Chapter 7: Extra: The Anxiety of Those Left Behind

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“Hey, do you really think he’s going to be okay?”

In a room at the inn, a green-haired girl who still had traces of childhood, the Healer Fran Arcury, asked with a worried expression. Of course, she didn’t need to say what she meant. It was about the Black Swordsman Lloyd Valt, who had been cast out.

“…Well, yeah. If Julius says he’ll be fine, then maybe he’ll be fine?”

The beautiful blue-haired woman, the Mage Elena Luibel, answered nonchalantly.

The matter of expelling Lloyd had been decided solely by the Hero, Julius Maftnes. And no matter how one tried to argue against something he decided on his own, it never overturned anything. Their travels these past weeks had made that painfully clear. Even when they faced strong enemies and advised, “It’s too soon,” or “We should retreat,” he never once listened.

The same happened when they went to subjugate the Red Dragon. No matter how much Elena and Fran tried to stop him, Julius wouldn’t listen, saying, “A hero can beat something like that easily.” The result was a near-total wipeout. Honestly, if Lloyd hadn’t released the power of Malice Glyph, they wouldn’t have made it out alive.

“But, like… We won’t have a front-liner anymore, you know? I’m really anxious about that.”

“They said that once we return to the capital, they’ll introduce us to a new warrior. Apparently they already have someone in mind.”

“…So we’re relying on the king again, huh.”

Fran let out an exasperated sigh and buried her face in a pillow.

“I actually relied on Lloyd quite a lot, though.”

“If that’s how you felt, then you should have opposed it. You were the one who got hurt because Malice Glyph went out of control, and that’s why he got expelled, right? If you had defended him, things might have gone differently.”

“…Do you really think Julius would listen? And I did tell him it wasn’t even a serious injury, so it was totally fine!”

Fran had a point. If Julius were the kind of man who listened, Elena herself would have opposed the decision. But she knew it would be pointless. Worse than pointless, actually. It would only backfire. Saying anything was more trouble than it was worth. If she pushed even a little too hard, there was no telling what he might do. He might toss her into the frontier like he did with Lloyd as retaliation, or accuse her of some nonsensical crime for “defying the Hero.”

His Majesty the King really had chosen a troublesome man to be a hero. So what if he was the son of an influential noble house? Why had the gods given such a man the qualifications of a hero? Elena simply couldn’t understand it.

“I mean, seriously… Isn’t it going to be super rough without Lloyd? He always did the item shopping, organizing, paperwork and all the annoying stuff. Who’s going to do that now?”

“Us, I’d say.”

“No waaay…”

Fran buried her face in the pillow again, clearly fed up. But there was nothing to “no way” or “come on” about it. After all, Elena was the one who had arranged this very inn. Thanks to Lloyd, they had been able to focus solely on fighting and adventuring, but that wouldn’t be the case from now on. Both Elena and Fran would inevitably end up with a lot more work.

“Does he seriously not realize that firing Lloyd is going to inconvenience him the most?”

“He probably doesn’t. For him, it’s only natural that someone else handles all the annoying things.”

Julius had the personality of a spoiled noble’s son. He only did what he wanted to do, and every annoying task was handed to Lloyd with a “Do this for me.” Normally, anyone would understand that once Lloyd was gone, there’d be no one to dump those tasks on. But Julius was different. In his life up to now, someone had always handled the troublesome things for him. Even without Lloyd, he probably assumed someone else would just magically do them.

Honestly, Elena wished His Majesty would send them a new front-liner along with someone to act as Julius’s servant and errand-runner.

“But, well… This is the price for relying on Lloyd too much.”

“That’s true… We’re not entirely blameless either.”

That, too, was correct. Lloyd had been added to the party by royal decree. Essentially, he was the party caretaker. Elena wasn’t sure what relationship Lloyd had with the king, but he was assigned as the guard for Julius’s group, who at the time had no actual combat experience. He was taciturn and rarely talked about himself, and he always kept a slight distance from Elena and the others. Or rather, they had made him keep that distance.

For some reason, Julius hated Lloyd, whom the king treated with special regard. Julius actively prevented Lloyd from fitting in with the rest of the party. If Lloyd and the others had been able to establish a Resonance Skill, he wouldn’t have needed to unleash the power of Malice Glyph… That was also partly Elena and Fran’s fault for not building a proper bond with him. The more she thought about it, the more she regretted not reaching out to him earlier.

“I wonder if Lloyd’s okay…”

Fran turned her gloomy face toward Elena. Elena had no idea how to answer. He had been thrown into the frontier with no money and no food. There was no way to judge whether he was safe. At the very least, Elena had no confidence she could survive if she were thrown into the same situation.

But… What was the Cursed Seal(Malice Glyph), anyway? She recalled the power it had shown when Lloyd repelled the Red Dragon. Covered in pitch-black miasma, he had become a berserker. Basically a raging demon god in strength. At the same time, a passage from a cursed text she had read long ago drifted through her mind.

“‘When the black curse and the white miracle cross paths, the world shall be saved,’ huh…”

She muttered the line softly. She thought it was something like that. She didn’t remember the surrounding passages clearly, but the crest depicted in that book seemed very similar to the mark on Lloyd’s skin.

“What’s that? Some kind of poem?”

Fran, who had good ears, asked.

“No, it was written in an old book on sorcery. If Lloyd’s miasma really is the black curse, I just wondered what the white miracle would be.”

In that sorcery book, it only said that “the white miracle will appear in the form of a young girl,” and didn’t go into detail. Maybe the truth simply hadn’t been revealed yet.

“Ohhh, that existed? The white miracle, huh… Maybe something related to the church? But if that’s what will save the world, then do we even need a hero?”

“…You’re right.”

Elena couldn’t help agreeing with Fran’s reasonable point. That was true. If someone other than the hero existed who could save the world, then Julius being chosen as the hero was unnecessary. There would also be no reason to bring Lloyd along.

“Well, for now, what we should really be worrying about is whether our next front-liner is going to be a decent person.”

“For real!”

Fran agreed with Elena’s concern. Now that they had lost the “guardian” who supported the hero, the future looked unbearably uncertain for Elena and the others.

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