By Zephyria 
“Damn it, that damned Holy Sword! I told you to get it under control! How many accidents has this been?!”
Memories of the past suddenly surfaced in Augustine’s mind. It was a memory of one of the many accidents the Holy Sword had caused.
Was it the day they touched a monster’s nest they were trying to pass by without disturbing? That ill-tempered Holy Sword would deliberately provoke battles that didn’t need to happen. It wasn’t a rare occurrence.
Ketron also got annoyed at Augustine’s frustrated shouting.
“It doesn’t listen to me!”
“Then make it listen!”
“If I could, I would have…!”
Once it started, the spring of memories gushed out like a broken dam.
“I’m starving. Hey, Ketron. See that bird flying in the sky?”
That must have been when they couldn’t find a village during their travels, and after camping out for days, they had run out of jerky and were forced to chew on dried fruit and crackers while marching on.
Augustine, seeing the bird flying in the sky looking like fried chicken, drooled and said that, and Ketron, who also looked up at the sky, replied.
“Doesn’t look like there’s much to eat.”
“Is this the time to be picky? I’m starving!”
“Wasn’t your principle to avoid killing as much as possible?”
Where did the grace of God go? Augustine almost snapped.
“Who cares about that when I’m hungry! Here, watch. If you bind it with Sorcery and drop it, I’ll finish it in one hit.”
“Your club will just crush it completely, wouldn’t it be better if I just cut its throat?”
“Yeah, then do that.”
“…Isn’t this just me hunting alone?”
“Tsk, quick-witted kids are so troublesome.”
He was smacked on the back for giggling, but in the end, Ketron hunted it down, and they were able to sleep relatively full that night.
It was a bleak world. They were traveling through such a world, but the reason they didn’t lose their smiles was because they were with a friend who got along well, even in such circumstances.
If the end of that journey wasn’t their deaths, they believed they would be good friends for life.
“I’ll hold them off! You guys hurry and eliminate the Demon King!”
At the very end, Augustine remained alone outside the Demon King’s Castle.
“Urya!”
He squeezed out every last bit of strength to hold on. He believed that Ketron would definitely defeat the Demon King. He believed that he would surely bring them victory.
The Demon King was strong, but his comrade was stronger.
After that, his memory cut off. When he opened his eyes, everything was over.
Blinking, he couldn’t even remember when or how he had fallen.
“Did we win?”
He was severely injured, but he somehow managed to open his eyes. He survived. Arthur was the one who answered him.
“Of course.”
Arthur’s face, returning as the Hero, was full of smiles.
It was a happy thing. They had defeated the Demon King, and they were returning as heroes without anyone dying.
But Augustine couldn’t understand why he felt so uneasy at the time. It felt like he had lost something very important.
It felt like he had lost something too precious… His heart felt empty, but he didn’t know why.
Nothing came to mind at all.
“Why the long face? Augustine.”
“Um… no, it’s nothing.”
Although he felt uneasy, they had won anyway, and all that was left was to bask in the glory.
The chances were low that something he couldn’t remember no matter how hard he tried was something precious and important in his life, and it was something he couldn’t do even if he tried, so Augustine forgot everything and returned.
Without knowing that he was leaving something truly important behind.
“Aaaagh!”
Augustine snapped back to his senses at the sound of someone screaming.
It was the screams of people who had seen the black rain, or rather, people who had regained memories they had buried in the oblivion due to the black rain.
Looking around, he saw the fear and confusion on the faces of people who were panicking and trying to avoid the black rain.
The Demon King had been resurrected.
The Hero they knew was not the real Hero.
The entire world was regaining its memories. Memories of the Hero they had forgotten, the lost Hero.
At the same time, they were realizing that the Demon King, whose existence had been erased, had returned.
Swish, swish.
The black rain, which had eventually turned into a downpour, could not be completely blocked even by Augustine’s Divinity, and Augustine, soaked in the pouring rain, was finally able to regain all his memories under the flood of memories that had completely poured out.
“Ah.”
Now I understand.
Why the young man he met for the first time at the inn cried when he asked for a sparring match that day.
Why he looked at him with such resentment.
“Ah ah.”
The face that seemed cold and unwilling to give anyone his time, but somehow treated him a little softly.
Augustine then realized that the young man at the inn he had felt close to was his precious friend.
And also the fact that he had just lost that existence once again.
Until just a moment ago, he was saddened by the loss of the inn people he had felt strangely close to, but apart from that sadness, he had the composure to prioritize questioning Boram, but now he couldn’t think of anything like that.
No.
Knowing it was useless, he ran to the ruined Eddie’s Inn building.
“Ketron!”
I can’t lose you again.
But even as he thought that, there was nothing he could do. Boram’s Sorcery was delicate, and she wasn’t a clumsy Magician who would let her opponent escape.
Creating a cage that perfectly blocked even teleportation of the people inside to escape and ‘surely’ killing the opponent was Boram’s specialty. The Evans family’s Sorcery, extremely specialized in destruction.
But even so, Augustine had only seen Boram use this Sorcery twice so far because it consumed too much mana each time it was used.
It was a reliable Sorcery when she was an ally, but the problem was that Ketron was the one who had been hit by it.
Augustine called out his friend’s name with a heart full of blood.
“Ketron!”
I haven’t even apologized for forgetting you, I haven’t been forgiven for returning without knowing I lost you, and now I’m losing you again like this.
“Ketron!”
Augustine tried to clear the debris soaked in black rain with his bare hands. Even though he knew that no one could possibly be alive under it. Just in case it was him, just in case it was the guy who really defeated the Demon King, just in case, just in case.
Just in case…
“Ketron…”
But the state of the inn was such that it was impossible. It was when Augustine was desperately calling out his friend’s name, unable to accept reality.
“Augustine, step back.”
The voice he had been longing to hear was heard. Augustine, who opened his eyes wide, reflexively stepped back from the spot as soon as he heard the voice.
It was also because the voice came from under the floor, but Augustine always trusted Ketron’s judgment entirely, so he would react and move as soon as he spoke.
As Augustine stepped away from the spot where Eddie’s Inn had been, the floor shook, and the debris of the building piled on the floor flew up all at once.
Then, a staircase leading to the basement, which had been hidden by the debris, was revealed.
There, Ketron, who looked fine, was clearing the debris with Sorcery and coming up.
In his hand, he held a huge sword with its blade wrapped in cloth. It was a familiar sight to Augustine, damn it.
“Why are you calling me so desperately?”
Ketron, who spoke calmly, frowned slightly and looked up at the sky. He looked up at the gloomy sky where the mana-infested rain was falling and let out a sigh like a sigh.
“He finally revealed himself.”
Augustine pressed his lips tightly and looked at the young man in front of him.
It wasn’t just Augustine. The people who had fled to places with roofs to avoid the black rain were also fixing their gaze on the young man who had appeared.
The existence they had forgotten.
The real Hero that everyone in this world had known until then.
The owner of the Holy Sword, the ‘real Hero’.
“…”
Augustine took a deep breath for a moment. That breath was trembling slightly. It was because he thought he had lost him until just now, and now.
Now… he didn’t know how to react to the flood of complex emotions.
It was joy, regret, sadness, and pain.
Now I know why you were so familiar.
Augustine hugged the young man in front of him tightly.
“I’m sorry.”
“…What for?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I mean, what for?”
“For forgetting until now. For coming back without knowing I lost you. For not remembering.”
How hard must it have been.
How painful must it have been.
Ketron, at the rambling words, belatedly realized that the mana-infested rain, which he hadn’t seen in a long time, not only proclaimed the resurrection of the Demon King but also revived the world’s memories of himself, the real Hero, which had been erased along with it.
The world’s memories returned, and everyone remembered the real Hero.
It was something he had once desperately wanted, but when the moment he had so desperately wanted finally came, Ketron felt surprisingly calm inside.
The best world for him was no longer a world where everyone remembered him.
So Ketron just patted his old friend on the back without saying a word.
Instead of saying it was okay.
The world had finally regained the real Hero they had forgotten, but the black rain soaking the ground was too ominous to be purely happy about it.
The end of that year, which they had believed would be the happiest year-end ever, was finally filled with pitch-black gloom.
The rain continued to fall for a long time after that. Until it soaked every last inch of land in the empire, as well as the entire continent, in black.