The Last Place Hero’s Return - Chapter 14

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 14. Limit Test (2)
After embracing the Primordial Flame and regressing through time.
I had never once fought at full strength.
To be precise, I had never even had the opportunity to do so.
‘Well, there were various incidents, certainly.’
But most of them amounted to little more than sparring with the Candidates in the Program.
In that sense, this duel with Professor Lucas Kane held great promise for me.
Even though it was merely a duel.
It was my first opponent worthy of pouring everything into.
—Clang! Clang! Clang-clang-clang!
Sword and axe collided at speeds the eye could scarcely follow.
“Hup!”
Professor Lucas Kane let out a sharp kiai, crossing the axes in his both hands into an X formation as he swung them.
He wielded them as lightly as if handling toys, yet the power contained within was anything but light.
Whoooosh!
Luminous energy erupting from the stigma blazed savagely along the axe blade.
The sheer wind pressure from the swinging axes tore the solid oak floor of the Training Ground as if raked by a beast’s claws.
Truly overwhelming destructive force.
‘Meeting him head-on is hopeless.’
The raw power emanating from his nearly two-meter frame was immense, but the disparity in magical reserves was even greater.
The stigma inscribed on Lucas Kane’s left chest was the stigma of the Earth God.
Mana born from the Earth God’s stigma possessed qualities that were heavy, ponderous, and devastatingly destructive.
If I tried to block that axe with my sword, the blade would shatter along with my hopes.
‘Then.’
I lowered my stance and angled my sword diagonally.
I wrung every ounce of mana from my body, condensing it along the blade.
—Clang! Clang-clang-clang!
The moment axe and sword collided.
The mana condensed along the blade erupted explosively, pushing Professor Lucas Kane’s axe back slightly.
The repelled axe slid downward along the angled blade.
I had applied the essence of “Overturn Heaven,” which Berald taught me, to swordplay.
It was my own desperate attempt to bridge the overwhelming gap in power.
“Resorting to tricks, are we!”
Another axe swung horizontally.
The axe aimed for my shoulder.
I tumbled forward, ducking beneath the sweeping axe.
“Tricks become skill if you keep practicing them, I’ve found.”
I sprang upright from my crouch and swung my sword.
Solar Sword.
The swordplay created by Reynald Helios, one of the Five Great Heroes five hundred years ago, and perfected by Yuren Helios, his distant descendant and one of the Last Five Heroes, now unfolded in my hands.
-Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Huff… where on earth did you learn such swordsmanship?!”
“I taught myself.”
It wasn’t a lie.
The swordsmanship that unfolded from my hands had originated from the Sunblade, but it had diverged so far from the Sunblade that Yuren once wielded in my past life that it could hardly be called the same technique anymore.
After the world fell to ruin by the Demon God’s hand.
Continuing my training alone to honor the memory of fallen comrades, I came to understand something painfully well.
‘I am not Yuren.’
My blade could never burn as brilliantly as Yuren’s, nor shine with such nobility.
Weak yet tenacious.
Frail yet sharp.
Even if it breaks, crumbles, and shatters.
Never disappearing.
Only Dale Han’s swordsmanship.
‘Use mana only in that brief instant when blades collide.’
There was no need to be so fast that the eye couldn’t follow, nor so overwhelmingly powerful.
What mattered was striking the most vulnerable point at the most opportune moment with the most lethal precision.
That alone was enough.
-Clang! Clang! Clang!
The metallic ring echoing in my ears.
Feeling my breath rise to my throat, I continued swinging my blade.
Slashing, thrusting, deflecting, breaking.
I could understand it now.
‘It was not in vain.’
The snow-covered Snowy Wasteland.
Those days when I walked alone through that pristine white world, steadily continuing my training.
Centuries, millennia of struggle.
‘None of it was wasted.’
I didn’t have some grand goal.
I didn’t have some lofty purpose.
I simply.
Didn’t want to forget.
Didn’t want to let rot.
The precious legacies they left me—more treasured than anything else.
“Ha, haha!”
Laughter spilled out unbidden, my chest swelling with emotion.
A thrilling sensation raced down my spine, spreading through my entire body.
I felt so joyful I could have cried out at any moment.
‘Why?’
Why was that?
Joy bloomed within me, yet in a corner of my heart, another emotion stirred to life.
‘It’s not enough.’
A burning thirst seared my throat like molten fire.
‘If I push just a little further.’
I felt as though I could ascend to even greater heights, to even more distant peaks.
As if I could grasp the very edge of the ‘Extreme’ that Yuren had spoken of with such reverence.
My body felt heavy, as though laden with massive chains.
My mind knew the way forward, but my body refused to follow—a maddening disconnect.
Within that agonizing chasm.
I continued to swing my blade.
“Hraagh!”
Lucas Kane barely parried the ferocious onslaught of my strikes, swallowing hard.
‘What kind of insane swordsmanship is this!’
The swings weren’t particularly fast.
Nor were they especially powerful.
The eye could follow them; they were easily deflected.
But.
‘Why… why can’t I counterattack!’
A suffocating pressure that slowly constricted him like quicksand.
His body, which had never tired even after swinging an axe for over five hours, was drenched in sweat after less than five minutes of combat.
In a battle approaching a state of transcendence.
He felt his breathing grow increasingly labored.
‘At this rate, I’ll die.’
Not ‘lose’.
‘Die.’
Lucas Kane no longer held even the awareness that this was a sparring match with his student.
‘To survive.’
I must kill.
Pouring everything I have into it.
I can only live if I kill the ‘enemy’ before me.
“Hgh.”
The moment that realization struck him.
His body, sensing the mortal danger, moved by instinct alone.
-Uuuuuuung!
The color of the light flowing from his stigma shifted, and a crimson aura engulfed his entire form.
‘The Bloodslayer’s Blessing.’
A unique ability possessed by only the rarest of heroes activated, and the blood flowing through his veins surged at a speed incomparable to moments before.
His muscles swelled across his entire body, and his eyes turned a deep crimson as capillaries burst.
Wrapped in that blood-red aura, he embodied his title perfectly—’the bloodhound starved for carnage.’
“Grrrrrrrrr!”
With a ferocious roar akin to a beast’s cry, Lucas Kane’s axe swept through the air with brutal force.
-CRAAAASH!
With a deafening impact that defied the notion of a sword and axe merely colliding, my body flew through the air like a severed puppet string and crashed into the Training Ground wall.
* * *
“Dale! Dale Han! Are you alright?!”
Lucas Kane rushed urgently toward me, embedded in the wall.
Seeing one entire wall of the Training Ground completely collapse, Lucas Kane’s face turned ashen.
No matter how dire the circumstances, to have used his protective blessing against a mere Candidate Program member.
“Tch… Damn it! I’ll send a medical request to the Academy right now, so just hold on!”
If word spread throughout the Academy that he’d used his blessing against a Candidate Program member, he couldn’t escape disciplinary action—but what did discipline matter when his student’s life hung in the balance?
Just as Lucas Kane reached for his Hero Watch to contact the Academy.
“I’m fine.”
I pushed myself up from where I lay embedded in the wall, brushing off the dust.
“…Huh?”
Lucas Kane stared down at me with eyes as if he were seeing a ghost.
“You… are you really okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Watching me nod calmly, Lucas Kane tilted his head in bewilderment.
‘Looking at the state of that wall, those injuries shouldn’t have been survivable…?’
It should have been instant death—at minimum, a couple of broken bones—yet I stood here completely unscathed?
Wondering if I was just putting on a brave face, he examined my body, but I truly bore not a single wound.
“That was my defeat.”
“Uh… what?”
“The match, I mean. I lost.”
“Ah.”
Only then did Lucas Kane realize he’d been conducting a ‘match’ this entire time, a soft exclamation escaping his lips.
Watching the bewildered expression on Lucas Kane’s face, I let out a quiet laugh.
“Still, I’m relieved to confirm that I’m at least capable of drawing out your true ‘full strength.'”
“Ahem, ahem! My apologies. I ended up using my blessing without thinking.”
“Not at all. I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t used it until the very end.”
With that, I sheathed my sword.
“It was an honor to receive instruction today. Well then, I have another class, so I’ll take my leave.”
“Ah… yes, yes. If you experience any pain later, be sure to contact me.”
“Of course.”
Without hesitation, I turned and walked out of the Training Ground.
“….”
Lucas Kane remained in the half-destroyed Training Ground, recalling the match—no, the battle—with me just moments ago.
“Phew. Teaching for this long, I’ve seen it all.”
When I’d first expressed my desire to spar with him, his only thought had been that I’d finally lost my mind.
And rightfully so.
No matter how unconventional Dale’s recent displays of power had been, he remained merely a Candidate in the Candidate Program.
Moreover, he was the lowest-ranked Candidate, notorious as the worst dullard since the founding of Reynald School.
“And yet that very same person has grown strong enough to corner me in a single day.”
Had I not experienced it firsthand, I would never have believed it.
“Did that bastard actually regress from the future or something?”
The thought was so absurd it bordered on ridiculous.
“Well, at least I still won!”
Though it felt hollow to celebrate victory over a Candidate when I’d had to invoke Divine Protection to secure it.
But a victory was a victory, regardless.
At the very least, I’d managed to avoid tarnishing my reputation as a professor.
‘Wait… hold on.’
Professor Lucas Kane’s expression hardened as he replayed the battle with Dale in his mind.
The bizarre swordsmanship I’d never witnessed before, the acrobatic control of magical power, the meticulous precision of every movement.
Dale’s abilities had transformed as if he’d truly regressed from some distant future.
Yet there was one thing.
One aspect that remained unchanged compared to before.
“Dale’s magical power… it wasn’t significantly different from what I knew of before.”
Magical power that didn’t even reach ten percent of the average Candidate’s reserves.
With such a pittance of power—over twenty times weaker than my own—
he had driven me to the brink, making me taste the very specter of death.
“….”
For heroes, magical power was akin to weight class.
Considering the chasm between our current reserves, it was as though I’d struggled and sweated profusely just to defeat an eight-year-old child.
If.
Dale were to acquire ‘magical power’ to match his current skill level, what would become of him then?
“Ha.”
A chilling tremor crawled down my spine.
“What I’ve been teaching might not be a hero Candidate at all… but a young monster.”
A deep sigh escaped from between Professor Lucas Kane’s lips.

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