Futurewalker
I failed. I couldn't protect the world. I couldn't protect my seniors. And in the end, I couldn't even protect the one person most precious to me.
“...Master.”
With a hand that barely obeyed me, I shook the master cradled in my arms. But instead of the usual scolding not to wake him, only a horrible silence answered. I already knew. He had stopped breathing. He had left for a place I would never reach again. I didn't understand how someone so strong could have been pushed back without even using his hands properly. Still, it didn't matter. The same thing had happened to me and my seniors.
“Cough!”
Something surged from my throat. When I touched my lips, they came away smeared with dark blood and fragments of viscera. I could no longer fight. I could no longer resist. All that remained for me was death—that cold, final reality.
“....”
I lifted my head and looked around. My dependable seniors had already become ice-cold corpses. The Grandmaster, once a beacon of invincible hope, had been reduced to nothing but ash. And even the one person I trusted above all else had finally been unable to hold on.
Rumble—.
At the grating noise, I forced my head up. Something grotesque was slowly approaching. It was neither human nor elf, neither beastkin nor monster nor demonic beast. A thing no word in existence could define. Yes, it was exactly as Master had once described it. The Enemy's Will.
Pure, yet unbearably dark malice directed at the world, at all living things, at hope and resistance themselves.
What would become of this world now? Every Hero had fallen. The allied forces that followed them had been annihilated. Only women, children, and the elderly remained—people who could not fight. Would they meet death, or something even more miserable than death?
Whatever it was, it no longer had anything to do with me. Everything I possessed had crumbled. Everything I was had ended. Even if I somehow survived, I had no desire to continue this wretched life.
“Master. Master.”
Clinging to an answer that would never come, I stared straight at the monstrous thing now right in front of me. The being that would deliver a fitting end to a failure like me. Until now it had been the enemy, evil, something that had to be killed. But in this moment, it felt like the one fate I wanted to accept more than anything.
“I'm sorry.”
As the darkness swallowed my vision, the one once called a Hero—Iris Futurewalker—met her end.
“Iris.”
“....”
“Hey, kid. What are you doing spacing out in the middle of a meal?”
Right... Master. Why am I sitting here eating with you?
You definitely drew your last breath in my arms. I held you close and faced the end with you. So why am I facing you across a table, sharing a meal?
Is this a dream?
No. It can't be. Dreams only come when you fall asleep. Had I been sleeping? No, not at all. I had died. Completely. Miserably. Without any other interpretation or possibility. I had died for certain. My body had been torn apart, and that unidentified Enemy's Will would never have spared me. To them, I—we—were mortal enemies. Irritating obstacles. There was no point taking a dying girl hostage, especially after every force capable of resistance had been wiped out.
Then what was this? A final hallucination before death? But everything before my eyes felt far too vivid for that. Just as I was about to pinch my thigh to test it—
Thwack!
My vision flashed white as a sharp pain shot from my head through my entire body. It hurt like hell, yet somehow the sensation felt impossibly nostalgic. This feeling... yes. This was definitely Master's signature knuckle flick.
“Falling asleep in the middle of eating? Enough nonsense. Finish your food. After lunch we're hitting the mountain summit, then strength training, a full sprint down the mountain, and finally cliff scaling.”
Just listening to the schedule made my mouth taste bitter. It was practically murderous. After officially becoming a Hero, I had never undergone training like this. Fighting monsters and Demon God Worshippers had been training enough. The only time in my life I'd endured such a brutal regimen was back then.
Back when I was an orphan with no parents, siblings, or relatives, wandering the world and slowly starving to death—until I met Master. The man who told a worthless nothing like me, “You are a Hero.” The man who somehow dragged even someone as pathetic as me all the way up to the ranks of the Heroes.
“Master.”
“Don't even think about weaseling out of it. I'm not skipping a single item on that list. No. Rejected.”
“....”
This was real. This was unfiltered truth. I didn't know how or why, but one thing was certain.
I had returned.
To the time before that catastrophe unfolded. To the happiest, brightest, most longed-for period of my life.
What was the old me like?
Remembering it made me want to bite my tongue in embarrassment. I'd been so immature, causing Master endless headaches. I had the least talent and ability among all the seniors, yet I caused the most trouble. Even now I couldn't understand why. If possible, I'd like to find my past self and smack some sense into her. A lot of sense.
...Ah. Come to think of it, that past self is now the current me.
“...Master?”
“I told you not to look at me with those desperate eyes.”
As he spoke, Master raised his hand, and my body flinched on instinct. I'd been hit on the head so many times that the reaction was engraved in me. Something this trivial couldn't possibly be an illusion.
I don't know the reason... but it doesn't matter. I've returned. I'm back.
Something tickled inside my chest. The tickle quickly swelled into uncontrollable excitement. I wanted nothing more than to throw my arms around Master and burst into tears. But I'd already done that foolish thing once. If I had truly returned to the past, my role was clear.
I had to prevent that tragedy from repeating. I had to stop my seniors, the Grandmaster, and my Master from meeting their ends. And I had to completely eradicate those damned beings!
Stay calm. Keep a clear head. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Any careless mistake would squander this heaven-sent opportunity. For a moment I considered telling Master the truth—that I had died and returned to the past. That this foolish disciple had walked in from the future.
No. No matter how I think about it, that's not a good idea.
If someone suddenly claimed they knew the future and had come back from it, anyone would look at them strangely. It wasn't just a matter of belief. When I checked my current body's condition, I realized I had returned to the me of that time. I'd hoped at least some of the abilities engraved in my body would come with me, but all I had now was my usual clumsiness and the knack for annoying Master. That wouldn't help anyone.
The only weapon I possessed was knowing more about the future than anyone else. To use that knowledge, I had to be in the right place at the right time. I couldn't disrupt the original flow. If something happened that I didn't know about because of a change, everything could fall apart.
I had to watch. Keep watching. And step forward only at the most critical moments. For that, I had no choice but to follow the original course of events—whether I liked it or not.
Or rather... I should say I have to live this present life exactly as it unfolds?
“Master!”
I needed to follow the path of my current life. Even if it was a little foolish. Even if I sometimes found myself unbearable. Even if there were moments I wanted to curse and hate it. Any small change might snowball later and erode the advantages I held. I couldn't allow that.
“What is it, my disciple?”
“At this rate I'll die from overwork before I even become a Hero!”
“If you don't want to die from a beating, do as you're told.”
“Eek! You're too much!”
“You do realize you're still at the level of a few-months-old disciple, right? Shall we have a nice long talk about who's really being unreasonable here?”
I shook my head vigorously. No! Absolutely not!
After that, I lived as the Iris Futurewalker of that time. I poured the same experiences into this pathetically weak body, following the original flow exactly.
Whenever Master told me to gather herbs, I grumbled on the outside while desperately trying to recall every single event I could remember on the inside. There had been so many things that I couldn't recall every tiny detail, but I remembered nearly all the major events.
Of course, following the original flow wasn't always easy. Sometimes I unconsciously tried to change things. Like when I went to train with the Grandmaster. Originally I should have been helplessly beaten without landing a single blow. But thinking about the strange relationship between Master and the Grandmaster, and seeing how close they still seemed even after reuniting, I couldn't help wanting to blur the line between them a little.
That was stupid. I shouldn't have done that.
Thanks to that, the Grandmaster became even more wary of me. It was my mistake. I resolved to restrain myself next time and not repeat it.
“While I'm away for a while, I'd like you to look after Iris.”
Originally, Master should have taken me with him. The moment he said he would leave me behind, my mind went completely blank. I ended up blurting out that I wanted to go with him, that I absolutely had to, spilling words that would look extremely suspicious to anyone listening. I knew it was a mistake. I knew I shouldn't have. But I had to follow Master. I had to go to the place he was heading.
I can't waste time there. It's fatal for both Master and me.
This might be my first and last chance. I didn't want to miss it. I had to seize it. The future the world had given me—also my past. Not a future where we all died together, but one where we all survived together. A future where we walked out from the darkness toward the light rising at the end.
That was the future I wanted to face.