Chapter 1 Part 1: Return

There’s no answer.
And it’s a serious problem.

Where are the pretty girls?
Where are the villains who harass the protagonist and then get pathetically defeated?

Were there people who praised me and hailed me as a hero…? There were, but not many.

Still, this isn’t what I wanted.

I was having a very absurd dream.

It didn’t take long to realize that fact.

The otherworld I arrived in was not a happy and romantic place like in novels.

Of course, a happy life in another world might not have been impossible.

It’s just that there was no room for that.
Immediately after being summoned, I received a brief explanation and was immediately thrown into the battlefield.

Me, wandering around the continent, meeting pretty and cute girls, and having a good time?

Not a chance.
It was hard enough just to save a single soldier on the front lines that were about to collapse, and when I saw a female knight who rushed in to save me get crushed, I realized.

This isn’t a novel.

It’s a terrible, more miserable reality than a nightmare.

I wanted to wake up, but I realized I was already awake, a hell from which I could not escape.

The very good thing was that I had potential.

The reason why I, an ordinary modern person who had never received any training, was able to survive in that hellish place.

Because I’m a hero.

I was a hero.

It didn’t take long to realize that.

My goal, which was just to survive, changed to definitely returning.

And to f*cking kill the damn demon king, while I was at it.

I spent ten years in another world.
Ten years.
It was a significant day.

It was the day the emperor of the crumbling empire closed his eyes.

He was not like those in novels or comics, trying to use me, the hero, but fully supported me, a man truly worthy of being an emperor.

And his end was also like that.

The emperor sacrificed himself.
He drove away the darkness that hung in the sky. It was no exaggeration to say that the royal family inherited the bloodline of the gods.

The emperor, who awakened his power by burning his own blood, temporarily drove out the demon king who invaded the empire, buying me time.

Finally, for all life on the continent, including the empire, the emperor became the sun in the sky, melting the bleak winter with warm sunlight.

The snow that fell that winter was warm.
The eyes of those who watched the emperor’s sacrifice overflowed with a warm heart.

But that wasn’t all.
In that season, I cut off the demon king’s head for the first time.

Ten years.
It took ten years for me, who was just struggling to survive on the battlefield, to become a being worthy of being called a hero and kill the demon king.

There was a lot of pain, but I was relieved that it was over, but then something ridiculous happened.

Another demon king appeared.
It was a terrible thing, and a desperate situation, but.

I was a hero.

Ten years was not a short time, but it could be said to be very short considering the future.

Indeed, it was.
I piled another ten years on top of the previous ten years, but it didn’t feel as long as before.

And, on the day I spent twenty years rolling around in another world.

The number of demon king’s heads that fell to my sword increased from one to a total of four.

How much longer would it be?
At the time, it was unknown, but there was definitely an end.

After trampling on the corpses of countless demon kings, I finally reached the goddamn demon god who commanded them as his kin.

A heterogeneous yet beautiful landscape unfolds.

It was a spectacular sight, like something out of a fairy tale, that made people gasp.

Under the blue sky, there is another sky.

There was a vast lake.
Its calm waves mimicked the sky.

At the boundary where the sky and the sky met, there were two women.

One was a goddess.
Wearing clothes that shimmered like glass, her long blonde hair flowed down, and she knelt at the boundary where it was difficult to distinguish between the sky and the lake.

“You’ve worked hard, Hero.”

The goddess said so.
There was no one to hear.
If she woke her up, she would hear, but the goddess had no intention of doing so.

“I believed you would do it.”

Smiling gently like a child, the goddess looked down at the white-haired woman sleeping on her lap.

Fufu.
A short laugh and a breath of air gently touched the golden hair, and it slowly flowed down.

“…Mmm.”

“Oh, my mistake.”

Perhaps because the long hair touched her cheek, the white-haired woman murmured as if it tickled.

The goddess carefully raised her hand and straightened her hair.

“It’s been a long time.”

Suddenly, those words came out.
It was a lament.
It was also regret, mixed with relief.

“It’s all thanks to you.”

The goddess looked at the hero.
The innocent man from when she summoned him was no longer there.

Instead, there was a beautiful woman who even the goddess admired.

“…I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, an apology came out of the goddess’s mouth. Regret wriggled in her bitterness.

The reunion that took place after a long time was quite different from what the goddess had expected.

There was no hero smiling brightly with pride at having saved the world, and the hero fell asleep like a puppet with its strings cut as soon as she met the goddess.

It was a pity that they couldn’t even have a short conversation, but the goddess didn’t think it was rude at all.

Rather, the goddess preferred it this way.

Because she thought that if the hero hadn’t fallen asleep, she would have heard tremendous resentment and criticism from him.

That didn’t happen, though.

“You’ve changed a lot.”

It was a statement with many meanings.

The goddess slowly raised her hand.
And she brought it to the cheek of the sleeping woman, carefully removing a single strand of hair that had fallen on her soft cheek.

The goddess’s eyes examined the woman’s face.

She couldn’t find any resemblance to the man she had summoned in the past, even by force.

From gender to appearance and body shape, everything that could be seen with the eyes.

The healthy black hair had even lost its color.

How hard must it have been for her hair to look so white, so lifeless?

The goddess placed the woman’s pure white hair on her palm and slowly raised her arm as well.

Sararak… It sounded like sand rubbing, but she thought pasasak would be more appropriate.

“I have so much I want to say, but it’s so sad that you can’t hear me.”

There was so much to say.
But she couldn’t force it on someone who couldn’t even hear.

But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t say it.

The goddess murmured quietly.

“Thank you.”

The goddess closed her eyelids, which were trembling with anxiety, by simply applying force.

Because she was afraid.
But to be afraid of the hero who returned after finishing everything after a long time and hardship.

It doesn’t suit a goddess.

Therefore, the goddess smiled and slowly opened her eyes.

‘…If, just if.’

And she thought.
What if she had shown a very rude attitude when she first summoned him?

If she had summoned him as a hero, but nevertheless ignored him as a mere human.

If she hadn’t offered a definite reward, just tossed him into the world she governed, and said, ‘I don’t care.’

If so… probably.

‘It would be me, not you, sleeping here.’

The wrath of a being who was only human, even though he was a hero, who transcended even the limits of a mortal.

The hatred of a being who could no longer be called a hero, who had defeated even the demon god who commanded countless demon kings as his kin….

The goddess swallowed her saliva.
At the same time, she calmed the fear that rose up.

Fortunately, what she had worried about didn’t happen.

The goddess treated the hero with the utmost courtesy as soon as she summoned him, and thanks to that, the hero did not antagonize the goddess.

Rather, it was a very happy thing for the goddess that the hero, who could not even trust other humans, showed a relaxed appearance in front of her.

“Thank you. Really, really thank you.”

For believing in me.
For remaining a hero until the end without turning away.

Drip.
The goddess’s eyes, which had opened, dripped water droplets the color of the lake.

Even while tears flowed, she couldn’t contain her gratitude, but she thought it would be too mean to say it in words.

In the end, she tried to replace it by embracing the face of the hero, who had become a woman, a little strongly, but.

“Because I, I was incompetent.”

In the end, words came out in a trembling voice.

“Even so, for not turning your back until the end.”

It was impossible to use as an excuse that the hero had too much to do, and the goddess had too much to do.

Even though she thought she had paid as much attention as possible, there were so many things that were lacking, and unlike the goddess, it was clear that the hero would have been tired of hearing sweet whispers promising to do everything she wanted.

But even so, the hero did not betray. That’s why she was a hero.

The goddess chewed her lip, feeling guilty that the hero had suffered even more than expected because of her incompetence.

On the other hand, the goddess was very proud of the fact that she had chosen the hero who had shouldered the mission to the end and put an end to everything.

“Thank you, Hero.”

There were so many things she wanted to say, but now there was no time.

The body of the hero, who had fallen asleep on the goddess’s lap, began to glow white.

It was a precursor to return.
As she had said when she first summoned him, they had made a contract to return after everything was over.

It’s not that she didn’t trust the hero, but the hero had become a being that even the goddess could not easily touch.

However.

“Still, I promised to reward you properly.”

A smile formed on the goddess’s lips.

“Sephie.”

And she spoke to her kin.

“Please take care of him… No, ‘her’.”

No answer was heard.
But without paying attention to that, the goddess filled her eyes with the face of the hero who would soon disappear.

“I won’t forget.”

To do that.
The goddess slowly raised the sleeping hero’s body in her arms.

“When you return, you’ll be embarrassed because a lot of things have changed.”

The goddess was now smiling playfully like a child.

“I hope you know that it’s only for you.”

It was a small wish.

“I, Rireina, the Goddess of Fate, speak.”

The goddess uttered solemn divine words with a playful expression.

“May your future be filled with the fate of happiness.”

In the end, when the goddess slowly raised her arms.

The hero’s body had disappeared.

And… at that moment.

“To think I’d enter a potential S-rank gate… It really feels like a dream.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I want to wake up from this f*cking nightmare. Damn it.”

In the middle of Seoul, South Korea, which was a little different from the place where the hero was summoned, a gate estimated to be S-rank opened.