บท 103: The Hero of Light
If the records are to be believed, then the Realm of Karnalle was created roughly 4,600 years ago. Throughout the history of our storied Realm, seven different Kings of darkness known as Demon Lords have risen up across the ages. These devilish rulers wreaked havoc and devastation across the land, making even the evilest of Lundreame tyrants look like saints by comparison. However, a Hero of Light has consistently appeared in our darkest hour to save us all from eternal darkness. Not once has the Hero of Light failed in their quest, and each Demon Lord has been defeated...
And now, it's apparently my turn.
Words escape me, but liquor does not.
Luxy graciously sets me up with a tall glass of Bourgeauxian salted whiskey on the rocks after accepting my plea for a stiffer drink. Known as one of the most potent and expensive spirits in all of Karnalle, it should be more than enough to get me through the dreaded topic of my destiny... hopefully.
"So it's really true?" I ask the Goddess after downing my first taste of the rich, dignified alcohol. "I'm supposed to take down the current Demon Lord myself?"
"Kind of," Another smirk tells me there's more going on here than it seems. "Things are a little different this time around."
"I'm going to go ahead and assume the magical penis growth, the eyes, and the divine pimping have something to do with that?"
"No doubt you've picked up on a good deal of the nuances," She chuckles, looking down on me like an artist proud of her work. "I made sure you were extra smart, after all. Why don't you make some guesses and see if you can figure more of it out on your own?"
I close my eyes and consider what the Goddess is telling me, and think back to the interactions we've had until now. The answer is obvious, though shocking. "I'm not meant to battle the Demon Lord head-on."
Pleased with my answer, my divine host claps her hands and smiles. "See? You DO get it! But that's not all-"
"I'm meant to raise heroes to do it for me. That's why you had me born to the only family in the Realm where I could inherit an Adventurer's Guild, isn't it...?"
"That sounds an awful lot like a question to me..." Luxy tilts her head, her voice taking on mock innocence as she repeatedly taps the armrest of her throne. Sighing, I pour her another small shot of ambrosia and watch her down it with delight. The dove brings the glass back to me and continues to wait for whenever its services are next required.
"So, yeah. This time, I kinda needed to focus on quantity over quality... so while you're technically the current 'Hero of Light,' you also come with a lot of fail-safes. You get me?" She keeps saying things are different repeatedly, yet I feel like getting the exact reason behind this is all but impossible.
"Fail-safes...?" I hope this isn't leading where I think it is, but it has to be...
"Think about it," Luxy teases.
Thinking of the girls that the Goddess has led to my side thus far, a pattern comes to mind. The Crown Princess of Karnalle, the supposed strongest Mage in the realm, and the daughter of a famous, heroic Shield Maiden... no doubt all of them would have mighty children given a chance, or if a certain Goddess pushed them in the right direction.
I squint at the smug, childish deity sitting from me across the table. "The reason you're hooking me up with all these women is so that if it looks like things aren't going well in the battle with the Demon Lord, then... I'm... supposed to start producing heroes in an entirely different way, aren't I?"
The Goddess blinks. For a moment, she actually looks impressed with me. "Shit, think maybe I made you too smart?" She giggles to herself, smug as ever.
Ignoring her, I move ahead to the biggest question on my mind. "Please don't tell me that the next golden age of adventurers is going to spring out entirely from my dick."
"Ok, fine. I won't tell you that." Luxy smirks, knowing she doesn't need to tell me something I've already figured out for myself.
Taking a gratuitous swig of my whisky, I let this thought ruminate as the stiff liquid glides down my throat. My brief contemplation is ruined by Luxy opening her mouth to say, "You would've figured all this out for yourself if not for your own rotten luck, you know. As a boy, you were so busy studying and trying to run a business that your youth passed you by... if you tried a little harder to lose your virginity, all this junk would've happened on its own."
"Great, might as well rub that in some more while you're at it," I add in sarcastically, downing more of my drink. "And if me setting off on my destiny was so damn important, why didn't you interfere before now? Why wait until I'm a fucking middle-aged wash-up? You could have just made my dick huge from the start, why bother with all of this convoluted bullshit?"
"What do you take me for, one of those divine Grekkan upstarts?" She snorts. "We've always done a hands-off approach when it comes to guiding our champions. You know, subtle shit! Messages in dreams, appearing to you in forms you wouldn't recognize, hush-hush things like that. We're Gods, the stuff we do doesn't have to make sense to you, Mortal."
I raise a finger toward Luxy, telling her to pause for a moment because I caught something in her phrasing that I didn't quite like the sound of. "You just said 'we,' which I take to mean your sister-"
"Shit," Luxy coughs into her fist as her glowing face goes pale.
"Tenebris Primis has divine champions as well, doesn't she? I can assume that the Demon Lords are her equivalent to your Heroes of Light?" Upon hearing my reasonable theory, Luxy sweats profusely and shifts her eyes off to the side. "Unbelievable... Do you two Goddesses just wreck our Realm for the fun of it every now and then?" It's hard to keep my calm while imagining my home as nothing but an oversized chessboard for the gods.
"Of course not!" Outraged at my accusation, the Goddess slams her fists on each side of her throne before standing up. The clouds hanging in the sky darken with the full force of her wrath, lightning crackling within. "This Demon Lord slash Hero of Light shit is... it's just..." Luxy sighs, forcing herself to sit down before she gets too worked up. "It's always been how we've settled arguments..."
My right eye begins to twitch from stress. "Have the two of you ever considered settling things in a way that DOESN'T involve an endless parade of suffering upon the Realm?"
"We get fired up, alright?! You wouldn't understand what it's like." She blushes and looks away defensively, her lips puffing out so she can pout. "Besides, I undo a lot of the damage with my miracles when it's all over, don't I?"
"Ah, yes, that more than makes up for everything..." I roll my eyes and shake my head. It's true that because of Karnalle's constant troubles, Lux Ultima is known to bless the Realm after we make it through an especially tyrannical King or Queen or after a Demon Lord is defeated. Although the dead are never returned to life, lands ravaged by war or demonic influence are brought back to their natural state, castles are fixed, and so on.
"I don't suppose you'll tell me what the argument that started this conflict is even about?"
"It doesn't concern you," Luxy dismisses me, rather poorly, I might add.
While I have a few harsh things to say in response, I need to let it go. I shouldn't try and hold this Goddess accountable for every bad thing that's happened throughout history. I'm not a God, and I can't pretend that morality means the same thing to me as it does to her. Lux Ultima is omnipotent, and she sees things through the eyes of the divine.
This realization motivates me to finish off my whisky and give the dove another small shot of ambrosia to take to its mistress. While I'm not in the best mood, Luxy's already answered a few questions back to back by now, and I want to keep her nice and satisfied.
After she drinks more of the nectar of the Gods, I launch my next inquiry. "So, The magic semen... is it supposed to incentivize unprotected sex, or-"
"Nah, you hardly need my help with that." Luxy snorts while making a playful expression. She has a fair point, but the Goddess just implied something I'm not sure how to feel about.
"Are you telling me you watch me have sex?" I try to react to this with surprise, but I just can't anymore.
"Details, details!" The bratty-looking deity sighs and shrugs off the answer. She goes on to clarify, "It's real simple- when you jizz inside of a girl, you're transmitting bonafide 'Hero of Light' power into the lucky lady."
"Ah, yes. That makes perfect sense," I nod my head and appreciate just how simple the answer was this time around- despite it being stupid. Looking down at my list, I mentally check off the ones we've covered already. Plenty of other important ones to get to, but something overtakes me, and I'm filled with the desire to ask something off the top of my head. "What happens if I refuse to take part in any of this Hero nonsense and simply go on with my daily life as if I were none the wiser?"
Laughing, Luxy shakes her head. "You wouldn't actually do that, right?"
I wouldn't, but my poker face is convincing enough to send her into a panic attack.
"R-Right?"
I continue staring back at her in silence. Eventually, the Goddess asks with a cracked voice, "C'mon, man, r-really? Haven't you upset the old man enough?"
I almost rise out of my seat right then and there in a drunken rage, but using all my self-restraint, I hold off. "That was low," I mutter through the skin of my teeth. Luxy, suddenly aware of how upset her taunting made me, now blushes and extends her hand. The Goddess grasps at straws, confused and unsure over what to possibly say in apology.
"Shit, I didn't mean it like that! I mean... um..." Luxy hangs her head and cradles the sides of her face in her palms. "Fuck, there's a reason I don't talk to you mortals very much. I'm bad at this if you couldn't tell. Like... REALLY bad. I didn't mean to go that far..."
While I'm definitely still angry, I can't hold it against Luxy when she seems to genuinely feel bad over her choice of words. "Whatever... You didn't answer the question. What happens if I just say no right here and now?"
"Well, it wouldn't be great..." Luxy coughs into her hand and shifts around in her seat. "Especially what with... uh... the scale of things, y'know?"
"No, damn it, I don't know," My frustration starts to reach a boiling point, no doubt thanks to the whisky in my system. Leaning across the table, I scowl and tell the Goddess, "I don't know jack shit about any of this, Luxy, and you need to be more forthcoming if you expect me to take any of your words seriously."
She frowns and shuts her eyes, the stress of getting called out piling up and taking its toll. "Ok, ok... my sister might get mad at me if she finds out I spelled things out for you, but... Karnalle isn't the only Realm at stake this time. Sis took things a bit too far with the gifts she gave the current Demon Lord, and, uh... well, he's kinda all over the place these days..."
I can definitely see why that would be a bad thing. Until now, Karnalle's Demon Lords have always been localized in, well, Karnalle. If our greatest evils started spilling out to the other Realms, then that could only spell trouble. "I'm going to presume there's some reason you can't give me the same gifts so that I could properly fight him on the same playing field?"
"Can't, it's a power steeped in darkness, not exactly the kind of Godly magic I got in me, y'know?" Luxy sighs and falls back against her throne. "And even if I could, I wouldn't do it because the Gods of other Realms are already pissed enough as it is thanks to you guys discovering Realm travel a thousand years or ago. Ugh... do you have ANY idea how hard I had to placate the pantheon of Merryburrow after that fucking foot fetishist king invaded? It's bad enough that the Demon Lord is gallivanting around the Realms... any more than that and... it wouldn't be pretty."
"You would think that foreign Gods wouldn't mind as long as my girls and I were there to help them,"
"Well, do YOU wanna negotiate with Sister Grimm? How about Amaterasu-no-Okami?" After a brief silence, Luxy sighs. "That's what I thought..."
"The world of Gods seems... much more complicated and political than I gave it credit for." I look at the Goddess of Light and stare into her glowing blue eyes, seeing in them the same tiredness I often find on my own face after working through stacks of paperwork. Even if only a little, I feel my respect for Luxy starting to grow.
"You don't even know the half of it..." She groans. Since she looks like she could use another one, I pour her a shot of ambrosia, and she perks up. "Thanks... You aren't that bad, I guess. Sometimes."
"I'm starting to think the same of you. Something's on my mind unrelated to the topic at hand, though."
"Shoot." The childish Goddess can't hold back her excitement upon hearing my opinion of her change.
"How did my grandpa even know I was destined to do battle with the Demon Lord, anyway?"
Shrugging, she rolls her eyes. "I sent a vision to your father telling him that you were going to be the Hero of Light, and sure enough, that made him dump you on your grandpa's lap just like I wanted him to."
Sounds like someone was all too eager to get out of responsibility. "That more or less fits with what little I've been told about my dear old dad..."
"Please don't tell me you're gonna ask me about him..." The Goddess groans as if even thinking about my father is draining.
The thought of me actually caring about my absent paternal figure makes me crack a smile and chuckle. "No, not at all. I have much more important things to ask you about."
Eager to try and bridge the gap between us, Luxy leans forward in her seat. "Liiiike?"
The gap is not bridged, as my question only widens it. "Since you decided to start interfering in my life, does that mean things are getting worse?"
As per usual, her response says a whole lot more than her words. "Well... things could be worse," Luxy swallows, twiddling her thumbs. "But, y'know. Things could always be better? I dunno, I hear a lot of shit from my sister, and it's hard to tell what's true or not..."
"Hm," I close my eyes and take the glasses from my face. After pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of my vest, I clean the lens and tell the Goddess, "Thing is, I quite enjoy my life right now, Luxy. I'm not very tempted to give up everything so I can devote myself to some endless battle of good and evil that I didn't sign up for."
"Wait, wait, wait!" The Goddess becomes huffy, her face scrunches up with worry and anxiety. "It's not like there's a deadline, and it overlaps with your goals anyway! Think about it, mortal, what do you want most out of life?"
"To run the greatest Adventurer's Guild the Realms have ever known," I respond with conviction as I set the glasses back on my face.
"Exactly! Don't you think that if you keep doing what you're doing, then you'll eventually reach the position where your girls will be asked to fight the Demon Lord anyway?"
I hadn't thought of it like that. Then again, I try not to think about the Demon Lord situation most of the time due to my personal hang-ups. But if what Luxy is saying is true, then my true goal may very well intersect with my intended path.
"Grow your business, keep expanding your roster of adventurers, and when the time comes to get serious, you'll already be prepared for the battle at hand!"
"You must have thought this through," I find myself impressed by her argument. "Seems I don't have much choice in the matter, then..."
"So you officially accept your position as Hero of Light?!" Luxy stands from her throne and excitedly leans over the table, startling her feathered friend, who flies off.
"Yes, albeit reluctantly," I sigh. "I'm not THAT much of an asshole, but I still intend on taking my sweet damn time with this."
"No prob, you have a lot of catching up to do, anyway. The competition has a pretty big head start..."
This perks my eyebrow up, as news of the current Demon Lord's activities is scarce. His attack on Bridgebury is the only time he's ever taken action in Karnalle, and that was five years ago. "Do you think we can win?" I ask, knowing Luxy is much more informed on the status of the enemy than I.
Again, her body language and posture suggest a profound lack of confidence. "A-Anything's possible, right?" She laughs weakly, sitting back down on her throne and nervously tapping her finger against the armrest. After a period of painful silence, the golden Goddess groans. "What else do you wanna know, mortal? I could really use another shot right about now..."
Not a good sign, but I pour Luxy more of the exquisite beverage regardless. "Sure, there's plenty more left... but you're going to need to tell me about my eyes."
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