Episode 1: The Breaking Dawn
It was scorching. Agonizing. Suffocating. Painful. Terrifying.
Every conceivable cry of misery surged to his throat at once.
Why was he the one condemned to suffer inside an inferno that liquefied muscle and devoured bone? If he had committed any sin, it was nothing more than taking hold of the radiant blade that had suddenly appeared before his eyes.
Please, make it stop. Stop. Stop.
A single second dragged like an eternity. Each breath he forced out tore through his chest like thorns—made all the more suffocating by the certainty that he would never draw another.
No. It hurts. I want to live—
Clinging desperately to that fleeting thought, he felt the firestorm drag his entire body into its voracious maw. His limbs refused to obey. Paradoxically, amidst the raging flames, his consciousness sank into the deepest abyss of a sunless sea.
Death wrapped him in its embrace.
And then, soon after. Once more. Again.
He returned to the past.
The moment he returned to—yes, the enemy was already scaling the ramparts on siege ladders. Instinctively, Einzel knew exactly what had to be done.
"Saintess!" Einzel rushed toward Beatrice, his voice cutting through the din of battle. "You must not use your Holy Power yet!"
"What are you talking about?!" shouted Sayne, who stood at the vanguard holding the breach. She was visibly straining under the sheer weight of the assault. Struggling, yes, but unbroken.
She can still hold out longer.
Einzel finished his calculations in an instant.
"The enemy commander is nowhere to be seen! If we squander our Holy Power recklessly right now, there's no telling what catastrophe will follow!"
Beatrice gave a firm nod.
Without wasting a breath, Einzel sprinted over to Peria.
"Don't bother targeting the catapults. Cast your detection magic instead!"
"Detection magic? Why on earth would I do that?" Peria hesitated, her thoughts spinning. Damn it, what should I do? If I just blindly follow his lead and it blows up in our faces, we're done for. "What about the catapults?!"
"The enemy is already swarming up the ladders! Catapults are meant to soften the walls before the climb begins—they aren't our immediate threat right now! Find the commander!"
His eyes burned with an eerie, unshakeable certainty, as though he had already witnessed the future unfold. Was this what set a Hero apart? Legends claimed that Heroes unraveled crises by perceiving things along planes foreign to ordinary mortals. Was it that boundless conviction driving him? There was no way to tell. Before she even realized it, Peria nodded.
Einzel immediately turned and sought out Lena.
"When the commander is exposed, loose an arrow from the shadows and strike him down."
Moments later, Peria's detection spell surged through the chaotic sky, marking a single coordinate in midair with a brilliant crimson beacon. The flamboyant silhouette of a high demon shimmered into view.
Before the demon could even widen his eyes and comprehend the trap closing around him, Einzel roared:
"Lena!"
An arrow streaked like lightning toward the crimson light.
Genom, who had been deep in the middle of channeling destructive black magic to shatter the main gate, was pierced clean through the chest.
"…!"
The spell instantly unraveled. With nowhere left to discharge, the unstable dark mana violently rebounded into Genom's core, throwing his internal flow into catastrophic upheaval. In simpler terms, that single arrow had churned his organs into a liquefied mess.
Genom vomited a mouthful of black blood.
How? He had laid out a flawless strategy. At least, that was what he had believed. Then how on earth did this happen?
He had committed overwhelming numbers to the siege ladders to fixate the defenders, used the catapults as psychological bait, and planned to blast the fortress gate wide open himself. So how could they have seen through it?
Someone had unraveled his stratagem down to the finest detail. It could not be a coincidence. Had it been mere chance, an arrow would never have buried itself in his chest before he could even mount a defense.
…None of that mattered now. Survival took precedence.
Struggling to steady his trembling body, Genom bellowed with everything he had left:
"Retreat! Fall back!"
Dammit. Could it be the Hero? If so, it made sickening sense. Heroes were a wretched breed whose very purpose seemed to be tearing apart magnificent grand designs.
He hauled his battered frame onto his skeletal steed. The mount snorted hollowly, nearly throwing him off balance in the process.
Genom let out a bitter sneer at his own pathetic state. Look at you, Genom. A legion commander of the Demon King's army, reduced to struggling with a lowly undead beast just because a single plan went awry.
The demon vanguard sounded the horn and withdrew.
"Waaaoooh!"
"We drove them back!"
The triumphant cheers of the imperial soldiers echoed across the battlements. The fortress had weathered the ferocious onslaught and forced the enemy into full retreat. Though it was too early to drop their guard entirely, the engagement was virtually won. Once an assault collapsed, the attackers could never easily regain the upper hand against fortified walls.
For the first time that day, they could celebrate in earnest.
"Incredible…" Peria murmured under her breath.
Never in their wildest nightmares had they imagined that his uncanny, eerie certainty had been bought with his own agonizing death. Even in a state of torment that would have driven an ordinary mortal out of their mind, the moment he died and returned to the past, he had moved without hesitation to dismantle the enemy's scheme.
She had always wondered how someone who couldn't grasp a single concept even after being taught ten had suddenly displayed such tactical brilliance. This was the hidden truth behind it all.
Did he fight like that all the way to the very end of our journey, dying over and over again?
An ordinary human would have gone completely insane. Yet no matter how much agony he endured, he hadn't lost his mind. He hadn't broken—or at least, so it seemed.
No, perhaps he was already broken. Is that why he colluded with the enemy…?
Colluded…?
She no longer knew what to believe.
Inside the scrying crystal, the projection showed the young Hero laughing brightly alongside the soldiers. He was sharing, savoring, and relishing the victory purchased at the cost of his own life more purely than anyone else on that wall. Yet the more radiant the smiles of the women in the recording were, the more the faces of those watching in reality withered with horror and grief.
Then, Lena broke the silence.
"Hey… wait a minute. Is this right?" She tilted her head, turning to look at her companions with furrowed brows.
"What do you mean?" Beatrice asked gently.
"In my memory, after we drove the enemy off like that, didn't we chase them down right away…?"
The women's eyes widened in sudden realization.
She was right.
In their memories, after repelling the assault, they had pursued the retreating host across the plains. They had never stayed behind the fortress walls, laughing and making merry.
…Something had diverged.
And the reason was dreadfully clear.
He had died. For whatever reason, at least once more after that moment.
Their expressions hardened into stone.
For the first time in an eternity, he was able to offer a genuine smile.
They had won.
It had been agonizing, tormenting, and he had died for it. But they had achieved victory. For a little while at least, he wouldn't have to die, and he would be revered as the Hero who repelled the Demon King's army. He had inflicted meaningful damage on the enemy for the very first time. If this was the outcome, then perhaps the horrors he had endured held some sliver of value.
This wasn't like the meaningless deaths he had suffered before. Yes, completely different from those pointless ends…
Damn it all. Who am I kidding?
No matter how beautifully one gilded death, it remained what it was. He had died, and he would die again; in the grand scheme of things, it carried no profound meaning. What difference was there between dying in battle against the mightiest, most terrifying adversary or being slaughtered by the filthiest, most cowardly vermin?
To the Hero, death was nothing more than an obstacle and a cage obstructing his sacred duty. The shape that barrier took hardly mattered.
And yet, despite knowing that, he smiled.
Though his skin still stung with phantom burns every time he drew a breath, and though a scream threatened to rip from the depths of his soul whenever he shut his eyes, the taste of victory was undeniably sweet—and he was the victor. The soldiers and his comrades were smiling back at him. Wasn't that enough?
Then, just as deep darkness coiled around the sky, Genom launched his true assault.
After silently picking off the sentries posted along the ramparts, he unleashed the Ash Soldiers bestowed by the Demon King. By what sorcery they had been forged, no one knew, but though these ash-colored soldiers were technically alive, they did not breathe, eat, drink, or sleep. They felt neither fatigue nor fear—the ultimate weapons to slaughter an enemy whose guard was down.
Scaling the siege ladders like silent phantoms, the Ash Soldiers seized the battlements, and within moments, the heavy fortress gates were thrown wide open from the inside. The instant those gates swung open, the fortress transformed into an abattoir.
Again.
The gates were breached again.
The Hero stared with hollow, dazed eyes as fire and slaughter engulfed the inner ward.
Why?
How could this happen?
Had they been bewitched by ghosts?
His face twisted in despair as his hand clamped onto the hilt of his sword.
In the dead of night, the enemy had struck without warning and overrun the ramparts. Given that they had taken the walls without raising a clamor, they had to be an elite vanguard. But where on earth could an elite force like this have suddenly materialized? They had fought a grueling pitched battle by daylight. How could any force infiltrate so flawlessly and butcher defenders who held the overwhelming numerical advantage?
It defied biological limits, regardless of human willpower.
As he watched the Ash Soldiers mercilessly slaughtering the humans, his eyes caught sight of another figure through the smoke.
Genom.
He came face to face with the enemy legion commander once more. The moment the demon spotted him, he sneered:
"Ah, so it was you after all, Hero."
It's over.
Einzel squeezed his eyes shut, and in the next heartbeat, dark flames consumed his flesh to ash.
When he opened his eyes, he was standing once again at the exact moment they had driven off the initial siege. This time, he ordered the garrison to remain on continuous, maximum alert. Yet after several days, when the soldiers' physical limits collapsed under sheer exhaustion, the enemy swept in like a relentless tide without missing a beat.
He died.
Returning to the past yet again, he searched for the most efficient rotation to safeguard the fortress while managing stamina. Even so, human endurance had its limits. In the end, the enemy breached the walls every single time.
He repeated the cycle again and again, striving with everything he had to hold the line. But no matter how many variations he tried, the moment the soldiers' stamina ran dry, the enemy descended upon the fortress to wipe them out.
There was only one way forward.
"Let's pursue those troops."
End it all in a single stroke.