Returners
Volume 1
1. Please Save the Earth. Ah, Sorry, That’s Impossible
Hundreds of armed people were trudging through a vast jungle.
Their attire was bizarre. They were heavily equipped with cold weapons one might expect from an older era and wore metal armor. On the other hand, they carried modern weapons like rifles at their hips, so their appearance—a complicated mishmash of medieval and modern—was beyond simply bizarre.
But this didn’t seem to be a joke. They all bore wounds large and small, and their expressions were the ideal faces of terror and rage given form.
At the very end of the column, a man with bandages wrapped around his side was being carried on someone’s back. The bandages wrapped tightly around his abdomen were so soaked in blood that not a single white patch remained. Seeing how the bandages around his left side were caved in, one could easily surmise that he had suffered damage far beyond the category of a mere “wound.”
It was a wound that would kill an ordinary person from excessive bleeding, but to them, it was the kind of wound they carried around as a matter of course. Had it not been for the overlap of several misfortunes that could only be called ill fate, that man too would have dusted himself off and risen in less than an hour.
They were moving at roughly 80 kilometers per hour. Considering that their equipment weighed over 100 kilograms, it was an astonishing speed, but to them, even this was moving at a greatly reduced pace.
Should one admire the vastness of the jungle, so wide that one could not escape it even moving 20 hours a day at 80 kilometers per hour for 8 days? Or should one admire their steel-like stamina, which did not tire even from such a forced march?
But human stamina had its limits. In a situation where they could not even enjoy proper rest, their strength gradually decreased, like clothes growing wet in a drizzle.
And it was when the man with bandages around his side and the man carrying him fell to the very back of the column.
“Uugh……”
The wounded man had regained consciousness.
It was a thread-like voice, but even the woman moving at the very front could hear it. Taking the man’s groan as a signal, the column quickly halted and gathered around him.
The man gently lowered the wounded man he had been carrying, propping him against a nearby tree.
The wounded man slowly looked around at the people gathered before him with hazy eyes. He did not ask how many days he had been unconscious. However, from the breathing sounds around him, he could tell their numbers had already dwindled.
The man who had been carrying him all this time and the woman who had been at the front of the column approached the wounded man. The two hesitated, trying to say something to him, but merely gauged each other’s reactions and could not speak a word.
When an eon-like silence of about ten seconds had passed, a voice came from behind, unable to watch any longer.
“Last words.”
The wounded man turned his gaze past the two standing in front of him. Another man, with steel-like muscles and holding a robe and staff one might see in medieval times, was looking at him.
“Last words.”
The robed man spoke again. In that voice, there was not the slightest hint of sorrow, only the tedium of a bureaucrat carrying out formal procedure.
But there was no one in this place who would call that disappointing.
In truth, they had witnessed too many sacrifices to grieve a single person’s death. Wasting even a minute like this just to hear the wounded man’s last words was already courtesy enough toward a comrade.
The wounded man looked at that and giggled. Because he knew what they wanted wasn’t simply to hear his last words. But it was also too much to call that disappointing…….
“Omitted below, you bastard.”
The wounded man waved his right hand in the air. It was an action like searching for something—not quite insane, but certainly bizarre enough.
Was he out of his right mind because the wound was too large? That wasn’t it. His right hand was clearly gripping something.
Following the wounded man’s bizarre actions, items were pulled from his right hand one by one and fell to the ground. From pinky-sized glass bottles to various equipment including greatswords and shields, and even food supplies the size of a compact car. Items with a volume clearly exceeding the wounded man’s body by over a hundred times poured out in heaps.
Hundreds of people quietly took only what they lacked. The remaining items were divided fairly among a dozen or so.
Two men and a woman watched the items being stored in that same bizarre way as the wounded man. They exchanged a silent conversation with their eyes. And the man who had been carrying the wounded man hardened his face, picked up a greatsword, and approached him.
“Save me.”
Watching the man with the greatsword approach, the wounded man suddenly spoke.
The man with the greatsword frowned upon hearing that. Emotions welled up, but it would be more accurate to say his tear glands had completely dried out.
“Sorry. Wrong choice of words. I’m not quite in my right mind.”
The wounded man looked at the greatsword man’s face and continued.
“Honestly, you guys really are something else too. The moment I wake up you pressure me to hand over my stuff, so how could…….”
He hung his head with a groan…… Whether from the pain in his side, he could not continue.
“Just. Leave me behind. That’s enough, isn’t it?”
The wounded man groaned for a while before raising his face and speaking with difficulty. His sweat-soaked face seemed gripped by an indescribable agony. The greatsword man looked at him, opened his mouth, but could not speak and turned his face away.
What followed was executed without a hitch.
Since they had already stopped, the hundreds of members took time to organize their equipment and took a short rest. A few people struck up conversations with the wounded man, and he answered with cheerful laughter. His demeanor of bringing up stories from the past so casually made it seem as if he did not know what was coming.
Rumble.
The brief peace shattered when a massive vibration echoed from far beyond the horizon. They all raised their weapons toward the source of the vibration with fighting spirit. Though they knew it was futile resistance.
‘In a way, it’s because of that damn stubborn tenacity that I could remain among the last few hundred.’
The wounded man thought that as he watched the scene.
Everyone formed up again and waited to depart.
Finally, the greatsword man who had carried the wounded man spoke.
“Jeongjin, are you really going to be okay?”
The wounded man—no, Jeongjin—could not hold back his laughter upon hearing that. Ignoring the intense pain in his side, he wheezed out a laugh and spoke.
“Okay? What do you mean okay? That Earth has ended up like this? That we’re the only survivors? That after struggling and running like dogs, in the end it’s all just a matter of dying sooner or later?”
Jeongjin’s words, shedding a thick fluid impossible to distinguish as tears or sweat, prodded the great scars remaining in everyone’s hearts. But the greatsword man and the party did not rebuke him. To them, this level of reckless talk was no different from an awkward blessing.
“Ah, get lost already. I want to be alone.”
Jeongjin made an obscene gesture and then comfortably leaned back against the tree and lay down. The party members left him one by one, silently seeing Jeongjin off to his end.
* * *
Even after everyone left, Jeongjin had things to do. It was a meaningless struggle anyway, but he wanted to live even a little longer.
Jeongjin looked around and walked toward a huge tree perfect for use as a hideout.
“Kk… heung……!”
With every step, the pain in his side violently assaulted his brain. Struggling to move his feet, he arrived at the target tree as if collapsing. He had moved only about 200 meters, but drops of blood were already falling on the ground where he lay.
The bandages wrapped around his side could no longer function as bandages and had turned into filthy rags that merely drank blood.
“…….”
Jeongjin clasped his hands together and muttered something. Then white light gathered in his hands and wrapped around his side. The mass of white light could not completely heal his wound, but it easily prevented it from worsening.
Then Jeongjin clasped his hands together again and muttered in a bizarre language. Following his words, an artificial flow gradually intervened in the surrounding atmosphere. When Jeongjin finished his last word, a hole large enough for one person had been pierced into the base of the tree.
Jeongjin entered the hole, curled up like a fetus, and rested.
* * *
Thud.
Jeongjin was sleeping. More accurately, he was precariously holding onto the thread of survival, one step across the boundary of death.
Boom.
His entire body was tightly wrapped in tree roots. Through the roots connected to his skin, he was absorbing the life force of plants existing within several hundred meters. If one were to look down at where Jeongjin was hiding from the air, one would see a circular barren land centered on his location.
CRASH!
The vibrations that had occurred sporadically several times soon culminated in a massive impact capable of collapsing a continent. The substances at the center of the explosion cleanly evaporated, and the crust overturned like rolling waves across several kilometers.
At Jeongjin’s hiding place, earthquakes occurred and the ground split even hundreds of kilometers from the explosion’s epicenter. Jeongjin’s hideout was exposed above ground due to the twisted crust, and because of that, Jeongjin, who had barely been breathing, woke up and looked around.
‘How much time has passed?’
Jeongjin removed the tree roots wrapped around his body and checked his wristwatch. The cheap digital watch informed him that one week had passed since he separated from the group.
Regaining his senses, he thought about the source of the shockwave, the group’s moving speed, direction, and time. They certainly hadn’t fought. They couldn’t have moved only a few hundred kilometers in a week.
Jeongjin looked around the barren land centered on him and the ruined forest. The wound in his side still hadn’t healed, but because he had woken earlier than expected, he had no choice but to survive in this state.
Hiding his darkened heart, he muttered inwardly.
‘Status Window.’
With the voice of his mind, a semi-transparent window visible only to him appeared.
[Name: I Jeongjin
Age: 53
Level: 167
Gender: Male
Class: Magic Swordsman
Race: Human
Stats ▼ (-98.8%)
Skills ▼]
“Heu-heu-hihik!”
This was so absurd. Jeongjin couldn’t hold back a hollow laugh. He had recovered as much as possible over a week, yet it was only 98.8 percent. Compared to 99.9 percent a week ago, should he consider himself fortunate? Hadn’t his survival rate increased twelvefold anyway?
Even the status window display was crude. Because he hadn’t fully recovered, he couldn’t supply enough stamina to exercise the supernatural ability called the status window.
Status Window. The record accumulated by his soul. The root of humanity’s supernatural ability that bloomed the speck-sized potential humans possessed. The transcendent being’s gift that allowed them to nurture power to resist extraterrestrial invaders.
But what good was it? Earth was ruined, and the last remaining survivors were preparing for a final suicide attack. Whether it succeeded or failed, there would be no place for humanity in the epilogue.
I Jeongjin caught a leaf fluttering in the air. The leaf, larger than an average adult man’s forearm, was shaped like a bamboo leaf one might see in a tropical climate. Earth’s current season was winter. And the place where Jeongjin was was definitely not the equator. Moreover, nowhere on Earth was there a jungle exceeding 10,000 kilometers in length. But the place where Jeongjin was was definitely Earth.
It was a sufficiently insane world. And it was the place where he had to somehow keep living.
Feeling there would be no end if he kept thinking, I Jeongjin discarded the leaf and searched his surroundings to replenish nutrients. In this jungle, he was a firm weakling and prey. Only by mobilizing all his knowledge and moving carefully could he continue that day’s survival.
One week passed. He made his base in a gap between ground split by the earthquake. I Jeongjin survived eating mushrooms and bugs growing from rotting tree roots. His wounded side remained the same. He had inevitably cut out his internal organs and one kidney to prevent additional poison from spreading.
Mana wouldn’t move. The forbidden technique of connecting to tree roots to absorb life force was his last remaining card. Now that it had been destroyed by the aftermath of a fight between unknown beings far away, there was no possibility of him surviving.
Two weeks. His stats changed to -98.9 percent. He was slowly dying. I Jeongjin exerted all his strength to feel the mana that wouldn’t answer.
“Keugh!”
Along with a cough, a dark red blood clot shot from his mouth.
Three weeks. -99.1 percent. The rate of his stat decrease was accelerating.
Four weeks. -99.5 percent.
And two days later.
“Ko… keuheek!”
I Jeongjin was covered with a crude blanket woven from tree branches. A level 167 catching a cold—even a passing dog would laugh.
“There are no passing dogs anymore either.”
No one answered his lame joke.
“Status Window.”
Lonely from being alone, he spoke aloud, but the status window did not appear.
‘Status Window. Status Window! Damn Status Window!’
He kept calling it, but it wouldn’t appear. In the end, it had returned to -99.9 percent.
He finally gave up, leaned against the cave wall, and looked outside. The jungle that had been blazing with sunlight until a month ago was covered in snow. He reached out, grabbed a handful of snow falling before the cave, and brought it to his mouth. It was the first water he had tasted in two days. He didn’t even have the strength to swallow it all, so he rubbed the rest on his face. The cold snow cooled his face, which was burning at over 50 degrees, if only a little.
Watching the gradually accumulating snow, I Jeongjin reminisced about the past. The past he regretted most was neither the people he couldn’t save nor the tragedies he couldn’t stop, but the jjamppong he hadn’t finished and threw away 30 years ago. He missed the jjamppong broth so much it brought tears to his eyes. He missed modern civilization. He wanted to see those peaceful times again.
‘30 years ago……’
The reminiscence that began with jjamppong returned to the beginning of that day.
“Protect the Earth.”
‘Who would have known this would happen from that one cryptic sentence?’
Perhaps he hadn’t known. Most of humanity probably hadn’t known.
I Jeongjin couldn’t bear the injustice and shouted. He organized the burning rage rising from his gut—too difficult to explain with words—into two simple words.
“You goddamn son of a bitch! I, I Jeongjin, was here!”
With that shout as his last, I Jeongjin collapsed to the ground. He didn’t even have the strength to hold onto the miserable rag, and it slipped from his hand.
At that moment, unable to move a single finger and slowly counting down to death as he exhaled his final breath.
[A new skill has been acquired. Skill: Cure]
[A new stat is being generated. Stat: Holy Power]
[A class change to Priest is possible. To maintain compatibility with existing job Magic Swordsman, a class change to Paladin is possible.]
“Huh……?”
At the same time, a new color was painted onto the uncontrollable flow of mana within his body. It was an exceedingly weak amount, but the power he had felt tens of thousands of times in the past was definitely holy power.
[Will you change class to Paladin?]
As his body recovered slightly, I Jeongjin unconsciously reached his hand toward the semi-transparent window that appeared before his eyes. And as he felt the connection with mana return, he could confirm the vast emptiness that had settled in his inner being. The last members of the suicide squad he had parted with about a month ago. That emptiness was the death of the other party members connected to him in the same party.
“…….”
One second of hope and the despair that would follow simultaneously washed over I Jeongjin. His unstable mind, which had sequentially passed through hope, confusion, emptiness, and rage, made him let go of the flow of mana he had barely grasped again. Feeling the mana rampaging violently within his body, he was dying again.
[Will you change class to Paladin?]
The status window mechanically displayed the same screen. I Jeongjin struggled to open the party member window, but the mana rampaging inside him like an ignited powder keg was decomposing him bit by bit at a microscopic level.
Feeling his vision blur, I Jeongjin realized his end had come. At the very end, he answered that cryptic sentence.
“Sorry. That’s impossible.”
They were I Jeongjin’s last words.