Chapter 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Wjin
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Hero and the Guillotine
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A man trudged toward the guillotine.
The people he had risked his life to save until that moment gazed desperately at his death, spitting at him and hurling stones.
Blood flowed from the gash on his head where a stone had struck, trickling past his eyes and down his jawline. Like bloody tears...
But the man didn't even groan. His hollow gaze simply stared up at the damnably blue sky.
The man's thoughts drifted to the past.
In his affluent childhood, born as the second son of an earl's family and raised without want, he hadn't envied the king one bit.
With a mere gesture, dozens of attendants moved at his whim. Delicious foods and the territory's beauties fell into his lap at the slightest reach.
'Looking back now, I was a real spoiled little shit.'
The price of that dark history was gruesome.
The peaceful continent was suddenly engulfed in the flames of war, like a bolt from a clear sky.
The earl's family, where he had lorded like a king, had no choice but to join the war to defend the kingdom.
The result was a crushing defeat.
The nation walked the path to ruin, and the earl's house vanished into the dustbin of history.
The man was no longer the pampered son of a noble house—he was just a slave. The worst kind, utterly useless.
Facing death, the man confronted reality and from then on did everything he could to survive.
Enduring all sorts of hardships, he grew bit by bit as a combat slave. But his treatment remained abysmal, and his life was always in peril.
Still, the reason he never gave up being a combat slave was simple: they fed him three meals a day. You couldn't fight on an empty stomach.
Then one day, he encountered a stroke of heaven-sent luck and gained a power on an entirely different level.
His status changed in an instant.
From that day, he saved the enemy kingdom's people who had toppled his own, struck down their foes for that enemy kingdom, and piled up countless achievements in its name.
And the result? The war ended, and now he was walking toward the guillotine.
Toward the guillotine of the enemy kingdom that had unified the continent with his own hands...
"Does the prisoner have any last words?"
As the man laid his neck on the guillotine, the executioner asked for his final statement.
The man, who had been hanging his head, lifted his eyes. By chance? His gaze met that of a man watching him at that very moment.
It was the comrade and friend who had fought alongside him in the war, prizing each other above life itself.
The only difference between them was that the man was a slave from an enemy nation, while the other was of the royal bloodline.
But that difference had led to this outcome.
"Mmph! Mmmph!"
The man on the guillotine tried to shout at him, but the gag in his mouth garbled his words.
The man raised his hand, signaling something, and the executioner beside him removed the gag.
Then the man bellowed at him.
"Is this the ending you wanted?! Hector!"
Hector replied with a blank expression to the man's cry.
"You're talking nonsense, Johann. Why keep a hunting dog alive after the hunt is over?"
"What a shame. I should've bitten through my master's neck sooner. Or no—maybe I was the idiot for ever thinking you were like me? Yeah, I was the fool. Puahaha!"
Johann let out a sneer, then glared at Hector and shouted.
"If—and I'm saying if—"
"...?"
"If gods really exist and one could change my life, I swear it. I'd show that bastard a way more entertaining show than this."
With those words, Johann flashed a grin. In that instant, Hector's pupils shrank, and a bead of cold sweat trickled down his temple.
Before every battle and campaign that everyone predicted impossible victory, Johann always wore that smile. And he always claimed victory without fail.
"Execute him!"
Hector raised his hand as if fleeing and ordered the execution.
Whoosh!
As the guillotine's blade fell like lightning, the man's head separated from his body and dropped into the basket.
"Hah...!"
Hector trembled at the sight of the head in the basket.
Johann was still smiling, even in death.