"Gasp!"
Leo sucked in a sharp breath and snapped his eyes open.
Reflexively, his hand flew to his neck. The fiery agony of being torn apart by jaws still felt all too real.
Naturally, there were neither black monsters nor dying comrades around him.
His neck was intact, and his arms and legs were right where they belonged.
"Haa, was that a crazy dream?"
He was sitting atop the roof of an empty house.
Judging by the holes gaping in the roof and the planks and nails scattered around, he must have lain down for a moment and dozed off while fixing it.
Being up on the roof gave him a clear view of the surroundings.
A small village of a few dozen households nestled in a basin ringed by a modest forest.
It was his hometown, Ronmar.
"Shit, that was way too vivid to be a dream."
And way too long, at that.
Leaving the village, becoming a mercenary, wandering across the entire continent, and finally dying in battle against the monsters... fifteen full years of memories.
All fifteen years of that dream sat heavy in his head.
No matter how shitty a nightmare he had, it usually faded the moment he woke up. Yet even after sitting in a daze for a long while, the memories didn't evaporate—they felt burned straight into his skull.
Was it really just a dream? And if it wasn't, what the hell was it supposed to be?
His thoughts were a tangled mess.
He looked down at both palms.
Clean hands, unmarked by scars. When he felt his face, the skin was completely smooth. It was unmistakably a boy's body, without a trace of facial hair.
"Why am I even questioning the obvious?"
Of course he had a boy's body—he was just a fifteen-year-old kid who'd had an insane dream.
Leo scowled deeply.
Sleeping out in the heat must havecooked his brain.
That had to be it. And yet....
"Hah, fuck, seriously...."
He couldn't shake it off.
The memories were far too vivid to write off as a simple dream, nagging at the back of his mind and refusing to let him go.
"Right, I'll just test it once and see."
There was a way to tell whether it had been a dream or not.
A dry laugh escaped him at how ridiculous he was being for even trying this.
If that bastard Dex saw him right now, he'd definitely ask if he'd lost his mind.
He would test his mana sensing.
Of course, fifteen-year-old Leo didn't know how.
In his dream, however, he had succeeded in sensing mana in his late teens and awakened Aura in his mid-twenties.
So all he had to do was try the mana-sensing method he had practiced in the dream.
There was no way it would actually work. It was just a crazy stunt to shake off this lingering unease.
....
Or at least, it should have been.
"Fuck! It actually works?"
His mind went blank. For several seconds, he couldn't form a single thought, as if his brain had been scooped out.
Mana sensing—something said to take years of grueling effort without talent.
He had pulled it off in five minutes.
Using memories from a dream, no less.
'Wait, doesn't that mean it wasn't a dream...?'
...And if it wasn't a dream?
His throat had definitely been ripped out by a monster. After that, his consciousness had gone pitch-black.
What followed was unmistakably death.
He had died.
And he had come back to life.
Inside his own body from fifteen years ago.
"What the hell is this...."
To write it off as a dream, sensing mana like this made zero sense.
And to say it wasn't a dream meant accepting the even crazier conclusion that he had regressed fifteen years into the past.
'Tsk, racking your brains is for smart bastards.'
Better to just accept it for now and deal with it head-on.
Brooding over questions with no answers had never been his style anyway.
Since he had succeeded in sensing mana, he decided to go ahead and anchor the mana inside his body while he was at it.
'If this works too, I'll really believe it!'
Closing his eyes again, he focused inward.
He guided the mana he had sensed and drew it into his body.
By nature, mana resisted leaving its original state, thrashing wildly as it tried to break free from Leo's unfamiliar vessel.
Unfazed, he silently and methodically forced the scattering mana down into his dantian over and over again.
How much time passed?
At last, the mana settling in Leo's dantian began drawing together and condensing.
An Aura Hole smaller than a pea took form.
'This works too?'
An Aura Hole—an actual Aura Hole.
The method for forming an Aura Hole was supposed to be a closely guarded secret of knightly houses, yet he had just created one himself.
There was no room left for doubt now.
Blazing a new trail took constant trial and error, but walking a road you had already traveled was smooth sailing.
The mana drawn into his body accumulated smoothly inside the Aura Hole.
Mana stored in the Aura Hole like this, ready to be wielded at will, was Aura—the symbol of a knight.
"Phew...."
Leo opened his eyes. Two or three hours had easily slipped by.
The Aura Hole that had started out smaller than a pea was now the size of a chickpea.
Given the current state of his physical body, this was his limit. Cramming in any more mana would only cause it to overflow.
All that remained now was to expand the Aura Hole through steady physical conditioning and Aura breathing.
"It really wasn't a dream."
He had no choice but to accept it now.
Belatedly, a tremor ran through his frame.
The terror and despair of facing that black tide of monsters washed over him all over again.
And right behind it came a crushing wave of regret.
'Mother, Lily...!'
What good was success, and what good was pride?
Why had he never once gone back to see his precious family...?!
He missed them.
He needed to see them.
Leo leaped off the roof of the empty house and sprinted down the village road.
Fifteen years of memories stood between then and now, but there was no way he could ever forget the way home.
Soon, a familiar red roof came into sight.
"Haa, haa...."
He caught his breath outside the faded wooden front door.
From inside came the clatter of dishes being prepared for a meal, accompanied by the warm murmur of voices.
It was unmistakably his mother and little sister.
Gripping the handle, he eased the door open.
His mother, in her late thirties, and his little sister Lily, who had just turned ten, turned toward him at the same time.
"Welcome home."
"It's big brother!"
Just looking at the two of them made his throat tighten, tears threatening to spill over.
"Yeah, I'm home."
His voice came out thick and choked.
Stepping inside, Leo went straight to the basin and splashed cold water over his face again and again without a word.
...He couldn't think of any other way to hide his tears.
Freshly baked bread and soup loaded with thick chunks of potato.
It was his mother Frill's favorite dish to make.
Staring at the steaming bowl of soup, Leo felt his chest ache with emotion all over again.
Why had it taken him so long to realize?
An ordinary lunch with the three of them gathered around the table.
Out on those endless battlefields of kill or be killed, what he had craved more than anything was a simple, ordinary moment like this.
"Big brother, your eyes are red!"
"So they are. Are you alright? You aren't coming down with something, are you?"
"Must've gotten some dust in them while working earlier. I'm fine now."
Could they have gone through the same thing he had?
No—his mother's and sister's behavior was far too normal and unbothered for that.
'I'll test the waters with Dex later.'
Leo kept his thoughts to himself.
He was terrified that this moment might pop and vanish like a soap bubble.
Right now, he just wanted to soak in this warmth.
"I'll do the dishes."
"Oh my, what's gotten into my son today?"
"I can help out every once in a while."
Clattering the bowls together, Leo deftly scrubbed the tableware.
While eating, he had organized his thoughts.
'Will the future I lived through play out the exact same way?'
He would just have to wait and see.
The real problem was what came after.
If the black monsters appeared fifteen years from now, just like in the future he remembered....
Not a single human would survive in the devastated northern continent.
The defensive line had almost certainly fallen, meaning the central continent wouldn't be safe either.
No, remembering how savage those bastards were, there wouldn't be a safe zone anywhere on the continent.
He had to protect this peaceful, happy life.
He couldn't let that future catastrophe repeat itself.
Right now, the Ashlen Empire looked peaceful on the surface.
But if his memories held true, chaos would erupt before long.
Internally, the First Prince's and Second Prince's factions would tear at each other over the throne, while externally, war would break out.
And after that would come the emergence of those unknown black monsters.
'Thousand-year empire, my ass.'
It was one disaster after another.
Frankly, he didn't give a damn whether the Empire stood or fell.
Moving his family down to the southern continent would keep them clear of the worst of the war against the Vort Kingdom.
The problem was that there was nowhere to run from the black monsters.
Just as he finished the washing up and was wiping the plates with a dry towel, a voice called out from beyond the door.
"Leo! You home?"
He knew who it was from the voice alone.
Standing outside the front door was a boy with light brown curly hair, about a head shorter than Leo.
It was his best friend, Dex.
"Come on, the guys are all waiting."
"Dex! You bastard!"
"What? What's with you?"
Grabbed suddenly by both shoulders, Dex leaned back with a weirded-out look on his face.
Leo didn't care.
The grizzled, stubble-covered face of his old comrade overlapped with the smooth, boyish face in front of him.
'Looking at this bastard now, he was actually a pretty cute kid.'
How the hell had his face gone so wrong later on?
Leo couldn't suppress a grin, remembering how Dex used to guzzle booze and whine that women ran screaming the second he opened his mouth.
"I'm heading out for a bit!"
"Alright, don't stay out too late."
Leo slung an arm around Dex's shoulders.
This was the brother-in-arms who had built the mercenary corps with him and fought beside him until the bitter end against the black monsters.
With Dex, at least, he could ask straight up.
"Hey, you didn't happen to have a weird dream or anything, did you?"
"What are you talking about? Did you take a nap or something? I was busy all morning."
"The Red Wolf Mercenary Corps, black monsters—none of that rings a bell?"
"Oh boy, you really must've had a wild dream."
Dex stared at him like he was the most pitiful idiot in the world.
That sealed it.
Leo was the only one who carried those memories.
"Get your head together. We're supposed to fight those vigilante bastards from the next village over today, remember?"
"Ah."
Right, that was today.
Cities had official town guards, but nobody bothered policing a tiny backwater like this.
Naturally, the villagers had to look after their own.
Usually, hot-blooded young locals banded together to form a vigilante group, and in Ronmar, Leo was the one leading them.
Then there was Korun, the village right next door.
Lately, the bastards in Korun's vigilante group had gone rotten and started crossing the line.
Word was that the very punks calling themselves vigilantes were harassing local girls and acting like thugs.
Recently, they had even shaken down some younger kids from Ronmar for their money.
Once they laid a hand on Ronmar's kids, Leo couldn't let it slide.
"We heading over now? Let's go."
"Are you fully awake now? You sure you're okay?"
"I told you, I'm fine. Worry about yourself. Your face is gonna be far from fine in a few years."
"...Why would you say something so mean?"
Huh? Did that actually hurt his feelings?
Thirty-year-old Dex would have shot right back with, 'I thought this bastard only lost his mind, turns out his eyeballs rotted out too.'
Fifteen-year-old Dex was a sensitive kid who bruised easily.
...That was pretty entertaining in its own right.