Damn Reincarnation

antom Rain Sword Javel with Ciel.

Deep inside the treasure room was a large, blank canvas in an antique frame.
The canvas was as big as a person, and Gilead stopped once he arrived in front of it.

“Show your respect,” said Gilead before taking out the seal of the family head from his inner pocket.
Eugene looked around with a puzzled expression, but he followed suit once he saw Carmen and Gion bow after getting on one knee.
Finally, Gilead went down on one knee as well.
He had the seal carefully cupped in both hands and brought it closer to the canvas.
Suddenly, the white canvas began to ripple.
Delicate lines started appearing on the blank page, and colors bloomed as well.

Soon, they were kneeling in front of a portrait of the Great Vermouth, the founder of the Lionheart clan.
The drawing was quite familiar to Eugene.
During his childhood, he had seen similar portraits in his parents’ house in the Gidol mansion.

This was the original, a portrait of Vermouth first painted three hundred years ago.
It was protected with magic to prevent the colors from fading, but apart from that, the original painting exuded a different atmosphere compared to the copies.
It was graceful.

Eugene gazed at the portrait in a daze.
It was the same portrait he had seen many times since he was young.
Vermouth’s face was no different from the memories of his previous life, and his expression and emotions were portrayed the same as well.
However, the original portrait presented Eugene with a stronger sense of recollection of Vermouth from his past life.

“The door to the Dark Room is connected to this portrait,” said Gilead before carefully placing the seal on the portrait.

Fwoosh!

Vermouth’s portrait suddenly disappeared, and a painting of a stairway leading to the basement took its place.
After confirming the change, Gilead stood up and stretched his feet towards the canvas.

Although the stairway existed inside the canvas, it wasn’t actually a painting.
Gilead started making his way down the steps of the canvas, and the other two followed behind him.
Eugene belatedly stood up before walking into the canvas.

‘…Completely ridiculous.’

A fucking monster — Eugene genuinely thought.
He reached into the cloak and grabbed Akasha, but this space magic made absolutely no sense even then.
No, in the first place, was this truly magic? He could understand that it was a world created by isolating space, but….

‘Is this truly magic?’

He headed down the dark stairs.
Although he could see through the dark in most cases, this wasn’t one such time.
Although he was holding Akasha, he could not see the magic that formed this space — or rather, this world.

Eugene had studied most of the magic books in the Hall of Space in Akron.
The authors of the books had all been renowned masters of space magic in their own era, but he did not recall any magic even remotely similar to what he was seeing now.
Was it perhaps just magic on a higher level? Or perhaps it was something else entirely.

He could not figure it out, but there was one thing Eugene was confident about.
No archwizard could possibly comprehend this space with magic.
Eugene was also a wizard, and although he wasn’t quite at the level of an archwizard, he dared to define this world with his knowledge.

This wasn’t magic.

“This is as far as we can go,” said Gilead.
After climbing down the stairway for a while, the group of four had arrived at the bottom.
On the far side of the darkness was a door with a subtle glow.

He continued as he pointed at the door, “Open that door and walk along the road.
You will eventually reach a place riddled with complex magic circles.”

“You won’t need to sit down.
The moment you get there, the Dark Room will show you,” said Gion before patting Eugene on the shoulder.
“Again, it’s fine to lose.
Rather, it would be strange not to suffer a single defeat.
To be honest, I… feel the same way as Lady Carmen.
You’re not used to being defeated, so….”

“No,” said Eugene while shaking his head with a smile.
He placed his cloak on the floor.
“I’ve been defeated many times, so I’m familiar with it.”

“What?” Gion wasn’t sure about what Eugene said out of the blue.

“It’s not just well known,” Eugene replied with a shrug.

Hamel Dynas, not Eugen Lionheart, had suffered countless defeats, and most of them were at the hands of Vermouth.
Being discouraged by defeat? What was there to say? He had been discouraged as much as his many defeats, but he had simply dusted himself and stood up again.
So Eugene strode forward without hesitation.
After crossing the darkness, he arrived at the door, which opened on its own to welcome Eugene.

When he took a step forward, the world changed.
The door had opened the way to a seemingly impenetrable darkness, but once he walked in, a bright space greeted him.
To be more precise, it was a white space, an area where nothing existed.
This space somewhat resembled Vermouth’s tomb in the Black Lion Castle.
However, Eugene could see nothing like the temple that existed in the tomb.

“I thought this was supposed to be a dark room,” muttered Eugene.
The space outside the door had been dark enough to befit the name, but this place was completely white.
However, the whiteness of the space made him feel even more out of place.

The mana in Eugene’s Core fluctuated violently contrary to Eugene’s will, so he quenched it before walking through the Dark Room.
Then, he saw the magic circle that Gilead mentioned.
It was a complicated array of strange patterns on the floor.
Eugene stared at the magic circle before he walked in.

It looked as if the letters and symbols belonged to an ancient language, but unfortunately, he could not decipher the magic circle.
In fact, he couldn’t even read any of it.

“Where the hell did you learn this kind of magic?”

Eugene gave up trying to read the magic circle and walked inside.
Contrary to his expectations, however, nothing happened.
There was no activation of magic even though he had walked into the circle.

“What the hell?” grumbled Eugene while continuing forward straight out of the magic circle.

The moment his foot left the circle, Eugene felt slightly dizzy.

“Huh?”

He looked ahead as he stood fixated in his spot.
He saw a boy he knew well.
The boy wore sandbags that weighed more than himself and even wore heavy armor while swinging a long spear.
It was Eugene from the past.

But that was only the beginning.
After that, the past of Eugene Lionheart started to unfold in front of his eyes.

He grabbed Wynnyd.

He lit the spark of mana for the first time in his body.

He studied magic in Aroth.

He drew light from the Moonlight Sword in a desert tomb.

He drew the Holy Sword from the treasure vault of the Lionheart family’s main house….

Eugene watched as the events played out one after another.
The boy became a young man with the current of time, and the appearance of the young man — his current self — scattered and disappeared.
What greeted him afterward was a scene of his previous life, the death of Hamel.
Eugene watched with an expressionless face as Hamel died with a gaping hole in his chest.

Time started flowing backward from the end.
The life of Hamel was longer than Eugene’s, and although Eugene had not yet met an end, Hamel’s life was given both a beginning and an end.
Eugene was shown many things starting with his own death.
It was a life he missed but could never return to.

He saw many things, including Hamel at his prime, during his immature days, when he worked as a mercenary before becoming Vermouth’s companion, and times far before that, when he was much more immature and weaker.

A boy from a small village came to hate demons after losing everything.
He did not want to live idly like the many other orphans who kept a low profile while living their pathetic lives.
He never possessed a grand sense of justice.
Rather, he wanted to pay back the demons in the exact same way they had taken from him.
It was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
So the boy grasped a dull blade and became a mercenary with a single goal in mind.

Finally, even the boy disappeared.

‘Is it starting now?’

The ideal version of himself would now appear as a phantom, and the phantom would be stronger than him.
Eugene prepared himself for the trial and corrected his posture.
He felt nothing in his grasp yet, and he saw no phantom.
However, it would come soon….

“What’s this?”

Suddenly, the space became distorted.
Eugene felt the space around him twist, then felt something starting to permeate the void of the white space.

There was a smell of blood.

He saw a man staggering through a battlefield littered with hundreds, thousands — no, even more corpses than that.
The man had been walking for a while already, and the only thing Eugene could see was his drooping shoulders in the distance.

Crack.

The scene changed once more, but the stench of blood remained.
However, the man was no longer stumbling across the battlefield anymore.
Instead, he sat on top of a mountain formed from corpses.
A sword stained with flesh and blood lay on his shoulder.
But even now, Eugene could not see the man’s face.
The man was sitting with his back to Eugene, staring at a battlefield located in the far distance.

‘Who is this?’

Eugene looked up at the man with surprise.
Although he couldn’t be sure, it was entirely possible that the man sitting on the mountain of corpses was the same man who had been staggering on the battlefield.
Perhaps Eugene could see his face if he got closer.

He felt his necklace burn.

Fwoosh!

A strong, sudden gust of wind swept everything away.
Eugene stared ahead while pressing down on his hair.
He could no longer see the corpse-ridden battlefield or the man.

However, there were countless weapons.

Weapons that Eugene had used since his previous life were strewn, stabbing into the ground.
Before he knew it, a common, long sword was in his hand.

“What?”

It wasn’t just the weapons that appeared.

A man with as many scars as Hamel on his face and body was looking his way.
Eugene Lionheart, with a rougher appearance, was staring straight at Eugene.