Ch.76Human Pride (5)

I wanted to be a hero.

I wanted to be a hero who protects people.

A fantasy profession that everyone born in Hero City dreams of at least once.

For Song Hana, being a hero wasn’t simply a childhood dream.

Even if it meant dying, she didn’t care.

To her, being a hero was the ideal itself—something worth risking her life for.

But children’s dreams are always meant to be awakened from.

“…I failed.”

In a way, it was an expected result.

Being a hero was already a profession where you put your life on the line, so being willing to risk your life to become such a hero was a natural mindset for everyone taking the exam.

It was a profession that only the exceptionally special could attain among the millions of applicants.

That was what it meant to be a hero in Hero City.

And Song Hana had only admirable spirit, with absolutely no ability to back it up.

Special powers?

None.

Outstanding swordsmanship or shooting skills?

She was average in close combat and somewhat decent at shooting, but even that wasn’t exceptional enough to be called a hero.

Above all, whenever she tried to hold a gun barrel with even a trace of magical power beyond conventional firearms, her body would routinely collapse, unable to withstand it.

In other words, being merely “somewhat special,” she could never become a hero.

She was unsuitable.

In a city-state with a population of 1 billion, Song Hana was just a courageous ordinary person, unable to squeeze through the needle’s eye that admitted only about 10,000 people.

So the next best thing she chose was becoming a soldier.

Commonly known as the second-tier profession where rejects who failed to become heroes gathered.

But she thought that if she worked hard enough there, she might get another chance to become a hero.

So she studied, trained, and worked to the point of exhaustion.

Because she desperately wanted to become the hero she admired.

As a result, Song Hana had to face the painful reality as time passed.

The hero aspirants were working just as hard as she was.

More than half of her peers, seniors, and juniors who shared the same barracks would study separately after duty hours because they too wanted to become heroes.

Even those who had already become heroes were naturally striving for higher ranks in this world.

To use an analogy, if everyone was running equally hard, how could Song Hana, who was like someone missing a leg, ever come in first?

Yet she couldn’t let go of her attachment.

Bang! Bang!

“Hey, you monster! What do you think you’re doing to the hero?!”

Crash!

The S-class hero lying sprawled on the ground, seemingly unable to stand.

Upon discovering Zero in that state, Song Hana, who had been honking her horn from a distance, collided head-on with the cockroach monster that turned to look at her.

“Urgh…!”

It was an attack she could only make because she had let Janghoon off beforehand.

But even then, it was her vehicle that crumpled and bounced back from the impact.

This was the wall she had always wanted to overcome.

The overwhelmingly high “wall of ability” that existed between ordinary people and monsters.

“D-did an armored vehicle just charge in?”

“Is that the issue?! If they came in an armored vehicle, that means they’re just a soldier!”

“Not a hero! Just run away!!”

No one at the scene welcomed Song Hana’s participation.

Because she was nothing more than an extra—Soldier A—whose presence made no difference.

Useless whether present or absent, just another meat shield.

That was how Song Hana was regarded as she appeared before the monster that had taken down even an S-class hero.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

People who expected something from her.

None.

People who cheered for her.

None.

There wasn’t even anyone who would watch to see how she would fight.

Regardless, Song Hana painfully emerged from the half-destroyed armored vehicle, wiped away the blood flowing down her forehead, and pulled the trigger.

All the weapons inside the vehicle had been destroyed by the earlier impact, so the only weapon she had left was the handgun she always carried.

She kept firing it.

To somehow save the hero lying on the ground.

“W-why?”

Ignoring the gaze of the woman who saw despair instead of hope in her, Song Hana charged forward with clenched fists after running out of bullets.

“This is incomprehensible…”

“Aaaaargh!”

Crack.

“Aagh?!”

“You cannot possibly win…”

“Grrgh…!”

“Even though you’re taking damage from your own broken fist… why don’t you run away?”

“Huff, huff!”

“According to my calculations, Miss Song Hana, your probability of victory is 0%. A complete 0% with not even a slight chance of winning.”

The moment she drove her fist straight into the monster’s abs.

She felt pain as if her bones were being cut, like striking sharp iron with her bare fist.

The physical difference was so absurd that the attacker herself took the shock instead.

However, no matter what Zero said, Song Hana never stopped.

Despite knowing it was futile, she used every movable part of her body to buy “time” from the cockroach monster.

Time for people to escape, even if just a little more.

“I know I can’t win!”

“Then why? Why are you trying to die? Isn’t survival the basic instinct of living beings?”

“Shut up! I want to live too!”

In her heart, she wanted to blend in with the evacuees and flee right now.

But she couldn’t.

Because she was a “soldier.”

And a soldier’s role wasn’t much different from a hero’s.

She had only ended up in the second tier because she lacked special talent, but soldiers also existed to protect citizens.

Above all…

“I’ve always admired you! I don’t want to run away in front of an S-class hero!”

“…!”

The crystallization of the dream she had never once forgotten in her heart.

She didn’t want to turn her back in front of one of the S-class heroes she had always aspired to be.

If she did, even if she survived here, she would die in a different sense.

“Zero, you said it yourself. That having me around wouldn’t help at all in combat.”

“Miss Song Hana…”

“You’re right. I’m completely useless… Probably no one among the evacuees fleeing right now would even remember my name.”

But.

Even so.

Even if tears mixed with blood streamed down her face, she wanted to show it.

To you, the S-class hero.

She wanted to prove that even a mere soldier like her, whom you thought was nothing, could be of some help.

She was here to show that even someone like her could save people.

Crunch.

“Zero… run away!”

“W-why? Why would you go this far for me…?”

“Because! You’re an S-class hero, the hope of humanity!”

As if annoyed, the cockroach monster flicked a finger, and Song Hana momentarily lost consciousness from the pain of her bones being crushed.

But she quickly got up again and desperately clung to the monster’s back as it tried to move past her toward Zero.

She pressed herself against that enormous body, which she couldn’t even fully embrace, and held on with all her might.

Because this was what being a hero meant to her.

“I… I cannot understand. Your current behavior is something I’ve never learned.”

“Grrrrgh…!”

“I-incomprehensible. I need information from the computer quickly… There’s no information?! Just a meaningless death? But what is this? Why am I trying to feel this? It’s just throwing away one’s life?”

She will die soon.

Because of me, whom she just met today.

Zero couldn’t understand.

Just as a computer capable only of emotionless calculations could merely “describe” such behavior.

Just like when he saw the mother of a dead child again near the chest of the always-dead homunculus, something unknown was throbbing painfully.

But there was no time to realize what it was.

“Run!! Now!!!!”

“…!”

Run away.

Stand up on your broken legs.

You can still move.

Since being created as a homunculus, nanomachines capable of “regeneration” had been injected into his body so he wouldn’t die easily.

Thanks to that, Zero, barely able to stand, turned his back on the monster he was supposed to subjugate for the first time.

Was it because he wanted to live?

…No.

He didn’t understand, but somehow it felt like the right thing to do.

His body, his heart moved on its own, as if this was what “she” would want rather than following the programmed behavior.

“R-run? Run… away? Don’t… fight? R-run away?”

Turn back and fight now.

You were created for that purpose.

The reason you were born was to be a shield for humans, never to be protected by them…

“Don’t look back, just keep going!!!”

“!!”

I don’t understand why I’m doing this.

Warm water is flowing down my eyes—what is this?

Why am I not acting according to my programming?

I had no attachment to life.

Even now, I could take my own life if ordered by the higher-ups.

But the reason Zero was running away following Song Hana’s words was because he had personally realized something more noble than such life or death.

The “value of sacrifice.”

He had seen the true “beauty” of risking one’s life for others, and as a fellow living being, he had encountered a bug.

Yes, this was the first bug that had occurred in her life.

So after running just a few steps.

Drip. Drip.

Physically mature but.

In a life of barely 20 months, Zero had experienced too many emotions at once.

She stopped running and looked back at Song Hana, who would soon die.

And she thought.

Why Princess Okami Hoshino hadn’t acknowledged her as an S-class hero that day.

The reason was because she lacked what was now visible right before her eyes.

The “noble spirit” of a hero.

“Miss Song… Hana…!”

You might have seen light in me, but I’m different.

Rather, I think I’ve seen in you the light that you probably saw in me.

If only one person can survive here, it should be none other than Miss Song Hana.

That was the judgment of Zero, who had stopped calculating due to the bug.

“Ah, aaah, aaaaaaaaaah!”

Just as she reached out her hand, wanting to save someone else through her own will for the first time in her life.

Thud. Thud.

“…!?”

A blonde figure with horned mask silently walked past Zero, who had fallen to her knees.

“You… are…!”

It was a monster.

Yes, definitely a monster.

But strangely, Zero felt “relieved” the moment their eyes met, causing her legs to give out.

Somehow, it looked too noble to be called a monster, appearing completely uninterested in humans.

The horned mask stopped in front of Song Hana, who was still clinging desperately to the cockroach monster without anyone’s support.

…Click.

“Ah…”

Despite being a monster.

It gave a thumbs up, as if to say “well done,” becoming the first audience to Song Hana’s performance that no one had witnessed.

And as payment for the ticket to this masterpiece.

“KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”

BOOM.

With a single punch containing its full power, it obliterated the revived cockroach monster without leaving a trace.