Return: the bottom-tier hunter's redemption - Chapter 1
>>Condition: Confirm the death of the skill’s owner.
>> skill: has activated.
>>You will return at the Memory Point.
>>Since the distance from the Memory Point was too far away,
>>Status information has been lost.
It was a message he was seeing for the first time.
The Hunter had posted information online, and he had once reported that a pop-up would sometimes appear.
However, no such message had ever been reported before.
“Return, huh? It’s the same as my skill. …Could this skill be something that I—-”
“Hello, Ashito! Can you see me? Can you hear me?”
“—-Wha!”
Ashito gasped at the lovely voice he heard from the side.
“I’m Ami, your guide. Nice to meet you!”
“……”
Feathers growing out of her back, large round eyes. A lovely silhouette like that of a stuffed animal.
The creature, about twenty centimeters long, is a System Guide that can only be recognized by Awakened Ones.
It is commonly called an angel.
If it had been the first time Ashito had seen an angel, he would have been excited, thinking, ‘So this is the angel the Hunters were talking about!’
However, all he felt in his chest now was hatred that made his whole body freeze.
(So it’s you…)
It was the culprit that deceived and trapped humans, leading mankind to its doom.
All those monsters that had swarmed the sky were guides that had abandoned their Hunters and materialized into this world.
Ashito still clearly remembered the look of contempt Ami had given him when she left him.
The passion he had frozen in fear at that time melted away and suddenly overflowed.
Ashito reached out to the angel.
But his hand passed through the angel and sliced through the air.
“What’s the matter, Ashito? Did you want to shake my hand? Sorry, but I’m an otherworldly being, so I can’t be touched directly.”
Angel Ami shrugged her shoulders adorably.
If he didn’t know any better, he would have believed that she was a harmless creature like a pet.
But Ashito knew Ami’s true nature.
They intended to make humans trust them and then kill them all.
That said, there was no way to deal with this angel at the moment.
There was no weapon or magic that could kill an angel. No attack could directly damage them.
Besides, even if he posted information about the angels’ intentions on the Hunter site, no one would believe him.
That’s because, five years after the First Outbreak when the Hunters first appeared on Earth, there were no Hunters who suspected the angels.
Everyone believed that angels were harmless cohabitants.
That’s how skillfully the angels had earned the trust of humans.
–And so, the moment they were trusted the most, they were plunged into the depths of hell.
“By the way, Ashito. Are you having trouble now that you’ve suddenly Awakened? I’ll explain the system to you–”
“No thanks.”
He was well aware of the system.
He didn’t need an explanation now.
“W, w, well, you’d better listen properly?”
“I don’t need it.”
“You’ll definitely be in trouble, so listen.”
“Please, shut up.”
“……What a guy!”
Ignoring the angel’s eyes wide with astonishment, Ashito turned his thoughts over.
(That pop-up just now, and this situation)
Tokyo was destroyed about ten years after Ashito Awakened.
If this is reality, then it means that he has returned to ten years in the past.
(This is the place…Wasn’t it an IT company?)
When he Awakened, Ashito had been visiting a company for an interview.
He had been looking for a decent job in order to escape his life as a day laborer.
(That’s right, I remember. I was feeling down because the interview didn’t go well.)
‘You haven’t graduated from college, and you don’t have any experience as a full-time employee, even though you’re 23.’
‘Everyone can be motivated and work harder than others, so those are just standard requirements.’
‘Your personality is serious, huh. But if you’re serious, why don’t you have any experience as a full-time employee? Aren’t you really a slacker?’
‘……So, why did you come to our interview?’
The interview had been mostly sarcasm and lectures.
Heartbroken, Ashito had decided to at least burn the image of the cityscape as seen from the roof of a nice company building into his memory.
“I never would have thought that the trash skill that I couldn’t use before would activate at the very end.”
The activation condition for the skill was ‘for oneself to die’, which was impossible to realize until one died.
However, this was a chance.
Before, he had fallen off the track to the upper caste from the time of his Awakening, but now it was different.
The Ashito of the present had knowledge of the future.
He knew about skills and strategy that no one else knew yet.
–And he also knew about the future of destruction.
(If I work hard from now on, I can become stronger!)
He would reject the future in which he could only accept destruction.
In order to do that, he had to become stronger than anyone else.
“Oh, man, it started before I could explain!”