Unemployed (GXG) (GIRLXGIRL) (GL)

39

When the Heroes left the bar with their new member Hawkins, they found a loud, rude, but well-dressed man having a tantrum. They believe the man is drunk, he’s swearing while kicking off the three men carrying him away.

“You’re all useless! Why should stoop down to the likes of you?!”

He falls to the ground and trips one of the three, they start stomping on his stomach in retaliation.

“What are you doing? Stop that this instant! That’s no way to treat a man of his age,” Eliza said as she rescued the drunkard and pulled him up to his feet.

He yells in surprise as he sees her. “You… you’re Eliza, aren’t you?! What are you doing in a place like this!?”

“Do you know me?” Eliza asked.

“Of course I do, I’m the King!” he replies. “I know all the descendants of the Heroes!”

It was a grim and confusing claim but as Eliza looked closely at the man’s face, she knew this the King, if drunk. She had had an audience with him once before but she frowned at the state he was in now, a far cry from the regal figure he was then.

“Your Majesty? Why is the King in a place like this?!”

“Do you really need me to explain that you to?!” the King snaps. “You should already know my city has been conquered by the Demon King! Thanks to her, I’m stuck here…! But everyone around me is useless.”

“I thought you were slain but you’re still alive.”

“I am most certainly alive! Even if I had no choice but to abandon the castle!” the King said. “That little girl killed my best warrior so I had to flee without my things! Ooh, my beloved collections… damnation!”

“Wait, did you just say you abandoned the castle?” Eliza asked. “Despite being the King, you abandoned the castle… you abandoned your people and your country?”

“Was there any other way I would survive?!”

Eliza broke down. This man, the King, did not hesitate to abandon his citizens and his country the moment it was clear he had lost. After throwing everything away just to save his skin, he could no longer see him as a King.

“If you’re truly a Hero’s descendant, then hurry up and defeat the Demon King!” the King said. “Go and take back my city!”

“… You’re no King,” Eliza said. “You’re just a bastard, thinking only about yourself and nothing else.”

“How dare you speak to your King…”

A fist smashed into his cheek.

Eliza wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stand to listen to him any longer, Dorothy had reached her limit and struck the King with all her might.

“Because someone like you became the King, because people like you exist, the people are confused and believe that the Demon King is good!” Dorothy yelled.

She couldn’t unclench her fist afterward. She couldn’t talk to this man any longer. She turned on her heel and walked back into the city as night falls. Maria and Hawkins follow them; they see the King fallen and unconscious, they give him a look of pity before they forget about him.

Dorothy was crying. She grew up being told she’s the Descendant of a Hero, that one day, she’d play a role just like her ancestors. That she would be a leader of the people.

But what was the reality?

Even though she had been training, she was easily bested by the Demon King. She had read countless books on leadership and politics, but it’s the Demon King who’s ruling the world today. The people curse the Heroes aiming to defeat the Demon King and the King she saw just now abandoned the people to save himself, then had the gall to tell the Heroes to go defeat the Demon King for him.

She was about to lose her purpose in life. Her drive to save the people, her heart was about to break. The painter mage’s words sank into her heart like fishhooks that couldn’t be pulled out.

“It’s better now under the Demon King.”

Dorothy looked up at the moon in the night sky, her face wet with tears as she wondered what to do with her life now.