Hero or Villain, Both

"So this is the Abel Kingdom's castle, it certainly is flashy."

"Look at those things, they seem very expensive."

"It seems like humans really are good with their hands."

Hearing the things that the three high elf girls behind me said, I couldn't help revealing a bitter smile.

I didn't think that it was a good idea to bring them, but Elder Arun insisted on bringing them.

It was all because he wanted to bring all of the high elves that had come to the Abel Kingdom to meet King Abel XIV. But the more important person that we were meeting was the hero of the Abel Kingdom.

I knew that Elder Arun was doing this because he wanted to gauge the hero.

What he wanted to do was see the reaction that each high elf had to this new hero.

After all, high elves were sensitive to things like spirits and the heroes were supposed to be beloved by the spirit of light. So he wanted to see just what kind of reaction we would have to the new hero.

But I already knew what reaction we would have.

So to me, this seemed like it was unnecessary.

Especially with how the three of them were acting.

It seemed like Elder Arun was also regretting bringing them a bit with the way that he looked at them. But in the end, he didn't say anything to the three of them and instead leaned in to whisper to me.

"You'll have to cover for them later…"

Another bitter smile appeared on my face when I heard this.

But in the end, I didn't have time to say anything else as we had already arrived.

"Presenting the group from the Verdant Forest."

There was someone that had even announced our arrival when we stepped into the throne room.

In front of us were a bunch of humans that were standing there.

At the very front of the room was a large throne and sitting on that throne was someone who was dressed like a king.

This made it very clear who this person was, but his aura alone was already enough to tell everyone who he was.

Though I recognized him at first glance since I had already seen him before. It wasn't just once or twice that I had seen him, I had met him quite a few times as the hero and even a few times as Yulian in his new position.

So I was already very familiar with his appearance.

But there was someone that was missing from this room that I wanted to see.

It seemed like they were still being cautious with that person, they didn't want to show that person to us until the very end.

That person was the hero…

So in the end, I used the shared senses to find that the hero was waiting in a different room that wasn't far from this throne room. It seemed that he was being kept there until he would be brought in by the people of the Abel Kingdom.

"Welcome guests from the Verdant Forest." As soon as King Abel said this, the rest of the humans in the room looked at us.

They were already looking at us, but they had been hiding it poorly.

They acted as if they didn't want to look at us, but had been peeking at us from time to time.

It really was a bit hard acting like we didn't see this, but that was what they chose to do.

After a few words, King Abel finally said, "We have a special guest that we want you to meet."

After a pause, he continued by saying, "Since they aren't a part of our Abel Kingdom in the first place, we had them wait in a separate room until now. We'll bring them in so you can meet them."

In the end, it took this long just to meet the hero.

The minute that Gran Jurad came in, Elder Arun immediately narrowed his eyes to look at him.

He didn't even need to ask which one of the group was the hero, his eyes immediately fell onto Gran Jurad as if he felt something from him.

Gran Jurad didn't look away as he looked right at Elder Arun with a smile on his face, as if he was waiting for Elder Arun's judgement of him.

Only Elder Arun didn't show anything on his face in the end.

All he did was look at Gran Jurad before turning away from him.

But what I could see was the faint curve of his lips that showed that he was satisfied with what he saw.

"What do you guys think?" Elder Arun asked in a soft voice that only we could hear.

This was using the power of a wind spirit, something that we had already agreed on doing earlier.

The other three said that they didn't have a problem with this hero, naturally I didn't have a problem with him as well. After all, he was also me, but they didn't know that.

Though from the way that the three high elf girls said what they had to say, it was as if they felt that there was something similar between me and Gran Jurad.

"Alright, then let me do the rest of the talking. Since we're in agreement, let's see if we can build a better relationship with this hero."

I didn't say anything as I watched Elder Arun talk to King Abel.

At the same time, the hero didn't say anything as he let King Abel do most of the talking.

Instead of letting us say anything, it was as if they were talking on our behalf.

But still, it wasn't as if they were saying anything bad.

Letting them discuss this was better since we didn't actually have to do anything.

This made it less likely that they would discover that we were actually related.

At the same time, there was a secret conversation that was happening.