“Oraa!! Scatter your flesh everywhere!!”

Zugan!!

“GigiIIIIII!!!”

The monster’s body was torn apart halfway.

As it collapsed and convulsed, he pointed the tip of his long club at it and grinned slightly wickedly.

“Uwaa… as always, I can’t tell which one’s the bad guy.”

“Obviously it’s this thing!! Seriously, quit spacing out, Seti. Want me to grope your ass?”

I’m not spacing out, and don’t grope my ass, you damn pervert.

…If I actually said that, it’d just fire him up more and he’s the type who’d seriously try to grope me all day, so I kept my mouth shut.

* * *

The day after going shopping with Gadivan, I spent the whole day resting.

Aleid woke up, but when I casually said, “It was a pretty nasty poison, so you should rest properly and make sure you’re fully recovered,” the entire party agreed.

With it framed as the Hero-sama’s break, Aleid was pushed into it—‘unanimously forced’—and ended up taking a one-week rest.

“Well, honestly, Aleid does try a bit too hard in a serious way. It’s better for him to properly rest both body and mind at a time like this, yeah.”

The moment he woke up, he apologized profusely for causing trouble to everyone, and even started preparing to resume the journey to defeat the Demon King.

He’s a workaholic hero, that one.

“Hey, Seti… hey, Seti!! Don’t zone out, help me clean up these monster corpses!”

“Ah—sorry, sorry, coming now.”

So then, what are we doing now while the Hero-sama is on break…

* * *

“Yo, we’re back. The monsters that showed up to the west, all taken care of.”

That’s right, we’re hunting monsters around the town we’re staying in.

“Good work. It must’ve been tough for you too, Seti. Working in pairs is different from usual.”

“Yeah, kinda… but honestly, dealing with this oversized idiot was harder than the monsters.”

“Hah!? What’re you saying, I was the one babysitting you!! And it’s not oversized idiot, it’s-sama Dikkasama!”

This loud, rowdy brat is Dikaramaus Barifa Valisrin.

You’d never guess it from looking at him, but he’s the second son of the prestigious Valisrin family, which once had a princess bestowed upon them by the royal family.

He’s supposed to be 20—but he looks about 15, like a middle or high school boy. As for his mental age, it’s about elementary school level. He’s definitely lying about his age.

Actually, he wasn’t someone summoned by the king as part of the Hero party.

Right after the party was formed and we left the royal capital, he begged us on his knees to let him join.

Aleid, troubled but moved by his enthusiasm, accepted him into the party.

…Putting aside whether it’s really okay for the second son of a high-ranking noble family to just run off on a journey like this, since he insisted on joining such a harsh quest as defeating the Demon King, his skills are actually pretty solid.

He’s got an aggressive and slightly rough base personality, mixed with a bit of a boy trying to act grown-up—good and bad, really.

“Hahaha, well, handling Dikaramaus is definitely tough. Sorry about that, Seti, pairing you two up. I’ll think of a different combination next time, so bear with it a bit longer for now.”

“Wha—hey! That’s harsh, Menaas, you too!!”

This calm man who always has a gentle smile is Menaas.

He’s an androgynous handsome guy, but with a quiet, plant-like calmness and gentleness, giving off the vibe of a literary young man.

‘Even though they’re both 20… these two are complete opposites.’

By the way, Menaas is an orphan.

But he’s incredibly intelligent, and after being taken in by a powerful noble who serves as the king’s right-hand man, he quickly rose through the ranks as a civil official.

That noble, and even the king, seemed to greatly favor him, but because of his origins as an orphan, he was subjected to jealousy and resentment from other nobles.

When Prince Aleid received the divine oracle and set out on his journey as a hero, the king’s request for Menaas to join the party was apparently also meant to distance him from those ill-intentioned people—that’s what Vivi mentioned.

“But honestly, having Menaas in the party is a huge help. He’s the one who proposed splitting us into the Hero party and a support unit, after all.”

Our Hero party is quite large.

Of course, it’s to support Aleid, the chosen hero, but if we all just moved together as one big group, it’d obviously become disorganized.

So Menaas took on the less combat-capable members himself and formed a rear support unit to back up the frontline Hero party that actually goes into battle.

He sets up operational bases in each nearby town before we move on, managing them and supporting Aleid and the others from multiple angles.

“And since Aleid needs rest, we’re staying in this town for a while, and under Menaas’s command, we’re splitting up to hunt monsters around the entire area.”

Monsters are the Demon King’s freely deployed enemy forces.

They rampage as they please, dealing damage to humans or wearing them down, and once they’re weakened, the Demon King’s army moves in to crush them—that’s the basic invasion pattern.

So right now, every human town prepares its own anti-monster forces and hunts monsters within its defensive zone, but unfortunately, most of them are barely more than strengthened militias.

So, for the sake of the town we’re staying in, while Aleid rests, we’ve been splitting up to hunt monsters.

‘Menaas’s planning is impressive as expected, but that oversized idiot charges in like a boar… keeping up with him is seriously exhausting.’

I was worried that pairs of two might be too little in terms of combat strength, but Menaas’s judgment and strategy were spot on.

During this week of Aleid’s rest, we repeatedly switched pairings and assigned areas while hunting monsters around the town, but throughout all that, we barely accumulated any fatigue, and not a single person suffered injuries that required my healing.