I Picked Up the Abandoned Hero

62 – 62. Reason and Instinct

While walking through the forest and feeding monsters.

“By the way, have you ever had a child without my knowledge?”

“Pu-huh!”

Arsel gasped in surprise at Alfred’s sudden fastball.

I hadn’t eaten or drank anything, but I heard something go wrong.

After coughing several times to calm his breathing, he can barely speak.

“What the hell is that?!”

“It’s okay, you can tell the truth. I’ve traveled all over the world for a long time and played the role of a warrior, so there might be a woman or a man who has my eye on you.”

He nodded as if he could understand that much.

He says that he is more lenient than he thinks and that he can tell the truth as much as he wants.

But it is said that lies are not forgiven.

“Say something that makes sense! Why are you doing this all of a sudden?!”

“…You think it makes no sense, right? In the first place, I checked on you at least once a month, but other than when I was gaining weight, I was never particularly full.”

Alfred sits in empty space and speaks very thoughtfully.

“I have never gained weight! In the first place, there were many cases of starving to save food!”

“But didn’t you gain weight as you grew taller?”

“Isn’t that obvious! It goes without saying that as your body grows, you gain weight!”

“Ah, other creatures were like that. I forgot about it because I said my weight had stayed the same since I was a baby.”

“Please realize that you are a demon and I am a human… Wait, your weight has stayed the same since you were a baby?”

“Yes, according to my grandmother.”

“Has it been the same since you were born?”

“It can’t be, I was a cute baby when I was little.”

Alfred’s words made my head dizzy for a moment, but I took a deep breath and regained my composure.

Did Alfred do that once or twice anyway?

Now it’s time to get used to it.

However, it was unfair from Arcel’s point of view.

He seemed to be enjoying a promiscuous life, not enough to be asked if he had a hidden child out of the blue.

Above all, when I was in the middle of my journey, I often starved for several days because there was no village nearby, but I can’t help but feel sad when I say that I’ve gained weight.

“Okay, calm down, this is a pretty important matter.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What would you think if your child, whom you have never heard of or seen, appeared out of nowhere?”

He gave meat to the wolf cubs in the forest and said,

Behind the cubs was a hungry-looking mother wolf, and Alfred gestured for them to come and handed over the mother’s meal.

The wolf looked ferocious, but he was especially docile towards Alfred and even waggled his tail to show his gratitude.

Of course, it is not an ordinary wolf.

It had horns on its forehead.

“…It can’t be, there can’t be a child I don’t know about in the first place.”

“Then it must not have been made in the normal way.”

There was a tree stump on one side of the forest.

I take a break because I think it’s going well.

“I saw you at Grandma Clen’s castle, right? A human like you.”

“I saw it. You’re not doubting that the girl is mine, are you? It sure looks like it to me, but that’s…”

“Of course I am not your child, but I do have blood similar to yours. It’s because they’re at least of the same blood.”

As a result of seeing it with his own two eyes, Alfred said he confirmed that the blood flowed with Arcel.

Aside from how it was confirmed, it was rather natural that the same blood flowed.

“Is that so, because they look so similar in the first place…”

I think it might be a relative.

Although he knew that his parents and siblings died with his hometown disappearing, there was no guarantee that all of his distant relatives would have died.

If not, there are also people who are completely strangers in the world but are born with almost the same appearance.

“At first, I tried to find out her identity by catching her right away and torturing her by pulling out her fingernails or breaking her finger bones, but her grandmother said she felt sorry for her and told me to stop.”

“You look pretty young when I see you.”

“What do you do when you are young? By your human standards, he’s a heinous murderer. Didn’t they already cut down children younger than themselves in that village? Like this.”

“…I see.”

Alfred took out a small chicken and threw it into the sky.

When a chicken that cannot fly flies, a fierce hawk appears and grabs the chicken.

The hawk that snatched the chicken circled around Alfred once and disappeared.

“I was also concerned. Putting aside the resemblance to me, even the way he uses his sword was the same as mine at that age. No wonder Stella reacted that way at first.”

“Should I bring it now if I’m curious? My specialty is kidnapping women.”

“…Stop it.”

Arcel sighed and took out his holy sword.

He wants the holy sword, so the sword is held in his hand with a blue light.

She is Miss Tell, the holy sword that has been with her for half her life.

“You’re not trying to stab me with that for what you just said, are you? Of course it’s a joke.”

From noble mtl dot com

Alfred takes a step back and stands alert.

It seems that he was forcibly assaulted for several hours at the auction house before, and his attention increased.

“At first, I thought about that, but after hearing what happened, I didn’t have to. Because I think I would be more comfortable with my child. …Honestly, it’s so creepy.”

If Arsel, who lives with Alfred, did that, it means that her whole body really got goosebumps.

Looks like yourself.

A swordsmanship similar to his own.

It’s only natural that he reacted like that when he saw a being that combined both of those things.

Was it the feeling of seeing your past self?

“I see, uhm… I was in a bad mood for some reason, so I thought of killing him right away. Seeing it strangely made me feel uncomfortable.”

Alfred speaks bloody words with a casual smile.

“Has there ever been anything that made you feel so offended?”

“A lot, the demon king and the dwarves are like that too. In addition, I wish all the nymphs would disappear from the world.”

“You managed to leave them alone.”

“Of course, this place under the sky is not mine. You can’t just deal with everything just because you’re in a bad mood.”

An exception is made if they were in their own castle.

As for Stella, it was the special treatment that Arcel cherished, she says she considers her to be just a nasty, bad-tempered pet.

“That’s something, hahahaha.”

When she thought of Stella, who suddenly became a pet, she laughed a little.

Perhaps if Stella was by her side, hundreds of arrows would have flown right away.

Now that I think about it, I also felt fortunate that Alfred left Stella behind.

“So, why don’t you decide soon?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Kingdom of Hermod. It’s easy enough to wipe it off the map below my estimate if you want. Because it resembles you and is in an unstable state without a holy sword yet.”

Alfred smiled broadly in a peaceful place and pretended to cut his throat.

If necessary, I can remove it from the map right away.

“I can’t do that. If you think about it in the first place, that’s not too different from what I’ve been doing before. They were hostile to them and took their lives simply because they were demons. I am not qualified to criticize them.”

Although it is now a holy sword that is clean and noble, in some cases it has been blatantly stained with red blood.

In the first place, the first training that Arcel received was to kill demons directly with this hand.

-Please save me! Sorry! Please save me!-

A shabby, skinny demon with exposed ribs.

As a human, the demons, who looked like they were in their 20s, had already begged Arcel with a battered body.

-Children have been starving to death for weeks! If I die, the children will starve to death too!-

Please, save my life.

He said that he had a family waiting for him, and he begged to see at least the faces of his family again.

If it’s a monster like a wild boar, I’ve already caught it.

But back then it was different.

A creature with the same intelligence as himself, he had a family and shed tears and begged for his life.

-Kill it, that demon is an evil tribe that killed dozens of residents while stealing the crops of our human village.-

In the end, Arsel took the sword and cut off the demon’s head.

The detailed circumstances were unknown.

From what I heard later, I was hungry and came to beg for something to eat. It seemed that I was threatened because I was a demon.

But even if I found out about that, what will change now?

It was after his hands had already been stained red.

This was the path that the chosen one, the hero, had to follow.

That was around the time Boar and Arcel were 7 years old.

“Besides, the people there are innocent, they are just people who worked hard, hoping to survive tomorrow as well. Her position may be different, but that doesn’t mean she’s being judged, even the inhabitants of the entire kingdom of Hermod… It’s not right.”

“I see, you are the hero. It’s so nice to be able to judge right from wrong in everything. But what about the demons who died from the explosion? Are they guilty too?”

“That is…”

“Oh no, I was so naughty. You can just forget about that. That’s Grandma Clen’s business.”

At Arsel’s words, Alfred grinned.

At first she didn’t know why.

But even without knowing why, I could guess what Alfred was trying to say.

“Anyway, arguing about right and wrong is something that only people with a full stomach can do. When it comes time to die, that moral concept will disappear and only the survival instinct will come out.”

I saw a small rabbit at Alfred’s feet.

Looks like he snatched it up quickly.

“And in the end, creatures tend to act according to their instincts, even if they are humans or demons. It just differs from person to person.”

“?”

At first, the rabbit tilts his head, wanting to know what’s going on.

Beep! Beep!

Now I feel threatened for my life and even scream.

Eventually, she bites his finger, but Alfred doesn’t seem to be tickled.

“Noisy.”

But when I gave him a small piece of meat, he became quiet.

Even acting cutely by rubbing his face in Alfred’s hand is different from before.

“…Do rabbits eat meat?”

“The rabbits living in this forest are scavengers. Since it is a devil’s forest, sometimes there are corpses of humans, elves, or demons. These guys will take care of all the bones.”

Contrary to its cute appearance, it is a bloody story.

Now I see that the rabbit’s teeth are sharp fangs.

“Now, take it and eat it with your friends. Don’t eat it all by yourself.”

Afterwards, Alfred brought out rabbit meat, and the rabbit was delighted and took the meat and disappeared into the woods.

It was a rather bizarre sight.

“So, are you feeding your own people?”

“Are they the ones who die from overeating if they are bored anyway, or their stomachs explode or bones get stuck in their throats? However, the corpse disappears in an instant, as if it had never happened again. If you don’t know what that means, I’ll explain in detail.”

“…It’s okay. If I listened to it for no reason, I feel like what I ate this morning will regurgitate.”

Arcel sighed, covering his mouth.

Alfred slowly admires the agonizing face of Arcel, and after he fully enjoys it, he opens his mouth again.

“So, if you don’t want people getting hurt, why don’t you just capture the queen? From the circumstances, it is clear that Hermod Kingdom is responsible, and it is the Queen who rules that kingdom.”

“If you are a queen…”

Arsel briefly recalled his past memories.

I happened to rescue the princess who was kidnapped by Alfred earlier than the other princesses.

Other princesses could only be rescued after defeating the demon king, but that princess was able to escape the demon castle alone and be rescued by Arcel.

‘She’s really the culprit behind it all?’

The princess I saw then was a pure and sincere princess.

Even at her young age, she helped her father in the affairs of the country, and even when Arcel was called a witch and was in danger of being executed, it was the princess who defended her until the end.

No matter how unpredictable the true intentions of people are, it was hard to imagine from Arcel’s point of view.

Because she, like Arcel, also wished for ‘peace’.

“Tell me if necessary, because kidnapping princesses is my specialty. If you choose an extra option, you can either cut the bone or bring it to the boneless. There are no extra costs?”

“No, there is no need for that.”

She just cut it off and turned it down.

If it’s Alfred, it’s because she really deserved it.

If the relationship between humans and demons had become more strained here, another war could have occurred even without the demon king.

Conflicts, large and small, are still taking place, but…

The scale is ridiculous compared to the past.

“If you lay your hands directly on the human side, another war will break out. Especially laying a hand on someone like the Queen is a cause I can no longer hope for.”

So a war like the past is a terrible descent of hell that should never happen no matter what.

Whether demons or humans suffer more, it is time to stop.

“Then why not just destroy one side? Nothing left, only ashes.”

In comparison, Alfred’s reaction was cold.

“Are you doing this on purpose?!”

Eventually Arcel couldn’t stand it and hit Alfred with her fist.

It wasn’t a fist filled with power, it was like a fist that a crying child wielded.

“Oh, did you get caught?”

“There is a limit to being naughty! If you really want to do that, there’s no way I can do it…”

Alfred could not hold back his laughter any longer and soothed Arcel.

Of course it’s a joke, but I felt that Arcel, who was genuinely worried, was cute.

“To do that, in the end, what do you have to do with the curse on your body, you still can’t use magic properly? The last time I wrote it, it was almost halfway through.”

“Oh, I did. It’s not too inconvenient to go about my daily life anymore, but…”

The curse still resided in Arsel’s heart.

Even though the power of the curse is greatly weakened, when Arcel tries to use her magic, she goes out of control and makes her whole body a mess.

“Then, as expected, I need to get rid of that curse first. The quickest way is to take out the heart and split it open to wash away the curse inside, but then you will die… Even if it’s annoying, you’ll have to go back a long way.”

“I’m quite used to that sound now. But is it really possible to do it that way?”

“Would you like to try it?”

“No, that’s it.”

Alfred pulls out a surgical knife with a wide smile and twinkling eyes.

There was blood on the knife that had already been used somewhere.

Looking at that, I can’t even say what I would say as a joke.

“Then let’s go to grandma’s house. I want to stop seeing them, but I know a lot as I’m older.”

“Grandma… Do you mean your maternal grandmother?”

“Yes. He said he has something to say to you if you bring the dwarf to me.”

“Stella?”

“I don’t know the details either, because my grandmother is like that.”

The unexpected news came that Alfred’s grandmother, Shion, was suddenly looking for her Stella.

There must be no one-on-one relationship with each other, but why?