Hikan Rober — or rather, Hyakin, one of the reincarnated Heroes — shot up from the plush sofa.
I can’t let the whole continent be plunged into darkness because of me!
His mother, who had been watching him, gave a startled cry. Julia Rober, the Duchess, looked at him in bewilderment.
“My goodness, Hikan! What’s gotten into you? Wasn’t your routine at this hour to nap on that sofa like a cat?”
“Ah, I have something more urgent to deal with right now! I’ll be stepping out for a bit of travel!”
“You only just came back from that southern resort not long ago — where do you think you’re going? And at the very least, you should say goodbye to your father before you——!”
“I’m sorry! I’ll explain everything when I get back!”
Hikan quickly stuffed himself into the family carriage and gave the coachman his destination.
“Take me to the Citrus Harbor. As fast as you can.”
The coachman, too, was bewildered as to why this idle young lord was acting this way — but loyal to House Rober as he was, he chose not to pry into Hikan’s affairs and simply took hold of the reins.
There should still be ships departing for the Elia Kingdom.
That’s right. Astonishingly, Hikan was forging ahead on an adventure — to go and meet the remaining Heroes, his utterly insufferable (former) companions from his past life!
He genuinely didn’t want to, but there was one reason, and one reason only, that he was going to see his (former) fellow Heroes.
If those idiots end up destroying this world, my peaceful life as a wealthy layabout is finished too!
Hikan — that is to say, Hyakin — had been a Hero in his past life, but he was fundamentally a small-minded, ordinary person with no particular sense of mission to save the world.
The only thing that mattered to him was one thing: to continue living his current life of comfort and plenty.
For that alone, Hikan had resolved to head to the Elia Kingdom, where the Heroes were said to be gathered, for an all-out confrontation with the very people he’d been so desperate to avoid.
Having secured the most luxurious first-class passage and settled himself onto a plush bed, Hikan exhaled one deep, heavy sigh after another.
“Now that I’ve actually taken action… what if, instead of listening to me and stopping, they just cut me down on the spot for being an impostor?”
Back when they were all young and had just set out to subjugate the Demon King, his (former) companions would never have done anything so barbaric — but…
Having gone through every newspaper carrying news of the Heroes, the conclusion was inescapable: they had truly, genuinely lost their minds.
How else could the majority of newspapers be running stories about them wandering around seeking out dark mages and necromancers?
Even the lowest-grade tabloids — the kind that printed nothing but sensationalism and exaggeration — were openly exposing the Heroes’ behavior and expressing alarm at the direction they were heading.
In short, his (former) companions had gone from Heroes to absolute menaces, and had become the fear of everyone around them!
Damn it. I’m probably the only one who can fix this.
He would make it known that the deceased Hyakin had been reborn as Hikan Rober and was living happily.
In doing so, the Heroes would be freed from their corruption and return to being good again, and everyone would get a happy ending.
Then Hikan, having resolved the problem, would return to his comfortable, peaceful, sweet home!
That was the entirety of the plan Hikan had hastily put together.
The one thing Hikan was worried about, however, was the possibility that his (former) companions — the Heroes — might not recognize him right away.
My appearance as Hyakin and my appearance as Hikan are completely different. There isn’t a single point of resemblance between my past life and my current one, no matter how hard you look — so how I’m going to prove it is the real problem.
Haa.
Hikan ruffled his hair in anguish.
It was then that a voice reached his ears.
— What are you so worried about? Those children would surely recognize you at a glance.
“……Since when were you reading my mind? I’m not even a Hero anymore.”
— Once a Hero, always a Hero. So it’s only natural that I keep watch over you.
“Ah, yes. Of course you would, my Lord.”
Hikan replied to the voice of God with a sulky grumble, then turned back to reading through the newspapers carrying the Heroes’ news one by one.
As he flipped through page after page, his brow furrowed all over again.
“What on earth did those people eat to come up with such a mad idea? Did someone push them into this from behind?”
— Well, the thing is, those children actually li——
“Oh, don’t talk nonsense. The idea of them liking me makes less sense than saying they’re in love with caterpillars and centipedes.”
— No, really, this is genuine——
“Tch. Say one more ridiculous thing and I’m cutting off my connection to you entirely!”
— ……Understood.
Whether or not the God who deserved his reverence was left sulking by a single word of his, Hikan paid no mind and was already deciding where he would go first upon arriving in the Elia Kingdom.
“Since the Heroes are all scattered and acting separately… if I had to pick the one most likely to believe my reincarnation story……”
Hikan’s finger jabbed at a point on the continental map.
“I need to go here.”
Hikan made a request of the now-sullen God.
“When I meet them, you need to send a divine revelation in their dreams so they don’t mistake me for an impostor and kill me. Understood?”
— Divine revelations aren’t meant to be used for something so trivial…… Ah, fine. I understand.
Hikan’s mood was thoroughly low, having left home on a whim to stop people he didn’t even want to deal with from running wild.
These idiots — whose current life do they think they’re about to ruin!
If they couldn’t come to their senses, he’d beat them back into the noble figures they once were as Heroes, even if he had to do it with his fists.
As Hikan smiled with quiet scheming, God grew only more uneasy.
— Does that fool even know the hearts of those Hero children, who would overturn the entire world just to get ‘Hyakin’ back……
With no one to pray to, God offered a prayer to this world itself.
Please — may the meeting between the Heroes and Hikan not bring about ruin.
As the ship cut powerfully through the waves and pressed onward toward the continent, Hikan let himself drift briefly into old thoughts — no, into memories of his past life.
“Life back then was truly wretched.”
The smile on Hikan’s face, carrying unmistakable contempt, darkened.
* * *
In the life before I became Hikan, I was a commoner child without a family name — Kevin.
Born as the youngest son of Tom and Sara, tenant farmers from the village of Dora in the Shuerre domain, I was a freckled boy with brown hair and brown eyes — the kind of ordinary look you’d see everywhere in that region.
I was hardly different from my siblings or the other children in the village — just another ordinary tenant farmer’s child — but there was exactly one special thing that set me apart.
That was the fact that I remembered my past life.
In my past life, I wasn’t from this world. I had been the second son in a family of two boys, a pitiful wretch who spent every moment of his life being compared to his older brother — a brother who was overwhelmingly superior in every ability.
“For a child born of us, you’ve turned out far too worthless. We raised you to adulthood, so we’ve done our part — from here on, go and live on your own.”
My parents’ favoritism had reached its peak, and in the end, the moment I came of age, I was thrown out.
Cast into the streets without a single coin, I bought alcohol out of spite, stumbled around in a daze, and was killed by a hit-and-run vehicle.
It was a truly hollow, utterly meaningless, miserable death.
And so, reincarnated with every memory of that past life intact, from the very moment I opened my eyes in this new one, I made a firm resolve: this time, I would achieve at least this one thing.
Let me build the happy family I never managed to have in my previous life.
And if, by some rotten luck, my parents in this life also failed to love me — then I would build the ideal family I dreamed of on my own.
For that alone, I accepted my life as Kevin and threw myself into living it as best I could.
According to the laws of this country, tenant farmers belonging to a lord’s domain couldn’t even move freely, which seemed to mean I’d spend my entire life in this rural village — but I didn’t despair.
It was because the family I’d been given in this life, which I hadn’t even dared to hope for, was wonderfully warm.
Tom loved every one of his many children equally, without a single favorite, and Sara was a gentle and kind mother to all her children as well.
The people of Dora village, where I was born and raised, were also easygoing and kind by nature, and I genuinely felt glad to have been born here.
I, too, wanted to meet a loving wife in this village, build a cozy family together as a happily married couple, and grow old slowly.
For that, I need to work hard and earn money.
The most I could do was farm and occasionally run simple errands for outsiders passing through the village, but I gave it my all.
My own land, one cow, one pig, one chicken — and a fine wife on top of that. That’s a perfect life.
I was drawing out that bright vision and living with energy, when one day, word came that an extremely important personage was visiting the village.
“My goodness. They say the Pope himself is personally coming to our village?”
“I thought it was just a rumor, but apparently not! He’s been traveling the whole country bestowing divine blessings, and it seems our village is next.”
“Oh dear, what do we do? We don’t have a proper meal to offer the Pope, nor even an inn in this village……”
“Thankfully, he’s not staying overnight in every village — he sleeps in the city over there, so that’s a relief!”
The people of Dora village were tremendously excited over the Pope’s visit — the kind of once-in-a-lifetime event you might never see again.
I was simply taking the opportunity to earn a bit of pocket money, but for some reason the news of the Pope coming didn’t sit well with me.
My neighbor Wendy noticed and looked at me strangely.
“Kevin, what’s wrong? You don’t look so good. Are you sick?”
“Hm? I’m perfectly fine.”
“Then why do you look like you’ve been chased by a wild boar? You’ve gone completely pale.”
“I wonder…… I’m not sure myself. Maybe I’m coming down with a cold?”
I gave Wendy a half-hearted answer and brushed it off, chalking it up to just having an off day.
Not knowing that it was my body sending me a signal — run, right now.
* * *
A few days later.
Riding a white carriage adorned with colorful flowers, the Pope truly came to our village.
Under the solemn escort of holy knights, a Pope with a beard as white and full as Santa Claus’s stepped down from the carriage with assistance.
“Ohhh, the Pope……!”
“God’s representative on earth!”
“Please bless our village too!”
The villagers dressed in their finest clothes as though it were a festival day, scattering flowers from baskets as they welcomed the Pope’s visit.
The Pope was smiling warmly and waving in all directions like a kindly grandfather, but the moment his eyes landed on me, they sharpened like a hawk that had spotted its prey.
W-what?
A sense of dread rose in me at that instant, but I couldn’t run — and the Pope came sprinting toward me in a way that was entirely unfit for an eighty-year-old man.
The Pope’s sudden behavior left both the villagers and his own attendants wide-eyed with shock.
It might have been alright if it had stopped there.
Because the Pope, upon seeing me, dropped to his knees right in front of me — eyes gleaming like a crow that had found a jewel!
I froze, unable to even scream, and the Pope spoke to me with an expression of absolute rapture.
“At last, I see you!”
“???”
“The reincarnation of the Great High Priest Hyakin, one of the founding Heroes who fought against evil and protected the continent! Ever since receiving the Chief God’s revelation, I have believed you to be somewhere on this earth, and I have been searching desperately for you!”
“What do you mean, I’m just an ordinary……”
I couldn’t finish my sentence at that moment.
Because the instant the Pope pressed his index finger to my forehead, a flood of ‘certain information’ rushed in.
This place…… this world is the world from a fantasy novel I once read!
A Hero-genre novel that had been so unpopular it was discontinued.
Within it, the reincarnation of a Great High Priest named ‘Hyakin’…… was an extra who died a gruesome, shredded-to-pieces death, having thrown himself into harm’s way in the name of protecting his companions.
Whenever a problem was being resolved, didn’t the protagonists always have a line like that?
‘He would have loved hearing this.’ — the ‘he’ in that wistful line was Hyakin…… in other words, it was me!
“You have the wrong person——!!”
The moment I realized this, I screamed and bolted.
