Hero Party After the Nuclear War

Chapter 18

"Master. Are you sure you're okay to move right now?"

Having just regained consciousness, Dante quickly grabbed his gun and ammunition and hurriedly climbed down from Elizabeth's cargo hold.

Wearing nothing but a bulletproof coat on top, with the bandages fully exposed, he looked dangerously unstable as he headed toward the battlefield.

Even though the bandages under his coat were still visibly soaked in red blood, Dante forced a dry smile, as if the wounds were nothing to worry about.

"I figured it'd be better to move quickly before it gets dark."

Eris, who had tried to stop Dante from retrieving the Holy Sword, finally understood why he was in such a rush. This place wasn't a neon-lit city like Neo Kyoto, but merely an ancient ruin devastated by a nuclear bomb.

When darkness falls, they will definitely appear.

Shadow.

A being that drags out the deepest fears from within the human psyche.

Nicknamed the Boogeyman of Red Grave Wasteland. Even Dante, who doesn't fear Cyborg Ninjas, wild Spirits, or being pierced by the Holy Sword, fears them. A 'Deus Ex Machina' in the worst sense.

If a Shadow were to appear, all Dante could do was shine a flashlight or lantern and hope it would quietly go away—so the idea of retrieving the Holy Sword before dark wasn't entirely wrong.

"Alright then. I'll go with you."

"No. You stay and protect Elizabeth."

Through the Summoner, Dante checked the current time and which Servants were available to summon. Pixie... seemed to be unavailable, likely sacrificed to restore Michaellis. Jack O'Lantern was also unusable.

Only the humanoid Ranger and the Divine Spirit-type Loki remained. One agility-based Servant, one Charisma-based Servant. That should be enough to break through a ruin that's already been cleared once.

Current time: 4:50 PM.

There wasn't much time left before nightfall. If they didn't retrieve the Holy Sword and set up a campfire for the night, their chances of being attacked by Shadows would only increase.

"Get the campfire ready. Light up every lantern you've got. Got it?"

"Still... I'm worried."

Dante shook the Summoner on his left wrist and replied.

"With Loki and Ranger, we'll manage. I'll be back."

Most of the turrets had already been taken out, so there was no need to worry about being attacked. Still, to respond to sudden ambushes, Dante swapped his equipped Servant from 'Loki' to 'Ranger' to slightly boost his Agility Stat.

All he had to do was follow the same path as before. Entering the underground passage cleared with explosives, passing the creepy Mage's laboratory, and walking straight ahead, he soon reached the battlefield where he had fought Hanbae.

On the ground still lay the Holy Sword, faintly glowing red. Next to it was a Shadow Ninja of a clumsy Cyborg who had tried to ambush Dante but ended up being taken down instead.

The reason Dante had hurried wasn't just to retrieve the Holy Sword—it was also because of this ninja.

Due to the nature of Shadows, they tend to target organic beings over inorganic ones—especially 'Humans' and 'Demons.' Leaving the ninja's corpse out at night would likely turn it into Shadow prey, disappearing without a trace.

Then why was Dante more interested in Hanbae's body than in retrieving the Holy Sword? The reason was simple—his first priority was to recover the gear Hanbae originally carried.

In the wasteland, recovering even minor resources is crucial to survival.

Rogue bastards wandering the streets rarely have anything worthwhile, so aside from the occasional well-stocked ammo pouch, they usually aren't worth looting. But Hanbae was different.

Though he'd been embarrassingly taken out by Dante, he was once a 'former' Crow who had worked for Raven's Logistics. That meant his equipment and supplies were valuable.

Dante detached and collected the Cybernetic Implants that could still be safely retrieved from Hanbae's body, and checked the Summoner board he had been carrying.

It seemed that when the Summoner's vital signs were cut off, its functions automatically shut down—and the command and Enslave functions for the Servants had also been fried.

However, its basic function as a 'Terminal' remained intact, so Dante fiddled with the board to access its Database.

And here lay Dante's second reason for digging through Hanbae's corpse.

That was... to find Hanbae's 'client.' Sure, Dante had done plenty of shady jobs in the past, but this particular request related to Neo Kyoto hadn't involved anything especially underhanded.

Of course, not handing over Eris to McKinsey and instead giving him Death Stalker's junk parts was a bit shady, but McKinsey hadn't explicitly said to retrieve the 'Fairy,' so that was on him.

In any case, Dante needed to gather data on the client to figure out who had started targeting him and why.

"Let's see... the most recent log... this one."

As he scrolled through the requests received in 2293, Dante accessed the most recent request file and sighed in disbelief when he saw the client's name.

"You've got to be kidding me."

The name written there... was 'McKinsey.'

It was the very same McKinsey who had hired him to retrieve the Holy Sword.

And the content of the request was even more absurd.

In the delivery request involving the Magi-Tech ruins, Dante had betrayed the client by delivering Death Stalker's junk parts instead of the originally scheduled 'woman,' so the client wanted him eliminated.

They had first tried to assassinate him using a Demonic Samurai, but it wasn't enough against a Summoner like Dante.

So McKinsey hired another Summoner—Hanbae.

If Hanbae managed to eliminate Dante and retrieve both the woman who accompanied him and the Holy Sword, he would receive the full payment that Dante was originally promised—an outrageous arrangement.

Dante, utterly dumbfounded, cracked his neck a couple of times and popped his fingers. He now knew who the client was and who had sent the Demonic Samurai squad after him.

That made Dante's next course of action simple. If there's one thing he'd learned from surviving this harsh wasteland, it's that when you owe someone a debt—good or bad—you pay it back double.

You dared to stab me in the back?

Boiling with rage, Dante kicked Hanbae's corpse and picked up the Holy Sword from the ground. Whatever insane engineering had gone into it, the Holy Sword—massive and heavy as a chunk of iron—felt weightless in his hand.

"If that's how you want to play it, then I've got my own way."

Muttering quietly to himself, Dante slung the Holy Sword diagonally over his shoulder and slipped out of the Hero's Guild headquarters before it got any darker.

* * *

"Manual transmission's not that hard, I'm telling you."

Inside Elizabeth on the road back to Neo Kyoto.

At the break of dawn, Dante had eaten a quick meal to collect his payment and repay his debt. Strangely, today he was sitting in the passenger seat instead of driving.

"In the era I lived in... every car had automatic transmission."

"Automatic lacks romance, you know? Alright, let's get going smoothly. Don't stall the engine."

Pressing the clutch and shifting gears, Eris was so nervous—driving a car for the first time in nearly 200 years—that she couldn't even respond to Dante and just stared stiffly ahead.

There were two reasons Eris was the one driving instead of Dante.

First, Dante was seriously injured and couldn't be allowed to take the wheel. Making a patient drive would be outright shameless.

Second... it had to do with the 'Holy Sword' loaded in a corner of the cargo hold. Though the principles were unclear, the Holy Sword of the Hero, model name S-24 Liberator, had chosen Dante as its rightful bearer.

Ironically, Dante currently held the status of 'Hero,' while Eris, being a 'Fairy,' had the role of guiding and supporting him. In short, Dante and Eris were now in a perfect 'Master-Servant relationship,' with Eris serving as the 'Servant.'

Dante had asked Eris to drive for the return trip. Though it was phrased as a 'request,' and he had no intention of forcing it, to Eris—who was practically the Hero's Servant—it might as well have been a command.

"Master."

"Hm? What is it?"

"The S-24 Liberator chose you as its compatible user. So I just wanted to ask—do you really plan to hand over the Holy Sword to that client, McKinsey or whatever?"

"Why?"

When Dante asked back with an indifferent attitude, as if he didn't care what happened to the Holy Sword, Eris replied with a face that was half-worried and half-stiff from her unfamiliar driving.

"Well... I'm sorry to Mr. McKinsey, but... I think it's better if you keep the Holy Sword."

"So you think I'm fit to be a Hero?"

Dante probed Eris's feelings with a sly question, and this time she shook her head firmly.

"No. There's a bit of a gap between what I imagine a Hero to be and what you are. But... I think even the Hero who actually existed 200 years ago wasn't all that different. Visiting the Guild headquarters this time and facing various truths... made me seriously wonder what the kind of Hero I truly wanted to serve would be like."

"So... what's your conclusion? If I'm not someone suited to be a Hero, why do you think it's better for me to keep the Holy Sword?"

"At the very least, the Liberator chose you. Once a Holy Sword registers a compatible user, unless the Hero dies, it won't accept any other user besides the one it selected.

It's just a hunk of scrap metal otherwise.

And if you're not a suitable Hero, then I can change that. That's... the role of the Fairy who guides the Hero. That's what I believe."

Dante nodded and gave a soft laugh at Eris's enthusiastic answer.

"Then isn't the very act of me keeping the Holy Sword, which was originally meant for McKinsey, and tossing aside the contract already breaking away from your ideal image of a 'perfect Hero'?"

"Th-That's..."

Caught off guard by Dante poking holes in her logic, Eris fumbled and couldn't respond. Seeing her like that, Dante burst out laughing and said,

"Whatever. I'm keeping the Holy Sword. Since it chose me as its compatible user, it's better I use it than hand it over to McKinsey and get a few measly coins. Better than it becoming scrap metal somewhere else. And besides."

Dante gently rubbed the wound on his stomach, rested his elbow on the truck's window frame, and lit a cigarette.

"And besides. That bastard McKinsey still has a debt to repay."

"A debt to repay? That's kind of sudden."

"The one who hired Hanbae. I went through that Cyborg Ninja's corpse and found out—it was McKinsey."

"McKinsey? Why?"

"Why do you think? Half of it's because of you. He didn't want Death Stalker's junk parts from the first delivery request—he wanted 'you.' I hid that and gave him the junk parts instead.

Not liking that, McKinsey stabbed me in the back while I was out retrieving the Holy Sword. If he got lucky, he could've ended up with both the Holy Sword and the Fairy under his control. All he needed was to hire a new assassin."

"I-I see. So... what do you plan to do?"

"I'll think about that slowly once we're back in Neo Kyoto. Hey, eyes on the road. The road's wrecked up ahead! Brake!"

"Ah! Waaah! I'm sorry!"