Chapter 2

Maou took out a whiteboard and marker and his teaching spectacles and turned on Teaching.

“Alright son, today I shall teach you how to distinguish between good and bad heroes.”, he said, drawing a line on the board straight down the middle. On the left, he wrote ‘Good' and on the right, ‘Bad’.

“But first of all, why make a distinction? Why can’t we just kill them all?”

Maou looked at Dom for an answer. Dom sat on a set of chair and desk that had been adjusted to his size by magic.

“...”

Dom stared at the empty desk in front of him that was there simply because his father had declared that it created a ‘better learning environment’. Dom often wondered if that was a skill.

“If you don’t know, say so.”

“I don’ know.”, Dom shook his head.

“Good. Admitting you don’t know is the first step on the path to learning a great many things!”, Maou declared and waited till Dom nodded his head in understanding.

“Let me ask you this, son. Do you like your uncles and aunts who visit from time to time?”

“...”

Dom again looked down at the desk, but this time he did answer.

“Not all of dem.”

“Ah, understandable. But you like Uncle Will and Aunt Teresa, right?”

Dom nodded, “but I like Aunt Ly..”

“Dom!”, Maou interrupted, “Don’t take her name. We don’t want her to interrupt our study session right now.”

Dom nodded again, understanding.

“Phew, disaster averted. Now since you just agreed that you like some of your aunts and uncles, wasn’t it good that I befriended them instead of fighting them?”

“Un.” Dom gave a big nod and then raised his hand.

“You have a question?”

“Ale all of dem helos, dada?”

“Well, that depends on what exactly do you mean by ‘hero’. There is a distinction between being a hero and being a Hero.”, Maou answered, writing the two words on one corner of the board, “All of them are indeed ‘hero’”, he pointed to the first of the two words on the board, “But it is simply a label given to them by the people of their kingdoms and there is nothing in the System to actually make it official.”

Dom looked at Maou with furrowed brows.

“Alright, let me put it like this: All your uncle and aunts call you ‘cute’, right?”

Dom nodded.

“But is ‘cute’ your Class?’

Dom shook his head.

“Do you have a ‘cute’ Title?”

Dom shook his head.

“Similarly, those people are called a ‘hero’ by others around them but it is neither their Class nor is it one of their Titles, or even a Skill for that matter.”

Dom thought for a few seconds before he nodded with an ‘Un.”

“But this ‘Hero’”, Maou pointed at the second word, “is a Class. Very few people in the world have it but since I am the Demon Lord and the only visitors I get are heroes, many of them often end up having it. As a result, most of your uncles and aunts have the class ‘Hero’.”

Dom nodded again. He already knew that none of his uncles and aunts was related to him by blood and that was because they were all heroes. But he always thought that was because they all had the Hero class.

“So getting back to our original topic of discussion, I couldn’t have been friends with all your uncles and aunts if I had killed them. So isn’t it a good thing I didn’t fight them?”

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Dom stayed silent for a few seconds in thought before nodding again.

“This establishes our need to distinguish between a ‘good’ hero and a ‘bad’ hero.”, he said alternating between pointing at the two columns he had made before, "and when I say 'good' and 'bad', it has nothing to do with evil. In the first place, there is no such thing as an absolute evil but that topic of discussion is for another time."

Dom furrowed his eyes again, lost. It was only thanks to the professionalism granted by Teaching that Maou could muster enough willpower to not stop the entire session right then to rub his son's adorable cheeks against his.

"It is enough for now that you think of all those heroes who end up becoming friends as good and those who don't, as bad.", Maou wrote 'friend' under the 'Good' column and 'kill' under the 'Bad' column.

"But dada..", Dom raised his hand again.

"Yes?"

"How can I know if dey ale good befole dey become fliend?"

"That, my dear son, is the billion dollar question!", Maou raised his hands and screamed at the heavens with glee, "Mwuahahahahahahaha!"

Dom raised his hands as well, "Uaa..hahaha..ah..ah..ah?" and tried to imitate his father.

Maou stopped immediately when he noticed his son adopting his bad habits.

"Ahem.." Maou coughed into his hand, a slight red tinge on his ears, "let's forget that ever happened."

"Anyways, son, you have hit the nail on the head! These days almost every human has the System so it is next to impossible to distinguish based on that.", He wrote 'System' in both columns.

"But!", Maou pointed at Dom with the marker, "There is a difference in how they obtain the System."

Maou drew a line subdividing the 'Good' column into two.

"As you already know, the System is short for Hero System. It was found that every human summoned using Hero Summoning had it and it boosted their growth several times over. But then it was discovered that it was hereditary and over thousands of years, it has spread throughout the human race. Now, in fact, it is hard to find humans who don't have it, though they certainly exist."

Dom nodded. He knew all this.

"So two ways of obtaining the System are..", He wrote the headings of the subdivided columns, "'Summoned' and 'Hereditary'".

Dom raised his hand.

"You're quite inquisitive today. Are you enjoying today's class that much?"

Dom nodded without putting his hand down. He was taught that it was proper manners before asking a question in class.

"Good good. Now ask away."

"Ale all shummoned hoomans heloes?"

"Good question. That was actually my next topic.", Maou wrote down ‘Hero’ in the column for ‘Summoned’, “All summoned humans, without exception, have the class Hero.”

“Whooooaaa…”

“Yes, yes. It is fascinating isn’t it?”, Maou nodded to himself, but then shook his head, “Well, not exactly, since the skill used to summon them is called Hero Summoning.”

Dom raised his hand again.

“Is your question on other kinds of summonings?”

Dom nodded.

“Hmm.. There are other summoning Skills, but they are more along the lines of Summon Familiar. As for inter-dimensional, class-specific summoning Skills…”, Maou rubbed his chin in thought, “There can and should be. But I personally haven’t encountered any. At least I do know that the spell version of it where the Skill is derived from is versatile, but the System has as much restricted it as it has optimised it, by creating a Skill out of it. And rarely will you find humans who use spells any more. Demons, on the other hand, do use spells even now, since they don’t have an ancestry of Hero’s. But as a result, they can summon a lot more types of things even though at the same time, it is more likely to end up in failure.”

Dom nodded with hesitation. It was clear he didn’t fully understand all of that.

“We’ll go into details of this some other time. And just so you know, your mother could use the summoning spell and some time before you were born, she had performed the largest summoning ritual in history.”

“Whoooaaaa….”, Dom’s eyes shone bright in wonder.

“Your mother was an amazing woman.”, a hint of sadness was visible in Maou’s eyes as he said that.

*clap*

“But enough of that. Again, that is for another day. Today, we need to finish at least this column.”, Maou pointing at the ‘Summoned’ column, “We will focus on the ones who are ‘Summoned’ and ‘Good’.”

“There is a very clear distinguishing feature about these people, and that is, if the hero is male then the party is not all women. Obviously, there are exceptions, but if you ever see a male hero with a party full of women of different races and the hero has a haughty expression, and is clearly underestimating you, just kill him. Those heroes are the stupidest and will never listen. And if you kill any of their women, they’ll either go crazy or lose all will to fight and become annoying so just kill them first, then the women.”

Maou quickly made two columns on the ‘Bad’ side and wrote ‘Hero class’, ‘Haughty’ and ‘All female party’ under the new ‘Summoned’ column.

“As for the good ones, they will definitely have some females in their party but not necessarily all of them. That is the first indication that they are sensible.”, Maou wrote ‘Less discrimination’ in the ‘summoned’ under ‘Good’.

“And even if a good Hero does have an all female party, he will have an expression of someone who has gone through many tough battles; his party is not just a cheerleading squad for him who whispers into his ears whatever he wants to listen.”

Dom raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“I don’ know what kind of ekshplesshion ij dat”, Dom said.

“Ah..”, Maou thought for a bit, “It’s not something I can explain. You will understand this as you see daddy encounter more heroes so for now it is enough to remember that there is such a thing.”

Dom nodded with hesitation. Maou could tell at a glance that the amount of knowledge had exceeded what Dom could grasp in one day.

“Alright, my dearest son, though I intended for more, let us round this up for today since I can tell you’re getting lost. We’ll continue this some other day.”

Dom raised his hand once again.

“Oh, do you want to continue instead?”, Maou asked, excited that his son was taking such a keen interest in today's lesson.

Dom shook his head, not withdrawing his upraised hand.

“Hmm.. Then what is it?”, a little disappointed.

“Can you dell me a stoly wid one of the good summoned heloes?”

“Oh so that’s what you wanted. Buer told me your uncle Will was on his way over and will be arriving shortly. How about you wait until then and I will tell you how your daddy and uncle Will met?”

“Un.”, Dom gave the cheeriest nod of the day which even the Teaching’s professionalism couldn't resist and they spent the rest of the time playing.

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Supplementary teachings:

Maou: In the beginning of the class, I had stopped Dom from calling out Lyca’s name. She has this uncanny ability that lets her pop up near certain people if they talk about her.

Lyca: Hmm.. Did someone call for me?

Maou: Oh Lyca, you’re here. Would you like to say something in today’s Supplementary lessons?

Lyca: Whooaaa… I’d love to! Hmm.. Hmm.. What should I talk about?? There’s toooo much I wanna tell...

Maou: How about, about the whiteboard and marker you gifted me the last time you visited. And thanks for that by the way; it’s been incredibly useful in teaching Dom.

Lyca: Oh really? Really? That’s good! Hmm.. Hmm.. The board and marker, right? Hmmm… They are ancient artifacts that I found in one of the dungeons in the demon territory only! It comes in a pair and was invented by a great wizard of the past to develop spell formulas. Spell formulas were incredibly hard and complicated in structure at that time and if you made one mistake, you had to start all over again. So he spent 30 years developing a spell formula for a board and pen that would let him erase small parts of the spell formula written on it and correct them.

Maou: Whhooaaaa…. That’s amazing.

Lyca: Fufufufu.. It is.