I'm Not the Hero! Volume 3, page 2
“Y-You don’t have to put it like that...”
Recilia: “Good grief. I thought you’d lost your mind when you told me you were going to become a reporter and hold an interview, and now look at how it turned out.”
“I-I mean...”
Recilia: “I understand you dislike your newfound fame, and you hate that it’s compounded how much work you have to do. As a result, you haven’t even been able to find time to train me one-on-one recently. I don’t blame you for wanting to push all of that fame onto the Invincible Blademaster instead.”
“Th-That’s not what I was trying to—”
Recilia: “But you should understand by now that it’s impossible to hide your accomplishments from the world. No matter what anyone, including you yourself, says, everyone knows that you’re responsible for discovering manual Arts.”
“[deep sigh] Fine. I get it.”
Veteram: “Heh, good you’re finally giving up.”
“Not yet. I’ve just accepted that everyone I know is going to praise me to high heaven. This whole interview was a waste of time, but I’ll find some other way.”
Veteram: “Ha ha ha ha! As long as you understand the position you’re in, I don’t care.”
“Tch. Screw this, I’m going home.”
Veteram: “Wait, leave the recording crystal here. These things don’t come cheap, you know.”
“Fine, here.”
Veteram: “Thanks.”
“All right, I’m leaving... Sorry for wasting your time.”
Veteram: “Don’t sweat it. This gave me some good ideas for how to spread the knowledge of manual Arts to people faster. I’ll have Erina edit this into a proper Article and publish it.”
“You sure came prepared. Well as long as you don’t turn it into something weird I’m fine with it. Though I guess I’m not one to talk.”
Veteram: “Don’t worry, I don’t have the skill or the motivation to spread fake propaganda. I’ll just publish what was said in this interview as-is.”
“I can trust you, right?”
Veteram: “Of course. I’ll tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. After all, the truth is already interesting enough as it is!”
Note: This article is an accurately transcribed copy of the interview Special Adventurer Correspondent Rex Tauren conducted at Freelea’s Adventurers’ Guild. The transcription was written by Guild member Erina.
Chapter 1: A Fated Meeting
As I made my way to the Guild’s training grounds, I was met with an insanely large crowd.
“Look, he’s here! It’s Rex!”
“Idiot! Don’t just point! You have to treat him with respect!”
“Please! Tutor me!”
I rubbed my forehead in exasperation. Goddamnit, I knew this would happen!
Ever since Nirva’s statement there had been people lining up here to beg me to teach them, but now the crowd was larger than ever. This was all thanks to the PR article the Adventurers’ Guild had published based off of the interview I’d conducted.
I’m gonna get you back for this Veteram, mark my words!
If this was Japan I could have sued him, but sadly this medieval-ass world didn’t have nearly as strong personal privacy laws.
I guess this is still better than before, since at least Veteram’s making sure people don’t follow me around outside of the set hours I’m supposed to be teaching people manual Arts.
Sighing, I steeled myself and walked into the throng of excited adventurers, then gave a quick lecture on the basics of manual Arts activation. After that, me and the Guild members assigned to help me split up and started giving more individualized instruction to the adventurers.
As I was dispensing advice and demonstrating how to use manual Arts I spotted a familiar face among the crowd. “Magey, is that you?”
Magey twitched and looked guiltily up at me, like a child who’d been caught pulling a prank. She was the very first adventurer I’d appraised the growths of. She was best suited to be a Mage, but because of how the game randomly assigned growths and starting classes she’d ended up a Fighter instead. I’d used Analyze to figure out she was meant to be a Mage, and I’d thought that she’d accepted that and swapped to that class, but now here she was.
“What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you ended up hating magic so you—?”
“N-No, that’s not it!”
In that case, why are you here?
There was no manual equivalent for magic, and Mages had little aptitude for physical attacks for obvious reasons. They had no reason to learn manual Arts activation.
“I’m just doing this...as a hobby. I plan to stick to Mage for the foreseeable future, and I’m grateful you showed me I have a talent for magic. But even if I have no use for manual Arts, I still want to learn how to use them...”
“So you’re learning them for fun?”
Honestly, I couldn’t fault her for it. She may have become a Mage now, but she’d lived as a Fighter for most of her adventuring life. Of course she’d want to keep up to date on new close combat fighting tactics.
“S-So do you think you could give me some advice, L-Lord Rex?” Magey asked. As always, she stumbled over the word lord. She wasn’t used to polite speech still.
I cocked my head and asked, “Advice for what, specifically? It looks to me like you’ve got the basics down already.”
It was hard to believe this was just a hobby for her considering how proficient she’d already become at manual activation. Then again, maybe she’d gotten this good precisely because it was easier to put in effort for a hobby than your actual job.
“Yes, but I need an outside opinion to know if I’m doing it properly or not.”
I stared at her thoughtfully. Before, I’d thought as long as people discovered Arts could be activated manually, they’d figure the rest out on their own, even without a teacher. I still believed that to an extent, but I realized now that manual Arts were more complicated than I’d thought. Furthermore, I’d had the benefit of being able to master manual Arts in practice mode, where Arts didn’t cost MP to use, had no cooldown, and there was a grading system that rated how well you’d traced the motion. In this world people had to expend mana to practice manual Arts activation, wait for their cooldowns, had no way of knowing how well they’d performed when they did succeed, or how closely they needed to follow the correct trajectory for it to technically count. They were playing on hell mode.
“You’ll be able to tell if my motions are sloppy, won’t you? Also, if you’d be so kind as to show me how you use manual Arts...”
“If you want a model to follow you should just auto activate the Art and try to copy that,” I said with a smile, but Magey shook her head.
“I’ve been coming to your lessons a few times and there’s something I’ve noticed. If you perfectly trace the trajectory you make when you automatically activate an Art it will give you a successful manual activation, but that’s not how you do it, Lord Rex. And I get the feeling the way you do it is the proper way.”
I raised my brows. I was surprised by how perceptive she was.
“I saw how Radd activates his Arts too. It’s amazing. He’s definitely the best manual Arts user out of everyone here. I bet that’s because he learned from your example rather than copying how the Art looks normally. But the way you use Arts is totally different, Lord Rex.” Magey looked up at me, absolutely confident in her analysis. “Your movements are a lot more freeform. You mess up some of the more detailed movements sometimes, but you always make sure the core motions are done properly. It’s like you have a feel for the proper way to manually activate Arts. That’s not something I have, and I don’t think it’s something anyone else in the world has.”
Honestly I had not expected Magey to read me that well. I nodded, accepting that I’d been seen through.
“Well...you’re not wrong.”
For simplicity’s sake I’d been telling people that to manually activate an Art you needed to copy the trajectory your weapon made when you used the Art automatically. That wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t completely correct either. The ideal way to manually activate an Art was to swing your weapon like it was a motion controller roughly tracing the motions of the actual Art. Of course, the only person who knew that was me, because I was the only one who knew this world was based off of a game.
“Are you coming to these training sessions because you want to figure out the secret and tell it to your friends?”
I could see that, since Magey was pretty fond of her comrades. To my surprise though, she shook her head.
“No, like I said... I’m just doing this as a hobby. That really is all there is to it.”
I could tell from the look in her eyes that she wasn’t lying. She really was just practicing manual Arts activations because she enjoyed it.
“I see... You really do love swordplay, Magey.”
She had far more of an attachment to the sword than someone like me who’d become a swordsman a few months ago. But to my surprise, Magey gave me a confused look.
“Huh? I’m not really that interested in swordsmanship though. If anything, I prefer magic because I don’t even have to train to get stronger...”
“B-But didn’t you say this is a hobby for you?”
Realizing the source of my confusion, Magey proudly puffed out her chest. “That’s right! I’m an honorary member of the Rex Fan Club so of course I need to come here to tell everyone else about how awesome you are!” She declared this loudly enough that her words echoed across the training field.
“...Come again?”
❈❈❈
“Thank you so much for teaching me!” Magey said with a bow as today’s training session ended.
“I’m glad you enjoyed today’s training session.”
Magey’s unexpected hobby had come as a surprise, but the real problem had been the fact that she’d announced it to the world. While I’d been frozen in shock she’d explained that she was writing down a record of all the amazing things I’d accomplished and trying to recruit more members into the fan club. Admitting her affiliation to me had seemed to make Magey bolder too, as she’d started preaching about how wonderful I was to everyone. It had taken quite a lot of effort to stop her. The whole ordeal had exhausted me, but Magey looked more energetic than ever now. It was like she’d sucked out my life force.
“It was the best session ever! As thanks I’ll work even harder to tell people about how awesome you are!”
“Please don’t.” I made a shooing motion, chasing her out of the training field. Once it was empty I let out a long sigh. “That was more tiring than it should have been.”
While Magey was going a bit overboard, her actions stemmed from her gratitude toward me. If I was being honest, it made me happy when she’d told me she’d been able to get her life back together thanks to my advice. That being said, she really was going overboard.
A fan club is just too much!
I couldn’t believe a hardened warrior had ended up like this. But while I was mentally drained, I couldn’t afford to rest just yet. Manual Arts lessons were done for the day, but I had other work I needed to take care of still.
“Next I need to go appraise people at the coliseum.” I said, slowly starting to make my way to the accursed place.
“I see you’ve been working hard, brother.”
“Recilia...”
She must have been waiting for me, since she appeared by my side the moment I left the training grounds. Probably so she could act as my bodyguard, as always. She took that job way too seriously, but I was used to it by now, so I just continued on my way to the arena.
“I’m surprised you’re taking the Guild’s request so seriously. I thought you would abandon your responsibilities once they became too overbearing.”
“Really? I can make money without ever leaving town this way. Sure, the excessive fame sucks, but otherwise this is the ideal lifestyle.”
Recilia shook her head in exasperation. “I don’t believe that for a second. You keep saying how you want to avoid danger and live a quiet life, but we both know you’re an adventurer at heart who loves jumping into danger every chance you get.”
“You make it sound like I’m an adrenaline junkie...” I said, frowning.
Recilia gave me an incredulous look. “Do you really think you aren’t?”
I averted my gaze, unable to argue back. “Anyway, like I explained before. I didn’t just take this job because it’s stable, there’s another reason too.” Recilia gave me a quizzical look and I said, “It’s so I can scout people.”
❈❈❈
“Next in line!” the Guild attendant said, and a nervous looking adventurer stepped forward.
“Th-Thank you for seeing me!”
I nodded absently to him and quickly cast Analyze. I then wrote down the stats I saw onto a sheet of paper, quickly appraising his capabilities as I wrote.
A total growth of 19, huh? He’s got a Warrior’s growths, but his Mind is pointlessly high. Hmm... Yeah, I’d say he’s average.
You see, this was the reason I’d taken on the Guild’s requests. Teaching people manual Arts and checking their stats gave me the opportunity to meet a vast number of adventurers. As a result, I could get a pretty good idea of which adventurers were strong and which weren’t. In retrospect I was the one invading everyone’s personal privacy, but I had no intention of misusing that information so hopefully these guys would forgive me.
I was hoping to find more promising adventurers, but everyone I’ve examined so far has been pretty meh.
Radd and the others were pseudo-unique characters, so they were given a better set of growth rates than the average adventurer, with all of them at a total of +21 or higher. Meanwhile most regular adventurers didn’t get higher than +20. I’d seen a few with +21 or +22, but unfortunately they’d all been higher-level.
Lower-level adventurers were much easier to raise, and since they hadn’t been adventuring for as long they’d be easier to recruit. In that sense, Radd and his friends had been the perfect group. But man, I really needed some help here. Of course, I wanted to recruit more strong people to help clear dungeons, but I also needed regular old assistants.
Most importantly, I need some pawns who can move around freely.
The world of Braves and Blades was vast, and it took days or even weeks to get from area to area. What I really needed were people willing to go to other areas and gather information for me. Recilia followed me everywhere like a second shadow, and since she was the only one who knew my secret, she was definitely my greatest ally. But she was decidedly not someone who did everything I asked. In fact, when I had asked her to gather information on the neighboring region for me, she’d rejected my request without a second thought. “I get what you’re saying,” she’d said, “but I won’t do it. I have no intention of leaving your side. It’s my duty to protect the body you inhabit.”
I couldn’t really argue with that, so I hadn’t pushed her to go. Of course, if it was absolutely essential, Recilia would be willing to act independently. However, as long as it wasn’t an emergency, Recilia likely wouldn’t leave my side. Or rather, she wouldn’t leave Rex’s body unsupervised.
Come on... Isn’t there anyone out there who conveniently won’t ask about my past or my motives, but do exactly as I say? Don’t get me wrong—I know I’m asking for something pretty scummy here, but...
Shaking my head, I stopped daydreaming for the impossible and swapped my attention back to the task before me. A pleasant high-pitched voice reached my ears.
“My name is Lily. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Wait...”
When I heard that voice, my heart skipped a beat. It was a calming voice, but one that also made you want to instinctively protect its owner.
Don’t tell me...
I looked up, and saw the perfect woman. Her features were striking, but in a way that felt familiar rather than intimidating. Her glossy black hair went down to her waist, and she had an ample bust that was visible even through her clothes. Even the way she stood was beautiful. I didn’t need to bother Analyzing her, I already knew what her growths and abilities were like the back of my hand. Our eyes met, and she smiled at me. It was an angelic smile, one that would captivate anyone who saw it.
“O-Oh!”
Oh, yes...
This was perhaps the first time I was truly grateful I’d been sent to this world. I averted my gaze, unwilling to let this person see my expression. After all, I couldn’t let her see the wicked grin spreading across my face.
“I’ve finally found the perfect pawn.”
I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to look and act normal. I knew Lily’s stats and growth rates by heart, so I didn’t even need to bother with Analyze.
【Lily Harmonix】
Starting Level: 5
Class: Bard
Age: 19
Birthplace: Rinesta
That was what her profile looked like in the game, but that wasn’t all I knew about Lily.
While I pretended to examine her, I desperately thought of how I would recruit her. Since growths never changed, it was likely Lily would only come to get appraised this once. This was likely my only chance to win her over. Doing my best not to let my impatience show on my face, I wrote down Lily’s numbers from memory. I then walked over to Lily and held the page out. But then I purposely let the paper slip from my fingers.
“Whoops.”
Lily stared in surprise as the paper slowly fluttered down. A second later she reflexively crouched down to grab it, while I also leaned down at the same time, my face right next to her ear.
“I know your secret,” I whispered to her.
❈❈❈
The rest of the appraisal session progressed without incident, and I didn’t meet any other important characters. After my work was done I got rid of Recilia by telling her I wanted to try triggering a certain event which required me to be alone, then made my way to a high-class restaurant on the outskirts of Freelea known as the Wyvern’s Perch. It took me longer than I’d wanted to persuade Recilia to leave me alone, but I still managed to make it before the meeting time I’d written down on the page I’d handed to Lily. Looking around, it seemed she hadn’t arrived yet, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Just then though, I heard a voice call out to me.
