Chapter 0: Prologue
A darkness surged in from the far east, covering the entire sky.
The clear sky turned pitch black, the white clouds darkened to deep ash, and the fresh fields became eerily like an old landscape painting.
Across the distant horizon, small lights flickered in midair under the hem of the Queen of Night.
One was a sphere, a black shadow coalescing into the shape of flames. It radiated an oddly sinister aura into the impenetrable gloom.
The other, in stark contrast, spread a brilliant radiance in all directions. A sacred silver-white glow emanated a warm yet majestic aura.
The two lights slowly, very slowly… settled on an old-fashioned brass scale───.
───The scale tilted.
『Aura, harm yourself.』
A sweet, clear voice issued the command softly. Amidst the stillness, delayed cries of shock and screams briefly rang out.
『No… this can’t be… I…』
The sound of flesh being sliced, something heavy dropping to the ground. The headless corpse wobbled for a moment before dissolving into the air.
It was the death of Aura of Chilbung-hyeon.
And the screen of the tablet went dark.
I exhaled.
My stiff neck creaked as I turned. The wall clock pointed to four. Four in the morning.
God. I couldn’t help but curse my own stupidity.
“Watching anime at this hour… I’m insane. I’m really insane.”
In two hours, I had to head to my part-time job. In short, I had stayed up all night. I let out a dry laugh.
“Ugh.”
Wherever her head had gone, Aura seemed to have ended her fierce battle on her own. Our lives weren’t all that different.
The only difference was that Aura’s battlefield was literally a battlefield, while mine was a small company’s production line, full of cursing and overwork.
I stared down at the tablet, a black hole of a screen. Aura and Frieren’s war… was ultimately meaningless. Was the world of Frieren at the Funeral meaningless too?
A deep, unexplainable sadness welled up inside me. My life, failing repeatedly in college entrance exams and hopping from part-time job to part-time job, did it hold any meaning, unlike anime?
I looked around the room. In this bleak, single-room apartment, the only signs of life were a half-eaten cup of ramen and a bottle of Zero Cola giving off a faint sour smell.
“Ha, damn it.”
This was my world.
Cramped, drab, and musty—this was my world. The desires left inside me felt unbearably cumbersome. They were the desire for a new life.
The desire to live more diligently and have a better life if I were to live again.
Wasn’t it ridiculous? That I clung to hope that next time would succeed, simply because I had failed once. That I embraced my hollow failures as if they were somehow important, even though they had yielded nothing.
“…I should sleep.”
Maybe because it was so early, the feeling was unbearable. I irritably pulled the blanket over myself. Even just two hours of sleep should be enough to suppress my self-loathing, right?
I closed my eyes tightly. Sleep didn’t come easily.
But…
At the end of it…