Do Heroes Need Welfare Too? - Chapter 131

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 131

Meriel turned her chair around as if suddenly remembering something and sat facing me.

“You’re really okay, right?”

“Of course.”

As if she still couldn’t believe I was alive and well, Meriel examined me from head to toe.

“May I take a look?”

“Of course.”

Meriel, sitting across from me, took my hand.

Thinking she was going to infuse divine power like she had done at the temple, Meriel pulled her hand back in surprise, then grabbed it again.

“Divine power…”

Her eyes slowly widened.

“It seems to be on par with mine, no. Even greater?”

Then she spoke with an exclamation of amazement.

“Haven’t you ever had moments where all the strength suddenly drained from your body? When a lot of divine power flows out at once, you might sometimes get headaches.”

“Now that I think about it, I think that has happened.”

I nodded after thinking it over.

Meriel grabbed my hand as if she had expected this.

“I thought so… It wasn’t that you had no divine power, but that it was completely empty. What I saw inside Iberis’s body before felt like a large pitcher with no water in it, which I found strange.”

“Then… can I use divine power too?”

At my question, Meriel nodded joyfully.

She seemed more excited than me, who had been living without knowing I had divine power all this time.

“Of course! If you don’t know how to use divine power, I can teach you slowly from the beginning. If you keep losing control and drain it all the way to the end, you might faint. I’ve often lost consciousness from being unable to control my abundant divine power.”

Meriel said while fidgeting with her hair as if embarrassed.

Listening quietly to her words, I grabbed Meriel’s hand firmly.

A one-on-one lesson from someone who was mentioned as the next Elderly High Priest of the temple! I couldn’t miss this!

I recalled the sensation of the ring I felt around my neck.

“I want to learn!”

Even if it wasn’t immediately necessary, there would surely be a use for it someday.

Meriel smiled prettily as if she had expected this.

“Then shall we try it now? Properly controlling divine power is good for your body too.”

I nodded slowly. Facing Meriel, I looked at my temporary teacher.

“First, breathe in and out. Hoo, ha, hoo, ha. Try following along.”

“Hoo, ha, hoo, ha.”

I breathed in and out following her, but I couldn’t feel anything particularly different. Still, since she was revered as the next Elderly High Priest at the temple, I should trust her.

But the breathing, putting hands together in prayer, hugging Meriel, and other activities that followed seemed strange no matter how I thought about it.

Eventually, unlike at first, seeds of doubt about her sprouted.

“…Is this really the correct way to handle divine power?”

Seeing Meriel tilt her head with an innocent face made me feel guilty for questioning her skills even as I spoke.

However, Meriel immediately burst into laughter.

“Hahaha! No, you were just so cute that I… I’ll teach you properly again.”

“…”

This High Priest, really.

* * *

To Adam, everything in this world was nothing but tedious affairs. Perhaps it was because he had experienced countless repeated lives.

However, Judith, who didn’t know this fact, was frustrated because he didn’t know where Adam’s boredom originated from.

Even when the Emperor tried to kill him, he remained relaxed. Yet he would toy with the Emperor as if holding him in the palm of his hand, making all his attempts come to nothing.

Adam’s usual attitude was as if he was watching this world from a third person’s perspective.

However, recently Adam seemed particularly anxious.

Like someone with a child left by the waterside, he couldn’t sit still in one place and wandered around, looking somehow uneasy.

Come to think of it, didn’t they say that maid was alive?

Since Judith had received a detailed report from Nain about what happened then, he was initially skeptical.

Perhaps the Hero had finally gone mad, as people were saying.

After all, it had been three years.

Even if she was alive, why would Iberis, who had left him for three years, reveal herself now?

Besides, Iberis, who had asked for help to leave him, wouldn’t return on her own feet.

Nevertheless, seeing the Hero restlessly fidgeting as if suffering from withdrawal symptoms, Judith couldn’t stand it anymore and spoke up.

“Look, if you’re going to keep acting like this, just go see her. Anyway, since we’ve eliminated all the central nobility, Father can’t exert any power.”

As if he had been waiting for someone to push him, Adam shot up from his seat.

His retreating figure as he left to find Iberis overlapped with that of a dog going to find its owner.

Judith almost clicked his tongue but stopped.

This would be better than living with a death-like expression for life.

In the end, all the remaining work was his responsibility.

As he was organizing the scattered documents neatly, he soon realized the roles had been reversed and threw the papers carelessly onto the desk.

Judith, who had been leaning back in his chair, got up and slowly began reorganizing the documents again.

“Sigh… I’ll end up doing it anyway.”

After learning that the Hero’s maid was alive, though he didn’t believe in God, he felt as if he had seen a prophecy.

All the work he would do with Adam in the future… would become his responsibility.

Surely he wouldn’t hand over the emperor’s throne to me after the rebellion, would he? Judith shuddered at the chilling thought.

* * *

Iberis, who had come back from learning how to handle divine power with Meriel today, was annoyed.

Additional reward, my foot.

That wasn’t like an additional reward but an additional penalty.

Iberis crossed her arms and glared at the air with a thoroughly disgruntled expression.

Lucy, who had been crunching cookies beside Iberis, tugged at her arm.

“Sister, what’s wrong?”

Stress – 95%

No matter how she thought about it, this was too much.

Even though an error occurred in the middle and she couldn’t complete the Quest perfectly by making it ‘0%’, hadn’t she come close to that target?

But after just three years, it’s back to square one?

‘What on earth happened after I left? Even though I made him rebuild the Demon King’s Castle, made him kill the Demon King without any companions, and he did clear it, isn’t this too much?’

…Come to think of it, maybe I was in the wrong.

I let out a groan.

After learning about Adam’s stress level, Iberis sighed deeply as if she had gained a great worry.

It had already been a whole month since receiving the additional reward.

As time passed, the stress level kept rising, reaching the highest point she had ever seen.

‘Maybe I should go meet Adam…’

But how would she explain pretending to be dead all this time? The timing to tell him the truth had already passed. If she confessed the truth to him, she could easily picture Adam’s hurt face asking if she didn’t trust him.

‘It’s not like I wanted to leave in the first place…’

No matter how much she thought about his reaction, she couldn’t even imagine him understanding her.

After knowing everything, most of Adam’s expressions she could picture were crying, disappointed, and abandoning his expectations of her and leaving.

She didn’t want to hurt him.

And she didn’t want to be hurt.

“Sigh…”

Iberis eventually bonked her head against the wall.

Then Lucy, who had been looking up at her, shrieked.

“Sister’s been acting weird lately! Always sighing deeply. Oh, you did it again!”

“Sorry, Lucy… Sister has a lot to think about these days.”

“Hmph, I’m going to go play!”

“Sorry!”

As if to show she was sulking, Lucy stamped her little feet and rushed out of the apothecary shop.

Iberis hurriedly reached out toward her, but Lucy darted out of the apothecary shop with squirrel-like speed.

Left alone in the shop, Iberis stared blankly into empty space.

Seeing that he was still doing what Lucy had just told him not to do made him chuckle softly.

When Lucy returned, she would surely be very angry. Still, it was endlessly adorable.

Just like Potato, who couldn’t hide it even when pretending to be sulky…

As he recalled one of the scenes from the Demon King’s Castle that he had deliberately tried not to think about, Iberis shook his head vigorously.

Even so, his gaze naturally turned toward Adam’s status window.

‘Huh, his stress level… went down?’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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