Chapter 12

How many years have passed? How many rounds has it been?

Come to think about it, aren’t I basically immortal?

Well, a shitty form of immortality at least.

A form of immortality where you want to die instead of living.

This time, I will work with poison.

I die more, I experiment with poison, on animals, on plants, and on myself.

It weakens me, so I die easier, the rate at which I die quickens.

But I think it was worth it.

I don’t gain an immunity to poison, the immunity I gained vanishes when I regress.

But I obtain knowledge.

Lots of it.

There is close to no poison that I don’t know.

The next few rounds I spend my time studying medicine, however since poison and medicine are closely related it only takes 3 rounds.

‘Only’. An ordinary person lives 1 life, yet I regard 3 as only. I’ve changed a lot.

Is it bad? Or good?

It does not matter. All I have to do is prepare, as much as possible, for a ‘final’ round where I give it my all with everything I accumulated.

If I still can’t survive even with everything I did… I’d rather not think about it.

It’s crimson eyes again.

I don’t know his name so I nicknamed him crimson eyes.

While I don’t know how many rounds I lived, I do know around half were ended by this man.

He’s very capable.

So much even I have to acknowledge it, before this might not have meant much.

But the current ‘I’, is someone who spent centuries mastering weapons.

Perhaps, did I already live over a millennia?

I probably did.

To think, a human like me would live over a thousand years.

I guess it is also proof how incompetent I am. I spent so much time mastering a single weapon.

The soldiers, the people, and my parents may call me a prodigy, but I know it better than anyone. The amount of time, blood and sweat I spent was abnormal.

Come to think about it, I never saw his face.

With that in mind I counterattack for the first time in countless rounds.

I can’t exert my full strength with this untrained body. I spent this time researching medicine after all, not training weapons.

While I can’t react to his speed, meaning I normally have no way to win, I can do a few things when I know the goal.

You might have noticed, I never spent a single round for martial arts alone. The reason? I always incorporated it in the weapon training.

For a moment crimson eyes freezes, rather, he couldn’t move.

Thin, near invisible threads which I placed the moment I made the decision to counterattack.

He is still a bit far from me, nor do I have any weapons on me currently.

I stepped on one of the threads, using the recoil to push myself forward.

Twisting my body in midair, I land a kick squarely on his mask.

*Thud*

Hm, I suppose he is about half as handsome as me.

Rather he looks a bit girly. Hold on.

A girlish boy or a boyish girl, which is it?

I can’t tell.

The crimson eyes seemed indifferent about the fact his, or maybe her mask fell off.

The threads were cut off, as expected, it didn’t hold on for long.

I stop all resistance and allow death to take me.

Humu humu.

It seems I really have become strong.

Soon the mysterious tugging feeling appeared again.

How many times did I do this, I wonder every round.

Should I really just ask?

Hm, now that I think about it, I never caught the old man’s name either.

I soon step into the pillar of light.

“Now your questions, first of all, that was a girl. second, this is-”

“So it's a flat chested one huh?”

For once I could see the old man’s face visibly twitch.

“Wrong. She got quite the asset, but that’s not the point is it? So this is th-”

Suddenly I got interested, not by the boobs. I swear.

Who exactly is the person who killed me over and over?

“Can you show him, er I mean her?”

His face twitched again. He really does hate being interrupted it seems.

Note to self, try to interrupt the old man speaking as much as possible.

It’s dumb, but I think these little things are what keep me sane.

Eventually the old man sighes, waving his hand.

The sea showed images of crimson eyes.

Now that I look at her, she’s quite a beauty. Was the ‘boyish girl’ because of a disguise?

Silky black hair, fair skinned, well built, etc etc.

Well, it doesn’t matter.

We are enemies, she is someone who took my life multiple times, the most out of everyone in fact. Plus, she’s not really my type.

Though I was sure it was a man since no woman would ever dare harm this handsome face.

“As I was saying, this is th-”

“Never mind that, while I’m extremely curious, I also don’t want to know. If you know what I mean”

The old man glared at me for a split second.

“Well, for your third question, you can just call me F”

I tilt my head, taunting him.

“F as in failure? Or as in-”

“Off you go!”

He slammed the sea surface with such force the wheel turned on its own.

Can’t he just do that instead of turning the wheel himself?

…

After I sent Kannon back I sighed.

He became deranged, but I’m not sure if I should call him insane.

He also started to annoy me on purpose.

But damn.

I close my eyes, concentrating.

An even larger chunk of my soul was taken for forcefully speeding up the regression process.

I wonder if I will last long enough to see him end this seemingly endless cycle…

If I don’t, I wonder who my successor would be.