A/N: Fshin' back to the start for a sed~

  -x-X-x-

  He was finally here. Standing there with a broad smile on his face, Oren looks out at the campus in front of him. Large buildings where he would be spending the several years learning everything there was to learn about business. There would be opportuo finally prove himself, to finally make a name for himself… to finally make a life for himself.

  Oren was an adult now. From here on out, the only one who could decide whether he succeeded or failed… was him. In the end, he just had to take the first step forward and start his new life. Oep was all it would take. Firming up his resolve, Oren proceeds to take that decisive step forward. Or rather… he tries to.

  His foot lifts off the ground but it never es down. It’s like he’s suddenly weightless… and indeed, looking down, he finds himself leaving the ground altogether.

  “Wha- what’s happening? What’s going on?!”

  It’s not like he’s aloside of the Uy. There are other people in the sidewalk moving bad forth, going about their days. But strangely, nobody seemed to pay him much attention. His startled cries go unanswered, even as he goes from baffled fusion to shouted pleas for assistance.

  “Help! Help me, please!”

  He’s rising higher into the air now… faster and faster. Gravity has ceased to have any hold on him. Is he dreaming? Is this some weird kind of nightmare? Oren squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to wake up. But when he opens them again, he finds himself staring out at a b of twinkling stars on bck.

  Looking down, he sees all of Earth below him. The experience is decidedly surreal. Surely this is all a dream, but the detailing is more vivid than any dream he’s ever had. Even when he’d lucid dreamed before, it’s been nothing like this.

  Earth… grows small fast. He’s pig up speed or something, surrounded by some strange nebulous force. And then, before he knows it… he’s moving too fast to even be capable of processing what he’s seeing. The stars bee streaks, like something straight out of sce fi… and then it goes beyond that, until all he sees is light.

  It’s almost anti-climactic when he finally arrives. Landing should reduce him to nothing but a smear on the floor, but instead all that happens is his legs buckle and he falls to his knees as he suddenly finds himself ba solid ground. Gasping for breath, Oren feels hands on him and a reassuring voi his ear.

  “Hey… hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. Just breathe friend. Just breathe.”

  What was going on? What was happening to him? Another voice echoes out, deep and serious in tenor.

  “The Hero has been summoned successfully. Those who sacrificed themselves for this moment did not do so in vain. Our salvation is at hand!”

  Slowly, Oren lifts his head up, staring around himself in wide eyes. The first thiices is the man helping support him, smiling at him encingly. The hiices… is the bodies.

  They’re in an auditorium and he’s in the exact ter of the room, surrounded by what Oren only describe as occultist nonsense. Except… is it really nonsense if it works? Around the edge of the circle, crumpled forms sit at equidistant points. Are they dead? It seems that they might be. Beyond them is a man in robes… the man who spoke before. And beyond even that, the auditorium is filled with onlookers, people with desperate undisguised hope in their eyes.

  “Hero! What is your name?”

  Swallowing thickly, Oren finds himself helped to his feet by the man at his side who gives him an encing nod to go with that smile of his.

  “Wha… I’m sorry, I don’t uand. Where am I? What’s happening?”

  The deep voiced man looks sympathetic.

  “ologize, Hero. We have summoned you from your world to ours because the need for your help is dire. The Demon King has arisen once more and sends forth his armies from the Hells to destroy our civilization. If he is left unchecked, millions will perish beh the cloven hooves of his army.”

  … The fuck?! That shit sounded like something straight out of a goddamn fantasy here was no way any of this was real. Was Oren being pranked?

  “Sir, I think the Hero needs a moment to collect himself. Perhaps the others should be dismissed?”

  There’s a pause as the man at his side looks around them meaningfully. Holy, until he said something, Oren hadn’t truly realized how much being stared at by hundreds of hopeful faces was b him. After a brief pause, the other man nods aures.

  “Leave aurn to your work! The Hero is here now… you may bor with lightened hearts knowing that our freedom from the tyranny of the Demon King is at hand.”

  Oh god. Did they really think Oren was going to be able to do anything about… any of that. He blinks rapidly, trying not to fall into a full blown panic attack even as everyone begins to pile out of the room. As they file out, the man at his side looks at him with some .

  “I am called Raythe. If it pleases you, I tio refer to you as Hero… or maybe Sir Hero. Tell me how you want to be addressed and sider it done.”

  Shaking his head, Oren swallows dryly as he looks to Raythe.

  “No! I mean… no, please don’t call me that. Just call me Oren. I still don’t know what’s happening. I’m not… I don’t know anything about being a Hero.”

  Raythe smiles another encing smile and nods his head.

  “That’s perfectly alright, Oren. It’s expected for you not to know much. And… I apologize most sihat we had to take you from your world. But the ritual is an a oried aed. It will always summon the ohat is most needed in desperate times such as these. Even if you do not know it yet… you have it within you to be a Hero. To be THE Hero.”

  Oren stares at Raythe with wide eyes, dry swallowing again in disbelief. He half-expected the other man to start saying nonsense like ‘believe in the me that believes in you!’ or something any sed now.

  … What the fuck had he gotten himself into?

  -x-X-x-

  With a grunt, Oren brings his wooden practice sword up, barely dodging Raythe’s overhead swing in time. As usual, the other man’s years of ditioning make Oren’s arms rattle from the blow, even as beads of sweat drip down from his forehead.

  “Good, Oren! Great even! Again!”

  But Oren just shakes his head and takes a step back, holding up ay palm as he gulps in lungfuls of air.

  “W-Wait… I ’t, I need a moment please.”

  Raythe immediately rexes his own stand nods.

  “Of course friend, take as much time as you need. Here, use my waterskin.”

  the other man a grateful smile, Oren takes a long pull of refreshing water from the skin and then hands it back over as he smacks his lips.

  “Thanks Raythe. That always hits the spot.”

  It’s been a month now since Oren was summoo this world. Four weeks since he’d had his entire life turned upside down. To be fair… he kind of got it. They’d shown him how bad things were outside of their little underground cave system. Specifically, Raythe had taken him for a trip up to the surface, where he’d barely sted five minutes before they had to go back down.

  They assured him that the Demon King’s armies hadn’t reached everywhere yet. It wasn’t all as bad as it was over their heads. But at the same time… that taste of what their world would look like if the Demon King got his way made it clear that Oren couldn’t just sit on his thumbs and do nothing. They needed his help… and apparently, he was the big damn Hero.

  Huffing at that thought, Oren shakes his head.

  “You know… you keep tellihat I’m the only one who defeat the Demon King.”

  Raythe pauses and raises an eyebrow at that. Oren offers a helpless smile in response.

  “Oh don’t get me wrong… I totally believe the Demon King o be defeated. You guys wouldn’t have had volunteers sacrifice their lives t me here if it wasn’t serious. It’s just… I ’t help but feel like you have the wrong guy. It just doesn’t feel like I’m making any progress here to be ho.”

  There’s a long, silent pause before Raythe hums and nods.

  “You ’t see it. You’re so busy sed guessing yourself that you ’t see your own improvement.”

  Oren frowns as Raythe suddenly moves over to the wall where a on rack carrying real bdes is located. He picks out a on and almost faster than Oren blink, turns and tosses it to him. Yelping, Oreheless mao catch the sword by its handle so he doesn’t cut himself… if only just barely.

  Giving Raythe a truly unimpressed look, roans.

  “Seriously? If that’s supposed to prove something…”

  Sure, he mao catch it. He definitely wouldn’t have a month ago. But that…

  “Nah. I want you to use that sword oraining dummy. And don’t hold baot even a little bit.”

  Frowning, nces over at where Raythe is pointing, to the training dummy he tends to spend time smag with his wooden sword each day whenever his friend is busy with other duties. And… damn it all, Raythe IS his friend. It’s kind of crazy to think, but he might be the best friend Oren has ever had. Only four weeks and they already feel like two peas in a pod.

  Shrugging, Oren strides over to the training dummy and takes up a proper stance just like Raythe taught him. Then, with a swing of his arms and a twist of his upper body, he lunges forward, smming the bde down onto the practice dummy from an upper diagonal angle.

  “HAH!”

  Not to toot his own horn, but the blow is pretty by Oreimation. Well-executed, one might say. He’s expeg to bury the sword in the wooden practice dummy’s ‘shoulder’ at best. Maybe cut in a few inches or something. He HAS gotten stronger over the st few weeks, after all.

  … But he’s not expeg to shear pletely through the training dummy, taking it from shoulder to hip and ing out the other side with what felt like barely aa all. Oh, it wasn’t as easy as cutting through butter or anything like that… but it was far easier than anticipated.

  As the upper half of the practice dummy betedly slides off and then falls to the ground, Oren just stares bnkly for a long moment, not quite sure what he just witnessed.

  “See? You’ve already e a long way, Oren.”

  “How… how did I do that?”

  Raythe chuckles, even as he takes the bde from Oren’s hands and puts it ba the rack.

  “Simple, really. It’s like I’ve been telling you. You’re the Hero and that es with both a blessing… and a burden. You have limitless potential, the capacity to bee strohan anyone else in the universe. You just o reach out and grasp that power. Keep training, and you’ll find that there is no ceiling you ’t break through.”

  … In all fairness, Raythe HAD been telling Oren that for weeks now. He’d just chalked it up to inspirational fluff. Taking down the Demon King had holy seemed like an impossible task to Oren. It was something he knew he had to do… but also something he was sure he would fail at. After all, he was just some random guy from Earth. There was no way he could take down an all-powerful Demon King and his armies… right?

  “Heh. I see you’re finally starting to believe, Oren.”

  Blinking, Oren looks over to see Raythe grinning at him. And he realizes…the other man is right. This is the first time since his summoning that he’s startling to believe in what it means to be the Hero. The first time that he’s started to think he might actually have a shot at beating the Demon King and saving the world after all.

  Lifting his wooden sword back up into the air, Raythe retakes his stance.

  “Still, that limitless potential isn’t going to unlock itself. We still have a long way to go, Hero!”

  Right. Feeling a newfound sense of purpose, a new wave of resolve aermination flowing through him, rins as he lifts his own wooden sword back up. A momehey’re back at it, fighting one another bad forth across the room… but now Oren thinks he feel it. The improvement happening bit by bit.

  And maybe one day… he’ll be able to storm the Hells themselves and kill the Demon King in his own throne room.

  -x-X-x-

  Ba the present, Sophia’s question still hangs in the air.

  “What… what happeo you? What did those that summoned you do to make you so cavalier about dying?”

  Obviously, Oren ’t exactly answer her holy. What did they make him do? Oh, nothing much… just singlehandedly kill her father and everyone she knew and loved up in the Heavens. Whi turn seemed to have brought about an age of god-killing and worshipper-killing down here oerial Pnes. It was all his fault, in the end. Was it any wohat he was so ready to y down his life for her? He wasn’t suicidal per say… but if a ‘good death’ preseself to him, he wouldly reject the idea.

  Still, what to say to her in this moment instead of the truth? In the end, Oren decides that stonewalling is still a perfectly reasonable respo this point. He doesn’t wao like him anyways.

  “Nothing. I told you before, I figured out they were lying to me and sought my freedom. Still, you’ve said it yourself. I’m an Otherworlder. The e ever seeing my home again are o none… but I don’t really belong here either, do I?”

  And then, because he’s kind of a bastard like that, oes for the throat.

  “What would your father say if he was here now? What would he do with me? I thih know the ao that.”

  He doesn’t have to look over at Sophia to know his words have caused a grief stri expression to spread across her face. So… he doesn’t. Pretending like he ’t tell the Minoddess is rather aggrieved by the mention of her father, Oren just grunts.

  “Nothing for it. With the horse dead… we’ll just have to keep going on foot. Unfortunately, our supplies have seeer days. I was hoping to move around the few towns to minimize human tact, but… we’ll have to resupply at this rate. e o’s go.”

  He starts walking and to her credit, Sophia hurries to catch up with him a moment ter. Hopefully between his attitude and the few days of travel on foot, Sophia would e to despise and disdain him.

  Because Oren knew he wasn’t worthy of anything more.

  -x-X-x-

  A/N: Angsty Mgsterson up in this bitch.

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