The Hero Who Returned From Death Quits

EP8. The Coming Doom

What can you do, Ra? Ainzel looked at the boy holding the holy sword.

The content of this ordeal was to confront and overcome one’s own wrong past.

“Be honest. How can you overcome your own regrets? You are already regretting it.”

As evidence, Ainzel’s face hardened as he watched the boy holding the holy sword.

He was shorter than his current self, and his face still had an immature look to it. It was a reflection of his past. Ainzel was speechless at that sight.

“Now, look. I see myself. I see myself holding the Holy Sword, just like you did in the past.”

The sight the boy had just seen was a perfect reflection of his past.

“You still feel regret when you look at me. The me right now is your mistake, and it’s the biggest mistake.”

From the beginning.

There were more than a few times when I repeated to myself that I wasn’t supposed to hold the holy sword from the beginning.

He suffered. He suffered loss. He suffered despair. If he had remained a quiet boy living in his hometown, he would not have had to go through such things.

He arrived in the Empire with a desire to succeed, and took up the Holy Sword with the intention of changing his life. Each decision he made led him into the abyss.

That wasn’t all, there were so many things I regretted, and among them, there were some things I regretted as much as, or maybe even more than, holding the Holy Sword.

That’s exactly what happened with my colleagues. If I had done better, I might not have lost the memories with my colleagues. I might not have had to go back to the past and keep those memories to myself.

But even if he thought about it that way, the past that had already disappeared would not return, and he ended up in a paradoxical situation where he could turn back time, but could not turn back time.

Regret. Regret. Regret after regret. A life completely stained with regret.

His ability to turn back time brought him only despair, and his best soon turned into his worst.

Ainzel couldn’t find a way to overcome that boy, who symbolized his own wrong choices.

“There is no next for you. You will only sink, immersed in feelings like regret and guilt. That is your fate. The things you are doing now, one day you will regret it.”

“…shut up!”

Ainzel swung his sword at the boy who had bloodshot eyes and looked like his past self.

However, it passed right through the black boy’s body.

“Oh, I didn’t expect you to be so ignorant. Didn’t you hear? What you need to do is overcome me, not defeat me. Do you remember why you came here in the first place? The reason this place exists is to surpass your previous self and reach a higher level.”

“What do you mean, what’s wrong with that?”

“What is it? The realm you have to reach – that is, the realm of the extreme – is not something that can be achieved by simply engaging in combat. The condition for standing on the borderline between a high expert and a master, that is, the condition for using self-defense techniques, may be met by having a perfect understanding of your own body, but something more is needed to cross the border.”

“So, what do you want me to do?”

“What is that? You are literally asking me to surpass you. The countless mistakes you have made in the past, the wrong decisions. The regrets that come from them. Your ordeal is to surpass all of that.”

Ainzel frowned at those words.

“…That means, what I did in the past-”

“You shouldn’t feel regret, you shouldn’t feel any emotions. Literally, it’s impossible if you can’t overcome the things you’ve done in the past. Of course, I’m not sure if that’s possible.”

“You don’t know?”

“Yes. Even this space itself doesn’t know whether you will be able to overcome this ordeal. This space itself was created to allow you to reach areas that cannot be reached by such calculations, so if you could know, it would be even stranger.”

He said, his face turning pale at the boy’s words as if they were a given.

“So what happened to my colleagues? What if something went wrong?”

“See? You feel fear even in the decisions you made when you came here, so can you tell me for sure that you can overcome this? Do you know what this place is called? It’s called the Furnace. It’s a place where warriors and their allies are melted down and recast into new forms. In the process-”

The boy smiled as if mocking Ainzel and said:

“How do you know it will end up in the trash?”

Ainzel frowned, but soon took a deep breath and calmed his mind. Perhaps even saying this was part of the ordeal. If he wavered here, passing the ordeal would only be further from him.

Thinking like that, he finally calmed down and continued to look at the boy in front of him.

The boy smiled as if he were his old self, picked up the holy sword and spun it around.

Ainzel sank into his seat.

What should I do? How can I overcome this?

Is it possible not to feel regret? Ainzel himself never thought it was possible.

As he sat there, clutching his head, the world around him changed once again.

In an instant, countless buildings disappeared as if they were made of sand, and in their place a mansion appeared.

There were stars in the sky. The star of the navigator that had pushed him on his back into the future.

He had lost some of his boyishness in the past. His body and his aura had changed a lot.

He was hugging the red woman, wounded.

“three…”

The man from the past opened his mouth again.

“How is it? Are you suffering? Because of a defense that could be pierced with just one spell, she and the memories of that one night with her were all lost. Of course, it is a special characteristic of a warrior to be able to pierce that defense with just one spell.”

Ainzel said nothing.

He smiled in the past, and the scenery changed again.

The man from the past, bleeding and dying. And the blue woman hugging him and crying. A library filled with all sorts of books and items.

Again.

A past image of him hugging a blonde woman while being hit by an arrow, with numerous soldiers surrounding him.

Again, again, again.

A woman of pure white light who tells him of her love for him in the past, and Malekidus who launches his final attack towards them.

Scenes that all cause him pain.

Ainzel clutched his head tightly. He felt like his head was starting to hurt.

“…I know it’s weird to say this, but your talents aren’t enough to become a warrior.”

Ainzel looked at his past self who said that.

That was just a fact I already knew. There was no need for anyone else to tell me.

“It’s not just about handling weapons and power… your mental structure itself is not suited to this kind of work.”

“Then why did you choose me? Why did you put these shackles on me?”

“That’s because. The current situation… is not a situation that can be solved with talent. That’s why the Holy Sword chose you, and gave you that ability to solve a situation that cannot be solved with talent. However… your talent is so humble that it seems virtually impossible for you to surpass that level. In other words, you could say that this is your limit.”

Ainzel silently listened to his past self’s voice.

“The limits of your talent. The maximum you can reach. In order to surpass them… aren’t there things that you have to give up to achieve? This is advice. Although the furnace will test you, it is ultimately there to help you grow. Whether you take the advice or not is your choice.”

You have to throw something away.

His talents were humble.

Because he had little talent, he had to put in several times more effort in things that others could easily do, and because he had little talent, he cursed his own weakness.

He was consequently at his limit, unable to fully protect himself and to desire anything more.

I couldn’t overcome the regrets about what I’d done so far and live looking toward the future… I couldn’t do that.

There was no way for him to overcome this ordeal without paying the price.

Will you give up on the ordeal while protecting yourself completely, or will you give up on yourself and gain strength through the ordeal?

He recalled the hatred deep in his heart. He thought of the girl who had been torn in half and died.

Yeah, from the beginning – if I wasn’t even prepared to give up on myself, I wouldn’t have posted it here.

The answer simply burst out of my lips.

“A memory that I regret.”

Memories of being in pain

“The memories I have experienced,”

Memories of the fight

“The memories I remembered,”

All the memories I loved.

“I give up.”

Ainzel raised the holy sword and said.

“In return… I will give everything I have solely to kill the Demon King.”

He climbed over the wall.