Al (the Great Hero)

A portrait of Al (Alicia Lebel) [https://i74.servimg.com/u/f74/12/09/03/58/al_cro11.png]

Illustration by Nachtimmel

For centuries, Brealia had a prophecy. A Demon Lord would threaten the kingdom, but a hero from another world, named Al, would be summoned. The Great Hero Al would defeat the Demon Lord, and bring prosperity to the Brealian kingdom.

When King Esthar decided to summon the hero, there was indeed a Demon Lord, Faur, on the other side of the mountains, but his involvement in any threats to the kingdom was far from certain. Besides, someone wanted the summoning to fail, which resulted in the "Great Hero Al" being Alicia Lebel, a divorced kindergarten teacher, three days shy of forty, athletic but untrained in any kind of fighting.

Full name Alicia Lebel Age 40 Race Human Occupation Teacher / Great Hero Hair Brown Eyes Brown

Call me old and I'll slap you

"The heroine is never forty years old", complained a friend, not so long ago.

I'm over forty myself, so I know how not-old one can feel at that age. Not even middle-aged, just someone who's been young for longer. I consider I was at my peak, not at twenty, but between thirty-five and forty. Yet, in most fictions, a forty-year-old woman will be, at best, the hero's mother. But it's only a narrative convention. In real life, Beyoncé is over forty, and she's fit, and she's strong, and she could totally go on an adventure, even though I don't picture her sleeping on the floor in a forest.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

So that was the main premise. Al is forty, and unlike most isekai heroes, she doesn't end up in a younger body, because she flat out refuses to be rejuvenated (instead, she gets the angels to freeze her aging process for the next five years, so she has more time before she needs reading glasses). And when this was established, things added up, to make her unlike the usual hero in more ways than one.

* She has no fighting skills, relying instead on her brains, her team, and her unique abilities which aren't fight-related.

* She's divorced, rather than single.

* She doesn't get summoned by a charismatic goddess, but by a soul-processing company, where she only gets to meet two employees who look a lot like biblically-accurate angels.

* She openly admits, from Chapter 1, that she's bi. Which will lead into her complicated relationship with Catalin.

* Once summoned by a monarch, and technically working for him, she doesn't think it's cool and she wants to blend in with the local nobles. Instead, she befriends the political opponent who wants to abolish privileges. But she's no Otherworldly Anarchist material, and she won't actively try to bring down the monarchy.

Cakes and coffee

Although Al lived in a residential suburb, in an undefined area of the Western world that could very well be located in the USA or in Canada, her tastes are quite European. The first thing she craves after crossing the portal is black coffee. Why? Because... she's a kindergarten teacher. My mom is a retired teacher herself. As a teenager, I went to her school with her a few times, to give a little help, and it looked to me as if all the teachers there literally ran on coffee. And cigarettes.

Al has a sweet tooth. She's quite fond of local cakes and she'll go out of her way to taste new ones, but she's also a reasonably skilled baker. This comes from a friend discovering isekai because of her young adult daughter, and the friend imagined something along the lines of How I Taught my Dragon my Pancake Recipe.

Yes, this is also the reason why there's a dragon in the story.

I tried to make Al more reasonable than the average isekai hero, but she still has flaws. Many of them. In particular, when she's the adult in the room, she considers she's in charge and she can lie to get her way around. She always means well, but her methods are questionable.

All in all, I hope she's relatable. And she has room for progress.