Atop the central tower of the ramparts, a towering silhouette emerged from the dense mists: the 1st Demon Lord.
It had to be that monster who had hurled Velmora from the sky straight down into the courtyard.
There wasn’t a millisecond to think.
Utilizing my blink spell, I teleported instantly to where Velmora had crashed.
Raising one hand toward the sky, I wove a massive, multi-layered barrier to deflect any incoming aerial assaults; with my other hand, I channeled a torrent of healing mana to bring Velmora back from the brink of death.
Right at that moment, the hand holding the barrier began to tremble violently.
Looking up, my blood ran cold; the 1st Lord was descending slowly, shattering every single layer of my barrier like glass with his colossal battleaxe.
Realizing I couldn’t sustain both actions at once, I gritted my teeth.
“Shit!” I roared.
Having healed Velmora just enough to stabilize her vital signs, I expended the remainder of my mana to teleport her near the border of the Western Empire.
I was certain Ermo would return along that route; they would find each other eventually.
Once Velmora was safely away, I fixed my gaze directly on the 1st Lord and violently dropped the hand maintaining the barrier.
As the barrier vanished abruptly, the 1st Lord paused, taking a step back in the face of my reckless move.
Just as he was about to deliver a fatal strike, another silhouette crashed between us like a meteor from the heavens, forcing him to leap backward.
The figure rising from the cloud of dust was none other than Scatroj.
Spitting blood from his mouth, he bellowed toward me: “Kaan!”
I caught his command instantly.
I lashed a powerful chain of mana toward his back to help him right himself and launch him upward in a seamless combo.
Yet at that exact moment, a gleaming spear descended from the sky with lightning speed, severing my chain mid-air.
Luna landed gracefully, gripping her spear from the ground as she regarded us with an icy stare.
“You are merely…
prolonging your inevitable demise,” she said, her voice freezing.
Without waiting for her to finish, I lunged forward on pure reflex; taking flight, I seized Luna by the throat and hurled her like a cannonball toward the 1st Lord behind her.
Even as she spun through the air, Luna executed a lethal counter; she aimed her spear at my neck to take my head.
At the last second, I threw up my other arm, deflecting the spear at an angle.
The sharp steel tore deeply into my arm, spraying blood.
Ignoring the pain, I rushed to Scatroj’s side, reforged my severed mana chain, and pulled him swiftly to his feet while simultaneously closing the deep gash on my arm with healing magic.
Just then, King Oberon glided down from the sky to join them.
The three stood side by side, looming before us like an unyielding wall.
Leaning on my support, Scatroj straightened beneath the weight of his armor and whispered with a bitter smile: “We are truly screwed, my friend Kaan…”
I slapped his armored back hard.
“Don’t go senile on me just yet, the fight isn’t over!”
Oberon turned to the 1st Lord, gesturing arrogantly toward Scatroj: “End this quickly.”
As the Lord lunged ruthlessly at Scatroj with his massive axe, I instantly erected a barrier with one hand to absorb the shock of the blow.
With a swift flick of her wrist, Luna shook the blood from the tip of her spear onto the ground.
“Your opponent is me, human!” she hissed.
While Oberon assaulted me from the rear with devastating spells, Luna pressed her advantage on the front line with flawless, close-quarters combos.
I ducked and weaved through Luna’s flurry; just as I was about to drive my katana into an opening I caught in her defense, dozens of enchanted spears of light manifested by Oberon rained down upon me.
I was forced to take a large step back to evade the strikes.
“So, you want to team up on me…” I muttered, leaping through the air directly toward Oberon in the back.
But Luna suddenly seized my leg, pulling me down to the ground toward her with immense strength.
“I told you, your opponent is me!” she screamed.
As I lay flat on my back, she thrust her spear mercilessly toward my abdomen.
With my free left hand, I caught the razor-sharp tip barehanded, halting its momentum; with my right hand, I drove my katana into Luna’s stomach in a single motion.
As she collapsed in pain, I leaned over quickly and whispered in her ear: “I missed your vital organs.
Stay down and don’t move, you won’t die.”
Straightening my katana and lifting my head, I realized the other powerful chieftains of the rebel elf clans had gathered behind Oberon.
Shaking the blood from my blade onto the stone floor, I sighed: “So, the Kajus in the castle and our boys failed…”
There was no time to lose.
I charged forward, falling upon the chieftain of the Wind Elves, who stood at the forefront, overconfident in his speed.
Before he could even register what was happening, my katana swept through his neck, and his head rolled across the stone floor.
Yet at that exact second, massive enchanted roots erupted from beneath the earth, binding my legs and pinning me to the ground.
A dark smile spread across my face.
“So, your plan was to sacrifice a chieftain just to bind me here, huh?”
Instantly pumping all the mana circulating through my body into the ground below, I incinerated those roots with pure heat.
The moment I broke free, the chieftain of the Ice Elves met me with his massive ice blade, our weapons clashing in a shower of sparks.
Meanwhile, I saw King Oberon preparing a massive AoE destruction spell in the back, mana gathering in the sky above.
Unleashing the last remnants of strength in my muscles, I shattered the spear of the elf shielding him with a brutal strike and carved a deep, fatal gash across his chest.
I was about to lunge forward to disrupt Oberon’s spell before it could manifest, but I saw the magic circle was already complete, and the sky was tearing open.
As Oberon leveled his hands at me with destructive malice, I remembered that Luna lay wounded right behind me.
“No!” I yelled.
I sprinted backward frantically, barely making it in time to deploy a massive area barrier over Luna just as the spell descended upon us.
The moment Oberon’s apocalyptic spell struck my barrier, cracks began to web across its surface.
Pressing both hands firmly against the barrier, I stood frozen, channeling all my life force and mana to keep the shield active.
I turned my head slightly back toward Luna.
“It’s fine, Luna…
I will protect—”
I couldn’t finish my sentence.
I found myself staring at the bloody, gleaming tip of a spear that had pierced through my abdomen and erupted from the center of my chest.
She sobbed, whispering into my ear in a trembling voice: “I’m sorry…
I’m sorry, I am truly sorry, Kaan…”
Gritting my teeth, I suppressed the blood pooling in my mouth and the horrific agony tearing my soul apart.
I still forced myself to focus on the barrier above to keep from losing consciousness.
When Oberon’s massive spell of destruction finally ceased, the barrier slowly dissolved, and the surrounding smoke cleared.
Right in front of the shield, I saw someone lying in a pool of blood: Scatroj.
Standing just ahead of him was the 1st Demon Lord; he leaned heavily against the hilt of Scatroj’s massive axe, which had pierced through his own torso, looking toward us through the haze.
Utterly indifferent to the torrents of blood pouring from his body, the 1st Lord wrenched his axe from the marble floor and pointed it toward me.
Lying on the ground, Scatroj raised a single hand with the last of his strength and whispered toward me: “Ruuun…”
Before he could finish the word, the 1st Lord brought his axe down, severing Scatroj’s head from his shoulders in a single swing.
Horrified, I tried to leap backward into the air; instead, my head slammed into a transparent magical wall that had suddenly appeared above, sending me crashing hard onto the stone floor.
My mobility was already practically zero due to the spear in my stomach, and now I was completely trapped within this narrow barrier cage.
As the Lord advanced with heavy steps, Luna, who had already fully healed thanks to divine intervention, stepped forward from behind me.
Barring the 1st Lord’s path, she said, “Let me…
be the one to kill him.”
The Lord turned his head back, locking eyes with King Oberon.
Oberon gave a dismissive wave of his hand in approval: “Let him die…
regardless of how or by whose hand.”
When the Lord lowered his axe and stepped back, Luna gripped her spear and looked directly into my eyes.
A profound sorrow dwelt within her gaze.
“In another life…
perhaps we could have been together, Kaan,” she said softly.
“But in this life…
we never can.”
And she plunged her spear with all her might straight into the center of my heart.
Without breaking eye contact, I accepted death entirely and let my hands go limp.
As my consciousness drifted away, I felt her warm tears falling drop by drop onto my face.
I opened my mouth one last time to try and say something, but the entire world around me began to blur rapidly.
I could no longer resist the deafening roar in my ears, and I sank into an absolute, pitch-black darkness…
Then suddenly, I snapped my eyes open, drawing a deep breath into my lungs.
There was no brutal battlefield, nor was there the agonizing pain of a spear piercing my chest.
I was startled by the rich, fresh scent of roses wafting into my nose.
Looking around in bewilderment, I realized I was lying completely unharmed in my wide bed, inside the safe, luxurious palace room of the Sun City.