“I can say it now. You weren’t in the wrong, Naofumi. If all you collect is bad information on someone, even a saint could look like a demon,” he said.

“But I am a bad person,” I told him. It was my fault that the people from the village happily went to their deaths—happily went into battle. I still thought making people happy with products and getting them to pony up their cash was the best way to get rich. But I didn’t consider someone who made people happy to place themselves in combat to be a good person. “I haven’t been able to save anyone from the ravages of war,” I admitted.

“But you always try to. Everything you do is to protect them,” Itsuki said.

“And yet I failed,” I continued. It was true. I had repeatedly failed my villagers. We had lost people in the Phoenix battle—not just Atla, but many others. Losses against Faubrey might have been smaller, but ours hadn’t been zero.

“They know all about the ravages of war, right from the start. They were born into it,” Itsuki said. I took a moment to think about them. However you framed it, they had a hard life. And yet I could only see their smiles. I wasn’t exactly getting homesick, but I did feel like a trip back.

“Being able to protect everyone from violence . . . that only happens in stories. But I deeply respect your desire to do so,” Itsuki told me. I had no reply. “I understand now that a village where everyone can fight for themselves and want to help you shines far more brightly than one that doesn’t.”

“Sophistry,” I said.

“I don’t disagree. But I finally understand everything that Rishia and Ren tried so hard to tell me about you,” he continued.

“You mean how I was like the slave of everyone in the village?” I said. I’d sworn that wasn’t the case, but the two of them had been quite passionate in their defense of the idea. I’d never felt quite so strange about a concept before.

“That’s not the case though, is it?” Itsuki said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When saving and leading people, you need to think about the kind of people they need to be in the future,” he replied. That was a roundabout way of saying things. “The world is full of corruption, starting with but not limited to the Church of the Three Heroes. It all comes from the idea that if anything goes wrong, they can just rely on a hero to save them. If they are trusting their very lives to someone else, it doesn’t do them any good if that person saves them.”