“Father wanted to become a hero so much that he even delayed his marriage. Only after the previous Duke passed away and he was forced to ascend to the dukedom did he give up his dream of becoming a hero.”
Right after escaping Baron Nolson’s lord’s castle with Klad, Jake sat in an inn room and calmly laid out his story.
“But for me to become the hero, he couldn’t contain his anger.”
“The Demon King hasn’t even officially started his activities and no oracle has been given, so how did the Duke know that you, who was only five years old, would become the hero?”
“Something of that level can be easily deduced.”
“So how, exactly.”
“He noticed that there was a reason for the abnormality in my heart.”
Jake had thought he wouldn’t become the hero as long as the Demon King wasn’t born while he was alive and breathing, but the Demon King had been born long before Jake was even born. According to the rule that the opponent’s physical condition is adjusted to match the abilities of whichever side was born first, Jake was born weak. Because the Demon King, who was born first, had something wrong with his heart.
Jake was born according to the Demon King’s condition at that time, unable to accumulate mana in his body, having difficulty walking and running, and even with faint breathing sounds.
“I suspect the Demon King had fallen into a state of suspended animation at the time. Perhaps he had been greatly wounded and fallen asleep, or maybe he was sealed—that’s my speculation. In other words, I was born in the same state as ‘a Demon King sealed while dying.'”
“The hero wasn’t even born yet, so how did the Demon King end up in that state?”
“Who knows. Perhaps he was stabbed in the heart by an incredibly strong person, but because that person wasn’t the hero, he only managed to preserve his life. I don’t know the exact cause.”
They had said Jake’s heart was leaking mana as if stabbed by a sword. That meant the Demon King had been stabbed by a sword before, and Jake might have been born with the same wound.
If the sleeping Demon King had been foreseen to awaken while Jake existed as the heir, it wouldn’t be strange for God to grant the newborn Jake the same conditions as the Demon King.
“It’s speculation, but I think the oracle came down at the moment the sealed Demon King awakened. When an oracle descends, the power of God dwells in the hero’s body. That power is given to face the Demon King, and normally there’s supposedly no physical change even after receiving that power, but strangely, at that moment breathing and walking became easier for me.”
Jake closed his eyes and recalled the day he received the Lord God’s power.
Even after walking for a long time, his heart didn’t hurt and breathing wasn’t difficult. The sword he swung properly cut through the wind with a *whoosh* for the first time.
The sense of achievement he felt for the first time. The emotion at that time was beyond words.
“The Demon King came into a state of living and breathing, so God adjusted me accordingly. Thanks to that, I avoided being in a state of a living corpse.”
“Avoided what. In the end, when the Demon King disappeared, your power was taken away again.”
As Klad said, Jake had now lost his power and was sitting sprawled on the bed.
If he was born weak because of the Demon King, shouldn’t he be adjusted to an ordinary person’s level after the Demon King disappeared?
To return him to his initial state close to a corpse. Geez, that bastard called God was as petty as a human.
“There’s no way Father, who possessed more information, didn’t know what I deduced. Father realized all of this in the year I turned five. That’s why he showed me that reaction.”
“You mean he sat there feeling jealous while looking at a sick five-year-old child.”
“Father was standing at that time.”
“I can’t say anything.”
Before Jake could say something like ‘Saying you can’t say anything is contradictory, Klad,’ Klad waved his hand to signal him to continue the explanation.
“If he couldn’t become the hero himself, he would have wished for his son not to become the hero either. He must have been resentful that the hero position was passed to the next generation with a difference of just a few years.”
The Duke had nurtured his anger every time he looked at Jake, thinking such thoughts. If only Jake hadn’t been hanging around in front of his eyes, he would have given up, saying it wasn’t his destiny to become a hero. He wouldn’t have come forward declaring he’d become a hero by destroying cities and villages.
“Since I took what he’d desired his whole life, I must have been that resentful to him.”
“You didn’t take it.”
“I don’t think so either. But Father felt that way.”
Jake, saying this, was neither sad nor depressed. Even though the Duke thought of his own son as an enemy, he showed no signs of being hurt at all. Nor had he fallen into a state of helplessness from becoming accustomed to such treatment. Rather, his attitude was one of complete disinterest.
Whether the Duke was jealous beside him or blowing up cities. Jake didn’t think about the Duke but only about the empire’s citizens who suffered because of him. To Jake, who devoted his heat and sincerity only to his duties and position as a noble and hero, Duke West was an obstacle that greatly interfered with fulfilling his duties. Just about that much.
“Father… no, our House of Duke West has manipulated history and deceived everyone over a long period of time.”
“You haven’t. Do you have to attach ‘our’ in front of West like that?”
“I’m no different, Klad. I’ve also deceived the empire’s citizens.”
At those words, Klad fell into thought for a moment. While Jake had hidden his true feelings and tried to deflect, he hadn’t particularly told lies. Though he had said many things that could sound rather unpleasant.
“Are you talking about deceiving the Baron?”
“The lies at that time were necessary to carry out the hero’s duties, so they’re okay.”
So deceiving the Duke and his gang, whom he recognized as ‘enemies,’ was okay.
Jake’s thinking was focused on the safety and peace of the empire’s citizens, so it seemed he partially accepted actions for that purpose. He’d been worried Jake might be stubborn about how deceiving the Duke or trying to trap him was immoral behavior that went against common sense, but this was good.
“Then when did you deceive who?”
“At the hero appointment ceremony, I didn’t deny that I was a Sword Master.”
“But the Duke made you do that.”
“Even so, the fact remains that I agreed to those words and received the fake hero’s sword as if it were real. I tacitly agreed to that false act that day.”
Jake, who found it extremely terrible to steal the truth from the empire’s citizens, couldn’t say it wasn’t so on that day alone.
“I could have stood there and shouted that all of this was false and I had no qualifications as a hero, but I didn’t do that. If it was revealed that the hero was frail, everyone would become anxious.”
And there, he couldn’t go on at length saying the Demon King has the same abilities as the hero so be at ease. Before he could even bring up such words, the plaza would have been seized with fear and no one would have listened to the subsequent explanation, and Jake would have been dragged away by the Duke without time to explain.
“If my lie can give peace to countless people even for a moment, I should do so even if it makes me uncomfortable.”
What stood there was not the noble Jake West but Jake the hero who had to face the Demon King. Thus, he was merely faithful to the hero’s duty of supporting and standing for the people. But it was true that he had participated in the Duke’s false manipulation, and because of that, he wanted to correct everything even more.
“I have no power now. Even now, when there’s not a single person who believes in me…”
“……”
Jake, whose eyes met Klad’s, subtly changed his words.
“…when there’s only one, who would believe me if I cried out that the history up to now was wrong? That’s why I wanted to defeat the Demon King and make the name Jake West widely known.”
“You thought it would become easier to reveal the truth that way.”
“Right. If I defeat the Demon King faster and more splendidly than any hero in history, my name will spread throughout the empire, and a world will come where my words become the truth.”
“How were you planning to defeat the Demon King quickly and splendidly?”
“I hadn’t thought that far yet.”
It seemed the most important part was missing somehow, but he decided to let it pass for now.
“Now that the Demon King has disappeared, I can’t even do that.”
“That’s right. I’m really relieved.”
“Relieved?”
Having lost both his status as the ducal family’s heir and his position as hero, lying there saying even speaking at length was difficult—and he was relieved?
Klad couldn’t understand Jake’s way of thinking at all.
“Even when I was locked in the underground prison, I could only think that I had to survive. My death could make many people anxious and lead this world to destruction. But now I don’t need to worry about such things, do I?”
“…Is that so.”
“The great enemy called Father remains, but he’s an enemy that anyone other than me can face.”
Klad nodded his head roughly as if responding to Jake’s words. He’d gotten at least some sense of how that way of thinking bounced around.
“Was that also why you were trying to hand over the ducal family to some descendant you don’t even know? Like, ‘I who deceived the empire’s citizens have no right to stand in that position. I’m also a member of the ducal family that distorted the truth, so I’ll drag down everyone including myself from that position,’ something like that?”
“Ah, that’s a bit different.”
“How is it different?”
“Originally in this plan, I was supposed to end up dead…”
“What?!”
Never mind about getting a sense of it.
