Chapter 350
Chapter 350
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 350
Chapter Title: To Myself (1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ People live with regrets.
Everyone does. Because perfection is a distant dream and flawless endings don't exist, humans trudge through life burdened by what-ifs.
I wish things had gone differently.
I shouldn't have done that there.
What if I had?
Everyone strings together sentences starting with "maybe," imagining better futures. Even knowing it's pointless.
Maybe.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Endless hypotheticals.
The best possible futures born from those hypotheticals.
The more you chew on those delusions, the more a person breaks down. They sink into the past. They regurgitate their mistakes over and over amid growing regrets. And yet they know all that remains at the end is bitter emptiness.
Knowing that, I still lived that way.
I had to.
Because I'd made such a colossal mistake.
Because I'd lost the chance to make up for it.
And yet I had to keep going.
I had to endure hell. Countless reasons forced me to live on.
Thud.
I lived in regret.
I lived a hellish life.
Thud.
The path I walked was always pooled with blood, and someone else's life weighed forever on my shoulders. It was heavy. So heavy it hurt. It hurt, but I couldn't stop walking.
Thud.
And so I walked and walked.
After walking and walking, I became the Hero. I turned into the madman people shunned, and in the end, I became a god(?) representing an entire world.
Thud.
I became a god, but no one was by my side.
Not just missing from my side—they were gone from everywhere. My world had burned to ashes, reduced to cinders where no life could survive.
Drip.
Only then did I stop.
I stopped because there was no path forward. With no future, I could only look back at the past. And as I did, laughter escaped me.
Hell was there.
2.
I had made Kyle fail.
The failed Kyle should have met death, but even that rest was denied him. Kyle became a calamity, and the wish he'd begged from the stars didn't fully come true.
I became the Hero as Kyle wished.
But unlike his wish, I couldn't become a true Hero.
I gained super-regeneration like the Hero's, but the stars' sacred arms weren't granted to me. I didn't even get the star's trait Kyle originally had. All that dwelled in my body was a vast amount of starlight.
Those stars kept me from dying.
I couldn't die even if I wanted to.
Slashes across my skin, gouged-out eyes—they regenerated in moments. At some point, I stopped feeling pain altogether. Adrift in emptiness, I drowned in the past.
Regret upon regret.
I thought of Kyle dying before my eyes.
I thought of myself, the one who shook Kyle.
Thinking and thinking, I regretted.
Why did I do that? Why to Kyle of all people? I berated myself. Countless people came to the broken me, but I couldn't stand. My time had stopped there.
But.
The world doesn't stop just because my time did. The world flows on. It leaves me behind and marches forward on its own.
Kyle Toben became a calamity.
He couldn't be forgotten by people.
People knew Kyle as the Hero.
But they didn't know he'd wounded the Demon King, or that he'd become a calamity in the end. Not knowing, to them Kyle was just a traitor.
"The strongest Hero has turned traitor."
"Humanity's hope became humanity's despair."
The Sword of Reversal, Kyle Toben.
The traitor called that.
True to his title as humanity's strongest sword from the start, calamity Kyle was brutally powerful. When that sword turned on humanity, no one could stop him.
Countless died by Kyle's hand.
"Calamity."
"Filthy, disgusting traitor."
"The Hero's stain."
"The worst Hero."
Countless cursed Kyle.
Countless pointed at Kyle, decrying him as calamity. They feared him, and the more they feared, the more they tore him down.
The fear grew.
Bound by contract, he couldn't push to the capital, but on countless battlefields, Kyle reigned as calamity. Unlike the others, he moved aggressively. He was sighted on battlefield after battlefield.
Each swing of his sword swept away countless humans. No one could block even a single strike from his blade.
Humanity retreated and retreated.
Frontlines lost all meaning.
The contract wavered, and magical beasts slipped into the capital. My master, who'd told me it would be fine, didn't return that night. Days passed with no sign. I learned days later that my master had been brutally slain by a beast.
My master was dead.
No one remained who knew the person called Raniel, not Raniel van Trias. And so Raniel had to vanish from the world. All that remained was Raniel van Trias.
The sage and Hero.
The human who had to stand before others.
Only then did I rise. Far too late, but I had to. For revenge. To fulfill unfinished duties. I killed the invading beasts. I crushed and burned the Demon King's army.
I advanced, burning everything in sight.
And I faced Kyle Toben.
Chanting that I had to kill him, subdue him, I tried. But in the final moment, I faltered. That falter led to my defeat.
"Over here."
"Killing the Ashen One isn't your goal?"
To save such a me, Kardi became bait.
"It's been a while since I felt pain like this."
The bait Kardi lost an arm, an eye, and a leg. Even then, supporting me, Kardi made it back to the capital.
"Get a grip, Raniel."
Kardi smiled.
"I can throw my body for a junior once. Feeling sane now?"
He said with a smile.
"Raniel, don't make my choice."
"Sorry to say it."
"You know it too. We have to kill him. No other way. I thought you might find one, but not anymore."
There was no way to turn Kyle back.
None anywhere.
Only one path left to me.
"Kill him."
"No other way."
...I had to advance.
Losing and losing, I pressed on.
Superhumans walked beside me. But they couldn't follow long. Those who did fell one by one. Their ends were all miserable.
Kelrhalim died first.
Then Draka.
Then Kariot.
"I'll buy time."
"What, I'm good at this sort of thing."
The last to die was.
"I'll go ahead, senior."
Kalt.
After Kalt died, no one remained by my side. Still, I had to go on. Alone, I advanced.
"Humans have no hope."
"Everyone died."
"To survive, this was the only way."
Blocking my path weren't just beasts. In the crumbling world, countless humans wavered and turned traitor.
Many familiar faces among them.
I killed students I'd taught, with my own hands.
I killed knights I'd protected, with my own hands.
I killed refugees I'd saved, with my own hands.
Kill and kill. No other answer.
Advancing like that, I met Chloe, the fifth calamity. Chloe, who'd lost all comrades and even Belnoa, stood in my way. Drawing on Galahal's starlight, Chloe smiled.
"Why."
"Why then."
"Why didn't you come when I needed you most?"
She needed someone to resent, and the broken girl hated me. I killed Chloe charging at me with Galahal's starlight. I extracted the star from her corpse. I burned the body to ash.
I obtained Concentration.
Now I could kill Kyle.
I had to move efficiently.
I burned the apostate lured out using Kardi as bait. In his final moments, he called Kardi's name, but I burned even that voice.
I dealt with the Sword of Death in the way he hated most. Trapped in the canyon of six mage towers, I bombarded him with spells for dozens of days. Each time he tried to escape, I reshaped the terrain to cage him again.
I whittled him down bit by bit.
Over dozens of days, I fought Ganikalt.
When his body crumbled and he dropped his sword, only then did I stand before Ganikalt. I burst the heart exposed in his broken ribs. Even then, the Sword of Death struck back at me. What blocked it wasn't me.
Using Kuntel and Kalt, who'd seized command from the apostate, I faced the dying Ganikalt. I lost both arms, both legs, both eyes in the process, but they'd regenerate anyway. In the end, I subdued Ganikalt too.
Ancient Lich, Skeval.
Reversal, Chloe.
Apostate, Gletus.
Sword of Death, Ganikalt.
Four of the five calamities subdued.
One remained.
To kill Kyle, fully realized as calamity, I had to give everything left to me. In the end, I killed Kyle. I burned the shadows.
When I turned after toppling all calamities and the Demon King, the world was already a sea of fire. Nothing remained to me. Survivors to the end could be counted on one hand.
Destel was among them.
Destel, who'd given crucial aid in subduing Kyle, squeezed out words with his dying breath.
"How about becoming a god?"
Purposeless, he proposed to me.
"Kyle said it."
"He saw you as a god."
"So why not make that your goal? You could pull it off."
Muttering that, Destel smiled.
"Funny, surviving this long just to relay that."
"I'm going ahead. Don't follow."
Destel took his own life.
I was the last Hero left.
Becoming a god was simple. I killed the stars and burned the ancient dragon blocking me. When I became a god, the world was already dyed in ash.
Goddess of Ashes.
At the road's end, I became a god.
Looking back, my life was hell.
"What is this."
I lived numbly.
I erased emotions, moved efficiently.
Trembling in fear, desperate to die, clawing at myself countless times a day, I endured. At hell's end, what I faced was emptiness.
Nothing left, hollow.
Before that emptiness, I burst into laughter.
Looking back on my hellish life, I regretted. Where did it go wrong? Where did I break? Why did I have to walk this path?
The answer was clear.
Clear, so I chose to go back.
I wanted to erase the hell, make this path I'd walked disappear.
With only one timeline in this world, changing the past would nullify the future where I existed. I hoped so. To make my meaningless life undone, I regressed.
Because I'd broken.
Because I didn't want to live anymore.
Because I couldn't accept this ending.
To choose the lesser evil over the worst, I returned to the past.
But there, I ended up seeing it.
What I'd thought I'd let go, forgotten.
3.
"I saw it."
To Kardi's words that I seemed a bit changed, I murmured. My voice was light. Like the old me, I spoke lightly.
"I thought my life was meaningless. A failure, worthless. Because I protected nothing. But, you know."
I smiled.
"He showed me."
"...What?"
"Possibility."
The possibility of changing the future.
A possibility of the best ending—one I could accept without endless rumination.
And.
"Because I returned to the past, because of this hellish life, he showed me... the path to the best ending."
A possibility enabled by my life.
Kyle showed me.
"I saw the path I should trust."
"...Trust?"
"Yeah, I'm going to try."
I smiled wryly.
"Looks like my life wasn't entirely worthless."
Even in failure, it has meaning.
It gained meaning. After all, meaning is decided by what you do at life's end.
"...Really."
I let out a short breath.
"He kept his promise to the end."
Watch me. I'll show you.
I'll show you changeable possibility.
I'll show you a changed future because of you from the future. I'll be the reason you, I, stand.
He kept every promise. To the very last, he showed me possibility. I can't ignore that effort.
"So."
I stopped before the door.
Kardi stopped too.
Before I knew it, we were inside the mansion. I looked aside. There was a familiar yet strange face.
"You...?"
My master, staring at me with wide eyes.
I nodded slightly to my master, whom I'd missed so much. I opened my mouth to speak, then just stayed silent.
All I had left was a handful of time.
No time to spend with my master.
Regrettable, but seeing her face is enough. I nodded, turned from her gaze, and entered the room. As I did, I murmured.
"So now it's my turn to show."
The possibility Kyle showed me.
The possibility he passed to me.
This time, it was my turn to show my past self.
Creeeak.
Opening the door, there I was—hollow eyes gazing down. Me from 13 years ago. Looking at my past self, I breathed out.
"Nice to meet you, Raniel van Trias."
At my words, she lifted her head.
Looking up at me, she gulped, eyes wide. Smiling at her reaction, I continued.
"I'm you, from 13 years in the future."
I thought.
This makes twice.
Raising up a broken someone.
"I came because I have something to tell you."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇