I wasn’t going to promise to let the soldiers off the hook. Letting them go probably wouldn’t have a large impact on anything, but it wasn’t my decision to make on my own.
“What I want to know is how involved Ishtobal and Prince Abel were with this incident. Did Chris attack the Guild on the prince’s orders or orders from some higher up in the kingdom? Or was he rampaging out of control like you said? If you know anything, then tell me.”
The soldiers all looked at the commander. I’d figured it would go that way.
After a moment, he relented. “All I know is that we received orders from up high that we were to accompany Chris. Chris said he’d received orders from Prince Abel, but I don’t know the exact nature of those orders.”
Maybe he’d given in, because now he was talking.
“You’re saying Prince Abel gave orders directly to Chris?” I asked.
“That’s what Chris said. I’m sure there were orders of some sort, because we received our orders to accompany him from the General Staff Office.” The commander grimaced when he mentioned the Staff Office.
“Does the person who sent those familiars work at the Staff Office?”
He scowled, realizing he’d said too much, then angrily spat, “The current First Chief of the General Staff office is Alisa Kusunoki. She’s also the second-in-command of the hero’s party. Ever since she cozied up to Prince Abel and effectively took control of the military, there has been a never-ending stream of people who have been…purged. It was most likely her who was watching us.”
I’d investigated Alisa as well. She was one of the most powerful SS-rank adventurers. The moment Abel’s hero powers awakened, she was currying favor with him, making her essentially the second-in-command of the kingdom of Ishtobal.
Around the time Abel got his hero powers, his father, the king of Ishtobal, suddenly fell ill and now made almost no appearances in public. Abel was acting as his representative. It all smelled fishy.
“If it was Alisa who sent the familiars, what’s the probability she did it on Prince Abel’s orders?” I asked.
“I honestly can’t say for sure. The prince has been different since receiving his hero powers. I don’t know what he’s thinking these days.”
Based on what the commander was saying, there was a chance Alisa could be the one pulling all the strings from the shadows. I had far too little information to determine exactly what was going on yet.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about the hero and his party?”
The commander nodded and told me each of the party members’ names, characteristics, and their rank within the kingdom. The information was pretty detailed, which meant this commander was high-ranked himself.
“How much do you know about Prince Abel’s abilities?”
“I don’t know anything.”
The commander didn’t seem to have any negative feelings toward the prince, so he’d probably hide that information even if he did know it.
“All right, so, does Chris’s Heart of the Hero skill have something to do with the hero’s power?”
The commander looked shocked. “How do you know that? Did Chris talk?”
“That I can’t say, but that does mean you lied when you said you didn’t know anything about the hero’s power.”
I didn’t want to reveal my hand or skills just yet, and it was probably the right move to sow suspicion between them.
The commander’s expression turned sour as he talked. “I don’t know the details, but I heard Heart of the Hero is something Prince Abel bestowed on Chris.”
Bestowed? Not taught?
Skills in this world weren’t things you randomly learned when you gained a level. It was sort of something you developed as you repeatedly did the task, building the mana circuitry needed to activate the skill, so to speak. For example, you could learn a sword skill by swinging a sword over and over. So then, how did Chris learn this Heart of the Hero skill? I just had more questions.
Even if Chris had learned some berserker skill by continuously fighting like a madman, the fact that this Heart of the Hero made his stats jump up made the skill way too good. Even if I accepted the possibility that he learned Heart of the Hero through continued training, I would have expected him to have learned derivative skills as well. Still, he had nothing similar to Heart of the Hero.
And its name, Heart of the Hero, had made me consider the possibility Abel had given Chris the skill, but if that were possible, it’d totally rewrite what we knew about how skills worked. I wasn’t certain either way, though, so I wasn’t going to deny it was possible.
“Has Prince Abel given Heart of the Hero to anyone else? If you know anything else about the hero’s abilities, then tell me,” I demanded.
“All I know is that the prince received immense power when he awakened as the hero. I only heard about Heart of the Hero from Chris. Alisa has been hiding all information about the hero’s abilities. That’s why I imagine that even in Ishtobal, there are only a few people who know.”
This Alisa did sound like she was the cautious type, and she was probably making the right choice to hide the effects of Heart of the Hero.
“All right, well, that’s basically what I wanted to ask you. Next, I need to talk to Chris. You lot sit tight there,” I told them as I adjusted the size of Impenetrable Defense so it enclosed only the soldiers. I then went over to Chris, who was still in the corner. The soldiers wouldn’t be able to hear us talk thanks to Sound Isolation.
Even after Dispelling my Incapacitate spell, Chris didn’t wake up, so I smacked him on the cheek—and I didn’t hold back.
“Agh! Y-You bastard! What are you— What the hell? What have you done to me?!”
Chris started complaining when he noticed the black collar on him, but there was something clearly weird about him, in a different way from before. Even before he’d activated Heart of the Hero, he’d been violent, but now he was looking at me with fear.
“What do you mean? All I did was seal your mana,” I answered.
If your mana was sealed, you couldn’t activate skills. As I imagined, Chris’s violent personality was an effect of Heart of the Hero. Activating it had turned him into a berserker, but what he had activated just then was the active skill, the second stage of Heart of the Hero.
The first stage heightened the user’s bloodlust and significantly boosted their stats. Chris had had the first stage activated from the very beginning, while the second stage boosted his stats even more. In exchange for that, automatic healing, and resistance to status effects, it took over your mind and turned you into a complete berserker.
“Hey, Chris, is Heart of the Hero a skill Prince Abel gave you when his hero powers awakened?” I asked.
“H-How the hell do you know that? Did they… They talked! Useless idiots!”
He seemed angry, but who cared?