Chapter 5: New chance

"A hero's job is to die gloriously! Eh, to defend what? Well, to defend his town, a local lord, a lost cause, the widow and the orphan, or anything like that! In any case, my job is to earn money! Or reap that of others when they forget to defend it.. And I intend to live long enough to spend every last penny. So get out of my way, you dirty kids! "

- attributed to Mark Griffin (deceased), a mercenary of the Spearmen Indomitable Company, before he tried to defend an orphanage on his own during the attack on the city of Mian.

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Mars' eyes were spread so wide apart that they were ready to fall out of their sockets, and his mouth was so open that an ostrich egg could have entered it.

"Ha.. ahahahahah..."

Mars could not stop a nervous laugh from coming out. The truth was that the mental shock was so great for Mars that even the psychic control spells that should have kept him still and silent could not remain intact and were partly broken because of this.

Going back in time? This is not a game!

If it had been that simple to do, the Wizards and Archimages of the realms would have already sent their Chosen Ones back in time to have a chance to change the course of the war! In fact, a lot of them had tried to do so, in order to send their most powerful Heroes, but they had all failed. All of them!

Even the Gods had tried and failed!

The situation was just too ironic. Mars remembered very well the bodies of the knights present at the door of the hall, as well as several other wizards and priests. They had been absent for the duration of the battle, wasn't it on one of them, or Aleria that the last hopes of the world should have rested on the success of the ritual?

Yet the one standing here today was he. It was just too stupid! He was not the Chosen One, not a Wizard, not a Saint, nor one of those many over-powerful heroes who had defended the kingdoms until their last moments. And these guys must have had very specific plans on how to try and save the world.

He had just died and thought he finally got out of fucking hell, but he still had to go back? It sounded like a bad fucking joke.

If he had been offered, would he have wanted to go back? Not a chance! Because it would have been useless. Did he have the power to save the world from the calamity, the nightmare armies or the black mist that was devouring the world? No, how could he do that?

Would he have to come and tell them "Hey, watch out, you are under attack" or "Be careful, the end of the world is near" and then they would say "Oh, we didn't notice. Thank you, you saved us!"

Fart! Don't make fun of me!

Him? In truth, if he survived, it was because he was luckier than the others.

Dying because you looked more appetizing than someone else. Dying because you pissed off the wrong person. Dying because you ran slower than the others. Dying because the sorcerer attached to your military unit failed to control his magic and became possessed by a demon. Dying because an army of monsters attacked the place you were defending rather than another. Dying because a spell hit you instead of your neighbor. Dying because the Noble at the head of the city you were in was a traitor.

In the end, it was just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It all depended on luck! For 14 years he had survived extreme situations because he was lucky enough not to die.

The skills? He had finally become very powerful, but with the curse of Narkasum to help him absorb the souls of his enemies and increase his power, only a moron would have been unable to do the same! But even so, his power had been far less than powerful beings like Saints, Wizards and all those kind of people.

To become the strongest earthling? That title was worth shit! It was a bit like being the best chicken thief in the village or the biggest meat pie eater in the local tavern. It was useless!

And he could feel it right now, the fact that he had lost all the power he had accumulated over 14 years.

All the soul power that he had accumulated, the blessings, his magic, his miracles, and all his equipment and high level objects, everything was gone. Even his massive musculature and his forearms as thick as tree trunks, were now nothing more than the robust and healthy body of a young man who spent a lot of time doing useless things on his computer.

And even if he had come back with the same power as before, it probably wouldn't have changed much either. On a kingdom scale, one more warrior, however powerful he was, would have had little impact on the course of the Great War, the best he could have done would have been to protect a city a little longer. So what was the point of sending someone back in time?

Right now, among the many kingdoms still intact, there were literally hundreds of over-powerful guys. Sorcerers, heroes, saints and sages, fighting the enemy every night, or defending fortified cities that lined the front lines, filled with soldiers to defend them tirelessly.

But eventually they would all fall. The great extinction was going to strike them as surely as a natural disaster.

The first time he had believed, like so many others, that his actions could make a difference in the war and save this world, he had tried to survive, and when he could he had tried to protect the people around him. But if there was one thing that experience had painfully taught him, it was that he had been naive.

This war was impossible to win. How foolish of him to think otherwise.

Monsters and demons fell upon them in almost infinite numbers as if the Nightmare Gods themselves were pissing in their faces from the sky! They would have had a better chance of putting out a forest fire by pissing on it than by winning!

The truth was cruel, he was stuck on this world and condemned to watch it be destroyed again.

Condemned to watch again the faces of the people around him being twisted by horror as they are torn apart and eaten alive before his eyes.

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Condemned to watch again as others beg him to finish them off while the demons eat their flesh slowly and methodically, piece by piece, before breathing their last sigh of relief when death finally wrenches them from all the horrors.

Condemned to know that those he meets will eventually be devoured, tortured, or used for experiments. To see them sewn alive and magically kept intact, imprisoned in a life of endless pain, to form gigantic golems and titans of flesh.

So what was he to do? Should he try to save the world?

No.

Aside from the many people who deserved to die, whether it was the people of Earth or the people of Yvelmore themselves, there were certainly many people who deserved to be protected or saved, and there were many of them. He did not believe that all the others deserved to be sacrificed because some unworthy of living garbage had acted or made unacceptable decisions.

But he also knew best how useless any struggle was. He had no chance of saving anything. As a veteran of the final war, he knew full well that he could not make a difference.

I'm sorry, Aleria, but... I can't do something like that. Don't blame me for that, you should have known that it was totally impossible for someone like me to accomplish what you wanted to do.

But could he just give up like that? The answer was obvious. He wouldn't let his life be taken so easily.

So the simplest thing would be to become as powerful as he could, so that he could take as many of those sons of bitches with him when he died.

He had to become strong, so that when desperate times came, he could endure them.

He has to become strong, so that he could protect those who were kind to him.

If he wanted to avoid living a miserable life, it would be the only thing he could do.

At this very moment, in the kingdoms, sectarians, traitors and incompetents who would be responsible for the worst acts in their darkest hours were working in silence to bring about the fall of the kingdoms, while many armies were under the yoke of incapable and complacent leaders.

All this while he had his ass in the mud and his guts, these dirty bastards had probably lived a life far too comfortable and opulent, and that was unacceptable!

Was he going to let them live a comfortable and luxurious life? Not a chance. Whenever he could, saying hello to them and stealing their stuff before throwing them on a battlefield seemed like a good idea to him. He didn't know what to do for the moment, but to create a better destiny, it seemed like a very appropriate first step. And then it would be a good opportunity to improve his lifestyle.

Except that for the moment he was as weak as a virgin and innocent girl before the sword of Excalibur. Focusing again on his surroundings, the fat priest finished his speeches and the group was ready to be evacuated to go somewhere else.

Is it too late to apologize? Shit, if only I had known, I would have stayed quiet and silent.

When he set foot outside the huge building, a warm, humid wind enveloped him, taking familiar smells with him. His eyes quickly became accustomed to the sudden change of light, from the dark interior of the building to a clear, clear sky illuminated by a great orange sun, while in the sky the great celestial rings made of asteroids, ice and dust stretched from the high orbit around the planet.

The moon Elos was high in the sky and looked like a pearly pink pearl, while Nadras was further away displaying a blue crescent moon. Its dark side was illuminated by many small lights.

Yvelmore seemed to be a planet larger than the Earth. The gravity here was a little stronger than on Earth, the continents were really big, but especially the days and years were longer than the standard Earth cycle, since the days here lasted about 27 hours while the year had 429 days. Too bad the summers were hot enough to turn his ass into popcorn, and the winters were as cold and icy as his ex-girlfriend's heart.

With so many days in the year, different nations, kingdoms and empires had different calendars, and each had so many holidays that it was almost impossible to remember them all. The celebrations were as much religious as they were popular, there were days dedicated to Gods, Saints, Spirits, but also to seasons, heroes, harvest days, and so on.

His favorite celebrations were the festival of beer, and the days dedicated to the goddess of love! In any case, people here took every occasion as an excuse to celebrate something, and he found it quite enjoyable.

Controlling his wandering thoughts as he walked with the group of Earthlings, he could see many tall stone buildings as five-storey buildings surrounded the invocation hall. The buildings were typical of the Gothic architecture that dominated the late Middle Ages in Europe, they extended over several different alleys.

Not far from there was the public square, and many people were gathered around the square to attend judgments where several future convicts stood. Mars did not know what kind of crimes these people might have committed, yet he doubted that a boy of about 10 years of age and as thin as an unhappy man would starve to death. But he could have been more serious than a small theft of food from a merchant's stall. But perhaps living or being born in unjust living conditions was somehow considered a crime.

A number of people on the streets and in the public square turned around to look at the Earthlings. The gaze of some of them expressed disgust, fear and hatred, mumbling swearwords and insults against them almost like curses. Mars did not know exactly what had happened, but the rumors he had heard about the time of the first groups of Earthmen summoned made it easy for him to guess the kind of acts that could bring such looks to a man.

Others ignored them, pretending that their group had never existed.

But the majority of them performed gestures of prayer and blessing to their attention. Occasionally children were carried in the arms or on the backs of their parents, with bright eyes, as if they had seen something inspiring.

A child dressed in filthy rags crept between the few guards to take a close look at them, and addressed them, calling them "Heroes from the other world" and asking the group to protect his older brother and sister, then finally gave up, his eyes filled with tears, when he realized that he was getting no response from the group of silent zombies.

The large, wide alleyway they were walking through was crowded and the noise of fighting and screaming came constantly from the merchants in the stores and stalls on the street. Many had their best smile, the kind of smiling face that was the equivalent of having the word "profiteer" engraved on their faces, and even when these guys were just peacefully negotiating, their words sounded like curses.

The stalls gathered all kinds of goods produced in the Varrimar Kingdom as well as others from the trade routes that connected it to the various provinces of the neighboring Empire. Quality furs to protect oneself from the cold of the nascent winter, poor quality armor disguised by various artifices in high quality armor, weapons of all kinds, but especially bad ones, minerals and various types of crystals with strange optical properties, artifacts, or at least objects that their sellers tried to pass off as such to the most gullible, various medicinal herbs, some of which seemed dubious when it came to claiming what they were supposed to cure, various sculptures of gods and various saints, horses, tame beasts, and sometimes a few slaves.

The smell of herbs, tobacco, meat pies, spices, and a few other bad smells, such as sweat, feces, urine, vomit, and all sorts of odors that can exist in a city of this size, floated in the air, assaulting the nose. Sometimes you could see a few drunks being thrown out of roadside taverns. A watchful eye would notice a few suspicious people sneaking through the crowd, probably taking a break from their unsavory activities, frightened by the squad of armed soldiers escorting the group of Earthlings to another place, momentarily convinced that it was less profitable to rob merchants and people of a good condition than to clog their lungs in a mine.

In the taverns, off-duty soldiers, craftsmen, carters and other exhausted workers were rounded up, finding a form of rest while they got drunk on black beer as if the ban on hop growing was to be published the next day, while some seemed to be negotiating with girls of joy, dressed in puffy dresses, their waists tightened by their corset, and their eyelids darkened by the thick layer of black make-up. Their cheap perfume, for those of them who had this luxury, could be smelled from where Mars was.

The smile on their lips became resplendent as they made their deals with men, who were also smiling at the prospect of a well-deserved moment of pleasure.

Watching this spectacle, it was almost as if the war taking place far from the walls did not exist.

Yet Mars knew this very well...

The fact that in less than two months most of these people were going to die when this city would be transformed into ruins.