The Hero Party Wants You
The sky of the Azure Heavens reveals all things.
The spring water cascading through the depths of a valley. The hurried footsteps of someone racing through the city. Even the twitching antennae of a tiny ant far below.
A light that looks down upon everything.
That is why it mixes with nothing, and sits above all else.
But the sky of the Crimson Night is different.
A sky filled with red dusk. The slowly approaching night embraces everything.
The middle-aged man collapsed and weeping in a drunken stupor deep in the night. The wild beast tearing at meat with thick blood smeared around its mouth. The breath thick with nothing but instinct, bodies overlapping as they hungrily seek each other's passion.
Ugliness. Cowardice. Disgust. Devastation.
Darkness embraces everything from the lowest place of all, and hides it.
That is why it is darkness. That is why anything can mix within it.
"It didn't heal. Not even a single graze healed."
But darkness only ever embraces.
"...This is a dangerous ability."
Overcoming what it holds is always one's own responsibility.
That is the difference between light and darkness.
Light lays everything bare—and on top of that, it hands you the power to go further still.
Darkness embraces everything—but overcoming it must always be your own burden to bear.
The infinitely terrifying light of hope, and the infinitely cradling shadow of despair.
If hope gives a person strength, despair gives a person rest.
If hope kills a person by drying them out, despair kills a person by letting them rot.
"...Sunwoo."
"...Papa."
And so they both turned to me and said—
"What're you gonna do, mm? / What are you going to do?"
Hope and despair.
Choosing between them is something only a human can do.
Sunwoo said nothing. He simply, quietly, drew the two of them into his arms.
"Yeah. Like someone with my luck was ever going to hit S-Class."
"....Idiot. Without this body around, you'd clearly go and do something stupid again. So this body will keep an eye on you, mm."
"....Nox will do anything—anything at all—for Papa!"
After all, a human is only human because they carry both despair and hope.
Nox's ability.
The things I'd been half-doubting now had a clear answer.
"Put simply, it's like this, mm."
No matter how pure a Spirit Contractor's mana may be, that power can never quite reach the level of nature itself.
So when a spirit takes that mana and puts it to use, there is always some loss.
To reduce that loss, a Spirit Contractor strives to keep their soul as pure as possible—but.
"You can think of it as a kind of lubricant, mm."
With Nox, that effort isn't necessary.
Darkness, after all, is that which embraces all things.
So even if there's some discrepancy, she reprocesses my mana so it can be used regardless—ignoring the difference entirely.
In other words... this is entirely thanks to Nox's power. Not because I've grown.
"Don't go thinking weird things, mm. Even with her coming in, the mana vessel itself got wider, didn't it?"
I had grown.
If I hadn't contracted with Nox, I'd probably grown enough to aim for S-Class.
"One Upper Spirit, several Intermediate Spirits, and Lower Spirits and bottom-tier spirits too numerous to count on your fingers. You contracted with all of them and the total capacity of your mana vessel still increased—Sunwoo did everything he could, is what I think, mm."
"...Hearing it like that, I almost feel a little more confident."
"If Nox hadn't cut you some slack and you'd contracted properly, it would've ended with Nox alone."
".........."
The confidence that had been about to take root was snipped off in an instant—vanity and arrogance cut clean at the bud.
Right. No matter how high a mediocrity jumps, they're still below a genius.
"And it's not like there are only upsides, either. Right, mm?"
"...Uuuu."
Nox pouted, clearly unwilling to admit it, but eventually continued Hecate's point as if she had no choice.
"Nox can only ever cover for you. Papa still has to bear the full burden himself. That's true."
"Hah. Damn it."
Things that were never meant to mix had mixed.
And every bit of the resulting strain piled up in Sunwoo's body.
Until now, his mana had been relatively pure on its own, and he hadn't pushed himself too hard, so it hadn't shown—but...
"I'm sorry, Papa. Nox isn't good enough..."
"It's fine. It just means I live the way I always have."
If I tried to seize power beyond what the old me had held, I'd have to be ready for my body to fall apart.
Just like that test orc that died on the spot after bleeding from all seven orifices.
...Thinking about that orc makes my stomach hurt all over again.
They'd reduced the damages, saying the examiners were partly at fault too—but I still had to pay some compensation.
The one silver lining was that I apparently didn't have to reimburse them for the equipment used in the test.
"For better or worse."
They'd said I'd gone too far myself, so that part was left to their discretion.
Well, any reduction is a win as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway. That was the situation.
Name:Kim Sunwoo (Male)
Age:28
Class:Spirit Contractor (A+)
"...Fuuuuuck."
Somewhere between genius and monster.
The wall of the monsters was disgustingly high.
"...???"
Heading back to the training center—yeah, right.
I'd gotten my ability evaluation done, so I was clocking out with nothing left on the schedule. On the way, a single banner caught my eye.
The Hero's face plastered on it at full size, and around him the faces of a Spirit Contractor, a Rogue, a Supporter, and even a Mage.
Written underneath: they were apparently planning to form a second Hero Party, or something like that.
And of course Sea's nowhere to be seen.
For someone supposedly scouted as a mage, the mage slot was still occupied by the existing member.
Well, a rolling stone doesn't easily knock the original stone out of place.
"Still, this is kind of a big deal."
The Hero Party had never once recruited successors before.
And now, of all times—right when we were about to start something new—they decide to start hiring?
Something smelled off. It felt a little too convenient to write off as coincidence.
"Hello? Hyewon? You busy right now?"
"Judging by the fact that you're calling me right now... did you see it?"
"Hard to pretend you didn't notice something plastered that huge across the street."
In terms of pure visual impact alone—
—it wasn't much different from that.
"I saw it too. I'm looking into it."
"If you say you're handling it, I don't really have much to add, but..."
I quietly waited for whatever Hyewon was about to say next.
"...Just a guess, but. It does seem like they're targeting us."
"Figured as much?"
"If there's anything unusual, it's that most of the people who passed the paperwork stage are women. Especially—even if their abilities are lacking, as long as they look good, they seem to get through without much trouble."
"..........."
Come to think of it, the Hero Party was...
"Also known as the Hero's harem party."
"...Hmmm."
Not the Hero Party—more like Produce 101.
But you couldn't just brush it off, not with the Hero Party's track record.
"Their growth rate alone is insane."
"Even more than the NTR Party, on that front."
The NTR Party had been something of an underdog story too—climbing up from the bottom.
But the Hero Party? You could almost say they'd deliberately gathered people who'd been stuck at F-Class and built a party out of them.
Things changed once they got famous, sure—but before that, they were a party that routinely showed growth so drastic it looked like the people themselves had been swapped out within a week.
And it wasn't just the Hero.
A lot of the women who came into contact with the Hero were the same way.
"The Hero's sacred sword, huh. Grab it and it just lights right up."
"Ah. About that part, actually...."
According to the circulating rumors, at least—
"The more a woman does it with the Hero, the steeper her power growth gets...."
"...So the sacred sword was actually a sex sword?"
"It's only speculation, though."
"Still, though..."
A crosswalk. Red light.
I rested my hands on the wheel and thought.
...Why?
Sure, parties that mainly run raids tend to replenish their roster often.
In the States, you'll even find cases where four or five sub-parties are nested inside a single party.
Raids are full of people getting hurt and dying, so they're serious about cultivating the next generation.
But—that only applies to ordinary guilds.
The Hero Party was different.
Once they picked their members, they looked after them to the end.
They might add someone every now and then, sure—but they'd never gone around loudly announcing a mass recruitment like this.
I needed to understand what that meant. Its value. Its true intent.
The reason. What's the reason for this?
I stared blankly at the traffic light.
"───? ─, ───"
Hyewon's voice murmured from the other end of the phone.
Honestly, my head still wasn't working right after what Nox had pulled earlier.
Was I just not going to find an answer right now? I was about to let out a light sigh when—
Clunk.
"Huh....?"
The car door suddenly opened.
To the right. Someone slid into the passenger seat and casually buckled the seatbelt like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"I don't know the details, but please be careful too, Oppa. There's no telling what the Hero's side might try."
"...You could've said that a little sooner."
A half-incredulous snort slipped out of me.
"Hello. It's been a while, hasn't it, Party Leader Kim Sunwoo?"
"...That voice. Don't tell me that's Jihye? What... Oppa. It's not, right? It's not that, right?"
Yoo Jihye.
The youngest daughter of the Yuseong Group.
And the Hero Party's backer—and its strategist.
She smiled sweetly and spoke to me.
"I'd like to have a word with you for a moment."
"And if I tell you to get lost?"
"Hmm... a dating scandal between Nature's manager and the Yuseong Group's youngest daughter might start circulating?"
"You think Hyewon would just sit back and watch that?"
"Oh, she'd stop it, of course. But having an article like that drop at such a critical time would be quite entertaining, wouldn't it?"
"For fuck's sake."
Part of me wanted to tell her to go fuck herself—no, to go get fucked—and throw her out, but once she was already in the car, that wasn't realistic....
"...You thought I'd think that, didn't you?"
".........."
The dashcam, you idiot.
I tapped the dashcam with my index finger, and Yoo Jihye's smile only deepened.
"As expected... you're far too good for Unnie, Party Leader."
"I only like virgins."
"What a shame. My rear is still virgin—would that be acceptable?"
"The rear is an exit, not an entrance."
Was it from hanging around the Hero?
The venom soaked into every word was the same as ever, but it felt like she'd grown about three more snakes coiled up in her heart.
And she'd gotten lewder on the side, too. Something halfway between a seductress and a demoness.
"If word gets out that the Hero Party's manager pulled this shit with another party's leader, things would get pretty interesting. Don't you think?"
That was that, and this was this.
I took everything Yoo Jihye had just done to me and reflected it straight back at her.
To which Yoo Jihye smiled and answered—
"I don't mind."
I might die on this next raid anyway.
"...What the hell does that mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like."
Shall we discuss it in more detail at a nearby café?
At Yoo Jihye's invitation, I gave a light nod and answered.
"Do it. Nox. Hecate."
"Excuse me?"
For the record, the passenger seat had already been claimed by two loli spirits.
They'd been extremely displeased from the moment she shoved her way in uninvited, is what I'm saying.
"Move that ass, mongrel."
"Papa's passenger seat belongs to Nox and Big Sis Hecate!"
"Kya—aaaah?!!"
One blast of light-flash.
At the same time, black fog engulfed Yoo Jihye's body.
She was subdued in an instant, thrashing wildly.
"Mmph, mmmph, mmph!"
"Whether you die or not is none of my business."
It's not my life on the line anyway.
I dumped her on the roadside just like that and hit the gas.
"...You're insane."
"Ah. The call didn't hang up?"
I needed to drive again now.
I reached out to end the call when—
"Um. This is sudden, but I think I've fallen for you all over again, Oppa."
"Didn't that happen back at the Academy too?"
"I love you."
"I'll measure your love by the money transferred into my account."
I dropped that garbage line and hung up.
What kind of nonsense is 'I might die going on a raid.'
She was stating the obvious at the level of 'if you drink water, you'll need to pee.'
As a side note.
"Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Yoo Jihye, manager of the Hero Party."
The next day.
She showed up at the training center and formally requested a meeting.
"Hyewon. Explain."
"...I didn't have a choice either."
Because Sea unnie is on the line.