Then, one day, an incident occurred in the old Demon Lord's domain.
"Waaah!"
"What is that?"
"The sky is falling!"
It was a meteor strike.
Colossal meteors had struck the planet Eishir many times before.
And of course, palm-sized little meteors fall by the dozen every year.
Amid all that, a somewhat larger meteor had fallen on the Demon Lord's domain.
KA-BOOOOM.
The surrounding trees were flattened, and at the center a small crater was gouged out.
"Aaah, the seal is collapsing!"
"So it is."
"The Demon Lord's going to revive."
"So he is."
"What'll we do, Aithel?"
"An oracle—an oracle!"
"Right you are."
And so it was decided.
"Long time no see, little humans. It's Aithel."
"Wh—wh-what is this, what's happening?"
"You may have forgotten, but it's an oracle. I'm your ever-so-adorable goddess, Aithel."
"So the oracles of old were real...! Y-yes! At once!"
"About a thousand years, has it been."
"It's the real thing—!"
The priests of the Temple of Beginnings, in a flustered panic, go scattering in every direction.
"Gather round, please. It's an oracle."
"Yes, right away."
"A short while ago you likely felt a small earthquake. In truth, a meteor fell in a distant land."
"A meteor?"
"A meteor. And with it, the Demon Lord's seal has come undone. You are to select a Hero once more and strike down the Demon Lord."
"A Hero?"
"That's right. A Hero. Unless you take a Saint, a Mage, a knight and the like and subjugate the Demon Lord, humanity will suffer immense harm."
"S-such a thing—!"
"Do your best, now."
It's slapdash, well enough—but it was the truth.
This incident, carried by relay horse, spread as rumor in no time not only across the kingdom but throughout the whole empire, so they say.
And of course it spreads to the many small nations surrounding the kingdom and the empire as well.
"We shall select a Hero!"
"At once!"
The day came for the king to choose a Hero, in high spirits.
It being the first time in roughly a thousand years, he was showing tremendous enthusiasm.
"Sir Charis, the knight. Do your utmost as our Hero."
"Understood, Your Majesty."
Charis the knight was a young man who had earned excellent marks in the very academy system this nation had established, and served as a knight.
By one account, there's a rumor he carries the blood of the Hero from a thousand years ago.
But it's a rumor, and nothing certain.
In any case, there's no Hero without a Demon Lord, and no Demon Lord without a Hero—so it would seem.
There's no denying it's a kind of coexistence.
Of course you can install a Hero in peacetime too, but a Hero in name only is bound to fade away before long.
"A Saint, a Mage, and a Sage, was it."
"That's right. By all means."
The Hero Charis sought companions.
The office of Saint had existed since long ago and had been handed down in an unbroken line.
It has ties to the church, and there's a history of Saints being prized as medical practitioners as well.
Good-looking, and useful for bolstering the church—a convenient institution, in short.
"As for a Sage, though—it's proving difficult."
"Is that so."
No suitable person for Sage would appear—until, one day, someone wandered in.
"An elf?"
"That's right."
A person calling herself a descendant of the elves, having caught wind of the rumor from somewhere, visited the royal palace, and the problem was solved.
Just as rumored, her ears were long, her hair golden and eyes blue, and she was a beautiful girl.
"Elves really do have that designer-child air about them, don't they, Lord Lunga."
"Well, we did design them, so—yeah."
"Everyone gets to be a beauty, lucky them, 'tis."
"You're a beautiful girl yourself, Aithel."
"Hee hee."
Little knowing she was being appraised from up in the heavens, the ancient-lineage elf's entry into the fray was settled.
Her lifespan is a thousand years, of course, so it's not as though she'd been alive since that long ago.
It would be more accurate to say the line had carried it down as a species.
The Demon Lord too, but also humans, elves, beastkin—all these peoples are descendants of that bacteria.
Hundreds of millions of years have passed since then, and to think life has kept its thread unbroken to arrive at now—there's something deeply moving in it.
For the spectators it was just a matter of pressing the Hundred-Million-Year Button, but even that's no longer needed now; we simply watch people's lives and enjoy them.
Can humanity be saved from the Demon Lord's threat?
On the edge of our seats, hearts pounding.
We can't help getting fired up.
Determined not to miss a single important event, we press ourselves right up against the hologram.