episode_0002

My journey from a warrior to a nobody was simply a matter of Gabriel reading a few words written on a scrap of paper.

My body felt so heavy. I just wanted to fall asleep.

-Tsk!

“…Ah.”

“You fell asleep while reading the Emperor’s edict… Leah, you don’t even have this basic courtesy? How disappointing.”

When did it start, suddenly, Ena’s noble knight-like figure suddenly barged in, and her arm slapped my cheek. Since I was an ordinary person with no strength, I just stood there like a doll, holding my cheek.

My heart, which had already been torn apart, and my mind, which had barely managed to hold on, were completely broken with that.

-Thud.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. And it’s hard. My heart aches so much. My tear ducts are clearly dried up, but why do tears keep flowing from my eyes?

The mind was shattered and turned into rags. It was clear that Leon had suffered more than this when he was a child, and Galvein’s spell was dozens of times more painful than this, so why did it hurt like this with just one slap on the cheek…

The world, the world was colorless.

After laughing and chatting amongst themselves, they left me there with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

My legs gave out. My body collapsed. I didn’t even think about resisting. I didn’t even have the mental strength to do something as simple as that.

When I suddenly looked in the mirror, I was sure that my eyes were dead.

Now I was nothing.

I have to do something. I’m a multi-talented nobody.

After sitting there for a while, I realized that it was a thought that had become a habit, even though there was no reason for it.

It’s funny, now I have nothing to do, but my body has already adapted, and my brain is burning with anxiety, so I can’t sleep for more than 30 minutes.

Do anything.

Versatile.

If you sleep for one minute, ten people will die.

Ah, when I finally came to my senses, I realized I was in a small training room attached to a temple.

I absentmindedly reached out for the sword, but the knights’ chattering and their gazes were so painful that I had no choice but to withdraw my hand.

In the end, I swung the whip with my thin arms that had lost all their muscle mass and no sexual strength.

-Tsk!

“Haaak…!!”

Clearly the whip hit something. Is it a minor issue that it was my arm?

I even lost my versatility in multi-talent.

I clenched my hands in misery. …Blood flowed out. My hands were covered in wounds from my fingernails, but I felt no pain.

I was so out of breath that I just got up and started running.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to be here anymore.

-Knock knock knock knock!!!

I just ran. I walked and walked and ran out the main gate of the temple.

My body swayed and shook until I finally leaned against the alley wall and fell to the ground.

People’s gazes were too painful. It was as if those gazes were piercing into my flesh, and it felt like they were mocking me, who was no longer a warrior or anything, or even a gender-less person, so I dug deep into the alley and hid myself between the abandoned cotton cloths, so that not a single hair could be seen.

Sob… ha… sob… ha…

Every time I breathed, there was a musty, humid smell. I couldn’t see anything except the faint light of the outside world shining through the gaps.

…That musty smell, that smell that made me fall to the bottom, actually woke me up.

Even though I’ve lost my power, I’m Leon Nine Saber, no… now Leah Nine Saber. I was once a hero. Even though I’ve lost my power, would I still show such a shameful behavior?

I was momentarily shocked and lost, but my determination to be a warrior held me together.

Okay, let’s get out of here. And I’ll go to my mother. There are still people I have to protect and be with…

I ran out of the cotton field without thinking and caught a carriage.

I don’t even know what he said. He just kept calling out the name of the town I was born in and told me to go there.

I ignored the coachman’s dissuasion. To me, I desperately needed a reason to live. I felt like I would die at any moment without the oxygen mask, so I shouted at him to just go away, giving him money indiscriminately.

It was just a person’s cry for survival.

The coachman’s eyes, those eyes were so painful. Like Belle’s cold eyes, like the eyes of those who judged me as multi-talented… I crawled under the carriage seat and trembled until the carriage started and arrived, not even thinking about getting out.

In fact, the coachman must have been worried about the little girl. She must have been pitiful to see her staggering about out of the blue, her face covered with tears, and her trembling and convulsing under the seat whenever he looked at her.

And so, the coachman, despite trying to dissuade the girl, had no choice but to start the carriage in the end due to the girl’s ramblings. At the same time, he probably wished that the girl would stop the carriage in the middle.

Because, the place that the girl called home was a place that had been attacked by monsters a few months ago, and all the residents had died without a single survivor.

But in the end, the carriage arrived at its destination without stopping.

*****

Oh, what am I looking at right now?

-Oh my god.

I took a step out of the carriage.

It’s a miserable sight, with monster and human corpses entangled without any respect.

The human corpses were all torn apart by monsters, with no intact part, some with teeth embedded in them, some with claws embedded in them. Some belonged to those who were terrified, and some belonged to those who fought bravely to the very end.

Even though it wasn’t funny at all that the monster’s corpse was actually more intact, I burst out laughing. Maybe it was a contradictory word called negative laughter. In fact, there is a simpler expression for that contradiction: laughter.

If their jaws were stuffed with human flesh, their internal organs torn out and displayed outside, and their mouths were pierced with spears between their eyes and the flesh, and yet they were still intact compared to human corpses, how could I possibly imagine how those monsters trampled, tortured, and killed humans?

I didn’t have a good enough imagination to picture it, but my eyes just pushed the scene into my brain as concrete and rational information, so now I had no choice but to picture it all in my head.

The corpse that was hit by the wolf-type monster over there was the blacksmith who was like a benefactor to me and made me a wooden sword when I was a child, supporting my dreams.

On the left, the lump of flesh that was so badly crushed by a monster that it was hard to tell what it was, was my sister who ran a flower shop. When I first became a warrior, she gave me a flower crown when I complained about my hardships. I still have that flower crown… But the sister who gave it to me died.

How did I walk? I finally arrived at the front door of the house.

The hand holding the doorknob felt heavier than ever.

Rather than opening this Pandora’s box, I wanted to go back to the coachman who was waiting far away.

But… I had to look behind this door. Perhaps it was because I had already sensed my fate the moment I saw the solidified blood that filled the entire village mixed with human blood.

-Squeak…

Even the sound of the door opening sounded miserable, sad, and terrifying.

And at that moment, I just sat there frozen.

“Ah, no… no…”

There were no humans there. There was nothing alive.

And, there was nothing that could be assumed to be my mother, only the ring my mother received when my father proposed to me.

“AAAHH …

I thought it was definitely dry… but the tears wouldn’t stop and came out again.

Even without thinking too deeply about what happened to his body, he probably ended up in a troll’s stomach.

Tears welled up in my eyes and blocked my vision, making it impossible to see even an inch ahead.

Trolls are, at best, mid-level monsters. If only I had been to the village at least once, rather than being too busy going to the front lines.

Monsters that I could have killed with just one swing of my sword tore my life apart.

Oh, there was something I couldn’t help but realize in the meantime.

One day, when I heard that there was a very small strange sign in my hometown and suggested that I go and check it out, Soo argued with me, saying that it was a waste of money and that the village vigilantes or dispatched reporters would take care of it. In the end, I was going to go alone, but Gabriel stopped me, saying that I should go to the front line and fight one more time.

At that time, I was so busy pretending that I ended up accepting Gabriel’s opinion. Instead, I completely believed what Ena said about sending high-ranking imperial knights and imperial magicians.

…That too, was a lie. The dispatch thing was a piece of crap.

If I had gone then… haha, if I had…

Even in this situation, you are destined to never be able to be happy. As if someone was whispering in your ear.

What was once a warrior has become a breathing doll with no reason to live.

All I could do was clasp my mother’s ring tightly on my hand and search the house and the village to hold at least one funeral.

Of course, no trace of the mother could be found until the last ring.