A Hundred Years of Endurance
“Day after day, just holding on… Let’s endure one more month, one more year… Before I knew it, ten years had passed, and eventually a full century.”
At some point…
The man had once said that time in this world seemed to flow far more slowly than in the place he came from. Whether the world itself moved at a sluggish pace or the creatures that roamed it simply possessed unnaturally long lifespans, he couldn’t be sure.
Surviving a single year on a battlefield where tomorrow was never guaranteed was no easy feat.
So if someone claimed to have endured for ten years, anyone who heard it would call it extraordinary.
Let alone a hundred years.
It was an achievement so remarkable that even scouring history and legend would make it difficult to find its equal. Thanks to that man, both the king and the Saintess standing here now had overcome countless crises.
But it hadn’t been that way from the beginning.
The man had not been strong when he first arrived.
Yet as each day passed, as one year turned into two, he grew steadily stronger. At some point, he had become far more than a mere comrade to them—a steadfast presence they could always rely on.
That same man now wore a faint smile as he spoke again.
His gaze remained fixed on the Saintess.
“It would be a lie to say I never considered settling down. But I have a family. My family is waiting for me there… so I must return.”
“Family, you say.”
Of course, both the king and the Saintess had come to think of him as family.
But no matter how deeply they felt that way, it could never become a bond greater than his real family.
The king slowly lifted his chin, gazing up at the throne room ceiling for a moment before lowering his head and giving a single nod.
“Then we must send you. After everything you’ve been through, it would be selfish of me to try and keep you here for my own sake.”
“That’s why I like you so much.”
The man answered with a dry chuckle.
But the king knew he wasn’t joking. He knew the man truly cared for him and held him in high regard, which was why he could smile back.
“Are the preparations complete?”
When the king asked the Saintess the same question, she shook off the swirl of emotions clouding her face and returned to the present.
“Yes. Everything is ready.”
And so the king, the Saintess, and their longtime companion made their way to a small clearing on one side of the palace. For the past several days, many people had been coming and going, constructing a rather complex structure there.
Large and small stones had been arranged in what seemed like both a regular and irregular pattern. Everywhere, intricate symbols had been carved or drawn using special materials.
The king, who had provided both the funds and the manpower, knew exactly how astronomical the cost had been. But he said nothing about it.
He simply looked at the man once more.
“……”
Even when the king had been an unknown mercenary, the man had been nothing more than a lowly foot soldier.
When the king joined the army, when he distinguished himself and earned promotion after promotion, even when the king’s betrayal—born of envy over his growing fame—put his life in danger, the man had remained a common soldier.
After they became comrades, the king had tried to give him troops to command, but the man had simply shaken his head.
-Keeping even my own life intact is already difficult enough.
And so he had fought as an ordinary soldier until the very end of every battle.
Despite earning countless merits in major and minor engagements, despite being nominated for promotion time and again during awards ceremonies, he had always remained in the rank of a regular soldier. For the king, simply keeping him close by had been the greatest consideration he could offer.
Raising hell from the very bottom.
It had been his own way of staying vigilant, of refusing to grow complacent so he wouldn’t die in this world. The king had only learned that after the final war had ended.
When asked why he hadn’t left the endlessly dangerous battlefield if he didn’t want to die, the man had simply looked back at the comrades fighting alongside him at the time.
Now that trustworthy comrade was returning to the world he originally came from.
The king wanted to stop him even now. He wanted to ask him to stay forever by his side—whether as a duke, or even as a king of his own territory if he granted him land. But that would be nothing more than the king’s own greed.
As the king traced through old memories that kept resurfacing, he suddenly noticed the Saintess trembling, letting out a faint groan.
“What is it?”
“……”
The Saintess stood rigidly, her face showing an expression rarely seen on her.
When she didn’t answer his call, he stepped slightly to the side and saw the scene reflected inside the large crystal orb before her. It was an utterly unfamiliar sight.
Square-shaped structures gleamed under the sunlight.
They were probably made of glass.
Judging by the size of the structures, the amount of that expensive glass must have been staggering.
Countless such buildings stretched out endlessly.
Between them ran what appeared to be roads, and something seemed to be moving along them, though the image was too blurry to make out clearly.
“So that is our friend’s homeland.”
“It appears so. It seems the ritual was successful.”
The man answered, his cheek twitching slightly.
He looked like he wanted to laugh out loud, but hesitated, as if showing too much joy might make things awkward for the friends who had to send him away.
But when the Saintess finally managed to speak, the man’s face—which had never once frowned until now—froze into a chillingly cold expression.
“Something is wrong. I sense a problem over there.”
“What…?”
The man stepped closer and peered intently into the crystal orb the Saintess had pointed at.
“……?”
The world on the other side didn’t look all that different from when he had left.
Moreover, according to what the Saintess had told him, he would return to the exact time period he had departed from. Even if a hundred years had passed here, only a few days—or at most a few years—would have gone by there, depending on the margin of error. So he hadn’t been overly worried.
But the cityscape reflected in the crystal orb was different from what he had seen from a few steps back.
The forest of buildings remained the same.
Yet for some reason, whether it was this country or that city, many places looked destroyed.
If there had been an earthquake or a terrorist attack, there should have been reconstruction efforts underway, but there was no sign of any such activity.
And what moved along the roads between the buildings were not vehicles or people.
“……”
Why were monsters roaming freely through the forest of skyscrapers? Where had all the people gone?
“Ah.”
He could see them.
Not too far away, small groups of people were moving together…
They crept from building to building, using shattered debris and abandoned cars as cover, as if terrified.
This was not the homeland he remembered.
“Can you show me from a higher vantage point?”
When he spoke in a slightly hoarse voice, the Saintess noticed the gravity of his expression and quickly adjusted the view.
As the altitude rose, the world seen from above came into view, followed by the sight of Earth itself.
“……”
The man’s expression grew even more grotesque.
She wanted to ask why he was making such a face, but it was so extreme she couldn’t bring herself to speak.
It was the face of a madman, a chaotic mixture of utter confusion, shock, and inexplicable rage—the kind rarely seen even on the battlefield.
But he soon steadied his ragged breathing and calmed his features.
“Can you not show me what it looked like in the past?”
He wanted to know why the world he remembered had become like this, but the Saintess shook her head. Even that was beyond her ability to discern.
What was certain, however, was that the scene before them—the mostly ruined cities and the strangely enlarged Earth—was the present. The place he would return to would be much further in the past.
“I’m sorry… but even if you try to stop me now, I must go.”
“It seems some calamity has befallen that place.”
“Whether it has already happened… or is yet to happen, I cannot say for certain.”
He then asked the Saintess to narrow the margin of error as closely as possible to the time he had left.
“The time period permitted by the gods is fixed. I can try to adjust it as much as possible within that range… but if I do, there is a chance you might return to a point before you even left. In that case…”
He could end up being summoned back to this world again by the high priests’ ritual, just like before.
“……”
He agonized over it.
No matter how many times one might have experienced it, a hundred years was an eternity when measured against an ordinary human lifespan on Earth. If he had to spend that same length of time here again, day after day…
Why did something like that happen to Earth…?
But since he had no way of knowing exactly when or what had occurred on Earth, the only way to confirm whether his family was alive or dead was to return as close as possible to the time he had left.
If the horrors he had witnessed here were to appear in the exact world he had departed from, humanity’s extinction would be inevitable. And so they compromised—aiming to return to the past without going too far back—and followed the Saintess’s instructions.
The man stepped onto the magic circle she indicated, while the king retreated beyond the safety perimeter.
When the Saintess began to radiate her holy power and announced that she was about to begin, the king, standing at a distance, suddenly pulled something from his robes and tossed it to the man.
Tap.
The man caught it midair and recognized it as an expensive-looking leather pouch.
“I remembered you often saying how poor you were back there.”
“But…”
“Just take it. If I can’t even do this much for a friend who is leaving, how could I call myself a king?”
Since the king had framed it as a matter of royal dignity, the man had no choice but to nod and grip the leather pouch more tightly.
“Thank you.”
“I hope we never meet again.”
The king’s words were a prayer that the man would not return to a time before he had come here, that he would not be summoned back and forced to relive his past.
Understanding the meaning behind those words, the man gave a light nod. Then he saw the Saintess’s holy power suddenly surge outward, activating the devices all around them.
“……”
The Saintess said nothing, but he could see that her eyes were wet with tears. So instead, he turned to her with a smiling face.