I found the source of the delicious smell.
It turned out that the smell was so strong because it came from a restaurant with lots of outside tables.
The night air was cool, and since the restaurant was on a hill, the view was nice too. I didn’t hesitate to grab a good seat and order a bunch of food from the menu.
I ordered meat—grilled, steamed, and fried, and even in stew. And of course, to top it off, apple juice. I couldn’t forget the apple juice.
It was the first free meal I’d had in a long time, so I stuffed myself as much as I could.
It seemed the shopping district saw this situation as a golden opportunity because I saw a lot of new items on the menu that I hadn’t seen before, and I used to come here often. The overall quality of the food seemed to have improved too.
Of course, the prices had gone up even more, but that wasn’t my problem right now.
“W-wow, you can really eat.”
“Yeah, no joke...”
I took that as a compliment and kept eating.Although I wasn’t done yet, I felt a bit more at ease now that I had food in my stomach.
Finally, I took a good look at my two unexpected companions. As I’d mentioned earlier, they were both around my age and looked decently trained.
No, wait. They weren’t just trained. They were strong, and not just a little bit.
If I had to fight them in my current condition, with only half my strength recovered, it wouldn’t be easy.
Between bites, they introduced themselves. The guy with a bit of a derpy look was Ashol, and the bold girl was Hallo.
I wonder if they are swordsmen.
Judging by their builds, the swords that hung from their waist weren’t for show. That meant they were professionally trained...
But... Ashol and Hallo? Their names sounded a bit silly, but they might be using aliases like I was.
“So, what brings you two to the academy?”
“Uh... well, we were pretty much dragged here by our master.”
Master?
I tilted my head while sipping my apple juice when Hallo cut in, her voice loud. “That’s not true! We’re here to check out those so-called young heroes!”
“Hallo...”
“What? It’s true.”
“...Yeah, but couldn’t you have put it more nicely?”
“Ugh, stop nagging... What are you, my dad?”
Watching them bicker, I asked again, “So what exactly do you want from the young heroes?”
“We want to see if they’re really as strong as people say!”
So they’d come here to fight?
I was dumbfounded.
The headmaster was right. All kinds of people were coming here.
I poked a piece of chicken with my fork and continued, “Then what do you guys do? Wander around training as swordsmen...? No, it’s more like you travel around like knights-in-training or something?”
“Something like that, sort of...”
“ ‘Sort of?’ We do nothing like that,” Hallo exclaimed with a cheerful face. She pulled something out of her pocket. “Ta-da!”
“Wow...”
A metal card with a familiar shape.
“You two are from Heroes, huh?” I said, somewhat surprised.
“Yeah!”
A card symbolizing official hero status in Heroes.
I had one too, though I’d gotten mine through the training camp, so it wasn't high rank.
A D-rank card, the lowest rank, signified an apprentice hero.
If you looked closely, the one Hallo had pulled out was different from mine. It was made of a different material.
The metal used determined the owner’s rank. A bronze card like that had to be C rank.
C rank.
At first glance, it might seem low, but it definitely wasn’t.
The Hero Institution Heroes only gave out C-rank cards to those they deemed worthy of handling real missions.
In other words, these two—despite one of them looking kind of derpy—had real combat experience, enough to have faced death multiple times.
“So basically, you guys came here to intimidate your future juniors?”
“More like to set the ranks straight. You know how the Bednickers can just hand out hero titles however they want, right?” Hallo said with clear frustration. “They’re clearly overstepping their bounds. Just because they’re nobles, they get special treatment? If they’re really that strong, they should come to Heroes and prove it by taking the entrance exam like everyone else.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Besides, House Bednicker has always been shady. Who even knows what standards they use to pick their so-called heroes?”
“Hey, Hallo, don't start this again—”
“Oh, come on. Did I say something wrong?”
Ashol shot me a quick glance.
He had probably just realized I might be a noble.
I mean, even though I was some nobody, I was still from a prestigious family, so maybe he picked up on it from the way I ate. Not that he needed to worry; I didn’t take it to heart.
If anything, I actually agreed with her, so I nodded in agreement. “You’re right about that. There’s a lot of bad rumors flying around about House Bednicker, and they’re so secluded, no one knows what they’re really up to.”
“I knew it! I figured you’d get it.” Hallo let out a loud, boisterous laugh. “Anyway, I heard that three people got hero cards from the training camp this time. Hector Bednicker, Charon Woodjack, and Luan Bednicker.”
So they knew even that detail.
Was Heroes just that good at gathering intel? Or had Bednicker spread the word themselves?
“Honestly, the whole thing smells fishy. Bednicker runs a training camp and two of their own walk away with hero cards? There’s no way that’s a coincidence.”
“Hmm. You think so...?”
“Obviously! The real standout is Charon, he actually earned his spot.”
I caught something in her tone, so I tilted my head and asked, “Do you know Charon Woodjack?”
Ashol smiled wryly and said, “I wouldn’t call us friends, but we hung out a few times back in the Sunken Swamps.”
...That sounded like they were friends to me.
I chewed my food, thinking it over.
Charon was seriously injured right now. Should I tell these two, since they seemed close?
“Anyway, as for that Luan guy, I definitely need to teach him a good lesson.”
“Mm.” I hummed and ordered another round of meat before saying, “Is that really necessary? From what I hear, Luan Bednicker’s actually a pretty nice guy.”
“Nice guy, my ass. Nobody had a good thing to say about that guy a year ago, and now he’s suddenly a hero who played a key role in stopping a demon lord’s descent? Come on, if you’re going to lie, at least put some effort in.” Hallo gritted her teeth and muttered, “A hero... shouldn’t be so artificially created like that...”
“...?”
“...Anway, we’ve been at the academy for a while now, but we haven’t seen a single young hero. Have any idea how we can meet one?” She asked, eyes subtly glancing at the food.
Sounded an awful lot like she was telling me to earn my meals.
Since I wasn’t completely shameless, I crossed my arms and replied, “It doesn’t have to be Luan, right?”
“He’s the one I want to meet the most, but if I can’t, I guess I have no choice. Not like that despicable guy would fight us head-on anyway.”
“Hmm, then how about Hector?”
From what I’d heard, Hector was the least banged-up of the young heroes. He had no serious injuries and no major mental trauma.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Of course, that just meant he was getting dragged all over the place.
“That genius Hector Bednicker, huh... Yeah, that’ll work. But how do we get him to show up?”
“I know him, which means I can ask. Also, if someone challenges him, I doubt he’ll back down.”
“Oh wait...” Hallo paused and looked at me. “...Are you a noble?”
“Yeah?”
“I-I knew it... You do look kind of classy.”
Look classy? Like how? I wondered.
As I thought that over, I glanced at Ashol, who was still giving me that awkward, embarrassed smile.
The more I looked, the clearer it became. There was a significant skill gap between these two. Ashol was holding back, yet somehow, Hallo was the one leading the charge.
“Haah... Well, at least this trip wasn’t a total waste. Now I've got something to tell our master.”
“This master you keep talking about, who is it?”
“Great question! Our amazing master is none other than... The Sky-Sundering Sword, Maxim!” Hallo said proudly.
She sounded even more confident than when she’d shown me her hero card, but honestly, I was very surprised.
“The Sky-Sundering Sword, Maxim... That’s an S-rank hero from Heroes.”
One of the twenty most powerful people in Heroes. Even among such esteemed ranks, Maxim was quite the celebrity.
Maxim, the Sky-Sundering Sword, also known as Maxim, the War Hero.
And for good reason. In the eastern part of the empire where tribal and racial conflicts raged, he ran into battle alone and ended wars.
Not just once but multiple times.
On each occasion, Maxim was said to have displayed swordsmanship so overwhelming that it seemed to tear the sky apart, thus earning him the name “Sky-Sundering Sword.”
“Someone like that came all the way to this academy?”
Something about this smelled fishy.
Sure, with a demon lord’s descent, it wasn’t strange for Heroes to deploy such top-tier forces...
But it wasn’t like they were fighting a demon lord. They were just assessing the aftermath, so why send someone so high up just for that?
“I heard Sky-Sundering Sword Maxim is one of the busiest heroes out there...”
Sending his disciples made sense, but being here himself? That was a waste of manpower for Heroes.
Hallo smirked and replied, “He’s not here as a hero of heroes. The imperial court has officially summoned the Middle Names.”
Clank.
My hand stopped in the middle of shoveling food into my mouth.
“Hallo, that’s—”
“Oh, whoops. My bad.”
I completely lost my appetite, and it wasn’t because I had already emptied over fifteen plates.
“...The Middle Names have been summoned? Really?”
“Yeah. You know of them?”
Know of them? I carried the name Bednicker. There was no way I wouldn’t know, no way I couldn't know.
I shot up from my seat.
“...I just remembered something urgent. I gotta go. Thanks for the meal.”
“Huh? Wait, hold on! What about meeting Hector Bednicker—”
“I’ll send him here. Same time, same place. Tomorrow.”
With that, I left without saying anything more. They tried to stop me, only to be stopped by the restaurant staff instead.
“Excuse me? You haven’t paid for the food yet.”
“W-wait, no. We weren’t trying to run away...”
“I understand, but if you could please pay the bill first.”
“All right, all right, I’ll p—AH?! What’s with the total...?”
“So this must be the infamous capital inflation...”
The Middle Names.
You want to know who those bastards were?
They were under the command of the imperial court, but calling them mere subordinates wouldn’t be accurate.
They were given immense authority, so much so that some of them even had the right to refuse direct orders from the emperor.
And calling them a “group” wasn’t quite right either because they had almost nothing in common. There was no camaraderie, no shared purpose.
There was only one requirement to be chosen.
Power.
Every single member of the Middle Names was chosen solely for their strength. Every one of them was a candidate for the strongest in the empire.
Like the Sky-Sundering Sword Maxim.
Of course, the one considered one of the absolute strongest in the empire was also one of the Middle Names.
The unrivaled charisma of a great noble house. The most feared demon hunter alive. The dark-fairy executioner.
The Lord of Blood and Iron, Delark C. Bednicker.
...None other than my father.
For fuck’s sake.
I had let my guard down, but now my mind and body snapped back to high alert.
Of everyone, if I had to name the one person I least wanted to run into right now, it was the Lord of Blood and Iron.
Sure, I could mask my demonic energy, but I doubted such a trick would work on him. If he became even slightly suspicious of me and activated the Blessing of Truth, there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do.
...Well, shit.
I knew I couldn’t avoid him forever, but now was definitely not the time.
Should I just make myself pass out and stay unconscious until he left? No, wait—where the hell was he right now?
“Hey, kid. If you don’t wanna get hurt, hand over everything you’ve got and scram.”
“...”
I’m dealing with enough shit already. Who the hell is this jackass?
I glanced over and saw some musclehead blocking the way. He looked like some random thug. How in the world had someone like him even gotten into the academy?
Was this because Headmaster Alderson was away?
Surprisingly enough, though, I noticed that he wasn’t talking to me.
The guy was snickering as he blocked the way of some robed boy...
Something about him felt familiar. He had black hair peeking out from under his hood, and a dark complexion not often seen.
“...”
“...”
Our eyes meet. A chill ran down my spine, and I almost let out a scream like a little schoolgirl.
Oh fuck. Shit! Fuck! SHIIIT!
Why the hell are you here, Dad?