Tonight I was on last watch. After waking me up, Melly sat down next to the fire with me instead of going to bed. Huh, isn’t this familiar. After waiting for me to get comfortable, she said. “This Hero is nothing like the past heroes.”
Well, that was fast, I didn’t expect something like this to happen for another week. At least she didn’t say this to the entire group. “You’re right,” I can’t help but agree. “But why are you mentioning this now?”
“I come from a long line of warriors,” She starts, “and one of my ancestors was lucky enough to end up working with a hero. Since she passed down everything that she knew, I learned a bit about how heroes work.”
“So, how exactly is ours different?”
“Mainly, ours has skill far beyond his level, and it seems like he’s using that to rapidly increase his power towards his actual capabilities.”
“Okay.” I acknowledge. “What's the problem with him doing that?”
“As you know, whenever people display skill beyond their expected power, they gain a small increase to their power in a process the heroes have named Leveling Up. And, as people become higher and higher leveled, the skill requirements, relative to their level, also increase, increasing even faster than their power does, until eventually, people reach their limit. Heroes, however, are able to increase people’s limits. Do you know how?”
“All that the stories say is that the greater the bond between the members of the party, the stronger the party members eventually become.” I answered. “But, I always figured it had more to do with the otherworldly knowledge given to the party members by their hero that increased their power instead. While the bonds between people can certainly help people effectively perform beyond their level, if that was all it took, we’d have far more hero level people wandering around. I presume the emphasis on their bond was mainly to convince people to try to get along with each other.” I admit.
Melly laughed at that. “While the knowledge from the Hero’s world can definitely help, if that was all it took, there would have been a massive effort to spread that knowledge, regardless of what the consequences of going against the Gods might be.”
“Then, why were the various heroes in the legends so powerful? Were all the stories just massively embellished or something!?” I couldn’t help but ask in worry.
“Don’t worry, the heroes were actually as powerful as the stories described them to be.” Melly comforted as she caressed my head. “Heroes have the ability to decrease the difficulty of Leveling Up for anyone with a close bond to them. The only real requirement being that both the hero and the person growing stronger have reached a minimum level, otherwise the ability won't activate. That’s why we were chosen as companions instead of someone already powerful. To maximize the benefits of the hero’s ability, it is better to start using it at as low of a level as possible. That's also why they chose people that were particularly talented for their age and level; talent is still the primary limitation for people to Level Up.”
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“Then, why weren’t we told about this before we started our journey?”
“So that we wouldn’t get the hero to do what ours is doing, rapidly Leveling Up.”
“What’s wrong with that, isn’t it better for the Hero to become stronger? Unlocking their ability to enhance others earlier should be very useful.”
“That's because the greater the bond, the greater decrease in the Level Up requirements. So, the reason we started the journey so early instead of just rapidly training the Hero, is so that by the time his ability activates, the party already has a great enough bond to give a noticeable increase in everyone’s growth.”
“But, can’t you just keep on using their ability to continuously decrease the difficulty of Leveling Up?” I ask, still confused.
“That’s because every time someone Levels Up, the difficulty of the next Level Ups are permanently increased, so having a greater bond at the start can massively increase the potential of someone, as it decreases the actual rate that the difficulty normally increases, with greater bonds creating greater decreases. To a limit, of course. So, even if you increase your bond later on, you would still require more skill to Level Up than someone that had a greater bond early on, but didn’t end up growing any closer afterwards.”
“I see, the Hero’s power is quite amazing.” I say, “Wait, doesn’t that make what the Hero is doing a massive problem? What are we gonna do about this?” I panicked.
“I don’t know. That's why I decided to talk to you, I wanted to hear your thoughts.”
I sigh, “I guess there’s not much we even could do. I mean, the Hero was already skilled enough to Level Up rapidly on his own. Slowing his training now won’t do anything. The only thing we can do is talk to him and try to get him to interact with us more. As long as that happens, I’m sure our bond will grow quite quickly.” I proclaim with confidence.
“Why are you so certain?” Melly questions.
“It is said that the best way to get close to someone is to appeal to their stomach, and in that regard, our Hero has ability in spades.”
“You’re right about that.” Melly agrees while laughing. “We might not actually have to worry all that much. Still though, that requires us to get the Hero to interact with us more, which is where our problem lies.”
“Leave that to me. Working at the church has let me interact with many different types of people, I’m sure I can figure something out.” I declare with confidence.
“I’ll leave it to you then. Thanks for the talk, I feel a lot less anxious now. Well, I’m gonna try to get as much sleep as I can before morning.” Melly thanked me as she went back to her tent.
After she left, I couldn’t help but sigh in wonder over how the Hero’s ability worked. I guess the stories weren’t just trying to get people to work together. Well, that's one thing cleared up. Now I just have to figure out how I’m going to persuade the Hero to actually interact with us properly. I mean, the Hero doesn’t seem like a loner, so why won’t he talk to us about his plans? Or in general really… Well, thinking about this can only help so much as I don’t really understand him, and I still need to talk to him in order to actually change anything.
After thinking for a while, day eventually came, and with it, came everyone waking up. I did have to go wake up Melly though, she wasn’t able to get much sleep after all. I’m sure breakfast will wake her right up though.