Leon said he wanted to speak with Ex alone and led him somewhere else. It was an empty training area inside the indoor practice hall.
In that vast space, only Leon and Ex stood facing each other.
Ex looked around and confirmed there was nobody else there. That only made Leon's intentions seem even more suspicious.
“What the hell did you drag me all the way out here for?”
Without a word, Leon tossed a training longsword at Ex.
Clang-
Ex didn't catch it. The training longsword hit the floor awkwardly and rolled to a stop at his feet.
“…”
“What? You actually thought I'd obediently catch it for you?”
“I see. I suppose I didn't explain myself properly.”
Leon picked up a training longsword of his own and stepped in front of Ex.
Only then, as though everything was finally ready, did he speak.
“I heard you can use internal energy, mana, and divine power. All three of them. Almost like a Hero. Is that true?”
So word had already gotten around.
It was a rumor Ex would've needed to spread eventually anyway, so he wasn't particularly bothered. He simply answered without hesitation.
“And if it is?”
“…Prove it.”
“No. You drag me out here without warning and tell me to show you everything I've got, and you expect me to go, ‘Yes, of course,’ and do it?”
“This is important! Stop treating it like a joke!”
“A joke?”
Ex ground his molars once and glared at Leon.
“Have you even apologized to Lola since then?”
“Th-That's…”
“What good is being a grown man when you still act like a goddamn child? Is it really that hard to tell a girl way younger than you that you were wrong? Do you still not understand why Circe left your side?”
“That's none of your business.”
“You dense fucking blockhead.”
Ex completely forgot Beatrice was there and let all the anger he'd been holding back spill out.
“Listen carefully, you overgrown man-child of a Hero. What pisses me off isn't just that you screwed up. It's that you screwed up and then walked around acting like you hadn't done a damn thing wrong. If you're a human being, then show some basic fucking humanity.”
“Why are you getting so angry? What does any of this have to do with you?”
“If you'd just said one lousy ‘I'm sorry’ to Lola, I wouldn't be this pissed. Even if you didn't mean it. Even if it was a lie, even if you were cursing her in your head while you said it, you still should've said it.”
“But why?”
“Because that's what basic human decency is, you fucking asshole!!”
Every time Ex looked at Leon's genuinely uncomprehending face, rage bubbled up from the depths of his chest like molten lava.
「Ex.」
Just before the last thread of his reason snapped, someone's voice doused the flames of his anger.
It was Beatrice, her voice filled with concern.
“…Whew. My apologies, Your Highness. You had to see me make a disgrace of myself…”
「Go punch him! Just hit him once! I don't care if the Goddess herself recognizes him, I refuse to accept someone like that as a Hero! I saw what he did too! What kind of Hero mercilessly beats up a defenseless Young Lady? That's not a Hero! That's just a violent thug!」
“…”
Ex was left speechless.
He hadn't realized Beatrice had this much fire in her.
Thanks to her, the anger that had been on the verge of exploding subsided considerably.
“Whew. Fine. It's important. I'm sure it's very important. So what? What exactly are you going to do if I really can use all three powers?”
“…Depending on what I find.”
Leon held his sword near his chest with the tip pointed toward the sky. It looked almost like a formal opening stance.
“I may ask for your cooperation.”
Then his entire body shot toward Ex like an arrow.
“And as the senior Hero, I might even show you the way.”
A precise, perfectly straight thrust.
There was no aura behind it, and the practice blade wasn't even sharpened.
But it was still an attack Ex couldn't possibly dismiss.
“You crazy bastard, at least give me some fucking warning…!”
Ex kicked the practice sword at his feet into the air, caught it immediately, and took his stance.
Clang-!
He barely managed to knock Leon's sword aside an instant before it struck.
But Leon's attack didn't end there.
A relentless chain of clean, direct strikes came from above, below, and both sides. Every time Ex parried one, his own sword shook harder in his grip.
Ex desperately tried to follow the paths of Leon's blade, but Leon's swordsmanship had long since reached a level ordinary humans couldn't hope to keep up with.
Left with no other choice, Ex conjured swords of white light around Leon and fired them from every direction. Three were illusions. One was real.
“I've already seen that trick.”
Leon simply swung his sword backward once and struck only the real blade, shattering it outright. He didn't even bother reacting to the illusions.
And there was no opening for Ex to exploit while he did it.
‘I'm hopelessly outmatched when it comes to actual combat experience…!’
Ex hadn't defeated Leon in the Ancient Ruins through his own strength.
Even the System had acknowledged that much.
There was no realistic way he could overcome a Hero who had spent decades fighting on battlefields. It was so obvious there was hardly any point putting it into words.
“In that case…!”
If he couldn't keep up with the sword, he'd use something else.
Ex immediately chanted an incantation while forming a hand seal with his left hand and cast Fireball.
The hastily assembled Fireball shot toward Leon, and Leon reacted immediately.
Whoosh-
By casting magic of his own.
‘He can already use magic…!’
Ex had expected Leon to start using magic later than this.
Yet the Leon standing before him had unmistakably cast a spell.
Ex quickly realized why.
‘The Chairman's training accelerated his growth…!’
Boom-!!
The two Fireballs collided in midair and exploded.
Leon's Fireball was still holding its shape.
Proof that his spell had been constructed to a higher level of completion than Ex's.
In the next instant, both Leon's sword and his magic came flying toward Ex.
Leon clearly had no intention of stopping his assault.
「Watch out!」
The ring suddenly flashed.
A blinding radiance burst forth, taking shape as a massive wall.
Clang-!
Boom-!
The golden shield of light, solid enough to possess physical force, completely blocked both Leon's sword and his magic.
Only then did Leon's offensive stop.
“…So you really can use divine power.”
Leon stared at the radiant shield with visible surprise.
He immediately recognized that the sacred art was on the same level as Frey's.
“That's a much higher-level sacred art than I expected. Since when have you been able to use divine power?”
“Would you believe me if I said yesterday?”
“It takes at least ten years of cultivating one's faith to reach this level. You can't awaken divine power yesterday and suddenly use it like this.”
Leon's analysis was exactly right.
Because this sacred art wasn't Ex's power at all.
It belonged to Beatrice, who had nurtured her faith since childhood.
“The source of that power… You wouldn't tell me even if I asked for the details, would you?”
“You catch on fast.”
“Fine. Understood. It doesn't matter. That spar was enough for me to confirm what I needed.”
Leon looked at Ex with flat, emotionless eyes.
There wasn't even a trace of hope left in them.
“You're not a Hero. You don't qualify.”
That was Leon's assessment of Ex's combat ability.
“I don't know how you're able to use all three kinds of power, but at this level, you wouldn't make it ten steps into the Demon Realm. Your swordsmanship is mediocre. Your magic is mediocre. And that divine power isn't even yours, is it? You're borrowing it from some magic device or artifact.”
He truly was a Hero.
One brief clash had been enough for him to see straight through to the heart of it.
Leon returned the practice sword to its original place and let out a faint sigh of disappointment.
“I don't hold anything against you for what happened in the Ancient Ruins. I've accepted that Circe left us, too. And like you said earlier, I'll apologize to that girl, Lola.”
“…”
“I don't know what you think of me, but I am a Hero. I believe it is my mission to give my life to save this world, because the Goddess chose me to do so. That hasn't changed.”
Leon looked directly at Ex, his gaze unwavering.
“For a moment, I genuinely hoped you might be a Hero too. If all you lacked was strength, that could've been fixed. You could've trained and grown stronger. But you're not a Hero. Of that, I'm certain.”
Leon left one final remark as he walked out of the training area.
“I hope you get your revenge.”
Those words came from the lie Ex had once invented to deceive Leon.
Leon had remembered it.
And just like that, Ex was left standing there alone.
“…Did the bastard suddenly turn over a new leaf or something?”
Ex wasn't sure what he was supposed to make of the Leon he'd just seen.
For a moment, he'd glimpsed the Leon from the latter part of the story, the one who had matured as a person. The rough edges of his early-story self were still there, making the two sides clash awkwardly, but there was no denying that something fundamental in his mentality had changed.
‘Strength, character, resolve. He beat me in all three.’
The moment Ex admitted that, a sudden sense of defeat washed over him.
A Hero growing into someone worthy of being a Hero was a good thing for Ex.
The stronger Leon became, the better their chances of stopping the Doomsday Scenarios that would strike later.
‘But what about me?’
Was it because his only goal had always been survival?
Or was it because, in the end, he was nothing more than an Extra?
For the first time, Ex found himself wondering whether he had any right to do what he was doing.
And if he didn't have that right, then what was he supposed to do?
That was when it happened.
「Don't let some dry, humorless bastard like that shake you!」
Beatrice shouted, utterly furious.
「You don't need qualifications to decide you're going to do something! You're still only a student, and he's already talking about whether you're ‘qualified’? Does that even make any sense?」
Beatrice continued berating the dejected Ex.
「Ex, I've been trapped inside this Soul Trap Ring for five years, and I kept praying even when those prayers served absolutely no purpose. It wasn't because I thought they'd help me someday. It wasn't because I thought they'd help me escape. I didn't need a reason like that. I prayed because I wanted to pray for the peace and safety of the Empire. That alone was enough.」
“Your Highness Beatrice…”
「I'm telling you to stop moping just because you lost to someone who's a little stronger than you! The person who saved me wasn't some self-important Hero who struts around bragging about how strong he is. It was you.」
Beatrice declared it with complete confidence.
「Sir Ex! If you are the Sword of the Imperial Princess, then stand tall and hold your head high, no matter where you are or what happens! That's an order!」
It was an absurdly forceful demand.
Little more than the kind of unreasonable declaration a stubborn child might make.
Words spoken without worrying about logic or consequences, filled with nothing but dreams.
And only after hearing them did Ex finally realize something.
Everything he'd been through had made him start imagining he was some kind of protagonist.
But Ex wasn't the sort of person who endured hardship, overcame adversity, and emerged stronger and more steadfast like some storybook hero.
What had actually happened whenever adversity came crashing down on him?
Forget growing from it.
There had been plenty of times he'd actually regressed.
The growth he'd achieved wasn't the result of some dramatic breakthrough where he'd conquered hardship at the decisive moment.
It was the product of countless ordinary days.
One more swing of the sword.
One more spell calculation wrestled with until he understood it.
One more day of stubbornly doing what he could.
All those tiny repetitions had accumulated into the person he was now.
“…I see. How did I manage to forget something this obvious?”
His goal had never been anything as grand as saving the world.
It was to survive, viciously and stubbornly, by any means necessary.
To keep standing until the very end, no matter how utterly fucked the coming destruction became.
That was exactly how he'd clawed his way out of one hell after another until now.
“Right. I'm definitely no Hero.”
「And you don't need to be one!」
“As long as I survive, that's all that matters!”
「The one still standing at the very end is the strong one!」
A strange sort of resolve passed back and forth between Ex and Beatrice.
And once Ex changed the way he was looking at things, a plan came to him.
“Your Highness Beatrice, I've just thought of something.”
If there was no situation where he held the advantage, then he simply had to create one.
Andras, hiding somewhere in the shadows.
The Archdemon lurking within the Theocracy.
Even Elysia, who was probably watching all of this from somewhere outside, perfectly relaxed.
He would unleash a lie so outrageous that none of them could afford to ignore it.
***
The next day, in the middle of the Tournament preliminaries.
Fwoooooooooosh-!!!!
Without warning, a colossal pillar of light erupted from the sky.
The pillar shone with brilliant, solemn majesty as it illuminated a single person.
At the center of the Tournament arena, surrounded by countless watching eyes, that person raised his sword toward the heavens.
“My name is-!!!!”
There wasn't a single person present who failed to recognize what that pillar of light meant.
It was the divine sign of the Goddess who had created the Hero, the figure at the heart of the Empire's founding legend, the hero admired and revered by all.
“Ex-!!!!”
Whoever received that light was, for all intents and purposes, someone chosen as a Hero, destined to begin a new heroic legend in the name of humanity's salvation.
“I am the one chosen as the Hero-!!!!!!”
Naturally, it was a lie.
–TL Notes–
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