The Hero Who Returned From Death Quits - Chapter 217



EP10. The Falling Twilight

I opened my mouth. I didn’t want to just sit there and do nothing, wrapped up in something like sadness.

“…This is the last time.”

I said that to the little girl in front of me.

“This is the last time a warrior is made, and you will be in someone’s hands again.”

It would rather be closer to a wish.

I don’t know if it’s possible in reality, but there was no lie in what I said.

It’s the wind.

It is a wish.

It is a wish.

I lit up my dreams, the stars in my heart.

“Then you won’t have to suffer. You’ll just become a useless piece of scrap metal, locked up in a warehouse alone and gathering dust. Or you might become a symbol of the past. What’s certain is that you won’t be clinging to such a mission or past events any longer.”

The Holy Sword looked up at me.

I suddenly felt annoyed and said bluntly.

“So, don’t try to use me for your mental self-defense. I caught you by deciding to fight of my own volition, and this time, you are no longer an innocent victim, but are in the hands of a warrior. I am a warrior, and at least I will decide the end of my fight.”

The girl burst into laughter when she heard those words.

“Mental, self-defense… Yes, that’s right. It’s what happened in the past and all, and I have no right to stop you from fighting. Yes. I’ve already chosen you as the Holy Sword, as the Hero, so it won’t do anything for me to wallow in depression by myself. But, can you win? Your mind-”

“Ha, when did you ever worry about my mental health like that? You never even thought about that in the first place.”

I let out a cynical laugh, then smiled at a thought that suddenly occurred to me.

“Okay, I have a goal.”

“…target?”

“Yes. I will fight, and after I win, I will laugh at you. I will laugh at you, saying that I have compensated for all the things that were ruined in my life because of you, that you made me fall into a pit, and now you are pretending to be the only one having a hard time, mentally masturbating, and you have accomplished something that was said to be impossible. I will laugh at you like that.”

Seonggeom closed his eyes upon hearing those words.

“…You really don’t waver at all.”

“Then, did you think I’d just sit around and do something as unfunny as you?”

I thrust my arm in front of the Holy Sword.

Before I knew it, the crack had disappeared. The little girl opened her eyes wide and looked at me.

“What’s surprising? It’s natural for humans to become stronger when they have a goal, so it’s not strange.”

When Seonggeom heard those words, he burst into laughter.

“Haha, hahahahahaha! Okay, fine. Let me go somewhere. Smash that damn Demon King and all, and turn me into a useless piece of scrap metal.”

Before I knew it, a door had appeared behind me. I opened the door, leaving the girl behind.

…

The first thing I felt as I stepped out the door was a sense of death.

My breath caught in my throat, my head became dizzy, and I felt my soul leaving my head.

A feeling that, no matter how much I think about it, I can only describe as unpleasant.

But, it doesn’t become dull. It can’t become dull. To become dull, the flesh alone is enough.

Even if I went back to the past again, the Demon King would attack me without fail, I would do my best to deal with it, and again without fail, I would die. The pain of the body, the state of being on the verge of death, has a significant effect on the mind. Regardless of the will, the state of the body inevitably clouds that will.

But even so, my soul has not yet been broken. Rather, like a coldly sharpened knife, it has become even sharper. I am afraid of death, and I am afraid of pain. That is why I can say that the me who is now sharpening my will through fear is much more courageous than the me of the past who lost fear. I can say that I have finally gained true courage.

Again, as soon as I returned to the past, I avoided the Demon King’s attack. The time of return was gradually moving forward. If I avoided one attack, the point of return would change to the point after that one attack was avoided. In this way, I returned countless times, avoided countless attacks, and exhausted the Demon King’s power little by little.

The Demon King laughed when he saw me like that.

“Hahahaha! I don’t know what kind of power that is that allows you to dodge all of my attacks. But, yeah… no matter what kind of power you have, in the end, it’s over if you break the heart of its owner.”

The Demon King poured countless black magic spells at once. So much so that there was no time to dodge.

This attack, I didn’t know how to dodge. So I died without finding a way. I just watched the endless barrage of attacks and wasted my time in returning.

But that doesn’t mean I can let go. If that’s the case, I have to do something. I examined the Demon King’s magic. I couldn’t figure out its structure in one go. That’s why I continued to examine the magic. Over and over, dozens of times, hundreds of times.

As time passed and I couldn’t even remember how many times I died trying to seize that one opportunity, I was finally able to completely analyze the Demon King’s spell, and I took advantage of that gap to break the spell.

Then, the Demon King became even more excited and launched all sorts of attacks. How long must he have watched that scene?

Occasionally, my colleagues would come up to me and ask me to fight with them. However, I refused them.

This fight was only my fight. Even if others poured their strength into the Demon King, it would be a waste of energy. Considering the Demon King’s power, it would be much better to fight somewhere else. That’s why I continued to face the Demon King alone. I tried to escape to somewhere else without fighting the Demon King, but even then, all I could see was a annihilation.

Maybe the path I chose wasn’t the right one. Maybe there was a way that had a slightly better chance of winning. No, maybe it would have been better to just give up without even hoping to win. But I didn’t feel any regret at all.

Stepping beyond distrust, leaving fear behind, brushing past pain, taking a step beyond that.

So, I took up the sword.

The feeling that I was truly alive in this fight was greater than the pain and fear of a single death.

Because I know death, I know that I am alive.

I feel the air flowing through my lungs. I feel the full movement of the muscles swinging the sword. I feel myself fully, and my senses expand.

Before I knew it, the Demon King’s attacks were starting to show up little by little.

However, I was unable to dodge several times. Whenever I dodge an attack, I would inevitably get hit by the next attack and fall down. Every time that happened, I felt regret.

I feel like I can do something better. I feel like I can dodge that attack too-

Such regrets were soon overshadowed by death and regression that would come again, but in any case, those numerous experiences with death were helping me grow little by little.

When I couldn’t even get over the wall, where did I come from and where did I go? Was growth even possible for me now? A thousand questions ran through my head.

And then, after fighting like that for a while, I finally realized.

That means the end of power is coming.

I didn’t know it until now. However, when I faced it like this, I felt that my power was being slightly reduced every time I died.

‘The remaining period is… about a month.’

Since then, I have not lost my senses at all. Whenever my will weakened a little, I could feel the remaining time of my power being sapped, so I continued to be aware of that and avoided the Demon King’s attacks.

Perhaps the Demon King was not completely immune to black magic. If it was powerful enough to blow away my body, which was equipped with a self-defense gimmick, then it must have been black magic with a considerable amount of black magic. However, it was not at a level where it would be easy to shake.

I had to find a way to drag it out a little longer, make it waste its energy, and then take it down.

In this way, it was more regrettable that the Demon King was not using his power. If he had used his power, he could have made him waste a little more black magic.

Even as I thought that way, my body felt an increasingly strange sense of disconnect.

What on earth could it be?

Every time I swung my sword, I felt the sword strike becoming a little heavier. In magic, in archery. In every field I was capable of, I felt progress that clearly should not have been made.

I thought so, and continued to fight, died again, and regressed again.

I realized before I knew it how many times I had repeated that.

‘If I die this time, it really is the last.’

The last line of defense before I can return is right now.

As soon as I had that thought, my throat was pierced.

…I realized now that I could no longer go back.