Mission

All around me are the bodies of others, all dead at the hands of the Demon King’s army. All people I couldn’t save. How many hundreds and thousands of people am I not able to save? Though it doesn’t matter. I can’t be the hero anymore. All I am is a man going home. Somebody else can save the world.

I walk through the canyon for a while until I come to untouched corpses, corpses I hadn’t displaced. Now that I’m no longer in battle, I realize how strange it all is. This body, made of theirs, works so perfectly, as if it were always mine. I’m in perfect condition. It’s as if I were never even injured.

It must be a power of the Hero’s Blessing that I’m still alive. That’s how it was explained to me. A power to keep the hero alive. A power to let the hero fight to the very end. A power to save the world no matter how long it takes. My injuries have always healed faster, but all it ever took was a bigger meal. I don’t know what changed. I don’t know why I needed to use their bodies. I don’t know what was so important for me to disturb them.

What do I think a human life is?

I step onto the pile of bodies. I walk up them without even a single moment of hesitation. Like they were nothing more than stairs. Like they were never alive. I step on them without a second thought. The lives of those who died fighting the Demon King, the lives of those who the Demon King slaughtered, the lives of those I couldn’t do even a single thing for, I step on all of them without a second thought. All of them are martyrs and all I can do is make them sacrifice even more. Of course I couldn’t become the hero in the end.

I put my hand on the wall of the canyon and try to grab hold of the rock, but I fail to do so. The wall is unnaturally smooth. It should’ve been obvious. Even if there’s a stream running along the bottom, it should have been obvious that this cliff was a fake. It’s not so smooth that it was cut through, but like it was molded intentionally with magic to be just shy of something you could climb. That seems like something the Demon King would do. He taunted us the whole time we fought, never taking us seriously, threatening to force us to watch the torture of our loved ones.

I jab my fingers into the stone. It’s a simple enough way to escape, but not one anybody thrown down here could ever do. I imagine that normal people died on impact. I’m the sole exception. I’m the only one who could live. Among the countless bodies left here, I’m the only one that’s still alive.

I climb. I climb the face of the canyon, which must be around one hundred meters tall, without any difficulty. The rocks stay the same all the way up, far too even for it to be a natural fixture. I don’t need anything to sustain myself, in spite of everything. The battle against the Demon King had lasted nearly twenty hours. I haven’t rested in more than a day, and it’s been almost as long since I last ate or drank, yet I don’t need anything.

I take hold of the cliff’s edge and pull myself up onto the grass. I return to the surface at the edge of the forest separating the Demon King’s castle from human lands. I stand at the forest’s edge for a while, just staring into its dark undergrowth. I can already see the path before me. Just beyond this forest is Alice. She’s waiting for me, only the span of the continent away.

She’s so close that I could reach out and touch her.

And looking down the length of my arm, stretched out towards the forest, she’s so far away I don’t know if my heart can bear it.

I can’t take a single step forward. I can’t take a single step closer to her. I’m the hero, after all. I’m the hero. I can’t turn my back on the people. I can’t leave. I can’t let those lives go to waste. I can’t shame the bodies that became mine. I can’t abandon them. I can’t abandon their will. I must kill the Demon King. I’ll kill the Demon King myself, right here and now. I’m a failed hero, after all. I can’t go home.

I march around the Demon King’s vile moat, filled with the dead, and come again to the thin strip of land connecting the castle to the rest of the world. It’s a perfectly straight bridge, pointing directly at the massive front gate of the castle. The castle hardly felt so large when I first attacked yesterday morning.

I am undaunted.

I am fearless.

I am the hero, destined to slay the Demon King. I am the hero, destined to protect humanity. I cannot fall back here. There is no other way but forward. That’s what it means to be the hero. That’s what it means to be alive.

I’ll return to her once I’ve finished here. That’s what I told her.

I am the hero.

Let me be the hero.

For just one moment, for just this single moment, let me be the hero.

I’ll do my duty properly this time. Even if it means I can’t go back to her.

Even with my allies and the holy sword in hand, I could not win. With my greatest possible strength, I could not win. I cannot muster enough to win. But even still, let me fight as the hero. I want to be able to fight as the hero.

Let me die here as the hero. Let me die as the hero who fought for the sake of humanity. And perhaps the next one can save us properly.

I walk onward.