Surviving as a Broken Hero

Chapter 24 – Fire and Flames (7)

Merged with the power of the relic as I was, I felt that I could, essentially, become the relic, which would allow me to truly harness its power.

That didn’t mean that my original body would vanish or be destroyed or something, of course.

I could feel that it was as easy as stepping over from one vessel to another and that stepping back would be just as easy.

…Provided that nothing happened to my body in the meantime.

Like that, the relic and I merged.

Overwhelming mana filled my consciousness, and I felt my control over the meteor widen. Even with my expanded mana control, I was still limited by the mana inside of the relic itself, which had once been a vast repository of mana that was down to barely a measly puddle.

I would make it work.

It was my chance to actually be a hero, after all, and to act out on my own initiative and solve a problem rather than merely patch one up after the fact as I had done so far.

I rapidly drained through the mana that remained within the relic as my expanded sight saw more hordes begin to run through the storm as if they had sensed something.

There was no going back from that point. Even if I stopped the meteor, the monsters would ensure the destruction of that last bastion of humanity in whatever forsaken realm I had found myself in.

The sky burned, and the meteor fell.

My mana reserves had mostly dried, but there was still one more aspect to put into play if I wanted to protect the village.

—Instead of using the relic’s powers, I would use my own.

Though my body was left behind, the concept and feeling of it were much the same.

I reached inward for that sense of foundation that was the earth and brought it forth.

Being connected to the relic as I was, I felt as if I had a direct connection to a large bubble-like radius around it where the storm had fallen from the meteor, the last waves of it still crashing through and obliterating monsters as the end of the world came crashing down.

I strained my will, wringing out every last bit of energy within the relic as I pushed the earth up along the village’s walls into the air.

The meteor continued its slow descent.

The mana in the relic ran out.

With the protective dome I had been attempting to construct only half-finished, I pulled on the only thing I had left.

—myself.

KRRRRRRRR

The ground shook and innumerable patches of earth and stone flowed against each other.

With my sight dimming, the dome barely reached its apex as the meteor crashed down into it.

My vision faded into darkness.

***

Not long before, back in the village…

Rodrig and Mia looked over the remains of the battle with the chief, awestruck at the complete destruction that had been wrought.

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Other guardsmen arrived at around the same time they did and began tending to those who had survived the attack.

Rodrig clutched his book and examined what remained of the monster corpses that Aizen had left behind.

Mia turned to the chief with a gleam in her eyes.

“See?! I knew he was the hero!”

The chief could only shake his head at his granddaughter’s blind optimism. He knew that their “hero” was only a confused man who had been dumped in a new world that he had no knowledge of. The man owed them nothing. How could he expect him to save them?

BRRRRRR!

Horns sounded in the distance, warnings of an impending attack.

Then…

BRRRRR!

More horns from around the village’s walls.

“Where did he go?”

Mia turned her head around frantically, looking for Aizen.

She recalled that they had seen him briefly headed back to the relic room.

She had thought at the time that he was simply going to rest after the fight that must have exhausted him.

‘What’s he going to do next?’

She couldn’t wait to see the hero’s next course of action, how he would defeat all of the monsters and emerge a shining victor.

Mia ran off towards the relic building.

“Mia! Wait!”

The chief held up his hand as if to stop her, but she was already gone.

“Rodrig…”

The bookish man looked up from a gouge in the earth he had been examining.

“Yes…?”

“Go after her.”

The man nodded, seeming to understand the chief’s worries.

“Ah… yes, right away.”

Whether the hero saved them or not, it would be the end of things as they knew them. The chief wanted Rodrig to look after his only granddaughter, as he could no longer keep up with her.

Rodrig took off across the field after Mia, tripping over his robes and huffing the whole way.

He found her again inside the relic room as the horns blared out around the entire village.

“Mia…?”

She had left the door cracked open, exposed for anyone outside to see.

Rodrig stepped into the room and found her standing still near the relic, staring at something.

He approached her and noticed a gentle humming sound emerging from the relic.

There, right next to where Mia was standing, was the hero’s body on the ground.

At first, Rodrig worried that he might be dead, but then he saw the thin interlacing golden strand of energy that connected the hero to the relic.

KRRRR.

The earth began to shake as she reached out her hand in awe to touch the golden strand.

“Mia! No!”

He moved to intercept her.

She might not have known what it was, but he recognized it as a strand of life itself, his eyes catching but glimpses of the soul within.

He batted her hand away just as the earth shook again, and they both fell into the golden strand before all went black.

“Do you understand now?”

A foggy cloud hung over my mind. Everything seemed muddled and distant, as if from a great distance.

Darkness…

I felt a hard surface below me and the distant, familiar smell of sulfur.

“Ah, I almost forgot…”

Click

There was a snapping sound, and the fog slowly receded.

I tried to remember what I had been doing.

There had been a meteor, monsters, fire… Darkness.

“You could have died. You know that, right?”

It was the woman’s voice again. The woman I had met at the tree.

“Yeah…”

“Messing with the soul is best left to those that know what they’re doing.”

‘Messing with the soul? Does she mean that connection I had with the relic at the end?’

It was the only thing I could think of.

“And for what? To save some imaginary village?”

The woman’s tone wasn’t angry, but inquisitive—chiding, in a way, but gentle.

I was awake, my eyes open, but it was still dark—just an inky void around me.

“Not only that, but you also managed to draw some of them back with you.”

Still focused on her question, I spoke.

“Was it really fake?”

I recalled the children I had seen in the village.

I remembered the looks of hope in the villagers’ eyes when I had first appeared, their fear of the monster attacks, the bookish Rodrig, and the somewhat rebellious but also inquisitive Mia. Had they really all been fake? There was a part of me that didn’t want—no, couldn’t believe it.

“I suppose that depends on how you define the word ‘fake’…”

She didn’t answer the question.

“Regardless, why would you risk everything for those you don’t even know? Do you not have goals left to accomplish?”

She was right. It had been foolish of me.

Why risk my life for people I hardly even knew when someone depended on me? I wanted to believe that Rhil needed me to save her, that I was the only one who could do it, that I would be able to find the rest of the people I sorely missed. My father… My mother…

But deep down, I knew that my chances of finding them were slim. Why would Rhil need my help when she was stronger than me by far? What could I do?

Such thoughts had lurked in the recesses of my mind, taunting me, out of my control.

In that village, I had felt strong.

I had been in control, I was able to choose to save others who actually needed me, whereas I was convinced that I was not needed elsewhere.

“I think you undervalue yourself. You have something nobody else does.”

She was referring to the Second System, of course. Also…

She had read my thoughts again.

“Do you remember the meteor? That feeling you had when you sent it crashing down? As you willed the fire to flow over the barrier of earth you constructed around the village?

I remembered. It had been more of a desperate plea than willing the fire to do anything.

“Look…”

I was still alone in the darkness, and a video floated in front of me.

The video showed the meteor crashing into a dome of earth over the village, bursting into a wave of fire that had flowed down the dome, and the meteor breaking apart into huge streams of fire that incinerated monsters by the hundreds just before impact.

Fiery waves of destruction spread outwards from the dome, wiping out the monsters as far as I could see, spreading into the distance in an unsatiable force of destruction until naught was left but the blackened landscape and the dome of earth.

Soon after, the earthen dome also dissolved away into nothingness, leaving the village standing alone on a decimated plain.

“You did save the village, but how long until the earth no longer provides and they run out of resources? The relic was doing more than just keeping the monsters at bay, you know.”

I had suspected it to be the case, but the villagers would have to seek out new earth over time and go back out into whatever was left of their world. I had only been able to do so much. A hero, but not a savior.

“What did the fire feel like?”

She asked me.

It was a distant memory, but it had felt hungry. The fire had felt like a hunger for everything that wasn’t it. The warmth of it was a pure gathering of energy.

“Remember that feeling, it is your reward.”

With that, the voice vanished, and I was left inside the arena that I had been in only days before with Bernard and Velle. It seemed that a much longer time had passed.

Not only that, but I could also feel a lingering warmth.

{{Quest Complete!

Save the Village

Rewards: ???}}