Chapter 133: You’ve changed a lot since I last saw you, Leon (4)

The man with the bandages over his eyes, who introduced himself as “Zetto,” cut down the demon I was struggling against with ease.

It made me realize just how weak I had become, but…

…suspicious.

He takes it for granted that I’m the hero.

He says it was dangerous, and he’s worried about me, wondering if I’m hurt.

Is he an enemy or not?

Can he be trusted or not?

-Tsk.

He reaches out to help me to my feet, but I swat him away even though it was not the way to treat a lifesaver.

“…”

The energy emanating from his body was at odds with mine.

I didn’t have to wait long to figure out what it was.

“Kerung.”

As I lay motionless, a circle of fuzzy fur approached me and licked my cheek with its tongue.

Unable to resist, I press my cheek against his.

“…Sheddie, you can’t lick the hero.”

Zetto lifts him up and places him on his head.

“Kerung.”

The creature laid down on Zetto’s head as if it were his own.

‘That’s a spirit, that’s…’

It was definitely spirit energy.

Dark spirits, the kind that demons are known for.

However, the blind man in front of me, Zetto, was not a demon, and there was something very different about his spirit appearance from the spirits I was familiar with.

“Keryung…”

Sheddie on top of Zetto’s head melted away with a pleasant expression.

He was quite cute.

‘…If it was that size and had soft fur, it would be perfect to hug and sleep with…’

I stopped thinking about it.

Embarrassed, I slapped the ground.

What am I doing here, in front of this mysterious man, thinking such silly thoughts?

Ever since I became a Rei, I felt like my mind was somehow being contaminated by a child.

“First of all…”

Zetto trailed off, pulling me to my feet and leaning me against the tree behind me.

This time, I didn’t reject his hand.

Zetto fumbled in his arms and pulled out a small pouch.

He slipped his hand into the pouch, and when he emerged, he held a flask.

It was a large flask, compared to the size of the pouch. It was a ‘subspace pouch’.

“…What is that?”

I asked Zetto as he approached me with the flask.

“It’s an ‘elixir’.”

“Elixir…?”

“Haha, I got a few bottles as a gift.”

I wondered why he would receive such a hard-to-find elixir as a gift and carry around a subspace pouch.

“Excuse me for a moment.”

Zetto put a finger to my immobilized lips.

He must have been trying to pinpoint the position of my mouth because he was blind.

He held the flask to my mouth and tilted it and the solution in the flask slowly trickled down into my mouth.

I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth when he said it was an elixir, but as the liquid touched my tongue, I recognized it.

This is an elixir.

It tastes exactly like the elixir I once poured down my throat during my hero days in the Saint’s absence.

I downed the elixir in one swift gulp and soon after, I could feel my body revitalize.

“Ugh…”

The elixir had a bitter flavor that naturally made me stick out my tongue.

How in the world had I been able to drink this stuff so casually in the past?

“Did you use much?”

“…Not much.”

“I just happened to have some candy, so I thought I’d give it to you as a treat…”

Zetto smiled, still holding the candy in his hand.

“…”

It was a candy of a different color so I wondered what kind of sweetness it had and my mouth began to water.

Zetto tilted his head and before I knew it, I was holding out my hand to him.

Since he’s blind, it would be better if I spoke to him.

“…I didn’t ask for it.”

My dignity as a hero was diminishing in real time because I had just eaten something bitter and asked for candy.

“Oh, candy?”

Zetto dared to mention the word candy.

“Give me…….”

I said, squeezing my eyes shut to keep the shame at bay.

It wasn’t long before I had candy in my hand and I immediately popped it into my mouth.

‘It tastes like…!’

It was a candy that harmoniously blended the flavor of chocolate, a high-end dessert that small villages on the outskirts could never dream of, with the mild flavor of vanilla, which is often used as a spice.

The extreme sweetness made my eyes widen.

Delicious.

It was so delicious.

It was the kind of sweetness that made you feel good.

‘This guy named Zetto…’

…might be better than I thought.

None of the guys who carried candy for little kids on their own were bad. That was the case with the director of the orphanage.

I leaned the back of my head against the tree, still holding the candy, and asked Zetto a series of questions.

First, I needed to know what was going on.

Zetto explained that he was a prophet. He can see into the future, to be exact.

He said that a bad future had brought him here.

I asked him what it was, but he dismissed it, referring to celestial leaks.

At least it wasn’t astrology.

He couldn’t read the stars because he was blind.

Maybe he sees the future through dreams.

A blind prophet was quite unique.

That aside…

…the demons were the problem.

The demons had discovered my location. This was a very bad thing.

Zetto asked me if I had any idea how they had gotten there.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a clue.

I’d been summoning the Holy Sword a lot lately and that is quite conspicuous.

I checked without even trying whether I could handle it or not.

It was a half-hearted, half-annoying thing.

At least when I was Leon, I didn’t have to do this. I’d grown up without ever realizing I was the hero, let alone summoning the holy sword.

Plus, for some reason, I had memories of his previous life and I don’t know why things have gotten so out of hand.

My brow furrowed as I realized that my complacency had endangered everyone in the orphanage, and I eagerly melted the candy in my mouth.

I needed the sweetness.

Zetto said it would be dangerous to stay here any longer.

Now that my location had been discovered, it wouldn’t be surprising if the demons returned at any moment.

“…Now that’s a bad thing, huh…”

“That’s why I have a suggestion for you, Hero.”

“A suggestion?”

“There is a place where you can be safe.”

“A place where I would be safe? You have no idea how many demons have crept into the land of men…”

He said that since my death, there had been a war in which there was neither a Demon King nor a Hero.

Zetto, who had been listening to me, bent down to be eye level with me.

I don’t know if there’s anything “eye level” about him, but he was looking at me exactly.

This is thanks to his special ability called ‘ki sense’.

I’d met a blind man with a bandage over his eyes once before, back when I was Leon, so it didn’t seem so bizarre.

Zetto held up a finger and spoke.

“…You can follow me.”

“When you say follow me, do you have some sort of affiliation?”

“Hero, have you ever heard of the Innocence Academy?”

“Ah, I know.”

Innocence Academy, the finest educational institution on the continent, said to have been built by my old comrade, the Sage of the Hero Party.

I’d thought about visiting when I was older. For now, I was too young to enter the academy.

It seemed like a safe place to be if it was founded by Hubert, who tended to be a bit of a maniac, considering and preparing for every eventuality.

From the way he’d described it, it was supposed to be a place where they taught demon hunting, so they wouldn’t allow demons to invade so easily.

“But what about it? I’ve heard that the Innocence Academy is a very closed place. I have a feeling I’m too young to be admitted to the academy.”

“You’re not the only one getting in… I’m actually a cadet at the Innocence Academy right now.”

“…What?”

“Believe it or not, I’m still in my first year.”

He looked young, but I couldn’t believe he was a cadet.

If that was the case, how could a kid who could only be twenty years old have defeated the Black Horned Demon so easily?

He’s a prophet who can see into the future, he’s dealing with high-level dark spirits that even I, who’ve dealt with countless demons, have only seen a few times, and he’s got the swordsmanship to cut down a Black Horned Demon with a single strike…

And at the young age of twenty.

His only drawback is that he is blind and has lost the light of the world.

Even if this was an inconvenience it was hard to call it a disadvantage because he didn’t need it.

‘Who the hell are you?’

Slowly, as I pieced things together, I realized that every single element of him was mysterious.

“…Okay, I get it. I see that you’re a cadet… Does that mean I can get into the academy if I follow you?”

“You’d have to be related, for starters.”

“Related?”

“You’d have to be related to me, a cadet, to get into the Academy… Well, leave the convincing of the higher-ups to me…All you have to do is act the part.”

“…Act?”

“Easy acting, perhaps…?”

Zetto smirks.

For some reason, his grin seems a bit sinister…

***

By now, the forest was bathed in the warmth of the morning sun.

Convincing Rei was easier than I expected.

Perhaps it was because she still had memories of being the hero, and she was receptive to the idea of something out of the ordinary.

Maybe it’s because she’s lived an extraordinary life and met a lot of extraordinary people.

After convincing Rei, I went straight to work on the orphanage.

The location of the orphanage wasn’t exactly known to the demons, but I explained to her that it was, so it was the next best thing.

Even if it wasn’t, I still needed to talk to the orphanage’s director to take Rei with me.

There was no need to go on a wild goose chase.

Rei had been there for years so she must have gotten used to it.

I flashed my Templar badge to the director, hoping to make things easier.

Roughly, I told him that since Rei had enough divine power, I would take her to the Holy Land and raise her as a paladin.

The “Ah, I know, was very puzzled, but he assumed it was some sort of prospect scouting so he agreed not wanting to stand in Rei’s way.

He only had one small question: weren’t there only women in the Silver Wings Order of the Saint?

With that, I explained that with the recent demonic activity in the area, it would be a good idea to relocate the orphanage and I offered to pay for the move.

I had a lot of money from the gambling house from my previous rescue of Magredo the Elementalist, so it wasn’t a problem.

I handed him a large bag of money and told him to use the money for the children at the orphanage.

The director thanked me profusely and told me to take care of Rei.

After that, I gave him time to say goodbye and the director hugged her tightly and burst into tears.

I slipped out of the orphanage and used Sheddie powers to dispose of the corpses of the demons Rei had killed.

‘She could have been killed by Madame.’

The ‘actor’ who thought could easily stage a crisis had unexpectedly struggled.

The rest of the demons were all taken care of neatly.

I would have taken care of the rest, but the hero is the hero.

Slithering shadows devour the corpses of the demons strewn across the forest.

“I’m sick of it.”

Not being human, Sheddie’s response was stony.

“Sick of it… I must have fed it too much back then.’

There’s no way he ate demons before he was enslaved to me… No way.

If it had a previous owner, it must have been a demon, but it’s not common for demons to kill demons.

-Hmph.

Soon, Rei arrives.

Emerging from the bushes, the small girl approached me, dressed for the long journey.

When Sierra spots her, she turns to me and asks a question, one that has been nagging at me ever since I met Rei.

[How can a girl so young be the hero? I still can’t believe it. Wasn’t Leon a man in the first place, or was I misinformed? ]

…She had it right.

Sierra continued, wondering what it would be like for a man to turn into a woman, what it would feel like.

‘Well…’

It’s a question I feel like I should never ask so I had deliberately avoided commenting on it.

Approaching me, Rei, still in her robes, watches the shadows consume the demon bodies with a blank stare.

Then her small lips part.

“Zetto, we should get going. Have you cleaned up yet?”

But there was a problem.

“Hero, you seem to have forgotten the ‘acting’ part…”

This was going to be important, so I pointed it out.

“…”

Rei pursed her lips.

I couldn’t help it, I’m not doing this because I want to.

I needed her to act, for the ‘setup’ I’d concocted to get her into the Academy.

And that was something she needed to start practicing now.

Rei didn’t seem to be able to perform as easily as the A.I. Geppeti.

Eventually, Rei’s twitching mouth opens completely.

“Brother…Ugh…”

“You’re doing great. Just a little more effort.”

“……Brother Zetto, are you done cleaning up?”

“Yes.”

I smiled and casually played ‘big brother’. As luck would have it, the cleanup of the demons’ corpses was completely finished.

I gave her a small clap for her efforts and reached for the candy. Hard work deserves a reward.

“……”

Before I can say a word, Rei rushes over to me, snatches the candy from my hand, and shoves it into her mouth.

“…”

Rei smiles with satisfaction as she takes the candy.

‘Well…She looks happy, so I’ll take it.’

Sierra’s eyes widen as she stares at Rei, the hero who can be happy with just one candy and is confused.

‘Anyway, the job went well, and…’

It was time to pick up the next ‘sister’.