My sword clanged against Harold’s before twisting back to slash him from the opposite side. He took my bait and started to move to defend towards his right, so my sword changed trajectory once more, now coming in overhead. In response, Harold made a quick jab towards my head, one that I avoided with a tilt of my head, but his jab turned into a deflection of my incoming attack. Hastily, I jumped back, ending our engagement.

“Not bad, but you’re practically showing off your whole damned life story in your movements. Be neutral. Avoid rigidity. Have fluidity in your motions. You’re starting to get there, but you have a long way ahead of you,” he said.

Wiping the sweat off my forehead, I watched my opponent’s movements for a few seconds before dashing back in and clashing my sword against him once again. A plan came to mind and I threw my sword up in the air.

Surprise showing in the old man’s left eye for a split second, I found my opportunity and began trying to beat him down with my fists, but he blocked and dodged every single strike, the surprise wearing off. As my sword fell back down, I caught it by the hilt with my right hand before launching an attack with my full strength.

In an instant, I lost, with the tip of his longsword directed at my neck. He had disarmed me with a skillful parry.

“Haha! You certainly are creative, boy. But again, your movements are excessive. Don’t just try to overwhelm with speed, especially when fighting someone as skilled as me. Be only as fast as necessary.”

“Yes!”

I accepted my loss.

Months had passed since I started training under Harold. Every day followed a similar routine — getting up early, hunting monsters as the sun rises, returning to the cottage to do daily exercises, breakfast, and then a mixture of sparring, solo training and weapon training into the day. Sometimes, we also hunted monsters later in the day.

And in every single part of his training, I refrained from using magic at all, focusing on building the capabilities of my own body. And it had been utter hell.

“Practice forms I taught you with that sword once more for an hour and after that move on to your archery. And after that comes dinner. Looking forward to your stew, boy,” Harold said before leaving me alone in the clearing.

It was part of his training to learn to wield different weapons, though my main focus was swords, whether double-edged or single-edged. Learning different styles of fighting and different types of movements made one a more versatile fighter, armed with the technicality to allow creativity in battle.

As I followed through with my sword exercises and then with archery exercises, I tried my best to leave my mind still.

“One of your biggest weaknesses as a fighter is that you overthink,” the old man once said to me during training. “You waste precious time thinking when skilled fighters have trained themselves to move almost automatically, driven by instinct and muscle memory. Don’t lose yourself in your thoughts. Simply be.”

Empty. Clear. No thoughts.

I shot arrows one by one at a marked tree, precisely hitting my target each time, each arrow only millimeters away from the previous. All my worries, my wandering thoughts, the tugging urges of my mind, all of it cast away as I lost myself in the act of shooting arrows.

And that’s one hour.

I put away my bow and walked up to the tree to retrieve my arrows. My stomach rumbled in anticipation of the warm meal I would cook for us tonight.

***

“Here you go, Teacher!” I set down a bowl of firebear stew in front of Harold while setting my own across the table.

“Time to eat. Thanks for the bountiful meal, o gods!” I clapped my hands quickly before stuffing my mouth with spoonfuls of my delicious stew, a recipe I took and modified from my mother, after endless experimentation with the ingredients I found in the forest. The fatty chunks of firebear meat mixed in with roasted root vegetables were perfect with the spices I threw in. Who knew the reborn Demon King would end up falling in love with cooking?

Suddenly, a thud rung from across the table. Harold had dropped his spoon.

“You alright? Not a big fan of my stew?”

“Hmph, just dropped my spoon, no need to make such a fuss about it, boy.” His right hand moved to pick up the spoon, but his struggling grip was shaky. Something was definitely wrong.

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“No, seriously, are you okay?”

“Just getting old, boy, just getting old.” He seemed not as brash as usual. Was he growing senile?

“Well, I wouldn’t understand… wait, how old are you?”

“How about you guess if you’re so damn interested?”

“70 years?”

“Try 350.”

What?! No, wait. There was a certain race of humans who lived longer than most. The Uraltens.

“Αρε ου ἀν Υραλτεν?” I asked him if he was an Uralten in their tongue.

“ες... The hell?” The old man confirmed before expressing his surprise. “Hmph, I forget how smart you can be sometimes, boy. Though, 350 years is old, even by Uralten standards. Sometimes, I’m just awaiting my death.”

“I see. Well, you’re lucky to have me as a pupil before you finally up and die, right, Teacher?” I asked jokingly. I wasn’t afraid to be blunt with this old man, as he acted the same to me. Though, if I was an actual nine-year-old child, the things this man said sometimes would definitely make me cry.

“Tch, don’t get ahead of yourself, boy. Even on my deathbed, you won’t be able to lay a hand on me with your still shitty sword skills.”

“Well, every day I’m getting better thanks to you and your gentle, wise, all-knowing guidance.”

“Don’t get sassy with me, boy. If you’re getting better, beat me soon.” He looked up at the ceiling. “After all, I don’t think I have much time left.”

As he silently said his words, a stream of thoughts flowed in my head. I had begun to suspect something about this old man.

***

“You don’t deserve to be alive.”

Corpses with forgotten faces whispered to me as I carried them and threw them into a deep pit alight with a black flame, incinerating countless of corpses.

“Your existence has brought only suffering.”

The pile of corpses around the pit sprawled out endlessly, as if each corpse I disposed of were simply replaced by another faceless corpse. As if, no matter how many I dragged into the pit, I would never escape this hellish fate.

“The world is better off without you.”

My arms ached with fatigue as I threw yet another corpse into the pit, the sight of its childlike size and haunting eyes burned into my mind.

“Why did you leave us to die?”

The corpse of the man who first taught Luqa swordsmanship, who was a guardian of Wehrau, stared at me with empty eyes. Keep going. A chilling voice from within urged me to keep disposing of the corpses, to never stop, to never forget my goal. But what was my goal?

“We died because of you.”

On each arm, the corpses of my two childhood friends hung to me, the utter weight of their bodies drawing second thoughts from me. Keep going. Keep moving forward. Never forget what your enemies did to you. You will get your revenge. The chilling voice whispered and whispered and whispered, its icy words impaling me like a poisoned dagger.

But I couldn’t bear it anymore. I couldn’t. It was enough.

I collapsed to the ground with the corpses of my two friends. But from the pit of black flame, ragged limbs crawled forward, inch-by-inch towards me.

“Atone.”

“Atone.”

“Atone.”

“Atone.”

“Atone.”

The raspy cries of the corpses echoed endlessly. I had no choice. I had to atone. I had to suffer. I couldn’t get off easy. Even in my second life, I never really changed until push came to shove. Was that really atonement?

“Luqa! Go! And I love you.”

The gentle words of a human woman from my memories woke me from my nightmare. I opened my eyes, finding myself in Harold’s small cottage.

Recently, in my dreams, I haven’t been seeing memories of Malachi’s life, but rather nightmares. Nightmares of guilt. Guilt for my continued survival, despite everything.

And when I stirred awake in the middle of the night, fearing to go back to sleep and immerse myself in nightmares again, I tended to do one thing — train. Whether that be magic or swordsmanship.

Training and improving my skills made me feel the illusion that I was truly pushing myself to change, that my second life wasn’t going to waste, that every single second of this life was being put to good use. That I was building up the power I needed to change the world. That power would fix everything.

Every time I trained, I ignored the questions that popped from the back of my mind. Were you truly changing? Is this all not just for your self-satisfaction?

I knew there was no use thinking about things that way. That would only be wallowing in self-remorse and self-hatred. I couldn’t hate myself anymore. But that didn’t stop the questions from arising.

Having decided that I had pondered enough, I got up hastily from my bed, picked up the sword Ersham gifted me and went through the wooden door leading to the moonlight forests outside. As I walked, I saw Harold at the center of the clearing I usually used, swinging his own sword in the air with perfect form.

Eying me from the side, he stopped and glanced at the sword in my hand.

“What are you doing here, boy?”

“Oh, uh, just wasn’t feeling sleepy so I wanted to tire myself out for a bit,” I said sheepishly.

“Don’t lie, boy. It was your usual bout of nightmares, wasn’t it?” he said while looking at me with a scrutinizing eye.

“Welp, as expected of Teacher. You’re right on the dot. How’d you know?”

“When a boy cries out in his sleep every night, it’s not exactly that damned difficult to take a guess.”

“I see, sorry about that then!”

“Hmph, no. Don’t even worry about it,” he said, uncharacteristically gentle. “…guilt for your village, huh?”

I smiled weakly, somewhat amused by how Harold could be sensitive when the time came for it.

“Something like that. Thing is, I don’t know what happened to the rest of the villagers. As far as I know, I could be the only survivor. Makes for very imaginative nightmares!” I said with a forced laugh.

“Could be worse, boy. Took me a couple of centuries to start getting over my own nightmares.”

“Haha, don’t know if I have a couple of centuries to live, honestly. But you go through nightmares of your own as well sometimes, old man?”

“Hm, too many sometimes. When you get as old as me, you have a lot of time to make mistakes. And then time afterward to hate yourself for them. And then even more time to grow numb and weary of that hate. The perfect recipe for sleepless nights, I'll say.”

As he muttered his words, I took a breath to ready myself to ask something; this was the perfect opportunity to confront him over suspicions of mine.

“…Is your real name Arnulf? As in, Paladin Arnulf?” I asked.