A New Beginning
—Thud!
A massive demon finally draws its last breath.
Its grotesquely muscular limbs are mangled with countless lacerations.
"Whew."
Del Roan, drenched in sweat after slaying the beast, wiped his blurred vision with his sleeve. The blood made it hard to see.
Yet no matter how much he wiped, his vision remained a hazy smudge. His entire body was already thoroughly soaked in crimson.
"Ah."
Realizing his situation only now, he slowly turned his head. Nothing but a vast, pitch-black expanse of death filled his sight.
The six comrades he had clashed with, grown with, and shared his heart with were all gone. He had barely managed to climb to this spot by stepping over their corpses, but the only reward waiting for him was failure.
"...Wow. What a spectacular sight."
As if trying to escape the reality before him, Roan looked up at the sky. But there was no paradise to be found in his retreat.
Dragons painting the sky.
A crimson moon summoned by cultists.
The colossal arm of an archdemon.
A hymn chanted by an apostle.
Even the gaze of a transcendent being.
It was spectacular indeed. A spectacle on the brink of ruin.
The moment he realized this situation was an inescapable quagmire, Del Roan had only one thought.
Ah, I regret it.
He regretted his life. It had been a continuous chain of regrets.
If only I had worked a little harder, if only I had slept a little less, the outcome would have been better than this.
A past where he had grown complacent, resting on his natural talents.
The party's destructive power was more than enough. If only I had focused on defense, I could have kept everyone safe.
A past where he had stubbornly insisted on attacking, utterly neglecting defense.
Countless other regrets piled upon him.
From trivial bickers to real fights where he lost his temper and left deep emotional scars, all the way to this very moment where the continent's peace lay shattered because he failed to stabilize its foundations.
But there was no time to make amends. The demons were swarming.
—Slash!
A sharp, overlapping sound echoed.
The two arms that had carried him through the expedition rolled onto the ground.
An irreversible wound.
Yet Roan could not even see it. His rapidly cooling brain was already forcing open the pages of his past memories.
He was born.
He held a sword for the first time.
He defeated his first monster.
Feeling a sense of destiny in saving people and slaying beasts, he chose his path.
He trained.
He grew faster than anyone else.
He became complacent, neglecting his physical conditioning.
Even so, his name echoed across the continent.
Evil arrived. Not just one, but many simultaneously.
He formed an expedition party with the continent's greatest powerhouses.
They joined forces.
They fought.
And then, the sprouting seeds of destruction claimed his comrades' lives.
A cultist's test subject.
A vessel for a transcendent being.
A demon-worshiping ritual.
An assassination by a traitor.
A sacrifice required for ascension.
A noble's puppet.
If only he had seized the right opportunities.
If only he had blocked those attacks, that past would never have come to pass.
Before long, even his regrets and mistakes began to fade into the dark. His thoughts grew shorter and shorter.
Just one more chance...
Without even finishing his silent plea, his life completely—
"Gasp...!"
Roan bolted upright.
Something felt different.
His limbs, which should have been cold and severed, were perfectly intact. The bone-deep fatigue that had plagued his entire body was completely gone.
It's so bright...
The sudden warmth of the sunlight felt incredibly intense. It made no sense. For the past few years, he had seen nothing but ash-gray skies and a blood-red moon.
Frowning, Roan stood up.
Everything is so high.
Everything was tall. No, that wasn't it.
I've shrunk.
An empty wooden house. The scent of his hometown, thick with old memories.
Pacing around the room, Roan looked outside.
Lush greenery filled the landscape, and birds chirped happily in the trees.
Melgen.
The place where he was born and raised. A quiet, rural backwater without a single tall building. A dark village without a single streetlamp. He had returned to a place that couldn't even be easily found on a map.
...And he was a child again!
It's a dream.
Thinking so, Roan pinched his own cheek.
"Aaargh!"
He let out a sharp cry. It was due to the monstrous strength he had possessed since childhood. Rubbing his cheek, which had almost been torn clean off, Roan snapped back to reality.
It's not a dream...
Indeed. This wasn't a dream; it was an opportunity.
How on earth did I return to the past? I think I faintly remember talking to the mage in our expedition party...
There were plenty of other things to question, but—
Who cares! Why overthink it? I should just be happy!
Rather than suspicion, Roan felt pure, unadulterated joy. It was only natural. Returning to the past meant he had been given a chance to start over.
Now that I'm back, there's only one thing to do.
Roan gazed out at the peaceful world. The foretold destruction. He didn't know if it would unfold exactly the same way, but even if it didn't, he had to prevent anything that would lead to regret. This was his chance to undo the countless regrets he had harbored before dying.
"Alright!"
Having made up his mind, Roan dashed outside. Five moss-covered wooden houses and a dirt path. It was the familiar, cozy scenery of Melgen.
"Mmm—this nostalgic scent."
He muttered to himself without realizing it. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing a six-year-old child would say.
"Roan! What time do you think it is? Get up already!"
As he was taking a deep breath of the fresh greenery, a booming shout echoed from the building right in front of him. It was a voice from his distant past, yet still incredibly familiar.
Could it be... Grandfather Melverick?!
"You should be up and farming by now! Skipping even a single day is a disaster!"
Ah! It really is him! Grandfather Melverick!
In his past life, that booming voice used to make Roan's heart drop. He used to snivel under his blankets whenever Grandfather Melverick scolded him like that. But now! He had never missed that scolding more.
"Go fetch water and pull weeds this instant!"
"Grandfather!"
Nostalgia was nostalgia, but business was business. Farming had to be put on hold for something far more important.
"I'm sorry, but I have something way more important to do! The world is on the brink of destruction, so I need to build up my strength!"
"Wh-What?"
Melgen.
Population: ten.
A community so small it was embarrassing to even call it a village. In an environment where rumors spread in a mere ten seconds, Roan quickly earned a rather dishonorable label:
"The kid worked so hard he turned into a doomsday cultist."
Regardless of the rumors, Roan's second life marched on.
Actually, this is better. Since they think I'm crazy, they leave me alone.
Still, he felt a bit bad that the local uncle who used to look after him had stopped visiting. He was one of the few people who had been kind to Roan, an orphan found abandoned in the village. At least the man still left food by his door so he wouldn't starve, so it wasn't as if he had completely washed his hands of him.
I can actually boil my own water and light my own fires now, though.
Still, he was grateful for the food. Roan chewed on the multigrain bread that had been slipped through the gap in his door, then stood up. His once-stubby legs had grown quite a bit, and his chubby, childish frame was beginning to show the faint outlines of physical balance.
Four years had passed since his return.
It was the year Roan turned ten.
And today, just like any other day, he was throwing himself into training.
Destruction is inevitable. The exact same events are starting to unfold.
Roan's gaze drifted to the newspaper lying on his desk.
• Crimson Moon Sighted Temporarily
• Demon Worshiping Cult Discovered
Now that he knew, there was no time to waste.
I have to grow strong again. I can't get complacent this time. I'll grit my teeth and push through to the very end to stop it.
He would accomplish the goal he had failed to achieve before. He would stop the destruction and crush the seeds of ruin before they could even sprout—seeds he hadn't even known existed in his past life. That was the ultimate purpose of this life.
But... there's something even more important.
Roan's eyes drifted back to the newspaper.
Debi Jane, the Prodigy of the Red Magic Tower, Develops New Magic...
My comrades from the expedition.
They had bickered and fought constantly, but they were as close as family. In this new life, he wanted to go on an adventure with them again. No, he absolutely had to!
Since he planned to focus entirely on defense in this life, the expedition party's overwhelming destructive power was not a luxury—it was an absolute necessity.
Defense... I've never really thought about it before.
In his past life, he had focused solely on offense. Because it looked cool.
But what was the result of that choice?
Thinking about it now really snaps me back to reality.
Because he had been granted a second chance, he could focus on building his strength with absolute clarity. Even during his complacent past, he had established a solid training regimen. Now that he remembered it all, he just had to repeat and refine it.
No complacency. This time, I'm going all the way.
Push the body to its absolute limits. Prepare for the coming destruction before anyone else.
And...
He had to find his future comrades and warn them of the impending doom.
In my past life, we just naturally came together.
The continent's greatest powerhouses had gathered in one place after hearing rumors of the expedition.
This time, it'll be different.
He would seek them out himself. He would go to each of them and ask them to be his comrades.
Starting from scratch, what was the most important thing for this plan?
Never be arrogant, and steadily build up my strength!
For an ordinary child, it would have been an incredibly lonely and dry existence. But for Del Roan, who had so much on his mind, it was anything but.
And so, his days of quiet, relentless preparation continued.
Age twelve.
"See, Roan? I told you to stop talking about the end of the world. I'm just glad you've finally come to your senses..."
He stopped talking about the apocalypse and integrated back into the community.
Age thirteen.
"Roan, don't train too hard. If you get hurt, we won't have anyone left to work."
"Don't worry! I'm tough as nails! On that note, I'll be counting on you again today!"
"Uh, y-yeah... are you sure you're okay? Rolling boulders down the hill... and you carried them all the way here yourself."
"I'm really, really fine!"
Growing his body was crucial. Thus, Roan ate everything in sight, trained like a madman, and worked like a dog.
Age fifteen.
"Roan, are you still training?"
"Of course! Sixteen hours a day!"
"...Isn't that a bit much? If you subtract sleeping and working, you barely have any time left."
"Don't worry! I'm perfectly fine!"
"That 'don't worry' of yours is what terrifies me..."
With their worries at his back, Roan continued to build his foundation. His body, fueled by massive amounts of nutrition, grew to match his past physique, and the far more intense training made his muscles as hard as steel.
And finally, at the age of twenty, when he deemed his preparations complete—
"I'm leaving Melgen now!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Roan announced his departure.