Chapter 186 – The Hero (7)
Blink?
The eye embedded in the sword hilt looked flustered.
‘Huh?’
I was flustered too. The summoning range for blades—one of Blade’s functions—turned out to be disappointingly narrow.
…Could it be?
I turned to Erona, who had jumped at the vibration.
“W-what just happened?!”
“I prayed to my god. I asked Him to eradicate all evil in this area.”
It seems this woman was recognized as a ‘companion.’ Extremely unfair, but since it’s the judgment of my great senior, I have no choice but to accept it!
By the way…
‘It really has begun.’
It looks like the mass death of his beloved companions hit him hard. Even one death would drive someone mad—let alone a whole group killed in such a short time…
It would be stranger if he were still holding it together.
‘Now… let’s see how you react.’
His companions are dead. I don’t know if Sword Demons have camaraderie or a sense of fellowship, but even the witches didn’t seem to know that part.
So let’s observe their reaction once.
If they can think, they’ll definitely stop the infiltration and approach more cautiously.
“The god Himself…?”
“Don’t ask too much. This is a secret too.”
“You have a lot of secrets.”
“It’s troubling when you talk as if I’m the only one with secrets. Especially regarding public matters.”
“Sigh… Fine. I won’t ask. But carrying all these bodies back to the territory by ourselves is impossible. We don’t even have a carriage…”
“Hm.”
Us?
I had no intention of helping. Yet this woman takes it for granted.
“What should we do?”
“……”
This is annoying. I have no reason to clean up after the Ranuvel patient, but there’s the matter of basic decency. And if we hold a proper funeral for them, the deeply hidden patient might show up.
If we meet then, maybe we could at least have a conversation. Perhaps even wake him?
In that brief moment, many thoughts swirled in my head.
“Should we bury them?”
She seems bothered by it too.
Sorry to the deceased, but human corpses start smelling horribly if left even briefly, and gas builds up inside, causing swelling… Beautiful or ugly, they all become grotesque very quickly.
“No.”
Burying or burning them on-site would be the simplest and most rational choice, but there will undoubtedly be people who refuse to believe their precious, beautifully raised daughter is dead without seeing the body.
And a funeral without a corpse feels wrong somehow? Even if the state is gruesome.
“Hm. I’ll tie them with vines or something and carry them all on my back.”
“Huh? Can you really do that?”
“A woman who crushes rocks with those slender arms is saying strange things.”
“That’s not what I meant… They’re corpses.”
“A person who has cut down countless people with the sword at her waist is saying strange things.”
“…Acquaintances are different.”
“That’s exactly why I’m the one carrying them. I’m not an acquaintance. And don’t mix them up like a puzzle when we arrive.”
“Yes…”
I’ve killed many monsters in patients’ dreams, but I’ve also killed plenty of people—no fewer than the monsters. Whether they were villains or good people.
If dreams are treated like reality and good and evil are judged by the number of one’s own kind killed, then I will surely go to hell.
In other words, dismembered corpses like these evoke no emotion from me whatsoever.
Blink~
“Not that woman.”
Blink…
Our cute eye-tentacle seems to want to cut her down too and bury everything here.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Apostle of God.”
“Ah…”
Erona went into the forest to gather vines to tie the bodies.
I understand she acts this way because she’s confident in her skills, but if a Sword Demon were hiding nearby, she’d be sliced in an instant.
Of course, thanks to the Blood God’s greatness, I’ve already cleared the surroundings, so it’s extremely safe.
“Hm.”
Who would’ve thought the day would come when I run while carrying dripping corpses on my back.
If the natives of the romance fantasy <I Became the Youngest Daughter of a Count’s Family> or the hunter story <I Became an SSS-Class Hunter>—who once looked at me like a god—saw this, they’d be utterly shocked.
“I’ll go slowly.”
“No. Run at full speed until your legs give out.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Yes.”
It would be nice if this counted as an ‘achievement’ too.
***
We didn’t achieve the goal of meeting the hero, but with some results nonetheless, we safely returned to the duke’s territory.
Because of the rotting corpse smell, we couldn’t even stop by any villages, but since I had no intention of carrying them for long, it wasn’t a big problem…
“The smell won’t come off.”
Did following the hero make her feel like she’d end up as a corpse someday too? Erona hovered around me, talking.
“I smell even worse.”
She only carried them briefly, while I had them on my back for hours.
“Maybe my nose has gone numb. It feels the same as mine.”
“……”
“Did you wash?”
“Of course…”
I could have completely erased it using my world, but I didn’t.
Why?
Because people are annoying. They approach, then plug their noses and run away at the smell—it’s extremely satisfying.
“Even after washing, it keeps coming back.”
“Have you never handled a corpse before? Corpse odor doesn’t come off easily.”
“Yes. It was my first time.”
“While adventuring with the hero, how did you handle enemies like bandits after killing them?”
I asked out of pure curiosity.
“Among the bodies we moved, there was a spiritist. She asked the earth spirits to bury them.”
“Hooh~”
Spiritist.
A profession that also existed in the virtual reality game <Molang Fantasy>.
I had seen several scenes where the possessing spirit that controlled my body subdued beautiful elf spiritists, humiliated them, and then killed them.
‘It looked extremely uncomfortable…’
Unlike mages who use their own magic, spiritists had to grant the spirits’ requests in return for having them perform tasks.
Before or after.
If the spirit’s request was easy, that was fortunate, but sometimes they made unreasonable demands like creating an entire forest…
If you only received help without fulfilling the request, the spirit would become enraged, leave completely, or sabotage you.
“You mobilized spirits for such trivial work?”
“Why?”
The spirits in <Molang Fantasy> were incredibly powerful.
Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, torrential rain, typhoons, droughts…
Even great mages of 6th job advancement or higher struggled with wide-area disasters or blessings on that scale.
“What did you give the earth spirits in return for their labor?”
“In return?”
“Yes.”
“…Nothing in particular?”
“Surely not… nothing? The spirits cleaned up the corpses you created in their place.”
“We said thank you.”
“……”
So they treated the spirits like slaves without any compensation.
If that’s the world setting imagined by the novelist-turned-Ranuvel patient Jeong Yong-sang, then I have nothing to say—but no pay is a bit much, isn’t it?
“Excuse me, Amolang-ssi.”
“Yes.”
The duke’s territory, having completed the funeral of the greatest swordsman in the country, had returned to normal operations.
And I was currently receiving VIP treatment in recognition of my achievement in avenging the former duke…
“The duke requests your presence.”
A knight loyal to the new lord spoke cautiously, wrinkling his nose.
“Hm. Let’s go.”
“I’ll stay here.”
Without me even asking or showing curiosity, Erona—who answered on her own—hunched down as if hiding.
I can understand. From her perspective, the hero she believed in had turned into a complete mess.
Not only did he run away from home because he didn’t like his fiancée and unilaterally broke off the engagement—the fact had spread, lowering her standing as a political marriage candidate even further.
In simple terms, her life had gone off the rails.
“Please enter.”
“Hm.”
Creak—
I thought we were heading to the duke’s office, but this was a reception room for entertaining multiple guests—currently set up with tea-time furniture since no party was underway.
“You’re here.”
“Come in.”
There were already many guests besides the duke.
“Greetings. I am the priest Amolang. Due to personal reasons, I cannot disclose my denomination.”
Blink~
Valentine peeked its eye slightly from my sleeve and glanced around.
“I called you because they wanted to personally express their gratitude for bringing back their children who almost rotted on the cold ground.”
“Ah, I see.”
They must be the ones who entrusted their daughters to the hero in trust.
People whose faces had become half-gone from shock after seeing the horrific state of their once-beautiful daughters.
It was truly heartbreaking.
“Priest Amolang. Thank you for delivering news of my daughter.”
“How can we ever repay you…”
“Sigh! It’s not easy to control my emotions. Please understand if my expression isn’t good.”
“It’s fine.”
It didn’t seem like they called me just to say thank you.
“Do you know where the hero went?”
“I don’t. According to Erona-ssi, who was one of the hero’s companions, the mage who could fly also didn’t die.”
“…So just the two of them fled?”
“Yes.”
“Haha… He abandoned my daughter and ran off with another woman? These bastards…!”
Bang!
The furious man slammed the table with his bare hand in anger.
“I heard you’re also looking for the hero.”
“Yes. The Blade Phantoms are chasing him, so I wanted to warn him to be careful. Though it’s a bit late.”
“Can you find the hero?”
“At the moment, no. He fled into the sky, and the trail was cut off.”
“Hm…”
A gathering of parents furious at the son-in-law who failed to protect their daughter?
It felt eerily personal.
‘If Song Sun-young had died in that traffic accident back then… Uwaaa…’
Just imagining it sent chills down my spine.
“That hero bastard…”
“I went out of my way to allow it…”
“I must have been crazy…”
I decided to give them—the ones itching to confront the hero—a chance.
“But there is exactly one way.”
“Oh!”
“There is?!”
It’s very simple.
“The Blade Phantoms can locate the hero who plundered the ruins—no matter where he hides, even at the edge of the world.”
Because when they infiltrate, they always start near the dream’s subject.
“Blade Phantoms…”
“That’s a method…”
“But it’s dangerous.”
The decision was theirs. And I had already taught the new duke how to defeat the Sword Demons.
Bows, crossbows, cannons, catapults…
Crush them with physical force from a safe distance.
‘This works on me too.’
Anything with even a hint of magic-like fantasy elements is far easier to handle.
“We should hold the funerals first.”
“No resurrection either…”
In this world where nobles can raise the dead with enough money, they don’t seem accustomed to ‘death.’
At that moment,
Dong! Dong! Dong!
The warning bell rang again.
“What the…”
Bang!
A soldier burst through the reception room door and shouted urgently.
“Duke-nim! Duke-nim! Blade Phantoms are swarming!”
“Swarming?”
The duke reacted sharply to the soldier’s ashen face.
“Yes! They say there are more than ten!”
“Crazy!”
The duke—who had prepared countermeasures after hearing the information from me—looked stunned at the number.
On the other hand,
“The fact that they’ve come means…”
“The rat sneaked into the territory.”
“Hah! After killing my daughter and still daring to…”
Did he secretly infiltrate the duke’s territory to pay distant respects or something?
The Ranuvel patient had returned. Much faster than I expected.
“Priest Amolang?”
“Of course, I’ll help.”
Just ten?
No way. We already confirmed three at the dragon’s lair alone.
Right now, with the patient’s mind on the verge of collapse, the crack in the world had widened even further. There was no way only ten came.
Unless…
‘Are they searching because of me?’
Whatever the reason, dealing with them comes first.
Rumble rumble rumble!
“…Hm?”
A sudden earthquake. Violent enough to shatter delicate items like glass and porcelain.
What now?
Clang!
The duke—who reacted first—threw open the broken window and shouted.
“That’s…!”
It was a spectacular sight.
“I see.”
The god who had invited the hero to this world—wishing him happiness—had descended.
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