things for a while... so maybe some pressure had built up...
"Assume the position, kid."
"Y-You perverted traitor! Get away from me!"
"You said this is my mindscape, right? Then things work the way I think they do, don't they?"
"Hic!..."