Emperor Has Returned

(Past memory)

Everywhere was burning.

Places beyond the horizon were also burning. The sea was right beside the city, yet the flames didn’t stop.

Inside the devilish blaze, all living things including their bones were incinerated. The flames flickered high as if it was about to burn the sky.

In the midst of the flames, walked one man.

He wore a nonchalant expression on his face, as if the flames didn’t exist.

He wore a light attire and appeared to be carrying a long sword on his waist along with a bundle on his back.

Calmly strolling across the fiery beach, he eventually stopped. The man looked up and shouted out loud.

“Excellently done!”

Towards where he was looking, a blue light dragon was lying dead.

While its colossal body was large as a mountain, its head was buried deep in the sand and streams of blood was flowing.

Above its head, a male in an armored suit was gasping for air from being out of breath.

Surprised at hearing who the voice belonged to, the armored male immediately bowed his head.

“Your majesty, it’s good to see you.”

“It looks like you’ve made a mess. Ga-in.”

“The negotiations….. didn’t go as planned.”

“Dragons are quite stubborn and prideful. Did you kill them all?”

“I believe all seven of the ancient class were killed. Only the lord escaped.”

The man called Ga-in looked as if he was in pain from breathing but he managed to stumble out a reply.

The lightly attired man spoke.

“Drink the dragon’s blood. You’ll feel better. Don’t worry about the one who escaped. I’ve already taken care of it.”

Ga-in widened his eyes.

The man grabbed his bundle and shook out all his belongings. The head of a blue haired old female rolled out.

Blood was still flowing from her open throat.

“It seemed they had no intentions to negotiate from the start. They were planning to draw our attention by creating a hail storm on the eastern shore. I took her head on the way here.”

The way he spoke sounded as if he plucked an apple because it was there. Ga-in let out a hollow laugh.

“Yet again, I’ve caused nothing but trouble for Your Majesty……”

“Nothing wrong trying to solve situations through compromise. It’s always good to avoid bloodshed. Only these bastards were planning to betray you from the start.”

The man shrugged his shoulders.

Consequently, I’ve been thinking about killing all adult class. I already managed to kill a few on the way here. It should be fine to only raise hatchlings.

“Every……. adult class?”

“Some will run away. However, i’ll make sure they don’t even think about coming back to the empire.”

The man spoke with a smile.

“I can’t forgo any actions to those who tried to attack my son.”

*****

Juan woke from his sleep.

A light headache and feeling of displeasure greeted him. Looking back, at the time it certainly wasn’t a bad memory.

A long past memory of meeting a familiar face and thrillingly purging dragons who rebelled in the eastern part of the empire.

It was a while since he’d dreamed of Gared and he wasn’t stabbing him.

Yet, a feeling of displeasure enveloped his body.

Looking around, he was in a damp stone room with mould growing all over the place.

Nobody was present. Juan inadvertently reached for the crazy woman’s hand and realised she wasn’t here. Furthermore, that he will never be able to hold her hand anymore.

A great sense of despair overwhelmed him.

It felt as if another hole had opened up on the same spot where Gared stabbed him in the past.

The feeling of despair found a place in his body and rooted itself deep in his heart. The emotion got better of him as a wave of nausea came crashing over him.

“Eugh!”

Before he knew it, Juan vomited over the floor. Blood and bits of flesh from the creature he consumed yesterday came out and soaked the floor. The ends of his fingers started to shake.

Juan lifted and looked at his hand. Someone had treated him by wrapping his hand with a bandage.

‘Making other people die… instead it should be me that’s supposed to be dead.’

But strangely he found himself not unhappy that he didn’t die.

At realizing this, Juan’s mind became blank.

He’s never thought about wanting to continue living. No concerns about what the future could bring. But when he slaughtered the soldiers, covering himself in blood, the thought of wanting to die never came about.

Juan fumbled his hand around his chest and inspected his mana heart status.

Different to a physical heart, his mana heart controlled the flow of mana in, out and around his body.

When he was emperor, he extracted the god of mana Mananen-maclil’s heart and used it as his own. Although he didn’t have it now, he could still remember the infinite and strong power it gave.

Furthermore, he knew how to stop a mana heart.

If Juan really wanted to die, it was a simple task.

Destroy his mana heart.

It was easier than flipping a hand over. A normal person would have forgotten how to control their mana, but not Juan.

His physical body was made of mana and restored with mana. To lose his mana heart would mean death.

It was peculiar that Juan never thought of this before.

Not that it mattered as now Juan didn’t want to destroy his mana heart.

‘Maybe deep down, I don’t want to die.’

This was natural. Of course he didn’t want to die.

There were many unanswered questions, things he needed to finish, care for the people important to him. In his past life, he was happy.

Yet, the emperor ignored all this and chose death. No resurrection.

Juan realized he was afraid of his future and that’s why he gave up and ignored it.

When the inspector sold out his name to glorify a massacre, something changed in his mind.

He knew the world he loved wasn’t perfect. Juan never fantasized about a perfect natural human behaviour.

But till his dying breath, he gave his best effort to perfect it.

And yet now, he saw his name being used to do the things he once prohibited.

Killing the people he cared for, and praising the acts under his name.

A different kind of emotion started manifesting within him. A dark abhorrent emotion.

Something I never want to look back again….

Juan didn’t know how to describe that emotion. He awoke his emotions and stayed alive.

The woman and Faun’s corpses were telling him he’s got unfinished work to complete.

“What work.”

His hair had dispersed over the floor.

Nowhere to return.

But at least, he no longer wanted to quit on life.

Juan slowly forced himself up. His entire body was screaming in pain around his muscles.

It was to be expected as he forced himself to go beyond the limits of what the human body could do.

Fortunately, his mana capacity wasn’t big, so it quickly replenished itself.

‘Taltere.’

Juan immediately thought of that name first. A dark emotion grabbed hold of him.

He didn’t care about it yesterday but he had noticed the slightest presence of Taltere’s energy at the Colosseum.

He had been beheaded. But a god’s life-force was hard to erase, even more than a cockroach. With a few followers and supporters help, resurrection was possible.

No need to say, like Juan, it would also take gods an astronomical amount of time to regather the power they had in their heydays.

Juan gave a grim smile. He’d realized what he first needed to do.

Kill Taltere.

If there is a corpse, he would dismember it and turn it to dust. If there is a soul, he would exterminate it.

His followers, supporters and loyal priest would share the same fate. He would kill them all.

Eliminating his enemies.

Juan was extremely talented in doing this. Especially gods.

His mood lifted at having a goal to work towards.

In a comfortable position, Juan redirected some of the mana flowing to Taltere to himself.

Like a desert stroller drinking water at an Oasis, Juan concentrated on replenishing his mana.

While replenishing, he thought back to the previous fight at the arena.

‘Excessive emotion dictated my actions.’

During when he was emperor, Juan mostly acted based on his feelings.

However, he could no longer afford to do this. He was able to kill the soldiers but retreated when the female knight entered the fray.

He had no animosity in retreating.

Pushing aside pride, as an emperor, making the right tactical decisions was more important. Plus, the female knight seemed as if she was not one of Daaron’s subordinates. She seemed too remarkable to be under him.

‘The female knight… her swordsmanship was admirable.

He thought back to when she said something related to Valte swordsmanship.

Juan never put a name to it. He simply called it ‘empire swordsmanship.’

The name Valte did cause a thought to prop up. The one named, Vares Valte.

‘General.’

Vares Valte. Part of a species that grew horns like a crown on their head. The last descendant of the powerful Honsluin tribe. Juan had left his responsibilities to him when he’d died.

When his entire tribe was exterminated by a god, Vares came to Juan giving his absolute loyalty to the emperor and from then onwards, entirely devoted himself in killing gods.

Juan taught Vares his own swordsmanship, and from there the fundamentals needed for a strong imperial army was laid out.

While Juan was the teacher, the swordsmanship was a symbol more associated with Vares and he can see why the name Valte swordsmanship stuck.

There were too many other skills and techniques that originated from Juan. He happily conceded the naming rights for this one, as it’s inappropriate to name everything after one person.

Thinking about this childish thought, Juan revealed a sheepish grin.

Maybe the things he thought about was a reflection of his current age. You could tell a lot about a person from their actions.

Anyways, he had to retreat when he clashed with the female knight. It was his mistake he didn’t make the correct decision.

If she’d gone all out from the start, he would have died.

Actually no. That wasn’t entirely certain. It was possible he may have resurrected.

‘I’ll need to have something prepared.’

Back then, he struggled because he entered the fight unprepared. He couldn’t display magic, summoning skill, even special techniques.

At the moment, him doing anything put a burden on his body. Being put in such a limited situation, there were only but a few viable options.

‘Magic imprinting.’

Technique that tattooed a magical verse on your body, reducing the amount of mana used and shortening the need to recite complicated chants.

Depending on the magician, some even covered their entire body in tattoos.

The downside was that usually it involved a detailed and complicated process. Sometimes it led to one’s death if one failed to properly imprint.

Having too many imprints eventually caused tattoos to overlap.

‘Well, this doesn’t apply to me.’

As Juan’s body was constructed from mana, for him using magic was easy as breathing. The hard part was choosing what to imprint.

He didn’t want to have a useless imprint and also needed to consider his mana capacity level not being high, so it was important not to imprint something wasteful.

A magic that befitted his current body the most.

After a brief squander, Juan thought of something.

Mana consumption was low, yet it was a high level magic. It was difficult to learn and wasn’t generally used by most.

‘Blink.’

A useful magic that moved a body to a specific location nearly instantly.

But different from a teleport, it jerked the user’s body and landed it on a spot. Because of this it proved too difficult for many people.

Magicians who used it without mastering it, found themselves occasionally slamming into walls and people, causing unnecessary damage.

Because of this, magicians relied on teleport magic and most refrained from using blink.

‘But for me right now, this is a very useful magic.’

The fact it required low mana consumption was fantastic for Juan.

Juan concentrated on the mana located on his hand. A burning painful sensation could be felt but not long after a red tattoo slowly started to appear on the back of his hand.

Imprinting a tattoo with concentrated burns was a high level technique that was known only to a selected few.

Not letting out a moan even once, Juan bitterly smiled after looking at the imprint that was coming along well.

‘My old self wouldn’t have needed to imprint.’

His past self regularly used the highest level of magic as if it was easy as breathing. With a bit of mana, he would have been able to crush the entire Colosseum flat.

Yet it was all in the past. Juan refocused on finishing the imprint.