The truth was that very little information about the Hero had ever spread through the wider world.
As mentioned on several occasions before, the Hero first appeared in recorded history a thousand years ago, during the Demon King's assault.
Prior to that, the Hero had been considered a purely fictional being—the kind that existed only in fairy tales.
Much like the Demon King himself, for that matter.
What this meant was that across the long, long history of the continent, countless champions had risen and fallen, yet not a single one among them had ever been recognized as a Hero.
Which raised an obvious question.
What was it about the First Hero that made everyone acknowledge her as the Hero?
A radiant character?
One look at the founding story of the Academy was enough to get a rough sense of what kind of person the First Hero actually was. (In fact, the historical records of every nation outside the Empire contained at least one documented account of the First Hero's outrages.)
Overwhelming power?
The First Hero's strength was unrivaled across all ages, past and present—but raw power alone would never have been enough to earn the title.
The Goddess's recognition?
That certainly played a significant role, but it wasn't the whole story.
What made the First Hero a Hero.
The proof of the Hero.
"That would be this Holy Sword right here!"
Cruje raised the ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩ high in her hand and declared it to the room.
As if in agreement with her proclamation, the ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩ began to shimmer and flash, flooding the room with brilliant light.
Aiolette sat with her arms crossed, chin resting on her hand, watching the swirling mass of light with an expression of distinct displeasure.
"How is that a Holy Sword? If it's a Holy *Sword*, shouldn't it at least look like a sword?"
She had a point.
Whatever Cruje was holding, no amount of generous interpretation could make it look like a sword.
More than that—it was genuinely questionable whether it could even be called a physical object at all.
To the eye, it looked like nothing more than a cluster of light suspended inside a necklace.
"Ah… well, actually. The Holy Sword was never really a physical object to begin with."
Cruje glanced down at the necklace in her hand and continued.
"The Holy Sword is a mass of power that the Goddess of Light bestowed upon the First Hero long, long ago as the proof of herohood. It never had a fixed form to begin with."
Cruje pointed to the swirling light pulsing within the necklace and launched into her explanation with full conviction.
"Whatever its owner desires, it responds to their will and shifts freely into any shape—a truly all-purpose weapon! According to legend, the First Hero used this power to transform it into a spear, a shield, countless different weapons, cutting down enemies in whatever form the moment demanded!"
And that was the truth of it. The Holy Sword was not, in fact, a sword.
It seemed that while the First Hero had carried it, the Shard had maintained some consistent appearance—but after the First Hero vanished, it had lost all form and reverted to a simple mass of light.
Even in that state it contained immense power, which was why the Church had kept it under strict guard. Cruje had leveraged her authority as Saintess to extract a portion of it.
"Then why is it called the Holy Sword?"
Aiolette's question was entirely reasonable.
If it didn't look like a sword to begin with, and the First Hero hadn't even used it exclusively as a sword but had changed it into all manner of weapons—what possible reason was there to call it the Holy Sword?
"Because the weapon the First Hero used to cut down the Demon King was a sword."
It was Gladia who answered.
"What? That's it? It happened to be sword-shaped when she killed the Demon King, so they named it the 'Holy Sword'?"
Aiolette let out a short, disbelieving laugh. But Gladia continued as though she had expected exactly that reaction.
"Well, that was apparently the image that left the deepest impression on the people of that era. From their perspective, it was the moment a long war finally ended."
A cutscene flickered through Gladia's mind—the opening sequence of the game *Saintess & Hero*.
Beneath a sky stretched over a dying continent.
The First Hero raising a radiant sword and severing the Demon King's head.
It was the cutscene that played every time the game was launched, and it had burned itself into Gladia's memory with perfect clarity.
She kept her outward composure as she explained all of this, but—
*Thud. Thud.*
—deep inside her chest, she could feel her heart hammering with a life of its own.
*The ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩—that's an item that shouldn't appear until the late game. How did she get her hands on it?*
From the moment Cruje had first produced the ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩, Gladia's heart had been pounding like it had just spotted a long-lost child.
It was as if the blood running through her veins was screaming, *Hey! That's mine!* and throwing an absolute fit.
*Is the ⟨Hero's Blood⟩ reacting to the Holy Sword…?*
Honestly, she couldn't think of any other explanation. Gladia held her expression carefully neutral.
She had decided it would be unwise to reveal any connection between herself and the First Hero.
*Do you have any idea how much trouble being a Hero is?*
The Hero. The name alone sounded impressive, even noble.
But the reality was something else entirely.
The moment your identity was exposed, you became the top assassination target for every follower of the Demon King—attacks came as regularly as meals. The royal families and the Church would throw mandatory quests at you that you couldn't refuse, demanding you fulfill your responsibilities as the Hero.
And on top of all that, the imperial family of the Libertian Empire—who prided themselves on being the Hero's descendants—would be watching your every move with barely concealed hostility.
Unless you had the kind of power to ignore all of it the way the First Hero had, becoming the Hero was nothing short of drinking from a poisoned chalice.
Even in the game, being chosen as the Hero triggered an avalanche of unskippable mandatory quests that severely hampered your freedom of play. It was a genuine nuisance.
Which was why Gladia—who had absolutely, categorically no intention of becoming the Hero—forced herself to ignore the reaction the ⟨Hero's Blood⟩ was sending her.
Meanwhile, Aiolette, who had no idea of the precarious internal drama playing out beside her, turned her attention back to Cruje.
Cruje had settled into her seat at some point, listening to Gladia's explanation with an expression that said *oh, I see~*.
*Wait—does even the Saintess not know why it's called the Holy Sword?*
Gladia, for her part, was growing increasingly preoccupied—Aiolette's reactions had been strange since earlier, the Saintess was proving to be something of an airhead, and the whole situation was becoming more complicated by the minute.
Gladia had been the one to suggest helping, so Aiolette was cooperating with the Saintess in exchange for a modest consideration—but the more time she spent around Cruje, the more doubts began to pile up.
*Is it really all right to entrust something as important as searching for the Hero to someone like this…?*
"So."
"…Pardon? What do you mean?"
Cruje blinked back at her, looking lost.
Aiolette gave a short, exasperated laugh.
"What do I mean. You said the Shard of the Holy Sword—or whatever it is—can find the Hero. So what exactly do we do now?"
"Oh!"
That seemed to snap Cruje back to herself. She pushed her chair back and jumped to her feet.
"It's simple! The Holy Sword is a weapon designed specifically for the Hero by the Goddess herself. So it always has a natural tendency to return to the Hero."
There were indeed records from the war against the Demon King's army describing the Holy Sword, when knocked from the First Hero's hand, moving of its own accord back to her grasp.
Cruje had read those records and thought: *That's it.*
She looked down at the Shard pulsing in her palm and continued.
"So right now, if I just hold it still like this… wait why is it moving?"
On Cruje's palm, the ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩—which was supposed to be sitting quietly and simply glowing—was convulsing like something had gone terribly wrong with it.
*Clatter! Rattle-rattle-rattle!*
The necklace shook hard enough to shatter, the mass of light inside thrashing violently as though it were about to burst free of its casing at any moment.
"Hey, hey! What's wrong with it?!"
"I—I don't know!"
"What do you actually know?!"
Aiolette and Cruje scrambled in a panic.
Gladia was no less rattled.
*Oh no, oh no, oh no. Please have some self-awareness. Dial it back!*
Gladia understood immediately—the ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩ had detected the ⟨Hero's Blood⟩.
At this rate, she was going to be forcibly reclassified from maid to Hero.
*I smell my ownerrrr somewhere nearby!*
The delusion was vivid enough that Gladia could almost hear the Holy Sword's voice—that was how rattled she was.
*That is the one thing I absolutely cannot allow!!*
Whether or not it knew its owner's feelings, the ⟨Hero's Blood⟩ inside Gladia's body was hammering against her heart in answer to the ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩.
The ⟨Holy Sword⟩ and the ⟨Hero's Blood⟩, on the verge of an emotionally charged reunion.
She was half a second away from drawing an actual sword and cutting that wretched thing down.
[Stop.]
A voice rang through Gladia's mind—one she had heard somewhere before.
A neutral voice, impossible to place as male or female.
*…First Hero?*
It was the First Hero's voice—the same one she had heard in the Core Room of the dungeon she had visited with Aiolette.
But the strange voice seemed to reach only Gladia's ears. Aiolette and Cruje were still staring at the convulsing Shard in front of them, thoroughly alarmed.
"Hey, hey! Make it stop! It's shaking even harder!"
"How am I supposed to make it stop?!"
"God, you're useless!!"
"I am not useless!!!!"
Aiolette was shouting with a fierce look on her face, and Cruje's tearful voice was filling the room—and right in the middle of it all, the First Hero's voice came again in Gladia's mind.
[She's 'different.' So… wait.]
The moment those words ended, the necklace—which had been rattling as though it might fly off at any second—went still as if nothing had happened.
At the same time, the ⟨Hero's Blood⟩ that had been surging violently through Gladia's body went quiet as well.
"…Huh?"
"…What. It stopped?"
The moment the Shard went still after all that frantic thrashing, Cruje and Aiolette's bickering cut off just as abruptly.
Aiolette let out a baffled laugh at the absurd acceleration and equally absurd stop.
"What was that. You were so confident, and you just brought a broken thing in here?"
"N-no! Broken? It shouldn't be doing this…"
Cruje examined the now-docile necklace from every angle, looking deeply aggrieved.
A thousand years under the Church's care. Not once, since the First Hero's disappearance, had the Shard reacted to a single person.
The Church had tried every method imaginable to harness this enormous mass of power, and it had sat there like a lump of rock without so much as a twitch.
That was why the Church had tentatively concluded that the Holy Sword responded only to the Hero.
Which meant… could it be?
A possibility flashed through Cruje's mind like a bolt of lightning.
*There's a Hero in this room?!*
Cruje's head turned, slow and creaking.
This private room, completely sealed off from the outside. There were only three people in this space right now, herself included.
Excluding herself, the Saintess, that left two candidates.
Cruje's trembling gaze drifted toward the mistress and maid of the Drnaris household, who were busy ignoring her entirely.
"What kind of person brings a defective item like that and startles people first thing in the morning?"
"Truly. I nearly choked on my breakfast."
"Exactly! I was so shocked I've completely lost my appetite! I don't think I can finish any of this—what are you going to do about it?"
As she said this, Aiolette tapped her plate with her fork and looked over at Cruje.
The plate had nothing left on it but bread crumbs from what Aiolette had already eaten, but neither of them considered that relevant in the slightest.
The only thought in their minds was to use this as leverage to make Cruje pay for the breakfast they'd had here.
It wasn't as though either of them was short on money—but an opportunity to make someone else foot the bill was an opportunity to be seized.
Even in the midst of a situation that had erupted so suddenly, Gladia and Aiolette's thinking was perfectly aligned.
It was, frankly, the pettiest possible thing to do—but both of them were completely sincere about it.
Cruje watched the two of them naturally extend a receipt in her direction, then looked back down at the ⟨Shard of the Holy Sword⟩ in her hand.
*…What do I do. I think this thing might actually be broken.*
Cruje simply could not bring herself to accept that a Hero might exist among people like these.