Chapter 29: The Warrior’s Regrets

How much time had passed?

“That’s roughly it.”

I had only told a small part, but perhaps because the content was so dense, it felt like an hour or two had passed.

Of course, there was no way to confirm since nothing had changed around me, but that was the feeling.

Meanwhile, the god gave a faint smile.

[So, you were a warrior….]

“Though there’s no way to prove it.”

[Is that so?]

It couldn’t be helped.
I had left everything I owned in the other world.

At that moment, the god pointed behind me with his finger.

[Seems like there’s something to prove it with?]

“Huh?”

I turned my head at the sudden reaction.

“Ah.”

Behind me, where the god was pointing, there was a sword.

I got up and drew the sword.

“Long time no see, you too.”

I felt a familiar sensation in my hand.
It was my real sword, not some illusion.

I thought it had definitely disappeared, but I never thought I’d see it again here.

Maybe it was because this was the spirit world.
Well, anyway, I was a little happy to see it again.

It had been my only companion in my otherworldly journey.

[What is that?]

“It’s my Moonlight Sword.”

Moonlight Sword .

The sole weapon of the Warrior of the Moon.
A sword forged with moonlight.
A versatile weapon that could become anything.

And…

The symbol of my weakness.

[That sword represents your weakness?]

“Yes.”

It wasn’t an unusual statement at all.
It was truly a sword I had obtained because I was weak.

“I was really weak back then.”

A pitch-black night where no one would help, and even screams would only wander and dissipate in the darkness.

When the encroaching malice gradually tightened my breath, I desperately begged and begged one last time.

Towards the invisible moon, hidden in the night sky.

Please, I want to live.
Even if it’s just a little, give me strength.

Looking back, it was truly ridiculous and pathetic. To be reduced to clinging to a distant moon that couldn’t be seen or reached.

In fact, everyone who came to kill me openly mocked my actions.

Saying my last words were extremely unsightly.
Asking who I was begging for my life from.
Saying they couldn’t watch anymore because I was so pathetic.

However.

The moon never mocked me.

“I was the weakest existence of all.”

It simply responded silently.

Faint moonlight landed on my hand, full of wounds and blood. Eventually, that moonlight slowly took shape into a single sword.

Literally, a sword forged with moonlight.
The first and last gift the moon gave to my weak self.

“Anyway, that’s how I got the Moonlight Sword.”

That was the Moonlight Sword.

[So, after you obtained the Moonlight Sword, you became a warrior?]

“No.”

I shook my head.

Obtaining the Moonlight Sword didn’t immediately make me the Warrior of the Moon.

However, the god denied my words.

[Well. Still, seeing the Moonlight Sword and that over there makes me think you really are a warrior. Am I the only one who thinks so?]

“Huh?”

[Look to your side.]

Instead, he pointed to the side with his finger.

When I turned my head slightly, a large circle that had appeared out of nowhere filled my vision.

“Ah.”

[Isn’t that your warrior’s power?]

“…That’s right.”

[Maybe in other words, it’s called magic power? I think they called it by that kind of word.]

As if all the previous wounds had healed, it had a pure white circle without a single speck.

However, it wasn’t a perfect circle.

[By the way, this is tied up?]

Because it was tightly bound by chains.

“I did that.”

[Why?]

“I had no choice if I wanted to win in the end.”

With only the single-minded determination to win the final battle, I sacrificed everything I had.

I must have been bound like this as a price.

“The Moonlight Sword disappeared with it at that time.”

It was a regrettable but unavoidable choice. If I hadn’t done it this way, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to kill that son of a b*tch at the end.

Instead, I would have died.

[Still, it’s more beautiful than I thought. Like the moon. I can definitely say you’re a warrior with this.]

“I agree that it looks similar to the moon, but it’s not beautiful. In fact, you can’t even call me a warrior with just this.”

[Why do you think so?]

“Because.”

This wasn’t a proper power.

It wasn’t a power bestowed by a sacred being, nor a power obtained through a mysterious chance encounter, nor a power awakened through love and friendship.

“It’s not a power I obtained in the right way.”

A bloodstained power gained by facing countless deaths, losses, and disasters alone.

[You think so because it’s a power you’ve built up by killing others and surviving?]

“Yes, that’s right.”

I wasn’t a warrior back then.

A homicidal maniac who desperately struggled with only the obsession to live, swung a sword without hesitation, and butchered people day and night.

I was just such an existence.

[But if you hadn’t done that, you would have died several times already. It looks like self-defense no matter how you look at it.]

“Still, you can’t call someone like that a warrior.”

It’s true that it’s a warrior’s power.
Anyway, it was my power, not anyone else’s.

But that doesn’t mean I’m a warrior because of this.

[If you weren’t a warrior from the beginning, how did you become the Warrior of the Moon?]

“It started when I met a little kid.”

I still remember it clearly.

A faded dress with slightly frayed edges.
A humble evening primrose held in both hands.
Tragically sparkling pink eyes.

[She didn’t have a name?]

“She was a nameless orphan.”

That girl begged me while crying.

[Then what did she say?]

“She asked me to save her.”

She was a girl suffering from a curse.
A curse that could only be cured by killing the Demon King.

[The subject of the curse is the Demon King?]

“I think so. She lived in a remote village, and the Demon King suddenly appeared and cursed everyone, she said. She was the only one who survived.”

[It’s a common story, but terrible.]

It meant that a death sentence had been handed down to a child who was only eleven years old.

A death sentence whose execution was postponed for a very short time.

[But why did she ask you? You were hated by the people of the other world. Didn’t she have anyone else to ask for help?]

“She did ask.”

The girl had asked others for help as well.

A mercenary who was infamous but certainly skilled.
A knight commander who was truly noble and exemplary.
A sword king who had reached the pinnacle of swordsmanship with just one sword.

Everyone was an amazing person. I could dare to say they were superhumans who had overcome the limits of humanity.

But everyone turned away from the girl.

“But in the end, they all refused.”

The reasons they gave were various.

Someone gave the realistic reason that it wasn’t profitable, someone else gave the principled reason that they couldn’t do it without orders, and someone else gave the personal reason that they only dealt with people who wielded swords.

Well, the result was that they wouldn’t do it.

[Didn’t she ask anyone else besides them?]

“There was one more person.”

In the end, the girl set out to find one last person she could ask for help,

With chapped lips from not being able to drink even a drop of water, shoes so worn that blood and pus formed on her feet, with a body that wouldn’t have been strange to die at any moment.

[Who is that?]

An existence destined to kill the Demon King.
A figure located at the opposite extreme of the Demon King.

That’s right.

“To the warrior.”

The girl went to the ‘warrior’ and asked for help.

[Warrior? You said you weren’t originally a warrior.]

“Yes, that’s right. It’s a different warrior from me.”

He also had a splendid holy sword, adventured with a warrior party that could rely on each other, and was a ‘real warrior’ praised by everyone.

[But she asked you?]

“The warrior refused.”

However, even though the warrior heard the girl’s earnest request, he coldly shook his head.

The reason was simple.

[Why?]

“The reward was poor.”

The reward was really nothing special.

It wasn’t glittering gold and silver treasures, nor overwhelming power to control the world, nor a beautiful woman to make your eyes spin.

A single evening primrose.

That was all the girl could give.
There was nothing else.

So, she couldn’t help but be rejected.

It’s natural. Saving others without any compensation is just a sugarcoated story like a fairy tale.

There are no fairy tale warriors in the barren reality.

[But why did you grant her request?]

“She overlapped with me.”

The girl was the same as I was in the past.

Like me, who desperately begged the moon because I had no one to rely on, she was a girl who pathetically asked me for help as a last resort because she had no one to turn to.

“To be honest, I also didn’t like that warrior son of a b*tch.”

In fact, there were also personal reasons.

Some people were busy sticking swords into other people’s bodies every day, while others were busy sticking their d*cks into warrior parties.

“I heard that’s how you gain other people’s abilities and become stronger, but I still got annoyed.”

[Is that all?]

And.

“Of course not.”

The fact that the existence called warrior was like that was disgusting.

“How can someone who has everything refuse to do anything just because the reward is a little small?”

I couldn’t tolerate the fact that someone who hesitated to lend a hand to the weak was a warrior.

Because it was so different from the warriors in the novels.

That’s why, the moment I heard the request, I promised the girl under the moon, while hooking our little fingers.

The warrior you spoke of.
The fictitious warrior that only exists in fairy tales.

I’ll try to be that, just once.

[Anyway, you must have become a warrior from that time on.]

“Actually, I didn’t think much of it at first, but she kept calling me a warrior. So, I have to call myself a warrior, I guess.”

Warrior of the Moon was also a name given by the girl.

She said that she gave me that name because I promised to become a warrior under the moon in the night sky.

That’s why I was the Warrior of the Moon.

[For someone who said that, you introduced yourself as the Warrior of the Moon so confidently earlier?]

“She called me that so diligently, it would be a little rude of me to deny it now. Instead, I decided to just brazen it out.”

[Good job. Good thinking.]

After that, I ran and ran like crazy.

I don’t remember this part very well.
I just killed a lot of things.

Among the targets were the Demon King’s subordinates, those called the Four Heavenly Kings, and those called the Demon King’s true retainers.

Most of the time was spent on the journey to kill the Demon King, and rest was taken to a bare minimum. Even then, I hardly ever rested properly.

[You overdid it. It was reckless.]

“But I couldn’t help it.”

I was so afraid that the girl might die if I delayed even a little.

So, I kept pushing myself.

Because I could never allow a futile ending.
Because I really wanted to become a warrior from a fairy tale.

Anyway, I directly cut off the Demon King’s head in the end.

[After that, the curse must have been lifted.]

“I don’t really know.”

The curse probably was lifted.
I had confirmed the Demon King’s death several times.

However, I couldn’t confirm it directly.

[Why?]

“I was marked as a public enemy. So, I was busy running away. I also thought that I might get caught up in the mess if I went to meet her.”

Even before, the other world b*stards had come to kill me. Ambush still existed on the journey to kill the Demon King.

But after killing the Demon King, it got even worse.

From the moment the rumor spread that I had killed the Demon King, a bounty was placed on my head. Naturally, the frequency of attacks was incomparable to before.

I wonder which b*stard did that.
Even now, I’m genuinely curious.

“It was really strange. I just killed the Demon King, but everyone kept asking me to hand something over.”

[That’s definitely a bit strange. You wouldn’t have touched the Demon King’s treasures anyway.]

“I just ate this and that because I was hungry.”

Well, this is all old news now.
Anyway, I’m dead now, aren’t I?

“Anyway, that’s it. When you look at it now, it’s just the grumbling of a dead person.”

[You’ve worked hard.]

The god gave a bitter smile.
I opened my mouth with a relieved heart.

“Where do I go now?”

I was curious about my afterlife.

Whether I would be dragged to hell because I had done so much in the other world, or whether I would live comfortably in heaven in consideration of my hard work.

Honestly, I would prefer the latter. No matter what, I suffered tremendously in the other world, so wouldn’t it be okay to wish for a little reward?

However, the god’s answer was neither.

[What if there’s another place?]

“Where?”

[Where else.]

Another choice that was neither hell nor heaven.

[The present world where you originally were.]