Chapter 11 – A Hero’s Arrival Was Always Late (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Bathed in the sunlight pouring in through the window, I sank into thought.

…Leon van Reinhardt.

He’s absurdly handsome, that’s for sure.

Honestly, Kang Geom-ma’s face wasn’t bad either, with its neat features and tall frame, but Leon’s looked operated on a different level, perhaps because of the protagonist buff. A handsome man with blazing golden hair like the sun and blue eyes like sapphires set into his face. Standing, he looked like a sculpture; sitting, a painting.

As people say, looked themselves create plausibility. Like every other overpowered protagonist, the heroines fall head over heels the instant they so much as make eye contact.

For example… if he runs into a heroine around a corner while she’s got a slice of toast in her mouth, that’s a flag. If he peeks on the girls’ bath and sees them naked, that’s somehow also a flag.

Lucky bastard.

Women gathered around him for such absurd reasons that calling him a walking pheromone cloud still wouldn’t be unfair. Thank goodness Miracle’s Blessing wasn’t an erotic game.

If it had been an adults-only game, I couldn’t help thinking Leon might have died of exhaustion before ever getting to fight the Demon King. Cause of death: probably overwork in bed.

And the women who got drawn to him, the so-called protagonist party members, were a dazzling lineup too.

Rachel, the Spear Saint’s niece; Saki Ryozo, daughter of the Absolute Bow; and even Abel von Nibelung, granddaughter of the Sword Emperor and the most beautiful girl in the story.

Staring blankly into the air, I let out a hollow laugh. Considering the weight of the burden Leon would have to carry in the future, being popular with women probably wouldn’t be much comfort. I shook my head and decided to focus on class.

Tap-!

The elderly professor with angular glasses, who was in charge of the history class, struck the blackboard with a piece of chalk for emphasis.

“This part will be on the test. Take note of it.”

The afternoon lesson covered the First Human-Demon War that broke out seven hundred years ago and, after that, the founding of the academy by Balor Hoakin and his seven disciples when he realized the need to foster the next generation of heroes.

I basically know the broad strokes already.

The Hero of Origin, Balor Hoakin, defeated Lycan, the Demon King’s right-hand man and commander of the First Legion, after a bloody struggle that lasted twenty years. Calling it a victory was putting it kindly; in truth, it had been a battle with no true victor, only losers.

They said it had been a history of piled corpses and rivers of blood, a hellscape made flesh, with screams filling the air on every side and the thick smell of blood saturating every corner. Even in my previous life, just seeing the story images in the game had made me flinch.

After that battle, Balor Hoakin lost one arm and became one-armed himself, leaving him unable to keep fighting. So he laid plans for the future and founded Hoakin Academy.

Come to think of it, though, that man was pretty funny too. The fact that he stuck his own name right onto the academy made it clear he had a healthy amount of self-love.

The First Human-Demon War led to a nonaggression treaty between humans and demons.

Who could have known that this would become the start of a seven-hundred-year ceasefire still continuing to the present day?

People in this world had probably grown too used to the current peace. As a matter of fact, I was probably the only person who knew that the opening act of the crack in that peace had begun today.

At the very least, I wanted to give Media some kind of warning. But that would be more than just interfering with the official storyline. It would be changing it, so I pushed the thought away.

She had told me she wanted to leave the headmaster’s seat as soon as possible. Yet Media, through her unique blessing, the Blessing of the Poet, was the first person in the story to notice that something strange was happening.

And… she was also the first of the Seven Sacred Heroes to rush to the front lines in order to protect the cadets.

According to the dark-wiki style spoilers, she was the first of the Seven Sacred Heroes to die at the Demon King’s hands.

Thinking of that left a bitter taste in my mouth.

What I had realized while living academy life was this.

It might have been better not to know.

After finishing that thought, I turned my gaze back to the blackboard. Some of the more old-fashioned subjects did make my eyelids heavy during lectures, but the brilliant teaching staff of Hoakin Academy, the foremost academy in the world, generally managed to present even potentially dull material in a clear and well-organized way.

Thanks to that, I was following the theory lessons more smoothly than I had expected. Of course, I still had the habit from years of standing while working, so just sitting around all day left me itchy with restlessness.

Even so, the scratch of pencil and pen across paper, and the woody scent of pencils tickling at my nose, felt surprisingly pleasant.

Still, Hoakin Academy didn’t weigh written tests all that heavily in one’s grades, and since the academy’s educational style valued practical combat above all else, what mattered most in general was hands-on performance.

In other words, what decided whether you failed or passed wasn’t your written exam but the practical tests held twice each semester. And because this was an academy that claimed to be the best in the world, the difficulty of those exams was vicious. Even so, I already knew the rough flow, so I was relatively at ease.

I looked over the faces of the cadets busily taking notes. Separate from whether one would fail or not, written exams still had a large influence on reassigning one’s class for the next year, so the students watched the end of the professor’s chalk eagerly with sparkling eyes.

The cadets of the upper classes were the ones most likely to be drafted first into the Second Human-Demon War three years from now.

Calling it a draft was putting it kindly. In reality, it was forced conscription. I had already felt on my skin for two full years in my previous life just how fucking awful that was, so I was declining a second round.

So, putting aside the fact that I had belatedly discovered a certain enjoyment in studying, my plan was to keep my written-exam scores right around the cut line.

Then, all at once, a question crossed my mind.

If even Balor Hoakin, who had supposedly been the strongest in all history, had only managed to seal the commander of the First Legion, then just how strong was the Demon King, who stood at the apex of the demon race?

Come to think of it, even back when I played Miracle’s Blessing M, I couldn’t remember whether there had been any player who had pushed the content all the way to the Demon King.

Didn’t tell me the protagonist actually loses or something in this insane story…

Well, whatever. It had nothing to do with me. The protagonist Leon would solve it somehow.

The scratch scratch of the cadets’ pencils settled low through the classroom. Because my train of thought had cut me off from the flow of the lesson, I only pretended to take notes with a few idle scribbles.

They weren’t notes about class. More like habitual doodles such as what should I eat for dinner.

For me, worrying about that day’s meal came before worrying about the fate of the nation.

* * *

That evening.

As usual, I stopped by the campus mart to buy dinner ingredients. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of my day. Most of the pampered sons and daughters of the rich went straight to the campus cafeteria without having to think twice about what to eat.

Well, by now I wasn’t even particularly envious. Food made by someone else that was merely intense and stimulating was nowhere near as good as food I cooked with my own hands. Besides, it wasn’t like I’d spent twenty years living by the knife for nothing.

“Huh? Geom-ma!”

As I was rummaging around the ingredient shelves comparing prices here and there, my gaze turned toward the youthful voice calling my name. That was right. The only person who called me Geom-ma was Chloe.

Without meaning to, I tensed and let out a low noise through my throat.

“Oh, fancy running into you here. You came to shop too?”

“Ah, yes!”

Maybe because she had made some friends, there was more energy in her voice than before. I instinctively glanced toward Chloe’s cart, which was packed full of every kind of fish imaginable. It reminded me that the scale on which she spent money was still something else.

Watching my expression, Chloe cautiously worked her lips before speaking.

“Um, did I do something wrong back then?”

“Wrong…”

Just as I expected, it seemed she had no memory of what happened that day. A dry laugh escaped me at the thought of whether trying to kill me with a drawn Japanese sword counted as doing something wrong.

After a brief moment of consideration, I decided to ease her concern. Part of me wanted to say it plainly and clearly, You almost cut my head off, Chloe. But even if I were dissatisfied, that wouldn’t really change anything. Whether I liked it or not, we were going to be seeing each other in the same space for the next year. I couldn’t keep avoiding her forever.

“Nothing happened.”

“…Really?”

When I silently nodded, color returned to Chloe’s face.

“…That’s a relief.”

Chloe pressed a hand to her chest and let out a small breath. Her red hair, now down to her shoulders, swayed lightly. Maybe she had fixed it up a bit, because it looked much cleaner now and suited her well. Seen like this, she really was just a small, cute girl.

What exactly was she?

What kind of past was hidden behind this gentle and adorable face? Chloe had been unconscious at the time, sure, but I’d felt her sword for myself. For some reason, sorrow had been woven into it. It had felt as if she were pleading sadly for someone to save her, as if she wanted to run away. Yet the killing intent steeped into that blade had been so fierce that it made every hair on my body stand up.

If I had to guess, then even if her raw strength was below that of the Mao twins, if the goal were simply to kill someone, she would be more dangerous than they were. Shaking off the questions piling up in my head, I asked Chloe.

“But Chloe, why do you shop and cook for yourself instead of just going to the school cafeteria?”

“Ah, well… it just doesn’t really suit my taste. It’s all too salty and too spicy…”

After grumbling for a moment like that, Chloe looked up at me with her round eyes and spoke.

“Um, if it’s okay with you, Geom-ma, would it maybe be all right if I treated you to dinner tonight? Ah! Of course, I’m not nearly as good at cooking as you are, but I really want to treat you…”

Dinner, huh…

Those eyes really did put a person in a difficult position. If I refused, I’d feel bad, but if I accepted, I had the strange feeling I might wake up inside a refrigerator the next day. With that awkward expression on my face, I thought over a suitable reason to decline before finally speaking.

“It wouldn’t really be in place of dinner exactly, but could I ask you for one favor instead?”

Chloe’s eyes widened into circles and she tilted her head.

“A favor?”

“Well, I want to learn some swordsmanship right now, and when I thought about who I could ask, you were the only one who came to mind.”

“M-me?”

Chloe’s face turned red. Holding both cheeks with her hands, she shook her head rapidly as if trying to cool herself down.

“B-but you’re already plenty strong, Geom-ma.”

“I want to get used to some new weapons too. If I’m going to prepare for the test coming up, shouldn’t I get used to using all kinds of blades? You had a Japanese sword in your room before, right? You do use a sword, don’t you?”

“…Cool.”

“Huh?”

“Ah, n-no, it’s nothing!”

With an excited voice, Chloe waved both hands in front of her. Then, after settling her breathing, she quietly nodded and said.

“Are you really sure I’d be okay?”

“I’m asking because it’s you, Chloe. If it’s too much to ask, you can refuse, so don’t feel pressured.”

Chloe nodded with all her might and accepted my request. As an excuse to avoid having a cozy dinner alone with her, it wasn’t bad at all.

I needed a swordsmanship teacher anyway, and she was strong enough that even I had to admit it. Strong enough to make my skin crawl.

So Chloe and I agreed to eat dinner separately, then meet at the training grounds at eight that evening.

Looked like that worked out pretty well.

I gave her a calm little wave goodbye and let out a sigh of relief.