Episode 036.
Only a single day had passed since the Order and the kingdom’s proclamation, but
the square before the Kingdom of Ersha was packed so tightly with holy knights, royal soldiers, and countless others that there was no room to set foot.
Knights in silver armor, mercenaries who had flocked in from every land,
and the “true” Heroes who bore the fate of the continent stood at the center.
A total of three armies, led by the Hero of Magic, the Hero of the Spear, and the Hero of the Bow.
Into the gaps of that dazzling formation, Saint candidate Seria and her party members quietly slipped in.
“Now then, we should join the ranks too, right?”
“Right. They said the advance party would depart within the week, so we need to finish preparations before then.”
“Rain, are you done checking your equipment?”
“Not yet.”
“Rain! Why are you so slow? You weren’t like this when Tanas was around…”
Seria raised her voice, pretending it was nothing.
“Hmph, we never needed someone like Tanas in the first place. We’re here, aren’t we?”
“Well, that’s true.”
Arshe nodded as she adjusted the weight of the greatsword and shield slung over her shoulder.
“Ooh… It’s Arshe of the Iron Wall!”
“Look over there! Isn’t that Lady Seria, the Order’s next Saint?”
“Even Lady Lurain, the genius born from the Magic Tower…!!”
“Who’s the other one?”
“Roin… was it? I’m not too sure either.”
As if showing off that they were still alive and well, they acted naturally while surveying their surroundings.
After all, the fame they had built up over all this time was not something that would vanish in a day or two.
But their eyes darted anxiously from place to place.
Ever since Tanas disappeared,
the abundant vitality and mana they had felt within their bodies had drained away like the tide.
Not only that, all of the gods’ blessings formed through the Hero party contract had vanished as well. They could not even guess how much weaker they had become compared to their prime.
But it did not matter.
This time, they were joining the expeditionary force.
“Now, let’s check our assignment too. Arshe, Lurain, hurry.”
Seria moved as if nothing were wrong and headed toward the tent.
“Excuse me, Lord Dmitri. Are we being placed at the rear of the Second Army?”
“…What do you think you’re doing?”
Hero Dmitri adjusted his glasses and looked at Rain with a cold gaze.
Rain’s expression stiffened at those contempt-filled eyes.
“No, since we’re about to set out on the expedition. Is it the Third Army? It seems our names are missing from the roster…”
“The roster?”
A moment later,
Dmitri let out a snort of laughter.
“What nonsense are you talking about? Your ‘Hero of Healing, Tanas’ has been proven innocent, hasn’t he?”
Dario, who had been standing beside him, snorted and slammed the butt of his spear against the ground.
“Hey, do you still not understand the situation? That healing shuttle cleared his name, right? Then that means you’re back to being the Hero of Healing’s party.”
“Pardon?”
That meant they were to take charge of the Fourth Army.
“It has nothing to do with us, so handle it yourselves.”
“You can’t just leave like this…! With our abilities, we’d be far more useful than some half-baked adventurers or holy knights…”
When Rain shouted, Dmitri turned back with an icy gaze.
“Ah… abilities, you say? To be honest, I was always puzzled by how you managed to subjugate monsters and repel the Demon King’s army all this time.”
“What? What are you saying right now?”
“I’ll be honest. I always hated Tanas, with his lowly blood… So I felt sorry for you, being in the same party as him.”
“Then why would you say something like…”
“But now I see Tanas wasn’t the only piece of trash. Trash of the same kind flocking together… it was a kind of garbage bin, really.”
“Heh heh heh… Well said.”
“……!!”
“H-how dare you say something so rude…! If the Order hears of this…”
“Ah, my apologies, Saint candidate. I misspoke. Please forgive me generously. …Though I do wonder how long you’ll remain in that position…”
The Hero of the Spear sneered.
“Heh heh… You’ve got a way with words.”
“Let’s go, Dario. This is a waste of time.”
As if they were not even worth answering, the two Heroes turned their backs and disappeared.
The knights and mercenaries who had been quietly listening nearby seemed to have roughly grasped the situation as well, and they whispered among themselves while casting strange looks at them.
“Kh!”
“…What, do they think we can’t do it? Seriously, this is so annoying!”
Lurain stomped her foot and shouted.
“Yeah! Exactly!”
It was true that they had grown weaker since the day Tanas disappeared, but…
Not all of their blessings and power had vanished.
They had no sense of just how much weaker they had become, but had they not once been one of the kingdom’s top parties, counted on one hand?
“Fine. We’ll prove those people wrong. We have to go east anyway, don’t we?”
“That’s right.”
“Before the advance party leaves, we just have to show them that our strength is still intact. They said there was an ogre habitat in the forest beyond that mountain, right?”
“Right. A place where ogre variants appear… It’s perfect.”
Lurain nodded.
“Even a Blood Ogre is only B-rank at best. The four of us can slice them up easily and come back.”
Arshe shouted confidently.
“Let’s go right now!”
“Will it be all right?”
“Of course. Well… we won’t need any preparations, will we? It’s only B-rank.”
Out of anxiety over not knowing how much weaker they had become, they had deliberately chosen a B-rank monster.
Not S-rank or A-rank, but something of this level—they were careless, assuming they could at least handle that much.
The heavy air of the forest pressed down on them.
Normally, they would have moved lightly and pleasantly under the gods’ blessing, [Forest Footwork], but now only the awful dust and the acrid smell of blood stabbed at their noses.
“There they are.”
“Ugh, filthy… There are only two of them. Arshe, you go first.”
At Seria’s signal, Arshe leapt forward, swinging her greatsword.
“I’ll finish this in one blow!”
Her complexion turned ashen in an instant as she tried to unleash her aura to the maximum, just as she always did, and end it in a single strike.
“Kuh, kukh! Cough…! M-mana…!”
The moment she tried to wrap the blade in blue aura, the uncontrolled mana near her heart turned into sharp blades and tore through her blood vessels.
She had not known when Tanas was with them. She had not known that his healing passive and Firm Oath had removed the backlash and purified her mana.
“M-my mana is flowing backward… H-heal me right now… It feels like my body is being torn apart!”
Arshe rolled across the ground and screamed. A faint stream of divine power burst from Seria’s fingertips and entered Arshe’s body.
However,
it was a drop in the bucket.
“Cough…! Se-ria, do it properly!”
A line of blood flowed from the corner of Arshe’s mouth.
“Th-that… healing is difficult… A spell that can heal you all at once takes quite a long time!”
With the Hero’s healing correction gone, Seria was nothing more than an ordinary priest.
Kwaaang—!
Just then, the Blood Ogre sensed the commotion, swung its enormous club, and turned its head.
“Arshe, block it!”
And the giant club descended upon her.
“Kh!”
She raised her shield to block it, but…
Crack—
“Kyaaaaaaak!!”
The sound of ribs shattering echoed through the forest.
Normally, thanks to Firm Oath and the Protection of Indomitability, the impact would have ended as nothing more than a slight stiffness.
“U-uuuugh…!”
But faced with raw pain she had never experienced in her life, her eyes rolled back and she foamed blood at the mouth.
“Rain! Cover her!”
Rain, the ranger, hurriedly drew her dagger and slipped into the Blood Ogre’s blind spot.
Under normal circumstances, with the gods’ blessings and her agile movement correction, not even her shadow would have been visible, but…
“Grrrk?”
Now, it was different.
The Blood Ogre turned its head far too easily and stared at Rain’s shadow.
‘H-huh? Why… why is it looking at me?’
Rain panicked and thrust her dagger, but her movements, half a beat slower than usual, cut through empty air.
Thwack—!
“Kyaaaaaaak!”
The ogre’s huge palm struck Rain across the chest. She barely twisted away and let the blow glance off, but that was only enough to avoid a fatal wound.
Feeling the unmitigated impact as her breastbone caved in, she barely managed to land on top of a tree.
“I-I almost died…”
“Lurain! What about magic? When are you going to use magic?!”
“……”
“What are you going to do?! Hurry! Arshe is going to die!”
At Seria’s scream, the mage Lurain raised her staff.
“By the goddess’s white wings… O spear of flame!”
If there was one fortunate thing, it was that Lurain’s mana itself was respectable.
The problem was that her casting was terribly slow.
An upper-tier spell that would normally have taken only two seconds was still only halfway complete even after a minute had passed.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
“Lurain! Magic! Use the magic right now!”
Whoooosh—the spear of flame pierced the ground.
“Lurain! You couldn’t even hit it?”
Boom—!
“Kyaaaaak! My hands! My hands!”
The mana stone at the end of her staff cracked,
and as the mana exploded backward, both of Lurain’s hands were burned red.
“Seria! Heal! Heaaal!”
She thrashed in pain and rolled across the ground.
“I’m doing it! I’m doing my best too!”
A wave of healing flowed from Seria’s fingertips.
If she had been an ordinary priest, it would certainly have been a decent recovery,
but she was a leading Saint candidate.
Compared to the past, when she could save even a corpse on the verge of death, it was the difference between heaven and earth.
“Grrrrrk—.”
The half-scorched Blood Ogres soon turned their gazes toward the girls.
At the powerlessness they were experiencing for the first time in their lives, all four of them hid behind a large tree.
“H-hiiik—!”
Tears welled in their eyes.
“W-what do we do?”
“Y-you’re the one who said we should go!”
“If I’d known this would happen, we should’ve started with something like slimes…”
“……”
“Gwooooooh!!”
At the moment the Blood Ogre’s club was about to crush them,
Wooooong—
Lurain’s magic tool shone.
Flash!
A pure white flash illuminated the surroundings,
“Grrk?!”
and then everyone vanished.
******
The royal capital of the Kingdom of Ersha.
“We’re alive?!”
“Wh-what? Why?”
They looked around while sniffling and wiping their noses.
They could not tell anyone about what had happened.
No matter how unprepared they had been when they charged in,
one of the Hero parties representing the Kingdom of Ersha had nearly been annihilated by a mere B-rank monster.
We should have at least brought potions…
“Wh-why…? Lurain, what was that just now?”
With reddened eyes, Seria rummaged through Lurain’s bag.
Inside was—
“Ah…”
“Th-this is…”
[Escape Rune]
One of Tanas’s magic items that Lurain had been keeping.
In a moment of crisis,
it was a top-grade artifact that allowed them to return to the royal capital.
—Tanas is always wasting money on useless things, isn’t he?
—Exactly. What danger would we ever be in? Spending so much money to buy trash?
—Is he saying we might lose? Seriously, it pisses me off. Tsk!
—He doesn’t even do anything, yet all he thinks about is spending money… sigh.
As they watched the rune crumble into powder and disappear,
“……”
“……”
All four of them remembered the words they had said to Tanas.
##