An Unborn Hero

Many a thesis had been written about the optimal application of wards. What would be the perfect combination of triggers and reactions? Was there a perfect combination?

Keying off hostility sounded good in principle, but it would happily let in mindless monsters, or even someone trespassing for the thrill of it rather than ill intent. Conversely, if an argument between spouses got too heated, they could find themselves unceremoniously defenestrated from their own home.

Triggering on anything without a class would keep out monsters, but would equally keep out pets and harmless wildlife. It would also let in anyone with ill intent, as long as they were sentient and non-demonic. It was that particular weakness that was responsible for the naked assassin stalking through the hallways of Mystery's home.

Mystery watched him in alarm. And it very certainly was a 'him'.

"Why is there a streaker in the house?! What the hell? Is this a prank? Does he have some sort of mental condition?!"

He was simply another victim of the great game between the hiders and the seekers. In his case, he'd taken the knowledge that more specialised sub-skills tended to be stronger at lower levels, and had upgraded his [Stealth] with an invisibility sub-skill that applied to him alone. Just him, and not anything he was wearing or carrying. Alas, despite the skill's high efficiency, he was rather low level, and in the darkness and with her wide selection of sub-skills, Mystery hadn't even noticed his slight transparency.

"Should I wake up my parents? Can I wake them up? It's not as if I can make bright lights yet. Would casting [Magical Girl Transformation] on Mum wake her? Bah, I hate being the mascot. I should be able to deal with this guy myself!"

As she trailed after the intruder, she rapidly dropped her theory of him being a mere prankster. After all, he'd got past the guards, who were camping on the road. He'd entered the locked house. And, most importantly, he wasn't randomly wandering but was proceeding briskly and directly towards the master bedroom.

"A thief? But he's naked. Maybe he has an item box skill? Or an assassin? But he has no weapons. Either way, I need to wake Mum, then I can guide her to him with a light."

Having failed to alert anyone to the demon that had been watching silently from outside the farm's wards, she was determined to be more useful this time. She zipped back to the bedroom, flying straight through the walls, and dipped far enough into Kellela to borrow her mana.

Kellela gasped as she was woken up by... something. Everything was wrong. Or perhaps different would be a better description. And a little familiar; it was a sensation she'd felt very recently, although she hadn't been in a position to pay attention at the time. Her mana was acting strangely, and she had less of it than she should after a night's sleep. Or part of a night; it was still dark out, far away from dawn.

Something was tight around her arms, legs and torso. And something was tickling her legs under the duvet. She lifted it up to see what was underneath, treated to the sight of rather more frills than she normally wore to bed.

"Seriously, Mystery?" she murmured. "I was sleeping!"

Hayedalf, who had been half-woken by the light-show as Kellela transformed, opened his eyes in response to her murmur, and found himself looking into the face of a fourteen-year-old girl.

He reacted fairly normally to waking up in bed with a stranger who hadn't been there when he went to sleep, regardless of their age, which was to scream.

A clatter came from outside their door, followed by a bang and another, rather quieter and muffled scream.

Kellela and Hayedalf looked at each other, Hayedalf finally working out who he was looking at. "I think we should assume Mystery didn't do that to me for no reason," said Kellela, dragging herself out of bed. Which—with her shorter legs—was rather further from the floor than she expected, causing her to misjudge the distance and stumble forward. Hayedalf wisely chose not to comment.

"Let's see who made that noise," she added as she threw open their door.

A naked man was writhing on the floor, now fully visible and wrapped in sheets of light. One was plastered across his face with only his nose poking out, making an effective gag. Alas, the sheets were transparent, and so did nothing to protect his dignity.

Hayedalf was, after all, a [Master Enchanter]. He knew well the limitations and inflexibility of wards. So why only use a single layer? Other people might have reason to enter his home, just as Platus, Melody and Rose had the night before, but they sure as heck had no reason to step into his bedroom uninvited. The wards around the room where he slept—where he was at his most defenceless—didn't let through anyone or anything that wasn't explicitly registered. The assassin's mission had been doomed to failure even without Mystery's intervention.

"Hey! Are you okay? I heard someone..." started Platus, charging out of his room wearing nothing but a pair of trunks, but still carrying his two-handed axe. And then he froze mid-sentence as he took in the naked, moaning mummified man on the floor, being stood over by an angry-looking child in an indecent, frilly pink dress, arms folded. "This scene could be one of two things. Please tell me it's the obvious one," he said.

"Out of interest, which one is the 'obvious' one?" asked Hayedalf, stepping out of the bedroom and examining the struggling assassin. "Hmm, he's human... Explains how he could get through the outer wards. Why did a human break in?"

Platus wisely chose not to answer the first question. It wasn't as if Hayedalf had never considered using his enchantments in the bedroom, and Kellela quite enjoyed an occasional struggle against magical bonds, but the whole Mystery situation had rather thoroughly murdered their sex life. Who would want to engage in coitus, kinky or not, knowing that their own child was watching?

Well, maybe some would—people were weird—but neither Hayedalf nor Kellela were among such degenerates.

"Mmmph," answered the assassin, still uselessly struggling. Or rather, the [Assassin]. Relatively new to the profession, he'd jumped at the chance to prove himself and earn a few achievements when the new job came in. That had led to him not doing quite as much due diligence as he probably should have done.

"It's too late at night for this," complained Hayedalf. "Let's just lock him in the cold storage and we'll deal with him in the morning."

"Mmmph!" disagreed the assassin, who wasn't exactly warmly dressed.

"Good idea," said Kellela, grabbing his nose—the only handle poking out of the bands of light—and dragging him off down the corridor. The intent was for the ward to be disabling, not fatal, so that little feature had been added to avoid suffocation. Yes, there was a slight issue when used on people suffering bad colds, but no ward was perfect.

The would-be assassin safely stored, she climbed back into bed, still in her irremovable dress. Not to mention her shoes, which certainly had no place under the bedsheets. Hayedalf climbed in opposite her, where they both gazed into each other's eyes for a few seconds, sighed, and rolled over.

ding
For seeing through an illusion without even noticing, [Soul's Eye] advances to level 26

"Illusion? What illusion?"

ding
For giving your father an interesting bedroom experience, [Magical Girl Transformation] advances to level 11.

"Don't phrase it in such a misleading way!" mentally screamed Mystery, forgetting all about the alleged illusion.

The teleporter in Karn's Vigil flickered to life, the enchanted platform glowing with white light. The light rose up, forming a cylinder that rose from the floor, meeting a matching platform embedded into the ceiling. The construct brightened, flashed, and then faded away to nothing. Where there had previously been only air, now stood a teenaged girl dressed in a white vestment, the decorated headpiece identifying her as a healer.

"Welcome, your highness," said the [Commander], who was stood off to one side.

"Thank you, but you didn't need to greet me in person," replied the disguised [First Princess]. "I'm not supposed to be meeting Mystery as a princess, but simply as a normal healer. Just make sure I'm in the next rotation of guards you send to the farm."

"Ah, but that's why I'm here. There was a serious attack yesterday, so we're increasing the number of guards. The platoon you'll be a part of will be leaving in half an hour."

The [First Princess] had been hoping it would be a couple of days before she met the [Hero]—or at least the hero's mother—so that she could sign up at the guild and do a few simple missions. With adept levelled [Purify] and expert levelled [Heal], she didn't feel she'd be useless, but it would still have been useful to kill a goblin or two beforehand. Instead, not only would she be leaving right now, but there had already been an attack!

"Then... best I meet the team," she squeezed out, feeling woefully unprepared for her mission.

The [Commander] politely refrained from drawing attention to her nervousness, and instead led her to another platoon, ten men strong.

"Right, listen up, you lot!" he barked at them. "As you know, there was another attack on our [Hero] yesterday evening. What you don't know yet is that Kellela was seriously injured in the attack. She took injuries that, without healing magic from the [Hero], would have been fatal. Therefore, I'm attaching a healer to your squad."

"Sir, with respect," chimed in the [Platoon Leader], "if you want to send a healer, why not one of our own? They're trained for teamwork and front-line combat situations."

"Yes, they are. However, they are not trained for demons. Get miasma in a wound and the only healer to hand lacks purification abilities? Kiss your limb goodbye. This is Grace. She can heal. She can purify. Take care of her, and she'll take care of you."

"Did you have to phrase that last sentence like that?" thought [First Princess] Grace, looking over the squad of middle-aged men. At least they were professional enough not to even smirk at the suggestive comment, let alone leer.

In the local branch of the church of Mreilyne, goddess of wisdom, a hooded individual sat at a stone desk, a thick grimoire in hand. This particular 'church' was really more of a chapel, small as it was, but it didn't matter. Every building dedicated to the goddess of wisdom had at least one of the textbooks; a guide to occupations, skills and achievements.

It was a reasonable assumption that the [Hero] was using the [Astral Projection] and [Soul's Eye] skills to move around and perceive. Since she had demonstrated an ability to react to sound, an extension of that assumption could be made that she possessed the [Sense Sound] sub-skill. That would mean speaking a language known to her wouldn't help; Mystery would still effectively need to relearn it from scratch, being unable to translate the input from the skill into the sounds she was used to.

That wasn't useful information to most. By the time heroes regained their memories, they'd invariably learnt the local language. Why would anyone bother learning their old language from them by that point? It wasn't required for communication, nor would anyone else on the planet speak it, so it would be a lot of effort just to fulfil idle curiosity.

Rrillandral Lehibeborn wasn't 'anyone', and she had plenty of time to spare for idle curiosity. She'd always found that taking an interest was a way to endear herself to her targets. It helped that she didn't even have to fake it; she legitimately found the myriad languages and cultures of other worlds fascinating, and she could engross herself in new languages without accidentally picking up new skills.

Since the [Hero] would be unable to understand their native language if spoken, she would just need to write. She took a sheet of paper and started writing a message in a variety of languages, in order of prevalence. At the very top was Japanese; the minor deities responsible for press-ganging otherworldly victims into their eternal war plucked Japanese speakers from a planet called Earth with an odd regularity, given that they apparently only made up a small portion of the population of that particular planet. Then she moved on to the sharp claw-scratches of one alien world, then the coloured mandalas of another. And, eventually, halfway down the third sheet, she reached English.

Spoiler

μ̵̼͉̐υ̴̡̽̿σ̷̭͓̃̀τ̸͉̤̾̆ή̶͎̱͌ρ̸̤͕̏̿ι̷̬̾͜ό̸͈ (Human)
Age: -8 months
Occupation: Hero (L)
Skills:
- Soul's Eye (U) (26/80)
>> Sense Vitality (U)
>> Sense Soul (R)
>> Sense Mana (U)
>> Sense Light (C)
>> Sense Sound (C)
>> Pierce Illusions (U)
>> Sense Miasma (R)
- Astral Projection (U) (18/60)
>> Sure Navigation (U)
>> Uncontainable (U)
>> Tether of Will (L)
- Robust (C) (17/40)
>> Hardened Soul (R)
>> Secured Mana (U)
>> Pain Tolerance (C)
- Stealth (C) (3/20)
>> Camouflage Vitality (R)
- Magical Girl Transformation (R) (11/20)
>> Age Correction (R)
- Light (C) (6/10)
- Increased Attributes (C) (6/20)
>> Mana Storage (U)
Achievements:
- Early Bloomer II (R)
- First Skill (C)
- Apprentice (C)
- Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal (R)
- I Broke The System, And All I Got Was This Lousy Achievement (E)
- Astral Explorer I (R)
- First Spell (C)
- I Broke The System Again, And Now The Administrators Hate Me (E)
- Spell Forger (R)
- Demon Slayer I (R)
- Monster Slayer I (C)

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