The War Hero Retires
The world is disgusting.
Utterly, fucking disgusting.
That Saintess bitch who claimed she loved me, only to betray me.
The princess who swore she'd give me everything this country had, then discarded me the moment I dragged the nation from the jaws of ruin.
The childhood friend who grew up beside me, only to marry the man who was my bitterest, most irreconcilable enemy.
"I just realized far too late that the whole world is crawling with nothing but rotten people."
The past when crowds had praised me, the memories of laughing together and cheering on each other's dreams—all of it had dwindled into a lonely scrap of nostalgia, something to brood over inside a tumbledown shack.
To have thrown my entire body into serving others without a thought for myself, only to end my life in a place this wretched…
"So this is how it ends."
A taste both salty and sharp on my tongue—tears or liquor, I could no longer tell. I leaned my weight against the blade of the beloved sword that had walked through life with me, and just like that, I died.
The familiar feel of its hilt in my hand. That the one to cut my last breath would be myself…
Pain for an instant. The world went dark. Consciousness sank into the sea, settling into a deep, silent depth.
Or so I believed.
"Beren! What are you doing—did you not sleep last night?!"
A sudden voice snapped my mind wide awake.
A training ground of open sand beneath a blue sky. A breeze that teased at my hair. Soldiers lined up in ranks, weapons stacked neatly to one side, the smell of turned earth thick in the air as if a bout had just finished—or was about to begin.
Everything was familiar.
This was not the lonely shack where I had wept over betrayal. This was the sword hall I had visited so often under the name of War Hero—a place that felt, if anything, more like home than home itself.
And the woman reaching a hand toward me…
Even with sunlight glaring off her palm as she shaded her eyes, the bright smile she wore as she looked down at me was something I could not trust my own eyes to believe.
My childhood friend. The one who had shared precious memories with me since we were small. Elena was kneeling before me on the ground, hand outstretched.
Her eyes held none of the contempt I remembered. Only a full measure of worry, and a quiet, gentle care.
"Well? Get up already. My arm's getting tired."
Her arm was fully extended, trembling just slightly. Looking at the gestures, the voice, the eyes I had once treasured and longed for—looking at that hand in which all of it was concentrated—I felt it in my bones.
A consciousness more alive than it had ever been was telling me the truth.
I had come back.
To the past.
"What do you mean by that, sir!"
Arhen, of the Imperial Palace Affairs department, was on the verge of losing his mind.
"You're lying. Or this is a joke. Tell me it's a joke."
"I regret to say it is one hundred percent true."
"That cannot be—oh!"
The armored man walking half a step ahead of him came to an abrupt stop and turned. Arhen's nose smacked straight into the hard plate. A little more speed and he would have bruised.
"I am merely delivering my superior's orders."
Looking up, the first thing that met Arhen's gaze was a pair of hollow eyes. Handsome, aristocratic features and blonde hair—but the emptiness of that stare made him look like a wax doll, the sort of man people instinctively avoided.
Sir Metis, the War Hero's right hand and Knight Commander, looked down at him with a face devoid of expression.
Arhen swallowed. The pressure made him flinch, but he could not simply tuck his tail and drop the matter.
"Does that even make sense right now? That the War Hero himself is retiring!"
This was no fleeting anxiety. His livelihood was at stake.
In the Horitois Empire, three figures stood nearly as high as the Emperor himself. Ordinary citizens—even sniveling children—had heard of their prestige and renown at least once. Fitting for the strongest nation on the vast continent, there was the Saintess, the cherished daughter of the Holy Cathedral. There was the Archmage, currently vanished on some solitary journey and missing, but still one of the greatest names in the continent's long history. And last of all, there was General Beren, the undefeated War Hero who had crushed rebellions and campaigns until the empire could truly call itself an empire.
"Why would a general of that caliber suddenly retire!"
The Saintess belonged to the Holy Cathedral, and the Archmage was absent; Beren was the only pillar the empire still had. His importance had never been higher—and the idea that a man still younger than the other generals, a man who had lived on battlefields since childhood, would simply quit was beyond comprehension.
His military genius was a storm no one could match. Having survived countless brushes with death from a young age, he had surpassed the empire's most celebrated generals in both martial skill and strategy, forced the old snakes who tried to diminish him into silence, and claimed the title of War Hero for himself. Nor was that all. Generals forged in the reek of blood tended to turn savage or strange somewhere in the soul—yet Beren treated even lesser nobles with kindness. Among commoners it had become fashionable to name children after him. For a man like that to step down meant a loss not only to the state and the nobility, but to every soul in the land.
"I am only delivering the order."
Arhen grabbed at Metis as the knight shrugged and turned to leave.
"If I deliver that order, I die!"
Years of surviving the palace's schemes had honed his sense for danger. His Majesty had grown increasingly short-tempered of late—sensitive about the succession, age weighing on him—and if word reached him that the War Hero was retiring, his fury would be certain. He might even take Arhen's head simply for being the messenger.
This was no longer about his post. It was about whether he lived or died.
"Give it up. I am a mere subordinate. I cannot persuade General Beren to reverse his decision."
Metis quietly peeled Arhen's desperate grip from his arm.
"What is going on here?"
The voice that saved Arhen—who had gone pale at the thought of dying on the spot—belonged to a woman behind them.
"Feels good."
"But why are you truly resigning, sir?"
Metis stared through me as I packed without expression. Even after years of living side by side, that face was still unreadable. He was the only one, though, who had stood up for me to the very end.
"You know that isn't true! General Beren is not the kind of man who would do such a thing!"
"If you cast General Beren aside, then I will step down as well!"
He had testified for me while I was in chains, and he had thrown his military dog tags—the symbol of a soldier—onto the floor. Remembering it now, I let out a short laugh.
"If you ever get sick of palace life, come find me. Your older brother will look after you."
"You spend every day chewing me out, and now you say something that soft? It makes my skin crawl."
Metis rarely showed anything, but he was frowning. If even he was reacting like this, my resignation must have hit harder than I thought.
"So why are you here? Not to comfort me, surely. You only show up when you have business."
Metis and I rarely talked about personal matters. That he had come at all was strange enough to make me curious.
"Ah—about that…"
"What do you think you're doing!"
The mystery resolved itself at once.
The door slammed open on a familiar figure. Princess Roana. She had come in such a rush that her usually elaborate hair was half undone, and the easy composure she always wore was gone—her breath short and ragged.
Metis rose to offer a bow. She ignored him entirely and strode straight at me as I packed.
"Cancel it. Now."
"Cancel what, Your Highness?"
"This retirement nonsense. What's the reason? Money? Are the other generals harassing you? I told you already—once I take my father's place, I'll pay you back double."
She started yanking open the bags I had just filled.
I sighed. I had expected this, but the familiar words and gestures were enough to make irritation rise.
"It isn't that."
"Then what is it? I'll give you everything you could want. What could you possibly be missing that you'd quit?"
Thud. Thud. Arms crossed, she kicked at my bag with her foot.
When had her personality twisted this far?
Probably because she believed I would stand at her side forever.
I had stayed by the princess only because her backing was so thin that her siblings could have crushed her at any moment. At the victory banquet after the war, she had been a girl with her lips pressed tight and her head bowed, looking ready to cry at any second—and no one paid her the slightest attention. The way she checked every face before daring a single word had been pitiful. She never even managed to ask me to take her side; she only caught the edge of my sleeve with fingers that trembled so clearly I could not bring myself to walk away. That was all.
But the glory of being the War Hero was so vast that, once she climbed onto my back, she had turned into just another spoiled young lady who no longer knew how to consider anyone else.
Even now she offered not a single word of concern for me—only her own ambition, pushed to the front.
How had I never seen it? It had been this obvious, and something over my eyes had kept it hidden.
Coming back had made it clear.
It was time she learned.
"This humble servant, Beren, hereby resigns as patron to Her Highness Princess Roana."