2 Dealing with the Hero for a Living
The Analeit Kingdom.
It’s a human nation on the continent of Daztrudia, separate from the continent Kasanagara, which is where you can find the demon realm.
But the royal authority in the Analeit Kingdom isn’t particularly strong; it’s more like the king leads together with the highest-ranking nobles.
Okay, I guess the political structure doesn’t really matter.
There are two important points about this kingdom.
The fact that they have an academy where kids from all over the world gather, and the fact that it’s peaceful there.
Well, I guess you could say the academy exists there because it’s so peaceful.
Daztrudia doesn’t have a demon nation, so the human-demon war isn’t a big deal there. Instead, they have the Holy Kingdom of Alleius, which is the headquarters of the Word of God religion, and the other territories are all connected from there.
There aren’t any big battles between nations and not many territories where nasty monsters exist, either.
Analeit Kingdom has a particularly stable climate and fertile land. Basically, they’re super blessed.
Honestly, it’d be harder to not be prosperous and peaceful in their shoes.
No wonder it’s an important kingdom. They’re a bunch of cheaters!
Anyway, I’m guessing that super-stability is why they’ve started putting lots of effort into raising the next generation tender love and care, complete with a big academy.
At first, it was only for the noble kids within the kingdom, but somewhere along the way, it started to enroll students from all over the world.
I’m sure you can gather from that natural growth just how successful the kingdom is.
Although the fact that students have come from the other continent might be an effort to evacuate them from the front lines of battle.
After all, Kasanagara is the place where humans are suuuper at war with demons right now.
It makes sense that rich people would send their kids to the academy for safety.
So, since they’re taking care of kids for nobles and sometimes even royalty from other nations, the Analeit Kingdom gets a nice fat connection with all those places.
That makes this academy the place to be.
And if you don’t send your kids there, you’ll be left out.
Sending your kids to the Analeit Kingdom academy has become a big status symbol and eventually turned into the norm for the upper class of noble society.
This has only made it even more important to stay connected.
Basically, it’s a big cycle in the Analeit Kingdom’s favor.
It’s no exaggeration to say that they’re second in influence only to the Word of God church.
They might even give the Church a run for their money.
Of course, it’s typical of the Word of God that instead of trying to crush them, they started proactively trying to bring the Analeit Kingdom into their fold instead.
The Word of God has an established presence in the Analeit Kingdom, which means it also naturally reaches the kids who are studying abroad at their academy.
Man, that pontiff hasn’t been guiding the human race all this time for nothing.
He’s got a knack for naturally brainwashing people. Scary stuff…
So yeah, technically, the Analeit Kingdom is being used a bit, but they’re still impressive.
They’re even comparable to the Renxandt Empire, who are always battling it out with the demon realms on their border.
If the Renxandt Empire is the bulwark that protects humanity from the threat of demons, Analeit Kingdom is the safe zone far removed from the front lines.
As long as nothing totally insane happens, it’s a place where humanity could take refuge.
That also means that if anything went wrong there, it would seriously freak out everyone around them.
Which is why we went to work in the Analeit Kingdom!
…At least, that’s the official story.
Honestly, the amount of influence the Analeit Kingdom has on humanity doesn’t actually matter that much to me, y’know?
I only have one reason for messing with them.
Because that’s where Yamada is.
It’s just…like…argh!
What the heck?!
Gahhh! Come onnn!
Aargh! Ugggh! Aaargh!
Whew.
Okay, that’s enough yelling for no reason.
This is all because the stuff I’ve done backfired in ways I never imagined.
All my preparations were going so well, but then everything went ridiculously wrong somehow.
And all of that converged right on our pal Yamada.
In this world, his name is Schlain Zagan Analeit, also known as Shun.
The fourth prince of the Analeit Kingdom.
And he’s the biological brother of the previous hero, Julius.
A prince of a major nation? The hero’s little brother?
As if all that backstory wasn’t overkill enough, then the craziest thing happened.
He became the new hero…
Do you have any idea how I felt when I found that out through my mini-me?
After I worked sooo hard to get rid of that hero!
The next one just had to be a reincarnation!
And on top of that, it’s someone who had a deep connection with the previous hero!
This is awful! No, it’s worse than awful!
How was I supposed to know this would happen?!
I’ve gotta readjust my plans—fast!
First of all, it goes without saying that our goal is to save this world from destruction.
Yeah, this world is doomed to be destroyed soon. That much is certain.
If nothing is done, it’s a guaranteed game over.
So in order to avoid that, we’re gonna destroy the system, which is basically this world’s life support!
Bad idea? That’ll just kill us off faster? Shh, don’t think about that.
The system does keep this world alive, but it also contains an insane amount of energy.
And the whole reason this world is falling apart is that it doesn’t have enough energy.
So our plan is to plunder all the energy the world needs from the system.
It’s kinda like using the electricity that runs a life support system to deliver an electric shock directly to the patient and revive them.
I know it sounds pretty risky, but it should work in theory.
Not to mention, it was that crafty Administrator D who set up the system in the first place, so I had a feeling there would be a backdoor method to do something like that.
I took a look, and sure enough, it really did exist…
Anyway, we’re carrying out our break-the-system plan, which means we have to make some arrangements first.
Like I said before, this system-breaking plan is a huge risk.
If it fails, this world is gonna collapse on the spot without its life-support system.
Which is why we’ve got to take every possible precaution to make sure nothing goes wrong.
You could even say that everything I’ve done these past few years has been for that purpose.
Honestly, the huge war between demons and humans was just one small part of our bigger plan.
There were two main goals.
One: to secure more energy.
It requires energy to destroy the system, and we didn’t have enough.
The only way to get the energy we needed was a huge amount of deaths.
This is because the system works by absorbing the stats and skills people improve during their lifetimes in the form of energy when they die.
Just as we hoped, we were able to gain the bare minimum amount of energy we need from all the casualties after war broke out.
But it’s still just the bare minimum. Ideally, we’d like to have extra just in case something unexpected happens.
It’s only thanks to the noble sacrifices of many demons and humans that we succeeded in securing the necessary energy at all.
Yeah, it’s awful for the people who got turned into energy, but this is to save the world from destruction.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and all that.
Just ignore the fact that the “few” in this case is an insanely huge number.
All that matters is that without that huge amount of sacrifices, this world would be screwed to the point of no return.
So. Anyway.
The most important of those many valuable sacrifices was the hero.
That was our second major goal: obliterating the hero!
See, the hero is a huge cheater by nature.
It’s like an official cheat code that was built into the system…
You get all kinds of benefits just for being the hero, but the scariest of those is the anti-demon-lord effect.
The demon lord is chosen from among the demons, but demons live way longer and have way higher stats than humans.
Which means humanity could never defeat an experienced demon lord.
To make up for that, the hero is designed to be super effective against the demon lord.
No matter how strong the demon lord might be, the hero will always have the ability to be more than a match for them.
…With backup from the system.
…Consuming a corresponding amount of energy.
And who is the demon lord right now?
Yes, it’s the Origin Taratect you all know and love, Ms. Ariel herself!
She’s by far the strongest individual in the world! I mean, stats averaging around 90,000? Is that a bug or a typo or something?
So what would happen if the demon lord clashed with the hero?
If the system provided the hero with backup to beat her, you better believe it would waste a massive amount of energy.
Obviously, we don’t want our Demon Lord to get killed, of course, but either way, that means we can’t allow the hero to fight the demon lord no matter what.
To make matters worse, the hero even has a special weapon.
It’s called the Sword of the Hero.
Hilariously cliché, I know, but its ability is no joke.
It only works once, but it can kill anyone in a single blow, even a god.
…That means even I would die if it hit me, right?
D is the one who made it, after all.
So, like, I’m just thinking out loud here, but it’s probably supposed to be another sneaky trick, like “You can use this to kill Güli-güli and get tons of energy if you want.”
Just like breaking the system itself…
Or maybe it’s for if some random foreign god came wandering into this world or something?
Either way, that Sword of the Hero spells doom for anyone, even me.
Just letting that thing continue to exist is dangerous!
So our other goal was to get rid of it, obviously.
Ideally by making the hero die after wasting it on something!
One problem, though! If we kill the hero, a new one’s just gonna pop up anyway!
So I tried to mess with the system itself and erase the very existence of heroes!
By erasing the settings for heroes from the system, basically.
So the plan was to kill Julius the hero, then hack the system before the title moved on to the next one.
It was practically a frame-perfect trick, but I did plenty of preparation beforehand, so it was no problem.
…At least, it wasn’t supposed to be.
Well, to get right to the point, that obviously didn’t work out.
And after I worked so hard to set everything up…
We made a queen taratect clone like Mother and sent it after him, thinking he’d have to use the Sword of the Hero to beat it, but he won without using it…
I even had to show up personally…
Considering that the hero’s special cheat ability might’ve activated even against me, I was hoping he’d naturally get killed by someone else, y’know?
In retrospect, his cheat code might have helped him beat the queen taratect clone in the first place.
The Colonel and Deadbeat both went down in the fight against the hero party, too.
I was planning on bringing them back whenever I could find an opening, but they had to go and act all manly and cool…
…We did succeed in defeating the hero, but honestly, the overall plan was a failure.
A major failure.
A really, really unbelievably major failure!
…Sigh.
Well, in a way, it stands to reason that my calculations went wrong.
We were trying to get Julius the hero killed for our cause and it’s only natural that he fought back.
Obviously, Julius didn’t know the real story. All he did was fight like a hero should.
He fought fair and square and totally shattered our expectations in the process.
I was taking the hero way too lightly.
I mean, I thought I was being careful. That’s why I made all kinds of preparations and formed a whole plan just to kill him.
But what I was really being wary of was the “Hero” as a function of the system.
Not Julius, the individual.
That was my mistake.
Now I know that what I really should have feared is the fact that he was chosen to be the hero.
After all, the title is only given to the most fitting person for the job. A mere human who would be the best receptacle for the miraculous power of the hero.
He’s not strong because of his cheat code powers. He’s strong because he was a worthy individual who could be entrusted with those powers.
Faith, determination, pride.
Those powers of the heart are what really make a hero formidable.
So really, I was probably bound to fail from the moment I made that miscalculation.
I accept that part as my mistake.
But that being said, I have a few complaints about what happened next!
I mean, seriously?! The next hero turned out to be YAMADA?!
Honestly, for the most part, it wouldn’t matter which human became the hero.
After all, most important humans participated in the big war, and over half of them died. Plus the half that’s left aren’t really worth much in comparison to Julius the hero.
Even if it went to a promising youngster who didn’t participate in the war, well, a young kid becoming the hero would be even more advantageous for us.
Such a young hero would never grow up in time to factor into our plans.
No matter how broken the hero’s official cheat powers might be, they’re not all powerful—I proved that when I defeated Julius.
Even if someone a bit inconvenient for us became the Hero, worst-case scenario, I could just take care of ’em nice and quick.
Or so I thought!
But the worst-case scenario turned out to be even worse than I thought.
It was none other than Yamada, who’s hard enough to lay a hand on as a reincarnation and one of the strongest to boot.
Well, let’s put aside the power level conversation for a second.
Considering the full strength of our forces, it doesn’t really matter who the hero is; they won’t be a threat to us.
The strongest reincarnation would probably be either Kushitani or Tagawa, followed by Yamada.
Kushitani and Tagawa have been traveling around as adventurers, building up experience.
And even that pair together weren’t able to defeat Mera on his own.
You couldn’t even take Mera, huh…?
Heh-heh. He’s actually the weakest of us…
If you can’t even beat him, you reincarnations should be ashamed…
Okay, that was just an Elite Four bit, but Mera really is the weakest of us.
If the two strongest reincarnations can’t even beat him, then we’ve got nothing to worry about in terms of strength.
Now that Yamada’s become the hero, it’s likely he’s surpassed those two in terms of stats, but it probably evens out since he’s got practically no hands-on combat experience, don’t you think?
So their strength doesn’t really matter, but that’s not the part we need to worry about.
First of all, Yamada is a reincarnation.
That makes it hard for me to lay a hand on him.
Okay, so personally, I don’t really care that much either way, but Ms. Oka has been trying sooo hard to save all the reincarnations. I don’t wanna ruin that for her.
I owe Ms. Oka a lot.
This was in our past lives, but she did save my life.
I want to pay her back for that.
So I’m trying to respect her wishes as much as possible, meaning I try to save reincarnations whenever I can.
Which means the fastest solution—killing the new hero—isn’t an ideal option here.
Not to mention, Yamada himself is raring to follow in Julius’s footsteps.
He wants to avenge the hero, who was also his big brother.
If he’s that fired up about it, he’s bound to get in our way when we try to make a move.
After all, we are the demon army.
More specifically, I am the one who personally killed Julius…
And finally, this part is the hardest to predict and the most annoying: Yamada’s unique skill.
By using my mini-mes to gather information, I found out that his unique skill as a reincarnation is called Divine Protection.
The effect is that it apparently makes the results he wants more likely to happen…
Talk about an abstract description.
I mean, it’s basically just a luck-based thing.
Most skills have their effects described in concrete, predefined numbers, but it’s totally impossible to figure out the extent of this one’s effects.
Even if things go well for him, there’s no way of telling whether that was thanks to his own abilities, good luck, or the help of this stupid Divine Protection skill.
But that’s the skill that worries me the most.
The unique skills D gave specially to each reincarnation aren’t usually so vague.
It might normally be little more than a slight boost in luck that you wouldn’t even notice, but I’m guessing that when it comes down to a really crucial moment, it means he’ll never make the wrong decision.
But that depends on Yamada himself.
In other words, it might bring about the worst possible results for someone he considers an enemy.
And obviously, that enemy has got to be us…
If worse comes to worst, a choice that Yamada thinks is right might even end up preventing our goal of saving the world from destruction. It’s crazy, but it could happen.
Since the effect is so hard to understand, there’s no telling how much this Divine Protection skill could intervene with what you might call fate itself, and that’s what’s so scary about it.
And so hard to plan for.
So, with all that in mind, I’m planning to take Yamada out of the picture for a bit.
Oh, I don’t mean send him to the afterworld or anything terrible like that, of course!
I’m just trying to physically distance him from the situation so he can’t interfere.
Since we were able to get rid of Julius the hero, clearly Yamada’s Divine Protection isn’t all-powerful.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t have let the person Yamada cared about so much die.
So I’m guessing that Divine Protection can’t prevent something that’s happening outside of Yamada’s awareness, probably. Hopefully.
So we’re just gonna destroy the Analeit Kingdom real quick.
Huh? That still sounds pretty terrible?
Shh. Don’t even worry about it.
All right, let’s go take down a monarchy, people!
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