Being sentenced to serve as a hero was the most severe penalty one could be given. At least, that was what the Allied Administration Division had decided. Some even called it a punishment worse than death.

Heroes served on the front line of a never-ending battle against the Demon Blight. Not even death would relieve them of their duty. Their sentence had no end. Even if they fought for a hundred years, they would not be released. Only by killing every last demon lord spreading the blight would they earn amnesty.

And the thought of accomplishing such a feat was mere fantasy—an impossible dream.

***

“This is bad,” said Dotta Luzulas gravely. “It’s over. I’m done for.”

Again? I thought. Dotta had a habit of getting into trouble at least once every three days. It was all because of his damn sticky fingers. How sticky, you ask? Well, so sticky he was found guilty of treason and wound up here, sentenced to be a hero. He’d apparently been involved in more than one thousand cases of burglary before he was arrested by the Holy Knights and thrown in prison. I suppose you could call him a world-class prodigy at petty theft.

Dotta Luzulas would steal anything. I still remember bursting into laughter the day I heard the story of how he stole one of the royal family’s dragons. But my smile vanished as soon as I heard it had eaten his left arm. He was a crazy guy, but so were most heroes.

“Hey, Xylo,” he said. “What do you think I should do? I—”

“About that.” I decided to shut him up, pushing back his face as he approached. “Do you think we can talk about it tomorrow? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re kinda busy right now. They’re working us to death.”

That wasn’t just a metaphor. This was a battlefield. We were in a forest at the northern end of the Federated Kingdom—the last nation left to mankind. The snow was deep, and the wind was so cold that it seemed to pierce our skin.

Humanity was on the verge of losing even this place, known as Couveunge Forest, forever. Due to various circumstances, Dotta and I had been hiding out here since morning. Night was slowly beginning to fall, and it was already obvious how goddamn cold it was going to be.

A deadly mission was waiting for us, too: the Demon Blight. It wouldn’t be much longer until it arrived. And now Dotta, back from scouting, kept mumbling, “This is bad.” Hearing him was giving me a headache—I just wanted him to shut up.

“Dotta, do you know what our job is here?”

“I mean…I’ve got a good idea.”

“Then tell me.”

“We’re going to fight a demon lord,” he muttered, face pale as he slipped a small bottle out of his pocket. It looked like a kind of alcohol from the eastern islands made from beans. Booze like that wasn’t cheap.

“Exactly… By the way,” I said, pointing at the bottle in his hand, “you stole that, too, didn’t you? From the Verkle Development Corporation’s wine cellar, I assume?”

“Heh. Nice, right? I swiped it from one of the high-ranking army guy’s tents.”

Dotta mirthfully took a swig of the high-end alcohol. He looked pretty happy for someone who had just committed theft.

“I snatched the most expensive-looking one. I mean, it’s the owner’s fault for just leaving it out in the open like that.”

“Pretty sure it’s the thief’s fault regardless. Besides, I doubt a guy like you could even appreciate the good stuff.”

I grabbed the bottle out of his hand and took a sip. The alcohol burned as it went down. I was only trying to lighten the mood. I didn’t care how it tasted, and I didn’t want to get drunk.

“This is some strong stuff.”

“Yeah. There’s no way I’d be able to do this otherwise. We’re about to fight a demon lord’s army… There are going to be a ton of them, aren’t there?”

“It’s a big one. Around five thousand faeries were affected. Makes you wanna cry, doesn’t it?”

That was the number we were given anyway. There might be a few less, thanks to our nation’s grand and noble Holy Knights. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, though. Even if they took out one or two thousand, it’d hardly make a difference. Because…

“It’s our job to keep those faeries at bay,” I reminded him. “Just the two of us.”

I thrust the bottle back at Dotta.

“Yeah…” He nodded, stricken. “I know. We’re heroes. We don’t have a choice.”

Exactly. We were criminals, serving time as heroes. We couldn’t disobey our orders—the tattoos known as sacred seals on the back of our necks made sure of that.

Heroes like us were denied even the release of death.

If your heart stopped or your head was blown off, you would be resurrected to fight at the front lines all over again. Being brought back to life might sound like a good thing, but naturally, it had a few drawbacks. Each time you were revived, you would lose another piece of your memories or your humanity. Some had lost their sense of self completely and were now nothing more than walking corpses.

We didn’t have the privilege of choice. There was nothing we could do but fulfill our mission. This time it was very straightforward, at least when you put it down in words:

Support the withdrawing troops.

We had to cover the Holy Knights’ retreat until they were out of the forest. This Demon Blight outbreak had spawned around five thousand faeries and was drawing ever closer. There were no other forces covering or supporting us. The mission was to be carried out by Penal Hero Unit 9004 alone, and the only people in that unit available to fight were me—Xylo—Dotta, and a completely useless commander. Everyone else was either out for repairs after having their arms or heads or whatever blown off, or busy with another mission. They wouldn’t be any help here.

Our mission would be deemed successful only if we got the majority of the Holy Knights to safety. If we failed or tried to escape, the sacred seals on our necks would torture us to death. The entire thing was utter bullshit, to put it lightly. I wanted to beat to death whoever came up with the idea. It could have been worse, though. At first, even crazier missions had been proposed, like defeating the demon lord at the heart of the Blight.

We had our commander to thank for working out our current deal. While he may have been a coward with no leadership or fighting ability, his past as a con artist and political criminal meant he was extremely skilled at deception.

“We’ll make it through somehow, though…right?” Dotta glanced at me, then took another swig. “After all, we have you, Xylo—our hardest hitter. Plus, we’re heroes. Worst-case scenario, we get turned into mincemeat and are resurrected later, so—”

“You don’t get it,” I said. Dotta needed to face the truth. “How well our resurrection goes depends on the condition of our body. If we’re mincemeat or they can’t recover our corpses, we’ll pay the price when we’re brought back to life.”

Plus, we couldn’t expect the Holy Knights to come back and find our dead bodies under all this snow. Not when the forest was about to become contaminated by the Demon Blight.

And if those in charge didn’t have our bodies, even if they resurrected us, there would be serious side effects concerning our memories and sense of self. I’d only heard rumors, but supposedly, the way they revived heroes was by dragging our spirits out of hell and driving them back inside our flesh. The better your corpse’s condition, the more precise the resurrection. But those tasked with reviving us weren’t afraid to use someone else’s body as long as they had all the necessary parts. However, resurrecting someone with bits and pieces taken from other people increased the chance of failure…or so I’d heard. That was how some heroes were reduced to mindless walking corpses.

“Wait! Are you serious?” Dotta seemed genuinely taken aback.

“Why would I lie?”

“I had no idea. You sure know your stuff, Xylo.”

I didn’t reply. Maybe that information hadn’t been made public. Or maybe Dotta had simply died so many times that his memories were fuzzy.

“That’s why we have to do a good job,” I said. “I don’t have time to listen to your nonsense.”

“But—”

“And even if I did, I don’t want to.”

“Listen! I might’ve really messed up. What do you think of this?”

He pointed at the ground to his side. Beside him was a large object that I had been making a point of not looking at.

“…What is it?”

A coffin. That was the first thought that came to mind. It was a rectangular box with complicated designs inlaid on its surface that could fit someone of small build. If it was a coffin, it must have been for someone important.

Once again, I found myself doubting Dotta’s mental state.

“Dotta… Why the heck did you steal a coffin?”

“I don’t know… One moment, I’m thinking how gorgeous this box is and how I could steal it, and the next…”

I didn’t comment any further, and I wasn’t going to complain about his kleptomania at this point. There was no cure for his impulses. He would steal anything, and the more useless, the more he wanted it.

I was more concerned about something else.

“Hey, Dotta. About this coffin…” I placed a hand on the lid. “Could there be…someone in here?”

“Yep.” He answered just like I thought he would. There was something seriously wrong with this guy. “I was wondering why it was so heavy when I was tugging it along, so I checked, and—”

“Would it have killed you to check before you snagged it?! What are you doing stealing dead bodies anyway? Makes no damn sense.”

“That’s what I want to know! By the time I came to my senses, I was already stealing it!”

“The hell are you getting mad at me for? Want me to kill you before the faeries have their chance?”

Now I understood why Dotta had said “This is bad.”