Chapter 0: Prologue

I have memories of a previous life.
From some point, ever since consciousness formed, maybe?

From the time I was a baby, actually.
If not for that, I would’ve either starved to death or been adopted by some weird people and suffered abuse — one of the two.

That’s how life goes for an orphan surviving in a postwar orphanage.
Surviving in a post-apocalypse, you could say.

There are plenty of childhood episodes tied up with that, but first, the things from my previous life.
To put it simply, here’s the gist.

Once, the world almost got completely destroyed.
Monsters appeared and rampaged, cities collapsed, and society fell apart.
Back then, I think Korea nearly went under.

In fact, governments collapsed in many places.
Citizens in those lawless zones had no choice but to become monster fodder.

Korea was one of the countries that held out until the end.
There were many reasons for that, and recalling them all gives me a headache.

People hid in apartments to endure the first wave, evacuated civilians, then bombed the cities.
They abandoned the provinces and fortified Seoul — things like that happened.

After holding out like that, a sliver of hope began to appear.
Broken common sense worked in a strange, favorable way.

Huge kaiju flew through the sky, and under Seoul Station new underground structures extended endlessly downward.
People suddenly using magic wasn’t that strange anymore.

Magic — to be precise, people using superhuman powers.
There was a complicated official term for them, but we just called them Awakened.
These days, even the government and the media call them Awakened.

The Awakened were deployed to the front lines and saved a world in crisis.
They slashed, cast spells, healed the wounded in an instant, and so on.

Countries that had already collapsed remained lawless, but some nations survived.
They responded appropriately to the impending ruin and bought time for the Awakened to appear.

It’s actually a pretty cliché story.
A setup you often find in fantasy novels.
There are reasons for it here too, but other things are more urgent right now, so I’ll skip those.

In my previous life I was an Awakened who used a sword.
I felled countless monsters and helped restore ruined cities.
And in the end I was one of the people who defeated the final boss.

A monster that, if left alone, would have covered the world and claimed billions of lives.
One Awakened alone couldn’t take that thing on.
Surviving nations quickly allied, and the strongest ability users from around the world gathered.

The fight wasn’t easy, but we ultimately achieved our goal.
Was it right to say “we”?
By the time the goal was achieved, I was the only one left alive.

So I tore that monster’s heart to pieces.

A modern version of a hero party that defeated the demon king.
The detailed memory is too horrific to even recall.

We somehow brought down the final boss, and I died in that place.
The story should have ended there.

But I am still alive.

To be precise, I was reincarnated.

Thirty years after the war.
In Seoul, rebuilt from the ruins.

A life that starts anew from infancy.
At first it was extremely confusing.
I had clearly died, yet I was alive and breathing.

Then I naturally realized what had happened.
I suppose it was inevitable.
After living for years, the sense of reality becomes naturally ingrained.

I had been given a new life.

I don’t have many complaints.
I had a lot of lingering attachment to life.

I wanted to eat delicious food and lie down on a comfortable bed in a nice home.
It would be even better with good friends.
The comrades I had fought with were good friends, of course, but the circumstances when we met were terrible.
I wondered how things might have been if we’d met in different situations and from different perspectives.

There are a few regrets, though.

First: in this life I was born an orphan again.
Not uncommon — it’s a wartime world and people die left and right.
So even though I was reincarnated, I got two orphan lives in a row.
If there’s a next life, I wanted to be born with a golden spoon and coast through life, but that was wasted.

Second: my gender changed from the previous life.
From male to female.
Because of that, the memories of my previous life and my present consciousness don’t sync well.

I had to rebuild the swordsmanship I had trained my whole life.
My height and strength dropped drastically, which was to be expected.

The tenacious sexual urges embedded in my previous-life memories…
There were many times I shuddered at those thoughts.
How did I, in my previous life, casually conjure up such shameless thoughts as if breathing?

Every time that happened my face flushed.
Although the previous-life me is technically the same person, it feels a bit alien each time.

Because of these difficulties, life in the orphanage wasn’t easy.
I had many hardships and fought a lot.

Still, I had to live.
Hoping for ordinary happiness, for the sake of the comrades who died.

Post-apocalypse Seoul scraped by after the war.
The city center is in the midst of rebuilding civilization.
The outskirts, meanwhile, are full of the poor.

Security is f*cked and monsters threaten constantly.
It seems like a place without hope, but when I look in the mirror a sliver of hope appears.

Shimmering black hair and mysterious red eyes.
A complete bishoujo.
And I handle a sword well, so I’m strong.

Some who don’t know me might think I saved the country in my previous life.
I actually did.
Not everyone can be a pretty girl in this world.

And right now.
I’ve reached a crossroads in my new life.

My name is Joo Wooyeon.
My age is a crisp eighteen.
I’m planning to become independent from the orphanage soon.

Setting out on this long path trusting only a single sword.

It’s really romantic as hell.