Starting Village (1)
The protagonist was born with talent and bloodline, yet he was a muscle-brained fool who ran on nothing but guts. A berserker who couldn’t tell friend from foe the moment battle began. A thief who kept one eye on his own party members’ pockets. A lightning mage with incredible firepower but a fifty-percent chance of failing his incantations. And a bard whose only skills were recording magic and snappy one-liners. This was the objective reality of the protagonist’s party.
Even if I accepted all of that, why the hell was there a bard in a party that had to fight actual villains? This really couldn’t continue. Time to handle the most urgent business first.
“Get out of the party, Yosef.”
Party member Yosef has left the party.
I don’t have the kindest personality, but I’ve always believed I lived a fairly decent life. No—given my naturally selfish nature, the fact that I never veered into the wrong path and lived respectably should earn me extra points.
I never jaywalked, remembering how annoying it was when I was behind the wheel. And because I always scowled at people smoking on the streets, I never littered or did anything that might inconvenience others. That’s how I’d lived.
‘Why are these the only memories coming up?’
“Oh!”
Thinking back to my poor childhood, I’d donated thirty thousand won every month. It wasn’t a huge amount, but still. ‘And… that’s right!’ I used to do volunteer work once a month, too. A friend from middle school had half-dragged me into it, but I’d kept it up for a full ten years…
Surely that counted as a pretty admirable life, right? Even if it wasn’t exactly admirable, there had to be at least one person out there who’d lived far worse than me.
...
“But what the fuck, why did it have to be me?”
I had transmigrated into a long-running shounen manga I’d read as a kid and kept reading well into adulthood.
I wanted to go home. Back to Earth.
——
It had already been five years since I arrived in this world. At this point I should’ve grown used to life here, yet all I wanted was to return. No—in this very moment, the desire burned stronger than ever.
Because this world had already been destroyed.
The Demon God—the final boss the hot-blooded protagonist was supposed to defeat through sheer guts and willpower—had killed everyone instead. After I learned the protagonist had died, I ran as far and as fast as I could while researching ways to get home. But now it was truly over.
I was lucky enough to wield space-time magic, which made me excellent at escaping, so I’d managed to buy a surprising amount of time. But there was nowhere left to run in this world.
By my calculations, I had roughly ten minutes left before I was discovered. If I could complete the dimensional travel spell to return to Earth in that time… Yeah, impossible.
I’d poured every waking moment since arriving here into researching dimensional magic, yet I hadn’t found the slightest clue. So I was going to die here without ever making it home?
If I’d known it would end like this, I would’ve tried something different. At the very least, I should have enjoyed whatever happiness this world could offer while I still had the chance. If only I’d been given that kind of time…
“You’re the last one. You scurried around like a rat, but it ends here.”
‘Ten minutes was too generous, huh.’
“Time Stop.”
The instant I spotted the Demon God, I chanted the spell. Flip— The first page of my grimoire opened. I could freeze time for only one minute. But I couldn’t move either. I couldn’t prepare any other magic. All it gave me was time to think…
“I see. A space-time mage.”
“Time Stop.”
He must have realized it was nothing more than stalling and posed no real threat.
“Roughly a minute, is it?”
“Time Stop.”
The spell was supposed to freeze everything except my mind, but apparently even that didn’t work on a monster like the Demon God. Not that it mattered—even if it had worked, it was still only buying time.
Drip— The backlash from over-drawing mana slammed into my body.
“Time—”
“This really will be the last one.”
“Stop.”
Just as the Demon God said, I had no moves left.
‘If I’d known it would come to this, I never should have neglected time magic.’
No answer came to me, of course. I’d fixated solely on space magic with the single goal of returning to Earth… If I had practiced time magic alongside it, maybe I could have bought myself even more time to invest in dimensional research. There might have been spells that could slow time, or even turn it backward.
“It’s over.”
The Demon God pointed a finger at me. All the light in the world seemed to be swallowed up, gathering at his fingertip.
This was really the end.
‘I want to go back.’
Even if it was just one day earlier. No—if possible, back to the moment I first arrived here so I could start over… Actually, no. If I could choose, I’d rather return to Earth before I ever came to this world.
...Maybe the answer to getting home had been in time magic after all.
FLASH!!!— The light swallowed me whole.
You have awakened space-time magic on the verge of death.
The subject has acquired the Regressor trait. Presence adjusted from 21% to 33%.
Protagonist qualification has been renewed.
Returning to the story’s starting point.
“Haaah!! Haa… haa…”
I had just died. No—I had regressed.
“It wasn’t… a dream.”
The memories of those five years were still painfully vivid. And the clearest proof of all floated right in front of my eyes.
Granting the protagonist buff in the most familiar way to the subject.
The status window is activating.
“Status window.”
I felt a strange mixture of emotions. The status window was exactly the kind of system I’d seen countless times in web novels back on Earth, so it felt familiar. In those stories, the protagonists were always thrilled to receive one.
But what I felt was completely different.
‘Now I’m the protagonist…?’
A heavy sense of responsibility crashed down on me. All I wanted was to go home. Still, since I had no idea how to do that, I had no choice but to focus on surviving first.
“...Presence?”
I understood the name, age, traits, and everything else, but I couldn’t quite grasp what “presence” meant. I had no idea how high 33% was or whether I needed to raise it. The one thing I did understand was what being the protagonist signified.
It meant I now had to carry the weight of this entire world on my shoulders.
...Maybe this was for the best.
“Zzz… kuh… fuuuu…”
At least the fate of the world no longer rested entirely on this idiot’s shoulders. Though I’d probably have to suffer a bit more because of it.
Creak—
“Cain oppa, you’re awake too?”
“Ah. Yeah… Good morning.”
The girl who opened the door and stepped inside was Lian.
“Ruruta oppa, wake up!!”
Slap!!—
This was the orphanage where the manga’s protagonist had grown up. I had grown up here too, of course. In my first life after transmigrating, I left quickly. The original Cain had also left the village after turning dark. I still wasn’t sure which path would be better this time. It felt too early to decide.
“Huuuuh… Meat…”
“Meat? If you want it that badly, go hunt it yourself! Hurry up and wake up already!”
Shuffle—
Mornings here were always this noisy.
‘If I want to plan for the future, I need somewhere quiet…’
“Cain, are you awake?”
“Ah… Director.”
“Come to the kitchen. Has Ruruta gotten up yet?”
“Yes. He’ll be down with Lian soon.”
For now, I should eat. There wasn’t much I could do without a grimoire yet.
...
“Thank you for allowing us to eat today.”
“““Thank you.”””
“Everyone, let’s eat before it gets cold.”
“Yesss— Hey! Ruruta, don’t eat everything by yourself!!”
I could afford to enjoy this peace for a little while longer.
——
“Ugh…”
The best thing I could do right now to prepare for the future was to understand the status window. But there wasn’t much I could do with it immediately.
Time until Scenario Start: ⌛ 6-22-46-58
It seemed nothing would activate until the scenario actually began. No stat points, no skills—nothing. There were still six days, twenty-two hours, forty-six minutes, and fifty-eight seconds until it started. In other words, seven days from now.
I already knew what that meant.
It was the day Ruruta and I turned twenty—the day we would receive our own grimoires.
I would obtain the incredibly rare space-time grimoire, something so scarce it was difficult to find even if you searched the entire world.
“It’s exactly one week away! Cain! I’m definitely going to become the Magic King!!!”
“...Yeah.”
“Show some spirit! You’re my rival, Cain!!”
One week from now we would head to the Imperial Library to receive our grimoires. Ruruta’s grimoire wouldn’t be there. He had been terribly disappointed in the original story, and the same thing would probably happen again.
The historic Imperial Library was said to house 99.9% of all the grimoires in existence. Of course, once someone claimed a grimoire, no one else could take it until that person died. Still, Ruruta was part of that unlucky 0.1%.
Some might celebrate, thinking it was amazing to have a grimoire so rare it wasn’t even stored in the Imperial Library. But this world wasn’t that forgiving. Of the 0.1% who couldn’t obtain a grimoire from the library, 99.9% of them would spend their entire lives searching for a grimoire hidden somewhere in the vast world and still die without ever finding one.
In other words, only 0.0001% of people obtained their grimoire somewhere other than the Imperial Library.
Of course, since Ruruta was the protagonist of this manga, he would find one. But it would take him a full two years. He would have to survive completely empty-handed until then.
Now that he no longer had the protagonist’s buff, could he even survive that long? I was certain he would die.
Fortunately, I knew exactly where his grimoire was.
‘But do I really have to go get it for him?’
It wouldn’t hurt to secure it in advance, but I wasn’t sure if I should actually hand it over to Ruruta. That was something I still needed to think about.
First chapter
Latest chapter