An Unborn Hero

The demon lord was angry. So many of its minions had been slain, yet so little mortal blood had been spilt in exchange. It was certain that its demons were flouting its orders; the moment the damned [Hero] had set foot in its forest, it had ordered her taken care of, and the demons had claimed it had been done. They weren't lying—they couldn't lie, not to their master—yet the mana was still foul and polluted with a hero's holy stench. Something fishy was going on, and the nascent intelligence of the unhatched demon lord had no chance of comprehending what.

And to add insult to injury, its egg had fallen over and then rolled all over the place.

Lacking the words to complain about its situation, it raged in its usual manner, sucking the forest dry of mana and belching out vast quantities of miasma, driving the sparser-than-usual occupants of the forest wild.

"Patience," soothed Dreobeth. "The [Hero] is defeated. We must wait for sufficient monsters to respawn, and then we shall rain vengeance upon your enemies."

What he didn't do, however much he wanted to, was complain that it was the demon lord's own fault that they needed to wait for the monsters to regenerate, and that the continued raging was just making things worse, by driving yet more monsters away.

"Vengeance!" agreed the demon lord, latching onto the word it best understood.

"Sleep now and gather your strength. It won't be long until you are ready to walk this world once more."

Dreobeth sighed, hoping the demon lord would remain unhatched for long enough to not screw up his plans. He knew that as soon as the demon lord fully awoke—once its memories and what passed for its intellect reasserted themselves—it would order the death of the [Hero], should it discover her capture. It would be necessary to invade somewhere before then and move the [Hero] and her party out of the forest, to keep them hidden.

It was a pity the [Hero] couldn't be corrupted by miasma. Although even if she could, Dreobeth was unwilling to risk the destruction of her soul being enough to trigger the birth of the next [Hero]. After this stunt, the various divinities would be sure to pull out all the stops for their next pick, and wouldn't be worried at all about little things like cultural corruption or collateral damage.

For that matter, they hadn't seemed overly bothered by such things for this pick. The current [Hero] was completely abnormal, and Dreobeth was somewhat concerned that while her party members had acted exactly as predicted, he had no clue what Mystery was going to do. Had Mystery's recruitment been a response to him? A line of thinking that stoked his ego, for sure, but was good for little else.

"If only I could replace that imbecile of a demon lord," he thought, before realising what he was doing and flying away from the buried egg, just in case his master overheard him thinking.

"Considering you promised you wouldn't do anything to me, you're enjoying this far too much," pointed out Rose, who, despite taking Mystery's madness in her stride with no shame whatsoever, now looked faintly embarrassed.

"I can put it on the mat and you can lick it out, if you'd prefer."

"... No thanks."

In spite of Rose's claim, Grace wasn't particularly enjoying herself. Perhaps in other circumstances, spoon-feeding soup to Rose while her hands were tied behind her back would have been fun, if somewhat messy, but being locked up in a prison cell thinking the rest of her party were dead kinda took any joy out of it.

Despite their combined efforts, they'd had no success in freeing Rose. Grace's [Magical Girl Transformation] didn't give her the strength to break her bonds, even after she recast it a few times to perfect her [Transformation Sequence]. Nor could she cast it on Rose; the collar broke down the magic before the spell could take effect.

At least they'd been fed, with bread, soup and water pushed through a slot in their door. Both girls wondered where it came from; as far as either knew, demons didn't need to eat. Having cells ready, along with food, made it obvious this capture hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Of course, food and water came with a downside, and Grace was eyeing the grate in the centre of the floor warily, unsure how much longer her overfull bladder would last. As if she hadn't debased herself enough since first leaving the capital...

"I've been thinking," admitted Rose between mouthfuls. "Why aren't you collared?"

"You think that demon was lying about trying to curry favour?"

"Maybe? It doesn't make much sense. If they knew about... umm... your crush, they must have been spying on us fairly extensively, in which case they should also know it wouldn't help. Not only that, but why try to appeal to you at all? It's not as if miasma poisoning is something that only affects people who want to be poisoned. Since they know about your purification, leaving you able to use it seems counterproductive, and it's not like anyone complained when you did. If the goal was to win you over, they should have collared you once it became clear you weren't cooperating."

"You think they wanted me to... Oh..."

"Oh?"

"Umm... This is a good news, bad news situation. Good news; Kellela and Mystery, at least, are probably still alive and are close by. Bad news; as long as Mystery is alive, there can't be another [Hero]."

"Oh. So, what should we do?"

"Continue trying to escape? If we've been spied on during our trip, they must know how strong we are, and would have designed this place accordingly. Maybe the reason you're restrained so thoroughly is that, in terms of physical strength, you're the best of us. But even if they've got the measure of us, there's no way they understand Mystery. Sometimes I suspect that Mystery doesn't understand Mystery. We just need to hope she can pull something out of her box of insanity to turn the tables."

Rose pondered that for a while, before deciding conversing about it was a bad idea, in case anyone was listening. Besides, she had more pressing matters to deal with. "Just to warn you, I need to pee. You might not want to stand between me and the drain."

For the first time since their capture, Grace laughed.

"Why is that funny?" complained Rose.

"Here I am, captured by demons, locked in a cell and dressed in rags, used like a pawn to ensure that no future [Hero] ever threatens them, and I'm still stuck worrying about my dignity."

"You need to pee too, but were too polite to admit it?" guessed Rose.

"... Maybe?"

"Just go already, before you burst," laughed Rose.

Rrillandral lay on her mat, eyes staring at nothing while her mind spun. With the benefit of hindsight, she could see just how meticulously laid the demonic plans had been.

The demons couldn't have known where the hero's party would come from. With the massive attack against Flinel, arriving from that direction was unlikely, but that still left most of the border open. But they did know they would come eventually, and they knew the final destination. The traps they'd faced on the way must have been prepared within the few days following their entry to the forest, but these cells couldn't have been prepared in mere days, nor the trap under the demon lord's clearing. They must have been planned for weeks.

On top of that, they were too well informed. They'd meticulously worked around Grace's purification and Hayedalf's enchanted protections, knocking the entire party out without risking a single demon.

Aside from her [Meteor Storm], of course. They couldn't possibly have predicted that; even Rrillandral was surprised she'd cast it, the new epic rarity skill on her status sheet ageing her another decade. There was no way the demons protected her from it and emerged unscathed. There were demons that would risk their lives for victory, but a demon risking their life to save an enemy? It made no sense, but so much of the demons' recent behaviour made no sense that she couldn't completely discount it.

"I'm looking at this all wrong..." she muttered to herself. "Stop thinking about 'normal' demons, and start thinking about things from the perspective of an intelligent, foresightful enemy general. Assume that their actions were logical. Why would they save me from my own spell? Am I really that valuable a hostage?"

She considered that question for a while, but the simple answer was that no, she wasn't. She knew her father. He'd mourn, but wouldn't let her capture interfere with what needed to be done.

... But she hadn't been alone.

The System chimed at her, awarding a level of [Investigation] as she realised the answer.

"Dammit. I am a valuable hostage. Just not against my father. They're trying to control Mystery! That's why they wanted me to contact my father; the outside world would know Mystery is still alive because of the lack of a world announcement. I assumed I missed it due to unconsciousness... They'd come looking, and I gave them a bad location! How do they know so much? Even if Lilith and the other attackers had shared everything before they perished, it wouldn't be enough."

She thought some more, recalling their rather loose tongues as they travelled through the forest. "But Mystery was keeping watch, and however good their stealth, with Grace randomly firing off purification blasts, the demons wouldn't have dared get close. Monsters, then? What monsters have good enough stealth to evade Mystery's sight?"

Another few seconds of thought was enough to realise she was once again asking the wrong question.

"Mystery possesses no means of projecting [Soul's Eye] through solid obstructions. All they needed was to have a monster follow us beneath the surface. A giant worm to make a tunnel, and something with excellent hearing following it, listening in to our every word. Even then, Mystery should have heard the tunnelling, but for someone not used to a forest, she wouldn't have identified it."

She lay still, one step away from despair. She knew what it meant for the demons to have captured Mystery; the ensouled races of the world would be doomed. Would be. There was still that last step, that faint glimmer of hope. It was a foregone conclusion that the convention-defying [Hero] of this cycle would do something insane. She could only trust that it would help, and not make the situation even worse.

Her mouth curled up at the edges as she wondered what madness Mystery would surprise her with this time.

Mystery, unaware of all the expectations being heaped upon her by teammates and demons alike, took a few metaphorical deep breaths, trying to psych herself up for something she expected to cause her absolute agony. "I know I promised not to do this again, but please don't take my doubled levelling speed away," she thought. "Surely this counts as enough of an emergency to let me off?"

ding

Yes. Yes it does. [Investigation] advances to level 6.

"Well, if that's not explicit approval, I don't know what is," she thought, popping out of Kellela's body and letting herself get sucked straight into the collar. After all, she'd broken Kellela's handcuffs that way, so surely this collar should be equally vulnerable.

Admittedly, having a substantial chunk of metal fitted tightly around her neck explode wouldn't be ideal for her health, but Mystery wasn't the one collared. Plumbed in to Kellela as she was, it was trying to drain her, but she had [Secured Mana], and [Mana Absorption] let her fight back, massively cutting into the rate at which the collar could deplete her mana. That didn't change the fact that it was depleting her, and that she couldn't absorb more from Kellela, but that didn't matter. Via the Vale's Finger, she could draw mana straight from the elven forest's Heart.

The result was that despite the collar, she'd prepared enough mana for [Magical Girl Transformation]. All she needed to do was explode the collar, stay conscious enough to cast it and heal whatever damage the explosion did to Kellela, then repeat the stunt on Hayedalf, rescue the other girls, escape and slay the demon lord. Easy.

Phrasing it like that was enough to give her second, third and fourth thoughts about her plan, but it was far too late to abort. Her poor little soul got sucked up like a grain of dust in a vacuum.

The expected pain never came.

Partially that was because of [Pain Tolerance], which she hadn't had the previous time around, but mostly it was due to the simple fact that she'd grown substantially since then. It had been a long time since she'd been nothing more than a small ball of cells, and her soul form had enlarged to match. She simply wasn't small enough to infiltrate the enchantments anymore.

Perhaps a sock in a vacuum would be a better analogy. She got stuck, the suction too strong to escape, but insufficient to tear her into pieces small enough to fit inside.

"... That did not go as well as I'd hoped," she thought, wondering how she was supposed to escape the suction of the collar and get back to her body.

Mystery (Human)

Age: -9 months

Occupation: Hero (L)

Skills:

- Soul's Eye (U) (42/100)

>> Sense Vitality (U)

>> Sense Soul (R)

>> Sense Mana (U)

>> Sense Light (C)

>> Sense Sound (C)

>> Pierce Illusions (U)

>> Sense Miasma (R)

>> Multi-focal (R)

>> Sense Spirit (R)

- Astral Projection (U) (25/60)

>> Sure Navigation (U)

>> Uncontainable (U)

>> Tether of Will (L)

- Robust (C) (29/50)

>> Hardened Soul (R)

>> Secured Mana (U)

>> Pain Tolerance (C)

>> Strengthened Will (U)

- Stealth (C) (3/20)

>> Camouflage Vitality (R)

- Magical Girl Transformation (R) (23/30)

>> Age Correction (R)

>> Gender Bending (R)

- Light (C) (12/20)

>> Heterochrome (U)

- Increased Attributes (C) (11/20)

>> Mana Storage (U)

- Investigation (C) (6/10)

- Cosplay (U) (11/20)

>> Skit (U)

- Mana Absorption (U) (11/30)

>> Drain Mana (U)

>> Conduit (U)

- Translate (U) (10/20)

>> Two Way (U)

- Telepathy (U) (17/40)

>> Reciprocity (U)

>> Empathy (U)

>> Guarded Mind (U)

- Lightning Bolt (U) (6/10)

- Fireball (U) (5/20)

>> Multishot (U)

- Wall of Light (U) (1/10)

- Energy Resistance (U) (7/10)

Achievements:

- Early Bloomer II (R)

- First Skill (C)

- Adept (U)

- Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal (R)

- I Broke The System, And All I Got Was This Lousy Achievement (E)

- Astral Explorer II (E)

- First Spell (C)

- I Broke The System Again, And Now The Administrators Hate Me (E)

- Famous Spell Forger (E)

- Demon Slayer III (E)

- Monster Slayer VI (E)

- Curiosity (U)

- War Veteran (U)

- Royal Audience (C)

- Diligent Hero (L)

- Studious (C)

- Pioneering Guider (E)

- Royal Pervert (R)

- I Couldn't Stop Breaking The System, And Now I've Been Smited (E)

- Royal Corrupter (E)

- Blessed of the Forest (C)

- Artefact Wielder (R)

- Veteran of the Corruption (R)

Artefacts:

- The Vale's Finger