Chapter 2: A Reason to Live (1)

“You’re suspended for a week,” the professor said in a deep voice.

I looked at him without responding, making him angrier.

“Do you have a problem with that?”

The deep voice belonged to a rugged-looking middle-aged man, his wild appearance reminiscent of a lion. He was Lucas Kane, who was once my professor in the Warrior Division when I was a third-year hero cadet, a renowned figure once known as the Bloodthirsty Hound. Back in those days, he had earned fame for exterminating hundreds of demons, and today, he was also the unfortunate man I had knocked across the room the moment I woke up.

“Disrupting class, assaulting a professor... You should be grateful that suspension is all you got. No?”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded absentmindedly under his sharp, piercing gaze.

“Well then, return to your dorm immediately and write a reflection letter. I still have a class to—

ugh

.”

Professor Kane groaned as pushed himself up from his chair, his face twisted in pain, and he clutched his chest.

“Are you alright?” I asked in concern.

“Mind your own damn business,” Professor Kane responded harshly.

His reply left no room for further concern. Taking the hint, I turned and exited the professor’s office.

On my way back to the dormitory, I walked down the hallway, usually bustling with hero cadets. If there was one silver lining, it was that despite the overwhelming confusion, I still vaguely remembered my old dorm room number from my four years studying here.

I held my wristwatch close to my room door, prompting a familiar mechanical chime.

“Hero cadet Dale Han. Identity confirmed.”

The door unlocked and inside I saw a small bed, a desk, and an old shelf with a few cheap bottles of wine.

It’s the same exact room I used.

It had been so long that my memories of my time as a hero cadet were hazy, but I still recognized the dorm room where I had lived for years of my life since I turned eighteen. Stepping into the cold, silent room, I sat on the edge of my worn-out bed.

“What the hell is going on?”

I definitely absorbed the Primordial Flame into my body and closed my eyes, believing that, at last, my long and weary existence was coming to an end. Yet, here I was.

Why did I come back?

As far as I knew, the Primordial Flame had no power to turn back time. I had wandered the continent for hundreds and thousands of years in search of the flame because the ancient records stated that it could burn away the soul stigmata, a blessing of the Seven Gods.

“Wait... does that mean?”

Hurriedly, I unbuttoned my shirt and looked down at my left chest. The soul stigmata bestowed upon me by the Forest God, one of the Seven Gods, was still perfectly intact.

“

Ah..

.”

A chill ran down my spine. For an eternity, I had roamed the world, chasing after the Primordial Flame, all for the sole purpose of erasing this mark.

Was it all for nothing?

No. It’s too soon to jump to conclusions.

It wasn’t just the soul stigmata that kept me from dying; it was the Blessing of Resurrection that resided within it. Every hero bore a soul stigmata, but only a rare few had been granted a divine blessing within theirs.

There’s a chance the soul stigmata is still there, but the divine blessing is gone.

The way to test it out was simple.I reached for the sword lying in the corner of my room. A simple cut wouldn’t be enough, only fatal wounds could trigger the divine blessing, which meant there was only one way.

With firm resolve, I tightened my grip and sliced straight through my own neck. I felt the chilling sensation of the blade digging deep, and the weight of my severed head tumbling onto the floor. Then, a fountain of blood came gushing out, dyeing my bed sheets red.

A blue light flared from the soul stigmata, and the pitch-black darkness clouding my vision gradually returned to normal. The severed head that had rolled across the floor was gone, and the bed sheets soaked in my own blood were clean, as if nothing had happened.

A helpless chuckle slipped through my lips. Nothing had changed. The soul stigmata on my chest was still there, with the Blessing of Resurrection embedded within it intact.

At the end of this unbearably long life, what awaited me wasn’t a period, but a loop back to the beginning.

A fleeting thought suddenly crossed my mind.

Then what the hell happened to the Primordial Flame? Did it vanish when I regressed?

I suddenly groaned when a searing pain shot through my chest, as if a red-hot brand were pressing into my flesh. I looked down to see a faint flicker of fire dancing over the soul stigmata, its glow no stronger than a candle’s wavering flame.

What the hell is this?

Not once, not in the thousands, no, tens of thousands of times I had died, had something like this ever happened before. This phenomenon had never occurred in all my endless cycles of death. The reason for it wasn’t hard to figure out.

So the Primordial Flame didn’t disappear after all. Not that it changes anything. The Blessing of Resurrection is still intact.

Of course, compared to when I first absorbed it, the Primordial Flame had dwindled to something pitifully small. But at least it hadn’t vanished completely. Groaning, I clutched my throbbing head and collapsed onto the bed. Thoughts tangled and twisted inside my mind, forming an unrelenting storm I couldn’t escape.

“Going back in time,

huh

...”

Raising my left hand, I channeled a small amount of mana into my wristwatch. A soft light glowed, and a translucent holographic screen flickered to life with a beep.

[Hero Cadet Information]

Name: Dale Han

Origin: Republic

Year: Third

Division: Warrior

Overall Rank: 472 / 472

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen this.”

I couldn't help but let out a dry chuckle as I glanced at the overall ranking displayed at the bottom of the cadet information screen. I was the eternal bottom-ranker and the worst dunce in the history of the Hero Academy.

Professor Kane once said, “even if you somehow graduated, you should never become a hero.”

I proudly held the number-one spot on that list of hopeless idiots.

“

Haah

...”

Recalling my hero cadet days left a bitter taste in my mouth.

At what point in time did I return to?

I closed the holographic screen and checked the date on my wristwatch. It was early March, the start of a new semester.

“Then the class I was just in must have been Practical Combat Training.”

Practical Combat Training was a mandatory course for all third-year students, regardless of their division. As its name suggested, it was a class designed to prepare cadets for real-life battles against demonic monsters.

It was also where I first awakened the Blessing of Resurrection, during the midterm evaluation of this class.

“

Ah...

?”

As I searched through my memories, a long-forgotten memory surged forward like a bolt of lightning striking my brain.

“Wait a minute! If this is the first semester of my third year, then that means...”

Thump. Thump.

My heart pounded so loudly it echoed in my head. Before I could even finish my thought, my body moved on its own.

I kicked open the dormitory door, nearly breaking it off its hinges. Drawing out what little mana I had, I reinforced my body and ran. I didn’t care if my legs tore apart or my lungs burst. Right now, none of that mattered. What mattered was something far, far more important.

I slammed open the lecture hall door, the very one I had been thrown out of just moments ago.

“What the?!”

“Dale?”

The gazes of the cadets stabbed into me like daggers. I ignored them and kept walking to the very back of the lecture hall, over to the seat by the open window where the gentle spring breeze drifted in.

She was there.

“Iris...” I called out softly.

Seated at the back, near the window, she looked strangely unfamiliar. But it wasn’t hard to pinpoint the reason for that feeling. Because she no longer had a blindfold on, and now those dazzling blue eyes, deep enough to pull me in, were looking in my direction.

“

Uh

... yes?”

She blinked, utterly bewildered, as if she never expected to hear her name from my lips. Of course, she wouldn’t. Back then, we weren’t lovers, we weren’t even acquaintances. We hadn’t exchanged a single proper conversation.

When I reunited with Iris ten years after graduation, she didn’t even remember that we had taken the same class for an entire year.Then again, why would she remember me? She was the Saintess, a shining hero expected to represent the Holy Empire. Meanwhile, I was nothing but a failure who clung to the very bottom of the ranks from enrollment to graduation—until now, that was.

Without answering, I stepped forward, closing the distance between us.

“You bastard! What do you think you’re doing to the Saintess?!”

A sharp voice rang out as a female cadet with navy-blue hair tied in a ponytail jumped to her feet. This was Camilla Vediche, a holy knight dispatched directly from the Holy Empire to protect the Saintess, and she was a top candidate for the title of the “Sword of the Holy Empire”.

“Stand back!”

Her fierce command was followed by a swift motion to unsheathe the sword at her waist. But before she could even draw it, I reached out. My fingertips grazed her wrist, the one gripping the sword hilt.

“Move away.”

I used the Berald Combat Style: Sky Flip.

“What the?!”

Thud!

Camilla’s body flipped upside down and crashed onto the floor. Screams and gasps erupted throughout the lecture hall.

I ignored all the voices and stood in front of Iris, recalling everything about her. Her fading warmth as she lay in my arms, her trembling hand stroking my cheek as she whispered over and over again that it would be fine, and her painfully forced smile as she looked at me while I sobbed.

“

Ah, ugh..

.”

A wretched sound, like a kettle boiling over, escaped my lips. It felt as if my heart had been impaled by searing-hot thorns.

What should I say? What words could I possibly say to her? I knew that she wouldn’t remember me and that every moment we had shared existed only within my memories. However, even so, the words I had repeated countless times while wandering through the snow-covered wasteland filled my throat.

There were so many things I wanted to say, but there was only one thing I had to say.

“Thank god...Really... I’m so glad.”

For a life that had been spent chasing only death, I had finally found a reason to live.

***

“You’re getting an extra month of suspension,” Professor Kane said sternly.

“No.”

“No? No?! Are you out of your damn mind?! You stormed into the lecture hall during your suspension and jumped a cadet, not just any cadet, but the Saintess of the Holy Empire! And you have the nerve to say no?! Have you gone crazy?”

“What do you mean I jumped her? You make it sound so scandalous. I never even laid a finger on the Saintess.”

“Oh? And what about Cadet Camilla? Want to try claiming you didn’t lay a finger on her either?”

“Camilla has already explained what happened. She tripped and fell,” I retorted.

“She had no other choice but to say that! You took her down before she could even unsheathe her sword! How could she bring herself to admit that?!”

“Come on, Professor. Do you think I could take down Camilla Vediche—a candidate vying for the title of ‘Sword of the Holy Empire’—before she could even draw her weapon?”

“

Hah

... Do you really think you can fool me with such a pathetic act?” Professor Kane scoffed, crossing his arms. His sharp gaze, befitting of his title as the Bloodthirsty Hound, bore into me as he asked, “You... What the hell are you?”

“You already know, don’t you?” I shrugged, keeping my expression calm and unbothered. “I’m Dale. Ranked 472nd out of 472 cadets in the overall rankings. The bottom-ranking hero cadet, Dale Han.”