The Hero's Bathhouse

There's a bathhouse at the dead end of a soot-stained back alley, and the sign's so worn you can only read one letter of it. The old man who runs it can't use a lick of magic. All he can do is split wood, read a fire, and boil good hot water. So why do the deadliest people alive keep sneaking in after dark?

Galeo is a tired man in his forties who got let go from the adventurers' guild for being "only good for lighting fires." In a kingdom that runs on magic, that's about the most useless thing a man can be. So he bought a derelict bathhouse nobody wanted, lit the old boiler, and settled in to spend his nights the only way he knows how — tending a fire and handing warm rice balls to whoever wanders in.

The trouble is who wanders in. A hooded swordswoman who slays dragons single-handed. A battle-scarred hero. A haughty priest from the holy city. Eventually, a demon lord who's been at war for centuries. Every one of them carries a bone-deep exhaustion no spell, potion, or sleep can touch — a "sludge" that builds in the strongest until it breaks them. And every one of them walks out of Galeo's water lighter, softer, half-asleep on his bench with a rice ball in hand.

Because Galeo is the last of a lost people whose fire could melt that sludge away. He is the one man in the world who can heal the heroes who guard it. There's just one problem: he has absolutely no idea. As far as he's concerned, he runs a bathhouse. The water's just water. The rice balls are just rice balls. And everyone in the world knows what he is — except him.

Author's note: I am the original author. This is my own English translation of my Japanese web novel, serialized on Kakuyomu: https://kakuyomu.jp/works/2912051603245993091. Royal Road is the only official English publication of this work.