The Strongest Loner Redo His Youth With Unmatched Prowess!! ~In the Second Round of School Life, He Made Beautiful Girl Friends!~ - Chapter 1: The Strongest Loner

A dark cave. 

The sound of footsteps echoes. 

“Akizuki Yuito” was walking alone in the cave. 

(Yay! Another day of dungeon exploration alone…)

A dungeon is an isolated space cut off from the outside. 

Inside, there are monsters called “monsters” lurking. 

Due to the danger, exploring a dungeon alone is not recommended. 

So, why is Yuito walking alone…

(I want friends… I’m lonely…) 

Because Yuito is a “loner.” 

He’s twenty-three this year. Of course, he’s single. No girlfriend. Actively looking for friends. 

His job is as an explorer. He explores dungeons and brings back unique resources from them. 

Because of this job, he doesn’t have anyone he can call a colleague. 

His life is gray. 

He dives into dungeons to earn money. 

When he gets home, he enjoys games and anime alone.

Games and anime are fun, but thinking about being alone for the rest of his life makes him feel miserable. 

(Will I die alone too…) 

He imagines himself aging in a small room, all alone. 

No one to watch over him, no one to mourn him. 

A rotten corpse will be found only after the smell of decay sets in. 

(No, no!! Let’s focus on the search. If I keep thinking like this, I’ll want to hang myself!――Aah, I hear something.)

He listens closely and he can hear it. 

“Gyaooooooon!!” 

“Whaaa!?!” “Kyaaa!!”

A roar like a monster.

Followed by the screams of men and women. 

It seems someone is fighting a monster. 

And the situation doesn’t look good. 

(Should I go help!)

Yuito starts running. 

Yuito always tries to help those in trouble.

Because it might lead to making friends. 

The current success rate is zero, though. 

He stepped into a wide area. 

It was wide enough to play baseball. 

There were the owners of the voices. 

A gigantic three-headed dragon. 

A sturdy body and large wings. 

Three long necks twisted, and flames leaked from the three mouths at their tips.

At the end of the dragons’ gazes were four explorers. They seemed to be a party. 

Yuito recognized their faces. 

Despite still being students, they were active superstars. 

They had already climbed to the second-highest rank, “A-rank” explorers. 

Of course, he had never spoken to them directly. 

They had been the talk of the town on TV and online news. 

They were also involved in streaming activities and seemed to be very popular.

He thought to himself, “Young people these days are amazing,” and Yuito remembered it well. 

However, the current situation seems to be critical. 

Out of the four, two can’t fight. 

The two who can move are at their limit. 

One is healing the immobile comrade. 

The remaining one is also in bad shape and about to collapse. The party is in ruins. 

Apparently, they picked the wrong opponent. 

The dragon they are facing doesn’t even have any noticeable wounds.

Given the situation, it seems they were being one-sidedly attacked. 

One of the dragon’s heads looked up at the sky. 

The flames leaking from its mouth intensified. It seemed to be trying to breathe fire from its mouth, attempting to burn them to ashes. 

(Not if I can help them.) 

Boom!! 

The sound of an explosion echoed. 

It was the sound of Yuito kicking the ground. 

And the next moment. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. 

Not even the slightest sound was made.

The dragon’s three heads were severed. 

Yuito held a sword in his hand. 

With a single stroke, he cut them off. 

Thud! 

There was no time for a scream. 

The dragon fell, spraying blood everywhere. 

It was a momentary battle. 

And the fight with the dragon didn’t matter anymore. 

What was important for Yuito was from this point on. 

“A-are you okay?” 

Yuito spoke to the explorers who had been attacked, trying to maintain a smile.

Moreover, since his facial muscles are dead, he is almost expressionless. 

“T-thank you.”

The young man who had been facing the dragon until the end finally spoke. 

(I-I wish he would show a bit more joy for being saved…)

The young man’s expression is tense. 

There is no joy in having survived the battle with the dragon. 

He seems to be facing a formidable enemy even now. 

There are two reasons why Yuito can’t make friends. 

One is that he is an introvert. 

His communication skills are at rock bottom. 

He doesn’t have the courage to talk to people for no reason. 

SNS also scares him. 

And the second reason is――.

“Could you be Akizuki Yuito? …The ‘S’ rank explorer?”

“…That’s right.” 

When they realized Yuito was an S-rank explorer, the atmosphere around the young man became even tenser. 

He subtly moved his body to position himself as if to protect his companions from Yuito. 

(Oh no!? I’ve been found out!!)

S-rank Explorers.

They are the highest rank among explorers. 

To put it simply, they are very strong people. 

However, the general public is more familiar with A-rank Explorers. 

A-rank is also what most explorers aim for. 

Why is that? 

The reason is simple. 

S-rank Explorers are a “group of crazy lunatics.” 

They suddenly snap and tear apart mountains, like “old-timers.”

A “battle maniac” who bends and swings buildings. 

A “mentally unstable healer” who, out of spite for being cheated on, pierced their lover’s organs 126 times. 

A “mad sorcerer” who, under the guise of an experiment, alters the underwater terrain. 

Because he was placed in a group of such abnormal individuals, Yuito was also labeled as a “dangerous person” and was feared. 

(I haven’t done anything wrong!!) 

He shouted his innocence in his heart.

However, there was no one to listen to him. 

His low communication skills and the label of being an S-rank explorer. 

These two factors had led Yuito down the path of solitude. 

And once again, he had failed. 

He couldn’t get along with the student explorers in front of him. 

Staying any longer would only scare them. 

Yuito decided to quietly disappear. 

“Well then, I’m going to destroy the dungeon core…”

“Ah, excuse me. Thank you so much.”

Yuito trudged deeper into the dungeon. 

He was on guard until the very end. 

It was as if he were being treated like a wild beast. 

As Yuito advanced further into the dungeon, he saw a large sphere floating there. 

It looked like a round Rubik’s Cube, though not as colorful. 

This is the ‘Dungeon Core.’ The heart of the dungeon, and if destroyed, the dungeon disappears.

Normally, dungeons are treasure troves of resources, so they are not destroyed. 

However, this time, they were told to destroy it. 

Yuito swung his sword. 

The core was cut silently and split in two. 

From there, light overflowed, as if to paint the world. 

If they waited like this, the dungeon would disappear, and Yuito and the others would be thrown outside. 

(A student, huh… How enviable…)

Wrapped in light, Yuito vaguely recalled his school days. 

They weren’t particularly good school days. 

He often skipped school in elementary and middle school. 

He dropped out of high school. 

So, Yuito never experienced youth. 

It was all fiction, like in manga and anime. 

“I wanted to hang out with friends, go to karaoke, go to the beach. Romance… is it too high a difficulty level for me…”

He wanted to experience youth. 

If he had made even one friend back then, things might have been different now. 

“I wish I could go back to my school days…”

That murmur was drowned out by the torrent of light.

◇◆◇◆◇

When he realized it, Yuito was in an unfamiliar room. 

It was a room in an apartment stacked with cardboard boxes. 

Brand new furniture without a single scratch was set up. 

“…Where am I?” 

Yuito had a sense of déjà vu in that room. 

“Isn’t this my high school room?”

Upon closer inspection, it was the room he had lived in during high school. 

Yuito had attended a school for training explorers.

Due to its location, he couldn’t commute from his family home. 

Therefore, this is a room he rented for living alone. 

Since he only lived here for a short period, it took him some time to remember. 

“What? What’s going on?”

He looked around the room in confusion. 

A large full-length mirror caught his eye.

There, Yuito is reflected. 

“W-What, I’m getting younger?!”

It’s clear he’s getting younger. 

He looks more childlike. 

And next to the mirror, a shiny uniform was displayed. 

“Could it be… I’m gone back in time?!”

◆◆◆

Translator’s Note

Hello, Minasan! Nyx here at your service~ (＾▽＾)ノ

I just wanted to let you know a little something about this new novel. This is actually the first novel written by the author! The other series I translated — “A Lonely S-Rank Explorer, Returning to His Student Days to Redo His Youth—It Seems the Strongest Loner Is Being Genuinely Loved by the Most Beautiful Girls in the School” — is the remake version of this one.

As far as I know, this novel has about 53 chapters, including the author’s notes. So it’s a bit shorter, but still worth checking out!

I really hope you’ll enjoy this one too and support it just like you did with the remake. Thank you so much for reading and sticking with me!