The Last Place Hero’s Return - Chapter 213

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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 213. Challenge Mode (2)
[Training combat magical device activated. Setting mode.]
A cold mechanical voice echoed across the vast Training Ground.
[Mode setting complete. Executing Challenge Mode.]
Whirrrrr!
With the sound of the magical device activating, a magical beast materialized in the center of the Training Ground.
A magical beast with enormous eyes—or more precisely, a creature whose very body was nothing but an eye.
A colossal eyeball three meters in diameter floated suspended in the air, which was horrifying enough on its own, but the dozens, hundreds of tentacles sprouting from around the eye, each adorned with smaller eyes and writhing grotesquely, was the stuff of pure nightmare.
Certainly, this was a magical beast that could never exist in reality.
Just how many eyes does this thing have?
Isn’t this far beyond even a Hundred-Eyes-class magical beast in terms of rank?
“Here, equip these silver rings on your arms, legs, and neck respectively.”
Elisha produced silver rings and held them out to me.
“What are these?”
“Recognition devices. Attacks hitting your arms, legs, and body count as three strikes. One hit to the head means immediate failure.”
“I see.”
It felt somewhat like a survival game.
Now that I think about it, I’d seen heroes use these during sparring matches before.
In my case, since I could resurrect anyway, I’d never actually used one.
“And use this sword during training.”
The sword Elisha handed me was less a sword and more a silver rod.
“This sword also has a recognition device built in, so when you strike the holographic magical beast, it produces the same effect as dealing actual damage.”
“Interesting.”
I equipped the recognition devices Elisha gave me and took my position in the center of the Training Ground.
[Countdown beginning.]
Numbers floating in the air gradually decreased.
[Challenge Mode start.]
With the soft mechanical chime.
Ziiiiing!
Yellow lasers shot forth from the eye-beast’s eyes.
True to a magical beast that ‘doesn’t exist in reality,’ the attacks came at incredible speed.
The lasers reached my face in the blink of an eye, but.
“Tch.”
I reflexively twisted my body to evade the lasers.
Gripping the sword, I observed the eye-beast’s movements.
I don’t need to use Ash Flame.
After all, the eye-beast was merely a hologram—a fake.
Unless I made direct contact with the recognition device-equipped sword, I couldn’t inflict actual damage.
Then.
First, I needed to close the distance.
“Huff.”
I gathered mana across the soles of my feet and exploded forward with a powerful thrust.
Berald Combat Technique.
Wind Step.
Boom!
My body shot forward with a deafening roar.
Tentacles surged at me from all directions, sensing my movement.
Whoosh!
I kicked off the empty air and twisted my body sharply mid-flight.
The tentacles that had been closing in from every direction suddenly lost their target and writhed in confusion at my defiance of inertia.
‘Now!’
I swung my blade viciously toward the eye beast’s pupil.
A sword strike that fell like lightning from above to below.
I thought the eyeball creature, lacking arms and legs aside from its tentacles, couldn’t possibly evade the attack.
Whoosh!
My blade cut through empty air.
The eye beast’s body that had been before me scattered like smoke.
“What the hell is this?”
The eye beast reappeared roughly fifty meters away.
‘It teleported?’
I suppressed a bitter laugh watching the eye beast traverse fifty meters instantaneously.
The teleportation without any warning was absurd enough, but what followed was even more ridiculous.
Zzzzzing!
Hundreds of writhing tentacles.
Light gathered at the eyes attached to their ends.
I let out a hollow laugh seeing hundreds of lasers flickering from every direction.
“This is Challenge Mode?”
What the hell did those Republic developers create?
Zzzzzing!
I had no time to continue my thoughts.
Lasers poured down from all directions.
I twisted my body to evade and swung my blade.
Ting!
Perhaps they retained some shred of conscience after all.
The lasers didn’t pierce my blade—they deflected and scattered.
At least I could block them if I used my sword.
Zzzzzing!!!
The lasers began splitting, engulfing the entire vast Training Ground.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands—numbers beyond counting.
“What in the world is this now!”
Ting-ting-ting-ting-ting!
I was managing to deflect the barrage of lasers with my sword, but there were far too many to block this way.
Could I dodge instead?
‘No.’
The gaps between the lasers were barely the size of a ball.
It was questionable whether even a single arm could slip through, let alone an entire body.
“Ugh!”
Beep-beep!
[Hit confirmed on shoulder area. Challenge will fail if hit 2 more times.]
With a brief warning sound, the lasers pouring from all directions vanished in an instant.
It seemed that once I took a hit, the attack would stop completely and restart from the beginning.
As if to say ‘I’ll let you off this time’, the eyeball monster bobbed gently and returned to its original position.
And then.
Chirp-chirp!
[Would you like to lower the challenge difficulty?]
[(～￣▽￣)～]
Along with a chick’s chirping sound, a message asking if I wanted to lower the challenge difficulty appeared before my eyes.
Below it was an oddly irritating special character.
“…How ridiculous.”
I stifled a bitter laugh while looking at the special character written below the message.
‘So it wasn’t designed to be cleared in one go from the start?’
Now that I thought about it, the lasers hadn’t been targeting my head at all.
It was designed so that the first hit was unavoidable, and then the difficulty would be lowered afterward.
“Hah.”
Some challenge this was.
This was nothing but unbalanced scribbling, like a child’s doodles in a notebook.
“I’m sorry, Dale. I had no idea it would be this kind of mode.”
Professor Elisha, who had been watching, clicked her tongue with an awkward expression.
She had heard that the developer had created this mode half as a joke, but even she hadn’t expected it to be this absurdly unbalanced.
“I’ll end the mode, so please wait a moment….”
“No, it’s fine.”
“What?”
I glared at the eyeball monster and bared my teeth fiercely.
“So you want me to give it a try, huh?”
Honestly, when I first started the challenge mode, I had approached it half-jokingly.
But facing this level of absurd difficulty, a stubborn determination began to boil within me.
“Fine, let’s do this.”
Without lowering the difficulty, I moved toward the eyeball monster.
Ziiiiing!
Hundreds of writhing tentacles and the gathering light converging on the eyeballs at their tips.
Hundreds of yellow lasers shot toward me simultaneously.
“Tch.”
I drew a sharp breath and lowered my body.
I charged forward in that crouched position.
A laser grazed past my hair.
Whoosh!
As I approached the Eye Beast and swung my blade, it teleported fifty meters away once more.
“Good. That’s how it should be.”
Berald’s combat technique.
Gale Step.
Boom!
I closed the fifty-meter gap in a single bound and swung my blade again.
Slash!
Before the Eye Beast could vanish, my blade’s edge barely grazed it.
The Eye Beast’s eye socket flashed red as a “hit” judgment appeared.
‘From detecting the attack to disappearing takes approximately 0.3 seconds.’
Within that 0.3 seconds, I can land a strike.
Zzzzzzzzzzzing!!!
The lasers began splitting apart once more.
Thousands upon thousands of beams of light engulfed the entire Training Ground.
I gazed at the gaps—barely wide enough for a fist to slip through.
“Well then, let me show you something too.”
I created a mana bullet.
Not on the outside, but within my body itself.
“Now that’s truly absurd.”
Boom!
An explosion erupted from within, and my body scattered into fragments.
Ash-gray smoke billowed out like a thick fog.
And then.
Crash!
Slipping through the laser barrage, I reformed and moved with brutal force.
0.1 seconds.
Before the Eye Beast, momentarily blinded by the ash-gray smoke, could even detect my movement—
Piercing thrust!!!
My blade’s tip pierced through the Eye Beast’s pupil.
Beeeep!
[An error has occurred.]
[Forcibly terminating mode and initiating system recovery.]
An alarm blared throughout the Training Ground the instant my blade pierced the Eye Beast’s pupil.
I suppressed a smirk as I watched the warning lights flash red.
“You really thought no one would be able to pass this, didn’t you?”
The fact that an error message appeared instead of a clear notification, despite defeating the Eye Demon Beast, suggested that the challenge had been designed without ever considering the possibility of ‘success’ in the first place.
“Phew.”
I drew a short breath, feeling the lingering pain that clung to my body like an echo.
‘It feels like it’s been ages since I fought this way.’
My cultivation had advanced so rapidly in recent times that I no longer engaged in combat by pushing my body to its limits like this. But in my previous life, I had frequently employed fighting methods that required the protection of resurrection to sustain.
‘There’s a reason I was called the Undying One.’
After engaging in combat in a manner befitting the ‘Undying One’ for the first time in ages, something hot and fierce kindled within my body.
I’m not sure if such an expression is appropriate.
But it was as if memories of my youth—ones I had completely forgotten—were resurfacing.
‘Hmm?’
The heat rising within my body grew progressively stronger.
“What is this?”
A sensation like gazing upon a scene shrouded in hazy mist.
A tingling sensation spread down my spine, and something flickered at the edge of my consciousness—just barely within reach, yet maddeningly elusive.
“This is….”
Yes.
The sensation of standing on the threshold of ‘enlightenment’.
A gulp.
Just a little further. If I could only reach out just a bit more….
“Ah….”
The heat that had been warming my body gradually cooled.
I exhaled a soft exclamation and clicked my tongue in frustration.
‘Did I fail?’
It was disappointing, certainly.
Yet I could discern that within the fighting methods of my former ‘Undying’ self lay a thread—a clue that could lead me toward stepping into a new realm of cultivation.
As I stood alone, consoling myself with this realization.
“D-Dale Candidate….”
Elisha, her expression one of disbelief, stared at me.
She looked flustered, scratching her cheek as she glanced toward the flashing red warning light.
“D-did you really want to bathe in the Hot Spring with me that badly?”
“Pardon?”
“I never imagined Dale Candidate would risk his very life to clear Challenge Mode….”
“Uh….”
That’s not why I did this at all.
My head just got heated without my realizing it….
“I-I’m sorry! From now on, whenever Dale Candidate wishes, I’ll bathe in the Hot Spring with you anytime!”
“No.”
The way she said it made me sound like some lunatic willing to risk death just to bathe in a Hot Spring with a woman.
“Follow me! Let’s go to the Hot Spring right now!”
“Wait, hold on a moment. I think there’s been some misunderstanding.”
“Hm? What misunderstanding?”
“The reason I pushed my body to the limit earlier wasn’t because of that….”
“Then are you saying you won’t go in with me?”
“…Ahem.”
Well, I mean.
That doesn’t mean I said I wouldn’t go in.

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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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