Source
https://kakuyomu.jp/works/16818093090568338422/episodes/16818093090637321713
*Estelle viewpoint
I was a young girl born into a reasonably rich family in a city in the Western Continent.
I had parents and a younger sister, and was educated as a gifted child from a young age.
I grew up in a pure and innocent way, and one day, when I was ten years old, I came across a storyboard show.
It was a storyboard performance given on a whim by a travelling entertainer who was visiting the town. The story was about the legend of the hero and the demon king.
According to the story, a demon king appears every few hundred years. The legendary heroes appear at the same time as the Demon King. The heroes have special powers and use legendary armour and their special powers to defeat the Demon King and save the world.
Even I, as a small child, knew this. The Demon King is the top existence of the demon tribe and demons, an evil person who attacks humans and tries to rule the world with evil.
That’s why I longed for him. I longed for a hero who would stand up to such an enemy. The legendary hero who will appear one day.
I am not a hero, so I cannot have big dreams of defeating the Demon King. But I think I can support the heroes from somewhere. That’s how I became an adventurer.
My parents were against it at first, but once I had made up my mind, I had a character that would not bend. So in the end, they broke their will and allowed me to set off on my journey.
I heard that a hero is someone who uses both magic and swordsmanship. So I wanted to become a magic swordsman so that I could use both in the same way. Because I could use magic, my swordsmanship was less powerful than that of a normal swordsman, but because I could use a magic sword clothed in magic, I was able to compensate for the weakness in power.
And so it was when I turned 20.
I heard a rumour that a fortune-telling old woman in town had said that a hero would soon appear.
A girl with flowing deep blue – dark blue hair. I was told that was her marker.
However, the Demon King appeared several years ago, and the demon tribe was raging in many places. And yet no heroes appeared at all, and I was terrified that the world would end like this.
That was when I turned 22.
Finally, a hero appeared.
It was just as the fortune-telling old woman had said. A little girl with dark blue hair was suddenly discovered out of nowhere and enshrined as a hero.
When I first saw her, I felt that she was such a small child. She was 18 years old, four years younger than me.
She was listless, timid and didn’t look like she could defeat the Demon King.
Her name is Stella. A name that shines like a star. She should have been, but I didn’t see a single sparkle in her, and I was disappointed. For what purpose had I gathered my friends like this and worked so hard until now to support the heroes? I wondered what all my hard work had been for.
But when a month had passed.
The hero I hadn’t seen in a long time had a different appearance.
Her height had not changed much and she was still small, but something inside her had made her stronger. I felt that this was a hero, that this was a special power that only she could possess, and I was determined to replace my once disappointed heart and once again support her from the shadows.
It was at this point that I decided to go to the dubious old fortune-telling woman in the city for the first time.
To tell her, ‘What you said was true.’
When I entered the fortune-telling house, the fortune-telling old woman had a wrinkled face and hands, a robe up to her head and a suspicious habit of saying ‘yech yech yech yech’.
And that’s when I tried to tell her about the hero.
“Nunu! ……showing signs of death. …… If you continue like this, you will die for sure.”
As soon as I met her, she suddenly said that to me while staring at the crystal in front of me
These words were said by the person who guessed the hero
I believed that story.
However, not knowing what to do, I asked the fortune-telling old woman how I could avoid that future.
“Hmmm, ………… all I can tell you is that your destiny is a young man with black hair and black eyes.’
I asked her why, but she gave me a different answer than the one I had asked for.
I also thought that it would be impossible to find a person with black hair, which is a rare hair colour and there are only a few people in this world with black hair to begin with.
It seems that the fortune-telling old lady is also known as the ‘Conceive Hag’, and that she can tell you the characteristics of your destined partner through her crystal.
If you can find that person and stay forever, you can conceive and bear a child with that person and be happy.
She says that she has actually found several such couples, and there is no end to the number of people who thank her for her help. She says, though …….
In the end, I did not get any advice on how to avoid the fate of death.
When I told this to my friends, they said that I would surely die one day because I was trying to support a hero, and I decided not to worry too much about that.
And then the time came.
It was about three months after the heroes appeared.
While I was staying in the town of Teramisia, which I had just visited, information circulated that someone was performing a dubious ritual at an old place called ‘Erusea’s Ruins’, which was no longer in use.
When we were about to go there to investigate, we heard that a party of heroes, who were also staying in Teramisia, had gone to the ruins ahead of us. We moved quickly and followed them.
The ruins were like a maze, but thanks to the brave party having gone ahead of us, we were able to break through the door, which originally seemed to be unopenable, without stopping, and proceeded onwards.
That’s when we reached the innermost room.
All four members of the heroes’ party were lying on the floor, bloodied and wounded.
Stella the hero, who had become dignified as if she had changed. She too was bleeding from the head and it was clear at a glance that she could no longer fight.
When I saw the mysterious enemy in front of her, my body went rigid.
It wasn’t something done by magic. It was the pressure of its intimidation. An overwhelming difference in strength that I could tell just by looking at it.
Even the heroes were defeated. We were still more powerful than the heroes’ party, but even so, I instantly felt that there was no way we could win.
I was prepared – I was going to die here today.
But I thought.
I would be willing to give up my life for the hero of today – the story I heard when I was ten years old about the legend of that hero. If that is true, I cannot let her, the hero Stella, die here.
The heroes will become stronger from now on and will surely defeat the Demon King in the future.
Believing this, we went up against the Four Kings of the Demon King’s Army – the ‘Compound Demon’ Tejato.
–We only held it for a few minutes.
No, maybe he held back. Originally, it could have been over much quicker, but in the end he played with us like a puppet show in the palm of his hand.
He would make us slaves and make us work for the rest of our lives, and when he told us that, we despaired.
Seriously, I imagined my future and felt frustrated at my helplessness to do anything more.
If I was enslaved, I had a horrible imagination that, besides pure labour, I would be impregnated by someone else, weeping and following the demon tribe, and one day die like a piece of trash.
That’s how his hand reached out towards me.
I thought that the only thing that kept the hero alive was the greatest happiness of my life so far, that I had given up everything, and so I had to accept the hand of the outsider – and I did,
That’s when I thought I had no choice but to accept the hand of the outsider. Tejato’s left arm flew into the air and a young man with black hair interrupted me.
I couldn’t see him.
I had been studying in my own way, and the average level of my companions was over 20. And yet, almost without finishing the movement with his eyes, the young man overpowered Tejato even more, becoming a sword god and cutting him to pieces.
But there was only one step left.
Deciding to retreat, Tejato created a hole in space-time and was about to flee to the demon territory.
The black-haired young man pressed on, trying not to let him escape – but he targeted me, who had collapsed and was unable to move.
“Damn! damn! make it in time!!!”
A desperate cry loomed, and then, as I was crouching, he was holding me.
“Gaaaahhhhhh!!!”
I witnessed the sight of his back being cruelly cut up by a super-grade magic I had never seen before.
I had no idea what had happened. I didn’t even know why he had saved me when I had never met him before. Everything was beyond my comprehension, and then, in desperation, he took out a leather bag of herbs and handed it to me.
“I’m glad I could help you ……, —-“
I could not hear his voice until the end. Because he just fainted.
“Why …… why did you ……?”
With tears in my eyes, I bit into the herb. Bitter and bad, these herbs are not very edible. The most common reason for this is that most people heal their wounds with magic, and the higher up the adventurers you go, the fewer medicinal herbs you will find.
It should have been so, but he, who is far stronger than me, had medicinal herbs in his possession. Medicinal herbs that were in large quantities in a leather bag, as if he knew from the start that someone was running out of magic and brought it with him.
I fed the medicinal herbs to Atria and Maybella, who were still breathing, to heal their wounds.
I was also drained of strength, but when I approached the place where he had collapsed again, I wanted to save him too.
I don’t know why, but I remembered the words of the ‘conceive hag’.
[- All I can tell you is that your destiny is a young man with black hair and black eyes.]
My heart jumped.
And it continued to beat loudly for a while, without stopping.
No, I didn’t think that was possible. It was absolutely wrong to believe the story of such a dubious old woman.
Sure, she might have guessed about the hero. Still, not all other fortunes would have come true. She’s the one who’s been called by the obscene nickname ‘conceive Hag’. There is no such thing as believing …….
We were dying, and he who is in front of me right now is dying.
And yet, despite the fact—, my lower abdomen was hot, hot and tingling.
I want to help him……. I definitely want to help him, I want to talk to this man and listen to him.
I want to get to know this person, why he helped me, why he came to this place, whatever it is.
I felt that way by instinct.
That’s why I absolutely cannot let him die here.
A young man with black hair and dark eyes whose name I don’t even know yet.
If this person is who the ‘conceive hag’ said he was, I will definitely let him live and meet him again.
–He might be the man of my destiny who will impregnate me and make me happy.
(TL/N : I see, so the hero is a girl)
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