“It’s our job to keep those faeries at bay,” I reminded him. “Just the two of us.”
I thrust the bottle back at Dotta.
“Yeah…” He nodded, stricken. “I know. We’re heroes. We don’t have a choice.”
Exactly. We were criminals, serving time as heroes. We couldn’t disobey our orders—the tattoos known as sacred seals on the back of our necks made sure of that.
Heroes like us were denied even the release of death.
If your heart stopped or your head was blown off, you would be resurrected to fight at the front lines all over again. Being brought back to life might sound like a good thing, but naturally, it had a few drawbacks. Each time you were revived, you would lose another piece of your memories or your humanity. Some had lost their sense of self completely and were now nothing more than walking corpses.
We didn’t have the privilege of choice. There was nothing we could do but fulfill our mission. This time it was very straightforward, at least when you put it down in words:
Support the withdrawing troops.
We had to cover the Holy Knights’ retreat until they were out of the forest. This Demon Blight outbreak had spawned around five thousand faeries and was drawing ever closer. There were no other forces covering or supporting us. The mission was to be carried out by Penal Hero Unit 9004 alone, and the only people in that unit available to fight were me—Xylo—Dotta, and a completely useless commander. Everyone else was either out for repairs after having their arms or heads or whatever blown off, or busy with another mission. They wouldn’t be any help here.
Our mission would be deemed successful only if we got the majority of the Holy Knights to safety. If we failed or tried to escape, the sacred seals on our necks would torture us to death. The entire thing was utter bullshit, to put it lightly. I wanted to beat to death whoever came up with the idea. It could have been worse, though. At first, even crazier missions had been proposed, like defeating the demon lord at the heart of the Blight.
We had our commander to thank for working out our current deal. While he may have been a coward with no leadership or fighting ability, his past as a con artist and political criminal meant he was extremely skilled at deception.
“We’ll make it through somehow, though…right?” Dotta glanced at me, then took another swig. “After all, we have you, Xylo—our hardest hitter. Plus, we’re heroes. Worst-case scenario, we get turned into mincemeat and are resurrected later, so—”
“You don’t get it,” I said. Dotta needed to face the truth. “How well our resurrection goes depends on the condition of our body. If we’re mincemeat or they can’t recover our corpses, we’ll pay the price when we’re brought back to life.”
Plus, we couldn’t expect the Holy Knights to come back and find our dead bodies under all this snow. Not when the forest was about to become contaminated by the Demon Blight.
And if those in charge didn’t have our bodies, even if they resurrected us, there would be serious side effects concerning our memories and sense of self. I’d only heard rumors, but supposedly, the way they revived heroes was by dragging our spirits out of hell and driving them back inside our flesh. The better your corpse’s condition, the more precise the resurrection. But those tasked with reviving us weren’t afraid to use someone else’s body as long as they had all the necessary parts. However, resurrecting someone with bits and pieces taken from other people increased the chance of failure…or so I’d heard. That was how some heroes were reduced to mindless walking corpses.
“Wait! Are you serious?” Dotta seemed genuinely taken aback.
“Why would I lie?”
“I had no idea. You sure know your stuff, Xylo.”
I didn’t reply. Maybe that information hadn’t been made public. Or maybe Dotta had simply died so many times that his memories were fuzzy.
“That’s why we have to do a good job,” I said. “I don’t have time to listen to your nonsense.”
“But—”
“And even if I did, I don’t want to.”
“Listen! I might’ve really messed up. What do you think of this?”
He pointed at the ground to his side. Beside him was a large object that I had been making a point of not looking at.
“…What is it?”
A coffin. That was the first thought that came to mind. It was a rectangular box with complicated designs inlaid on its surface that could fit someone of small build. If it was a coffin, it must have been for someone important.
Once again, I found myself doubting Dotta’s mental state.
“Dotta… Why the heck did you steal a coffin?”
“I don’t know… One moment, I’m thinking how gorgeous this box is and how I could steal it, and the next…”
I didn’t comment any further, and I wasn’t going to complain about his kleptomania at this point. There was no cure for his impulses. He would steal anything, and the more useless, the more he wanted it.
I was more concerned about something else.
“Hey, Dotta. About this coffin…” I placed a hand on the lid. “Could there be…someone in here?”
“Yep.” He answered just like I thought he would. There was something seriously wrong with this guy. “I was wondering why it was so heavy when I was tugging it along, so I checked, and—”
“Would it have killed you to check before you snagged it?! What are you doing stealing dead bodies anyway? Makes no damn sense.”
“That’s what I want to know! By the time I came to my senses, I was already stealing it!”
“The hell are you getting mad at me for? Want me to kill you before the faeries have their chance?”
Now I understood why Dotta had said “This is bad.”
Judging by the fancy coffin, it seemed safe to assume that the person inside was royalty—or at least a noble. Someone really, really important must have gone to battle with the Holy Knights and died.
The Knights would definitely panic once they realized the coffin was missing. I had only one thing to say to Dotta.
“Take it back where you got it, numbskull,” I said, removing the lid to check the body.
Even I wasn’t sure why I opened it.
Maybe it was morbid curiosity. If the person inside was a royal or a noble, I might know them. I had a whole list of such people I wanted to kill. I felt a wave of dark, illogical anticipation.
I didn’t have any solid, specific reason for what I did, though. It was simply in my nature to be reckless.
“Dammit.”
I immediately regretted removing the lid.
There was someone inside: a young girl—and she was frighteningly beautiful.
She was wearing the white military uniform of the Holy Knights. Her silky golden hair and snow-white skin made me think she was from the north. Her face was like a work of art, but what captivated me the most was the seal on her left cheek that stretched down to her neck. The marking likely continued all the way to her heart. I knew what it meant.
It looked similar to the sacred seals on our necks, but it was something very, very different.
“Dotta, this is bad.”
“Figured. She’s royalty, isn’t she?”
“No. She isn’t even human.” I felt a stinging sensation in my head. “This kid’s a goddess.”
“Huh? A what?”
“A goddess. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
She was one of mankind’s last hopes: a life-form created for war using the wisdom of the ancients. That was the exaggerated sales pitch anyway. But I knew the truth, and the truth was…that the sales pitch was exactly right. Goddesses were the strongest weapon we had against the demon lords.