The Reward for Saving The World is a Husband - Chapter 1
My world has come to an end.
Even in the farthest reaches of my memory, it was already on the brink of destruction, and today, it finally met its end.
Beyond the translucent window that obscured my view, lay something huge as a mountain – the corpse of Ermitar the Demon Dragon.
I tried to pull the sword from under its jaw, but it collapsed. Only the broken hilt of the sword remained in my hand. The only existing SS-rank item, the so-called ‘Holy Sword,’ was now destroyed, but I felt no particular emotion. It was never mine to begin with.
“Damn it…”
My profanity wasn’t for that reason, though.
I could hardly rejoice at the unbelievable fact that I was finally free from the endless crises, and that there would no longer be any linked quests.
My companions had exhausted their life forces, becoming Soul Stones, and there were no resources left to revive them.
I was the only survivor in a world that had become nothing but ruins. And soon, I too would likely follow everyone else.
This world, long since turned uninhabitable, lacked even a single blade of grass or tree stem to serve as food.
The only thing left was the corpse of the dead dragon, but I found no reason to tear into its tough flesh and endure.
Gasping for breath, I leaned against the dragon’s body, and a flurry of fragments of memories flashed through my mind.
Scrounging through trash bins until I was nearly beaten to death, being kidnapped to a laboratory where I first tasted meat, which turned out to be steeped in drugs causing excruciating pain, among other memories…
‘This is just terrible…’
I shouldn’t have thought about it.
But still, didn’t I make some relatively happy memories with new companions after being deployed in the field?
‘If you dare come at me again, I’ll use your mouth as a sheath for my sword.’
‘Oh, then I guess I’ll have to use your asshole as my inventory.’
…Though some were a little weird, in the end, we were all there for each other without hesitation.
The ashes opposite me were no different.
‘You need to live. Even if it only increases our chances of winning by 1%, you have to survive.’
That despicable guy, who usually acted so horribly, died to save me.
I wasn’t grateful at all. What a fool.
1st place – CODE NO.124
2nd place – CODE NO.0
3rd place – Yumi
4th place – Baeksa
…
…
The ranking of contributions wasn’t much of a surprise.
CODE NO.124, or me, the last survivor, had the highest contribution, and the ashes, which had blocked the dragon’s breath and ended up not even leaving a corpse, took second place.
‘What’s the point of all this?’
Unless the reward completely restored this world, it was meaningless.
About 1000 years ago, in the era when the old human civilization thrived, the environment was so clean and resources so abundant that no apparatus was needed to assist breathing.
Of course, I knew that such a grand reward was unlikely. How many years have I been rolling like a dog in the mud doing these damned quests? At best, they’d probably throw a couple of SS-rank items at me and call it a day.
“…….”
Still, there was a chance, however slim, that resources necessary for Soul Stone restoration might be awarded. So, I forced my drooping eyes open, striving to stay alert.
If there was even a faint possibility of reviving just one person, I could hold on to that hope.
I was prepared to endure a life of hell, even if it meant scraping the flesh off that damned lizard and turning it into a year’s worth of jerky.
But when the translucent window finally reappeared.
“Haha…”
I couldn’t help but burst into hollow laughter.
I should have known better than to expect anything. As always, this cursed quest was a joke until the very end.