Although I felt sorry for the Captain, I could sense that I didn’t have much life left.

For the last time, I tightly gripped his hand and the necklace around my neck.

The necklace was an item left behind by my deceased mother.

Wasn’t it supposed to exert power in dangerous moments?

I clearly remembered hearing that, but in a situation like this where my life was hanging by a thread, it wasn’t providing much help.

It only served to calm my mind a little.

“Yulia! Wake up! Yulia!”

Sensing the end, I closed my eyes, but the Captain’s shouts continued to reach me.

I simply let go of my fading consciousness without trying to hold onto it.

So this is how life ends.

It was at that moment that I felt a strange power emanating from the necklace I was clutching tightly in my hand.

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a tent.

Not in the grand banquet hall of the imperial palace I had seen in my last moment, but in some crude tent.

My body was laid out on a makeshift bed prepared there.

At first, I thought I had come to heaven, having lived a good life and been unjustly poisoned.

But no matter how I looked at it, this wasn’t the scenery of heaven.

As I was in a daze, unable to grasp the situation, someone entered the tent.

“Deputy Captain! Are you awake?!”

The moment I saw the face of the person who entered, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Flaming red hair, a mischievous face dotted with freckles…

It was the face of someone I had missed so much that I occasionally saw them in my dreams.

Seeing that face, I let out a faint laugh and thought:

It really is heaven.

Unless this was heaven, how could someone who had been killed by a monster 3 years ago be walking around so casually?

The guy who just entered the tent, ‘Karl’, was my subordinate who had definitely died and turned to dust 3 years ago.

I was absolutely certain he had died because I had personally buried Karl’s body when he died.

How much had I cried while caressing the cold, stiff face of my fallen subordinate?

Anyway, the fact that someone who had died like that was here meant that this was either heaven or some other afterlife.

Feeling my heart ache with joy, I said to him:

“I’m glad to see you again. When I buried your body… I thought we might never meet again. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I cried a lot.”

“…Pardon?”

Karl looked puzzled, then burst into light laughter.

“Ah, you must have had a dream? A dream where I died? Although it was just a dream, I’m honored that the Deputy Captain personally cried for me…”

“Wait, a dream… you say?”

“Yes, it seems you had a dream. I’ve never died. As you can see, I’m perfectly alive. If anything, it was you who nearly died, Deputy Captain.”

While I was bewildered, Karl continued to say incomprehensible things.

“Who would have thought such a powerful monster was hiding in the 3rd rift of Count Hackenstein’s territory?”

The mention of the 3rd rift in Count Hackenstein’s territory made my ears perk up.

A rift, literally meant a gap in space-time.

Beyond these rifts lay a world completely different from ours.

All the monsters attacking the Empire poured out from here.

In other words, monsters were strange life forms that had lived in a completely different world and crossed over to this world through the rifts.

Therefore, the ‘Silver Knights’, the Empire’s special order for countering monsters, and I, as its deputy captain, had been striving for nearly 10 years to eliminate monsters and close these rifts.

Among them, the 3rd rift in Count Hackenstein’s territory that Karl just mentioned was a rift that our Silver Knights had successfully closed 5 years ago.

It was already a story from long ago, so why was he talking about it now?

What on earth was going on?

While I was puzzled, Karl continued to pour out words.

“If Captain Martin hadn’t rushed into the rift to save you, Deputy Captain, who knows what would have happened… But don’t worry. We managed to close the rift safely.”

Although it was from 5 years ago, Karl’s words brought back vivid memories.

At that time, seeing the small size of the 3rd rift, we had rashly assumed that there would be insignificant monsters inside.

We had let our guard down.

So I had entered the rift alone without leading other subordinates, and nearly died in there.

Because, unlike the size of the rift, an overwhelmingly powerful monster was lurking inside.

I might have really died. If Captain Martin hadn’t come to save me at the right moment.

The Captain then defeated the monster, rescued me, and escaped from the rift.

So, now a Karl who had died 3 years ago was alive and talking about a rift that had been closed 5 years ago.

At that moment, a certain hypothesis popped into my mind.

It seemed impossible, but I wondered if I had returned to the past.

Wanting confirmation, I asked Karl.

“What year is it now?”

“It’s the year 68 of the Heldenberg calendar.”

The time when I died from drinking poison was the year 73 of the Heldenberg calendar.

He said it’s now the year 68, so it seemed to be indeed 5 years before the day I died.

How on earth did this happen?

Was it even possible to return to the past instead of going to the afterlife after death?

While I was lost in confusion, Karl began to say even more bewildering things.

“Ah, and Captain Martin will be here soon. He’s been very worried since you collapsed, Deputy Captain.”

“The Captain was worried?”

“He may not show it, but he cares for you especially, Deputy Captain.”

As I was about to respond to Karl’s words, someone else spoke before me.

“Ha, who’s caring?”

Captain Martin, who had just entered the tent, refuted Karl’s words like that.

I was shocked once again upon seeing the face of the Captain who had just entered the tent.

He looked much younger than the Captain I knew.

Really… had time really gone back 5 years?

Thinking so, I calculated in my head.

If this was 5 years ago, the current Captain would probably be 26 years old.

He was a year older than me, after all.

26 years old. No wonder he looked young.

Somehow my body felt strangely light too, probably because I had returned to when I was 25.

Anyway, the Captain who was 5 years younger grumbled at me in a somewhat gruff voice.

“Why would I specially care for Deputy Captain Yulia? I was just worried that if the Deputy Captain collapses, it would affect our entire order.”

Listening to the words of the younger Captain, my mind went blank for a moment.

The Captain immediately pointed that out.

“Why such a dazed expression? Did you get hit on the head by a monster inside the rift?”

The 26-year-old Captain was more gruff and cold than the 31-year-old Captain.

To the point where I wondered if he was really the same person who had held my dying hand and urged me to hang on a little longer.

Well, it made sense that he would have no affection for me at this point, as we had only just met.

I became the Deputy Captain under Captain Martin when I was 24, and before that, we had no contact as we acted separately.

In other words, at this current point, we had only known each other for just a year.

Moreover, at this time, I deeply loved… Ernant, so I hated the Captain who threatened his position.

The Captain also knew me as Ernant’s person, so it was natural in a way for him to be gruff towards me.

I reassured the Captain who was looking at me with annoyance.

“My head is fine.”

“That’s good. You had a bad enough head to enter an unverified rift alone, it would be terrible if it got worse.”

“…”

“This time, you nearly died due to your rashness. You understand that, right?”

I couldn’t argue back.

The 25-year-old me was young and foolish enough to enter an unverified rift alone.

“I understand. I’ll be careful.”

“Tsk.”

“And—”

I calmed my trembling heart a little before slowly opening my mouth.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“…”

I meant it sincerely.

I was grateful that he saved the 25-year-old me who nearly died after entering the rift alone due to youthful recklessness.

I was grateful that he mourned for the 30-year-old me who was dying after drinking poison given by the man I loved.

Captain Martin was truly a person worthy of gratitude.

So I offered my thanks, but for some reason, the Captain just stared at me blankly as if he had seen something strange.

Then, he suddenly strode towards me with his long legs and cupped my face with his large, warm hands.