HRB 108

Eddie looked at Ketron and Augustine, who were embracing him with pale faces. Ketron kept telling Augustine, who was repeatedly apologizing, that it was alright.

He knew exactly what the apologies were for.

Their memories had returned.

Not just Augustine’s, but everyone in this world’s.

“Gerold, do you know who Ketron is?”

Eddie asked Gerold, who stood behind him. Gerold glanced at Ketron and nodded.

“Yes, he was real.”

It was fortunate that Gerold was so indifferent; otherwise, the fact that the man he always bickered with was the true Hero would have been astonishing.

Sebastian, standing behind Gerold, had his jaw hanging open. Ebon, on the other hand, merely looked down at where the convenience store had been, with a hint of disappointment.

“Haa.”

With the Hero’s name returning, it wasn’t strange that people were regaining their lost memories of the Hero, especially since the Demon King, who had vanished with the Hero, had been resurrected.

He should have felt pleased. He should have been simply pleased and happy that Ketron had regained what he had lost.

― Screeeech

But the discordant grinding of gears that had been ringing in his ears for a while was too loud, and Eddie couldn’t feel pure joy.

He wasn’t unaware. He knew why the story was making such a loud, ‘wrong’ sound.

This dark rain, this resurrection of the Demon King, was not the flow the story had intended.

The Demon King’s resurrection was not part of the story in Part 2.

The ending of Part 2 that Eddie had confirmed was… the Hero and his new companions setting off on a journey to ‘eliminate the remaining Demon race.’

In that story, the Demon King, then as now, did not exist and had already vanished from this world.

He shouldn’t have resurrected like this.

― Screeeech

Yet, that existence had resurrected. In a way that perfectly defied the established ending of Part 2.

As if it couldn’t tolerate this, the gears of the story continued to create discord, as if everything had gone wrong.

Perhaps the Demon King’s visit to Eddie hadn’t caused major issues because it was an ‘incomplete resurrection,’ thus not affecting the story.

But now, he was fully resurrected and had completely overturned the story’s flow. What would happen to this twisted story now?

The story desires a perfect ending. To that end, it doesn’t hesitate to forcibly change the story’s flow at times.

Ketron was surely destined to regain his glory at some point in the middle of Part 2, in one way or another.

But it wouldn’t have been in this manner.

Would beings like the Demon King or Eddie, who were leading the story in an unintended direction, be welcomed by the story? No, they wouldn’t.

Then why isn’t the story making the Demon King’s resurrection an erased fact? Perhaps forcibly twisting the story, like during the Tournament, isn’t as easy as he thought.

Everything was just speculation, with no conclusions. It just gave him a headache. Eddie covered his face with his hands and sighed.

Even so, the screeching discord echoing only in his ears continued without stopping.

Before long, Boram was dragged away by the Imperial Palace’s direct Magician Corps, wearing a Mana restraint.

With Marquis Rivalt, who oversaw the Imperial Palace’s Magician Corps, directly intervening, Boram’s end would not be good in any way.

Of course, Marquis Evans didn’t seem like the kind of heartless father who would leave his daughter in prison, so what would happen next was uncertain, but with too many witnesses, she couldn’t avoid immediate detainment.

“Ketron.”

Just before being dragged away, she spoke to the companion she had betrayed, for the first time in a long while.

While Augustine had visited Ketron several times even while he had lost his memory, Boram and Ketron’s conversation was effectively the first since the Demon King’s defeat.

Ketron looked at Boram with an expressionless face.

After a moment’s hesitation, Boram warned him, looking at his cold face.

“You’re sharp enough to know, but Arthur’s imprisonment is all the Demon King’s design. And my attacking you.”

“You’re not trying to make excuses, so what do you want to say?”

“Be careful.”

“…….”

“He seems intent on taking revenge on all of us. You know his methods best, don’t you?”

She briefly glanced towards Augustine, warning both of them, then meekly allowed herself to be led away by the Magician Corps.

It wasn’t because of a sudden change of heart that she was seeking forgiveness from the two. But she wasn’t the type of person to lie in a moment like this.

Augustine said he should probably go to the temple, which must be in great chaos, and left. Promising to visit soon.

Eddie looked at Marquis Rivalt, whose face looked like he had aged several years in an instant, and asked,

“What will happen to her?”

“Unofficially, it will be treated as an attempted assassination of royalty, so it won’t be easy for Marquis Evans either.”

Perhaps because Eddie was involved, Marquis Rivalt was present at the scene of the incident, Eddie’s Inn.

Not only Eddie, who was royalty, but his own younger sibling had lost their place to stay.

“You can stay here for a while.”

Marquis Rivalt guided Eddie to a mansion located not far from the central plaza. According to Marquis Rivalt, it was a mansion personally owned by Eddie’s elder brother, Emperor Ricarius.

“……Is the Imperial Palace in chaos too?”

Eddie felt awkward having a direct conversation with Marquis Rivalt, so he hesitated for a moment, but eventually spoke to him to resolve his curiosity.

He assumed speaking formally would be more awkward for him, so he used informal speech to sound natural, and Marquis Rivalt nodded.

“The Imperial Palace, and the capital, are in chaos. It’s likely all countries are. Everyone is trying to grasp the situation.”

“My brother must be busy.”

“Being busy is his usual state.”

“You don’t have anything specific to ask me?”

“Hmm……”

He probably had many questions. Whether Eddie knew Ketron was the Hero and had been hiding him, or if he had genuinely not known.

What Ketron was thinking by staying by Eddie’s side.

However, Marquis Rivalt shook his head.

“That doesn’t seem to be the issue right now.”

It was more important to sort out the situation within the Empire, which had been thrown into disarray by the Demon King’s resurrection, than Eddie and Ketron’s relationship.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an atmosphere that could be easily sorted out just by wanting to.

It was as if a monster they thought was gone had resurrected, or perhaps never truly died, and the Hero they had loved, believing him to be the true Hero, was a fake.

That fake had committed a major crime by murdering an Imperial noble, and one of the Hero’s companions had attacked the place where the true Hero was staying, creating an unimaginable level of chaos.

Marquis Rivalt looked at Eddie for a moment, then asked,

“There is only one thing I wish to confirm.”

“What is it?”

“Is he real?”

Having been deceived once before, his cautious attitude, even with his memories returned, was not strange.

Eddie replied with a sigh,

“He is real.”

“……I see.”

Marquis Rivalt, perhaps considering it disrespectful to ask how Eddie could be so sure, nodded without further questioning.

“Will the inn be able to be rebuilt?”

“Honestly, it was destroyed so cleanly that it would be faster to build a new one.”

Indeed, it had been cleanly obliterated, leaving not a single pillar. He had hoped for a possibility of restoration, but even for the great Marquis Rivalt, rebuilding a building reduced to mere dust seemed difficult.

“It seems difficult to reopen the inn for now, so please stay here. The Imperial Palace is also complicated, so this would be better. Of course, you are welcome to come to the Imperial Palace anytime if you wish.”

“I’ll decline that.”

If an illegitimate child of the Emperor, whom most people didn’t even know existed, were to appear in the Imperial Palace, which must be in utter disarray, the chaos would be unimaginable. Of course, Eddie had no intention of throwing himself into a place that felt utterly foreign.

Marquis Rivalt departed after earnestly requesting Eddie to contact him through Gerold if anything happened. It was remarkable that he, as the Emperor’s right-hand man, had spent so much time.

The mansion provided by Marquis Rivalt was adequately spacious and well-maintained. Frankly, it was a much more stately building than Eddie’s inn, which was essentially a lodging establishment.

How many mansions of this caliber would the Emperor have in the capital? Perhaps there were even a few in Eddie’s name.

Though he recognized it intellectually, Eddie, who had almost no sense of being royalty, was freshly reminded of how wealthy he and his elder brother were.

While the mansion was spacious by Eddie’s standards, it seemed to have been arranged hastily as a temporary measure, as one of the five rooms was being used as a storage room, leaving only four rooms available.

This meant that two of the five of them would have to share a room, and by chance, Eddie and Ketron ended up sharing one.

“Me and Ebon—”

Originally, Gerold would have naturally shared a room with Ebon.

“No.”

However, it was Sebastian who unexpectedly stopped him.

“Let’s not share.”

At this sudden and unwarranted statement, Gerold frowned and looked at Sebastian, but Sebastian met Gerold’s gaze with a resolute expression he had never seen before.

Ebon, not understanding the situation, let out a confused “Huh?” and looked back and forth between Gerold and Sebastian. Ketron, meanwhile, looked indifferent, as if he didn’t care. In the end, Eddie had to step in.

“Um, I’ll share a room with Ket.”

There, is that settled? Nothing was truly resolved, but it seemed like a reasonable compromise. A decision that no one was satisfied with, yet no one was dissatisfied with.

However, the decision, which he thought was a reasonable compromise, made Eddie regret it that evening when he lay down on the bed, his body tired in various ways.

He was now acutely aware that he had to share a bed with the younger Hero, who could now be called a kiss demon without any awkwardness.