Prologue: The End of the Journey
Time began to stretch, dragging to a crawl.
It was an intimately familiar sensation—the cold embrace of death, experienced countless times before. I fixed my gaze on the figure looming before me: massive horns, pitch-black hair, and crimson eyes. It was the Demon King. Slowly, inexorably, he brought his blade sweeping down toward me.
Knowing beyond all doubt that I was finished, my mind reflexively retraced the steps of the gruesome routine I had endured so often. In a heartbeat, that razor edge would bite into my neck. A spray of crimson would paint the air, and my head would tumble from my shoulders to strike the dirt with a dull thud. Then, nerve by nerve, the connections would fray and snap as darkness swallowed my vision. Once every thread severed and all five senses faded into nothingness, my soul would be seized by a strange, weightless vertigo, drifting upward like a shipwreck salvaged from the abyss.
Next would come the light—blinding and pure, shattering against me like sunbeams breaking over battered driftwood.
And after that… after drifting in a void where an eternity and an instant felt indistinguishable, I would open my eyes. I would awaken to find myself thrown back in time, standing once more before our battle with the Demon King had even begun.
Once that sequence ran its course, the vicious cycle would resume: confronting the Demon King all over again, only to meet yet another bizarre death where time warped between a heartbeat and forever. Until I finally slew him—or perhaps for all eternity—I would never break free of this cage.
Still, I forced myself to look on the bright side. The silver lining was that I had managed to push him remarkably far this time; with each attempt, I was slowly deciphering his patterns. The bleak reality, however, was that with my pathetic lack of talent—having failed to master swordsmanship, magic, divine miracles, or even the black arts to any true pinnacle—this might very well have been the closest I would ever get.
I brushed that despair aside. No matter how hopeless the foe, if I kept dying and throwing myself at him, sheer luck would eventually grant me an opening to pierce his weakness. Even if I tasted defeat and death a thousand times over, I only needed to win once. That was the conviction that kept me going.
As the final flash of memories signaling my demise began to fade, my body acted on its own, executing the single motion most deeply engraved into my muscles: a thrust. It was pure instinct, a desperate reflex at death's door.
Then, a heavy resistance shuddered up the hilt of the Holy Sword in my grip, biting deep into flesh. A spray of crimson blood erupted before my eyes.
It was not mine.
Like a taut string suddenly snapping, the stretched fabric of time surged back to its normal speed. When my senses cleared, my blade was buried to the hilt in someone's abdomen.
Before me stood the Demon King, glaring at me with bloodshot eyes full of venomous hatred. Blood spilled past his lips, and the arm that had been swinging down to cleave me in two hung limp, like a marionette whose strings had been severed.
Soon, as the dark flow from his stomach slowed to a halt, the Demon King disintegrated into ash and scattered into the wind.
Through the settling dust, I saw my companions running toward me.
And just like that, my long journey to slay the Demon King came to an utterly hollow end.