How to Teach a Hero at the Academy

Chapter 182 : Chapter 182

Chapter 182: What to Prepare Before Departing on an Adventure (4)

'What?'

Monica's eyes went wide.

She dispelled the aura wrapping her legs. The aura that had taken such a fully realized form scattered into the air, meanwhile,

'This man......'

Monica's gaze tilted toward Dietrich.

Dietrich was clutching the collar of Monica's clothes. His lower body hanging slack, as though he couldn't summon any strength at all.

'......He can't stand.'

It wasn't that his legs had simply given out. He looked paralyzed.

And yet his face was gentler than anything. The smile floating on Dietrich's face. As though he had known it would come to this. Or as though this very state, unable to use his legs, was what he was most familiar with.

'......Hero.'

Monica chewed over Dietrich's words.

He'd said it, without a doubt. To her — the Hero of Epezeria.

"You must find it hard to believe."

Dietrich spoke in a small voice.

Then he released Monica's collar. Dietrich's body crumpled like a fallen leaf. Monica instinctively stretched her prosthetic arm out toward Dietrich, and,

"That's enough."

As Abel rose from the bench, at the same moment,

"Brother Dietrich!"

Emilio began running toward Dietrich.

"As you can see, I was born with this kind of body."

Dietrich looked up at Monica.

After glancing briefly at the prosthetic arm held out to him, he whispered.

"For now I merely can't walk on my own, but even this is the best state I can be in. Without additional measures, I'll soon lose the use of my arms as well. Given time, my body will begin to collapse."

"You, exactly......"

What are you.

Just as Monica was about to ask,

"Who I am isn't what matters."

Dietrich took hold of Monica's prosthetic.

He wasn't grabbing it to raise himself. Dietrich quietly stroked Monica's prosthetic. As though trying to discern what it was made of.

"My role is nothing more than a supporting one. Before long I'll die, and my brother will at last become complete. That's good enough. It makes no difference what I am. Rather, wouldn't it be wiser for you to apply your thoughts to what you yourself are?"

My brother seems not to have told you,

And even had he told you, you would not have believed him,

But you, unlike me......, and.

Just as Dietrich was murmuring,

"Brother, are you all right?"

Emilio supported Dietrich.

Heave-ho. After laboriously hauling Dietrich to his feet, he turned to look at Abel.

"Everyone, gather. The training is over."

Abel stood nearby, having left the wheelchair behind.

After settling Dietrich into the wheelchair, he called the students together.

"Gentlemen, your skills are truly unsightly."

Monica, Ernst, and Roberta stood facing Abel.

The three of them, however, were looking at Dietrich. A young man unable to move on his own, seated in a wheelchair. The presence they'd witnessed during the spar was nowhere to be found. Dietrich was only staring blankly down at his own feet.

"Dietrich failed to pass even the first-year course of the Department of Elemental Studies. You gentlemen have been toyed with, helplessly, by that Dietrich. For my part, I cannot stifle my lament."

"No, hold on, isn't something off here?"

Ernst furrowed his brow and protested.

"He was wielding spells without a wand. Quite skillfully, at that. I didn't see him mobilizing a single spirit, either. Those are all feats one can only pull off upon reaching the level of a sage. Of course, that's not to say that fellow actually seems like a sage, but......"

"Ernst. Have you solved the task I assigned you?"

"Why are you bringing that up now?"

The task has to be a reasonable one first.

Devise a strategy to conquer the Demon Realm, he says.

If I could do that, why would I be attending CIAR?

As Ernst grumbled on,

"Professor Argento, question."

Roberta shot one hand into the air.

"Roberta. Have you solved the task I assigned you?"

"What's wrong with Brother Dietrich? Why is he sitting in a wheelchair?"

"Have you solved the task I assigned you?"

"He was walking around just fine a moment ago, but now he seems different."

"The task I assigned you......"

"I finished all of it!"

"Don't lie. The 'Labyrinth of Existence' I gave you isn't a puzzle that can be solved so easily."

"Then why are you asking when you already know so well?!"

Good grief.

Unbelievable, and.

Roberta snorted through her nose and muttered.

'Apply my thoughts to what I am?'

Meanwhile, Monica kept her mouth closed and mulled it over.

Holding her silence, she looked Dietrich over. At a glance, Dietrich seemed to be looking at her too. Creepy. Monica thought as much. The smile etched on Dietrich's lips was strange in some indefinable way. It resembled the smooth, practiced look worn by fortune-tellers on the street.

"Gentlemen, an announcement."

Abel's hand came to rest on Dietrich's shoulder.

"As of today, I will be away from my post for some time. I intend to drink myself stupid at a southern resort."

What kind of drinking trip.

He really can't lie, my god.

Monica thought as she brushed back her hair.

"That said, your supplementary lessons will not be suspended. From tomorrow, Fabien will oversee your training. So you may rest easy."

I knew it.

Would a little rest really kill him.

Ernst thought with a long, drawn-out sigh.

"I have clearly conveyed the direction of the training. You need only follow Fabien's instructions. Don't even think of being absent or slacking off. A corresponding punishment will be meted out."

What kind of punishment will it be.

I'm curious, so I think I'll skip a class and find out.

Roberta thought, eyes round and wide.

"So Ernst and Roberta are to focus on their training, and......"

Then, Abel's gaze tilted toward Monica.

Monica's shoulders flinched. An uneasy premonition flashed through her mind.

"Monica. Prepare yourself."

For you will be departing with me.

***

"How was it?"

Abel opened his mouth.

Standing before the round table in his office.

"The feeling of moving your body freely."

Dietrich was seated across from Abel.

No words worth calling an impression came to him. Even if he had been free for a fleeting moment, there was no reason to be glad. No reason to be sad. Dietrich only stared at Abel with his mouth shut. If he had to speak, he'd rather ask about the days to come than some idle impression.

"Hero."

And so Dietrich spoke.

According to his adoptive father Marchen Blackmore, the man standing before him had to be the Hero among the Mother God's Left Hand.

"Hero Abel Argento. I have a question."

"I am no hero. I am merely a madman."

Like your father Marchen Blackmore, and.

After murmuring so, Abel took a step forward. He began preparing for his departure to the west. Three or four sets of formal attire, a leather pouch full of gold coins, and a small backpack — he set them all on the round table.

"Ask."

He then addressed Dietrich.

"What is it you wish to know?"

"Why are you concerning yourself with me?"

Dietrich's question was a simple one.

Why was this man taking any interest in him?

He shouldn't have the leisure. He had a world to save.

And above all, he himself......

"I presume you are aware. Before long, I'll die."

I must die, and.

Dietrich whispered softly.

"I heard it from Father. That the Mother God's Left Hand are studying the history of Epezeria before regression. That though you received only fragmentary facts through divine oracles, you know, one way or another, why this world failed."

"What I know is little. If it can even be said I know anything."

Abel recited the facts plainly.

As he packed bandages, adhesive plasters, disinfectant, and syringes into the backpack, he went on.

"It's no more than what skimming through history books would give you. All history is merely the result of lumping time together. Even now I haven't grasped the identities of those I'm opposing. To speak of why this world failed......"

What I know is far too little.

Neither I nor your father are anything more than outsiders here.

Abel murmured.

"I die a year from now."

Dietrich spoke up, unfazed.

He briefly recited what he had come to know through his adoptive father.

"That is a fate I cannot avoid. Because my flesh will reach its limit. As you have surely noticed, my body is composed of pure mana. Originally, my brother and I were meant to be completed as one body. To fuse my brother — a spirit — with me — mana — and give birth to a living, breathing spell. That was the skeleton of the experiment."

It must be so.

Abel muttered, as though it were no great matter.

He had discerned what Dietrich's essence was. Unlike Lizer, who could live and breathe as a spirit, Dietrich, the younger brother, was composed of pure mana. That was why he couldn't sustain his body. Mana was no more than a motive force; it could not compose a single being on its own.

"I am aware of your brothers' origin. You were princes of the now-fallen Echrra Kingdom, yes? I heard Marchen rescued you himself."

"The fact of us being princes is nothing but fabrication. We are merely the results of an experiment. My brother and I were both weapons designed to end a war."

But the experiment failed.

We could not become weapons.

Because we were completed not as a single spell, but as two separate beings.

Dietrich whispered so.

"But not much time remains."

A smile spread on Dietrich's lips.

"If history proceeds as it originally did, I'll soon collapse and be absorbed by my brother. Thus my brother will become complete. The experiment never succeeded because I was alive, so the moment I die, its purpose will at last be achieved."

So do not concern yourself.

There is no need to pay any mind to me.

"Because I......"

Am of use only when I die.

"Only when this burdensome body of mine is gone......"

Will my brother finally be unburdened.

Dietrich murmured so, and,

"Dietrich."

Thud.

Abel set the backpack down.

The thickly bulging backpack flopped onto the round table.

"There seems to be a misunderstanding. I am not particularly concerned with you. Looking after you is Marchen's duty."

And yet, if there is something that does concern me, and.

Placing both hands on the round table, Abel whispered.

"Then, are you satisfied?"

If your dying can be of use to Lizer,

Is that enough? Can you be thoroughly satisfied with that?

Abel asked, and,

"I......"

Just as Dietrich was about to answer,

"Mr. Abel."

Thud, thud.

The sound of someone knocking at the archway door of the office.

"Well......, I packed my things, for what it's worth."

It was Monica.

Abel and Dietrich, who had been staring at each other, turned their heads in separate directions. Before long the archway door opened and Monica appeared. Why is he still in here. Thinking that, Monica stood beside Dietrich. With a bag bulging to the point of bursting slung on her back.

"......What have you packed so much of?"

At Abel's question, Monica pressed her lips firmly together and answered.

"I packed only a sleeping bag and clothes, a portable stove and drinking water, utensils, tools, a gas mask, a fishing rod, and a few books."

"Most of that is useless."

"Not at all. These are all things essential for survival."

Monica's gaze tilted toward Dietrich.

Dietrich silently received Monica's gaze, then wore a faint smile and whispered.

"You have to tell her, Professor Argento."

If you truly are of the Mother God's Left Hand,

Then you must tell the Mother God's Right Hand.

"Tell her she is the Hero."

She is the one who......, and.

Murmuring so, Dietrich looked up at Abel.

"That Lady Monica Lohengrin is the Hero of Epezeria, blessed by the World God."