The Hero Radian
It was darkness. In the endlessly sinking abyss, I had let go of everything.
The battle was over, and in the moment I perished alongside the Demon King, I had believed my duty fulfilled.
A perfect nothing — neither cold nor hot.
In that place where even the flow of time could not be felt, I was quietly preparing to depart this world.
And yet my heart was beating. It should have stopped, but the pulse began again.
Blood coursed through my whole body, and faint consciousness rose slowly to the surface, as if I had been sunk in the deep sea.
Light seeped in between my eyelids.
At sensations so vividly clear, I drew in a breath.
Air rushed to fill my lungs.
The world made itself known through all five senses.
And within that world, I was standing once more.
"Th… this is…?"
I raised my trembling hands before my eyes.
Tendons writhed beneath the skin; warm blood flowed through them.
It was impossible. I had surely died.
I… had come back.
"O Goddess… have You truly called me back to this earth…?"
This was a miracle. Something no human hand could achieve — a deed possible only within the domain of the divine.
I rose, clenching both fists.
Joy, awe, an overwhelming rush of emotion — they all came flooding in at once.
But in that very moment, I noticed a figure standing in the corner, watching me.
A girl in a black robe, gazing at me from the darkness with eyes of violet.
I drew in a sharp breath as I looked up at her.
A faint trace of life's essence still shimmered at the tips of her snow-white fingers.
In that instant, I understood.
"…It was you."
My throat tightened, and the words slipped out of me unbidden.
"The Goddess did not abandon me. You are… a Saintess. Are you not?"
My eyes grew hot with tears.
One who had roused me from the very end of death and darkness could be none other than a Saintess — an avatar of the Goddess descended upon this earth.
I reached out with trembling hands and knelt before her, beginning to weep.
"I thank You…! To call back a sinner such as me. I can fight again. I can fight for this world once more…!"
She said nothing.
She merely stared at me, looking rather flustered.
But that swelling emotion was soon swallowed by something strange in the air.
The air was thick with the scent of blood,
and beyond the window shimmered a crimson-black sky.
I knew this place. I knew this energy.
The aura of that cursed land where I had swung my sword hundreds, thousands of times in battle.
"…This is the Demon Realm."
My heart plummeted. I was still in the enemy's territory.
Even if I had returned to life, lingering here would mean only death waiting for me once more.
But hope remained.
The Saintess had revived me; all I needed was to escort her out of this place.
This must be another trial the Goddess had laid before me.
Then this time, at last, I would fulfill the Goddess's will with these two hands.
Gritting my teeth, I rose to my feet.
My revived body was still unfamiliar, but the feeling of a hand that had gripped a sword lived on undiminished.
And turning back to her, I spoke with resolve.
"Fear no longer. From this moment, I shall protect you."
I gently lifted her into my arms.
As I cradled her body in both arms, her warmth and her breath seeped into my chest.
Warmth. How long had it been since I last held the heat of a living person?
From the day I set out vowing to defeat the Demon King, my comrades had vanished one by one.
Brothers-in-arms extinguished amid blood and flame, voices scattered meaninglessly in the Demonic Realm's poison.
In the end, I alone remained, forced to cut down the endless tide of monsters with nothing but a single sword.
That was when it began — when I could no longer feel another's touch, another's breath.
Everyone who stood beside me had vanished into blood and dust, and all that remained was battle and death.
And now, this warmth in my arms was reviving something I had long forgotten in this land of the dead.
"We must leave this place. I cannot abandon a Saintess to this foul land."
And then I looked toward the door of the cabin.
"Come with me. Even if remnants of the Demon King's army remain, I will carve a path through them."
I was certain of it. The reason I had opened my eyes again was surely to protect this girl.
I was now facing an unbelievable situation.
The corpse that had been lying cold until moments ago — Hero Radian, whom I had painstakingly revived cell by cell — had called me a Saintess, and then, with tears brimming in his eyes, suddenly scooped me up into his arms.
"Wait…! What are you doing?! Put me down!"
I flailed my arms and legs, but his embrace was as unyielding as rock.
"Do not be afraid, Saintess-nim. I swear I shall deliver you from this place."
Deliver me? This is my house? This isn't a rescue, it's a kidnapping!
I screamed internally, yet couldn't bring myself to make a sound.
If I blurted out the truth now, this raving fanatic might just lop off my head.
Dying at the hands of the hero I'd barely managed to resurrect — what a grotesque ending that would be.
So I hurriedly chose a different option.
Held captive in the hero's arms, I moved only my lips and whispered.
Guys, you heard that, right? This bastard's kidnapping me. Save me!
Around the cabin, buried in secret beneath the soil, my pet corpse soldiers lifted their heads one by one.
Faint glimmers flickered in their long-since rotted, hollow eye sockets in answer to my command, and with the menacing clatter of grinding teeth, skeletal hands and feet burst up out of the ground.
Good, that'll do. They're Death Knights I worked hard to make — even this hero won't escape them now.
Hero or not, how was he supposed to handle this many with no weapon, bare-handed and naked?
And besides, the guy had been a corpse until just now. No way his body was working properly.
He'd take a decent beating and collapse, and then I'd just patch him up again.
Then back to being a corpse, and be a good boy and become my test subject once more!
Except—
"So this is…!"
My eyes went wide.
Radian wasn't holding any weapon at all.
And yet the moment my Death Knights lunged at him, he twisted his body, snapped their arms bare-handed, seized their heads and tore them off, and began splitting bone with nothing but his fingers.
All while pinning me firmly in one arm.
Kraaaaaagh—!
Krrrrrgh—!
Screams rang in my ears.
But they weren't the hero's screams I'd been hoping for — they were the last death rattles of my Death Knights.
And this bastard didn't so much as waver in his gaze.
Far from it — he was bellowing hymns to the Goddess as he shredded my precious Death Knights to pieces.
"Back, minions of darkness! You shall not so much as sully the ground beneath the Saintess-nim's feet!"
Then he snatched a Bone Sword from one of the Death Knights and started channeling Sword Aura on top of it.
The soldiers I had poured my heart into… all of them, cut down.
Heads and limbs flew in every direction, and the bodies torn apart by Sword Aura crumbled to powder without even a scream.
Held fast in his arms, I had no choice but to watch my creations vanish before my eyes.
H—hey! Hold on! I built those to guard my house!
Of course, my voice never reached him.
My lips had only fluttered; I couldn't make so much as a sound.
And then an even more horrifying thought flashed through my mind.
Those eyes… that fanatic's gleam.
That lunatic was already fully convinced I was a Saintess.
Then how much longer was I supposed to keep up this insane charade?
The moment I revealed my true identity, he'd probably tear me apart first.
My breath caught in my throat, and my mind went white.
I'm done for… he's completely insane. I can't handle the monster I brought back to life…!
Only after grinding every last one of my Death Knights into dust did Radian finally catch his breath.
Not a single rasp in his breathing, he set me down and spoke as if to reassure me.
"Fear not, Saintess-nim. Though the road ahead be perilous, the Goddess walks with us — our escape is certain."
You are the scariest thing here right now, you doomed bastard.
To you, that crimson-black sky probably looks like an omen of apocalypse, and the blood-soaked air like pure menace.
But to me, it's just the familiar scenery I see every day.
It's your fanatic eyes that are a hundred times creepier.
In the end, I clenched my teeth.
Getting from here to where humans lived was not a journey that would be over in a day or two.
I lived in the deepest depths of the Demon Realm, after all.
Which meant at least several days — no, possibly weeks — of enduring this fanatic's company.
Somehow, some way, I'd turn him back into a corpse before then.
And so, beneath the crimson-black sky, our awkward companionship began.