The capital of the Holy Astal Kingdom—that is, the Citadel of Stars, Folis.

Adjacent to the Sacred Cathedral of Light stood a building called the Heroes’ Heart—in other words, it was the place the Heroes summoned by Luciel operated from.

Generally speaking, Heroes stationed in the capital, or those not stationed in any particular location, shared a dorm room here with up to nine others of the same sex, for a total of ten Heroes per room. But certain Heroes—particularly the Saints and others who had earned themselves unique titles—got more privacy.

One such Hero was the wielder of the sword that was said to be able to slay gods.

That young man, Reynald, was currently sat at a desk in his room, though to describe his posture as ‘sitting’ would be generous.

To be more precise, his face was on the desk. Yet he was not asleep—he was simply in no mood to sit straight up, and that was all.

The knock on his door elicited little more response than a mumbled ‘come in’, and even when the small girl shook Reynald’s shoulder a few times, he did not so much as move.

Only when she pulled his head up did he change his posture, entrusting his full weight to the back of the chair.

“You look… Terrible, Reynald…”

“Heh. You don’t look any better, Ebstrea.”

Indeed, the small girl who had entered Reynald’s room was his partner and companion, Ebstrea. Normally speaking, he would be worrying about why she was in his room, but—

Currently, both Heroes had more in common than just their golden hair and eyes.

Under those very eyes, both carried the dark circles of people who had not slept in a long time.

The one to break that awkward, tired silence was Reynald.

“Hey, Ebstrea…?”

“What is it?”

“What does being a Hero even mean?”

Out of nowhere, a philosophical question… Maybe not.

Knowing him, he meant it far more literally.

“Where’d that come from…? What do you mean, Reynald?”

“Well, you know. Up until now, I’ve operated under the assumption that being a Hero is all about defeating monsters and making the world a better place, and such. You get me?”

“Mhm.”

Pulling up the other chair in the room, the small girl nodded.

“But then that guy comes along. The demons he controls are… well, they’re not nice, but. I find myself sympathising, you know? I don’t think them capturing Yxon was the right course of action, of course, but… Well, from what we’ve heard, he did seal away defenseless tribes. And the vampire made small talk as if it was no big deal! So I figured, well, maybe being a Hero is about helping people in Lady Luciel’s name.”

“Right…”

With a perplexed expression, the girl nodded once more.

“Then, you don’t think so anymore?” she asked, canting her head to the side.

Without any of the warning signals one would expect, the young man stood up and clamped his hands onto the girl’s shoulders.

“R-Reynald?!” she exclaimed, “I don’t think we should… Not here, the walls are thin…”

In the blink of an eye, the small girl’s face assumed the colour of a tomato.

Yet this reaction, cute and semi-lewd as it was, went completely ignored.

“Tell me,” Reynald said, the colour practically dripping off of his face, leaving a pale husk of a man. “Tell me. If being a Hero is about doing good in Lady Luciel’s name, what’s with the Azalyths?!”

“Shh!”

In just a moment, the colour drained from Ebstrea’s face just as it had from Reynald’s, and she practically dove onto him, clamping her hands over his mouth and pushing him onto his bed.

“We’re not supposed to know about that, remember? Don’t say it out loud!”

He was unable to speak, what with the hands in front of his mouth, but he nodded in assent.

Thus the small girl removed her hands.

“Um… it’s all fine that you’ve removed your hands, but would you mind getting off me?”

“A-ah.”

Her face once more completely red, she removed herself from his waist.

“S-sorry about, uh, jumping on you like that…”

“No, no, it was my fault for saying something bad…”

For several minutes, they continued like that, trying to pull the blame to themselves. Despite their flaws, they were truly good people.

Eventually, they remembered what they were originally talking about.

“Anyway,” the small girl said, “if you want to be a Hero, it’s fine to just do what feels right… Well, that’s just what I think, though.”

“What feels right, huh… Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks, Ebstrea.”

“No problem!”

***

The crackles and pops of water freezing over and tiny ice crystals shattering in the air dominated the otherwise silent hallway.

The floor, walls and ceiling in this place were all made of the same, slightly translucent material.

Indeed, this place, located even further north than the elven forest and a surprisingly large distance away from the frigid seas inhabited by mermaids, contained only one major landmark.

A massive castle of ice, perhaps half the size of the castle that belonged to the girl who had made the world.

And yet this tranquil silence was only momentary.

Since tragically, a scarce few seconds after the silence was established—

A series of enraged screeches took hold of the castle’s halls, followed by a loud crash.

The one responsible was a skeleton in a robe, with a crown of ice on its head.

“What do you mean, it didn’t work?! I made that poison myself! If he drank so much as a drop of it, he’d be dead!”

In the corner, a living statue of ice shivered in delight and envy. Yet the piece of ice the tirade was directed towards—that is, a translucent-blue maid, floating a little off the ground—seemed rather unhappy, almost a little panicked.

“N-no, that is, uhm,” the poor semi-ghost stammered, “he didn’t even drink the poison, to begin with…”

“I see, I see. So it’s because you did a terrible job at pretending to be one of his maids, is it? Huh?!”

“N-no, I—!”

“Just get lost.”

Before the maid had another chance to speak, her head had already been separated from her neck.

Indeed, the tentacle that grew from the skeleton’s hand had just, without the slightest trouble, decapitated a ghost.

Admittedly, this was a pseudo-ghost, in this case essentially a ghost inhabiting a body made of ice. But even so, as a ghost, she should have been essentially impervious to physical attacks. Simply being part of a ghost should have made the ice that made up her body intangible.

Apparently not.

“Well, they sure turned out to be useless,” the skeleton said as the tentacle attached to its hand disappeared. “In that case, there is nothing I can do but launch a frontal assault.”

A leap in reasoning so absurd even the demon king would have called whoever made it a moron.

The skeleton turned to the statue.

“I have a job that even you can do.”

As anyone who spent more than five minutes around the two could predict, the statue ‘blushed’, its cheeks turning dark blue. Yet it nodded with a serious gaze.

“Spy on Lady Entropy’s castle. Inform me when my liege leaves. That moment, I strike.”

After a salute and another strong nod, the statue left the skeleton to its brooding.

***

In a certain space that didn’t exist, there was a being that couldn’t be.

The summit of evil, the foundation of good, the creator of all logic, the fundamental contradiction in all arguments, the avatar of judgment, the eater of worlds, it had many names, none of which were its true name.

But then, it wasn’t as though it had a true name to begin with.

Currently, this “something” was in the middle of an activity that, for lack of a better word, could probably be described as “crafting”.

This something, which lacked even the slightest semblance of coherent thought yet of which the intellect surpassed the greatest of minds, was, for as far as it could be, deeply “selfish”.

Yet even for this something, there was one existence, one soul it would never even “consider” eating.

This existence was its faithful, unwilling servant, a single girl who had, in a moment of haste of millennia past, made an eternal contract.

Her role, for the most part, was to be the something’s arms and legs if it turned out the arms and legs it could obtain from its “target world” were incompetent.

Not that it had the thought process required to target a world, though.

In order to make this possible, the something would extract a tiny bit—truly just the tiniest bit—of divinity from its “target world”, and forge a body around it.

Just the tiniest speck of divinity, too insignificant to even be called magic.

And as always when it did such, the something gave its servant an “order” in a language neither party actually understood—one because it could not think, and the other because she was too smart.

“Kill the black-souled man,” both parties nevertheless understood this order to mean.

And thus, the girl who did not want to work set off to do her job, in her body of pale skin like a sheet of satin, icy blue hair, self-contradicting eyes and gorgeous robes.

***

South, south, yet further south.

Inbetween the southern border of Eskaria and the mountains that hid the dwarves stood a tower.

And yet despite the tower’s greatness, there was scarce anyone who approached it. It was used neither as a meeting spot nor as a fortified, defensible location.

After all, it was inhabited, and its inhabitant had a reputation for being… a hermit, to put it lightly.

The tower’s name was the Sage’s Tower, and its inhabitant was the great sage, Cyci.

Books, books, books. Books every which way, on the shelves, off the shelves, in metres-high stacks, strewn across the floor, open, closed, old, new.

Amidst those books lay a small purple cat.

Well, no, to call her a cat would be misleading.

Amidst those books lay a small girl, with purple hair and the ears and tail of a cat.

At a glance, she would appear to be a beast-person with dyed hair, who had gone the extra mile by dyeing her ears and tail, too.

And this girl was simply lazing about, all alone, amidst a huge library, that was even larger vertically than it was horizontally—in other words, a tower.

Yes, the Sage’s Tower.

In other words, this listless girl was—

“Myahh…”

With a vocalisation one would expect of a girl with cat ears, she stretched her body as if making to get up.

And then she didn’t get up.

“Ehehe… Asty pulled some amazing stuff up there, didn’t he, Mr Snuggles?”

With a giddy smile, she rolled onto her side and turned to face the only vaguely humanoid thing in the room apart from herself—a teddy bear.

“Mhh… But it’s been so long since I’ve seen Asty… But I can’t just up ‘n interrupt him, can I… Oh, I know. I’ll send him a letter! I bet he’ll be so happy~”

With a twirl of her finger, she used advanced magic to produce a piece of paper on the spot, easily enough to make any sorcerer cry tears of blood, and with another twirl, she produced a pot of ink and a quill, too.

And then, without even moving, she had the quill draft up a letter.