BOOOOM—!
An entire mountain collapsed.
The one screaming was a Blue Dragon.
The hide of an ancient dragon that had lived for thousands of years split apart like tofu.
[H-how could a mere human......]
“A mere human?”
I stepped onto the space between its eyes.
Azure Aura flickered around the sword in my hand.
“How does it feel to die to that mere human?”
[W-wait. The Lord said......]
“Mention the Lord one more time, and I’ll make sure it takes you a hundred years to die.”
I raised my sword.
Fear trembled in the Blue Dragon’s eyes.
Every dragon on this continent had worn that same look for the past several hundred years.
Kain Asel.
Humans called me a living legend, while dragons called me a calamity.
SLASH.
My Aura sliced through the ancient dragon’s neck as easily as a sheet of paper.
Its enormous head crashed to the ground, making the mountain tremble.
I split open its chest and pulled out its still-beating heart.
A Dragon Heart.
Swallowing it would make me stronger.
***
I lived like that for a thousand years.
All to kill one bastard.
Dragon Lord Arkadion.
The enemy who had reduced the kingdom where my mother lived to ashes a thousand years ago.
I hunted dragon after dragon so that I could reach him.
No human could rival me anymore, and most dragons bowed their heads before me.
And finally.
After a thousand years, I stood before the Lord’s lair.
“Tell me. Why did you destroy the kingdom?”
[I have nothing to say to an insignificant human.]
A pair of enormous yellow eyes looked down at me.
The target of the revenge I had pursued for a thousand years was right before my eyes.
That was when it happened.
“Cough.”
My back burned.
I looked down and saw the tip of a sword protruding through my chest.
“Heh. I suppose even the legendary Magic Swordsman is helpless against a stab in the back.”
“Valensius...... you bastard......”
My comrade, who had been known as a Dragon Slayer.
I had thought that the bastard had fought beside me for a thousand years, only to discover that he had been the Lord’s dog all along.
“How are you still alive? There’s a sword through your heart.”
“Unfortunately for you.”
I grabbed the blade.
“I’ve got two hearts.”
I unleashed my Aura in an explosion.
Valensius’s body burst apart, chunks of flesh scattering everywhere.
I immediately unleashed the Aura I had honed for a thousand years at the Lord.
But.
With only one heart, I couldn’t reach him.
My Aura was effortlessly deflected.
[......]
Arkadion looked down at me once, then turned away.
As though a dying fly wasn’t even worth finishing off.
I lay dying on the cold stone floor.
Without even getting the chance to swing my sword properly.
‘If it hadn’t been for that bastard Valensius.’
If I could turn back time.
This time, I would notice his betrayal first and stab him in the back before he could do the same to me.
Then I would obtain the power the Lord feared most and take his head.
‘If there’s a next life, that is.’
My life, which I had thought would last forever, finally ended when I was a thousand years old.
Or so I thought.
Until the necklace my mother had left me began to glow.
***
“How is this possible......?”
At first, I thought it was a dream.
But when I woke up on a hard floor with nothing but a thin blanket beneath me.
When I vividly felt both of my hearts beating.
I realized the truth.
I regressed when I was twenty years old.
I had returned to a time when my mother was still alive.
“M-Mother.”
“You’re awake, Kain?”
My mother, who had been in the kitchen, turned toward me with her golden hair fluttering and smiled.
There was no mistaking her.
There was no way I could fail to recognize the mother who had lived until I was thirty.
Nor could I mistake this decrepit house where I had lived until I was twenty.
Even I didn’t know how I could remember things from 980 years ago so clearly.
Then again, I had always been exceptional at everything.
Magic, swordsmanship, memory, even lifespan.
“M-Mother......”
My mother’s eyes widened when she saw me drop to my knees.
“W-what’s wrong, Kain? Does your heart hurt again?”
“Yes...... It hurts. A lot......”
I, who had never shed a single tear while consumed by vengeance, completely broke down before the mother I was seeing again after 970 years.
***
Sordin was a small, quiet village in the countryside.
Its population barely reached fifty, and the only person who could even be called its leader was an old village chief.
Kain had been born in this village twenty years ago.
It was essentially his hometown, but he knew something the others did not.
His mother, Serena, was a princess of the Kingdom of Asel.
Kain didn’t know why she had abandoned her status as royalty and fled to such a remote village.
No, the twenty-year-old Kain wouldn’t have known.
‘But I know now.’
His mother had told him on the day she gave him her keepsake.
She was the illegitimate daughter of the King of Asel, and during a struggle over the throne, she had become a target for elimination. She had hidden herself here in order to survive.
‘But she never told me anything about my father. She told me never to ask again.’
Even after a thousand years, Kain had never learned the truth.
Nor did he particularly want to know anything about the man who had abandoned him and his mother.
“Kain! Going out to work the fields again today?”
A young man approached him with a broad grin, a farming tool resting over his shoulder.
Jake, his only friend in the village.
‘Jake’s alive.’
Kain’s expression hardened.
‘He hasn’t been eaten yet.’
Nine hundred and eighty years ago, Jake had been summoned by the village chief and never returned.
There was no calendar, so Kain couldn’t remember the exact date, but he knew it had been around this time.
“Why are you empty-handed? If you’re going to work, you need your tools.”
“No. I’m taking the day off.”
“The village chief won’t let that slide.”
“What’s that old man going to do about it?”
Jake looked somewhat surprised by Kain’s brusque tone.
“You’ve changed......?”
“How?”
“You’ve gotten kind of rebellious.”
“Hmph.”
He hadn’t known it in the past, but he knew now.
He knew just how incompetent the village chief had been.
He knew how many people had died because of him.
‘If you knew what I know, could you still think well of that old man?’
This village had a special rule.
Once someone reached adulthood, they would leave every two years after receiving the village chief’s recommendation for a job in the royal capital.
The village chief personally arranged everything.
But Kain knew that it wasn’t simply employment.
‘He was choosing sacrifices for a dragon.’
This village was under the rule of the Green Dragon Bernatus.
The village chief had secured a promise that the dragon would leave the village unharmed as long as they offered it a sacrifice every two years, so he sent people away one by one under the pretense of giving them jobs.
For the sake of preserving the village.
“Jake, you’d better stop trusting the village chief.”
“What’s gotten into you with the chief? You used to listen to him just fine.”
“I didn’t know any better back then.”
“Jeez, what happened to you? I’m going to work in the fields.”
Kain watched Jake trudge away before returning home.
He closed his eyes and meditated, organizing his thoughts on what he needed to do in this life.
‘I’ll protect Mother. I need to find medicine that can cure her incurable illness.’
And one more thing.
‘I’ll recover our family heirloom too. The one Mother sold when I was five just so she could feed me a piece of bread.’
After that?
‘I’ll kill Dragon Lord Arkadion.’
To do that, he had to become stronger starting now.
There was no time to waste working the fields outside.
‘I’ll gather the mana inside my body and form a Circle.’
Kain, who possessed extraordinary talent in magic, already had three rings around his heart.
Despite never having formally learned magic, he had figured out how to absorb the mana around him and reached the Third Circle on his own.
‘I’ll grow even faster this time.’
He closed his eyes and drew in the surrounding mana.
The swirling mana gathered around the rings encircling his heart.
Refined mana accumulated, making the rings thicker.
He formed the foundation of a new ring, then layered more mana over it.
Again and again, like an artisan tempering steel.
Then.
‘It’s complete.’
Four rings now surrounded one of his hearts.
He had reached the Fourth Circle.
But he wasn’t particularly pleased.
Circles meant little when facing dragons, the progenitors of magic.
‘I need to raise my Aura as high as possible.’
At this point in time, he had yet to awaken Aura.
He closed his eyes again and began working.
Normally, magic and Aura were powers that couldn’t coexist.
It was impossible to create both Circles and Aura within a single heart.
But Kain, who possessed two hearts, could do it.
He could form Circles around one heart and cultivate Aura within the other.
For the world’s only Magic Swordsman, it was as easy as eating.
By the time he opened his eyes, night had already fallen.
Having awakened 1-Star Aura, Kain rose to his feet in satisfaction.
‘Now I can use the power of a Magic Swordsman.’
His Aura-infused body overflowed with more strength than before.
His mother, Serena, was watching him with a smile.
“Are you finished meditating, Kain?”
Perhaps because he had always meditated in order to sense mana, his mother hadn’t disturbed him.
“Yes, Mother. I’m finished.”
“Come and eat. You must be hungry.”
“Yes.”
He was eating with his mother when she suddenly spoke.
“Oh, right. Jake came by earlier.”
“Jake did?”
“I waited until now because I didn’t want to interrupt your meditation, but he said the village chief had summoned him. He wanted to say goodbye before he left......”
Kain shot to his feet before she could even finish.
“Where’s Jake?”
“He should be at the village chief’s house...... Where are you going? Kain!”
This wasn’t the time to sit around eating.
‘I never saw Jake again after the village chief summoned him. He became a dragon’s meal.’
Kain had learned the truth when a knight named Dmitri came to take his mother away.
Before arriving at the village, they had dealt with the dragon that posed a threat to them.
In the distance, Kain spotted his friend walking alongside the village chief.
“Jake!”
“Kain?”
Jake brightened and waved.
“Perfect timing! I was worried I wouldn’t get to say goodbye before I left.”
“Where are you going?”
“To work, of course! The village chief said it’s a two-year contract. If I work hard during that time, he says I might even settle down there and make a lot of money!”
Instead of Jake, Kain looked at the village chief.
“Where are you planning to send Jake?”
The old village chief’s gaze sharpened.
“That’s none of your concern. Say your goodbyes and go home, Kain.”
“I’ll go.”
“What?”
“What are you talking about, Kain? That’s my position......”
Ignoring them both, Kain repeated himself.
“I said I’ll be the sacrifice instead of Jake.”