"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.

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.

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.