"We're all doomed if you get killed by pills not demons," the first thing Mina says to me as soon as I wake up from the ground.
Dirt and rock got inside my clothes, some even in my mouth.
Wait, I think I should be worrying about something else. What is it again?
The wyvern!
I look around the empty field, trying to reach my weapon until a foot landed near it.
Oh hey!
A man wearing a mask, looking down at me. Bow and arrows behind him, they were shining under the sun. He spoke, "Are you the Hero Of The West?"
No, "Yeah?"
"I was tasked to come down here to assist you finding the Pumpkin demon."
"Uh, yeah we were expecting you."
I stand up, clearing the bits inside and around me.
Just a village after getting kicked out of the West City together with Mina, we were given a paper by a golden pigeon. There are instruction of where we have to go and do. One of them, as this masked man said, is to meet an intel just around this area.
To explain our unfortunate incident before, turns out I had became pretty famous. My pictures is everywhere and they were overexaggerate how I look like, my eyes don't shine and I don't have a rose between my lips! Anyway, when we were passing through villages, people started kneeling at me as soon as I arrived. They begged to deal with the monster that has been terrorizing the people around for a decade. At first, I tried everything to not answer their plead. But then I did. And you know how that turned out.
Mina was writing on her note before pointing at the man with her pen, "So are you a mercenary?"
"A hero."
"I see. Name?"
"The precise fox"
"Real name?"
"…"
A hero in this world doesn't reveal their real name, or shows their face. This is a decision made up by the guild they are working with or just for personal reason. This is why having The Hero of The West without a mask is a big deal around the world.
Fox (that's what I'm calling the man now) turned to me, "You don't look like what I expected."
"Yeah, if there's a rose nearby maybe I'd chew it in front of you."
"… Why did you run from the wyvern?"
I assume he was throne handled the wyvern chasing us, putting a kabash of us getting dissolve in its stomach acid. And now he's pretty confused since the person he ended saving is the Hero Of The West and not the other way around.
But I have to find an excuse fast. One of the instruction in the paper we had told us this: if your true identity is revealed, we'd know, you'd die right there and then. So, excuse, now.
"I, uh, have no quarrel with the wyvern."
He raised his eyebrow.
"It is, uh, very sacred being. I heard there was only few of them left. So if I can not hurt it, I'd try to."
The mask stares at me for a long time, I can't see his face so I don't know how he's reacting to all of this in real time.
"Is that so," he says, turning his back on us, "I shot a warning fire at it and let it run, so you don't have to worry."
Oh? Does that mean he took my excuse positively?
He chuckles, "Hero Of The West, so the story of you are a hardcore pacifist is true. Follow me you two, we'd talk in the guild."
I follow him from behind and Mina paces herself beside me.
"Hero, what is your feeling right now."
She asks while looking down at her note ready to scribble.
I answer her, in whisper, "Very good, I am still alive. And very bad, because we're heading to die."
"I see," she began writing.
"Mina, is there even a point of writing all this?"
When we first met she told me that she'd write our adventure.
She turns to me with a very tired eyes that she always has, "Of course there is."
"But you… we are going to die anyway."
Mina reply, "flesh might be gone, the words don't."
Woah, I think this is the first time she said something, uh, sounded at least smart.
Mina then follows it up, "Which might be in our case since I wrote that you lost the war and killed the Hero Of The West. My mother and her friends will make sure to burn our flesh and the words, too."
Now I just feel a sudden weight crashes onto my back. I want to complaint her about the just outright wrong information she wrote about me. I didn't kill the Hero of the West! But then again, like she said, everything will be gone anyway. The story would never get out.