The Breaking Dawn
"We won."
Those were the very first words that met his ears the moment he opened his eyes.
"You fought so bravely, so magnificently. I am so terribly proud of you, Hero." Beatrice spoke with tears pooling on the brink of spilling over. "The enemy forces have been completely wiped out, and their commander died in pursuit of you. Above all, since that commander was Genom—the butcher who slaughtered our soldiers en masse—our front lines will be relieved of an unfathomable burden."
It was an unprecedented triumph against the Demon King's army. Word would soon reach the capital, and when it did, he would undoubtedly take his first true steps as a continental hero.
Felling Genom had been the decisive turning point. Excluding Grandis, the undisputed apex among the Demon King's legion commanders, Genom was the most catastrophic dark mage alive. How many thousands of imperial soldiers had perished at a single flick of his wrist? The gates of Felton Fortress, fortified though they were with layers of heavy defensive wards, would have shattered into kindling had the Hero not anticipated the strike and thrown himself in the way.
Because the Hero had intercepted the blow, and because Lena's arrow had inflicted grave internal wounds upon the demon, Einzel had achieved the miraculous feat of holding his ground against a commander who normally would have burned him to ash without giving him a chance to run. As a result, Genom's legion was annihilated, and Genom himself had his heart run through.
The enemy's remaining ranks had crumbled with absurd ease once Sayne, the fierce heir to the ducal house of Ludran and the Empire's premier sword, carved a swath through their center, followed by Peria, the presumptive successor to the Magic Tower, who incinerated their flanks in blazing sorcery. There were hardly any casualties or wounded on their side; the clerical order led by Saintess Beatrice mended the soldiers' injuries almost instantaneously, driving the enemy into an irreversible rout.
Beatrice poured this tale out to the bedridden Einzel, her gaze shimmering with unreserved joy. Right then, the rest of the party ambled into his quarters one after another.
Sayne sank onto the edge of Einzel's bed with an incredulous chuckle. "Seriously, you're out of your damn mind. Who in their right head decides to buy time against a legion commander all on their own? Honestly... I had no idea you could actually pull off something like that."
Lena raked a hand through her disheveled golden hair, her expression flush with lingering adrenaline. "Holy shit, you insane bastard. Telling me to snipe Genom right at that second set up the whole fucking board. God damn, holy fuck..."
She showered him with praise laced with foul language wholly unfitting her ethereal beauty, then leaned down, seized Einzel's face in both hands, and planted fierce, messy kisses across his cheeks. "Fuck, you did so damn well, my sweet boy!"
Sayne glanced over at the elf, her brow twitching. "Hold on, if we're claiming ownership, he's my kid. Think about how many months I've spent drilling swordsmanship into him. Don't cross the line."
Sayne bantered with playful familiarity, trading jabs despite maintaining polite speech, and the two women burst out laughing together.
"Aigoo, look at our brilliant little madman!"
The sweet fruit of victory had bound them closer than ever before. Only now, in the glow of surviving impossible odds, had the Hero's companions truly become comrades in arms.
"Peria, don't you have anything to say?" Sayne turned toward the blue-robed mage hovering near the doorway. Peria hesitated, fidgeting as a blush crept up her cheeks.
"W-Well... at first I wondered if that plan was completely reckless, but... it was astounding. You looked just like the legendary Heroes of old tales." Having blurted out the words, her face burned crimson—too embarrassed to linger after praising the man she usually spent her days lecturing—and she slipped hastily out of the room.
His companions lingered a while longer, showering him with laughter and admiration, and Einzel smiled brightly through it all.
Eventually, agreeing that a recovering patient shouldn't be exhausted, they filed out. The moment the heavy oak door clicked shut, Einzel pulled the woolen blanket over his head.
Twitch.
His forearms jerked in a violent spasm.
Twitch, shudder.
His entire frame began to convulse, shuddering erratically like the severed corpse of a slaughtered beast in the throes of post-mortem rigor. Drenching cold sweat poured from his skin, soaking the sheets.
He remembered Genom.
He remembered the roaring black flames.
He remembered the agony.
He remembered the sheer, suffocating terror.
They had won. Yet deep inside, not an ounce of joy existed.
Phantom pain still ravaged his nerves, searing him with the sensation of his flesh peeling and boiling away. While dying repeatedly at Genom's hands, he had been too consumed by instinct to understand. Only after finally conquering the demon did the reality crash down upon him: this nightmare was only the beginning. He would have to endure this torment again and again and again.
It hurts this much. I'm this terrified. And I have to keep fighting like this forever?
No. No. No, no, no. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts so bad. I'm scared. God, I'm so scared. Make it stop.
Every glimpse of the future brought a fresh wave of cold sweat. When Genom had caught him during that final, desperate chase, despair had burrowed deep into the marrow of his bones. He didn't want to fight anymore. He didn't want to hurt anymore. He never wanted to feel that gut-wrenching dread again.
A storm of chaotic, frantic thoughts tore through his mind until, at last, his conclusions crystallized into a single quiet resolve.
Let's die.
If I die, I'll never have to feel terrified again.
The moment Genom's claws had seized him in that previous loop, his spirit had already fractured beyond repair. He had survived only by sheer stroke of luck, but the boy inside had died. He had no desire left to live.
True, death had only ever thrown him back into the past. Yet somehow, a desperate delusion took root: choosing his own end would surely be different. If I impale myself with the Holy Sword, wouldn't something change? She's a goddess, isn't she? Surely she'd grant mercy to a soul that chose to surrender on its own.
The unfounded conviction of being uniquely chosen—the very hubris that had once made him boldly charge an ogre—had now degraded into an instrument to justify his own suicide.
Yes. It has to be. If I pierce my own chest with this sacred blade, eternal peace will come. I can finally rest where nothing can ever hurt me again.
Clinging to that thought, he drew the Holy Sword, aimed its shimmering tip solemnly against his abdomen, and thrust it home with all his might.
Tearing, gut-wrenching agony ripped through his core, but compared to the sensation of being incinerated alive, it was nothing.
He died.
And then—he opened his eyes to the exact same room, back in the moments before he had driven the blade into his flesh.
The Hero's former companions watched the memory crystal displaying their first shared victory, their expressions steeped in grim gloom.
They had remembered it as a glorious, untarnished triumph. Yet beneath that golden facade lay countless buried deaths of the Hero—sacrifices whose existence they had never even suspected. Watching him engulfed in roaring fire, shrieking in agony time after time, was a horror that no human being could ever grow numb to.
And when the Hero finally collapsed, smiling brightly under the congratulations of their past selves, the women had briefly forgotten the sins he had supposedly committed in the present. They had caught themselves thinking: At least we won't have to watch him suffer anymore.
Then, left alone in the quiet quarters, the boy on the screen had begun to convulse, weeping into his hands before drawing his blade and plunging it into his own gut.
Horror paralyzed every woman in the room.
Suicide.
Perishing while desperately battling a foe was fundamentally worlds apart from forsaking one's own life by choice. Realizing just how shattered his sanity must have been to drive him to that point, they lowered their heads in sickening shame.
Yet the true nightmare was only just beginning.
On the projection, the newly revived Hero blinked, looking frantically around the empty room. Then he grabbed his head with both hands, dropped to his knees, and began to shudder violently.
From the crystal, his voice bled into the room.
"Fuck."
The companions froze. What?
They snapped their eyes toward the screen. Throughout all the recordings they had witnessed, he had never once uttered a single profanity.
"Fuuuck!"
Tears streamed down his contorted face, his features twisting into pure, rabid frenzy. "Why?! What the fuck did I do to you?! Why won't you even let me die?! Fuck! You fucking bitch! Why me?! Why the hell does it have to be me?! Why do I have to be some stupid fucking Hero and suffer through this hell?!"
Every word was torn from the rawest depths of his shattered soul.
"Why won't you even let me die?! Why?! Why?! WHYYY!"
With a blood-curdling screech, he leveled the Holy Sword at his belly and drove it in again.
He died. He woke. He stabbed himself once more, and died again.
Then, the raving rage broke into pitiful, sniffling sobs, and he began to plead with the empty air.
"I was wrong... I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Please, just let me die. I don't want to hurt anymore... I don't want to die scared anymore. Please... please, I'm begging you..."
A second later, the weeping turned back into feral fury.
"Why make it me?! Out of everyone in the world, why did it have to be me?!"
Cursing the gods.
Begging the heavens for scraps of mercy.
Despising the divine with every fiber of his being...
After cycling through this endless, frantic frenzy several times, his strength drained away, and he collapsed onto the stone floor like a discarded rag.
In the viewing room, it was the Hero's former companions who felt ready to collapse.
"How... how could this..."
He had broken. Utterly and completely.
Ever since that victory, the Hero had always shown them a gentle, reassuring smile. Knowing what they thought they knew, they had assumed his eventual fall—his supposed collusion with the demon race—had been born of weak-willed self-preservation, unable to bear the burdens of war. But looking at the projection, the truth laid bare was vastly different. He hadn't wavered out of malice; he had simply shattered, purely and thoroughly.
He had lost his mind, screaming curses at the heavens, frantically rubbing his palms together to beg for death, sobbing until his breath hitched and his eyes swelled shut.
Through the crystal, they had already witnessed him endure horrific physical mutilation. They had seen his spirit pushed to edge of delirium. But they had never imagined he could be reduced to something this broken—this hollow.
Not even a fraction of his long tenure as the Hero had elapsed yet. He had barely set out on his journey, yet he was already shattered into dust. The weeping boy wailing on the floor bore no resemblance to the triumphant champion hailed across the Empire.
If he was already in this state now... what horrors awaited them in the recordings to come?
Lena reached blindly for a cup of water, but her trembling fingers spasmed, knocking the glass from the table to shatter upon the floorboards.
On the projection, the Hero remained curled into a miserable ball, groaning faintly in the dark. And when he finally gathered the strength to haul himself back to his feet, the first rays of morning light filtered through the window frame.
The dawn dyed the sky in blinding, incandescent radiance—brilliant enough to feel as though it would burn the entire world to ash. It was far too bright for him. And far too bright for them.
For some reason, my stomach felt a bit tender today. Well, whatever.
I suppose I got off easy. There were days when it felt as though the skin across my entire body was being boiled in oil from dawn to dusk, so a mild stomach ache didn't even register as real pain. Not to mention the fact that my nervous system had long since lost half its ability to process sensory signals properly anyway.
Harboring that faint, phantom tug in my gut, I turned my back on the burning bandit stronghold. The thick splashes of blood painting the scorched earth weren't half bad to look at.