Chapter 2: I Have Resurrection Magic?

The process of discovering that I had resurrection magic was simple.

On the very first day I was transported—

I was killed, torn limb from limb by a cult.

The place I landed in this new world happened to be the gathering site of a cult.

They were a group formed by people who had once suffered because of other Transporters.

Their ideology was clear. Not a single Transporter should be allowed in World 1.

And I had the misfortune of showing up right in the middle of their gathering.

The rest goes without saying.

“Kill the Transporter!”

“Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”

No matter how desperately I cried and begged for my life, it didn’t matter.

In the end, they tore off all my limbs and my head, and I died.

And then…I came back to life.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in the place where the cult disposed of bodies.

As I crawled out of the pit of corpses, rain poured from the sky.

That’s when I realized it.

My special ability was completely useless.

What if, after killing me, the cult had buried my body underground?

I would’ve revived inside the earth.

Trapped, unable to move, unable to breathe—

I would’ve suffocated to death from lack of oxygen.

And then resurrected.

And then died.

And then resurrected again.

Endlessly.

For me, death wasn’t liberation.

It was a never-ending curse.

The moment I realized that, I hid my ability and started living quietly.

What good is being able to come back to life if that’s all it is?

Roughly counting, it took at least four hours for me to resurrect.

If my body got buried somewhere during that time,

I’d spend eternity in pain.

Still, I tried to protect myself in my own way and even joined the training facility run by the Transporter support group.

But I was just an ordinary person.

To be precise, I was a perfectly ordinary person. Just a little below average in physical ability.

– Frontline duty’s out of the question. You’d probably be better off learning magic instead. But there’s no one at our training center who can actually teach magic.

Formal magic education was expensive.

The organization established by Transporters who had settled in World 1 was funded by pooled donations, but that wasn’t enough to support proper magical training.

And as for the street-learned, shady, unofficial magic created by sketchy mages—

That was far too dangerous.

Because the basics of mana weren’t properly refined, a mistake could cause a full-blown mana rampage.

Of course, even that kind of training was out of reach, since the support money from the Transporter group barely covered food, clothing, and shelter.

That’s why I ended up tagging along with old man Bulldog.

That guy, believe it or not, had learned formal magic.

He’d been an orphan, but by sheer luck caught the eye of an old mage and became his disciple.

Though that old mage eventually died and Bulldog turned to frontier work, his skills were the real deal.

Unlike most pioneers who formed teams, he worked alone. With just one porter.

That alone was proof of how capable he was.

And in the end, he died.

Because he kept bringing just one porter with him.

His head was chopped off by that serial killer in the most gruesome way.

I could see old man Bulldog’s body, already cold and lifeless.

I walked over to him slowly and lifted his head.

It had been four hours since I died.

By now, that serial killer had probably gone off to hunt his next prey.

Thanks to that, the forest was dead quiet as night fell.

Maybe I’d trampled over too many corpses crawling out of the pit.

But looking at a dead body didn’t make me feel sick.

Even so, a bitter taste filled my mouth.

Old man Bulldog had a rough mouth, but he was a good man.

I had even planned to butter him up later and ask him to take me in as his disciple.

Among the uncivilized folk of this other world, he was one of the best.

Every single native of this other world I’d met so far had been the very definition of uncivilized.

The hateful stares and discrimination aimed at transporters.

Any time an incident occurred, they’d jump to connect it to a transporter. It was an absolute lawless mess.

And yet, when it came to throwing a transporter in prison, they’d suddenly scream about “following the law”.

Disgusting hypocrites.

Filthy maggots.

They all deserved to die.

A sudden, intense surge of hatred toward the people of this world overwhelmed me.

“Hoo…”

I nearly slammed old man Bulldog’s head into the ground in a flash of rage.

No—I couldn’t do that.

He was a good man.

Maybe it was because of everything I’d been through—

Getting ripped apart by a cult, robbed blind by roadside bandits…

Stuff like this happened now and then.

To hell with the people of this world.

Even that serial killer who took my head was a transporter like me.

In the end, people are all the same.

I carefully gathered Bulldog’s severed head and body.

Then I gently closed his eyes.

Now what?

Even if I took his decapitated corpse back with me, would the Pioneer Guild even believe me?

– Oh, the porter somehow managed to survive and even retrieved the body? Well done.

Yeah, right.

More likely, they’d just accuse me of being the killer and drag me off to the execution platform.

As expected of this uncivilized world.

Not that I’d actually die from it.

But once was enough when it came to the experience of getting my head cut off.

So should I just leave his body behind?

A weak sense of morality and guilt wrestled inside me for a while.

And then, quietly, I began rummaging through his belongings.

Soon, I found a silver Pioneer License.

Proof that Bulldog had held a silver rank.

If I took this back, at least I could report that he had died.

I also carefully gathered up our supplies.

I still had to get paid for today’s work, after all.

“Old man, you were the best of all these uncivilized bastards in this world.”

It was the kind of thing I’d never say out loud under normal circumstances.

Saying something like that publicly would get me beaten to a pulp.

But since no one was around, I just muttered it to myself.

If I didn’t at least do that, I’d explode from the stress.

“You won’t make it to your son’s wedding…but the money should be enough.”

Good thing that serial killer didn’t care about money.

From what I could tell, that guy was a complete lunatic.

He didn’t even touch the cash. He just killed for the sake of killing.

Yeah, he definitely just enjoys murdering.

“Freaking psycho.”

I finished packing everything.

Finally, I reached out my hand to gently close the old man’s lifeless, bulging eyes.

I offered him one last silent prayer.

Please… don’t be born as an uncivilized person in your next life.

I meant that. Sincerely.

At least, up until the moment a pure white light began to flow from my hand.

“…Huh?”

The sound slipped from my mouth in confusion.

The light spreading from my palm was surrounding the old man.

A huge amount of energy was draining from my body all at once.

I knew this feeling.

It was the same sensation I experienced right before I resurrected.

My limbs went weak, and my mind began to blur.

But even so, I couldn’t pull my hand away.

I wanted to see with my own eyes what exactly was happening right now.

By the time the pure white light that had filled the forest finally faded,

I collapsed straight down, landing on my rear.

My fingertips trembled slightly. There was barely any strength left in me.

And yet, for some reason, I felt a pleasant sense of release.

“Ugh, nghh…”

Soon after, a familiar voice rang out.

I quickly directed my tired eyes downward.

In that moment, the man whose neck had been severed opened his eyes with his body completely restored.

He winced as if he had a mild headache and slowly sat up.

“What the…”

I stared at him with my eyes wide open.

He was alive.

The man who had died came back to life.

Just like I had.

My gaze shifted to my hand.

No way… could my resurrection magic—

work on someone else too?

I didn’t know.

Even though I’d rolled around in piles of corpses, I’d never tried bringing any of them back.

What I’d meant to do for old man Bulldog was nothing more than a final act of respect.

Still, maybe… deep down, I had wished for it.

In this harsh world,

A small hope that someone who had helped me might live on.

And that wish had triggered a power I’d never known I had.

“Haru?”

Old man Bulldog finally came to his senses and called out to me.

I quickly hid my hand behind my back and shouted,

“Are you okay, old man?”

At my worried tone, the man shook his head from side to side.

“Well, I feel fine… but what happened? Why was I suddenly passed out?”

“The serial killer…he showed up. Old man, your neck was halfway gone!”

“My neck?”

He instinctively reached up and wrapped his hand around his throat.

From the look on his face, it was clear he was confused about what had happened.

This was my chance.

“Remember? You cast a spell at the last second. When it exploded, the killer couldn’t finish you off and had to retreat. After that, I managed to pour one of the emergency potions you always carry around and bring you back. I honestly thought you were dead. You don’t remember any of that?”

“I-Is that so? Sounds like I really almost died.”

Memories right before death often fade.

The brain tends to forget moments of extreme stress, even if only briefly.

And when someone else fills in the blanks, people usually interpret it in the most convenient way.

Hardly anyone assumes they were actually brought back from the dead.

“…What about the killer?”

He glanced nervously around and fear caught up to him now that the danger had passed.

Nearly dying had left its mark.

“The regular army showed up just in time after getting the report. He ran off. I was stabbed too, so I used what was left of the potion on myself and waited for you to wake up.”

“The regulars, huh? Figures. Those bastards probably didn’t care about us and just went straight for the killer, right?”

“It happens all the time.”

To them, capturing a serial killer was more important than saving some half-dead pioneer or a porter.

Sacrificing the few for the greater good. That’s how the regular army works.

“Would’ve died without that potion, huh… Guess it was worth spending the big money to keep one on hand.”

Of course, that potion was still safely tucked away in my pocket.

I’d already said it was used, so there’s no way I could return it to him now.

I’ll just have to treat it as my emergency stash.

“Old man, it’s getting really late. Do you think you can move?”

“Yeah, aside from a bit of a headache, I feel lighter than expected.”

Well, his neck was cut. No blood had been reaching his head, after all.

He got up from the ground.

In the meantime, I picked up his gear along with mine.

“You sure you can carry all that?”

“Of course. You think I’d let a guy who just came back from the dead carry luggage?”

“Ha, brat, you really went through hell this time. I’d be dead without you.”

“If you’re that grateful, why not teach me a bit of magic sometime?”

“Ugh, still insisting on that?”

“Come on, if there’s one thing you’re good at, it’s magic.”

“Good, my ass. Compared to a regular mage from the Tower, I’m nothing. I just barely patched together enough basics to keep my mana from going berserk. To those guys, I’m no different from some back-alley magician.”

The Old man Bulldog has a complex about magic.

That’s probably why he’s so reluctant to teach it to anyone.

Still, he was the only person I could realistically learn magic from.

Getting into the Magic Tower would take earning hundreds of times more than I do now, if even that were enough.

“But it’s good enough to get by. Good enough to be a father who can be there for his son’s wedding.”

He looked at me for a moment.

Judging by the way his hand brushed over his neck, the experience of nearly dying must’ve left him feeling a little sentimental.

“…Tch. Damn brat, you really know how to run that mouth.”

“You’re a little moved, aren’t you?”

“Piss off.”

He turned and started walking away with heavy steps.

“When I was a kid, my old man gave me a book and said it’d help me study. It’s still at my place. I’ll give it to you, so stick around for dinner.”

“I might just do a cartwheel out of joy.”

“You drop even one piece of gear, and I’ll kill you for real.”

Today was a lucky day.

Sure, I did die once at the hands of a serial killer.

But in the end, I got a chance to learn magic.

And more importantly—

I found out that my ability can bring others back to life too.

What I’m going to do with that power…

Well, that’s something I’ll have to figure out in time.

It’s been a few months since I got transported to this World 1.

And finally, I was starting to see a thread to hold on to.