Do Heroes Need Welfare Too? - Chapter 124

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 124

For Adam, living life was a daily struggle.

However, Adam pretended not to know anything and asked his god.

“Don’t Heroes go to the Temple?”

Your Deity says you must not go to the Temple.

If you go to the Temple now, the remaining Emperor faction High Priests will report Adam’s existence to the Emperor and he will die.

It was something he learned after countless attempts, but young Adam, who didn’t know this, tilted his head in confusion.

“Still, I don’t understand.”

Your Deity persuades you that you must build your strength first.

Adam found it strange but believed his god’s words.

He had no intention of defying his benefactor who had saved his life.

However, even gods weren’t omnipotent, and he fell into crisis many times.

There were times when he couldn’t recruit proper companions and had to bang his head against a wall, and he nearly died without even seeing the Demon King’s face.

Each time, he recalled the peaceful days of being beaten under his adoptive father, who was no longer frightening, but he didn’t want to return.

It wasn’t because he feared that violence.

‘If I give up here, will God go to someone else?’

He hated that thought.

His god had to belong only to him.

Even while dying, Adam looked up at the sky where his god might be.

Without fail, the end of the world approached.

God would disappear as always, and he would soon die.

When he first remembered the regression, everything was confusing.

Living alone with memories that everyone else had forgotten was also painful.

‘But I want to see you again.’

However, now only one emotion remained.

No matter how many times he tried again, the only god who looked at him alone had become an indispensable existence to him.

Therefore, he couldn’t imagine a world without her.

‘What if God suddenly disappears because I stop regressing?’

His lips went dry and his heart sank.

Feeling as if the Demon King’s curse was manifesting, Adam scratched his innocent hand.

His neat nails scraped down his hand, creating small cracks.

That wouldn’t happen.

【My Hero, do you want to go back?】

He recalled the voice that now clung to him like a curse.

It seemed to worry about Adam, seemed to pity him, and seemed full of affection.

If God disappeared, he could just go back again as always.

* * *

Adam, who had been recalling the past, slowly closed his eyes and opened them.

Iberis was not in the Demon King’s Castle.

She would never return now.

He kept calling for his god, but no answer came.

It was more miserable than when he was left alone in the Demon King’s Castle.

He thought she had finally come into his hands.

He had only just recognized her now…

Adam clenched his tightly closed fist even harder.

His hand turned pale blue from lack of circulation, but he didn’t care.

He felt the bumpy texture of metal in his clenched palm.

“…”

Adam shed tears silently.

I am satisfied with life in a cage.

But if the cage burns down, I’ll have to find the arsonist and kill them.

And the bird forcibly taken outside will die.

Longing only to return to the time when it waited for its master to come back.

Adam recalled the regression he had forgotten until now.

If he started over, could he see her again?

“Then if I get hurt, will you take revenge for me, Hero?”

At that moment, Iberis’s voice from the past flashed by.

Adam hadn’t answered then.

Just imagining it made him feel sick to his stomach.

Even when he tried to open his mouth and act nonchalant, his mouth wouldn’t open.

He closed his mouth even more, afraid that the anger subtly surging within would be transmitted to Iberis.

He was afraid that if he showed all his inner thoughts, Eve would run away.

What did Iberis think when she saw that?

He couldn’t be certain since he didn’t have the ability to tear open and examine someone’s heart.

But surely, wasn’t she hurt…

He should have spoken properly from the beginning.

What you cherish always slips through your fingers like sand.

What remained were memories that only he could remember.

The companions he had met several times, the friends he thought would believe him, and even his birth parents whose faces he didn’t know.

He wanted to find comfort by not letting them into his heart.

However, by the time he realized this fact, he was already deeply submerged.

‘Should I start over again after all?’

Adam’s eyes fell on the holy sword carelessly thrown about in the Demon King’s Castle.

Would he find peace if he died like the owner of the holy sword that proudly bore his first master’s name?

Without God, no, without Iberis, there was no reason to prolong this life.

‘No, that’s not right.’

Instead of gripping the sword, Adam habitually held and fiddled with his earring.

Why should he just go back for someone else’s benefit?

He thought of the Emperor who would surely be grinning from ear to ear.

Recalling the Emperor’s face who once ordered him to tear apart a companion before his eyes and then laughed, Adam slowly raised his head.

This would be his doing again, so it wasn’t even surprising anymore.

Adam clicked his tongue at the Emperor in his memory.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to get revenge before leaving?’

His thoughts spread their wings and gradually formed a concrete plan.

Iberis had left so futilely, yet thinking that the Emperor would sleep soundly after seeing that sight twisted his mood.

After finishing his thoughts, Adam left the room. Inside the Demon King’s Castle was terrifyingly quiet.

As he walked through the dim Demon King’s Castle, red eyes shone from the dark air.

“Are you leaving?”

“…Yeah.”

After Iberis left, Abracxas also became quiet without showing himself.

Adam ignored him and continued down the stairs.

Abracxas, who he expected would step aside as usual, disappeared and then appeared again.

Abracxas, who blocked him as he was about to leave the Demon King’s Castle, handed him a small box.

Adam looked at him with a tired expression without accepting it.

Now even wearing the mask of a good person had become completely pointless.

When the mask of suppressing his sensitivity and pretending to be a good person with a smile broke, his weary expression appeared as it was.

Should he kill Abracxas too before leaving?

Now there was no Iberis to stop him.

Adam contemplatively stroked the handle of the holy sword hanging at his waist with his finger.

However, he quickly removed his hand.

If he listened to her words well, perhaps he would have the dignity to face her again when they started over.

Adam desperately suppressed his impulse and opened his mouth to ask.

“What is this?”

“Just take it. Don’t open it. You wouldn’t be able to open it anyway.”

“….”

Adam tried to open the box with force, as if he didn’t believe his words.

However, the box that didn’t look particularly sturdy didn’t budge no matter how much strength he used.

It didn’t move an inch, as if rejecting his power.

Adam shook the box in front of Abracxas’s face and asked with his eyes.

“…I cannot tell you that alone.”

It seemed there were complicated reasons, not because he didn’t want to say.

Adam stared at the tightly closed box, then took it with him and went outside.

Abracxas stood still and did not leave that place.

It would be more accurate to say he couldn’t.

He was a pitiful soul bound to the Demon King’s Castle by the Demon King’s covenant.

It was time to wait for the master of the Demon King’s Castle to return with a dark expression.

However, Adam suddenly stopped walking and turned around.

“What are you helping me for? From your actions, it seems like something that shouldn’t fall into my hands.”

A being who could never leave the Demon King’s Castle for life, waiting for his master who might never return. Though he seemed to understand the reason for Abracxas’s sudden actions, Adam deliberately asked.

Just as Adam had changed, Abracxas had changed too.

“…Because I couldn’t stop it. I…always end up doing things I’ll regret. So this is, at the very least, atonement.”

Adam muttered just one phrase in a self-deprecating voice.

“…Same as me.”

Leaving only those brief words, Adam continued on his way.

To finish the ‘revenge’ that Iberis had spoken of.

* * *

The easiest way to strike at the Emperor.

Internal strife.

“It’s been a long time, Your Highness the Prince.”

Adam slowly smiled toward the figure before his eyes.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————