Chapter 13
【Die, Kaizen.】
Someone whispered endlessly.
【If you die, everything will be easier.】
Everything happened in an instant.
The moment the sharp tip of the sword pierced his heart.
“Kaizen, you bastard! I’ll see you in the next cycle!!!!”
Romie disappeared after saying something incomprehensible.
Even though it was absurd, Kaizen didn’t think deeply about it. After all, once he died, it would all be over.
For the eternal rest that was about to come, he slowly closed his eyes.
How much time had passed?
Suddenly, discord began to intrude upon his once peaceful world.
“Get your newspaper! Selling for 5 Cooper!”
“Ugh, how did the feed prices rise so much? I’m going to die feeding these horses!”
“It’s all because of the prophecy about the Demon King’s resurrection. The villagers in the starting town evacuated; that’s why everything’s like this.”
The noisy chatter scattered like he was in a bustling marketplace.
Was this some kind of hallucination experienced while dying?
Kaizen slowly opened his eyes.
“Hey there, young man. Move aside a bit. Why are you lying here like this?”
“……”
The stern-looking woman clicked her tongue and looked down at him.
Suddenly, he realized.
“…Is this hell?”
Then, the woman before him must be the gatekeeper of hell.
“Huh? Well, this is hell, I guess. Anyway, move aside a bit! I have work to do; why are you blocking the way?”
“…Work?”
Kaizen finally noticed that something was off.
Familiar smells, familiar air, familiar people.
He slowly stood up and looked around; the scenery he saw was one he knew well.
No way.
“Where… am I?”
“Geez. Looks like this young man’s out of his mind. This is the starting town.”
Kaizen closed his eyes briefly and opened them again, looking at the pitying gaze.
“What day is it today?”
“Tsk. Totally lost your mind, huh? Today’s the 17th! But this young lad’s been talking to me disrespectfully since earlier.”
… The date didn’t match.
Kaizen hurriedly moved his body.
Now that he thought about it, everything he was seeing felt eerily familiar.
The boy selling newspapers, the villager talking about feed prices, and the prophecy about the Demon King’s resurrection.
And then.
Jingle—!
“Hey, watch out! Waaah!”
Even the man who fell off his bicycle while passing by. Everything had happened a week ago.
In that moment, Kaizen instinctively understood.
“…Time has reversed.”
Then, Romie’s words, spoken as she disappeared, felt deeply significant.
‘Kaizen, you bastard! I’ll see you in the next cycle!!!!’
The next cycle. That woman clearly knew something.
Kaizen’s eyes grew cold as he recalled Romie.
Cycle 99.
He had returned.
“Ugh, this is frustrating.”
Upon opening his eyes, the familiar sky filled him with anger.
Soon, the sky would crash with thunder and lightning, matching his mood.
A sigh escaped from deep within his abdomen.
“Kaizen, what the hell is wrong with youuuuuu!”
As he muttered habitually to himself, Kaizen’s face suddenly appeared in his view.
I jumped up in surprise.
“What… what? Kaizen, why are you here?”
He stood with his arms crossed, glaring at me sideways.
Why is he really here?
This was the first time such a thing had happened during 99 cycles of regression.
“Weren’t you the one who said it? That we’d meet in the next cycle.”
“What? You didn’t… recover all your memories, did you?”
The words of Hamma came to mind, about recovering memories after escaping brainwashing.
‘After eating the raw bird given by the Hero, my brainwashing was undone!’
I was carefully observing, wondering if Kaizen was the same, when suddenly he drew a sword from its sheath and pressed it close to my neck.
“Who exactly are you? How do you know I’ve regained my memories?”
A deadly intent shimmered in his steel-blue eyes.
Ah, here we go again. Why does he always start with a sword?
If this continues, I’ll probably reach Cycle 100 in record time, so I quickly stepped back.
“Hey, wait. Calm down. Let’s talk.”
I climbed a tree, grabbing a branch and hanging on.
Looking at the ripe, plump fruit, I quickly cast a spell.
“Be obedient. Be obedient.”
Focusing my eyes tightly, a sparkling effect appeared on the fruit.
It wasn’t my own dish, so the effect would be short, but I was grateful that it worked at least temporarily.
Phew.
Hanging from the tree, I swallowed hard and tossed the fruit to Kaizen.
He reflexively caught it.
“Eat this first, then we’ll talk.”
“Are you kidding me?”
A deflating sound escaped from him.
“What are you talking about? I’m serious. If you don’t eat it, I won’t talk to you at all.”
Kaizen glared at me as if he could strike my neck at any moment.
Well, what can you do? I’m hanging from a tree, so go ahead.
But as if reading my thoughts, Kaizen muttered coldly.
“You don’t actually believe you’re safe just hanging there, do you?”
“Uh… huh?”
I flinched.
“Get down before I cut the tree and bring it down on you.”
“Hey. Saying it like that makes me even more scared to get down. I didn’t do anything weird. Just eat it, and I’ll come down, okay?”
“If you keep talking nonsense, I won’t hold back.”
“See? I ate it. Now it’s fine, right?”
His eyebrows twitched like waves.
Damn… terrifying.
“You don’t actually think I’m scared just because of that, do you?”
“No?”
Kaizen burst into a sharp laugh at the brief retort.
He glared at me with a displeased expression and clicked his tongue lowly.
“…Fine. I have no energy to argue, so come down.”
Massaging his forehead as if he had a headache, Kaizen devoured the fruit in one bite.
Red juice dripped down his chin.
When he wiped it off roughly with the back of his hand, he looked at me expressionlessly.
It worked!
The “obedient” icon appeared above Kaizen’s head.
Free from the life-threatening situation, he finally recognized the current circumstances.
“Ha…”
From visiting the temple to Kaizen’s death, and now returning after regression to face this situation, everything had been overwhelming.
I exhaled briefly and turned my gaze to Kaizen.
The skull icon still hovered above his head. With two out of five bars filled, it seemed this was his default state.
“I’ll tell you everything, so sit down. Let’s talk calmly.”
I said, then leapt down onto the grass.
Kaizen looked displeased but obeyed. The obedient effect seemed to be active.
“So, how much do you remember?”
If he had recovered all his memories, he wouldn’t have asked who I was.
“Using your words, I suppose I remember things from the ‘previous cycles.’”
“Then how did you find this place? You’ve never been here in any previous cycle.”
“That is…”
Kaizen’s expression wavered slightly.
He thought for a moment, then slowly spoke.
“When I grabbed the sword at the temple, memories I didn’t know started coming back in fragments.”
“Memories you didn’t know?”
“I’ve met you here before. I even vividly remember being annoyed that you kept following me wherever I went.”
I remembered those memories vividly too.
‘Hey, Kaizen, where are you going?’
‘Stop. If you come any closer, I will cut you.’
Yet I had stubbornly followed him and realized this place was beneath the Floating Island.
“Whatever the reason, it seems your memories from previous cycles are slowly returning.”
“Previous cycles…?”
“You are living your 99th life. And each time you die, I also repeat 99 lives alongside you.”
“……”
I spoke as calmly as possible, but Kaizen looked shocked.
His trembling lashes and slightly parted lips confirmed it.
He blinked slowly and remained silent for a while.
Finally, his lips moved.
“…If all of that is true, how do you remember it?”
It was probably because I didn’t belong to this world… but I couldn’t bring myself to tell Kaizen that this was a game-like world.
“I don’t know either. I’ll have to find out going forward.”
“… Then why haven’t you told me until now that you’ve been repeating 99 lives?”
I knew he wasn’t scolding me; he was just curious.
But irritation surged up.
“Do you think I didn’t tell you? Every time, you treated me like a madman.”
“……”
“And before I could do anything, you just went somewhere and died each time!”
“…I’m sorry.”
“Ha, fine. If you’re sorry, then don’t think about dying anymore—defeat the Demon King instead.”
“My dying wasn’t because of that…”
Kaizen’s expression suddenly stiffened.
“…The voice.”
“What?”
“I heard it. It kept urging me to die.”
“That’s… ridiculous…”
Wait.
Suddenly, the words of the stone tablet god at the temple came to mind.
‘Savior, restore all the hero’s memories, end the curse, and save this world. Then, all will return to their rightful places.’
He had said to end the “curse” and save the world.
What if Kaizen had been cursed?
I lifted my head sharply and stared at him.
