What on earth is going on?
Allen recalled what had happened. His last memory was of swallowing the orb and being hacked to pieces by the demons.
If this isn't death, then what is it?
Why on earth is the day of that mission playing out before his eyes?
“Look at this bastard, totally spaced out.”
“Hey, hey, aren't you going to snap out of it?”
“Hey, kid!”
SMACK!
Once again, a bandit's palm struck his cheek.
It hurt. Enough to make his cheek sting.
More than feeling insulted, he snapped back to his senses.
“It's not a dream… so why am I here?”
At Allen's muttering, the bandits cackled again.
“Why? Because you've got a pretty face, and we figured you might come in handy.”
“You, what family are you from? If it's a family with some money, there might be a way for you to live. If not, well, we can just sell you off as a male prostitute.”
“Kahahaha!”
On the day he came of age at eighteen, Allen had received his first mission from the family.
It was a request the family had taken on: a mission to subjugate the bandits disrupting trade caravans in a nearby kingdom.
A very light, easy mission with nothing special about it.
Yet Allen had failed that very first mission in spectacular fashion.
‘Is this a dream?’
His cheek still stings, so it isn't a dream.
Could it be some nightmare illusion woven by the demons?
No. If it were, there would be at least some trace of it, and what stood before him wouldn't be mere bandits but far more vicious monsters.
The conclusion he reached after much thought.
“It's real!”
“Argh, that scared me! What's with the sudden screaming and all this bullshit……?”
The bandit, who had raised his hand in surprise, was thrown off.
Because Allen was smiling from ear to ear in this situation.
‘Real people.’
How many years had it been since he had seen anyone other than demons or the Deathsworn?
They were smelly, filthy bandits, but even guys like these were people, and he was glad to see them.
After seeing nothing but demons and demonkin, these guys almost looked cute and pretty.
And what made him happiest of all.
‘I'm back. In the past.’
Was that he had returned to before everything began.
‘I really came back!’
Hahaha-
Allen laughed out loud. He couldn't contain his joy.
The bandits, staring at him as if he were a lunatic, came to this conclusion.
“……Did we scare him too much?”
“Looks like the shock drove him out of his mind.”
How scared must he be to act like that? He looked a little pitiful, but that didn't mean they could just leave him like this.
Whoosh- whoosh-!
A bandit who looked like the youngest of the bunch approached with a hefty club in hand.
“Where do you get off laughing and pulling this bullshit? Quit laughing and answer me. I asked where you're from!”
Allen, his spirits soaring sky-high, answered.
“Vishken.”
“……?”
At once, silence fell over the warehouse.
The bandits doubted their ears.
The youngest one, who had heard Allen's answer right under his nose, even had a bead of sweat form on his forehead.
“W-Where did you say?”
“Vi… shken……?”
“H-He says Vishken, boss?”
Vishken.
A family that was always mentioned whenever people discussed the greatest powers on the continent.
A single family that wielded power rivaling an empire, whose swordsmen were known to be formidable experts, every last one of them.
A great house of swordsmanship, said to be able to sweep away a small country by sending just a single sword unit.
That was Vishken.
Was that why?
“Pfahahahaha!”
“He really is a lunatic.”
“Him? A Vishken swordsman?”
“Guess he's dropping any name he can since he thinks he's about to die. He's really got no fear, huh.”
“As if there'd be a weakling like you among the ghosts of Vishken!”
None of the bandits believed it.
This drifter they had caught, a Vishken swordsman? Even a passing dog would laugh.
Yet even without believing it, they trembled with fear when the name Vishken came out of Allen's mouth.
For the name Vishken carried a primal fear.
‘Figured this would happen.’
In truth, Allen was embarrassed too. He remembered that back then, he hadn't been able to answer honestly either.
On top of that, he wasn't even an ordinary Vishken swordsman.
He was of Vishken's direct bloodline, the youngest son, no less.
‘If I told them Axion Vishken is my father, they'd all fall over laughing.’
The son of the continent's greatest swordsman, kidnapped by bandits!
It was truly unthinkable. And the reason that impossible thing had happened was Allen's innate constitution.
The Manaless Curse.
Every human was bound to possess at least a tiny bit of mana.
Swordsmen and mages grew by accumulating that mana and learning to wield its power.
But one who bore the Manaless Curse was born without a single speck of mana. Unable to sense mana from birth, they couldn't accumulate it either.
It was, quite literally, the worst possible constitution for becoming a swordsman or a mage.
‘A rare constitution said to appear once every few hundred years, and of all people, it had to be me.’
Allen had despaired over that fact, and after slamming into reality, he had run away from the family.
And this mission was the incident that set it off.
“Weird, right? I think so too. Why someone like me had to be born into Vishken, of all places.”
“This bastard's still-.”
“But you guys, though.”
Swish.
Allen raised both hands.
At some point, the rope that had bound his hands had come loose.
“Didn't you tie this a little too loose?”
“……!”
THWACK—!
In an instant, one guy's jaw was smashed, and he crumpled to the ground.
Dusting himself off, Allen caught the club as it fell toward the floor.
“Who tied this? Somebody needs to learn his knots again. Or maybe you tied it sloppily because you didn't care if I got loose?”
“This bastard…….”
“Just kill him!”
“No, don't kill him! Sell him off as a male prostitute!”
Dozens of bandits charged at him in a mob.
Watching them, Allen gripped the club like a sword.
With a club instead of a sword, Allen leapt in among them.
THWACK, THWACK—!
CRACK—!
The sounds of bones breaking and flesh bursting echoed through the warehouse. Allen felt his weakened body and his rejuvenated heart.
‘My body's gotten weaker… but being young again is nice.’
Eighteen.
He might be less trained, but physically, it was the age of his prime.
Had he gone back to an even younger age, his arms would have been shorter and his sense of distance different, but fortunately, there wasn't much of a difference.
His trained physique was gone, but the razor-edge senses from fighting countless demons right up until a moment ago remained fully intact.
One hit, one man down.
With movements that flowed like water and precise strikes, Allen subdued the bandits.
CRACK—!
Then, at the sound of one bandit's skull cracking, the charging bandits faltered.
Each time one fell, another lost the will to fight.
“H-He was this strong?”
“Then why'd he get caught so easily?”
“Don't tell me he did it on purpose…….”
Then a thought suddenly popped into the bandits' heads.
“C-Could he really be from Vishken?”
“Eeeeeek!”
They had brushed off the name Vishken because Allen's skill had seemed so lacking. But now, those words had gained credibility.
Having beaten down half the bandits in a flash, Allen flicked the blood off his club and said,
“Funny thing is, I'm really glad to see you guys right now. So killing you would hurt my heart.”
Allen looked over the bandits' faces and said,
“You're too ugly to sell as male prostitutes, so as a special favor, I'll sell you to the guard.”
***
Inside the warehouse, where every bandit lay sprawled.
Allen moved his body this way and that.
‘I need more training.’
The younger body was nice, but it didn't move as smoothly as he wanted.
For his manaless body, training and more training was the only way to survive.
With the noisy guys gone, a thought suddenly struck him again.
‘But why did I suddenly come back to the past?’
Only one reason came to mind.
‘Is it because of that orb?’
The mysterious orb the demons had been searching for in the Human Realm.
It occurred to him that swallowing it might have something to do with his return to the past.
If so, what on earth was that orb? What could it possibly be, to make something as impossible as defying time possible?
Just as he was sinking deeper into that thought.
-Kill them.
A faint voice came from somewhere.
Allen looked around.
Then he asked the bandits sprawled on the floor,
“Did one of you just say something?”
But the answer came from somewhere else entirely.
CRASH!
Someone kicked open the warehouse door from outside and came in.
The moment he saw that face, Allen's face lit up.
“Brother!”
“-Allen?”
A man with uncommon silver hair, holding a sword as pure white as his hair.
He was Allen's older brother, Lucas Vishken.
In his previous life, it was thanks to Lucas that Allen had made it out of here alive.
Lucas had received a mission from the family and come through that door to rescue Allen.
Lucas, having entered the warehouse, looked puzzled.
The situation inside was nothing like what he had feared.
Dozens of bandits sprawled on the floor, and Allen holding a club dripping with blood.
To anyone's eyes, Allen had beaten down every bandit and was about to escape.
“So it was not the worst case after all. I thought I would find you captured, looking pathetic.”
He did not praise Allen.
Then again, this situation should never have happened in the first place, so that was only natural.
The Lucas of this period, as Allen remembered him, had been a truly difficult person to deal with. Strangely, every time Allen messed up, Lucas would appear before him, and every time, Lucas would reprimand him.
Sure enough, Lucas's lecture was only just beginning.
“Your mission was judged a failure, so a mission was assigned to me. A mission to rescue you.”
“Was it so hard that even you had to step in?”
“Because I was the closest.”
It was a remark meant to stress that this was the only reason.
“Because of you, Vishken is short two swordsmen. On top of that, as Father's son, you lowered the family's standing. Regardless of whether the mission succeeds, you will hardly escape reprimand.”
“I see.”
Allen nodded and said,
“Thanks.”
“……?”
“You came before it was too late. You saved me.”
Back then, he had screamed at the top of his lungs. That he could have escaped on his own even if his brother hadn't come. That he hadn't failed yet.
Pride.
What was it even worth, that he couldn't so much as thank his brother, who had rushed all the way here?
If anything, this time he really could have escaped on his own without his brother.
So this was something he had failed to say back then and had put off ever since.
“Thanks for saving me.”
“……Are you all right?”
The fact that he asked like this showed his brother hadn't hated him after all.
Why on earth hadn't he seen this side of him back then? No, why hadn't he even tried to see it?
“I'm fine, except I'm hungry. Why? Do I look off somewhere?”
“That is not it. You just look better than I feared.”
“Coming back from the dead really snaps you awake.”
Allen looked at the sky beyond the door Lucas had broken through.
As he gazed at that sky, a certain resolve settled in Allen's eyes.
“……And thanks to that, I think I know how I should live now.”