Chapter 382: Another Hero
Chapter 382: Another Hero
“I’m sure this goes without saying, but I’ll say it just in case. What I’m about to tell you must not be repeated to anyone, anywhere.”
After breakfast, I brought only my party members to my room.
There were too many eyes and ears in the dining hall. It wasn't a suitable place for a secret conversation.
So now, it was just our party members here, with Vanessa standing guard at the door as a bonus.
Originally, I had only planned to consult with Diana or Leia, but I changed my mind along the way.
I felt bad for excluding the other party members, and if I did, I’d have to constantly watch what I said around Silvia and Matilda, which would be a pain.
Most importantly, everyone was already there when I mentioned discovering the giant Magic Stone and the possibility that the dungeon was a fragment of the Demon God.
I decided it was better to just tell them everything and make them promise to keep their mouths shut so rumors wouldn't spread.
It wasn't like Silvia or Matilda were the types to go around blabbing, anyway.
“What on earth are you trying to say?” Matilda asked, looking at me with a tense expression.
With a serious face, I swallowed hard, scanned the faces of everyone looking at me, and then opened my mouth.
“The truth is… Sara is a Hero.”
“…W-What?!”
“Hm. I knew.”
“Eh? Eeeeeh?!”
“W-What did you say?!”
Hm. Just the intense reaction I was expecting. Although, it seems there was one reaction mixed in that was a little different from what I’d anticipated.
“Um… Diana?”
“What is it?”
“You knew?”
“Exactly what I said. Did you really think that after traveling together for so long, I wouldn't be able to recognize a Hero?”
Diana’s tone suggested she was more surprised that we had actually intended to hide it.
“Since you all weren’t saying anything, I kept quiet as well… but you’ve finally revealed it.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner…”
“No. There’s no need to apologize. Revealing that you’re a Hero in this situation couldn’t have been an easy decision.”
“‘This situation’?”
“Hm? You don’t know? It’s widely known that there’s only one Hero left in the world. That’s why the royal family is trying to incorporate the Hero’s bloodline into their own.”
“No, I know that, but…”
“If you know that, then you should be able to guess, can’t you? How much of a headache it would be for another Hero to suddenly appear in the current climate. It wouldn’t end at the level of Sauron Auden. Well, I don’t think we need to worry too much in Miss Sara’s case, though.”
At the mention of Sauron Auden’s name, Sara’s body flinched.
Just as I expected, Diana seemed to know about Sauron Auden as well.
“D-Diana, what do you mean, Sauron Auden?”
“He was a new Hero who appeared suddenly, like a comet, about twenty years ago. Unlike the existing Heroes, he was also handsome, which caused him quite a bit of trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“…Hmph. I wonder if it’s alright to say this in front of Miss Sara.”
At my question, Diana hesitated to answer, glancing at Sara’s expression.
Had she even figured out the connection between Sauron Auden and Sara?
Then again, on top of him being a new Hero who appeared out of nowhere, there was Sara’s reaction just now.
It would be stranger if someone as sharp as Diana hadn’t noticed.
“…It’s fine. Please tell me.”
“I’m telling you, it won’t be as pleasant to hear as you might think.”
“It’s really fine.”
But Sara spoke with a firm expression, as if she had made up her mind.
Until now, Sara had consciously avoided any talk related to her identity, but it seemed she felt she could no longer turn a blind eye to it.
“Hmph. Is that so? Very well. What kind of trouble could a talented and handsome person have? Everyone was scrambling to get involved with him. The daughters of every noble house threw themselves at Sauron Auden. Thanks to that, the provoked existing Hero clan tried to recklessly build up their achievements, and all of them died except for the young Leon Flitus. As for Sauron Auden himself, he was surrounded by countless women and died from sexual exhaustion. In a way, you could say he’s the very reason there’s only one Hero left in the world.”
The answer Diana gave was quite different from what I had expected.
The story I heard from Sara definitely didn't sound like that.
Considering the circumstances, Sauron Auden was almost certainly Sara’s father.
Didn’t Sara say her father was harmed by people who were jealous of his abilities or tried to use him?
“……Died from sexual exhaustion?”
Sara’s voice turned incredibly cold, as if she hadn’t expected Diana’s answer at all.
“Mm. It seems Sauron Auden tried to avoid it at first, saying something about having a lover back home, but in the end, he was corrupted and did nothing but indulge in a life of debauchery… something like that.”
“……Hmph… So he was just a piece of trash who couldn't even control himself.”
Sara. Your eyes are scary. Your voice is scary, too. The aura rippling around you is also scary. Everything about you is terrifying right now.
“Don’t be so hard on him. I only spoke with him briefly when he first appeared, but as I recall, he was a pure and righteous young man with big dreams. He was just too naive. The existing Heroes were mad with jealousy and treated him with hostility, while beautiful women from all over the world threw themselves at him, wanting only his child. I think it was inevitable that he ended up that way.”
Diana’s words were meant to comfort Sara, but they didn’t seem to provide much solace.
I wanted to comfort her as well, but I couldn’t think of the right words.
“So, was the whole point of gathering us here just to tell us that Miss Sara is a Hero? It was certainly surprising, but to gather us all like this just for that…”
“R-Right! That wasn’t what I was originally going to talk about! Sara being a Hero is just the prelude!”
Nice one, Matilda! So you can be useful in this way, too!
If I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say, then the best thing to do was change the subject so Sara would stop thinking about it.
I sent Matilda a look filled with praise.
In response, Matilda’s eyes grew increasingly hazy as she looked back at me.
Hey. You’re getting like that from just this?
“Yes. You need to tell us what you heard from that Hero.”
“Hm? Heard from that Hero? What do you mean?”
“What? Yesterday, Guwon, you dueled with the Hero and had a talk…” “Ah. Leia, wait.”
“Huh? Was I not supposed to say that? To talk about what you’re going to say now, you have to mention this part…”
No, you’re right about that, but…
The timing for revealing that right now is a little bad, you could say.
“…You. Do you remember what I told you about not causing trouble?”
See?
“…Y-Yeah. Of course. I didn’t cause any trouble.”
“Then what, exactly, was the duel?”
“A… a passionate conversation between men, shared through the flesh?”
“Are you messing with me right now?! You punished me for my mistake, and yet you go and do something like that?! What kind of man are you?!”
“‘Something like that’?”
“……No. It’s nothing.”
Diana dodged Leia’s question, but her eyes, fixed on me, were blazing.
They seemed to say, Just you wait until we’re alone.
“Haaah… So. What did you end up talking about?”
But deciding that the conversation was more important for now, Diana took a deep breath to compose herself and spoke again in a calm tone.
“Ah, right. That guy Leon. Turns out his race is Majin.”
“Hm? In that case…”
Diana’s gaze naturally shifted to Sara.
Did she remember what I’d asked her about before? She really does have a good memory.
“Yeah. The same race as Sara. Same Hero, same Majin. Seems like there’s something there, don’t you think? Besides, now that we think the giant Magic Stone, which could be the dungeon’s core, might be a fragment of the Demon God, the race name ‘Majin’ is too on-the-nose to ignore. That’s why I tried to get information out of the Hero.”
“So that’s why you dueled… I understand, but at least when I was… No. We’ll talk about that later. So, the fact that you’ve gathered us all here means you found something out, right?”
“Yeah. The thing is…”
I once again explained the story I’d heard from Leon, along with my own speculation.
Come to think of it, I think Leon told me never to tell anyone else this, but oh well. It can’t be helped.
It’s not like my girls are the type to go around blabbing.
“…Hmph.”
“…So that’s what happened.”
After I finished the long explanation, the reaction was surprisingly less intense than I’d thought.
I expected our resident angel to at least pull Sara into a comforting hug.
“But Guwon, I don’t think anything will happen to Miss Sara, do you?”
Instead, our angel said something like that in a calm voice.
“Huh? But Leia, like I just said…”
“Yes. I understand that logically, there is a possibility. But Guwon, aren’t you forgetting an important fact?”
“An important fact?”
“Yes. Your conversation with the Goddess. Do you remember? The Goddess clearly said this: making a Hero an Apostle was the greatest possible achievement.”
“She did… she certainly said that, but why is that…”
“Think about it. If something were to happen to Miss Sara’s body as you predict, there’s no way the Goddess would have sounded so happy, right?”
“No, but what if that’s what the Goddess wants? What if, in order to completely annihilate the Demon God, it needs to descend into this world? Then the person who will become its vessel must also reach the depths of the dungeon with me. So maybe she was happy that the groundwork for that had been laid…”
“Hey! You!”
“Just a moment, Cardinal Matilda. I’ll handle this. Guwon.”
“Yeah.”
“The Goddess isn’t that cruel. The condition for an Apostle Appointment is that the person must love you, right? To use someone’s happiness, and not just any happiness but the emotion of love, to play such a game… The Goddess would never do something like that.”
“It’s just as Leia says! What on earth do you think of the Goddess?!”
Leia looked at me with unwavering eyes as she spoke, and Matilda, standing next to her, looked genuinely angry at my remark.
I guess that wasn’t something to say in front of priestesses who follow the Goddess.
“Ah, right. Sorry.”
I apologized for the time being, but I couldn’t shake my suspicions.
No matter how you looked at it, the Goddess had some intention for sending me to this world.
Is it really okay to just keep advancing through the dungeon like this, without any countermeasures?
“Hmph. I understand what you’re trying to say, but this time, I agree with Miss Leia and Miss Matilda.”
Noticing that I still wasn’t fully convinced, even Diana looked at me and said as much.
“Think about it. I find it impossible to believe that the Goddess who taught us the emotion of love would toy with that very emotion. We’re talking about a god, not a person.”
Is that so? I guess that makes sense. Maybe I was overthinking it.
A goddess wouldn’t mess around with the very domain she governs.
“So, I don’t think you need to worry so much about Miss Sara. In the first place, the fact that she’s here right now means her ancestors also forsook that Demon God, doesn’t it? The idea of the Demon God descending into Miss Sara’s body is, no matter how you think about it, a bit of a stretch. So, you and Miss Sara shouldn’t worry too much. More importantly…”
Diana looked back and forth between me and Sara, reassuring us, before taking a breath and continuing.
“The fact that the Demon God’s existence has been confirmed is the bigger problem. It seems your guess that you were brought to this world for a matter related to the Demon God was correct.”
Right. I’d been so worried about Sara that I’d paid less attention to it, but the potential danger to Sara wasn’t the only problem.