Chương 3: Chapter 2: Ren Amaya Confronts the New Hero Summoned

A thousand years had passed since I decided to make the Equilibrium organization. In this time, I changed my class to Outsider using special means. With this change, I can now attack and kill humans, unlike before, where I could only be passive. With this class, I could keep the abilities I had before, but it also means I am no longer the hero, so a new hero can be summoned. This means I no longer have the blessing of the goddess.

As a trade-off, I found myself no longer aging, leading to me surviving even after a thousand years. This class, though, was not exclusive, and I can grant it to others. The party that had followed me back then decided to take the class too and has survived to this day with me. Even the demon king from back then had escaped the world's rules and become an Outsider like me. We now lead an organization to make sure the war between humans and demons never ends.

In this process, we let people join based on invitation only. This was due to how everyone in the organization was granted the Outsider class. This class can only be given to loyal members, or they can live forever and get in our way. In this thousand years, our organization has become quite big, containing hundreds of members. I, as well as the founding members—my party and the demon king—devised a system of power. It was based on a board game from Earth called chess.

Though nobody except me understood the game in this world, after explaining about the game, the women in my party loved it. So, we based the hierarchy of the organization on chess pieces. I am the king, the head of the organization. The demon king is the queen, as she was the second-strongest combatant in the organization. As there is only one queen in chess, we decided the queen would be the second-in-command in the organization, so there will only be one. Then came my party members.

Sophia, as the former princess, was third in charge, but like the other two, Maria and Claire, they were all rooks. There can be multiple rooks, but promotion in the organization can only be handled by a superior rank. Anyone in a superior rank can give orders to a lower rank and they would have to follow. Below the rook are the bishop and knight; they are of equal rank.

As for why they are split into two different abilities: the knight is the combatant who does the fighting, and the bishop is the support faction who does healing, administration, or anything not involved in fighting. Finally, at the lowest level, where anyone who has joined the organization starts, is the pawn. They have no authority in the organization, but they gain the benefit of getting the Outsider class.

Promotions are simple: it takes one person in a superior rank to promote you to knight or bishop if you reached certain criteria of theirs. At the knight and bishop level, promotion becomes significantly harder, and you need two people of higher rank to agree to promote you to advance to rook. To this day, there are only seven rooks who have reached that rank.

These rooks are usually sent out to accomplish missions that don't need the king or queen to take action, like intentionally sabotaging a side to become weaker or helping one side fight against the other. Unless something unexpected happens, the king and queen don't usually take action. At the rook level, you need to gain the approval of the king as well as defeat the queen in combat. If you so happen to win, you will then become the king and dethrone the current queen, who would then become a rook.

This has not happened yet throughout the thousand-year history of the organization. So, this was just a possibility that was discussed. The rook rank, though, because of the small numbers, was ranked in terms of combat ability and usefulness to the organization. In this way, Sophia was ranked first due to her support magic being so useful. Second-ranked was Maria due to her magic reaching the limit of humanity after all these years. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

The third rank was Claire, as her swordsmanship is still extremely powerful to this day. As for the fourth to seventh rank, they are too close in power and the rankings tend to fluctuate, so no one really knows how to rank them. Above the queen is the king. Nobody can replace the king unless the king dies. If the king somehow does die, the queen will be next in line to be king. Though the chance of the king dying is low, as nobody in the organization can die due to old age.

The king can only die if someone managed to kill him, and considering my current level of power, this is just not possible, but a contingency was made just in case. Today, though, something happened that required mine and the queen's attention. As the previous demon king was killed a few decades ago due to a mistake from us not paying very close attention to the situation, the hero emerged victorious, which caused the human side to gain a huge advantage.

Though the hero soon learned the cruelty of humanity but didn't want to do anything about it directly, he used his new magic to go back to Earth. This led to neither side gaining that much of an advantage and we, the Equilibrium organization, stepped in to stabilize the situation and managed to keep the balance over the past few decades. Though recently a new demon king had emerged, and since the demon king was new, he had to stabilize his rule and hasn't been making any big moves.

On the other hand, the humans have directly summoned a new hero. It seemed this new hero was very strongly opinionated and had a hero complex to save the world. This caused her to grow very fast and could now even kill high-level demons and monsters. This has destabilized the situation and caused the humans to grow stronger than the demons. So, I now had to step in with the queen to stabilize the situation and stop the humans from continuing their advance.

We then dressed up in a disguise and headed to the human continent to face the hero. The disguise is due to how we operate in secret; we rarely reveal ourselves and direct the war in the shadows. Nobody really knows who we are, and all those who know are either dead or had their memories erased of our existence. The disguise allows us to avoid unnecessary enemies holding a grudge against our organization, as though we are strong, who knows what surprises these two forces have.

Though I was the hero, the kingdom always held secrets I didn't know about. Not to mention, they somehow managed to keep the situation in balance before I came, so they must have something to rely on. This wariness has kept me from making any definite moves on the human side. On the demon side, the demon king has told me about the inner workings of the demonic continent. Even if she wasn't around, there are some demons in hiding right now, not wanting to reveal their strength unless absolutely necessary.

They were healing from injuries due to unknown sources, presumably due to something from the human side. As for how strong they are, no one really knows, but the demon king's father once told her if these people ever decided to act, any one of them could replace the demon king, easily taking the spot. So, over the years, we had been very careful of our actions not to be in danger. As we secretly arrived at the human region, I marveled at how different things were from a few decades ago.

New trees were everywhere, ones that I had not seen before. The animals were everywhere, and the sea was brimming with fish. This was probably caused by the temporary peace between humans and demons from both the demon king dying and the hero returning. If only the peace remained like this, I thought to myself. We then journeyed inland to confront the hero. After several days of traveling, we arrived at the Trist Kingdom, the same kingdom from a thousand years ago that summoned me.

The tradition was still kept for the Trist Kingdom to summon heroes, as only one could be summoned at a time. As we walked in, Sophia looked around, amazed at all the changes. She too hasn't been back in a long time and wanted to look around. As we walked around, I then received a signal to see a member of my organization trying to get my attention secretly. It was the fourth-rank rook of the organization, here on a mission to observe the hero.

This person was a girl with long brown hair and looked a bit mixed-race, as her hair was still brown after so many years. I had personally recruited her a few hundred years ago. She was a hero summoned back then who shared the same ideology as me and soon realized that the humans were corrupt long before fighting the demon king. As she hadn't killed the demon king to get the power to return, she left the human forces to fend for themselves.

In this way, I went to greet her, which initially gained a negative reaction, but after some persuasion, I managed to recruit her. Over the course of a few hundred years, she has become a rook in the organization and is loyal to us. After meeting with her, she relayed the news to me: "The hero is currently out fighting monsters to get stronger, so this is a good time for us to attack as she is outside the kingdom. I know where she is, so let's go." After understanding the situation, we immediately set off.

After a quick trip, we arrived at the forest where apparently the hero was. We then walked through the forest and heard a sound, and we decided to follow it. After arriving at the source of the sound, we saw a woman with long black hair tied into a braid fighting against high-level monsters. As we watched her, she soon defeated the monster and seemed to be exhausted. From the amount of power, I knew she was the hero, so I stepped out while she was still weak to confront her.

Upon seeing me, she asked, "Who are you and what are you doing in such a dangerous forest? Do you not know that there are several dangerous monsters here?" I then replied, "I'm here to stop you from killing anymore monsters and demons."