The Breaking Dawn
"I'm sorry. It's all because of me."
She spoke those words softly.
"...No. It's not your fault."
He answered gently.
She caressed his cheek with trembling fingers, her voice barely a whisper. "...Thank you. For pushing yourself this far, fighting until you were broken, just for someone like me."
"It's nothing. A fight like this? I could do it a hundred times over."
"Pfft, idiot." A faint laugh slipped past her lips. "There's something I want to say. I want to tell you while my head is still clear."
"Go on."
With a radiant smile, she threw her arms around him.
"Thank you."
She clung to him desperately, wrapping her arms and legs around his battered body.
"I love you."
She pressed her lips against his.
"I really wanted to tell you that," she murmured. Dark crimson blood steadily pooled from her torn abdomen. "Ah, everything is... growing so hazy."
She squeezed out one last, fragile smile.
"Still, I'm glad that you're the last thing I get to see."
"Ha, since when did you care about me that much?" He managed a playful, teasing smirk.
"It doesn't take very long to fall in love with a human. Look at me—I fell for you in an instant."
"...That sounds pretty wonderful."
"If there's such a thing as the next life... then next time..."
Her voice trailed off into silence.
Wrapped in a blanket of crimson blood, with a shattered blade serving as her tombstone, she slipped into eternal rest.
He smiled—a bright, bitter grimace.
"Next time will be better, so rest easy," he whispered, even as blood seeped from every wound across his body.
His consciousness began to sink. He pictured himself drifting for a brief while across a tranquil sea of oblivion, knowing full well that he would soon be dragged back to the scorched earth of endless battle.
"I'll save you next time. I swear it."
He lay down beside her corpse. And there, he died.
Lately, the past kept bleeding into my dreams. And of all things, memories of struggles that had already been settled long ago.
What is this? Is the dark mana invading my body starting to scramble my brain?
The mere thought sent a foul shudder down my spine, feeling as though insects were crawling beneath my skin.
Fuck, someone bring me a mace. I'll just die once and restart—ah, right. If I kick the bucket now, that's really the end.
The abrupt reminder of reality left a sour taste in my mouth. My instincts were still stubborn, hardwired to the days when I was the Hero.
Come to think of it, barging into this place without a second thought was probably another bad habit left over from those times. Back then, if things went sideways, dying wiped the slate clean, so I never bothered much with recon or careful planning.
Unless I did something about this mindset of mine, getting back to a normal, peaceful life was going to stay an impossible dream.
I let out a long, heavy sigh.
"A war?" Einzel asked the Saintess.
Beatrice offered a serene, benevolent smile. "Yes, they reported it as war."
A skirmish had erupted along the border. The opposing force was a single legion belonging to the Demon King's army. It had been barely five months since Einzel was chosen as the Hero.
"What exactly is a Hero supposed to do in a war?"
Einzel didn't have the faintest clue what role a Hero was expected to play on an open battlefield. Strictly speaking, the Hero's true function was assassination—striking down the Demon King. While their small party offered little strategic impact in mass warfare, the Hero was an exceptional talent of unmatched legitimacy who honed his power through focused combat, eventually infiltrating the heart of the enemy's territory to decapitate the Demon King while human armies kept the demon legions pinned down.
For that reason, Heroes rarely took the field directly in full-scale wars despite their massive symbolic weight. Mass combat ran counter to their very nature; compared to small-scale monster skirmishes, open warfare was unfamiliar territory. From the ground up, the Hero party's strategy was engineered to eliminate a handful of high-value targets with ruthless efficiency.
Thus, having the party's maiden campaign be an active siege rather than an expedition was remarkably unusual.
"We will take part in the fighting, but we won't be shouldering the main burden," Beatrice explained gently. "The priority is for you to gain combat experience, Hero, while bolstering the troops' morale."
"Still, isn't it dangerous? I'm not sure what we're supposed to accomplish when an actual Corps Commander is taking the field."
Beatrice beamed. "Do not worry. We are defending behind fortified stone walls; the tactical advantage is overwhelmingly ours."
She wasn't wrong. Fortress walls were among the most decisive factors in warfare. Besieging a stronghold was inherently far more brutal than defending one. But was that rule absolute? One could never be sure.
"You liar!" Einzel yelled.
"Are you out of your mind?!" Sayne screamed.
Einzel and Sayne were frantically trying to shove over siege ladders, throwing murderous glares in Beatrice's direction.
"You said we had the advantage!"
Cold sweat trickled down Beatrice's neck. We are in serious trouble.
"What part of this looks like an advantage to you?!"
Watching demon soldiers swarm up the ladders like rabid beasts even after tumbling headfirst into the abyss, Beatrice could hardly muster an answer.
"Hey! Say something—"
"Quiet, both of you."
Einzel and Sayne snapped their mouths shut.
Beatrice gritted her teeth and began to pray. Seconds later, a colossal mace forged of holy light manifested in the heavens, sweeping down across the parapet to splinter every single siege ladder into kindling.
Beatrice wiped the sweat from her brow. "That should buy us a moment."
Freed from the frantic desperation of stabbing blindly at whatever crawled over the edge, Einzel and Sayne took a breath and surveyed the rest of the battle.
Farther along the ramparts, Peria was systematically incinerating catapults with bursts of flame, while Lena picked off enemy officers with uncanny archery.
"...What the hell are we supposed to be doing right now?" Einzel muttered.
"...Hell if I know. Go grab some popcorn, maybe."
Einzel and Sayne stood around like wooden posts, staring blankly at the demons below.
Now that the ladders were gone, they literally had no job left to do. The siege engines shelling the walls were being erased by Peria, and any enemy commanders attempting to rally the front lines were dropped by Lena's arrows before they even reached the base of the wall.
Einzel clicked his tongue, sheathed his sword, and began weaving mana to prepare spells.
Sayne, who thought they were comrades in shared misery, stared at him in utter betrayal. To add insult to injury, the bastard who was supposed to be the legendary Hero had stowed the Holy Sword away completely and started plinking away with an ordinary hunting bow.
With nothing left to cut, Sayne just stood there awkwardly. Einzel glanced back at her. "Go get that popcorn."
"...Wait. Something isn't right." A few hours later, Einzel frowned, cocking his head.
"What's wrong?" Sayne asked.
"They made a big deal about a Corps Commander leading this assault... but why haven't we seen so much as a shadow of him?"
...He was right. The enemy's paramount fighting force was nowhere on the battlefield. Even the tactical command was being handled by run-of-the-mill grunt captains.
Sayne hurried over to Beatrice. "Excuse me, Saintess. Something feels off."
Beatrice turned her calm blue eyes toward her. "Off?"
"No matter where we look, the enemy Corps Commander is nowhere to be found."
"The Corps Commander...?"
This is bad.
A Corps Commander wouldn't absent himself out of sheer incompetence. There had to be an ambush or a hidden scheme—the Saintess realized this by pure instinct.
And right at that moment.
A flamboyantly attired demon with deep indigo hair materialized before the fortress gates.
The 2nd Legion Commander, Genom.
He was notorious for unleashing devastating wide-area destruction through his mastery of dark magic. While his raw finesse couldn't match Grandis—there were even rumors that Grandis surpassed the Demon King himself in the pure art of dark spellcraft—Genom was undeniably one of the top practitioners in the entire demonic hierarchy.
And when someone of his caliber concealed his presence to prepare a single, concentrated blast, the destructive force was more than enough to shatter ironclad fortress gates into scrap.
A streak of pitch-black fire hurtled forward.
The dark flame melted iron instantly, ignited the very air, and detonated with deafening violence.
The gates were breached.
A horde of demons poured through the breach.
Einzel drew the Holy Sword without hesitation and leaped down from the battlements. There was no point in clinging to high ground when a Corps Commander had already breached the courtyard. Rushing straight into the heart of the burning inner town, the Hero came face-to-face with the demon commander.
Genom's eyes flared with intense light. "The Hero? Are you the Hero?"
Einzel's expression hardened. "...Yeah."
A chilling smile spread across Genom's lips. "What a magnificent face."
"Huh?"
Unprompted praise from a mortal enemy. Einzel looked at him as though he had completely lost his mind.
"The unyielding conviction burning in those eyes... the raw fighting spirit etched into every fiber of your muscles, every single cell. It borders on perfection." Genom took a measured step forward. "Which is precisely why I must kill you here."
In the span of a single heartbeat, Genom closed the distance and appeared directly in front of Einzel.
"Only by snuffing your life out now can there be any hope for demonkind," Genom murmured as an incantation spilled from his lips. "Our Lord Demon King, the great Grandis, the titanic Malekidus... not a single one among them is expendable to our cause. Yet you would one day strike them down—if you were granted infinite time to grow, that is."
Einzel slashed his blade with frantic ferocity, but not a single strike found purchase.
"Did you truly believe that would connect? How naive." Genom toyed with him casually, slipping past every blow with effortless grace. "Still, a Hero is a terrifying creature. Even as pathetically weak as you are today, you are destined to become the dagger aimed at the Demon King's throat."
Genom's voice dropped, ice-cold.
"Therefore, extinguishing your life is infinitely more important to me than taking a hundred fortresses like this."
"Give me a break," Einzel spat, his face contorting in frustration.
Genom left not a single opening. Einzel racked his brain, desperately searching for a vulnerability, but Genom spoke in a tone dripping with mock sympathy.
"Glaring at me is an exercise in futility. I do not drop my guard. My mind is fixed entirely on killing you, and only you."
Genom unleashed dark magic. Before Einzel could even register the movement, black flames engulfed his entire body.
"Aaaaaaaargh!"
Darkness swallowed his vision whole.