Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Returning to the Past (1)
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002
Chapter 1. Returning to the Past (1)
1.
Maple World was a world of adventurers.
A world that wouldn't turn without adventurers.
A world where all history was written by adventurers.
At some point in that world of adventurers, something called the Mystic Gate appeared.
“Beyond the Mystic Gate lie monsters. Not just the monsters of Maple World, but monsters never before seen in Maple World.”
Beyond it swarmed terrifying beasts.
“And there are items. Items hard to obtain in Maple World, and items impossible to get in Maple World—ones that only appear in legends and heroic tales.”
Items overflowed there as well.
Naturally, adventurers went wild over the appearance of the Mystic Gate.
They abandoned their old adventures and rushed headlong into Mystic Gate expeditions.
The whole world naturally began to revolve around the Mystic Gate.
“In the past, to have a memorable adventure, you had to cross mountains, sail oceans, and split the skies. But now, you can find a more thrilling adventure just by heading to the Mystic Gate that popped up in your backyard.”
Adventurers hailed the era ushered in by the Mystic Gate as the greatest in adventurer history—the era of dreams.
But things were different for those who weren't adventurers.
El Pam was one such case.
A twenty-year-old young man doing odd jobs in the port city of Lith lost his work overnight.
The adventurers who had helped with logistics all left for Mystic Gate adventures in a single day, drastically cutting his jobs.
Of course, it wasn't hard for a twenty-year-old to fend for himself.
“It's Black Blood Disease. The disease where you vomit black blood and die. That's the one your father has.”
But life was different for a young man with a dying family member.
“A cure? Sure, it exists. You can get it, too. For about a million mesos.”
He needed money.
But a nobody like El Pam could never have a million mesos on hand.
In the end, he took out a loan with outrageous terms.
Even so, his father passed away.
“Per our contract, you're now a slave of the Gapor Merchant Group.”
And the survivor became a slave.
“Remember this. You're bait. If you can't lure that monster, you'll die by our hands.”
In the Mystic Gate era, the only place slaves were used was beyond the Mystic Gate.
Most slaves turned bait didn't survive past six expeditions—they got eaten by monsters.
“This guy's alive again?”
But El Pam kept surviving.
It wasn't luck.
The next role for a surviving bait slave was just more bait duty. Nothing else.
Despair was followed only by more despair.
“Eh, he'll die eventually.”
Until he inevitably got eaten by a monster.
What allowed El Pam to survive was the black ring that appeared on his left wrist.
The 1st Circle, an essential condition for adventurers, had opened.
Naturally, the Gapor Merchant Group that owned him stopped using him as bait from then on.
They didn't grant him freedom, of course.
“An adventurer's ransom is different from a slave's, so work hard from now on and you can pay it off. Work hard.”
He worked like a dog.
“Good work. That settles your debt.”
He finally got treated like a person three years after awakening as an adventurer.
And on the day he gained his freedom, it began.
“Monsters are pouring out of the Mystic Gate!”
The disaster that started crumbling Maple World.
El Pam's desperate days fighting to survive that disaster began.
“Pam, you okay?”
Amid those desperate days, El Pam happened to discover his own talent.
“You just used Thunderbolt, right?”
He had no choice but to use Thunderbolt to save a comrade in crisis.
It was insane.
“You're a fire-attribute mage, aren't you?”
Using magic of an attribute different from your innate one was like playing with fire—literally. It dealt fatal damage to the caster's body.
El Pam knew that. He steeled himself and cast it. He couldn't lose a comrade.
“You're really fine?”
But against all expectations of death, El Pam's body showed no anomalies.
“No way you were born with two attributes?”
Of course, up to that point, everyone—including El Pam himself—thought he simply had two innate attributes.
“That's impressive.”
And it was a huge deal.
“Damn it, mushrooms are coming! Those zombie mushrooms are swarming! Everyone, battle stations!”
But the reality crashing down before them left no room to explore or hone that talent.
He only truly realized his All Master talent later, after more time passed.
“……You can use poison attribute too, huh.”
With all his comrades dead, in a suicidal bid, knowing he'd die upon casting it, he used Mist Eruption—a 5th Circle poison-attribute spell. Only after breathing effortlessly in the nonstop erupting toxic mist did he realize.
“I can use them all.”
He possessed the All Master talent.
From then on, El Pam's standing changed.
All Master—he became a powerful mage.
Infinite Mage, Shadow Butterfly Hunter, Balrog Butcher... Countless titles adorned his name.
But his situation remained the same.
Slay a strong monster, and an even stronger one appeared.
The days of risking life and limb just to survive didn't improve—they worsened.
And surviving those brutal battles left only new titles.
That was it.
Nothing remained.
He survived alone to face the glory.
It was the same now.
“Ah…….”
El Pam looked to the sky.
There, Hontail flapped its wings and flew away. With one head lost, now sporting two heads instead of three.
It wasn't victory.
Hontail was a dragon that wouldn't die unless all three heads were severed.
In time, it would return with a new head.
He'd merely bought a little more breathing room.
‘I'm the only survivor.’
Sacrificing all his comrades' lives.
El Pam felt no despair at that fact.
‘This time too.’
He'd chewed over such despair countless times, so it held no value left to mull.
El Pam stood.
And prepared.
‘Next time, I'll hunt it for sure.’
To drop all of that monster's heads to the ground and add the title Hontail Slayer before his name.
Whether it was possible or not didn't matter.
What for? For whom? The era of debating such values was long gone.
Hunt monsters—that was the only way to survive.
El Pam, the last adventurer of that era, rose to his feet.
‘Let's get items.’
As he planned.
‘Head to Victoria Island first. Cheryl's suicide squad held out there, so their items should be gathered there.’
Step by step, a plan to hunt Hontail.
‘If I can get Gerector's collection—he was the Cross Hunters' leader... I can bolster my tactics. If that's not enough, go to Edelstein. The Resistance hid one of the Six Heroes, Aran's polearm, in their base vault, so...’
That was the moment.
El Pam's moving legs suddenly stuck to the ground.
He hadn't been attacked.
‘Ah.’
His legs just wouldn't move.
The reason wasn't special.
His mind told his legs to move, but they simply wouldn't.
‘Strength.’
He just lacked strength.
Even the strength to walk.
Naturally, he lacked the strength to stand.
Thud!
El Pam collapsed to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.
He didn't panic at the fact.
‘The time has come.’
When death approached, it usually hit like this.
‘Like them.’
He'd seen this situation countless times.
‘Last words…….’
And he'd seen and heard what those facing this moment did, countless times.
‘But no one to hear them.’
Sadly, unlike how El Pam had heard his comrades' last words, no one remained to hear his.
Around the last adventurer, there was no one left to listen to his tales or inherit them.
Only one thing possible: El Pam telling his own adventure tales to himself.
‘So much happened.’
Thus began the reminiscence.
And naturally, it started then.
‘That's when it all began.’
The day he first awakened as an adventurer.
‘The day I got slapped.’
2.
Slap!
The moment El Pam raised his head, something flew at him and struck his cheek hard.
“Get up, you bastard!”
At the sudden cursing and violence, El Pam just stared in shock at the one who slapped him.
The muscular man, unfazed by El Pam's gaze, slapped him again and yelled.
Slap!
“You slave bastard, who the hell are you glaring at? Get up! Hurry up and get up!”
Only then did El Pam finally rise.
But he wasn't in his right mind.
El Pam's face held no expression, his eyes no focus.
It couldn't be helped.
‘What?'
He was reminiscing.
As he lay dying, dragging up distant memories from the past—faint, hazy ones.
‘Is this really reminiscing? Why does it hurt so much, feel so vivid?’
But what he felt now was nothing like distant or hazy.
‘Feels like reality?’
His swollen cheek, the blood taste in his mouth from lips split by the hard slap—it couldn't be past reminiscence.
That was when it happened.
“Throw in the bait!”
With the sudden command, someone stomped full-force on El Pam's back like stamping a seal.
Thud!
El Pam's body naturally pitched forward to the ground. And into his view came...
“Orange Mushrooms are charging!”
Hundreds of Orange Mushrooms rushing toward him like enraged bulls.
‘Ah.’
Seeing that, El Pam suffered a greater shock.
“Drop the bait and run!”
Not from the sight of charging Orange Mushrooms.
To El Pam, monsters were as ordinary as trees in a forest—part of daily life.
‘It's clear.’
The shock came because this scene was from his memory.
‘That day.’
Not just any memory, but one he could never forget.
Naturally.
‘The day bait-slave me opened my 1st Circle.’
The day El Pam's fate changed.
The day slave El Pam became an adventurer.
The day the last adventurer was born.
That was why El Pam was shocked.
El Pam realized it.
‘I've returned to the past.’
He had regressed.