One day... One day the world was going to end, no doubt about it.
A day that far into the future wasn’t worth the concern of farmers trying their best to live in the present.
A day that far into the future wouldn’t make any money for merchants.
A day that far into the future was beneath the consideration of knights who lived for the honor of tomorrow.
A day that far into the future wasn’t even in the minds of kings planning policies for generations to come.
Or, so was once the case.
When the great war broke out, all living beings suddenly came face-to-face with their ends. This was back in the era when the sky was still red. It was a period of darkness, when death was commonplace, and the world was consumed with terror and despair.
One day, among the mortal forces, an alluring woman with tanned skin called out to an old man reading a letter. “So you’re still alive? I heard you did great in the last battle.”
“I can’t die just yet. I still need to attend my apprentice’s wedding.”
“You’ll have to give up on that dream.”
“I practically have.”
Reynaud, an elderly man with a face covered in wrinkles and a head full of white hair, spoke politely to his beautiful apprentice Lara, a hint of resignation in his tone.
“It’s rare to see a letter these days, though,” said Lara. “Did it arrive recently?”
“Yes. There are many strange people in my generation. It seems that one of them took the time and effort to send this.”
Lara was puzzled to see her mentor reading a letter. The forces of darkness had destroyed the world so thoroughly that even if someone were to write a letter, it couldn’t be safely sent. While military communication was still possible, civilian correspondence had mostly died out. The fact that Reynaud had received a letter despite all that meant either that it was a matter of great importance or that someone eccentric was involved.
“It’s from an acquaintance of mine who apparently found documents regarding artificial life-forms. I recognize the name of the documents’ author.”
“What kind of person are we talking about?”
“A mage by the name of Asher who I met once, a long time ago, but we didn’t get along that well.”
“In what way?”
“Have you ever had someone lecture you for two hours straight on how wonderful magic is and how amazing their research results were?”
“Fortunately not.”
As Reynaud told Lara about the contents of the letter, he looked up at the sky, exhausted, recalling a distant memory. It seemed that even thinking about it was a painful experience, and he had a faraway look in his eyes.
“That’s good to hear. I, meanwhile, was utterly stumped by the conversation. Asher told me that if one could create a replica and transfer their soul to it, they could achieve immortality. But I wondered, who could guarantee that the transferred soul would be exactly the same person, without the slightest defect?” Reynaud continued.
“Sounds impossible. People have been coming up with similar ideas for ages, but as you’ve said before, they always stumble at that part.”
“Precisely. If you ripped out your soul and moved it somewhere else, could you be certain that it wouldn’t be damaged during the separation? Could you then say you were exactly the same person? No one knows the answer. Eventually, you’d start to question whether you were really still the same as before and go mad, though I suppose it would be possible to maintain your sanity through some kind of delusion.”
“Did you point that out to him?”
“Someone else who was there did, but Asher was the type of person to grow hostile toward naysayers. Things were on the brink of turning into a magical slaughter. But he was imprisoned before the war for failing to properly educate his disciple, and I don’t know what happened to him after that. I heard that his disciple used extermination magic during the entrance examination for a magical academy, resulting in casualties. Apparently, this was the only kind of magic that Asher taught him.”
“Whoa...” Even Lara was left speechless as she listened to her mentor digging up his memories.
“If I remember right, his apprentice was named U—”
Clang clang clang!
Va-vooom!
As Reynaud was about to dig further into the past, the sound of bells and hunting horns all across the battlefield stirred him to action.
“Teacher! Miss! The enemy army is here!” Lara’s fellow apprentice under Reynaud, who had been helping out the army with various miscellaneous tasks, rushed over to them.
“How long until I actually get a break?” Reynaud lamented as he stood up and stretched.
“You can have a nice retirement after the war,” Lara commented.
“Yes, I certainly will.”
“I’ll be going back, then,” Lara said.
“Very well,” Reynaud replied.
“Please do your best, miss!” her fellow apprentice said.
Lara could hear their two voices behind her as she moved farther into the army to reunite with her comrades.
The dragons who were allied with the mortal races flew across the sky. Orcs, with their war paint and their bloodshot eyes, let out rough snorts. Elves took out their bows. Dwarves stood firmly on the ground as they readied their hammers. Human knights mounted their horses. Monks strengthened their Life Waves. The mages’ fingers were glowing. Priests concentrated the power of light into their bodies.
This was back in the era when the sky was still red. It was a period of darkness, when death was commonplace, and the world was consumed with terror and despair. But this was slowly becoming a thing of the past. A light was driving away the darkness.
“My antiair defenses are ready!” Ferd the Hero, the tip of the blade that drove away the darkness, proudly carried at his waist not just his favorite sword, but multiple other swords provided by the army as well.
“Can you really call throwing swords ‘antiair defenses’?” Max, the Dragonsbane Knight, had some doubts about Ferd’s statement, so he turned to Erhard, the Dark Knight.
“No idea.” However, the man clad in pitch-black armor only gave a curt reply.
“Is there a need to start straining your body before the fight?” Elrica the Saint cocked her head and asked with a blank expression.
“My muscles are always in perfect condition, but they become even stronger with a little strain.” Stein, the muscular monk who’d started doing push-ups, replied with his pet theory.
“Is that so?”
Lara had joined up with her companions when Sazaki the Blademaster approached from behind her, holding not a sword but a bottle of alcohol.
“Dang. I’m the last one here, huh?” Sazaki said.
“You’re drinking again?” Lara asked.
“It’s no fun celebrating a victory without a drink.”
“You have some nerve saying that when you’ve already drunk half of that before the fight’s even begun.” Lara was exasperated at her companion’s behavior.
Sazaki, meanwhile, seemed unconcerned as he took another swig from his bottle. “Hic. So, what’s the plan?” he asked, already tipsy.
“Same as usual.”
“Gotcha. How nice. It’s the simplest plan and I don’t need to use my head.”
Then, Ferd stood before the enemy army—with troops easily numbering over ten thousand, including insect-animal hybrids, black dragons flying across the sky, and massive monstrosities that shook the earth—and announced their next course of action.
“Charge!”
This was the Hero’s party’s modest and simple strategy. They would face the terrifying army of darkness head-on, pulverizing, smashing, piercing, and cutting down anything in their path, before finally taking the enemy general’s head. It was all too simple, or to put it bluntly, a plan that could only be accomplished through overwhelming violence.
“Raaah!” Ferd put all of his strength into his sword and imbued it with dazzling light and threw it.
“Gyaaah?!” The strangely glowing sword crashed into a hybrid monster that was flying in the sky, slicing easily through it and sending it plummeting to the ground.
“Hell yeah! Let’s gooo!” With Ferd’s words as a declaration of war, the Hero’s party charged into the enemy army.
“How could such a person be born without any connection to the gods?” Reynaud muttered with a hint of astonishment as he watched Ferd from a distance.
It doesn’t make any sense. The fact that someone can have so much light within him and still maintain his human form, much less his ego, is inexplicable. At least, it’s beyond any knowledge that I possess. Part of Reynaud’s mind calmly analyzed the amount of light within Ferd and concluded that his existence simply wasn’t plausible. Harboring this light was the equivalent of harboring the brilliance of all human life, and it would be the same as a human containing all the seawater in the world inside them; it was a state that couldn’t be explained with theory.
Making the impossible possible. Keeping the world from ending. Taking down the Great Demon King. A man of courage... That’s who the Hero is, huh? It really makes you want to believe in him. Watching that impossible existence of a man made Reynaud want to put his life on the line too.