Chapter 1
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Opportunity
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Prologue
The day the Abyss Gate opens.
The era of humanity will come to an end.
Part of a prophecy handed down from ancient times.
However, almost no one truly believed it. After all, humanity had never once faced a crisis of extinction over thousands of years.
But the prophecy was real.
On a night when the moon glowed an especially vivid red.
The Abyss Gate opened.
Monsters poured forth.
Lord of the Undying, Screaming Eyeball, Frost Dragon, Specter Knights, Giant King, Swamp Lord, and more.
Creatures that had existed only in legends swept across the world, and the glory and civilizations built by humanity crumbled away into nothing.
Yet humanity did not give up.
They desperately resisted the monsters, fighting for survival. It was around this time that individuals called heroes—or saviors—began to appear.
Seven heroes who passed the trials.
The great warrior Ullan was one of them.
Ullan Bator, the great chieftain of the barbarians.
A man with strength rivaling that of a giant, the mightiest vanguard force bearing the hero party's frontline.
As if to prove it, Ullan advanced with terrifying power, treading a path where defeat held no place.
But in the giants' cave.
His advance halted.
"Huuk! Huuk!"
Bright red blood trickled down his chin.
Dozens of arrows lodged in his body.
And these were arrows from the giant tribe—no different from spears by human measure.
That was far from all.
A gaping hole pierced his abdomen, his guts reduced to pulp. His face was charred from burns, and his left arm had turned pitch-black, rotting away from virulent poison.
A condition where death at any moment would come as no surprise.
"Huuk! Hooo!"
Exhaling ragged breaths one after another.
Ullan reflected on his past memories.
One of the Abyss's rulers.
Right after falling into the Giant King's trap.
Three of his comrades suffered grievous wounds.
To compound the disaster, the hero party's sole healer—the Saintess—was poisoned as well.
Total annihilation loomed right before them.
But they could not die here. Not yet.
The heroes were humanity's last hope.
So Ullan volunteered to remain behind.
To buy his comrades time to retreat and thin the enemy's ranks by even one more.
And the mission had succeeded.
The landscape spread around him stood as proof.
Corpses, corpses, corpses!
The giants' bodies piled into mountains.
Blood flowing from those peaks formed rivers, and beyond them loomed a beast several times larger than the rest, drawing its final breaths.
Giant King Largtan.
The king who had battled Ullan to the very end.
Even he teetered on death's edge.
「A splendid fight it was.」
Suddenly, the king addressed him.
His voice carried genuine admiration.
「Warrior. Tell me your name.」
He bore many titles.
Great Warrior of the Plains.
Giant Slayer.
Red-Eyed Barbarian Hero.
Great Chieftain, and so on.
But before death, all feats and honors meant nothing. With calm resolve, he gave his true name.
"......Ullan."
His terse reply ended.
The king murmured faintly.
「Ullan, Ullan. I shall remember it.」
He repeated Ullan's name several times.
Then Largtan smiled in satisfaction.
「Let us meet again in the Abyss and clash once more, Ullan. At the end of endless hell... I shall await you......」
His voice faded away.
The king's body crumbled to ash—a peculiar demise reserved for Abyss monsters alone.
After Giant King Largtan's death.
Ullan sensed it too.
His own life hung by a thread.
"Huu."
His vision grew hazy.
His shallow breaths scattered like mist.
Then, the records of his decades-long life flashed through his mind like a montage.
Born a warrior of the plains, he challenged legends to become a hero, embraced his tribe's fairest beauty, fought for humanity—such memories.
Amid this torrent of recollection.
Moments of regret and lingering attachment surfaced aplenty.
Failing to reach superhuman heights.
Unable to prevent his brother's death.
Abandoning his tribe's welfare to the last.
And more.
Countless regrets and attachments weighed on him, but the greatest by far was meeting his end in this place.
‘......I lacked strength.’
Had he been stronger now.
Had his flesh been more resilient.
Had he wielded an axe sturdier than the one that shattered mid-battle with Largtan, perhaps he wouldn't perish like this.
Regrets chained endlessly.
At the end of those regrets, Ullan grasped a burning longing. A yearning for a new life and chance that would never come again.
‘If I could live once more......’
He would overturn those regrets.
Push his blessed body to its utmost limits, draw on honed experience and wisdom to transcend the great warrior realm.
Seize weapons far mightier than these. Bar the Abyss lords' path, honor the vow to return safely with his comrades.
Ullan vowed in silence.
The instant before his consciousness slipped away.
An anomaly struck.
Flash!
A pure white light erupted from the shabby necklace at his throat. Ullan turned his dimming gaze toward it.
‘......Hero's Token.’
Some thirty years prior.
When he was yet a warrior of the plains.
The token he had earned challenging the tribal legend, the Hero's Trial. But why did it glow now?
As questions clouded his mind.
Paaaaat!
The light exploded, engulfing the cave.
And right then.
Ullan's consciousness snapped away.
Chapter 1. Opportunity