“Even then,” she confirmed. Oh boy. Ren immediately looked super depressed. He’d had his balls crushed before even getting to his confession. He might have sounded undecided, but it was pretty clear he liked her.

This didn’t feel like an end to it either. I also didn’t want his performance in battle to suffer due to a broken heart.

“Ren,” I said.

“What?” he eventually replied.

“She’s not the sharpest when it comes to matters of the heart. If such a situation actually came about, she might change her mind. If you get lucky, the one you confess to may then start to take notice of you. It’s too soon to give up,” I told him.

“Okay, okay. I get it,” he said.

“But you also need to read the room a little. If you confess to her right now, I don’t think she’ll give you the nod. You need to get closer to her first and then let her know how you feel. Maybe even get the elation right after we save the world to give things a push,” I advised.

“Yes. Yes, okay!” Ren gave an enthusiastic nod at my suggestion. That was easier than expected. My only experience with this kind of thing was dating simulators, of course, so I couldn’t provide a detailed plan of action. This was perhaps something to ask Motoyasu about. In the past, at least, he might have provided some actionable intel, but as he was right now . . .

The reason I had kept my advice a little vague, using words like “maybe” and “I think,” was so I wouldn’t need to take any responsibility if he failed.

“Well then, Hero Iwatani. I will repay your kindness for everything I have been taught here. Now I take my leave.” With that, Eclair used Ren’s portal to return to the castle.

Chapter Two: Limit Break

As it turned out, Ethnobalt was with Sadeena and the others. Sadeena had not stopped trying to call me over.

“Little Naofumi, how are you doing?” she asked.

“Really not sure how to answer that one,” I responded. The Melromarc wave had been taken care of, by the way. With the four holy heroes and the staff, claws, and projectile seven star heroes all suitably powered up, wave-level enemies were not such a problem anymore. It had been over within minutes of it starting. No enemy we could consider a threat had been included in the wave.

Maybe that was just how strong the heroes had become.

One piece of bad luck, however, was that we hadn’t been matched with Kizuna’s world during the wave. I had kind of been hoping that, if we had been matched with them, Raphtalia could have made it back to this world through one of the wave cracks. As more waves were going to continue to occur in nations across the world, the heroes were going to have to split up to handle them all. Needing to go and bail out Kizuna and her gang in another world was a pretty tall order, on top of all our troubles.