Chapter 7

Maria’s Story “He was my Hero, too.” When asked about her relationship with the Hero, she gave her response with a warm smile. Maria Lauren was the healer in the Hero’s party. Now a bishop, she manages the church’s affairs. From a young age, she was gifted with miraculous healing powers, which she used to treat anyone regardless of their social status. For this, she was known as Maria the Holy Maiden. “We first got to know each other in our academy days,” she explained. “He spoke to me one day out of the blue, asking if I could teach him healing magic. You know, at first, I thought he was trying to flirt with me. That’s usually what men are after.” Maria gave me a cheeky smile. She has long and silky black hair, porcelain-white skin, and inscrutable, enigmatic eyes. In the literature, she was described as a beauty, and even now, her looks are very much intact. If anything, age has only enhanced her allure. “But when we got to talking, I found out that he was serious. He was under the impression that a Hero could wield a sword, use magic, and cast healing spells.” In the past, there were Heroes who could do all those things, and the same should be true to this day. Was he really that strange for thinking that way? “He was. Well, to be precise, both attack magic and healing magic require innate talent. At the time, people thought it was impossible to wield both styles of magic while also succeeding as a warrior.” But the Hero makes the impossible possible, is that right? “When you put it that way, yes. But in over two hundred years, there had been nobody of that description. Apparently, the academy was first established to train warriors in both attack and healing magic, but it was so inefficient that they put a stop to it right away. “The two types of magic aren’t very compatible, you see. Mages view the world’s natural energy as mana, which they use for their own purposes. We priests interpret that same energy as God’s blessing, and we act on His behalf. We have a fundamentally different way of seeing things, which makes it difficult to juggle the two.” The idea that attack magic and healing magic are inherently different is still hotly debated to this day. Although it is technically possible for people to wield both, it is an impediment in the sense that no one can rise above a rudimentary level in either discipline. “Not to mention that training as a warrior is nothing like training as a priest. Classes in the academy were separated based on occupation. The idea was that it was more efficient to specialize.” But you didn’t agree, and that’s why you taught Ares healing magic? “I was interested, you see, about whether a person without talent could receive God’s grace.” Maria smiled benevolently, and yet what she was saying was borderline blasphemous. What did it mean for a priest to have talent? “It’s a matter of whether you can sense God. Piety has nothing to do with it.” She crisply denied the relationship between faith and healing magic. “Although sensing God can deepen one’s faith, it is not faith that allows a person to sense God. I have seen many people who are more devout than I am. But they weren’t necessarily able to sense God’s presence. That’s what I mean when I say ‘talent.’” It is generally understood that priests needed to receive God’s grace, which was a talent in a certain sense, but it was highly unusual to see someone—a bishop, no less—outright deny the connection between faith and God’s grace. “It’s not a taboo, although I suppose there are many who would find it hard to admit. Now, let’s get back on topic, shall we? The Hero had neither talent nor faith. In fact, he asked, ‘If God exists, why are there monsters?’ A blunt question, indeed. But you do come across people who think that way, especially when they’ve actually fought monsters themselves.” The relation between God and the monsters have many points of debate, but the priests avoid a clear answer. The consensus is that it is “God’s will.” “So I was curious to see whether he could learn to use healing magic. I taught him as an experiment.” Is it easy to teach healing magic? “Not at all, especially to someone with no talent. Feeling God’s presence is much easier said than done when you’ve never sensed it in your life. It is like teaching language to a dog.” But it must have gone well, given that the stories say that the Hero wielded divine powers. “It depends on what you mean by ‘gone well.’ With the help of my instruction, he gradually started to feel God’s presence over time. It took him more than two years to learn his first healing spell.” If he learned it in the end, doesn’t that count as a success? “It takes an aspiring priest a month at most to learn their first spell. Or to be more precise, it comes to you naturally as long as you have the aptitude. In his case, he made no progress whatsoever in two years. I couldn’t understand why he kept at it for so long.” Do you think he was able to become the Hero because he applied himself to learning healing magic without getting results? “Who knows? I was interested in watching him at first. Right, so a divine miracle won’t happen for someone without talent, I thought. But he kept at it for two years without any payoff. Any normal person would give up within three months. You might be able to push yourself if you had something to prop you up, like devout faith or a natural aptitude, but he had neither of those things.” You didn’t understand why Ares would practice healing magic? “There are folktales that say the Heroes of old could use healing magic, but I don’t know whether that’s actually true. For decades until very recently, party roles were very clearly defined. If the warriors performed well on the front lines, they didn’t need healing magic. That was the conventional wisdom, you could say. It’s why everyone in the academy thought he was strange for practicing healing magic, not just me.” Now that you mention it, I suppose a warrior leading the charge wouldn’t need to use healing magic. I’m sure it would come in handy, but if the party works well together, then there wouldn’t be much burden on them to use it. “Indeed. But I should mention that I only told him about God’s presence. I didn’t stand there and watch him practice the whole time. Although I warned him about his lack of aptitude on many occasions, I couldn’t stop him.” He proved you wrong, yes? “He showed that someone without talent or faith can learn healing magic. But all he acquired were the most basic spells, so it wasn’t a huge achievement in that sense.” The beginner spells can only heal or soothe small injuries and bruises. “When the pain or injury is that minor, it will go away over time, so I didn’t think those spells were worth the effort. Even a priest wouldn’t bother healing such small wounds in battle. You’d be at it all day otherwise. But he understood the importance of healing those types of wounds.” How so? “Although they might not be life-threatening, they’ll slow you down if you leave them untreated. Or rather, I should say, any injury will impede your movements, however small or large it is. If you want to use your full strength at all times, then you have to heal every single wound. I healed his major wounds, while he took care of the light injuries by himself. He was able to fight so tenaciously because he had the beginner spells up his sleeve.” In the literature, Ares is glorified for never letting any obstacle or hardship wear him down. Were the beginner healing spells his secret trick? “You could say that. To be more precise, he understood that every little thing adds up. Whenever he was up against a formidable monster, he would wear away at it with smaller wounds until his foe went down. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say. It sounds simple when you put it like that, but it was very time-consuming. “Once, we fought an enemy for three whole days and nights. When we were done, we all slept right there on the spot like the dead. We would have been wiped out if we got attacked at that moment.” Maria smiled fondly in recollection. But if you did everything that way, wouldn’t that have extended the journey significantly? The Hero’s journey did not take that long. “Yes, things would have moved at a crawl if we left everything to him, but between Leon, Solon, and me, we were able to get through most problems quickly. We were always telling him, ‘If we left this to you, the Demon Lord would die of old age.’ “None of us were the friendliest of people, so it might have come off as condescending. But he would always laugh, scratch his head, and say, ‘Thanks, you were a big help.’ It made us feel like the bigger fools in a way.” You speak so fondly of those days. You loved Ares, didn’t you? “I’ve been asked that question many times, and I’ve always given the same answer: I didn’t love him. That’s the truth.” There was no dishonesty in her expression. The rumors say you’ve stayed single because you’ve never been able to forget him. “Well, that’s a bit of a prying question. I simply missed the window for marriage. Perhaps I’d have found a partner long ago if I had a bit more courage. They might call me the Holy Maiden, but in truth, I’m quite a coward.” Why did the Hero die? “It was a tragic thing indeed, but I suppose that was God’s will. I can only say that it was Ares’s role.”