The Last Place Hero’s Return - Chapter 293
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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 293. Interlude – The Sixth Hero
I was dying.
At this rate, my soul would wither away into nothing but dust.
I truly believed that.
“Gasp! Gasp!”
An onslaught of relentless pleasure.
A dizzying ecstasy that stimulated each individual brain cell cascaded through my entire body.
Thanks to possessing the body of a superhuman who had transcended into the realm of divinity, physical fatigue was negligible, but the problem lay in the exhaustion carved into my mind.
Haven’t we all experienced such moments?
After playing recklessly with friends until dawn and returning home, that overwhelming sense of deflation—like a balloon drained of air—that settles over your entire body.
That helplessness where you’ve done nothing but play and drink, yet you can’t muster the will to move a single finger.
What I felt now was that sensation amplified tens, hundreds of times over.
The sensation of my entire brain burning as it crossed the threshold into an overwhelming tide of pleasure.
My soul screamed under the torrential flood of endorphins and adrenaline coursing through me.
“Ugh… more… no, I can’t… anymore…”
Thud.
I collapsed onto the bed and surrendered—I’d lost count of how many times—but the ravenous lionesses showed me no mercy.
“Haa, haa. Are you already trying to stop?”
“Mmm… Dale… just a little more…”
“Hehe. Dale’s body is so warm.”
“If you’re tired, Dale can just lie still.”
Unlike me, gasping as though death were imminent, these beasts still had that hungry gleam in their eyes, their lips curling with anticipation.
There was no helping it.
While I was being relentlessly wrung dry without pause, they were taking turns, each one facing me in succession.
And each of them was a superhuman far exceeding the level of an ordinary hero.
The brief respites between rounds allowed them to recover their stamina quickly and rejoin the feast(?).
I’m not sure if the analogy is apt, but if they were doing one full-body workout set per hour with breaks in between, I was continuously repeating without a single second of rest.
“I… can’t…”
My consciousness flickered and dimmed.
The destination of days upon days of unceasing pleasure was a vision darkening like a starless night.
“Ah.”
“He… he passed out?”
The women stared down at the collapsed Dale, their eyes widening in circles.
“What should we do? Should we wake him?”
“Yes! That’s a good idea, Iris!”
“Hoho. Don’t you think so, Lanez?”
The fallen Saint and the witch exchanged sinister words with innocent smiles plastered across their faces.
Unable to bear the sight, one of the heroes carefully opened her mouth.
“Everyone, calm down. Dale is exhausted.”
“My, so Yurina is fine with stopping now?”
“So let’s just wait five minutes and then wake him up.”
“Should we?”
Following the Saint, the hero began showing signs of corruption.
Witnessing this lamentable spectacle, the spider released a deep sigh and shook her head in disapproval.
“That’s enough. If we keep going, Dale will literally waste away to nothing.”
“I think he’s already heading that way….”
“Ahem.”
“Hehe. Just joking.”
Iris giggled and approached the collapsed Dale.
As her gentle hand caressed his forehead, a seven-colored luminescence flowed from her palm and slowly seeped into Dale.
“What is that?”
“It’s magic to help him sleep soundly. It’s quite effective for recovering from fatigue.”
“I see.”
Elisha nodded and rose from her seat, retrieving cold water from the refrigerator in the corner of the room and distributing it to Iris, Yurina, and Lanez.
She gazed at her students—not a thread of fabric upon them—and let out a small cough.
Earlier, her mind had been too heated to notice, but now that she thought about it, hadn’t she just shared a bed with her candidates (though one had graduated recently)?
‘I’m unfit to be a professor.’
As waves of self-reproach washed over her and she released a heavy sigh.
“My, are you regretting it now?”
“….”
“Hehe. There’s no need for that, Elisha.”
“Ah, at school you’re supposed to call me Professor.”
Elisha wore a flustered expression, still unaccustomed to being called by that name.
Iris laughed brightly at Elisha’s reaction.
“This feels… nice, doesn’t it?”
“…Nice?”
“Yes. It feels like family.”
Iris smiled softly and hugged her knees.
“I grew up as an orphan… so I’ve never felt this kind of comfort just being together with others.”
Though Camilla Bediche was there, the inevitable difference in their stations had gradually erected invisible walls between them.
“Family… now that I think about it, you said something like that before.”
Elisha recalled the memory of when they first called her “sister” and let out a soft laugh.
“It’s been a long time since I felt something like this.”
After losing her parents to the Archbishop of Beasts.
This was the first time she had experienced her heart warming simply by sharing a space with others.
“M-me too! S-sometimes… I g-get a little jealous… but still… I l-like you all…”
“Same here.”
Lanez and Yurina nodded in agreement.
“This is nice, isn’t it?”
Iris gazed at the other women with a smile gracing her lips.
“Wounded people gather together and become family to one another.”
Some might pity the sight with sympathy.
Some might lament the relationship as unfortunate.
“But I’m happy right now.”
So much so that I wonder if I even deserve to experience such happiness.
“That’s why… I don’t want to lose this. Never.”
“….”
A faint smile graced Elisha’s lips.
She gently stroked Iris’s hair and continued speaking.
“You won’t lose it. I—no, we’ll make sure of that.”
“Ah, you sounded just like a professor for a moment there.”
“…I am a professor.”
“Hehe. Just joking.”
Iris stretched with a satisfied groan.
“Shall we head out then?”
“Mmm… I’d like to stay with Dale a bit longer….”
“I would too, but he’s sleeping right now.”
“I know….”
Just as Lanez began to rise reluctantly.
“Ugh….”
I opened my eyes groggily.
“Oh my, you’re awake already, Dale?”
“….”
“Come now, pretending to sleep won’t work, Dale.”
Iris and Lanez approached with knowing smirks spreading across their faces.
“I was planning to stop here today… but it seems I have no choice?”
“No, wait. I was just sle—”
“Ahem. My apologies, Dale.”
When I opened my eyes, I was still inside the beast’s cage.
* * *
Several days passed like that.
Slam!
The door burst open violently as an elderly man entered the room.
The moment he stepped inside, a pungent smell of alcohol permeated the air.
When I turned my head, I saw it was Kalid Han.
“…What brings you here?”
“Hm?”
Upon seeing my appearance (?), Kalid Han flinched slightly.
“Dale, have you been attacked or something?”
“Ah, well. It’s….”
I was mercilessly mauled by the starving lionesses.
I swallowed the words rising in my throat and pulled a water jug from the refrigerator, gulping it down desperately.
“Phew. So, what brings you here?”
“I came because I have information to share with you.”
“Information to share?”
“Why, didn’t I mention the ‘Sixth Hero’ before?”
“Ah, yes. You did.”
The Sixth Hero.
A being who accomplished the great feat of slaying the Demon God—something even the Five Great Heroes could not achieve.
His true identity was none other than the Eternal Cult Leader.
“After that matter, I conducted my own investigation separately… and I’ve uncovered some information about him.”
“…!”
What?
“You’re saying you’ve discovered information about the Sixth Hero… in other words, about the Eternal Cult Leader?”
“That’s right.”
“…How?”
Information about the Sixth Hero had been thoroughly suppressed, making it virtually impossible to find in any records.
“I received some help from my son.”
“…You mean Morris?”
“Yes. My boy mentioned that he once overheard mercenaries discussing the Sixth Hero—or more precisely, an entity presumed to be him.”
“Mercenaries?”
How could mercenaries possibly know anything about the Sixth Hero?
“Well… this is more like a legend passed down through oral tradition among mercenaries, so its credibility isn’t particularly high.”
Kalid Han stroked his unkempt beard as he continued.
“There’s a rumor circulating among mercenaries. Five hundred years ago, a certain mercenary participated in the battle against the Demon God alongside the Five Great Heroes.”
“…So the Sixth Hero was originally a mercenary?”
“Possibly.”
Kalid Han clicked his tongue.
“That’s likely why no records of the Sixth Hero exist. Back then, mercenaries were treated far more poorly than they are now.”
“…That alone seems like insufficient reason.”
No matter how despised mercenaries were as a profession, it made no sense that a hero powerful enough to slay the Demon God would simply have no records left behind merely because he was a “mercenary.”
“The story became severely distorted as it was passed down through generations, so it’s not entirely accurate… but from here on, this is my speculation.”
“I see.”
“I suspect the period when the ‘Five Great Heroes’ and the ‘Sixth Hero’ were active together was either extremely brief or never existed at all.”
“…They never worked together?”
“Right. That’s why no one except the mercenaries ever knew of the Sixth Hero’s existence in the first place.”
“Then… you’re saying he essentially operated independently until only the final battle against the Demon God?”
“Exactly. Many heroes participated in that final battle back then. He was likely one of them.”
In other words.
The Five Great Heroes and the Sixth Hero had no connection to each other whatsoever from the beginning.
“Of course, there’s no official record of mercenaries participating in that final battle. They were far too weak to face such a formidable enemy.”
“So there’s no evidence.”
“That’s precisely why it’s called a legend.”
“….”
“In any case, the Mercenary Company led by that mercenary was completely annihilated by the forces of the Demon God, and one mercenary, enraged by their destruction, participated in that final battle. That’s the entirety of the legend passed down among mercenaries.”
“What? That’s all?”
“Yes. There are no accounts of the hero who participated in the final battle achieving great feats, or valiantly confronting the Demon God, or anything of that nature. In the first place, among mercenaries, the story is merely passed down as ‘we had a brave hero among us who participated in the final battle.'”
“….”
If that truly was the extent of the legend.
‘Then I understand why there’s no record of the sixth hero.’
It was essentially nothing more than an achievement of ‘we participated too,’ so it likely wasn’t widely spread even among mercenaries.
From others’ perspective, they probably dismissed it with a scoff, assuming the mercenaries had fabricated false rumors merely to preserve their minimal pride.
“So that’s all there is? The sixth hero is presumed to have been active as a mercenary five hundred years ago?”
“There’s one more thing.”
Kalid Han continued, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“You’re aware that five hundred years ago, a rift opened between dimensions, and foreigners from a world called ‘Korea’ beyond it crossed over, aren’t you?”
“Who among the citizens of the Republic wouldn’t know that?”
After all, the Republic itself was founded by those foreigners who crossed over from that other world and settled here.
“There’s a story that the mercenary who participated in that final battle was the ‘first foreigner’ who crossed over from another dimension.”
“…The first foreigner?”
“Yes.”
Kalid Han nodded and continued.
“That name was certainly….”
* * *
A Garden overflowing with pristine white chrysanthemums.
A dark-haired man gazed intently at a worn box.
“It’s been quite a while since I’ve opened this.”
The man smiled faintly as he looked down at the box.
“Everyone’s waited long enough, haven’t they?”
The man slowly reached out and withdrew the clothing from inside the box.
“Now… there’s not much time left.”
On the name tag of the worn garment that resembled a school uniform.
“Let’s go. To face the end of this world.”
The name ‘Han Dae-su’ was written.
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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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