The True Enemy
The door to the private meeting room burst open.
"S-sorry I'm late."
I let out a soft chuckle and stood up from my seat. "You're here?"
I brushed a strand of hair behind my ear as I walked over to the Hero. The Hero suddenly gasped and took a step back. "What's wrong?"
His reaction was strange. "N-nothing..."
I patted him on the shoulder. "You said you took public transit, right? It's easy to get delayed. Come on, sit down."
For some reason, his movements were incredibly sluggish. "Is something wrong?"
I asked out of genuine concern, but he avoided my gaze without saying a word. "Hmm..."
Catching sight of his slightly flushed earlobes, the reason suddenly clicked. "Hehe~ Don't tell me you're flustered by my breathtaking beauty?"
What was with this adorable reaction? The Hero wasn't exactly young, but the way he was acting was just too cute.
"Pfft!" He choked, utterly scandalized by my teasing.
Anyway, once the Hero got his coffee, we sat down and began to chat quietly. We had so much to catch up on.
"To think those two had a baby..."
Hearing news about our old comrades from the Hero's party was especially entertaining. Apparently, Aina and Balder had continued hunting demons alongside the Hero, while Marcus and Liselotte tied the knot immediately after the Demon King was defeated...
"Well, those two basically had that kind of vibe ever since we were traveling together."
At first, they didn't get along at all. A mage and a barbarian—they were so different they might as well have been from different species. But after crossing the line between life and death countless times, they grew close. Honestly, they had no choice. How could Liselotte not fall for Marcus when he threw his body on the line to guard the backline for her time and time again? Slowly but surely, she opened her heart, and they grew closer. It was so obvious that even those of us watching from the sidelines knew. We all took it for granted that they would get married.
"It's a shame I missed their wedding." Since it was the wedding of heroes, I imagined it must have been quite grand.
"Actually, the wedding was quite modest," Yu Jin said.
"Really?"
"The circumstances being what they were..."
Ah, that made sense. Even though the Demon King had fallen, it was a chaotic period of post-war reconstruction, and the threat of the remaining demons still loomed...
"Liselotte must have been disappointed."
"Actually, she preferred it that way..."
Was that so? When it came to weddings, wasn't grander always better? I wouldn't really know. Back when I was a man, I had never once given marriage any serious thought, and now, I had no idea if I'd ever even be able to get married... Still, listening to stories of the Other World was always fascinating.
"So you even defeated a Legion Commander... You really went through a lot."
"It was just what had to be done."
Perhaps. But even so, the Hero's hard work deserved praise. I quietly stood up from my seat and reached out. The Hero looked at me with a bewildered expression, then squeezed his eyes shut. I wasn't entirely sure why he did that, but I went ahead and gently patted his head anyway.
"Good job. You worked so hard." I praised him, offering my commendation to the Hero who had suffered and strived so much.
"Saintess..." Oh, he was blushing. Well, I suppose being treated like this would be embarrassing for a grown man. Feeling mischievous, I kept stroking his hair. The Hero's face was turning redder by the second.
"Y-your breasts are bouncing, so please... please stop."
Only then did I realize my posture. Because I was leaning forward and reaching out, gravity had taken hold of my breasts, causing them to dangle downward. The problem was that, given their massive size, they were making their presence very, very known.
"Oh my, how embarrassing." I felt a tiny bit of shame. But the Hero's reaction was just too entertaining to pass up.
"Fufu, quite a sight, isn't it?" I straightened my posture and proudly puffed out my chest.
"W-what are you doing?!"
"Why? Don't you like what you see?"
"H-have you no shame? No modesty at all?!" The Hero couldn't even open his eyes properly, utterly flustered.
This was fun. So much fun. His reactions were top-tier.
"Saintess, you weren't like this before... Why have you changed so much?"
Hmm... True, back in the other world, I would never have played around like this. We didn't have the luxury of time for jokes, and every single day was a battle for survival. This was only possible because I had returned to Earth and finally had some breathing room.
"Tsk, you're no fun." I sank back into my chair and crossed my legs.
"Whew..." The Hero let out a deep sigh and chugged his iced coffee.
"But seriously, don't you think my outfit is pretty?"
"Pfft." The Hero barely managed to hold back the coffee he was about to spit out, quickly covering his mouth with a napkin. He hurriedly cleaned up.
"So, what's your answer?"
He hesitated for a moment before speaking.
"You look incredibly beautiful. It suits you well."
"Hmph..." His compliment instantly put me in a good mood.
After that, we shifted back to a more serious conversation. We talked about our lives since returning to Earth. The Hero had been gone for seven—no, eight years, so he apparently spent about a month struggling just to adapt to how much the world had changed.
"Especially smartphones... I never expected them to advance this much."
Smartphones, huh... My gap was even wider.
"I was gone for ten years. For me, the world had literally turned upside down."
"Was it that bad?"
I had been summoned before the Gate incidents ever started appearing.
"Before the Gates... You must have had a really hard time adjusting."
"Tell me about it! Especially when I first returned to Earth and found myself inside a Gate... I seriously thought I'd been dropped into yet another fantasy world."
We cursed that damn Goddess together as our conversation flowed naturally. The Hero watched me with a warm, gentle smile. Then, something suddenly crossed my mind.
"Ah, now that I think about it, there's something I absolutely have to tell you..."
I had been having so much fun chatting about random things with him that I almost forgot again. Since it was fresh in my mind, I needed to bring it up now.
"What is it?"
The matter of the other world appearing inside the Gates...
"That place showed up inside a Gate."
It was hard to explain it coherently, but the most important thing was getting the core message across.
"So... you're saying the world we were in has manifested inside the Gates?"
It sounded like an absolute lie, but it was the truth.
"For now, the ones I've personally confirmed are the Elves' Great Forest and the Millennium Ancient City."
The Great Forest was a place the Hero had helped conquer, so he would be familiar with it...
"And the Millennium Ancient City is the place you purified before I was summoned, right?"
Those places existed in a state from the other world before we had dealt with them. Unbelievable as it was...
"What on earth could be causing such a phenomenon..."
Naturally, the Hero didn't have any answers either. We could only speculate, keeping various possibilities open.
"Could the Demon King be the one interfering with Earth as well?" The Hero made a truly absurd suggestion.
"Yu Jin, you were the one who defeated the Demon King."
"I know... but when I struck down the Demon King, something felt off."
He had felt the sensation of slicing through the Demon King with the Holy Sword, and he had witnessed his complete annihilation. Yet, for some reason, he couldn't shake the feeling that the Demon King hadn't truly been defeated.
"I know it sounds crazy, but..."
He had traveled far and wide while subjugating the demons, and there had been absolutely no trace of the Demon King left in the other world.
"What if... he came to Earth?"
That... I fell into deep thought. Was such a thing even possible? But my suspicion only grew. After all... hadn't the World Tree left me with a message?
"The true enemy is not the Demon King...?"
"What do you mean by that?"
I told him about the voice of the World Tree I had heard when we subjugated it in the Great Forest.
"The World Tree said that? There was nothing like that back when we fought it."
"Maybe it couldn't tell us back then because the World Tree was already dead? The Great Forest we saw in the Gate was from a time before we invaded."
It sounded completely absurd, but if the Gates had somehow peeled away and preserved a slice of the past... if it was from a time when the World Tree was still alive...
Hearing my explanation, the Hero fell into contemplation.
"If the enemy isn't the Demon King, then what is it?"
How should I know? I was about to reply, but instead, I pretended to ponder. If it wasn't a king...
"A god?"
"Pardon?"
"I mean, the only being capable of doing something like this would be a god."
My thoughts leaned toward the idea that the demons might have their own deity.
"A god of the demons?"
"Isn't it possible...?"
It was just a hypothetical, but what if there existed a god of the demons who was far more powerful than the Demon King? What if this was the work of divine power?
"And that demon god is the one responsible for the other world appearing in the Gates?"
"I'm just saying it's a possibility."
Nothing was certain.
"I really don't know..."
I also informed him of the changes in the Gate occurrences. It wasn't confirmed, but there was a shocking trend: ever since I returned to Earth, Gates had been appearing at a much higher frequency...
"It makes no sense for the Saintess to be the cause..."
No matter how much the Hero and I—both of us being action-oriented fighters—wracked our brains, we couldn't find an answer.
"Let's stop thinking about such difficult and complicated things!"
"Saintess...?"
"And as for how you address me, I'm not the Saintess anymore. I'm Nix. Just like you're Yu Jin instead of the Hero, I have a proper name now too."
"R-right... N-Nix..."
To be fair, back then, I didn't have a name. So the Hero had spent over seven years calling me "Saintess." It was bound to feel awkward.
"So the origin of your name is the Goddess?"
"Yeah... since this body is basically like the Goddess's daughter, in a way."
My surname, Hemera, was the Goddess's actual name, and Nix was derived from her epithet. Even if she was a goddamn goddess...
As the Hero and I lost ourselves in conversation, lunchtime slipped past us unnoticed.
"Ah, it's already past lunchtime."
The Hero must be hungry too, right?
"What do you want to eat for lunch?"
"Well..."
It seemed he hadn't given it any thought.
"Honestly... a guy who acts like that won't be popular with girls, you know?"
When I crossed my arms and spoke with a playful pout, the Hero panicked.
"S-should we head out first?"
"Let's do that."
Even when it came to paying for our drinks at the cafe, we had a minor squabble over who would foot the bill.
"I'll pay. I have plenty of money."
The Hero had only been back on Earth for a short while, and how much could he possibly make doing manual labor?
"Still, the man should be the one to pay for things like this."
"That's gender discrimination."
In the end, I was the one who paid. Or rather, the Hero gave up once he heard how much money was sitting in my bank account.
"I guess Hunters really do make a lot of money."
"Speaking of which, Yu Jin, you should become a Hunter too. You still have all your strength."
"Seeing you makes me consider it."
Oh...!
"If you don't have a guild in mind, you should join the Murim Alliance."
"I'll have to think about that."
Fair enough...
We wandered aimlessly around the area, looking for a restaurant. But nothing really caught our eye. It wasn't easy to choose.
And for some reason, the Hero was being contrarian, shooting down every single suggestion I made... What on earth was his problem?