The Greatest Warrior Of All Time Returns

**Chapter 1**

Thud!!

A chilling sound of flesh being pierced echoed in a dark, unknown substance embedded itself into my body.

It was a defeat I was familiar with.

Not that I thought I could win, anyway.

This was already the dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times I had challenged this gatekeeper-like monster.

No matter how I thought about it, with my current abilities, there was no way to deal with this thing.

How did I end up in this situation?

Even as death crept closer and my vision blurred, I felt no regret.

In this cursed space, even if I wanted to die, I couldn’t.

—

[You cannot die here.]
[You can not lose your mind here.]
[Time does not move in this place.]
[You cannot leave until you reach the extreme.]

—

The familiar floating text greeted me again as I regained consciousness.

The last two lines of that message are the reason for this horrible, endless loop.

I honestly have no way of knowing how long I’ve been here.

There are no clocks or any other devices from civilization in this world.

Does the sun rise? Does night fall?

Not a chance.

The sky is always red, and the only thing visible in it is a crimson moon, like a glaring eye.

It’s as if this world has already met its end.

—

[Time does not flow here.]

—

That’s right. There’s no day or night here, and even my body’s biological rhythm doesn’t exist in this world where time has stopped.

—

[To complete the Hall of Swords, your sword must reach the extreme.]

—

That message is the reason I’m endlessly fighting these sequentially summoned monsters.

The three rules keep me from dying or going insane.

I can’t starve to death, nor can I sleep.

In other words, this place isn’t reality.

So, where is this place?

—

[Welcome, visitor. In the World of Dreams, you can achieve everything you desire.]

It’s a prison—an awful prison with a dream-like appearance.

* * *

When I was first trapped here, I thought, as usual, that I was dreaming.

Even in my previous life, I often had vivid dreams.

That didn’t change after being born as the eldest son of the Cascadia family, a border lord on the Lazeros continent.

After a hard day’s work, I would fall asleep and have strange dreams that washed away my fatigue.

That’s why I loved dreaming.

To me, dreaming meant my exhaustion would disappear.

Anyway, it all started when I fell asleep at my desk while investigating my family’s business.

When I woke up, I was already in this odd location.

To find myself in such a strange place after falling asleep from fatigue was strange.

Shortly after, I saw various images floating before me.

“What kind of strange dream is this?” I thought, looking at them with curiosity.

There were images of swords, fists, skulls, and dozens of others.

They looked like game icons from my previous life, but their forms were recognizable at a glance.

When I touched the image of a sword, a golden light wrapped around it, and it began to glow.

Being human, I couldn’t resist touching all the images like a madman, making them all glow before finally feeling satisfied and laughing to myself.

Looking back now, if I could watch myself from afar, I would’ve screamed and begged that past version of me to stop.

“Stop! Don’t press that! Stay… Oh, this isn’t working, is it?”

At the time, I had no idea what it all meant.

Was it a glitch? Or was it intentional? I still don’t know.

Only after I pressed everything did the text that would open the gates of hell appear before me.

—

[Welcome, visitor. [This is the City of Dreams, Labyrinthos.]
[A series of achievements has been prepared for you, our only visitor.]
[Here, you can obtain everything you desire, face hardships and trials, and build the foundation for your future.]

—

“Huh?”

Reading the text with a dumbfounded expression, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy—even if it was too late.

[We will now explain the rules of Labyrinthos.]

—

And then, those cursed rules were burned into my memory.

—

[You cannot die here.]
[You can not lose your mind here.]
[Time does not flow here.]
[Reach the end by fulfilling the conditions required by the Hall.]
[You have all the time you need, but you cannot leave until you accomplish it all.]

—

“What is this? A gym where you can’t leave until you bench 500 pounds?”

Looking at the ominous warnings, I realized too late that something was very wrong.

And then, the disaster struck.

In an instant, my surroundings changed into an empty desert under a crimson sky, with a moon like a blood-red eye staring down.

Before me, an ordinary iron sword dropped to the ground with a clang.

—

[Pick up the sword.]

—

As if waiting for this, a cluster of light gathered in front of me, forming a small creature.

It was a goblin, a common low-level monster.

While an expert could easily defeat it, for someone like me, with no combat skills or talent, it was a significant threat.

What followed was a brutal, bloody battle.

The outcome?
It was my victory.

However, the goblin’s desperate survival instincts were overwhelming for someone like me, with no combat experience.
Its final counterattack left a deep wound on my arm.

Still, the important thing was that I had survived.

The sensation was too real for a dream.
The pain and the intense sense of danger made it clear this wasn’t something I could dismiss as a passing fantasy.

That’s when I should’ve realized something was very wrong.

But this cursed **[Hall of Swords]** wouldn’t let me go.

—

**[You have successfully defeated a goblin.]**
**[Summoning 3 goblins for the next stage.]**

—

That’s when I learned how terrifying it is to face three enemies instead of just one.

In a battle, how many nobles have ever been outnumbered three to one?

Swordsmanship? That was something my younger sister trained in, not me.

So, when three goblins tore into me, I died. And as the rules dictated, I came back to life, perfectly unscathed.

Sweat poured down my face.

Fear gripped me. I screamed for help and ran like my life depended on it.

But no matter what I did, one truth became clear:

This wasn’t just a dream.

The goblins weren’t illusions.

And the only thing standing between me and death was a rusty sword I could barely use.

—

**[Pay attention to your opponent’s attacks, movements, and defenses!]**
**[It will help you!]**

—

At first, the cheerful advice from the floating text didn’t register.

I was too overwhelmed.

Time passed—how much, I couldn’t tell.
But after countless deaths, I started to grow familiar with the sword.

No matter how incompetent someone might be, they can’t remain unchanged when faced with overwhelming amounts of time.

People say you can’t fix the unfixable, but adaptation is a different matter.
I proved that myself.

I was a talentless person, but that excuse held no weight here.

—

“Damn it, can’t you just die quietly? How long are you going to resist? Every time I meet you, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

*CRACK!*

*Screeech!!!*

The massive hobgoblin thrashed as my sword pierced its vital point.

After a moment of struggle, it fell apart.

By now, my body had experienced what felt like an eternity.

In this endless span of time, I finally reached the level my younger sister had achieved in her early teens: **Sword Expert**.

—

**[Displaying your status to help your understanding.]**

*Beep!*

—

– **Name**: Leo Cascadia
– **Age**: 17
– **Gender**: Male
– **Rank**: Sword Expert

—

Simple, clear, undeniable proof that I wasn’t imagining things.

“…Ha. Sword Master? Mind Master? Grand Master? When will I ever reach those levels?”

Besides, what *is* “the pinnacle”?

—

Talking to myself became second nature.
It started as a desperate attempt to avoid forgetting how to speak—a completely irrational fear, but one that felt all too real.

In truth, I wouldn’t forget how to talk.

For some strange reason, my memories in this place remained disturbingly vivid.

I remembered my previous life, and my life before being trapped in this hell.

So, my goal remained crystal clear: to return home.

Even so, I couldn’t help but keep talking to myself.
While my memories might endure, my body was another story.
Muscles can atrophy without use.

—

**[Congratulations! You have defeated the gluttonous aberration.]**
**[The next opponent, the sword-crazed specter, Phantom Blade, is being summoned.]**

—

Before me appeared a shadowy, ghost-like figure wielding a thin, deadly longsword.

Its name—Phantom Blade—was displayed by the ever-present floating text.

This monster wasn’t new to me. I’d already faced it dozens of times.

In this place, defeating one enemy led to the next, stronger one appearing.

But if you failed at, say, the 10th enemy, you didn’t simply restart there.

You’d be sent all the way back to the beginning, facing the first opponent again.

That’s why this place was a **true hell of endless repetition.**

The Phantom Blade was the first real wall I’d faced since gaining the ability to sense *Aura*.

I had no mentor. No teacher to guide me.

I had to transform my barely learned basics into practical skills through trial, error, and countless deaths.

Through relentless effort, I began piecing together a path forward.

—

In the continent of Razeros, swordsmanship is categorized into levels:

– **Swordsman**: Beginners learning the basics.
– **Aura User**: Those who can wield aura to enhance their bodies.
– **Expert**: Masters who can manipulate aura to create powerful techniques.

Most people never progress beyond these three stages.

Even reaching the Expert level requires exceptional talent. But there’s more beyond that:

– **Sword Master**: Superhuman beings capable of cloaking their swords in energy, wielding incredible destructive power.

– **Mind Master** and **Grand Master**: Rare, almost mythical levels that few in history have achieved.

Above those stages? No one knows.

I didn’t even fully understand the levels at first.

They were nothing more than distant, unreachable concepts.

Even progressing through the basic stages took me countless deaths and unimaginable effort.

So, I persevered.

—

The first rule of this place:

**You can’t die.**

Knowing this, I used my body as a test subject.

To awaken my aura, I experimented recklessly, trying every absurd method I could think of.

Failure? Death? They were meaningless here.

No matter how many times I died, the progress I made stayed with me.

Through this brutal process, I grew stronger.

—

More time passed. No, *felt* like it passed.

I had no teacher to guide me.

Every bit of knowledge and skill had to be discovered through sheer trial and error.

I drew from fragmented memories of stories and movies from my past life, using them as inspiration.

But there’s one thing about humans: we make mistakes.

What happens when you build something on a shaky foundation?

Eventually, it collapses.

And in this place, where time and life are infinite, I could tear everything down and rebuild over and over.