The Wrong Hero

Chapter 57 - Fanning the Flames, Part I

An hour. One hour had passed, according to the timers for the other hourglasses Dante was registered to. It wasn't out of the ordinary. He's fought in five waves before this one. Some were longer, some were shorter, but they averaged out to around this amount of time. Faubrey's wave had four heroes with most of the power up methods, and that one took around an hour.

At first glance, one might think this wave wouldn't take so long. That was because the combined quality and quantity of the monsters was less than the last four waves. Dante figured it had something to do with the number of holy heroes present, since the other waves only had one and a varying number of vassal heroes. He did recall that the waves would be harder if a holy hero died, so maybe the number of participants in any given wave also affected it. The difference wasn't huge, but it was noticeable.

The route to the boss was the issue. The other heroes had to first figure out the ship's pattern and then board it from one of the plateaus it flew around. Well, two of the heroes did. Dante saw skills and magic being shot up at the hull of the ship way earlier.

"Dad, we're back!" JoJo came jogging into the village with Keel and Rifana on his back.

"Hey, you three." Dante greeted them. "Any issues?"

"Nope!" JoJo happily chirped.

"Not one!" Keel similarly responded.

"You two..." Rifana sighed. "A few of the knights tried causing problems."

Those three went to the same village as the knights from Itsuki's group, after all. Dante looked over the group. There HP barely went down at all, and they didn't look any worse for wear.

"What did they do?" Dante asked.

"Some tried to attack us when they thought our backs were turned." Rifana answered.

"I kicked them really hard!" JoJo announced.

"Did any die?" It would probably cause Dante problems later if they did, no matter how much it would have been deserved.

"No, but they'll be walking funny for a while." Keel snickered.

Dante didn't need any more information to know where they were kicked.

"Good job." Dante gave JoJo a quick scratch. If they were back, that meant evacuations in that village were done and the knights could handle the rest, plus any adventurers that were already there. "Evacuations are done here and we're just handling any stray monsters. Once we regroup, we'll see about dealing with the boss."

Eclair, Dio, and Rishia were still at the other village with the young knights Motoyasu brought. He'd received no alerts, so he assumed they were doing fine, especially with how high their HP was. That was also the village Elrasla lived, so they probably met up with her.

"Okay!" JoJo saluted with his wing.

During his time fighting, Dante was better able to understand his newest curse and its effects on his mind. He didn't need to be in danger personally, nor one of his party members. There were moments in this village where no monsters were in sight and he was fine. That led him to believe that being in an area of threat of some sort was enough, like the wave.

He'd test it more when he went to the castle.

"Hey, Dante?" Keel spoke with a bit more seriousness than before.

"Yeah?"

"In the capital, with Ann...that was our fault, right? When we fought the Bow Hero?"

Dante thought for a moment. "Either that or, more likely, when we killed that noble woman." If she was killing demi-humans for fun—an idea that seemed incredibly likely due to that death pit she had—she was likely favored by the church. That aside, Aultcray didn't need many reasons to persecute Dante or anyone around him.