The Last Place Hero’s Return - Chapter 82

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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 82. Consumed by the Sun (4)
The Helios Family Estate, situated on one side of the Imperial Capital.
True to a family that once wielded even greater authority than the imperial court itself, the sprawling grounds and magnificent mansion stood as a testament to the family’s enduring prestige.
Yet it was no vulgar display of wealth like the estates of common magnates, ostentatious and crude in their opulence.
The Helios Family maintained three “Gates of the Sun”—barriers to protect the family’s radiance.
First came the towering stone walls and iron gates that resembled fortress ramparts, visible the moment one approached the mansion’s entrance.
This colossal first Gate of the Sun was meticulously guarded around the clock by hundreds of trained sentries.
The second Gate of the Sun manifested as knights scattered throughout the estate grounds.
The Knights of the Sun, the Helios Family’s personal order of knights, maintained quarters on either side of the path leading to the mansion, perpetually prepared to repel any intruder.
The first Gate of the Sun, defended by hundreds of sentries.
And beyond the second Gate of the Sun, guarded by one of the Empire’s three mightiest knightly orders, stood the Helios Family Estate itself.
The moment one crossed the mansion’s threshold—a portal so immense it overwhelmed the senses—a third Gate of the Sun materialized, incomparably more formidable than those before it.
This final, third Gate of the Sun was a protective barrier that the Great Sage Julius Bastian had personally installed within the estate for his dear friend.
Legend held that the moment an unauthorized intruder breached the mansion, this formidable barrier would activate, unleashing a torrent of magical bombardment so countless and devastating that it would reduce the trespasser to ash in mere moments.
The vague phrasing was deliberate—in five centuries of Helios Family history, the third Gate of the Sun had never once been triggered.
Though outsiders had attempted to infiltrate the estate seeking its treasures, most had never even penetrated the first Gate of the Sun.
Of course, compared to five centuries past, the Helios Family’s influence had waned considerably, and the Gates of the Sun no longer commanded their former majesty.
Yet as the saying goes, even a ruined fortune endures three generations—the Helios Family remained a fortress that no one dared approach carelessly, regardless of their decline.
…
Within the Helios Family Estate.
A silver-haired woman gazed vacantly upward through the window, watching sunlight seep into the room.
Clear skies.
Yurina looked up at the cloudless azure expanse and offered a bitter smile.
I wish today had been overcast.
The sun blazed brilliantly across the blue heavens above.
Its light, illuminating all things, burned with undiminished radiance today as always.
As though it would devour the entire world.
As though it would devour me.
Knock, knock.
The sharp rap at the door severed my reverie.
The door opened, and Mother entered the room.
Are you finished preparing?
Yes.
I nodded weakly and rose to my feet.
The thin white gown, scarcely more substantial than undergarments, whispered against the floor as I moved.
Faust says his preparations are complete as well, so come along now.
Yes, I understand.
I followed Mother’s footsteps slowly from the room.
Creak.
…
Before I could open the door and leave.
I stopped in my tracks and turned my gaze toward the mirror placed in the corner of the room.
A silver-haired woman in a white gown, her sad eyes fixed upon me.
Goodbye.
Take care of yourself, Yurina.
I raised my hand in a final wave toward the silver-haired woman reflected in the glass.
“What are you doing, standing there like that?”
“Oh, I apologize.”
“Move quickly now. And brighten that expression of yours. Today is a good day, isn’t it?”
“….”
“Once the procedure concludes successfully today, we should hold a modest celebration party.”
“…Yes.”
A good day, she said.
I forcibly swallowed the surge of emotion threatening to spill up through my throat.
“….”
I followed Mother down the Corridor in silence.
The location where the procedure would take place was the Underground Chamber beneath the Helios Family Estate.
Despite the epithet of the “Sun Family,” it was a place with a decidedly gloomy atmosphere.
“You’ve arrived.”
As I entered the Underground Chamber, a man who introduced himself as Faust approached me.
A man with hair slicked back in a pompadour style, pure white as snow, wearing gold-rimmed monocle glasses.
Despite his handsome features and the pleasant smile he wore, conversing with Faust alone filled me with such visceral revulsion that my stomach churned.
“Hmm? Is there something making you uncomfortable?”
Had my emotions surfaced on my face?
Faust tilted his head curiously as he examined my expression.
“Ah, perhaps the gown you’re wearing is too thin?”
Faust clicked his tongue as he looked at the thin gown I wore.
“That’s my oversight. I assumed you wouldn’t mind, given that you’ve lived as a man until now. Shall I prepare a thicker gown for you?”
“No, it’s fine. That’s not the issue.”
It wasn’t an empty reassurance.
‘I was so embarrassed when I went into the Bathhouse with Dale.’
Why was it, then?
Standing before a man I’d never met before in a gown that left nothing to the imagination, yet I felt no shame whatsoever.
The emotion I felt now was merely instinctive revulsion.
It was similar to the feeling one gets upon seeing the corpse of a crushed insect.
“I see.”
Faust shrugged his shoulders, a subtle smile playing at his lips.
“Then, please come here and lie down comfortably.”
In the center of the spacious Underground Chamber stood a procedure table barely large enough for one person to lie upon, and radiating outward from that table was a magical circle of such tremendous scale that even someone ignorant of magic could sense its magnitude, sprawling across the entire Underground Chamber.
As I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the magical circle, Faust approached me with a quiet laugh.
“Haha. There’s no need to be so anxious. The procedure itself won’t take long.”
“…Yes.”
I rose weakly and lay down on the surgical table.
The cold surface pierced through my thin gown, sending a chill across my skin.
“….”
All I could see was the dim ceiling of the Underground Chamber above me.
On this glorious day when I would be reborn as a true “Sun,” what awaited me was nothing but absolute darkness—a void devoid of even a single ray of light.
‘Dale.’
Lying on the surgical table, a single face naturally came to mind.
‘He looked so startled yesterday.’
When I approached him in Yurina’s form yesterday.
I recalled the shock written across his features as he gazed at me.
‘Was he so surprised because I was beautiful?’
Entertaining such frivolous thoughts, I relived that brief encounter beneath last night’s moonlight.
‘It was wonderful.’
Seeing his astonished expression, sitting beside him and conversing, the two of us gazing silently up at the moon hanging in the night sky—all of it.
Others might dismiss such things as trivial.
But to me, it was a treasure beyond compare.
‘That was enough.’
Yes.
That was sufficient.
Just as a Candidate who skipped class and fled eventually returns to the Academy.
The endpoint of rebellion is inevitably a return to the ordinary.
“Then I shall begin the procedure.”
Yes.
This is my reality.
Lying on this cold surgical table, waiting to become the “Sun”—this was my true existence.
‘This is…’
This pathetic thing.
This wretched thing.
The life that Yurina Helios has lived.
‘I hate it.’
In that instant.
A torrent of unbearable emotion erupted violently from within me.
Crack!
I roughly swatted away Faust’s hand as it reached toward me.
“Yurina! What are you doing?!”
My Mother’s startled reprimand cut through the air.
“I… I’m so sorry.”
I turned to Faust with a look of shock on my face.
Faust grasped his reddened hands and smiled softly.
“No, it’s fine. I understand you’re quite confused right now.”
Faust took a small step backward and turned his head toward Rosanna.
“Wouldn’t it be better to give Yurina a bit more time to prepare herself mentally?”
“Sigh. I apologize. The girl’s been running around with that Republic trash, and it’s made her manners atrocious.”
“….”
Mother exhaled a sigh and shook her head.
The moment I saw that expression, a hollow laugh escaped my lips unbidden.
A desolate emptiness carved through my heart.
‘What have I been struggling for all this time?’
The fact that I’d spent the last eight years desperately striving just to earn this person’s approval, just to hear a single word of praise—”you did well”—suddenly seemed absurd.
‘If I ran away now… would that work?’
Abandoning everything.
If I fled this place, could my life actually change?
“What are you doing? Lie back down on the procedure table.”
“…Yes.”
Despite the turmoil churning in my mind, my body obediently followed Mother’s command.
“….”
Life has inertia.
Even though I wanted to escape, the past eight years had become shackles more binding than anything else, constricting me relentlessly.
The moment I heard Mother’s cold voice, my entire body stiffened and refused to move.
Even my desperate desire to flee this place withered away, light as ash.
“…Ah.”
All I could do was obey Mother’s command and lie back down on the procedure table.
“Ha, ha ha.”
I let out a dry laugh and shook my head weakly.
‘Nothing has changed at all.’
My clock had stopped eight years ago, on that day.
The day I could do nothing but shed tears while staring at my dead brother’s corpse.
“Sigh.”
Suddenly.
A story my older brother had told me in childhood came to mind.
That trite, hackneyed tale of a prince on a white horse coming to rescue a captive princess.
‘The brother who told me that story died because of me.’
With a self-deprecating laugh, I lay on the procedure table and gazed up at the dim ceiling.
I traced Dale’s face across the darkness above.
I imagined him suddenly bursting through the wall, rescuing me like a prince from a fairy tale.
‘What am I even hoping for?’
A bitter smile crossed my lips at such a pathetic fantasy.
Hoping for Dale to save me.
I didn’t even know that Dale wasn’t Yuren—that I was actually Yurina.
But even if I had known, what could I have done about it?
‘There’s no way Dale could have come here alone.’
The Helios Family Estate was fortified like an iron fortress, protected by hundreds of guards and the Knights of the Sun.
And beyond that, there was the protective barrier of the Great Sage Julius Bastian that unfolded once you entered the mansion itself.
No matter how formidable Dale’s abilities were, there was no way he could have pierced through three “Sun Gates” and arrived at this place.
“Please begin the procedure.”
I was done throwing tantrums.
Now was the time to accept reality.
“It seems you’ve made your peace with this.”
Faust approached me with a gentle smile.
Just as his hand was about to touch my Sacred Mark.
Beep beep beep beep beep!
A loud alarm blared from the Hero Watch on Mother’s wrist.
“What is it?”
Mother frowned irritably and activated her Hero Watch.
“I distinctly told you I had an important event today….”
[Sir, there’s an intruder!]
“What?”
[An intruder has breached the first “Sun Gate” and entered the estate grounds!]

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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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