The Hero Who Returned From Death Quits

EP6. Cataclysm

What I see before my eyes is a feast of countless gray soldiers.

Ainzel gritted his teeth. The thought, “Why now?” crossed his mind. But there was nothing he could do. Thinking about it wouldn’t change anything.

The situation was now close to the worst. Most of the soldiers had died fighting the demons, and his comrades had little stamina, divine power, and magical power left because they had fought the black knights. It was a huge burden to fight so many soldiers when there was not much energy left to fight the enemy.

Rather than give up, he took up his sword. He intended to fight to the end, even if he had to fight to the death without coming up with any solution.

He swung his sword at the ashen soldiers on the front lines.

Clash! The blades clashed in midair. Ainzel found himself slowly being pushed back. His arms were shaking.

He squeezed out his divine power to create a shield, then succeeded in completely ignoring the opponent’s attack and stabbing the opponent’s neck. However, he only managed to knock down one ash-colored soldier by squeezing out his divine power.

There are at least a few hundred. Just one in a few hundred.

It was a hopeless situation, but he gave up thinking and fought.

As he continued to swing, block, cut, and dodge his sword, his mind began to wander as the thought began to creep in that perhaps he had been planning it wrong from the start.

Had to fight.

I have to fight…

He felt his mind becoming clouded. It would be normal for a normal human to be exhausted after fighting at full strength for just five minutes, but he had already been fighting for hours. The physical and mental fatigue was beyond description.

Not only his arms, but his legs were also shaking as if they would fall over if hit. It seemed like the other colleagues were feeling the same.

“Run away.”

Ainzel spoke with difficulty, as if he was chewing and swallowing.

“what?”

“Run away! You can’t win, absolutely not!”

“It’s already too late to run away, so how can I run away?”

Ainzel bit his lip at what Peria said. He was already surrounded. There was no way to escape.

“…Shit.”

Ainzel cursed without thinking.

I thought he had barely managed to win without dying even once. But it turned out that things wouldn’t go smoothly for him like that.

He sighed.

An arrow flew towards him.

He accepted death.

He felt the arrowhead touch his skin, and each of his nerves being pierced by it.

The feeling of his throat being pierced, the blood gushing down his throat, the thinning air. Everything felt slow.

I never thought I was sick. I just felt the state of my body in detail.

He thought.

From the beginning… Did I think wrong, this time too?

The plan I had initially made went awry and ended up like this. What on earth could I have done to win?

If even victory is part of the mistakes you made… .

He felt his soul leaving his body and floating in the air, in a state of confusion until the very end.

And when he came to his senses, he fell into even greater confusion.

“…uh?”

The black knight appeared to have fallen.

The demons were also seen fallen.

He returned immediately after the castle fell.

‘…What the heck?’

Why did you come back now?

Ainzel fell into even greater confusion than before he died.

‘It was clear that I didn’t have the strength left to defeat the Gray Soldiers. So why did I come back now?’

No matter how well you fought, it was impossible to defeat the gray soldiers. But why? Why right before the gray soldiers arrived…

Ainzel was dumbfounded.

‘…no way.’

If fighting wasn’t the right decision in the first place.

What if from the beginning it wasn’t a matter of life or death, but rather the right decision was to simply retreat?

But no matter how much I thought about it, it was impossible. Even if I retreated in this already exhausted situation, it was obvious that I would soon be caught up due to the speed difference.

He wondered what he had as an advantage over the gray soldiers.

Clearly, the ash-gray soldiers had no physical problems, and their fighting prowess was comparable to that of the demons. They were so inhuman that it was more questionable whether they were living creatures than whether they were demons or another race.

They arrived here in perfect condition, without any signs of fighting. They had probably just arrived here to provide support.

… Then doesn’t that mean you don’t know much about the geography of this place?

The Imperial Army, Ainzel, and their companions continued to search the land nearby for operations.

If the opponent did not know the geography of this place well, he could have saved his forces and then retreated.

Ainzel shouted.

“Retreat! Retreat!”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Lena looked at Ainzel and said.

“Even if we manage to defeat all the enemies, we don’t have enough power to capture the castle. If we don’t retreat now, there’s a chance that we’ll be annihilated if the enemy provides even a little bit of support.”

Lena frowned.

“…Damn it, so should we just retreat? We’ve already annihilated the enemy?”

“If we can be annihilated even if the enemy comes just a little bit, we can’t even say we’ve captured the castle. We have to retreat now.”

Lena crumpled her expression and sighed.

“…Okay, let’s go. We’ve caught a legion commander, so this isn’t too bad.”

Ainzel and the Imperial Army began to retreat. And then, the ashen soldiers appeared.

“Fuck! Why are they coming out again and causing trouble! Run quickly!”

“I can’t run because I don’t have the strength!”

The Imperial Army quickly retreated, taking every shortcut they could find.

The ashen soldiers chased them without the slightest change in their lifeless appearance.

However, the gray soldiers did not know much about geography.

Ainzel ran even though his hands and feet were shaking. He had no choice but to run.

Because I knew that I had to keep running to survive.

He had to live. The Holy Sword brought him back to a point where he could change something. That meant that if he couldn’t change anything now, there would be no answer.

He came to his senses. The gray soldiers were no longer visible. However, he could not rest assured. He did not know when they would notice his location.

However, it was a blessing that we were able to take a breather. It was obvious that after a proper rest, the retreat would pick up speed.

And, above all, it never occurred to them that the Gray Soldiers would abandon the castle and continue to pursue them.

Ainzel finally rested in peace.

The warrior returned. The assigned force was nearly annihilated, and none of them looked well.

The emperor smiled inwardly. If the warrior had failed his mission, he thought that he could use that as a basis to reduce the warrior’s ability to interfere with him. He had never even thought that he could actually capture the fortress in the first place.

And the answer the warrior gave was a little different from what was imagined.

“We annihilated the Black Knight, Arin, and his legions, and were on the verge of taking the fortress, but we failed to take it due to the lack of troops left and the enemy’s follow-up forces.”

It was said that the warrior came close to conquering a fortress that many of the empire’s greatest generals had challenged but failed to conquer.

“It could provide information about the geography around there, and more importantly, with the Black Knight dead, the fortress’s forces would be weakened enough that we could defeat them with just one properly armed man.”

“Then, there is the Count of Serindell….”

“No, you can’t.”

Those were Beatrice’s words.

“…What?”

As the Emperor looked at her with a puzzled look, Beatrice said:

“Since the warrior and I have fought them once, we must end it too. We will use some of the Paladin forces.”

Paladins. They were the most elite troops on the continent, directly under the command of the saintess. And they were also a notorious order of knights, consisting of only fanatics, who burned people on the streets without a care a few hundred years ago.

“…A Paladin?”

“Yes. They’ve only just had a short break, so they were reluctant… but there’s nothing we can do. The Paladins and I will go and finish them off.”

Ainzel felt uneasy at what Beatrice said. Could he win without her? Wouldn’t he just send them away and then be irreversible?

Beatrice smiled and said, knowing that Ainzel was looking at her with anxious eyes.

“Don’t worry. I’ll show you the strength of the Paladins. If the Black Knight is present, then it’s understandable, but if the Black Knight is gone, there’s no way the Paladins will lose.”

And, it was exactly as it said.

The Paladins took the fortress.

Ainzel was dumbfounded for a while after hearing that.

Although he had heard that something had gone wrong with the church, Ainzel had already lost consciousness and could not hear it.