[13th Round] War and Obliteration
“So impatient…”
“Huh? I’m sorry. Not a day has passed since we met, and I’m already being so impatient… Oh! This is my first time, so I don’t know what to do, and I feel strange… S-sorry. I’ll try not to become a burden to you,” the Snow Woman mumbled, interpreting my words in her own way.
If I were to explain everything to her in more detail, there would be no end in sight, so I decided to leave it as it was.
“You almost got into a fight with the fake First Hero, but you somehow managed to restrain yourself, Drug Hero. Everything should be fine, right?”
“Well… The real First Hero, watching all this, lost his temper.”
“Huh! What an unexpected turn of events!”
Having escaped from this world, my senior slowly prepared for war, but he decided to speed up the process due to the recent events.
According to my assumptions, this war would be on a universal scale, but wouldn’t it be too stupid to start it for such a trivial reason?
I didn’t want to be involved in all this.
My life and dignity were important to me. I didn’t have that much free time to participate in someone else’s war.
One problem remained.
“We need to go back in time.”
I used Ssosia’s time machine to get here, but I had no information on how to get back.
I wasn’t trying to summon my cowardly wife again, though.
But now I was in the “past,” so she was probably now somewhere on the continents of Fantasy as an unmarried woman who hadn’t yet met the MAX-Class Hero that she desired to become her husband.
So my call didn’t work.
But, fortunately, I had already prepared for this.
“Snow Woman, I need your feathers.”
“Huh? Oh, yes. Take as much as you want.”
Her feathers were ideal as a catalyst for spatial transference magic.
Wizard A, who raised the Snow Woman, researched it, but he didn’t succeed and couldn’t write his name in history. Unlike him, I would succeed. I was loved by the universe, after all.
All I needed to do was know the theory.
Wizard A, thinking he had failed, stopped all his research and gave up the Snow Woman, who was the key ingredient to it.
He handed her to me together with his research.
Her wings feather that I now had in my hand was enveloped by a green glow.
Wizard A’s theory wasn’t wrong.
The problem was…
“Wizard A, listen. I talked about this when we first met, but your theory is not a failure. These are the words of a Hero with 64 years of experience, which means you can trust them. You were just too greedy.”
A shipping company, for example, would demand higher fees the larger and heavier the cargo was.
The theory of Wizard A, who used the Snow Woman’s feathers, was perfect, but the problem was that he was trying to use this service for free.
He thought of the feathers as the payment to move between dimensions.
I, receiving the support of the universe, immediately understood what the mistake was.
Feathers were feathers, and fees were fees.
The President of the Universe wasn’t so generous.
Therefore, it was necessary to reduce the value of matter that was going to move in space.
And power was what contributed the most to a person’s value.
“Watch attentively. By sacrificing experience points, I reduce my value and use what I spent as payment for the spatial transfer fee. In this world, sacrifice is indispensable.”
“Ah!”
With tears in his eyes, he found enlightenment, changing his job to Archmage A.
It was nothing special, but geniuses living in their closed world sometimes missed such tiny details.
“Shadow A.”
“Did you call for me?”
An elf jumped out of my shadow.
“You already know your mission, don’t you?”
“Yes. You want me to look after the Snow Woman in your stead as you return to the present?”
“Precisely.”
My resentful senior had an unsuccessful marriage, but the pathetic Elf King seemed to have a rather amazing one.
“Not even a day will be enough for me to tell you all the merits of His Majesty Elfheim. Hmm… In your words, he reclaimed the savages of Fantasy and turned them into civilized citizens.”
“Incredible story!”
“Hoo-hoo! That’s not all. He also…”
“Sorry, Shadow A. I’ll listen to the 2nd part of that wretched Elf King’s story in 500 years!”
She wouldn’t have anything to miss about him anyway, considering her loved one, whom she so wanted to meet, was now on the Southern Continent.
“No. The Elf King of this place is like a photograph in an album. I do not need His Majesty from my memories. I need the real him. It will take a long time, but I look forward to our reunion. That’s why the Snow Woman’s feathers are also important to me.”
Shadow A’s goal was to meet her husband, who was in the dimension of the Festival.
That was a different world, so to get there, she needed spatial transference magic.
“If you understand her importance, then there’s no need for me to say anything else.”
“Leave her to me. The First Hero is strong, but his past self is nothing compared to me. And…”
“And?”
“These are probably his first years as a hero because when I met him, he wasn’t a fool chasing every skirt. If you count by human age, he’s now going through puberty.”
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
“Do you by any chance know how old the First Hero is right now?”
It was very important.
Shadow A stroked the Snow Woman’s head like a pet, and with a tilt of her head, gave me a surprising answer.
“Around 19.”
“What about his experience?”
“About two years.”
“He didn’t go through the regression process, did he?”
“No.”
“My God…”
I couldn’t even insult him about having only two years of experience.
Because when I was his age, I only did what Alex told me and cried bloody tears. Not only did I lack transcendental skills, but I also couldn’t reach level 999.
My senior was a real monster.
He had personality problems and weird preferences right now, but according to Shadow A, he would soon fix it.
He was the same as me.
▶ Interest: I wonder how you were in your first round, cadet Kang Han Soo.
‘It’s better for you not to know, Trainee Teacher! Your opinion of the ideal MAX-Class Hero might collapse.’
And although I could say with confidence that after two years in Fantasy, I was mentally older than the First Hero, I didn’t have such a power.
‘I suppose this is also preserved in my personal file.’
Now I understood a little why my infuriated senior wanted to start a war.
If there were a way to erase it somehow, then it would be necessary to do it.
▶ Excitement: Will there really be a war? I don’t want to see my place of work turn into a battlefield where seniors and juniors alike harm each other…
‘Trainee Teacher, you should be ready, but you don’t need to worry so much. I don’t think the war will start that easily.’
The First Hero would first conduct secret negotiations and, with the help of threats, ask that his personal file be erased.
That wasn’t such an impossible request, so some of the teaching staff would definitely agree, and everything would be quietly resolved.
After all, war wasn’t a joke.
“That’ll be difficult to do.”
“Huh? You…”
“It’s been a while. I wanted to order chicken instead of pizza this time, but this is a school, so only teachers and students are allowed inside. I hope you understand.”
“I still wear the ring you gave me, Health Teacher.”
How could I forget this woman?
As soon as I put on the ring, I immediately remembered her dorsal and cervical vertebrae.
“Glad you liked it. I’d love to hear how it came in handy, but we’re running out of time, so I’ll quickly explain something to you. Do you know that teachers are prohibited from interfering with the educational process? However, the First Hero declared war, which caused a state of emergency. We had to make an exception.”
Why was my senior so angry?
I forgot that he ruled through a dictatorship. He didn’t need any special reason. If he wanted to start a war, then his commanders and subjects would simply follow him.
“So the war has already begun?”
“Not yet. As you predicted, he made a demand. He said that if his personal file was not deleted within ten days, he would destroy Fantasy’s entire dimension.”
“And you came to ask me to join the war?”
It was easy to assume that.
Didn’t the God of the Fantasy World kidnap those who couldn’t adapt to life in society and raise heroes out of them to “overthrow the embittered First Hero”?
But that, of course, didn’t mean that I couldn’t adapt to societal life as well.
I was just a victim of a system error.
“No. We’re not shameless enough to throw students into battle who have not yet completed their studies. We should avoid this unnecessary war.”
“Is that the only reason?”
It was funny to hear about peace from those raising soldiers to kill the First Hero.
“Ha… Honestly, we’re not ready yet. To avoid any other cases of heroes joining the enemy’s side like the First Hero did, starting with the fourth generation, which you’re the representative of, people are given more time than strength to slow down the growth of the students’ combat power. My point here is that no matter how good an education system is, it can’t only have merits and virtues.”
“So you decided to delete his personal file?”
“Yes. But it’s not easy to do.”
“That’s understandable. After all, he’s part of the story.”
The First Hero killed the Demon Lord.
He was a great man, having many achievements. Tales about him were known by the young and the old.
And if, in such a situation, one were to get rid of the First Hero’s personal file…
“The novel will lose its main character. If it were a novel that didn’t have the First Hero from the very beginning, then everything would’ve been fine, but he played an important role in the history of the Fantasy World, so it’s hard to remove his existence from it.”
“So you want to rewrite everything from the very beginning?”
“Yes, but this is not a novel, but a huge system. It’s impossible to recycle absolutely everything from the very beginning.”
“Fair enough. After all, the developer was fired.”
The system’s creator was none other than Ssosia, and without her, it would be difficult to recreate it.
Even if they hired her again, it wouldn’t work that easily. She would want to regain full control over it.
Hence, that wasn’t possible.
They wanted to solve this problem without a developer.
“That’s exactly it. Also, there were rumors that you became her husband, and, looking into your thoughts, I was convinced of this.”
“And what do you want from me?”
I didn’t know what to do.
I wanted to avoid a war, but what if we couldn’t delete my senior’s personal file?
“First, let’s go somewhere else. I can erase the memories of those who have nothing to do with this, but I can’t erase the memory of my former student who looks at me so intently,” the teacher said, glancing at Shadow A.
Her former student replied, “You never visited me. Not even once. Yet you still call me your student?
Shadow A’s tone was far from friendly, but it couldn’t be said that she was hostile.
“Just as you remember to maintain the illusion of your big breasts, I also do not forget the students I taught that technique to. I just couldn’t meet you because of the strict school rules. Oh! Your husband Elfheim is doing well. However, I’m certain you’ve already heard that from Kang Han Soo.”
“I’ve never forgotten your grace.”
“It would be strange if you did. I taught you the shape-shifting technique so that you could marry the man you loved with all your heart, but then he came to sort things out with me. And he called it a bogus wedding.”
‘Elfheim, I can’t believe you did that…’
But I couldn’t blame him either.
They had deceived him.
“Sorry to interfere with your beautiful reunion, but didn’t we decide to go somewhere else?”
But that was no longer necessary.
Because Shadow A, like a black hole, swallowed the Snow Woman and Archmage A and left.
“We can continue the conversation here now.”
“Then let’s go straight to the main point. How can the war be avoided?”
I still had no ideas.
To avoid it, they would need to delete the First Hero’s personal file, but the entire educational system would collapse if they did. Then it would no longer make sense to run away from the war.
Wasn’t that what people called a stalemate?
“It’s simple. We need a new Hero to fill the gap.”
“Hmm?”
“Ah! What a coincidence! Right in front of my eyes is a candidate who’s in the same era as the First Hero.” She gave me a radiant smile.
