I Picked Up the Hero Who Banished Me - Chapter 65



64 – [A Brief Rest – 04]

“Was it really okay to refuse like that?”

“Become Oberon? I’m just a half-elf. Such a high position is just…not for me.”

“Titania said she’d help you.”

“Well, I don’t know if I could do something like that.”

“I think you’d be good at it.”

While walking, Lyvia and Sylphy were continuing the conversation from earlier.

Well, if Titania’s life really was reaching its limit, then it’s probably fine for her to step down from the throne soon.

The real stroke of luck was that becoming the Elven King wasn’t about bloodline, but about wielding the Comet Bow and being recognized by it.

Looking at it broadly, even Reina, on the verge of death, had held the Comet Bow and shot it, so shouldn’t she be considered recognized?

In that case, it felt like Sylphy had used her recognition to shoot, but still, she’d grabbed it, she’d shot it.

“There’s no way people would accept a half-elf like me…”

“Sylphy! Thanks for yesterday! The Hero and his companion are here too!”

“Ah, no problem. I have some urgent business… I’ll see you later.”

“Okay, be careful!”

“……”

“……”

Livia and I simultaneously looked at Sylphy with expressions that conveyed an emotion hard to put into words.

Sylphy, also realizing what she’d just said, cleared her throat, embarrassed.

“No, um… still, there would be people who wouldn’t like it.”

“Well, think about it seriously. Titania’s not expecting an answer right away, is she?”

“It seems so difficult…”

“That was genuine, huh.”

“No, I’m serious, isn’t that position way too hard? Look at Grandma’s workload. She’s gonna die from overwork.”

“That’s true. I have no talent for that kind of thing, administrative work, or whatever…”

Livia definitely doesn’t have a talent for that kind of thing…

*Sssip.*

Or does she?

It just seemed like she had absolutely no will to learn.

If you actually made her learn, she might do it surprisingly normally.

“Still, Silphy, there are advantages to you becoming Oberon.”

“Like what? I’ll listen since you’re saying it, Royce.”

“Why do you talk like you won’t listen to me?”

“……No way.”

“Hey, the silence before you answered was long!”

The conversation keeps drifting sideways.

Personally, I didn’t dislike it.

I didn’t even dislike the hustle and bustle that much. I preferred being alone at home reading, but seeing people happy and loud wasn’t so bad either.

“So, what is it?”

“Silphy, you want to save the half-elves, right? Then becoming Oberon would be quite effective.”

“…….”

“Titania, as she herself said, would eliminate the unilateral ban on half-elves, but that rift won’t easily disappear. That goes for both the elves and the half-elves.”

“…….”

“There would be people who accept it regardless, but also those who hold negative feelings toward Elvenheim, which banished them.”

The best thing would be if everything just passed smoothly, but even if you weren’t directly affected, history resonates with people’s hearts.

For example, let’s say a nation waged war two hundred years ago, inflicting suffering on another.

After two hundred years, the people who lived during that time are already dead, but there are still those who hate that nation.

Especially if that rift hasn’t been properly resolved, it becomes a rift that won’t be healed no matter how much time passes.

“But Sylphy, you’re a half-elf. If that half-elf happens to be a king named Oberon, then at least there’s a chance he’d hear you out and be friendly.”

There might be other half-elves who wouldn’t, but those who have suffered tend to have a stronger sense of kinship.

Because of that kinship, they might at least hear the story, and even if they wouldn’t outright agree to things they normally would refuse, they might at least be willing to hold them back.

“Indeed…”

“Actually, Titania probably said that with that in mind. Though she looks like she’s lost her spirit with how abruptly she’s been refusing everything…”

“Seeing that murderous workload from the side, I don’t even dare think about trying to match it.”

“She’s been Titania since the human-elf war, after all. It’d be hard to do as much as she does, no matter what.”

At least, while the current Titania is alive, they should learn as much as they can, and then add their own color to it and pass it onto the next successor. That was the mission of the people who would become the next king of the elves.

As Titania had said herself, she had given everything to Elvenheim, and that’s why Elvenheim is what it is now, but at the same time, it made it quite difficult to pick the next successor of Elvenheim.

She’s done it for so long that whoever the next successor is, there’s bound to be some discontent.

Even if it wasn’t Sylphy, but someone else, it would be the same.

“I’ll think about it…”

“Yeah, we’re almost there.”

“Reyna’s house is bigger than I thought.”

“Well, she is Titania’s daughter… I got the key, I’ll open it.”

A two-story house, it seems.

Unexpectedly, she lived under the tree, not in it.

We opened the door and stepped inside, and a tidy room came into view.

Reyna died just a few days ago.

It was still too short a time for traces of a person to disappear.

“The cleaning is immaculate….”

“Reina, you could almost call her a bit of a neat freak…. She was sensitive about things like that.”

Livia answered Silphy’s question.

“It was really noisy in the monster realm….”

“Looks like she cleaned right after returning, after all this time. It’s so tidy. Shall we look for any clues, then?”

“It’s wider than I thought, so sticking together wouldn’t be very efficient.”

“Yeah…. Then I’ll investigate the second floor first.”

With those words, Livia went upstairs, and Silphy and I watched her for a moment before beginning our own searches.

There are quite a lot of books.

I wasn’t that close to Reina, so I didn’t know she liked books. Or maybe she doesn’t like them, but read them because she felt it necessary as the daughter of Titania?

There are a lot of histories and information about elves.

If she had spent this time studying something about society, maybe she could have avoided being so absurdly Gias-ed by Alex.

Come to think of it, since Reina was under a Gias, what about Belita?

I think I wasn’t.

It may sound wrong to say, but if Reina hadn’t been Gias-ed, even if she had confusing emotions, she wouldn’t have cooperated with something like assassinating the hero.

Alex understood that and put it on her, and in Belita’s case, she was a woman with a weak core, so perhaps she could be threatened by a simple weakness.

I don’t know what that weakness was.

Or is it possible that she sincerely sympathized with Alex and negotiated?

Belita wasn’t a bad person when I was with her, but she was severely lacking in courage, and was too cautious in many ways.

Frankly, you could just call her a ‘coward’.

“Lois, could I ask you something?”

“What is it?”

“Why did you save Olivia?”

“……That’s a really sudden question.”

While investigating and looking around the house, Sylphie asked, and I answered while looking at a book.

“I don’t think it’s just because you’re a good person.”

“……”

I was silent for a moment.

There was no need to lie.

“I wanted to believe in human goodness.”

“Human goodness?”

“I was exposed to human malice in the past and went through quite a rough time. As a result, I couldn’t trust people and suspected everyone, interpreting everything maliciously.”

It was so bad that I took even kind words as sarcasm.

“But one day, it all felt so pointless… Everyone else was smiling happily, and I was the only one who couldn’t. Yeah, I became an idiot. So, I tried to believe in human goodness. Then I saw Livia.”

“……”

“I didn’t want to admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“Livia definitely had some personality problems in the past, but she was a good person. She risked her life countless times to save others, and she saved so many people. For someone like that… I didn’t want to accept that kind of ending for her.”

“……”

Regardless of the fact that I didn’t like her, she had saved so many people.

I killed the Demon Lord and saved the world.

Is *this* the ending?

Betrayed by my comrades, cursed, discarded like a used tool, and then to die—is *that* the ending?

No.

I can’t accept it.

I refuse to accept it.

There’s no way the ending for someone who ran harder than anyone, for the sake of others, should be like this.

From noble mtl dot com

That was all there was to it.

“Livia seemed to think highly of me for that, but really, even that was for my sake.”

Maybe I wanted to prove something.

That by saving Livia, the world’s goodwill could keep going round and round.

I wanted the hero, who was practically the limit of good, to not lose to evil.

I didn’t want it to end unhappily.

People sometimes fall to evil and stray onto bad paths, but.

I believed that they could sometimes win and walk a good and righteous path.

“Olivia wouldn’t care either way.”

“Does it seem that way?”

“It’s like Olivia loves Royce an awful lot. The reason wouldn’t matter. It’s as if who saved her life isn’t all that important.”

“Surprisingly, there are people who *do* care.”

“I want to believe they’re the minority.”

“Royce! Silphy!”

Mid-conversation, Olivia’s voice cut through from upstairs. She was halfway down the stairs when she spoke.

“Could you two come up here? Maybe you won’t get it, Silphy, but I think Royce might see something and know what’s going on.”

“Why are you lumping me in?”

“You and me are like the fork and knife you get with your steak, y’know?”

“I don’t get it.”

Is Reina up to something again?

Considering she’s under the geas, it might not be a definitive piece of direct evidence, but maybe we can still figure something out.

“Let’s go up, I’ll take a look.”