This Hero is Sleeping!

"Take a look at it… huh?"

Claude\'s words were filled with a hint of thorns and a dash of annoyance as he looked at the sight in front of him with bewildered eyes. Through the creaked open ebony doors, the light brought out their silhouette on the vast piles of papers and books filling the abandoned room.

"Even though the castle is a bit far, Soleda is still the most important city of Maris. The church, knights and the king himself gather the people here." Erika said, her arms crossed and her lips turned up.

Stood the three in a room full of documents and reports, the record room where all the knight orders and their subsidiaries reported incidents from around Maris. The place itself was not the end as the other rooms in the two storey building once filled with people held the records of taxes and families and merchants and policies. Everything that happened around the city was held in here.

Well it would likely be moved soon, nay, a lot of the important stuff was the first to be moved by the knight orders and mostly the irrelevant and distant incidents remained here.

But for now, no one was going to come and take a look.

Crossing her arms, Erika muttered.

"Let\'s go." She took a step ahead before Claude held her too by the scruff of her neck. The action slowly becoming instinctual for the man.

"Now, wait here. What makes you think I am going to sift through, um, at least thirty thousand reports for Elric\'s little curiosity?"

"Well, for one," Erika said. "You killed the vampire before she could tell us herself! That woman was definitely thanking us and going into a backstory and instead you started spamming flame arrows like a little tramp!"

"Claude, you did that?!"

"I did, cool right?"

"Damn straight!"

The two boys bumped their fists while Erika shook her head. Strong as they were, common sense seemed foreign for them.

"That and, well, when you both fainted, I also found… another of those cores… in her…"

The two of them now stared at Erika.

"What cores?"

"The demonic dark desire thing?"

"Heh!? What\'s with that cringe name? Wait, it\'s actually not that bad if pulled off right…"

Erika and Claude decided to rightfully ignore Elric who had looped back into trying out the lines in cool ways.

"Do you mean that world saving orb? Then, you didn\'t give one to that old coot?"

"I did. The… old coot, is going to give me something I need. As for the second one, I sent it with Puzo and Kone to my benefactor." Erika said.

Claude wondered what it was that she needed, but didn\'t bother asking.

This was but the last few hours he was going to spend here. And once she was gone, he\'d be thinking about his revenge again. Just enough to satisfy himself, just enough to pull through, just enough to not get consumed.

To that end, he didn\'t mind it.

"I am curious too, so let\'s take a look."

"Yay paper dive!"

Elric screamed and jumped into the pile. And so began a long treasure hunt for a blonde vampire and her case.

The three of them rolled around on the floor, leaned against the desks and shelves, reports in their hands.

The sounds of the birds chirping were louder than ever, and the heaves of the people doing their best to fix things up.

Now and then, clouds would cover up the sun and the light pouring in would dim down, and then once they moved, the room would be filled with light again.

Incidents, reports of all kinds, some sick and vile while others strangely stupid and humorous. Claude laughed when he read of how someone managed to get his head stuck in a pot while naked and streaked through an entire town screaming for help and felt angered at the mention of robbery and murder.

Elric threw a report away, and Claude picked that one up.

The incident in Koror village, the death of an entire settlement worshipping a demon and how it ended in a tragedy.

A thought entered Claude\'s mind when he read the report of something he was so involved in. Dozens died then, and pangs of guilt filled his heart to the point that he dug them all graves all night long.

But hundreds, if not thousands had perished yesterday too. His hand right around.

Yet.

Yet not a needle of guilt hit him, he felt sad, definitely did. But he didn\'t grieve just yet.

Was it because he had grown a sterner heart after Koror village and the forest? Maybe that explained his and Elric\'s behavior.

His eyes turned toward Erika next, sitting against a shelf, biting her nails as she skimmed through more documents.

Why her?

Her training?

Then…

"Hey, get that plank here!"

"There you go, have a break with some soup."

Why the people working outside, the ones who had not lost their direct family.

Why didn\'t grief or loss strike them like it had him back then?

"Even though we witnessed so many deaths…" Claude spoke up. He would usually only bear his thoughts in front of Elric, but this time, he found it hard to resist. "Why, are we not sad… We witnessed something much worse than in Koror, and yet…"

Erika fumbled with her words, unable to speak out loud.

It was then that Elric snapped shut a book and picked up another.

"The people in Koror were weak."

"And—"

"You didn\'t witness anything, Claude," Elric\'s gaze remained on the documents in his hands. "You survived. And so did everyone else here. If even surviving shouldn\'t bring hope, then the world would be too bleak."

Erika and Claude stared at Elric.

"Is that so…?"

Claude only muttered those words and got back to searching through the documents, his heart much lighter now.

Erika, though, couldn\'t do the same.

She was… envious.

It was a long time after, that Claude place down a pile of reports on the ground.

"Four months back, the burning of a family in a far away village in accusations of housing a vampire."

The other two crawled over the room and peeked down at the documents.

"This seems to be it."