The Fake Hero Is Too Strong-Chapter 183

After arriving in the capital, we got an inn and gathered in one room.
It was time for an emergency strategy meeting.
Neril spoke first, her tone slightly cynical.
“We need to make sure to collect this debt from Idria properly. Even if it’s something that benefits us too.”
“Don’t worry. I intend to collect it with interest. We are not just putting on a play where we fight Idria.”
At that, Neril’s expression eased a little, remembering what I had said before.
“Well, if it’s that, then I guess it balances out.”
“Alright, let’s talk seriously now. What should we do?”
Everyone fell silent at once, as if we had all agreed beforehand.
Normally, the party members would toss around ideas in moments like this, but this time, no one seemed to know where to start.
Then…
Lisel, who had been blinking her big eyes, spoke up.
“Um… I wasn’t sure if I would be saying something dumb again, so I hesitated to bring it up…”
“Hm? It’s fine. You get things exactly right one out of a hundred times. You’re the one who helped me remember Aktion’s name in the first place.”
Serein nodded, chiming in.
“Yeah, one out of a hundred! In scholarly terms, that’s a bull’s-eye.”
“Oh, hehe. Thank you, Serein.”
“……Sure.”
Unaware of our awkward smiles, Lisel continued seriously.
“Couldn’t we leave Velosian out of this operation?”
“What? Why?”
“Because he is asleep, right?”
For a moment, I felt like an idiot.
Her point was so obvious it hurt.
I recalled a brief exchange I had had before fighting Kaeld at the starting point.
—“From what you just said, sounds like you even know that I got power from Velosian?”
—“Yeah. And I also know that thanks to that, he ended up trapped in the special room.”
—“Heh. Trapped? No, he passed out.”
—“What?”
—“He overused his power or something. Knocked right out. Sleeping like a baby.”
Right. He had said Velosian was asleep.
The reason Velosian couldn’t leave the special room wasn’t anything complicated, it was because he was sleeping.
The realization brought color back to everyone’s faces.
“So Kaeld might actually be on our side?”
“At this point, I’m starting to believe it. In a sense, he is the most reliable one. If he is involved, we can trust him to ruin something.”
“Thank goodness he is not really our ally.”
“Yeah. Kinda a relief to know he is our enemy instead.”
“As a sign of gratitude, how about we kill him quickly and painlessly?”
“No, that’s too much, even for him.”
The party’s banter was ruthless as ever.
Still, thanks to Kaeld’s careless mouth, we had gotten a priceless piece of information, and the discussion heated up.
Neril spoke next.
“It’s too early to relax. Even if he is asleep, he could wake up at any time.”
“Like an alarm spell?”
“I doubt that monster would use basic magic like that, but the effect would be about the same.”
“Then we will have to move quietly, step by step.”
“The problem is what to do. We still don’t have a plan.”
Then.
Adwin, who had been lost in thought, opened his mouth.
“What if we try to connect with Idria?”
“……?”
Everyone gave him a questioning look.
He continued explaining.
“Idria and her underlings are trapped inside the special room, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then if they cooperated, things would go a lot smoother, wouldn’t they?”
“Well, yeah, but how would you even connect with her?”
Neril frowned and took out a communication orb.
“This one is linked to Idria. As you can see, it’s completely dead.”
“……”
“Everyone knows the door beneath the Imperial Palace is another realm altogether. Communication orbs don’t work across dimensions.”
True.
And even if they did, there is no way Idria could talk with us in secret under Aktion’s watch.
“….”
Wait. Secret communication?
A thought struck me, and I turned to Adwin.
“You don’t mean… talking through souls, do you?”
“Yes.”
“……That might actually avoid Aktion’s surveillance. But don’t you need to see Idria’s soul for that to work?”
“There might be another way.”
“You don’t mean….”
“Yes.”
He swallowed hard and continued.
“Please take me to the underworld.”
The necromancer’s bell we obtained.
It was an artifact made by Leon Sioc, one of the three great heroes, allowing a living person to visit the underworld.
When I had gone there with Impelium’s guidance, I saw an endless expanse of shimmering bubbles, each one representing a person’s world.
I had briefly explained the scenery to my companions, especially Adwin, who had been fascinated by it.
Now he had built an ingenious plan from that description.
“Wouldn’t Idria and her followers each have their own bubbles in the underworld?”
“They probably would.”
“Then take me there. I will… figure something out.”
He scratched his head awkwardly.
“Honestly, the old me would have never said this out loud, but I think I can actually do it now.”
“Because you have turned fame into power?”
“Yeah. It’s temporary, but it’s still power. Like I said before, my understanding of souls has deepened a lot.”
He had erased even the soul of Kaeld, who had been powered by Velosian.
If anyone could handle this, it was Adwin.
As I considered it, Xenia spoke up.
“It’s too dangerous. To go to the underworld, you have to separate your soul from your body first. Can you even do that yourself?”
“Yes. I think I can now.”
“Adwin…”
“Don’t worry too much. I won’t be going alone. I’m asking Mide hyung to guide me.”
He turned to me.
“I will link my soul to yours, just slightly. That way, I will follow you naturally without effort.”
That finally eased the group’s tension a little.
Their expressions said,
If he is with Mide, it will be okay.
Given we were about to take a stroll through the underworld, that was some outrageous trust.
[Honestly, you think it might work too, don’t you?]
‘Yeah. I have been there before. The real problem will be finding Idria’s bubble among the infinite ones.’
[We will see when we get there. If not, we can always go again later.]
Trail said it like a casual errand to the underworld.
The worst part was that I couldn’t even argue with that.
I let out a short laugh.
“Alright. Let’s go.”
“Yes! Ah, who should handle the necromancer’s bell?”
Neril spoke up immediately.
“I will. I used it last time, and besides, we can’t trust Offense with something this delicate.”
“I didn’t even volunteer, so why am I getting blamed?”
Serein chuckled and added,
“It’s just our warm way of wishing you a long life, Offense.”
A very odd kind of comfort.
The journey through the underworld began right away.
Adwin first separated my soul from my body.
When I came to my senses, the vast world of shimmering bubbles I had once seen before greeted me again.
Jingle, jingle.
I could hear Neril ringing the bell.
And at the same time, Adwin’s voice echoed beside me.
“Heh. So this is the place where I will eventually lay my body to rest, huh.”
“I figured you would say something like that. Anyway, since it’s your first trip to the underworld…”
“I can hear the cries of the souls.”
“Don’t wander too far. I will tell Neril on you.”
“Mercy, please.”
“Anyway, as you can see, this is the underworld. Seeing it for yourself feels different from just hearing about it, right?”
Adwin looked around, his eyes full of curiosity.
Then, after a moment, he smiled faintly.
“No necromancy ever recorded on the continent has described the underworld like this. Not even the words of Lord Grade, Lady Lepia, or Sir Leon match this.”
“Impelium said the same thing. Even the heroes of the past couldn’t break out of their own worlds.”
“Then how can you see a place like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, either way, thanks to you, I have had a fascinating experience. Thank you, hyung.”
I wasn’t sure this was something to thank me for.
In the continent’s language,
‘I will send you to the underworld
meant
‘I will kill you.’
Scratching my head, I looked around.
“Last time, with Impelium’s help, I found the bubbles of Serein and Pirensha. But this time, I have no clue where to even start searching.”
Each bubble-world was impossible to distinguish from the others.
At this point, it was Adwin’s domain, not mine.
He moved from one bubble to another, scanning them closely.
Like a child exploring the market while holding his parents’ hands.
“Hey, don’t go too far.”
“Ah, yes! Let’s check over there.”
“Alright.”
And so, for a while, I wandered through the underworld alongside Adwin.
Jingle, jingle.
Come to think of it, Neril must still be ringing the bell back in the real world.
Her arm must be getting sore by now.
Maybe we should start heading back before she yells at me later.
After all, with Adwin and the necromancer’s bell, we could return anytime.
“Adwin, maybe we should…”
“Father.”
“Hm?”
“My father isn’t here, right?”
His voice trembled slightly.
I straightened my back.
“When you found my father’s statue in my hometown, I definitely saw my father’s soul within it.”
“…!”
“I didn’t tell my mother because she would only worry, but his soul was terribly weak like a terminal patient barely clinging to life.”
It made sense.
Even without deep knowledge of necromancy, I knew the body and soul were inseparable companions.
A soul housed in a stone statue could never survive.
“The feeling I had then… it wasn’t long.”
“What wasn’t?”
“The time my father could hold on.”
He called it a feeling, but coming from Adwin, a master of necromancy, it was practically a certainty.
When had I first met him?
Before I could count, he spoke again.
“He probably has only a few months left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Well… we have had a lot more urgent things going on.”
“Adwin. You’re just as important to me as any of those things.”
Rustle, rustle.
Without thinking, I reached out and ruffled his hair.
“We won’t even wait a few months. Once we rescue Idria, I will make her lift the curse right away. Your father will be fine.”
“Hyung…
sniff
.”
He swallowed his tears and rubbed at his face.
For all his attempts to act grown up, Adwin was still just a kid.
No, this wasn’t about being a kid or an adult.
No one could stay perfectly calm when their own parent’s life was at stake.
Pride swelled in me, along with pity.
Trying to shake off the awkward emotion, he spoke in a deliberately cheerful tone.
“Ahem. Anyway, based on the general feel of this place, I can confirm my father is not in the underworld yet!”
“So that’s why you wanted me to bring you here.”
“Ah, no! That was just… part of it.”
“Heh. Let’s say it was.”
Adwin turned his head toward the distance.
“Let’s go over there. I sense something strange.”
To me, everything looked like the same endless sea of bubbles, but I decided to trust the continent’s most brilliant necromancer.
And as I followed him, I realized he was right.
He is really onto something.
Something felt different here.
“What do you think?”
“Yeah. This one is far away from the others.”
That was it.
All the bubbles in the underworld were separate, independent worlds, but this one was isolated far beyond the norm.
From a distance, it looked like a hole had been punched in the fabric of space itself.
Up close, it almost made you think this spot wasn’t part of the underworld at all.
“Why is it so far from the others?”
“My guess? Because they aren’t human.”
I nodded at Adwin’s words.
So even in the underworld, the Demon King and her followers were alien, foreign to the world itself.
Now I could understand, at least a little, why Idria was so desperate to flee into the fake world.
This world rejected anything not human.
“Finding it is great, but now what do we do?”
“Hmm…”
Adwin carefully reached out toward one of the bubbles.
I nearly shouted for him to stop, but his hand was already touching the surface.
“Hey, hey!”
“It’s okay, hyung.”
“You nearly scared me to death.”
“Sorry. But I couldn’t get a sense of it otherwise.”
“…”
“The one I’m touching right now, this is Idria’s bubble.”
A spark of excitement stirred in me.
“Can you communicate through it?”
“Yes. Actually, maybe even more than that…”
He paused, then grinned mischievously.
It was rare to see that kind of expression on his face.
“Would you like to experience it yourself?”
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