[Proclamation]
In the northeastern reaches of the continent, a monster appeared in the Vier Territory.
It devastated the territory, then vanished without a trace.
After observing its power, the dispatched force determined that a new Demon God had appeared for the first time in a thousand years.
We have named it Abaddon and designated it as a target that must be eliminated with all haste.
We therefore seek the aid of warriors who will stand against it and protect humanity.
It does not matter who you are.
All those with strength, gather beneath the name of humanity.
『Rak Pellantz, Head of the Pellantz Family, blessed by the Water Dragon.』
The document was sent throughout the continent.
“My lord, what will you do?”
One blessed by the Fire Dragon.
Head of the Flamer Family.
Shuren Flamer listened to his strategist, then read the proclamation once more.
“Of course we'll join them.”
Shuren answered with complete certainty, as though there were nothing to ask.
“But the place where the Demon God appeared is far from our territory. Would it not be better to observe the situation a little longer before responding?”
“Hmm…….”
Shuren lightly swept back his red hair.
He did not particularly like the strategist's perfectly reasonable argument.
“Sir Frit.”
The strategist lowered his head without answering and waited for him to continue.
“Our Flamer Family is one of the Four Great Families of the continent.”
The Flamer Family, guardians of the Fire Dragon.
The Pellantz Family, guardians of the Water Dragon.
The Yulter Family, guardians of the Lightning Dragon.
The Summerford Family, guardians of the Earth Dragon.
Those four families held sway over the continent.
“The Pellantz Family has already stepped forward. How could we stand by with our arms folded? We'd lose face as one of the Four Great Families.”
“……You are correct, my lord.”
“Of course, your advice isn't wrong either, Sir Frit. It's the right choice for a strategist. I really did choose the right man for the job.”
“You honor me.”
“Anyway, the appearance of a Demon God is a historic event. One wrong move, and the entire continent could be swept up in a great war. How many people would die then? I can't pretend not to see that.”
“My lord, you are a model for all nobles.”
“Hardly. It's only what I should do as the head of the Flamer Family. I'm sure my predecessors would've thought the same.”
“Then I shall begin assembling the troops.”
“I'll leave that to you.”
“But do you think the other two families will move as well?”
“Probably, don't you think? The Yulter lot are fickle, and the Summerford lot are as heavy as stone, so I am a little worried…… but surely they wouldn't start fighting over their own interests even in a situation like this? Humanity itself is in danger.”
Ever since the balance of power between them had stabilized, there had been no major conflicts among the Four Great Families.
Even so, they had always regarded one another as rivals.
Shuren could not help worrying that one of them might try something underhanded while everyone else was distracted.
‘They're not idiots…… What good is a seat of power if the continent is smashed to pieces?’
Shuren could only hope that the other families would make a rational decision.
“Then I shall get to work.”
After bowing, the strategist left the office.
Shuren was left alone.
FWOOSH!
Still seated, he quietly set the rings within his body turning.
Eight rings spun powerfully.
‘When will I finally reach the Nine-Star realm?’
Nine rings.
The goal every knight longed for.
Shuren also wanted to see where the path of the sword ultimately ended.
But the Flamer bloodline had carried a hereditary curse for generations.
The Calamity Flame.
It was a curse that was not quite a curse, borne by the Flamer Family as guardians of the Fire Dragon.
If they absorbed more fire energy than their bodies could withstand, the flames would burn through their mana circuits.
That was why members of the Flamer Family had to be cautious as they grew stronger. They had to walk a fine line, accumulating the energy of fire while still protecting their circuits.
Most who tried to advance beyond Five-Star or Six-Star were eventually devoured by the Calamity Flame.
But Shuren had been gifted enough to reach Eight-Star.
That was why he became greedy.
He wanted to know whether he could reach Nine-Star without being consumed by the Calamity Flame.
‘I hope I can grow stronger before I encounter the Demon God.’
With that thought, Shuren turned his attention to his own work.
***
Shuren and the other three family heads stood tall as they stared at the Demon God Abaddon.
It had taken them more than a year just to finally catch up with it.
Whenever the Demon God appeared on a battlefield, it devastated the entire area.
There was no predicting where it would appear.
Once it had indulged in enough violence, the Demon God would simply vanish, leaving the strike force assembled to hunt it arriving too late every time.
And finally, today.
They had forced a decisive battle with the Demon God and succeeded in inflicting meaningful damage upon it.
But the damage on their side was considerable as well.
The surrounding area was so filled with soldiers' corpses that they formed hills.
Only the four family heads remained alive.
“Persistent bastard.”
“It's a Demon God for a reason. Filthy bastard or not, it's still a god.”
The Demon God's combat power was brutally destructive.
Whenever it swung a fist, dozens of soldiers died helplessly.
“It has not emerged unscathed either. Its strength and speed have both dropped considerably compared to the beginning.”
Rak, head of the Pellantz Family, spoke with a cold expression.
“Let's keep at it a little longer.”
Shuren spoke.
“I was planning to do that even without you telling me. If we don't win, all that's left is death.”
Zenitz, head of the Yulter Family, sneered. The prolonged battle had left his nerves frayed.
“It's coming!”
Zait, head of the Summerford Family, shouted as he stepped forward.
A wave of mana unleashed by the Demon God began racing toward the four of them at tremendous speed.
SHNK!
Zait drove his sword into the ground and spread a massive mana barrier.
BOOM!
The mana wave struck the barrier and exploded.
At the same moment, the other three leaped into the air and swung their swords.
The powers representing each of their families manifested from their blades.
A colossal tidal wave,
razor-sharp lightning,
and scorching flames—
poured toward the Demon God from three directions.
It spread a violet barrier and blocked all three attacks.
The same pattern of battle continued again and again.
‘No. At this rate, it'll turn into a war of attrition.’
Shuren thought rapidly.
Their opponent was a Demon God.
The four family heads, on the other hand, were still human, no matter how superhuman their power might be.
If they continued colliding like this, the ones who broke first would be the family heads.
‘What do we do?’
Shuren's mind raced.
Then, suddenly, realization struck him.
‘I've grasped the final thread to breaking the curse.’
Shuren felt an inexplicable rush of exhilaration.
For some reason, he felt as though the person he was now could defeat the Demon God.
‘Let's try it right now.’
Whether he made a mistake and died to the Calamity Flame or failed to defeat the Demon God and died anyway, the result would be the same.
Then he had no choice but to gamble.
ROAR!
The eight rings began spinning like mad. A massive pillar of fire erupted around Shuren.
THUD!
The moment Shuren kicked off the ground, a dull impact rang out and cracks spread across the earth.
Such was the tremendous strength in his legs.
“Shuren! What are you doing?!”
Zenitz shouted when he saw Shuren suddenly charge ahead.
Even with all four of them attacking the Demon God in perfect coordination, victory was uncertain.
Charging in alone like that was practically suicide.
But Shuren was moving far too quickly for anyone to stop him.
In an instant, he closed the distance to the Demon God.
SKRANG!
The sword he swung was stopped by the Demon God's arm.
Shuren did not care.
He swung again.
HUMMM!
At the same time, a pulse resounded from the center of his body.
Fire energy surged violently outward from him.
FWOOSH!
At last, another ring formed.
ROOOAR—!
Blazing fire began racing through the mana circuits inside Shuren's body.
‘Just hold out a little longer!’
BOOM!
Shuren's attack struck the Demon God.
The destructive force that erupted was difficult to believe had come from a sword.
THUD!
For the first time, the Demon God, which had not budged an inch until now, failed to withstand the force and staggered backward.
Shuren did not miss the opening.
WHOOOOSH—!
Black flames blossomed from the sword in his hand.
The flames surged so high they seemed capable of piercing the sky.
ROAR!
Shuren swung his sword diagonally.
Flames as hot as hellfire tore across the Demon God's body, inflicting a mortal wound.
“Now! Attack together!”
The other three had been left dumbfounded by Shuren's sudden actions.
His shout snapped them back to their senses.
SHNK!
They closed in on the Demon God in an instant and drove their swords into its body.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The energies of water, lightning, and rock mixed together inside the Demon God and exploded.
SPLATTER!
Chunks of the Demon God's ruptured body rained down in every direction.
It no longer moved.
“Did we…… finally kill it?”
At Rak's ominous words, the others tensed for a moment.
But the Demon God truly seemed to be dead. They could no longer sense any trace of its power.
Only then could they relax.
“Ptooey! That was brutal!”
“At last, peace has returned to the continent.”
Each of them said a few words while staring at the Demon God's mangled corpse.
Meanwhile, Shuren quietly consolidated what he had learned.
‘My reasoning was right. This is how the Calamity Flame is overcome.’
The moment he overcame the Calamity Flame, energy had flooded through him, allowing him to reach Nine-Star.
‘But…… was I too late?’
Shuren realized that his mana circuits were collapsing.
The fire energy had grown even more powerful when he reached Nine-Star.
“Cough!”
“……Shuren?”
When Shuren suddenly coughed up blood, everyone stared at him with wide eyes.
THUD!
A moment later, the strength left his legs.
Shuren lost his balance and collapsed to the ground.
“Shuren!”
The other three crouched down and supported him.
“I used too much power at the end. I think this is as far as I go.”
Their expressions turned to shock.
While Shuren still had enough strength left to move his arms, he wanted to leave behind the realization he had reached.
“S-someone, something to write with…….”
Zait immediately took out a pen and paper from his subspace and handed them over.
With the last of his strength, Shuren wrote down the method for overcoming the Calamity Flame.
‘If only I'd discovered how to overcome the Calamity Flame sooner.’
He wondered how far the Flamer Family could rise once freed from the Calamity Flame.
His only regret was that he would not be able to witness it with his own eyes.
All that remained was to say his final farewells to these three.
Before the Demon God appeared, their families had competed fiercely against one another.
But after spending the past year rolling through battlefields together, Shuren believed they had grown fairly close.
“Rak. One year ago, it was because you circulated that proclamation that all of us were able to come together. I honestly didn't expect you to be the first one to act like that. Thank you.”
“I merely did what a family that upholds justice and proper order ought to do.”
Rak answered calmly.
“Zait. Thank you for always protecting us from the front line. If you hadn't been there, reliable as ever, the Demon God would've gotten us before we even had the chance to fight.”
“If I was of help…… then I should be thanking you instead…….”
Zait stared at Shuren with a hollow expression.
“And Zenitz. With your personality, I know sticking with us this whole time couldn't have been easy, but thank you for staying with us anyway. Well, you did keep taking jabs at me the entire time…… but it's not like you actually hated me, right?”
“Hmph! You're half dead and your mouth is still working just fine…….”
For some reason, Zenitz's voice lacked its usual force.
Shuren gave a faint chuckle at the reaction.
“Our families may have been quietly competing with one another, but we spent an entire year traveling together and talking about all kinds of things, didn't we? We crossed the line between life and death again and again…… and somewhere along the way, I think we developed something like…… camaraderie.”
The three quietly listened to Shuren.
“I don't know what the next generation will be like…… but at least for our generation, I'd like the family heads to remain friends. Of course, I won't be there with you.”
Using the last of his strength, Shuren raised the arm holding the paper.
At the same time, his vision began to fade.
Death drew another step closer.
“Ah, and one last thing…… I'd like you to deliver this paper to my family.”
CLASP.
Someone took hold of Shuren's hand.
“I don't know who just grabbed my arm…… but I'm counting on you.”
“It is me. You have done well.”
“Rak…… ‘done well,’ huh. Anyway, I'm counting on you.”
With those final words, Shuren's head fell limply forward.
“Shuren…….”
After hearing Shuren's final words, Zait stared at his face with a heavy expression.
Zenitz's eyes had even reddened.
Rak, on the other hand, raised the corners of his lips while looking at Shuren.
The sinister smile that appeared for that fleeting instant went unnoticed by everyone except Rak himself.
***
The darkness filling Shuren's vision began to brighten.
At the same time, it felt as though his severed consciousness had suddenly been connected again.
‘What…… is this?’
As Shuren's thoughts began moving again, confusion flooded through him.
‘What in the world happened……?’
“Waaah!”
Shuren startled himself.
The moment he opened his mouth, a cry burst out automatically.
‘What? Waaah?’
He tried to move his body.
WRIGGLE, WRIGGLE!
It was pointless.
His body refused to move the way he wanted it to.
“Waaah, waaah!”
Nothing but cries continued pouring from his mouth.
“Are you awake, Shuren?”
Someone called his name.
It was a woman's voice that sounded unfamiliar, yet somehow familiar.
The moment Shuren turned his head toward the voice, his body suddenly rose into the air.
She had picked him up.
“Oh, my baby. Why are you crying? Did you have a scary dream while you were sleeping?”
‘Who is she?’
Shuren was baffled.
Who in the world was this woman to call him a baby?
Just then, he caught sight of a mirror over her shoulder.
Shuren focused his eyes and stared at his reflection.
Sparse red hair.
Golden eyes.
The typical appearance of the Flamer Family.
‘Huh? Why is there a baby?’
Wondering whether he was seeing things, he waved his arm.
But the baby in the mirror really was him.
He looked about two years old.
‘I've become a baby?’
Separate from the questions flooding his mind, his body grew comfortable, and sleep began to overtake him.
‘Wait…… I can't fall asleep now.’
Shuren tried to resist.
It was useless.
‘So after dying…… you really do…… see all sorts of things…….’
Shuren's consciousness slowly faded away.
Some time later, when he opened his eyes again, he was still in the body of a baby.
‘What an incomprehensible thing. Does this mean I didn't die?’
He had questions, but his body simply lived according to its instincts.
When he became sleepy, he slept.
When he became hungry, he fussed.
He rolled his body this way and that.
For the time being, Shuren understood that something very unusual had happened to him.
‘Let's sort this out. What's happened to me is either regression or reincarnation.’
Even Shuren found the conclusion absurd, but nothing else came to mind.
This certainly did not seem to be the afterlife.
‘Then the person who first held me must be my mother.’
But his mother had not looked like that.
‘Then…… was I reincarnated?’
While Shuren was thinking that—
The door suddenly burst open and a man entered.
“Shuren! You're awake. Look at those bright eyes. You're going to grow up splendidly.”
‘Judging by the way he's talking, is that man my father?’
The man had the same red hair and golden eyes as Shuren.
He probably was his father.
‘But why is my name Shuren?’
It was an ordinary enough name, but having the same name as in his previous life left him with a strange feeling.
“You brave little fellow. One day, you'll become a child who brings glory to the Pellantz Family.”
His father stroked his cheek as he spoke.
‘What? Wait. Did he just say the Pellantz Family?’
The words struck Shuren like a bolt of lightning.
‘I'm not a descendant of the Flamer Family…… I'm a child of the Pellantz Family?’
***
The moment his father left the room, Shuren awkwardly waddled around.
No one happened to be there at this hour, and one side of the room was filled with books.
‘What in the world does that mean? I'm a child of the Pellantz Family?’
Like the Flamer Family, the Pellantz Family was one of the Four Great Families.
And Rak, who had fought beside Shuren against the Demon God, had been the head of the Pellantz Family at the time.
But none of this made sense.
His red hair and golden eyes were distinctive traits possessed only by the Flamer Family on the entire continent.
To learn the truth, Shuren began pulling out books one by one.
Fortunately, the books related to history were kept on the lower shelves. Grunting with effort, Shuren barely managed to pull one free.
The book was larger than his head.
He paid no attention to that and strained to flip through its pages.
Flip, flip—
Shuren became so absorbed in reading that he lost all sense of time.
How long had passed?
Amid the scattered books, Shuren clenched one tiny hand into a fist and trembled.
One of the history books recorded the battle against the Demon God Abaddon like this.
‘The heads of the four families joined forces and defeated the Demon God. And in the process, I died because I failed to overcome the Calamity Flame.’
That part was not particularly different from what Shuren himself had experienced.
‘But why is there nothing about me reaching Nine-Star? And I definitely asked Rak to deliver the method for overcoming the Calamity Flame to my family!’
He had.
With that method, his descendants would no longer have to suffer as they grew stronger.
That was why Shuren had entrusted it to Rak Pellantz, believing in him, and died in peace.
‘And yet my family was absorbed into the Pellantz Family? And as if that wasn't enough, they even changed their surname?’
GRIND!
Shuren ground his teeth in fury.
‘The Flamer Family suddenly fell into crisis, and then the Pellantz Family conveniently reached out a helping hand at exactly the right moment…… Doesn't that make it sound like the Pellantz bastards were up to something?’
According to the history book, this was what had happened.
After Shuren's death, the Flamer Family rapidly declined.
Their territory suffered an abnormally high number of monster attacks, and outside support was cut off until the main estate was eventually overrun.
The Pellantz Family then took in the fleeing members of the Flamer Family on humanitarian grounds, after which they abandoned their own surname and changed it to Pellantz.
‘This is ridiculous!’
Rak Pellantz.
That bastard had clearly pulled some kind of dirty trick.
‘What the hell was that entire year we spent together, then? While risking my life against the Demon God, I believed the three of them had become my comrades. And this is how they stabbed me in the back?’
Besides the Water Dragon Family, the other two families had also been there at the time.
Yet both of those families were still intact while only the Fire Dragon Family had vanished.
That meant the others had been in on it as well.
‘You bastards……!’
Shuren's fury surged all the way to the top of his head.
“Waaaaah!”
The absurdity of it all and the bitter grievance finally overwhelmed him, and he burst into tears.