Skill Tree Goddess:Volume1 Epilogue

Epilogue: A Still Unseen Hero

Brave Liar came to. The first thing he saw was the abandoned castle’s ceiling. Then a girl’s face peering down at him. Seeing the jelly girl’s face screwed up with tears told him what had happened.

So I lost, the Hero spoke under his breath.

“Look, Gilbezos. That troublemaker just woke up. Ugh.”

“Did he?”

The Hero spoke to the victor.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because I promised I wouldn’t.”

Gilbezos didn’t say to whom he had promised.

The look on his face said he would punch Brave Liar if he couldn’t figure that much out.

“Also I wanted to ask you something.”

“?”

There was no deeper layer to this incident. Brave Liar had been known as the Hero and he had been feared because he didn’t hesitate to shatter any political power or bonds that got in the way of his actions.

But Gilbezos Overridge was talking about something else.

“I want to be a Hero.”

Time froze.

He didn’t mean he wanted to fight and kill monsters.

He meant it on a more fundamental level.

The king had asked him to stop Brave Liar and to do one more thing: to not create a world that believes death in the face of adversity is to be expected. That part of the promise was still active.

He could manipulate the Skill Tree to learn overpowered abilities. He could do just about anything. But that wasn’t enough. Fighting Brave Liar had taught him that. Heroes really were special. Specifically, they could learn the Hero exclusive skills. He had won this time because his specialized strategy had worked, but he would have been killed if his cheap trick had been broken and he had been forced into a direct mudslinging contest.

Being a Hero didn’t mean you were right.

Or maybe it was better to say being an embodiment of righteousness didn’t mean you were safe.

Brave Liar had proven that. Gilbezos had to assume he might end up facing another dangerous Hero carrying a different form of righteousness.

“You know how to do that, don’t you? What exactly do you have to do to become a Hero?”

Brave Liar was the Hero who could no longer battle monsters, but he had once been the traditional sort of Hero. So at the very least, he had to know how an ordinary human became a special Hero.

“You can’t do it through the Skill Tree,” said the goddess. “Opening up the Hero exclusive skills area requires being someone worthy of being called a Hero.”

That meant it didn’t work like ordinary status jobs where, for example, you gained the title of “priest” because you knew a lot of recovery magic skills. You first had to become a Hero and then could learn the skills. So what was the condition? Gilbezos couldn’t even guess. He had never heard of any training or tests for it.

“Why do you want to?”

“Because it opens up new possibilities. New trump cards that let me fight against absurd tragedy.”

This wasn’t just about humans and monsters. There had to be plenty more invisible dividing lines and suffering that ordinary people couldn’t see. Those cruel gears were the kind of thing people failed to notice until they themselves were caught in them.

Gilbezos was not an ally of humans, nor was he on the side of the monsters. He would simply reach out a helping hand if any good person was suffering for some inexplicable reason. And if he was going to do that, he wanted to take it as far as he could.

The cruel gears?

He would find each and every one and remove it.

Brave Liar clicked his tongue and spoke without looking Gilbezos in the eye.

“You weren’t born a Hero, which means you don’t have the inborn traits. So you can’t just become a Hero by following in my footsteps.”

Inborn traits. The world really wasn’t going to make it easy.

But Gilbezos’s thoughts were cut off by Brave Liar’s next words.

“Did you forget? You showed a flicker of it back there.”

“?”

“From what you’ve built up. Separate from the Skill Tree. …If you weren’t born with it, you’ll just have to work harder to build up little bits and pieces here and there to increase your heroism.”

There was still a path forward.

It might be narrow, dark, and unreliable, but Gilbezos knew what he had to do.

He had made a promise.

So he couldn’t back out now.

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