Chapter 39 – Henry’s Memories (2)

Asher had taken three lethal blows from the demon Helmmore in Iris’s stead.

Henry had sensed the boy’s feelings for the party’s healer, but he also believed Asher would have done the same for anyone else in the group.

Though Henry didn’t think the boy truly deserved the title of Hero, he respected Asher’s contributions nonetheless. Thus, he was the one to suggest using the Elixir of Resurrection.

The first person to voice an objection was Iris, the very woman whose life Asher had just saved.

“It breaks my heart too,” she said, tears streaming down her face, “but we are at a critical juncture. What if one of the actual Heroes is gravely wounded later? We’ve come too far; we can’t afford that kind of risk.”

The rest of the party agreed, and Henry didn’t push the matter further. In war, there is sacrifice; he was a soldier, and he was accustomed to this reality.

Besides, deep down, he had never truly considered Asher his comrade.

However, after Asher died, the others began to fall one by one.

The precious Elixir they had been too stingy to use sat forgotten; they didn’t even have the chance to uncork it. Despite its name, the “Elixir of Resurrection” couldn’t truly bring back the dead. It only granted a sliver of survival to those on the brink of passing.

The subjugation failed just steps away from the final door.

Then, time wound backward.

At first, Henry felt a wave of relief, knowing he had a chance to fix his mistakes. What he didn’t know was that the previous quest would be the only time the Hero’s party would ever set foot in the Demon King’s castle.

From the second loop onward, Asher Griffin never accidentally appeared at the Investiture ceremony again. Upon inquiring, Henry learned that the boy had died of illness on the very Awakening Day.

The third attempt was a total failure. The party was trapped and died within a dungeon.

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The fourth time, the entire team contracted a bizarre plague and died in agony, one after another.

The fifth was yet another disaster. Andrew Matthew was stabbed to death in bed by a mistress; down one member, the party failed to react to an ambush. That time, they hadn’t even managed to leave Marbour.

The sixth… the seventh…

By the fiftieth loop, it was still failure.

Even though Henry tried to memorize the exact locations of every monster legion, avoiding one trap only led them into another. Within the Demon King’s domain, nothing followed logic. A single minor change was enough to make the entire sequence of events unpredictable.