With Patrick still holding me, we made our way back to the ground. The threat in the skies had disappeared, and the chaos in the Royal Capital was settling down.
I stood on my own two feet for the first time in a while as I asked Patrick the question on my mind. “From the way you described it, it sounds like my two sides were battling a bit before fusing back into one... What was the fight like?”
“You weren’t fighting for that long, so I don’t really remember.”
Would he really forget the moment that Left Yumiella and Right Yumiella clashed? I was going to push Patrick to spill whatever he was hiding, but the hero landed near us and called out to me.
“Thank you for saving the world. The way you fought was quite the sight to see.”
“Thanks to you, my two sides seem to have come back together.”
I’d just thrown myself into the battle to prove I was strong, and a version of me was the very threat we were fighting... I didn’t feel right being thanked for saving the world.
I’d tried to be humble in my response, but if this conversation kept going, I would just sound hypocritical, so I tried to avoid discussing the world.
“I’m glad to hear that,” the hero said.
“By the way, how would you describe the way I fought?”
“You were vicious in a way that is unbelievable for a human to be.”
“You’re talking about my out-of-control left side, right?”
“Both sides.”
I see. Our battle must’ve been so intense that Patrick didn’t want to say anything. I feel like it wasn’t a cool, graceful battle, but more of a cosmic-horror bloodbath to the death, so I won’t ask for details.
Because I set aside my curiosity things were, for now, settled. Just looking at the end result, things were back to normal, so you could say we had a happily ever after. Everyone seemed to be quite relaxed.
“So the threat against this world is gone. It’s time for me to fulfill my objective.”
I knew what that objective was very well. Now that my two sides had merged, I could see all the details.
The hero—the first king of the Kingdom of Valschein—was a brash person who was often mistaken for a barbarian. His nature led him to impulsively start up a kingdom, but towards the end of his life, he was full of regrets.
The hero had had a falling out with the Demon Lord, and his younger brother had become a duke only to become an enemy of the royal family for the kingdom’s sake... The Kingdom of Valschein was a kingdom that was built upon countless sacrifices. He felt it was a mistake of a kingdom and that, with his own hands, he had to...
“Are you planning to destroy the Kingdom of Valschein?”
The hero responded with a hearty nod. “I still want the same thing. I was miraculously brought back to life, so I can’t leave this mistake of a kingdom as is.”
“So you’ll get rid of Valschein... Then what? Are you going to rebuild this kingdom as its king?”
“Once the kingdom is gone, the future should be determined by the people living here.”
So you’re going to destroy their kingdom, and then the rest is up to them?
The hero’s objective was quite strange. The act itself of destroying Valschein sounded quite malicious, but he didn’t want to kill the citizens of this kingdom, nor did he want to take over this land. He just wanted to destroy the framework which this kingdom was built upon, and he had no desires past that.
That seems kind of unnecessary, no?
“As you can see, the Kingdom of Valschein is prosperous and peaceful.”
“Still, that doesn’t change the fact that the way this kingdom came to be was wrong.”
I’m aware that the founding of this kingdom was kind of suspicious. But isn’t that just how kingdoms are? Not that I’d say that out loud—it would be like I’m trying to complain about all the different legends about how other kingdoms came to be. I don’t think the hero is going to respond to that sort of rhetoric either.
Perhaps if someone who knew him well spoke to him that could get through to the hero. The very man who was the perfect candidate to stop the hero appeared, landing near us, albeit a bit late to the conversation.
“Affirmative. All kings do are make mistakes.” The Demon Lord, who was a valuable member of the team to convince the hero to stop, had ended up validating his statement.
No way. He should be the most against all of this. I kept my mouth shut and waited for the Demon Lord to continue.
“Kings have always made mistakes, and they’ll continue to make mistakes in the future.”
It was at this point that I knew for a fact that the Demon Lord would never approve of the hero’s actions, but the hero wasn’t backing down. An argument between the two began.
“I changed while I was in the Kingdom of Twilight. I have the qualities of both a hero who takes down enemies and a king who rules over a land.”
“You haven’t changed! All that’s different is that your appearance and demeanor are now sickening. Your true nature hasn’t changed in the slightest.”
“What about me is—?”
“When we broke through the barrier in the sky, you just ran towards it! I was the one who made sure my Black Hole was timed perfectly.” The Demon Lord trembled with anger as he piled on his objections. If this were an actual debate, he’d be breaking the rules, but what he said was true, so the hero couldn’t object too fiercely.
“That was because I believed you would—”
“If you had any intention of fighting together, why didn’t you say something or even just shoot me a glance? You always keep running forward without ever looking back.”
“That is one of my faults... I’ll do my best to fix it.”
That seemed to be one aspect of the hero’s true nature that had remained the same, despite his centuries of change. The Demon Lord was probably going to tell him that he wouldn’t be able to fix it, but that assumption of mine was proved wrong. The Demon Lord responded with something completely separate from the issue of whether the hero could fix this flaw.
“Don’t fix it! Don’t you dare ever fix it! You stay that way!”
After supporting the hero’s reckless attack and even complaining about his actions, the Demon Lord had clearly told him not to fix his behavior. He continued repeating his statement, not telling the hero that he couldn’t fix this flaw, but rather commanding him not to.
The hero had probably caused a lot of trouble for the Demon Lord, which should’ve made him want the hero to fix his flaw, but the Demon Lord let his feelings out and yelled, telling the hero to stay the same.
Patrick and I were completely stunned, and the hero seemed taken aback as well. The Demon Lord took a moment to catch his breath before continuing, his voice now calm.
“Why don’t you understand?! In your current state, founding a kingdom would be an out-of-reach fantasy.”
“I would be able to handle things much better the way I am now.”
“That’s not possible. No matter how proper you try to act, you wouldn’t be able to even handle a tiny kingdom.”
“As long as the king is proper, then his people will follow!”
Right now, I felt that the hero was winning the argument. When he was alive, before he’d changed, he was clearly not fit to be king. He was a skilled fighter, but everyone would have agreed that he was destructively terrible when it came to political matters.
The Demon Lord shook his head repeatedly at the hero, whose eyes glimmered like a king who was ready to lead his people. “No way. It can’t be done. It’s impossible. We followed you with everything we had precisely because you were a man of many mistakes. When the land was filled with battle after battle, we were all able to dream of a new kingdom because you were a violent and selfish idiot who followed his own path.”
I was starting to understand the Demon Lord’s point. If the hero was going to rule over Valschein in its current state, the hero (King) was definitely a better fit. The hero (barbarian) would’ve been abandoned by both the aristocrats and his people.