[11th Round] Hero Discrimination!
▶ Hasty: Cadet Kang Han-soo! What should we do? At this rate, everyone might become mentally ill and become less than dust!
Miss Trainee Teacher, don’t worry too much. I’ll make them all regress before that.
It was a common theme for fantasy novels: a story about a social misfit who has ruined his life and pretends to be an intelligent human being. I will grant them protection.
▶ Dissuasion: I don’t think that’s a fundamental solution. I heard that it was fate to come even though they didn’t ask to. They’ll probably repeat the same mistakes. So why don’t we stop that terrible torture and find out what caused it?
Miss Trainee Teacher’s suggestion is absolutely correct, but I wonder why I have to go that far.
Indeed, I care more for the friends from the same beautiful hometown than the savage natives, but I don’t have the capacity to defend sinners. They tried to kill the Lord. In the barren Western Continent, the labor force provided by the corpses was absolute, and the one who moved them was the Lord, the magician.
The heroes were threatening the survival of the villagers! I had no room for debate, even if they were tortured.
▶Persuasion: Cadet Kang Han-soo is taking the entrance exam. It doesn’t end with just achieving your goals. Classes are determined according to the test results, and the higher the class, the easier it is to graduate.
Miss Trainee Teacher! You should have told me about that sooner!
I left the square, where the heroes’ torture was in full swing, and headed to the Lord’s house. After all, there were procedures to everything. Making a fuss with force to carry out one’s will was no different than being an ignorant idiot. I couldn’t do such a thing as a righteous hero.
It wasn’t for my reputation.
The Lord’s home wasn’t very fancy. The Lords of the Western Continent could use their undead labor to build pyramids or palaces if they wished, but the Lord here was very frugal.
Tick tack! Tick tack!
The corpses were repairing the fences and walls destroyed in the heroes’ raid. I headed inside, watching the gruesome restoration.
“This is the entrance fee…Oh! Anyway, Holy One! Welcome!”
It was a world overflowing with transcendental skills, but the effect of Divinity Z was weakly effective. Maybe the energy of the universe worked this way, too?
I answered the butler of the manor with a smile.
“I am Hero A who was passing by. I’d like to see the Lord.”
“Hero…!”
“Can’t I?”
I placed my hand between his 6th and 7th cervical vertebrae and asked again. It was very unpleasant to be treated the same as the heroes who were tortured outside. So, I wanted to shake his neck for offending me, but I was afraid that the biased judgment of the Fantasy God would wreak havoc on my report card again, so I put up with it.
I couldn’t give her an excuse, right?
“Hck?! Oh, no! This way, please!”
“Thank you.”
The Lord, who had been attacked by seventy incompetent and despicable heroes, was chatting with his wife in his office as if nothing had happened.
“I think the sky is dark again today.”
“…”
The Lord’s wife, who boasted a perfect beauty without any blemishes, was quietly listening to her husband’s story while sitting in her chair. The sight was so heartwarming that I felt sorry to interrupt. I bowed down in a dignified aristocratic manner to greet him.
“I am very sorry for taking away the good time you spend with your family, my Lord. I am a hero from the Central Continent. As I was passing through this beautiful estate, I saw the sight of justice in the square and came here.”
“…Are you going to argue about it?”
The handsome Lord, who was no less attractive than his beautiful wife, looked at me with questioning eyes. I expressed my disapproval here.
“They are socially maladjusted people who haven’t been able to adapt even in their hometowns. I commend the Lord for your patience and compassion, who summoned over seventy of these helpless losers and took care of them for two days.”
“Hmm-hmm! Well, that’s nothing…”
The corners of the lips of the Lord, whom I praised, drew a soft arc. It was an enthusiastic response to ordinary conversation because of his wife, who always listened and didn’t talk. This Lord’s timidity hadn’t changed from the 1st playthrough.
No matter how strong he had become.
▷ Race: Death Human
▷ Level: 2183
▷ Job: Magician (Blessing = Command↑)
▷ Skills: Command ZZ Force ZZ Rule ZZ Eternal Youth Z Blessing Z…
▷ Status: Satisfied, Embarrassed
He was plastered with Transcendental Realm Skills. Command and Force, which were essential skills for magicians who deal with corpses, were the highest, and that skill level was even higher than the Five Great Disasters in the 1st playthrough. If the Lord were like this, then how about the Five Great Disasters…?
It wasn’t easy to predict, even for me with my decades of experience.
“My Lord. Is the oracle still coming down?”
“Yeah. It comes down so often that there isn’t enough time to talk calmly with my wife. That’s why I can’t even sleep properly. The future is already bleak when I think about summoning an additional thirty people later.”
The words to ignore the oracle came up only to my lips. After all, it was absolute for the natives here. It wasn’t that there were no atheists at all, but even they followed the oracle unconditionally. This was because ignoring would result in terrible retaliation.
“What is the purpose of the summons?”
“It is said that they are the heroes who will defeat the Five Great Disasters. My role ends with the summons. However, even if it was an oracle, I thought of providing food, clothing, and shelter until they had some force since they were guests invited to my estate. However….”
The Lord couldn’t continue and smiled bitterly instead. It was because he was attacked by those heroes two days after summoning. For the Lord who gave them a favor, he was in a situation where he would be angry beyond absurdity. I had a strong feeling that it wouldn’t be easy to rescue those heroes through formal procedures.
The Lord was the victim, and the heroes were the perpetrators. Their crimes were clear.
“My Lord. What are you going to do with them?”
It wasn’t an easy problem to solve. How many people in the world would easily forgive those who sought their life? The Lord turned to his wife as he answered.
“Honestly, I don’t know. So I asked my wife for help. She’s a very wise woman.”
“…”
“For now, I gave an order to torture them until my wife gives me an answer. The Western Continent does not have enough food to feed sinners for free. Sinners eat Lucifer, and we collect their excrement and use it as manure.”
The only food overflowing in the Western Continent was Lucifer. However, the taste wasn’t very good, and humans couldn’t live on protein alone, so that they couldn’t eat it indefinitely. But there were exceptions everywhere.
That was the sinners. It was torture in which Lucifer was constantly fed to sinners who couldn’t move as their limbs were tied. It was mixed with a small amount of vitamin and mineral-rich moss, which was a poisonous herb that ordinary residents could never eat because it made them suffer from diarrhea.
Then, the filth excreted by the sinners was collected by the dead and used as manure for the fields. This process was constantly repeated. It seemed that the sinners would die soon, but it was the other way around in reality.
Was it the vitamins that were good for the body? These poison plants that induced diarrhea prolonged life, so they couldn’t die at will.
“Even my wise wife can’t answer easily this time.”
“…”
“If you don’t give me an answer quickly, their sphincters will lose their function forever within the next two days. No, maybe that’s what you want, my wife? Aah, my dear wife! This husband is fine with it. Why don’t you forgive the heroes?”
“…”
“Haha! I guess you still can’t give me an answer. Then there is nothing I can do. I will wait quietly until you can forgive those who seek my life.”
“…”
The couple’s passionate love was very touching. I also recognized from the previous conversation that I had no choice but to persuade the Lord’s wife to release the heroes. However, this was difficult even for a MAX-Class Hero.
The Lord’s wife was a corpse, after all.
*
The natives of the Western Continent of Fantasy ate six meals a day. Dawn, breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, and a late-night snack. In other words, they eat every four hours. This was because villagers had very little to do as the corpses handled large-scale tasks such as security and farming.
So, there were only six blacksmiths in this small estate alone. Similarly, there would be six clothing stores, carpentry shops, and inns operated separately. And these stores changed in shifts, so they only worked four hours a day. The rest of the time was dedicated to resting and eating.
The Lord invited me to the Fourth Bell dinner. The concept of a day was very unclear because the Western Continent was always dark, with no distinction between night or day. Therefore, the clock tower in the middle of the estate rung the bell about every four hours. If it rang six times, a day had passed.
I could say that I was invited to a snack meal.
“I was really surprised. I didn’t know that the hero from the Central Continent had this much knowledge of the Western Continent…it’s as if you’ve lived here for a few years.”
“It’s nothing. This is natural if you’re a true hero.”
“Indeed…!”
Every meal wasn’t the same. Steamed Lucifer, Roasted Lucifer, Fried Lucifer, Lucifer…
Although there was a slight difference in each estate, it was set by law to cook a different dish for each meal to get tired of that Lucifer, which was the main ingredient. If you break things because it’s annoying, you’re going to get kicked out, regardless of age or gender.
You may think that they’re sensitive to insignificant things. Still, if you remember that the number one cause of depression and suicide among natives in the Western Continent is loss of appetite, you can see that it is a very serious matter.
“So it’s fried Lucifer. You applied precious honey to it and erased the unique smell of Lucifer with a rare herb that grows only in the central part of the continent. You don’t have to be so considerate of me like this…”
I had only eaten Lucifer for over a year before, so I was used to it. At that time, the chef was Lanuvel, and to my dismay, her cooking skills were impeccable.
“Haha! It was your first day, so I paid special attention. Most of the other heroes couldn’t eat it. My wife didn’t say it out of courtesy, but she was very upset about it.”
“…”
“Now, it seems that she is happy that you eat it well, hero.”
“…”
As we talked, I had a rough picture of the situation in my head. Eating giant flies and a dead body of a loving wife. There was no way the social misfits (heroes) could understand this unique culture and environment, not to mention the lack of experience and information on the Western Continent. They would have cowardly attacked the Lord and accused him of being a demon. The result was torture after a devastating defeat thanks to the overwhelming power difference.
I felt troubled while eating fried Lucifer. There wasn’t much time left to save the heroes. As the Lord boasted, their sphincter would be irreparably damaged within two days. This was an extremely serious matter. Once dead, it couldn’t be cured even by the resurrection of the saint.
It was the same as not being able to straighten the wrinkles of an old man or give elasticity to sagging breasts.
▶ Question: It’s a serious situation, right?
It’s a very serious situation, Miss Trainee Teacher! They have to live with a cork in their ass until they die. It’s a bonus to be traumatized by just hearing Lucifer’s cry.
▶Goosebumps: I didn’t expect that the Western Continent was such a scary place.
…Hmm? Haven’t you eaten Lucifer, Miss Trainee Teacher?
▶ Memories: No. I knew the natives would eat these flies, but my colleagues and I ate a normal meal with the Lord’s consideration. Ah! I remember he explained to me that it was a fish caught in the river. That’s why I don’t understand why he only feeds those flies to Cadet Kang Han-soo or the other cadets. It’s the same Lord…
I suddenly lost my appetite. I put down my knife and fork and glanced at the Lord.
“My Lord. In front of this manor, a river formed by the gathering of streams of water from the mountain range flows, and I believe that not a few fish live there. But why do you only give me Lucifer dishes?”
“Oh! Have you figured that out? That’s right. Freshwater fish are also a specialty of this estate. However, powerful monsters roam the river. That’s why we only serve fish when important guests come.”
The Lord spoke as if it were a matter of insignificance. Feeling my eyebrows twitching, I asked politely.
“Are you saying I’m not an important guest?”
“To be honest, in skills, both you and your companion stuck on your head aren’t that reliable.”
“…”
“If you want to be treated better than now, gather a lot of excellent companions and build more skills.”
I realized an important fact as I smashed the Lord’s jaw.
“Why have I overlooked it so far? This timid Lord’s position is the same as that of the Dumpling King.”
Let’s engrave on this Lord’s spine that this MAX-Class Hero doesn’t need companions!
