Return (1)
Why did I end up on this land?
This was a question Dalen had never forgotten since he first opened his eyes on the snowy mountain.
Even after vowing never to lose anything again and promising to protect the precious bonds he had formed here, the question lingered.
The meaning and goals he found for himself could drive his life, but they couldn’t answer the most fundamental question.
“Who brought me here? I’ve always wondered.”
The pantheon of the Empire? The lords of the Great Abyss? A secret magical society’s ritual? Or perhaps the war god worshipped by the Holy Knights?
Maybe it was just a coincidence. He had long known that not everything in the world followed a predetermined fate.
“Turns out it was a pretty cliché reason.”
The truth was surprisingly mundane, like something out of a third-rate novel or a boy’s comic.
Save the world, they said. And they chose a couch potato from South Korea for the job?
This so-called transcendent will, which supposedly governed countless worlds, must have been desperate.
Then again, maybe it made sense that such a transcendent will had no one else to turn to. Dalen’s mind was filled with these random thoughts.
A problem that had troubled him for three nights turned out to be trivial once the answer was known. Life’s dilemmas often felt the same once resolved.
Faced with a rather anticlimactic answer, his thoughts tangled into a complex web rather than delving deeply into the reason behind it.
“If that was the case, they could’ve at least given me more support. Dropping me into a medieval land without a clue. What if I had just died?”
Even now, after countless battles and hardships had made him stronger, the situation was the same.
With his current power, he couldn’t defeat Enaxagus.
His holy sword and axe were broken, and most of his relics were lost.
He had gained the powers of Delaine and stats in the triple digits, but Enaxagus had grown just as strong.
“He united the forces of the Five Great Abysses. Even if Delaine herself stepped in, facing such a foe would be impossible.”
As he sank into the Abyss, observing the labyrinthine city like a third-person spectator, he spotted Enaxagus near the horizon.
Though he could only see a blurred silhouette, the piercing gaze that shone through the veil unmistakably held the power of the Five Great Abysses.
The five evil gods and their armies were supposed to be in constant conflict, biting and checking each other.
Even amidst a grand invasion, skirmishes among demons and the vigilance against such conflicts never ceased.
“But now that the evil gods have united, they’ll combine their powers completely. It’s not just five times stronger. It’s more than that.”
How could he overcome the impending apocalypse, a union of the Great Abysses he had never defeated even from behind a monitor?
Dalen scratched his chin, looking at the man before him. Come to think of it, there was someone who had already saved the world once.
Moreover, this legendary hero and war god was also said to have come from another place, not this continent.
“So, you were brought here by the Well of Reversal too?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Huh? Didn’t you say last time that an external presence was needed?
As Dalen raised an eyebrow, the man shrugged, answering the unspoken question.
“The Well of Reversal did ask for help. But unlike your case, it had no power over me. I came to this world of my own will, to save its powerless inhabitants.”
”…And then?”
“And then I had to make a choice, just as Delaine told you.”
The man grinned, revealing sharp canines in a smile that was both gentle and fierce.
“See for yourself.”
With that, the man nodded toward the pillar of light.
Inside, countless scenes began to flicker.
[Huff. Huff… What kind of herb grows on such a cliff?]
The first scene showed an herbalist.
A middle-aged man who traveled the continent gathering herbs, only to be captured and eaten by an orc tribe.
[Tsk, today’s extra income isn’t great.]
The next scene featured a mercenary.
A mercenary who earned money by cutting down monsters and men alike, only to die the day after being promoted to a gold badge, struck by a stray arrow.
An imperial centurion, a knight of the Tsar’s kingdom, a disciple of the magic tower, a monk who took up woodcutting.
Hundreds of scenes, each a vivid tapestry of diverse lives. And Dalen knew the beginnings and ends of those lives.
“My characters.”
The ordinary and heroic figures he had watched with half-closed eyes from behind a monitor. Protagonists created with the clicks of a mouse and keyboard.
Dalen scanned the scenes within the pillar of light. Not all of them were characters he had raised.
These were not game characters but the lives of heroes. Lives born as someone’s son or daughter, instead of starting on a snowy mountain.
”…That one.”
Among them, one man particularly caught his eye.
The land and sky where the man stood were slightly different from the other scenes.
A snow-covered tundra. Clothing made of thick furs. People relying on hunting more than commerce or agriculture. And a strangely unfamiliar night sky.
“Is it a different time period?”
Dalen noticed the subtle differences in the positions and shapes of the constellations.
His remarkable senses and memory recalled a page from a thick astronomy book Felber had once read.
It was a drawing estimating the constellations from before recorded history, based on the movements of stars over the past few centuries.
If the book’s records were accurate, and if his memory was correct, those were constellations from thousands of years ago.
Dalen turned to the man.
“Is that you?”
”…”
The man did not answer.
He simply stared silently at the pillar of light.
Seeing the eyes lost in deep reminiscence, Dalen shrugged and looked back into the pillar.
[A son! What a strong cry!]
[Congratulations, Yurkan!]
The man was a warrior born and raised in the north.
A society of ancient northerners, where there was a king but he was merely a representative of the chiefs, living scattered in small to medium-sized tribes.
The man was born in a small, remote tribe. There, he grew into a warrior skilled in hunting, trapping, and fighting, like other northerners.
Hunting by day. Festivals and skill honing by night.
Until he turned thirty, his life was a continuous cycle of repeated time.
Yet even in that monotonous repetition, the man was acutely aware of his own extraordinariness.
So he would occasionally leave the village to gaze at the white tundra to the north, lost in thought.
[Hey! Yurkan’s son, Hadash!]
[Is the tribe’s greatest warrior staring at the edge of the world again today?]
[We’ve lit the bonfire, come have a drink, the village women are waiting for you!]
Until his friends came to drag him to the village festival, the man’s gaze remained fixed on the edge of the land.
And a few years later, when he was about to celebrate his thirtieth birthday,
From the white wasteland he had always watched, an army of millions of demons began to descend.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
[Sound the drums! Blow the horns!]
[We will not retreat! We will defend our land!]
War broke out.
The northerners, each a seasoned warrior and hunter, held the line against the demon and monster armies for a long time.
The man, the tribe’s greatest warrior, also took to the battlefield. Surviving countless battles, he and his comrades grew stronger by the day.
With each demon’s head he severed, the divine power within him grew.
More precisely, the divine power that had always slumbered within him was slowly awakening, fueled by the evil he vanquished.
[Retreat! Retreat… ugh!]
[Head south! The allied forces await us!]
But no matter how powerful a hero, victory in war cannot be achieved alone.
Overwhelmed by the endless demon hordes, the man and his comrades led the surviving warriors south.
Their homeland was left in ruins. The human kingdoms to the south, the dwarven kingdoms within the mountains, and the beastmen territories could not escape the flames of war.
Millions of lives fell into the hands of the abyss. Countless people lost their homes.
By then, the man’s strength had grown to the point where he could crush a demon’s skull with his bare hands.
Heroes of equal prowess began to join him as comrades.
[Krzzzt! Stop the northern flames! Krzzzt!]
The Lizardman theocracy of the southern great forest, realizing they were next, sent a massive army north.
[We have come to vanquish the continent’s evil. We also bring humanitarian supplies, so please distribute them to prevent the refugees from starving.]
The elves from across the sea, recognizing the gravity of the situation, dispatched a large contingent of reinforcements.
The Pharaoh of the Sandstorm Dynasty personally led his royal guard from the western mainland, and the dwarves broke their rules to convert deep underground machinery into weapons.
The beastmen and humans, who had been in constant conflict, united. The northerners sharpened their blades with the vengeance of losing their homeland.
The grand counterattack of the allied forces began, and the territories of mortals were slowly reclaimed.
It took nearly a decade to reclaim the central and northern regions of the continent.
In the tenth year, the allied forces advanced beyond the lands of the northerners, reaching the stronghold of the dark gods that had descended upon the continent.
The wind howled, a blizzard obscuring all vision.
Visibility was reduced to just a few meters.
The allied forces trudged through the snow, their feet sinking into the frozen ground beneath, braving the biting cold.
“Chhht.”
“Phhh…”
White breaths escaped from mouths of all shapes and sizes. The thirty-thousand-strong allied army was a tapestry of diverse races.
Lizardmen and beastfolk, elves and dwarves, humans and high orcs, northerners and desert dwellers.
Lizardmen perched atop massive dinosaurs, bows in hand, scanning the surroundings, while towering ten-meter-tall tripedal machines creaked forward, cutting through the blizzard.
The jeweled eyes of the Sandstorm Dynasty’s golems glinted in various colors despite the cold, most of them hauling the high orcs’ supply wagons.
Dozens of flags flapped violently in the fierce wind. Heroes dispatched by each faction of the continent, staking their destinies, showed uncharacteristic signs of tension.
”…Ahem!”
“Hoo. Hoo.”
They knew.
If they lost here, there would be no next time.
Without their elite forces, the alliance would be unable to repel the advancing army of dark gods.
Their hard-won homeland would be ravaged, and their families and friends would be slaughtered, served up on the demons’ tables.
”…”
”…”
Yet, in their silent eyes, there was a resolve and faith that overshadowed fear.
Tens of thousands of eyes were fixed on the back of one man.
A man wielding a sword and axe, leading the vanguard of the allied forces.
Standing over two meters tall, with broad shoulders and muscles like stone.
His long hair and beard were matted with snow, and beneath his tattered fur armor, scars crisscrossed his skin.
With a swift motion, the man at the front halted.
He raised the hand holding his sword, and the blizzard that had threatened to sweep them away suddenly calmed.
The snowflakes gently settled.
Beyond them, the vast army of hell emerged.
Millions of monsters and thousands of demons, led by the four dark gods themselves.
“Allied forces, advance.”
The man spoke no lengthy words to the heroes frozen in place.
He simply took a step forward, striding ahead.
But the heroes, watching his back, understood.
They knew how many battlefields those scars had seen.
How many monsters and demons had fallen to his sword and axe.
”…Forward! Follow Hadash!”
“Machines, prepare for battle!”
“Annihilate the enemy! Erase the evil!”
Inspired by his unwavering resolve, the heroes began to follow in his footsteps.
Thus began the final battle of the great war that had changed the fate of the continent thousands of years ago.