Strawberry Devil in a Fantasy World

Each hero born into this world would have their own individual traits and abilities. Once a being became a hero, it was a point of no return. Although it was the same deal for the other three paths, the difference was that a hero would be forever bound to the physical world and never to attain a pure spiritual body. That was the first downside to being a hero. Of course, there was much more to that, including many benefits.

The first major benefit was that they seemed to have a variable status. Based on Vorte's experience, heroes would always be at least fifty percent more powerful than the strongest opponents they were fighting as long as heroes were fighting on their home turf. When heroes became invaders, their fighting strength tended to be much weaker. This meant that heroes were defenders and not invaders. The details of how the new stats were calculated was unknown.

This was probably also why a hero would rarely lead an invasion into another country. A hero king would likely be no different than a regular soldier in terms of raw stats. There would be no point in being a hero in that case. Though, this restriction didn't seem to apply to those under a hero's command so a hero's army could still be doing the dirty work. Once a land had been fully conquered, a hero just had to sit there and defend it.

Anyway, there seemed to be more to it than just sitting around and defend. A hero needed to be recognized and trusted by the populace of the land. Vorte speculated that there might be a threshold in faith a hero needed from that populace, however he had never collected any data so it might as well be a guess. It seemed that this was a way that the system or world prevented heroes from becoming tyrants.

It was extremely rare for heroes to lose the support of the populace. Generally speaking, the more support and faith a hero received, the more powerful a hero became. In the event that a hero lost such support, he or she would age rapidly and perish. Obviously, heroes were not immune to the passage of time and would age even with the support of the populace but at a much slower pace.

After hearing all this, I figured that the evolution requirements likely wasn't level 70 but something else. Otherwise, it just wouldn't be worth becoming a hero if there were better choices. To add to that, it was strange that he didn't know if there was a level requirement. Someone was bound to have checked the status of potential heroes unless memories were tampered and contracts were signed by heroes. Perhaps it was recorded somewhere and he just didn't know.

Anyway, none of the two paths mentioned by Vorte were by any means bad choices since evolutions in this world always meant becoming more powerful. After hearing this much, if I could choose, I would pick one of the three paths instead of becoming a hero. It was just a niche thing more or less.

Vorte once heard a story of two heroes fighting each other due to a clash of ideals. In the end, only one stood victorious even though both should be equally powerful. It was likely a result of many factors that decided the match such as usage of traits, abilities and tactics. Though, it made me wonder if the support of the spectators had any contributions. After all, heroes seemed to rely heavily on faith for strength. Without it, they were as good as a regular folk.

Hey, why don't I just secretly wipe out the whole human population? That hero king would perish in his sleep! Or if I can undo the brainwashing and get everyone to hate him, then he would also wither away on the spot. I'm such a genius! But oh wait, what if more heroes spawn because I'm recognized as a threat? This is tricky. Until I know the exact requirements, I should stay away. Yep!

I always had fantastic ideas in my mind, always!

Anyway, we conversed for quite long. The cave which was technically a part of the temple was already getting dark but neither of us needed our physical sight to see. Well, strictly speaking, the lighting crystals were too dim and no one bothered to raise their brightness. At this point, he had covered all the topics I was interested in so we concluded our meeting.

"Good luck on your evolution! See you later." I said.

"Farewell."

I guess I'll meet up with Haelley in the palace.

That bird girl never showed up here. Perhaps, she was training somewhere else with other folks. After all, this place wasn't short of strong individuals.

I promptly left the temple. Since I didn't actually accomplish my goal, I didn't have anything to say to Smoothie. Instead, I visited that remote valley where I had first entered my subspace.

Time to test things out. Can I consider myself a scientist now?

There were several things I wished to test and work on. The first was to test whether I could teleport directly into my subspace. To do that, I threw a strawberry into my subspace. Once the subspace portal closed, I attempted to teleport in.

There was no reaction.

Haah... It doesn't work. I guess it's considered a separate space. How about I open it up a tiny bit?

Allowing even a tiny bit of connection between this world and my subspace seemed to have done the trick. Instantly I was inside my subspace. Apparently, absorbing things and sending them via my abilities didn't count as a connection, at least not by the system. It sort of made sense but sort of didn't. If I absorbed myself using my ability to get into my subspace, it would be like eating and digesting myself, not that different from a death wish.   

Awesome! I could escape into subspace if I ever get trapped in a barrier! But wait, wouldn't that mean if they kept up that barrier, I would be sealed forever? That wouldn't be funny! Well, I'll think of a way when that time comes.

The second thing I wanted to tested was how wide this subspace portal could open. Of course, mana was required to access my subspace physically. So, how large an opening I created directly corresponded to the mana it required to operate.

Since I couldn't be too careless like opening a gate the size of my entire subspace, I decided to start with something simple like the size of a lake.

Just like that, a nearby lake that connected to the valley was swallowed up in a single gulp.

Woah! This makes [absorption] seem like child-play! Ehh... Hopefully, no one saw that.

Knowing this, I could effectively capture things in my subspace if I wished. That was good to know. However, it was simply more efficient to use magic to encase a target first since my mana was limited regardless how much I had absorbed so far.

Hmm... There's probably no actual limit to size. I wonder if my subspace can grow?

It wasn't difficult to get a visual of the size of my subspace. I just had to re-examine the curvature of the shell being formed since I originally set the automatic construction to be the edge of my subspace. To be frank, numerical values on a screen wasn't too helpful for someone like me.

I'm still short of materials for construction. I should probably just hollow the planet. It's not like anyone is making use of all that good stuff down there, right?

First come, first serve!

To make things easier for me, I scattered some special clones, which were just lumps of plant matter, to gather rocks and minerals. Their ability to absorb things were set to maximum. Basically, they ate up anything in contact with them, mana, air, dirt, whatever they might be, living or not.

Well, it wasn't like they could instantly eat up anything, time was still required. Eventually there would be a bunch of holes in the ground but that wasn't my concern at the moment since they were dropped at various remote places with the desert being several of them. No one would care if a chunk of desert disappeared. Yes, no one would care.

In total, I scattered about a hundred special clones or so. That should speed up construction within my subspace by quite a bit.

I accomplished so much tonight! I'm so proud of myself. Can someone give me a pat? Anyone? No? Okay. Where's my ice cream?

With all that finished, I headed back to the palace and ventured towards Haelley's chamber. I was sure she was sleeping already this late into the night.

When I arrived at the palace, with my new official documents and authority received from Kanoko, getting past the guards was an easy matter.