Setting Off

The Hero’s village was consumed in flames. Orcs with tusks protruding from their mouths like wild boars were waving sabers with one hand while gripping what little there was to pillage with their other. The creatures bellowed fearsome roars.

The Hero, who had lived a life entirely disconnected from fighting until this day, readied a cheap bronze sword from her house in one hand and faced down three orcs.

“…!”

But she did not cut a very reassuring image compared to her powerful-looking opponents. Even the Hero, who bore the potential to become the most powerful being someday, was—at this point—still just a young girl who knew nothing of battle.

The struggle was decided quickly. The Hero’s strike left a shallow cut in one of the orc’s arms, but she was quickly caught in a grapple from behind by one of its brethren. An orc’s muscular hand clamped down on the wrist of her hand grasping the sword, and the girl was immobilized.

The Hero struggled desperately, but her defiance merely amused the orcs. One of the creatures licked his lips all the way up one of his tusks with a long red tongue as a coarse grin twisted his fearsome face. The brute’s gnarled hand reached out to touch the Hero.

However, the orc’s hand froze as it closed on empty air.

“Huh?”

The monster felt a burning heat at his back and tilted his head in wonder. He tried to turn around but was hit by a sudden sense of exhaustion and dropped to his knees, promptly collapsing.

* * *

My mithril spear smoothly pierced the orc’s back, and he slumped, unmoving. His companions saw me riding my drake with a spear in hand. Their eyes were drawn to the dragon crest adorning the chest plate of my armor.

“The crest of the Bahamut Knights?! What’s a knight from the capital doing in a backwater village like this?!”

The orcs screamed in fear. They’d likely planned to just ransack a helpless little village but instead now faced a drake knight from the capital of the kingdom, one of the elites of the Bahamut Knights, feared even among the ranks of the demon lord’s armies.

“Gyah!”

While the brutish raiders were distracted by shock, the Hero kicked the shin of the orc holding her and freed her sword arm. A smile crossed the Hero’s face as she ran toward me.

I leaped down from my drake, set aside my spear, and drew my blade as I stood in the orcs’ path, shielding my little sister, the Hero.

“You dared to lay your hands on my little sister. I hope you’re ready for the consequences,” I said as I rushed into the orcs with my knight’s sword.

This was the first page of the Hero’s story. The Hero defeated the creatures attacking her hometown, allowing the villagers time to escape. Those orcs turned out to be advance troops from the demon lord’s army. While they were taking control of the surrounding villages one after the other, the Hero became the pillar of the resistance. She saved those wronged by the evil forces and raised the signal for all the gathered people to strike back against the demon lord.

Apparently, I Wasn’t a True Comrade

It had been three years since Taraxon, the Raging Demon Lord—ruler of the dark continent—began an invasion of the continent of Avalon.

In just three years, four different countries had been destroyed, and half of Avalon had fallen into the demon lord’s hands. But just when the people began to despair that they could do nothing to stop the destruction…it turned out that the god of their world had not abandoned them.

The Hero’s birth was prophesied. And then a girl suddenly took command of forces in the countryside that should have had hardly any soldiers with combat experience and managed to beat back the demon lord’s army’s advance forces. The Hero, Ruti Ragnason, appeared in the capital bearing proof of the Divine Blessing of the Hero. Evidence that anyone would recognize and accept. From arranging a compromise to stopping the fighting with an underground band of thieves in the capital to recovering the proof of the Hero that was resting in ruins from the ancient time of the elves to various feats beyond, the girl’s exploits convinced the king that she was indeed who she claimed to be.

And thus, the Hero set off on a journey to save the world, accompanied by the cheers and blessings of the people.

* * *

Zoltan. The frontier.

Far from the Hero’s hometown, Zoltan was on the front lines of the war with the demon lord’s army. Blessed with a wealth of rivers—but in the path of storms coming out of the southern ocean. Protected to the north and east by the vast, unexplored mountain range known as the Wall at the End of the World. Covered in wetlands, so transportation and communication were difficult, hardly having developed at all. It was a land with no strategic value.

With its bounty of rivers and the replenishment of nutrients that came from storms that caused the rivers to overflow, one could make a decent living just spreading seeds around farmland with good drainage. But of those who seriously devoted themselves to agriculture there, many lost everything to the squalls that blew it all away. As a result, the people developed a natural laziness and distaste for hard work.

People working in Central were all scared of the threat of being demoted and sent to the lazy land of Zoltan. Even criminals who preyed on various villages left Zoltan alone because they knew they couldn’t make a living here. The only travelers who came to the frontier were fugitives, hermits, or eccentrics.

But as I was now, this sort of place suits me.

“Three kilos of nightshade, two kilos of koku leaves, one bag of white berries…”

I placed the medicinal herbs I had gathered on the table at the Adventurers Guild’s collection desk.

“Thanks for all your hard work, Red… Your total comes out to one hundred and thirty payril.”

The girl at the counter promptly breezed through the calculations and handed over silver payril coins for my payment.

“We look forward to working with you again.”

Seeing me leave the counter, the other adventurers all grinned.

“Hey, Red, still gathering medicinal herbs? How ’bout spicing things up a bit with a goblin extermination for a change?”

“Sorry, this is a bit more my speed.”

“Come on, man—that bronze sword of yours is seriously lame. An adventurer who doesn’t even have at least an iron sword is an embarrassment to the job.”

I just shrugged. It’s not as if I particularly liked being made fun of, but compared to how things used to be, this was nothing.

These guys were just shooting the breeze; they weren’t serious. They had the same lazy Zoltan spirit as everyone else and stuck to taking easy quests.

As for why I was working as an adventurer in a place like this… That’s a story from before I became a specialist in herb collection.

* * *

In the past—though it was less than a year ago—I was a member of Ruti the Hero’s party.

At the time, my name was Gideon Ragnason. To be frank, the Hero—Ruti Ragnason—is my little sister.

In this world, people receive a Divine Blessing when they are born. It’s considered a gift from God in order to guide people down the paths they should live. They’re granted strengths appropriate to that path, which is why they are called Divine Blessings. Power could also be granted in the form of skills based on what kind of blessing you have. Those with blessings in the Warrior or Mage trees could take on warrior or mage skills.

My blessing was Guide, one that had never been seen before. The power it granted was an initial blessing of level +30. I was born at level 31. I had a level equivalent to a knight in the royal guard. It caused a pretty big fuss at first. By the time I was six, I was heading out to exterminate monsters, and by eight, I was recruited into the knighthood. At seventeen, I had already risen to second-in-command.

When it came out that my little sister was the Hero, we started getting praised as the twin hopes of humanity. When Ruti and I returned from skirmishes in the countryside, Ruti was finally recognized by the king as the Hero, and when she set out from the capital to defeat the demon lord, I was obviously added to the party.

At that point, I was stronger than my sister and was one of the top five knights in the capital. No one opposed me joining the Hero’s party.

No one except the Sage, Ares, another member of our group.

In the end, Ares was right.

My blessing, Guide, was a power meant only to protect the beginning of the Hero’s journey. As everyone else’s levels rose, they learned powerful new skills, and the limitation of the Guide’s blessing became apparent.

With the Hero’s blessing, hero skills could be used; with the Sage’s blessing, sage skills could be used; with Warrior-style blessings, all sorts of warrior skills could be used… But there were no guide skills.

The only ones I could choose were common abilities anyone could learn. When we set out, I was strong relative to the rest of the group. Over time, however, they caught up to and eventually surpassed me. Gradually, I became deadweight. My role was that of the party member who helped the immature Hero in the early stages only to drop out midway through the quest.

* * *

“You are not a true comrade.”

That was what the Sage, Ares, told me when we were headed to the local lord’s mansion to celebrate after the intense battle with Desmond of the Earth, one of the four heavenly kings of the demon lord’s army.

“What do you mean?”

“A true comrade is someone who fulfills their role. Someone with whom you can fight back-to-back.”

“And you’re saying I’m not that?”