“Guhk!”
Teron staggered backward after taking a blow to the stomach.
It clearly hadn’t been harmless, though, as a mouthful of blood came surging out.
“Ghhh…”
Teron lowered himself into a stance, ready to charge again.
It seemed he still hadn’t regained enough of his senses to hold a conversation.
No choice, then. I’d have to beat some sense into him again… No, I’d have to rely on the power of Love & Peace.
The moment I raised my fist, Teron’s body trembled violently. Then the demonic energy engulfing him thinned a little.
“…What? What happened?”
Teron had come back to his senses. As expected, the power of Love & Peace was truly magnificent.
“Keke, you were consumed by demonic energy.”
“…Me?”
Teron muttered in disbelief.
He studied my expression as though trying to tell whether I was serious, but when Alex nodded in confirmation, he finally accepted it.
“Sorry about that. Looks like there was a loophole in the contract. Benumael… I suppose he isn’t a highest-grade Demon for nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem like you can control it. How about stopping here?”
“No. I can’t. If I stop here…”
Daike will die.
As expected, convincing Teron wouldn’t be easy. No, it didn’t look like he had any intention of continuing the conversation in the first place.
‘Daike is the shackle binding him. As long as that problem remains, he’ll keep reaching the same conclusion.’
After thinking it over earlier, I had come up with a way.
But I couldn’t do it alone.
Teron was one piece of the puzzle, and he was also one of the keys capable of freeing Daike from his shackles.
“Come at me! I don’t care if I have to use a Demon’s power! If it means defeating you, I’ll do far worse than this!”
Rumble-!
Demonic energy swallowed Teron’s body once again.
“You idiot! Do you really think Daike would be happy about this?”
Alex started running toward Teron.
And just as he passed beside me—
Thud.
“Gah!?”
Alex caught his foot on my leg, toppled over, and rolled across the ground.
“Oh dear! Are you all right? You can’t suddenly come charging up behind someone like that.”
Of course, I’d done it on purpose.
Sending in Alex, whose parry chance was a mere 33.3%, would only end up increasing Teron’s attack power.
“Ugh… Sorry. I got too impatient. All right, let’s time it properly and go together.”
No.
Alex wouldn’t be attacking from now on, either.
‘I’m going to stop him.’
That’s right.
In this game, you could designate allies as attack targets too.
‘It was probably designed that way to account for status effects like Confusion and Charm… but it makes magic characters a pain in the ass to use.’
If someone was inside the area of effect, it didn’t matter whether they were friend or foe. They took damage all the same.
By the same principle, healing magic could also be cast on enemies.
‘And the farther you get into the game, the wider spell ranges become, while allies and enemies are constantly tangled together…’
Hit them, heal them, hit them, heal them.
Sometimes while playing, I genuinely wondered whether the people who made this game were all psychopaths.
“Let’s go!”
Thwack!
The instant Alex dashed forward, I kicked him squarely in the ass.
He pitched forward and planted his face straight into the mud.
“My, my… Looks like your footing got tangled. You should be more careful. A man can’t afford to have such a weak lower body…”
As you could see, my countermeasures against Alex’s trolling were flawless.
Hm? Then how was I supposed to attack?
A sharp observation.
Attacking an ally also consumed ‘my turn.’
In a turn-based game, that was a serious problem.
Whoosh-!
Teron didn’t miss the opportunity and launched an attack.
A vicious strike aimed at the opening immediately after I had used my turn.
But it was fine.
Clang!
Because I could just parry it.
“…!”
“Keke, have you lost the ability to learn?”
And the advantage of parrying didn’t end with merely blocking an attack.
I drove my fist into his exposed side.
“Guhk!”
Teron backed away, coughing up blood again.
‘The counterattack that comes after a parry doesn’t count as consuming a turn.’
Exactly.
Making full use of parries was the key to clearing this battle.
Alex wouldn’t increase Teron’s attack power.
Teron could be freed from the Demon’s temptation.
And I got to beat up two brats.
A strategy that made everyone(?) happy.
And so I knocked Alex down, blocked Teron’s attack, then counterattacked.
After repeating that sequence about three times—
“That’s strange. I haven’t taken a single hit, so why does my whole body hurt this much?”
“Keke, you must be imagining it. Or perhaps it’s some sort of demonic sorcery. Something like that.”
“Is that so? Then we should finish this quickly. The pain keeps getting worse.”
I was already planning to.
Judging by Teron’s remaining health, he could probably take one more attack at most.
He wouldn’t survive two.
‘If I’m right, the Hidden Piece should trigger now.’
I’d played this game for eighteen years.
If the Hidden Piece was ever going to activate, it had to be now.
Sure enough, Teron reacted.
Through the thinning demonic energy, his face emerged.
“All I wanted was to protect my friend. That was the only thing I ever wanted!”
He meant every word.
Getting rid of the hound tradition had only ever been a secondary benefit of protecting Daike.
But.
“Even though you treated your friend like a dog and ordered him around however you pleased?”
“It was only an act.”
“Perhaps that was true for the clever and rational Teron. But was it also true for Daike?”
Teron flinched.
Without even realizing it, Daike had grown accustomed to living as a hound.
And Teron had vaguely begun to notice that himself.
Ironically, his desire to protect Daike had ended up turning him into a hound more loyal than anyone else.
“Then what the hell was I supposed to do?!”
His dream of becoming a hero.
His dream of becoming a traveler.
Even his friendship.
“I gave up everything! I endured all of it! I even prayed to God! And still… am I not even capable of protecting one friend?”
The truth was, the fact that he had endured this long was remarkable in itself.
No matter how intelligent Teron was, he had only been ten years old back then.
Even now, he was merely fifteen.
Yes.
Teron had endured everything alone.
And that had been his greatest mistake.
“The problem is that you keep trying to solve everything by yourself.”
“What?”
God doesn’t reach down and take a person’s hand.
In the end, the one who takes your hand is—
“Another person.”
Had he never even considered that possibility?
Teron stared blankly at me.
That’s right.
Asking for help.
That was the path the two of them should have taken in the past.
Ironically, the people who had taught me that were—
‘Teron and Daike. Those two.’
Like I’d said before, I had been an orphan in the real world.
Back in school, just surviving on my own had been difficult enough. Making even a single friend to laugh and talk with had been harder still.
That was simply what life as an orphan was like.
‘Maybe I should die.’
In some ways, boredom had been harder to endure than hardship.
That was when I discovered a game called ‘Hero of the Academy.’
It was an incredible game that ran smoothly even on my ancient computer, but what appealed to me most was the fact that no one had ever cleared it.
And so I started playing.
Most people who played the game usually attempted the ‘Save Rodelin’ route.
The first major character you met, an attractive girl, a tragic backstory, and a heartbreaking ending.
Anyone would naturally want to save Rodelin.
But I was different.
‘The Save Teron and Daike route. That was my first challenge.’
For someone who had never had a friend, the bond between those two had been almost blindingly brilliant.
Brilliant enough to bring tears to my eyes.
Brilliant enough to make me stop wanting to die.
After about three months of trying to clear their route, I happened upon a fight while heading home from school.
“Hey! Hurry up and hand it over!”
“Wouldn’t it be better to give it up now instead of getting beaten and having it taken anyway?”
Some kids were being shaken down by a group of delinquents.
They were my classmates.
The obvious thing to do was keep walking.
And yet, for some reason—
I suddenly thought of Teron and Daike.
“What the hell are you supposed to be?”
“A-A noble and his hound?”
“…?”
Naturally, it didn’t end well.
I got beaten black and blue and left sprawled on the ground.
The only consolation was that I didn’t have any money for them to steal.
“Why’d you have to jump in and get yourself beaten up too?”
“…Because we’re classmates.”
“We’re in the same class…? Hey, do any of you know this guy?”
“Is he lying? Maybe he’s pretending to be our friend so they can extort twice as much from us.”
“A delinquent spy!? Kill him!”
That was when I made my first friends.
They were a weird bunch, but they weren’t bad people.
For the first time, I had people I could talk to at school, and little by little, the amount of time I spent talking grew.
So did the amount of time I spent laughing.
They helped me a lot, both materially and emotionally.
Teron and Daike.
Characters from a game had saved the real me.
And now it was my turn to save them.
“…What a joke. I should’ve asked someone else for help? Who exactly was I supposed to ask?”
Teron scoffed as though the very idea were absurd.
He probably believed there had never been anyone who could help.
Within House Vyuern, the power of Duke Zeppelin and the council of elders was absolute.
“No one helped us! Not a single person ever reached out a hand!”
No.
That wasn’t true.
There was the servant who always happened to pass by while muttering to himself right around wake-up time.
The maid who tucked bread inside her clothes so she could serve it to them while it was still warm.
The knight who secretly slipped them healing potions under the pretense of distributing supplies.
The administrator who loudly discussed confidential information just within earshot beyond the door.
The gardener who recreated famous landmarks from across the continent in the garden for the two boys who weren’t allowed to leave the estate.
There had been many people helping them in secret, hidden from the Duke.
“That can’t be… No, that’s impossible. Everyone was afraid of Father. There’s no way they would’ve helped us…”
“Think carefully. Weren’t there days when things went strangely smoothly? Far more easily than they should have?”
“That was… because I’ve always been lucky…”
Teron trailed off.
Now that he was older and looking back on the past, it seemed plenty of memories were beginning to come back to him.
That was how many people had tried to help the two of them.
And.
‘There’s me… No, there’s us too.’
We had wanted to support them.
We had tried to help them.
All of us gamers.
“…So that’s what it was. People had been looking out for us.”
“Ask for help. I… no, we will help you.”
There was another reason I needed to convince Teron.
To save Daike, Teron first needed to make up his mind.
But I also knew from experience.
Help begins with asking for it.
And yet—
“…I can handle this myself.”
Pride, self-sacrifice, and a persecution complex.
Teron was wrapped tightly in all three, and breaking through them wouldn’t be easy.
“Do you like heroes?”
“Heroes? Of course I do. There was a time when I dreamed of becoming one myself. But now… no. That will never be possible.”
Teron looked down at his body, stained by demonic energy, and muttered bitterly.
“No. It’s possible.”
“…?”
There was one thing I had realized after playing this game for eighteen years.
The title, ‘Hero of the Academy.’
At first glance, it sounded like it referred to Alex, the protagonist.
But the more you played, the more you came to understand what the title truly meant.
“You don’t have to be the protagonist to be a hero.”
The parrot and Luterus from the very first episode.
Caron and the rats, who worked from the shadows underground to preserve peace on the surface.
Lucia, who had been called a manufactured hero.
Adonis, who spent what little remained of his life working for the next generation.
Principal Dwener, who stood before a high-grade Demon with nothing but a single spear to protect his students.
Lowell, who was strict with her younger sibling in order to protect them.
Even all the people who had yet to appear—the ones I had met in the game—had been someone’s hero.
That’s right.
In this game, in this world, I had met countless heroes.
And Teron, standing before me now, had every right to become one of them.
“Become a hero. A hero… just for Daike.”
Teron’s eyes widened.
A positive reaction.
Time to land the finishing blow.
With words he couldn’t possibly refuse.
“I refuse your refusal. No matter how much you hate the idea, Teron, we’re helping you.”
“Why are you going this far?”
Why?
The answer was obvious.
“Because we’re friends.”
“Hah!”
A laugh of disbelief escaped him.
Tears streamed from both eyes as Teron finally opened his mouth.
“Help me.”
–TL Notes–
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