The First Day I Decided to Retire
The sword slid free with a soft, metallic whisper. Its mirror-bright surface reflected the eyes of a man stripped of all emotion. These were the eyes of someone who had raised countless exceptional disciples, hurled himself into the kingdom’s wars, and carved through hundreds of thousands of lives until nothing remained but numbness. Within those exhausted pupils, the blood of battlefields and the screams of the dying twisted together like dark sediment.
“Huu……”
A heavy sigh escaped him, an attempt to scour away the memories that throbbed inside his skull. But they were branded too deeply. In the end, he slid the sword back into its sheath, leaving the faded remnants of those horrors behind.
With a quiet click, the blade vanished. Only then did the boy standing before him come into focus.
Anyone could sense the boy’s dignity at a glance. He was Enoch Ring Shardena, First Prince of the Shardena Kingdom.
“Are you truly leaving, Master?”
“……Yes. I’ve suffered enough. I think it’s time I tried this thing called retirement.”
The boy’s expression grew complicated. It was not mere regret at losing the kingdom’s sword, the war hero who had dragged them back from the brink of annihilation. No, the complexity came from self-reproach for his own part in pushing the man to this decision, from rage at the world that had driven him to such a state, and from a quiet sorrow as he tried to understand what his master must be feeling.
The man knew Enoch’s heart well. As he had always done, he reached out and ruffled the prince’s hair—rough, yet undeniably gentle.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going off to die. I’m simply tired. Don’t I deserve some rest?”
“……Of course. If you need anything at all, please tell me. I will obtain it, even if I must beg my father.”
“Good. I’ll call on you if the need arises.”
Those words, spoken through eyes that looked half-dead, were hard to believe. For a moment Enoch thought exactly that, but he kept it to himself. He believed in this man—the one who had raised him, the master who had brought him to this place. No matter how deeply the war had cornered him, given time to breathe, he would stand again as if nothing had happened.
Of course, the wounds…… won’t disappear.
Even if his outward appearance returned to what it once was, the scars carved into his heart by this war would remain. So many of the disciples he had poured his heart and soul into had died. The affection he had given them was immeasurable; therefore the wounds left behind would be just as vast. No amount of time could erase them.
I only hope something exists that can fill Master’s wounds……
But Enoch knew better than anyone that no such thing existed. All he could do was pray that his master would at least appear whole again.
“Please travel safely. I will always wait for you here in the kingdom, Master.”
“……Yes. You head back carefully as well.”
With those final words of parting, the man turned and began descending the hill where the royal castle stood. It was midday, the sun bright and warm, yet the afternoon felt utterly cold.
Enoch watched his master’s retreating back until the very last moment.
The day they would meet again lay several years into the future.
Fifty years had passed since I fell into this world.
At first I denied everything. I tried to shut myself away and reject the truth. But after countless incidents and accidents, I finally accepted that this place was real and began to run with everything I had. Before I knew it, fifty years had gone by.
Yet even after all that time, whenever I looked at this body that hadn’t aged a single day since my arrival, I couldn’t help doubting whether this world was truly real.
“But it must be reality……”
I pushed the fleeting doubt aside with a single sentence, recalling the memories of everything that had happened.
It had been roughly fifty years since I fell into the world I once knew as a game—the growth-type open-world RPG Continent Marika.
No matter how desperately I told myself it was just a game and tried to ignore what was in front of me, the people I saw clearly possessed intelligence. They had distinct personalities, emotions, and reactions. Their actions intertwined, sometimes clashed, and together kept the world turning. No matter how I looked at it, they could never be dismissed as mere NPCs or strings of code. That was when I realized, bone-deep, that this world was real.
Once I understood that I wasn’t the only one floating outside of it all, I began to live with everything I had.
This place was reality, not a game, but I already knew how that reality would unfold. To prevent the worst outcome, I trained the power I had been given upon arrival, gathered promising children and raised them as disciples, and threw myself onto the battlefields where the demon race ran rampant.
“……”
On those battlefields, I took my first life.
He was nothing more than a low-ranking soldier, but the way he crumpled like tofu beneath my blade, face twisting in agony as he died, remains vivid in my mind even now. The sensation made me want to vomit. Yet shockingly, that revulsion became familiar after only two days on the front lines.
The more accustomed I grew to killing, the more my mind decayed. Every scream that filled my ears, every splash of blood that soaked my body, chipped away at my spirit. And on top of that, the constant reports of my disciples—those children I had raised with such care—dying across the battlefield drove enormous nails into my heart. Invisible nails that dragged screams out of me and embedded themselves deep inside.
Even when the frenzy of combat forced me to pull them out, the holes they left behind remained as open wounds.
“Why were you all in such a hurry to go first?”
Without warning, tears slid down my cheek.
“……Ah.”
I let out a small sound and quickly wiped the dampness away. The memory was still less than a month old; simply recalling it made my emotions impossible to control.
“If the others saw me now, they’d laugh until their stomachs hurt.”
I tried to console myself with a forced joke, but the cold, aching hole in my chest refused to fade.
“Haaaa……”
With yet another sigh—I had already lost count of how many I’d let out today—I wiped away the last of the tears and looked at the cottage I had nearly reached.
It stood on the frontier of the Shardena Kingdom’s territory, at least five hundred kilometers from the capital. To be more precise, the entire region, including the land the cottage sat on, had been granted to me by the king himself. Yet the only structure I had built was this single cottage. What I needed right now wasn’t a noisy estate but a quiet rural home where I could rest.
I had asked Enoch to keep it modest, but the building before me was easily twice the size of a normal cottage. I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“I told him to build it small, yet he still made it this big.”
Knowing Enoch’s personality, he had probably restrained himself from making it dozens of times larger. Still, for a rural cottage on the frontier, it carried an air of unexpected elegance. It wasn’t entirely to my taste, but I couldn’t ignore the sincerity behind it. I would have to live here.
I took the final few steps and reached the cottage, then placed my hand on the door handle.
“Waah…!”
“……Hm?”
A sudden cry reached my ears just as I was about to open the door. It came from directly below me. I lowered my gaze to where my vision hadn’t reached before and finally saw it—a basket, and inside, a baby wrapped in cloth.
“Who would leave a baby here……”
The infant still had its baby hair and hadn’t even grown teeth. When I approached, it began wailing even louder. I hurriedly lifted the entire basket.
“Is there a letter or anything……?”
Someone had deliberately carried the child past the fence and placed it in front of my door. This was no accident. I searched for some note explaining the circumstances, but the basket contained nothing except the baby. The small limbs waved helplessly as it continued its broken cries.
“What in the world is going on……”
“Euu…… Uwaa……”
When I extended a single finger, the noisy babbling slowly stopped. The baby latched onto my fingertip and began to suck on it. I let out yet another deep sigh.
The first day I decided to retire.
Suddenly, I had a baby I needed to raise.