SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 93: So Much To Do

The estate hadn’t changed a bit. That was the first thing lena noticed coming through the gates.

It still smelled like wood and whatever the hell the gardeners were burning in the back.

It felt weird to be back in Ashfen. Lena boots were still covered in dried mud, but the house was so quiet it felt like the last few days hadn’t even happened.

She stood there for a moment, doing nothing but breathing, as if she needed that second to settle herself.

A servant stepped forward and took her bag without a word, smooth and practiced, just the way she had taught them. Or maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was Lena.

Lately, the line between the two of them felt blurry, like she couldn’t quite tell where one ended and the other began.

She walked into the estate and made her way to Caelum’s office, ready to report on her mission.

When it came time to give her report, she kept it simple.

There wasn’t much point in dressing it up. Worm infestation. Source found. Source destroyed. Veth’s livestock problem—handled.

She stayed standing as she spoke, her voice even, her posture steady, watching Caelum closely.

His expression barely changed, which was exactly what she expected. Still, she could feel the weight of his attention on her.

He asked a single question. She gave a straight answer. He nodded once, and just like that, the conversation was over.

As she stepped out of the study, the quiet of the hallway wrapped around her, and her thoughts drifted. It felt strange, when she really stopped to consider it.

She had just killed something as large as a fallen building—something that, in her old life, would have been the kind of story she’d tell over and over again, each time with more detail, more weight.

Something people would have listened to with wide eyes.

But here, it was reduced to a few plain sentences.

And somehow, that was the strangest part of all.

Because this quiet, efficient, almost indifferent way of dealing with extraordinary things somehow felt better.

She found the box again when she unpacked.

She had wrapped it in a spare undershirt and tucked it at the bottom of her bag and somehow she had managed not to think about it constantly, which felt like an achievement.

She sat on the edge of her bed and held it in both hands and looked at it.

It was small. Made of dark wood or something that only looked like wood, with corner fittings that weren’t quite metal.

There was no latch, no seam, nothing to suggest it could even be opened.

Just a box that didn’t seem meant to open at all.

It had appeared after she killed the Worm Mother, given to her by the system. A reward or a drop.

That was the only way to describe it, even if this system didn’t behave the way systems were supposed to. She had stopped trying to force it into familiar patterns. It didn’t follow rules she knew, and it clearly didn’t care to.

She turned the box over once in her hands, studying it.

Then, instead of guessing, she focused.

The system responded with information, placed directly into her awareness.

Item obtained.

Name: key To Tomb of Great Sage

Linked Object: Tomb.

Status: Locked.

Access Condition: Incomplete.

That was all.

The information settled in her mind clearly, without speculation, without any feeling to interpret or vague impressions to chase, just plain facts presented exactly as they were meant to be understood.

She went over it again, more slowly this time, letting each part sink in: a key, meant for a tomb But there was no location, no directions, no hint of where it might be or when it would matter, only the simple certainty that this box was tied to something sealed somewhere out there.

She lingered for a moment, half-expecting the system to reveal more, but nothing followed, no hidden layer, no additional prompt, nothing beyond what she had already been given.

Accepting that, she wrapped the box in an undershirt and placed it carefully in the drawer beside her bed, then sat there quietly with her hands resting in her lap, her gaze unfocused.

It was a key to something she couldn’t even begin to find, given to her by a system that offered just enough to be useful and nothing more. She let out a slow breath, steady and controlled, and told herself she would figure it out eventually.

Eventually—that word had started to carry more weight than she liked.

The afternoon was consumed by work. The kind that always seemed to be waiting for her no matter how much had already been done.

There were inventory issues in the kitchen stores that needed checking, a disagreement between two servants that had grown far more serious in her absence than it ever should have, and a delivery that had arrived with the wrong items and now required a careful response to sort out.

She handled all of it.

Efficiently, calmly, and almost without thinking, because she didn’t really need to think about it anymore.

That was the strange part, the way it had become natural.

The instincts that once belonged to the original Lena had settled into her as if they had always been hers.

She moved through the estate with quiet certainty, knowing where everything was, knowing what needed to be done, often before anyone even said it out loud.

She was very good at being someone she wasn’t.

And yet, in the spaces between tasks,her thoughts kept drifting back to the same thing.

The other heroes.

She had nothing to go on. No contact, no signal, no message from the system that suggested anyone else had survived whatever had brought her here.

Most days, she didn’t think about it at all, too occupied to let it surface, but in quieter moments it returned, persistent and unwelcome.

Where are they?

She had only a guess, and even calling it that felt generous. The human empire.

It was the kind of conclusion that followed game logic rather than real logic, but it still held a certain weight.

Heroes tended to appear in places that matched them. She had arrived in a demon body, inside the demon empire. It stood to reason that someone who arrived in a human body would end up among humans.

Probably.

It wasn’t much to build on, and she knew it. The idea was little more than a theory shaped out of thin air, given the softer name of a guess so it would feel more solid than it actually was.

And even if she was right, it didn’t change anything.

She had no way to get there. The border between the demon empire and the human empire wasn’t something a demon butler could cross on a whim, and from what she had gathered, small pieces of conversation, it wasn’t something anyone crossed easily anymore.

Still, she told herself the same thing she had before.

She would figure it out eventually.

The hours passed quietly after that, the rhythm of work carrying her forward until afternoon slipped into early evening, and it was then that Ian appeared in the doorway of her workroom, wearing that particular expression that meant Caelum was asking for her again.

He was standing by the window when she entered. She had begun to notice a pattern, he tended to stand there when he was in the middle of thinking something through.

She recognized it and stored it away, and dismissed it as one of those details she had no real use for and kept observing anyway.

"There is a conference," he said at last. "In the capital."

She remained silent.

"Twelve days from now." He turned from the window then, his expression deliberately flat. "The situation with the human empire has reached a point where the council requires a formal gathering. Among other things."

He paused briefly before continuing, "And most of the demon princes are also gathering for a separate conference to discuss an important matter given directly to the eldest prince by the Demon Emperor."

She caught the weight in that phrase and left it alone.

"You’ll attend as my Aide," he continued, the words delivered as a decision already made rather than something open for discussion. "The capital is not like Veth. The people there will be watching everything, everyone connected to everyone else. Conduct yourself accordingly."

"Of course," she said.

He studied her for a moment, that familiar look returning, the one that suggested he was measuring something about her and finding the result just slightly off from what he expected, without yet deciding what that meant.

"Ten days," he said. "Prepare."

She gave a short bow and left.

She walked back to her quarters, letting the idea of the conference settle into her mind and take up the space it was inevitably going to occupy.

She thought about the box in her drawer.

She thought about the tomb she couldn’t find, the other heroes she had no way of reaching, and the dungeon that still made no sense no matter how she approached it.

There was too much to prepare in ten days.

She sat at her desk, picked up a pen, and began making a list.

When she noticed a letter on her desk, she saw it bore the mark of Hollow seal.

"Can this really get any worse?"