Chapter 105 – Journey to Find the Hero

What in the world? This is creepy.

A social media post about looking for the Hero, which was featured on the news, went viral.

At first, I just thought the public broadcaster was really scraping the bottom of the barrel for news.

I really did.

-Only the Hero can save this world.

-Hero Heaven, Disbelief Hell.

-The world is divided into those who believe in the Hero, and those who do not.

The post had become a sort of meme.

Brilliant phrases embroidered over a background of a man’s black silhouette raising his right hand to the sky.

For some reason, it gave me the creeps.

This text, which praised the Hero with such blind devotion, reminded me of someone.

‘No way.’

She should be leading her clan just fine.

Someone with so much to do already wouldn’t come all the way here to act like some crazed fangirl.

‘But these days, it seems like any Tom, Dick, or Harry can cross dimensions.’

Nah, it can’t be.

Usually, whenever I think, ‘No way,’ that’s exactly what ends up happening.

Like it’s some kind of law.

The day after the company dinner.

Katrinne had left for school, and soon after, I got a text.

-Lee Seo-yeon: Mister, it’s probably best if you don’t come outside today.

-Lee Hyunbin: Why?

What a strange thing to say all of a sudden.

Being told not to go out just makes me want to go out more.

I got dressed and went outside to find a green-haired woman shaking the front gate, trying to open it.

Huh, green hair. It looks familiar.

“Waaaaaah!”

Huh, that cry.

“Hero-niiiiim! I knew you’d be heeeere!”

The green-haired woman, with tears and snot running down her face, reached out to me pathetically.

I immediately went back inside and closed the door.

A moment later, I opened it again.

“Hero-niiiiim! Your Ria is hereeee!”

“…”

To be honest, I did think of her once when the kids were giving me a hard time.

A devotee who believes my every word unconditionally.

Unlike the elves who originally practiced cannibalism, she was from the forest clan, a version more commonly known in this world.

A High Elf.

At this point, it wouldn’t be strange no matter who showed up.

Why not just merge the dimensions already?

The elf, a mess of tears and snot, stuck her hands through the gate and screamed her head off.

Honestly, I didn’t want to open the gate. But I could see the neighborhood ladies walking by, giving me suspicious looks.

“Aigoo, young people these days are so strange.”

“Looking at the state of things, he must have played with her heart and then dumped her.”

“Hero-niiiiim, did you dump meeee?”

Damn elf, she has sharp ears.

She’d taken the passing ladies’ words at face value and was now sobbing her heart out.

I figured she was about to start screaming loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood, so I had no choice but to open the gate.

The moment I opened it, the elf threw herself into my arms.

“*Sob*, I finally found youuu.”

“Why are you here now?”

When I was summoned as the Hero, they said the power of a priest was needed to cross over to my original dimension.

In other words, not just anyone could cross over.

It was a power only a select few in that world possessed.

“I came because I missed you, of course, Sir Hero!”

She said, looking up at me as she rubbed her face against my chest.

“You’re paying for the laundry bill….”

She’s smeared tears and snot all over my clothes. This damn knife-ear.

* * *

Thanks to the knife-ear’s snot-terror attack, I gave up on going to work.

For now, I let her into the house.

“How did you find this place?”

“At first, I asked people on the street, but nobody knew.”

“…”

Is she a bit slow?

Her name is Iurilia Frenberg. I usually call her Ria.

She is the young chief who leads the High Elf clan.

Meaning, she’s the leader.

And yet she’s running around acting so clueless.

“At first, I had nowhere to sleep, so I was homeless, getting meals at a shelter. Oh, right. It seems you’re not supposed to pick and eat fruit from trees in this world.”

Of course not. That’s stealing.

She probably didn’t go into a forest, but someone’s orchard and started stuffing her face.

From what she was saying, it sounded like she’d been in this dimension for about a month.

And it seemed she’d gone through all sorts of hardships during that time.

That’s a bit pitiful.

“But, what’s with your clothes?”

“My clothes?”

She was wearing a business suit.

Well, it makes sense to wear modern clothes since she came to this world.

But an elf in a suit. It feels a bit… unbalanced.

“It looks good, right? My workplace gave it to me. Hehe.”

“Workplace? You have a job?”

“You have to work to live, of course.”

“You didn’t work back in the other world. You were just a bum who never left the forest.”

“…”

Why can’t you answer?

“Th-that was in the past. I’m working hard now.”

“What kind of work?”

“…Um, well…”

The fool fidgeted with her fingers, thinking hard about something.

“It’s a bit… relaxed, the work is….”

You don’t even know what you’re doing, do you?

“Ah, but it’s a field with very good prospects. The income is also very high. And I get a lot of respect from people. Hehe, though not as much as you, Sir Hero, of course.”

Good prospects when you don’t even know what the job is?

What, do you work at an observatory?

Hahaha, ah, that’s a good one. I should use it on my team members later.

“Look, this is the money they use here, right? Right?”

Since I didn’t seem to believe her, her pupils shifted dangerously as she shook a wad of cash.

Well, it wasn’t issued by a children’s bank.

It was all real cash, in 50,000 won bills.

“You’re not doing anything shady, are you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“No way. The boys take care of collecting the money and all that. They say it’s all thanks to me.”

A strange word caught my ear.

“Collections?”

“Yes, collections.”

Looking at the brightly smiling elf, I had a bad feeling about this.

I peeked out the window.

“Hey, mister. Don’t go this way. Go that way.”

“While the big sister is visiting, you all stand guard properly, got it?”

“Yes, boss!”

“…”

Outside, a whole bunch of burly thugs had gathered.

I could see the neighborhood ladies looking at my house and whispering amongst themselves.

I closed the window. Then I asked the brightly smiling elf.

“Are those guys outside your ‘boys’?”

“My boys? Ah, that’s right. Hehe. The company must have told them to wait, so I guess they came all the way here.”

“…”

What the hell has she been doing since she got here?

“Do you even know what your job is right now?”

“Me? Ah, a family-like company?”

I think you’re supposed to drop the ‘-like’ part.

“Don’t worry. You know who I am. I’m your Ria, Sir Hero, Ria.”

“I don’t know when you became ‘my’ Ria, but…”

“Huhu, I quite like this job. It’s about managing several stores, and if there’s any discord somewhere, I go and persuade them.”

Physical persuasion, I bet.

She may look like a stick figure now, but she’s different in a fight.

When she switches to muscle mode, her whole body turns to muscle.

Like the body of an overturned cockroach.

If she shows up looking that terrifying, most people would be completely intimidated.

“Get out.”

I kicked her out.

“Hero-niiim, waaaah!”

Outside, the pathetic, whining elf and her self-proclaimed ‘boys’ were glaring at me with menacing eyes.

They looked ready to pull out sashimi knives at any moment.

What are they doing, causing such a racket in the neighborhood?

Especially when I’ve already been drawing the neighbors’ attention with all the incidents happening one after another since I moved in.

How much time had passed?

Just when I thought it had gotten quiet, there was a knock on the door.

“Sir Hero, I’ll wash my hands of it! I’ll come back as a clean person, so please, take me baaaack!”

Sigh….

The lady from next door and the lady from across the street are whispering to each other while looking at my house.

What kind of rumors will start now?

If I don’t open the door, it feels like it’s going to be broken down.

I let the troublemaker back inside.

“Hehe.”

Sure enough, the gangster boys were no longer around.

“Sir Hero, you must be hungry, right? I’ll make you something delicious.”

I could have just ignored her.

But thinking of the effort she put into searching for me, it was hard to kick her out so heartlessly.

More importantly, I was curious about why she came over to this world.

If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t care.

But a High Elf, responsible for ruling a clan, coming over all by herself?

This isn’t a simple matter.

She might seem like an idiot, but she isn’t a complete fool.

“I can use the kitchen here, right?”

“What’s an elf doing cooking? Just go graze on some grass.”

“That’s such a species-discriminatory remark. I’ve gotten used to life here, you know?”

I’d been treated to a meal by her clan once before.

It was nothing but greens.

Normal elves eat only meat, but these guys were at the other extreme, eating only plants.

Surely, she’s not planning to cook with some weird grass again, is she?

Glancing over as I passed by, it thankfully looked like she was using normal ingredients.

“So how did you manage to travel between dimensions anyway?”

“Is there someone else who came besides me?”

Looks like she didn’t know. Her expression was one of surprise.

“In the first place, what about your clan? Why did you come alone?”

“My clanspeople?”

Ria gave a sad smile.

“Now, I’m the only one left in the clan.”

“The only one?”

Those were words I had never expected.

What she was saying was… that her entire clan had been wiped out.

“I can use this cutting board and knife, right?”

“Uh….”

Ria, using the kitchen so nonchalantly.

The High Elves’ greatest weakness was only that they were a small population.

Compared to humans, they were overwhelmingly strong.

That’s why even the human kingdoms didn’t dare to mess with the elf clans.

Although elves were objects of hatred for humans, the kind High Elves were sometimes treated with friendship.

“Was it because of that Demon King bastard?”

“How did you know?”

Of course I know. That Undead Demon King bastard keeps raising hell.

I even have a toy he made stored safely in my inventory right now.

“The continent is no longer the place you remember, Sir Hero.”

Ria began to speak, her voice filled with sorrow.

“It’s nothing more and nothing less than a dinner table for monsters.”

It seems the situation is even worse than I thought.

* * *

Each Demon King has their own title.

Of course, it’s not just one title. Countless titles exist.

And the Demon King Im Jae-joon was called the King of Duality.

It fits his two-faced personality well.

The Undead Demon King.

A title truly befitting a chuunibyou patient.

A monster who literally leads an army of the undead, taking a stroll across a continent stained with death.

“The kingdoms are already gone.”

She said the Seven Kingdoms, which had once vied for supremacy on the continent, had vanished.

The cities where humans lived had fallen, and they now spent their days on the run from the undead monsters.

In other words, an environment where they could neither live nor die.

“Still, the Seven Kingdoms fell that easily? In just a few months?”

It hasn’t been that long since I came here. And the kingdoms were all wiped out in that time?

It took me ten years to defeat those Seven Kingdoms.

Just how insane is that Demon King bastard?

“Sir Hero, I think you’ve misunderstood something.”

“Misunderstood?”

Ria blinked as if she found his question strange.

“Faced with an unprecedented crisis, the Seven Kingdoms all joined forces and fought a three-year war.”

They are strong when they unite. The problem is they’re usually too busy fighting over more land.

But wait.

“Three years?”

“Yes.”

The years don’t add up.

“It’s been fifteen years since you left our world, Sir Hero.”