“Haa… haa…”
ROOAARR!!
“Alright, alright! I get it! Now shut up!”
I shouted over my shoulder.
Crashing through the trees like snapping dry branches, the ugly bastard of a magical beast chased me with a roar in response.
“Goddammit…”
I ran. I ran like hell.
Blood was already streaming down from several places on my body.
Hot, sticky blood trickled into my eyes, blurring my vision. I wiped it away roughly and kept running.
As I ran, random thoughts began to scatter through my head.
It all started… with a damned defeat.
Damn talent.
That’s the only thing I want to say about this whole situation.
I had dropped my sword and was staring blankly at the kid in front of me.
The boy held his sword in both hands, his expression dazed as he looked at me—me, who was bleeding heavily from my shoulder where his blade had struck.
“Are… are you okay, sir?”
He looked no older than thirteen.
He’d told me earlier that this was his very first time holding a sword.
A genius .
I’ve seen so-called geniuses before…
But this? This was on a whole other level—so blatant it was almost insulting.
How could some brat, who had never once touched a sword before, unleash such a terrifying strike?
I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Were geniuses just… fully completed beings that fell from the heavens?
Or did some great existence personally bless them?
If that was true, then what about me?
I, who had swung a sword for decades without taking a single day’s rest—
Why was I not given even the smallest scrap of that damned talent?
Why wasn’t I blessed, you bastards…?
Pathetically bleeding, gasping for breath, I collapsed to the ground.
“Mister! Hey, mister! Stay with me!”
Even as my vision blurred, I pushed his hand away.
“Don’t… touch me… you damn genius brat…”
I tilted my head back to look at the night sky.
The stars glittered like grains of salt scattered across black velvet.
Between the bright stars stretched an expanse of pitch darkness.
There must be more stars hidden there—ones too faint to be seen, swallowed by the dark.
“The black is the night sky, and the shining specks are those damn stars…”
“…What are you doing?”
While I was reciting a piece of impromptu poetry under the Milky Way in the dead of night, a voice sounded from behind me.
I turned. It was a familiar face.
“Captain.”
The captain clicked his tongue at me.
“Ah, so the lunatic finally snapped. I was wondering when it would happen, and it turns out it’s tonight. What the hell are you doing under the moon?”
I replied curtly, “It’s none of your business, Captain.”
“Tsk. Lose to a kid, and now you’re acting like this, huh?”
Something about his condescending look set my temper off, and I answered coldly,
“One day, I’ll shatter your world. I’ll make you understand what it feels like to be weak, you monster. You’ve never lost, have you? Do you even understand my feelings? My heart is like a reed, you bastard.”
“…You’ve lost your damn mind.”
Whack!
“Guh!”
“Quit spouting crap and get some sleep. I picked up a job.”
An assignment slip fluttered down onto my head.
I snatched it up and read it—it was a D-grade magical beast extermination request.
I glared at him.
“D-grade? How much are you looking down on me, you bearded bastard?”
The captain kicked me away as I lunged at him.
“Leave early tomorrow morning. Go kill some beasts and get your head straight. And stop howling at the moon like a mad dog.”
I charged at the monster in human skin again.
“So the truth is, you were a beast all along, weren’t you? Otherwise there’s no way you could be this ugly!”
“Something’s wrong with your brain.”
Whack!
Yep. The beast’s fist was merciless.
The next morning, I grumbled my way onto a carriage, assignment slip in hand.
The destination was a small rural village near a forest.
From the looks of it, they didn’t even have many strong, able-bodied men.
The villagers greeted me warmly—so warmly, in fact, that they slaughtered a pig and threw a feast.
…Most likely because they couldn’t afford to pay me in coin, so they were offering food instead.
I pretended not to notice and ate the meat they offered without hesitation.
Better to eat their pig than watch them get slaughtered by a beast because they couldn’t pay.
Also… the meat was delicious.
That was when it happened.
—ROOAAARR!
A chilling roar echoed from the forest.
And moments later, the source appeared.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The curse slipped out on its own.
A long, thick tail. Fearsome fangs. Horrific claws.
Half reptile, half dragon, the massive creature strode from the forest, toppling trees in its wake.
They had called it D-grade in the request, but it was easily B-grade.
I quickly drew my sword and shouted, “Run!”
The villagers, frozen by the beast’s roar, finally snapped out of it and fled for their lives.
Was it the smell of roasting pork that drew it here?
The beast thundered toward us—then spat out whatever it had been carrying in its mouth.
It was a magical beast resembling a wild boar.
D-grade.
The exact target listed on the request.
“Ah… ahhh…”
Beside me, a boy stood frozen, staring at the monster.
For a moment, I saw myself—back when I had first faced a gleaming blade in a back alley.
The beast must have found the boy more appealing than the pork—it drooled as it charged straight at him.
“Damn it…!”
I had no choice but to throw myself at it.
And that… was how it happened.
When the jumble of memories ended, I felt as if tears might start streaming down my face at the tragedy of my life.
Now I was running for my life, trying to shake the beast off me. I’d been luring it away from the village while fighting it, but keeping its attention off the kid had been no small feat—it must have thought that brat looked absolutely delicious.
In the process, I’d taken more than a few wounds, none of them what you could call “light.”
“Haa… haa…”
And so here I was, clutching my useless left arm, blood pouring from me, fleeing for what felt like days.
What had begun as a run to save the villagers had, at some point, become a desperate sprint for my own survival.
Normally, a beast would be exhausted and give up after a few days of pursuit. But this one? It seemed to have fallen head over heels for me, determined to chase me until one of us died.
Endurance like that should be illegal.
“Can’t you just give it a rest already, you bastard?!”
—ROOAARR!
Sometimes, running for days on end with death at your heels gets… lonely.
At first, being chased by the beast had been thrilling in a strange way, but by now, there was no romance left in it.
Running had become a solitary, lonely trial of endurance.
When that loneliness struck, I would imagine the beast as a beautiful woman and glance back.
Then I’d see her laughing sweetly, slender arms smashing trees aside as she ran toward me.
Of course, as the cold city man who never gave his heart easily, I’d simply wink, turn sharply, and keep on running.
Then, in the next blink—
—ROOAARRR!
The hideous beast would be there again, drooling as it chased me.
…The fact that my mind was drifting like this probably meant I really was at my limit.
I’d lost far too much blood.
Pushing through the trees, I suddenly realized the space ahead had gone wide open.
The air carried sound differently.
A cliff.
I skidded to a stop and looked down.
A sheer drop vanished into a sea of mist.
Mist Cliff.
I’d somehow reached the border.
I grinned and turned around.
I hadn’t planned it, but this would do nicely.
My body was wrecked—still being alive at all was a miracle.
I was going to die anyway… but having company on the road to the afterlife would keep it from being lonely.
“At least I won’t be alone on the way to the underworld.”
—ROOAARR!
The beast charged.
I stood with my back to the cliff and roared like an animal.
“Come on!!”
It was the final battle.
I barely dodged its claws and managed to drive my sword into its neck.
Shk!
But it bit down on my head as if it were nothing but a snack.
Crunch!
“Ghhk!”
Those massive fangs tore into my vision—whether my eyes burst or not, the world went black under the agony.
We struck each other with fatal blows and tumbled from the cliff together.
—ROOOAAARR!
I could hear it thrashing in midair.
“Don’t be scared. It’ll be over soon.”
I laughed as the dizzying fall continued.
It went on for a long time until—
Thud!
It ended.
At last, my pitiful, wretched life was over.
And then—
In the pitch-black world of my ruined eyes, something red appeared.
It grew larger… until it crashed down on my head like a meteor.
“GHHHHHK!”
Air rushed back into my lungs and a wave of unbearable pain followed.
Even in that chaos, I realized that something alien had entered my mind.
A strange voice echoed in my head.
—What is this?
.
.
.
In a quiet forest where birds chirped, a young girl pushed through the undergrowth, a basket of strawberries in her hands.
As she searched for more, she spotted a collapsed beast and a blood-soaked man—and gasped before fleeing.
“Mother! Mother!”
I felt hazy, as if drifting in a sea of dreams.
Voices reached my ears, muffled, like I was underwater.
—To survive a fall from that cliff… it’s a miracle. Impossible.
—When will he wake?
—We’ve done everything we can. All we can do is wait.
—Should I bring more herbs?
—Yes. The bleeding’s already seeping through. We’ll need to change the bandages.
“Ugh…”
Pain from someone touching my wounds made me frown and open my eyes.
A pair of bright, curious eyes stared back at me.
The child flinched and pulled her head back, shouting, “He’s awake!”
A bearded man’s face appeared next.
“You’re conscious?”
I blinked and asked, “Where… am I?”
“You’re in our home. My daughter found you in the forest and brought you back.”
Beside his bearded face, a woman’s face entered my view.
“You were covered in blood—we thought you were dead!”
The man scolded her, “Don’t say that to someone who’s alive and right here.”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
I looked away from them and stared at the ceiling in a daze.
What the hell happened?
I was sure I’d died—bitten in the head by that beast, then falling off the cliff.
“Ugh!”
When I tried to get up, pain ripped through my body.
The man hurried to stop me.
“Don’t get up. You need to rest.”
Ignoring him, I forced myself upright and asked, “Is there a stream nearby?”
“Ah… yes, just up ahead…”
I dragged myself out the door and staggered toward the stream.
Splash!
I splashed the icy water on my face, trying to clear my head. The cold shock helped, if only a little.
Letting the water drip down my face, I looked around.
A dense forest stretched before me, and beyond it, a sheer cliff.
How…?
I was certain I’d fallen from there, but the idea of surviving that drop was absurd.
And now that I thought about it… I remembered seeing something strange at the end.
When my vision had gone black from the beast biting my eyes, something red—like blood—had fallen onto my head…
“Ghhk!”
The thought triggered a pounding headache.
I leaned over to splash my face again—
“…Huh?”
Floating on the water’s surface was a pair of ruby-red eyes.
(End of Chapter)