“Pull, pull, pull! Quick!”

Cadel was the first to run to the rope, pulling as hard as he could. He had no idea what was going on down there, and the pull was so strong that he couldn’t imagine it was coming from the weight of a tiny fairy.

The hard rope rubbed against his palm, causing a bitter pain, but Cadel gritted his teeth and held on. Van, who had been watching the situation with no less urgency, hurried over.

“Let go of it, Commander! I’ve got this.”

Worried about Cadel’s injury, Van pulled Cadel off of the rope and grabbed it instead. Unlike Cadel’s grip, the rope was no longer pulling downward.

“What’s going on down there?”

Had he found something dangerous inside the well? Or was he suffocating? He shouldn’t panic and let go of the rope.

Leaving the rope in Van’s hands, Cadel stood in front of the well, ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. Grasping the edge of the well, he looked down to the surface. The rope was rising slightly under Van’s strength, but there was no shadow from below.

“Lydon! Are you okay?”

He called out, but there was no answer, and Cadel rubbed the corner of his mouth in frustration.

“Commander!”

Van called out to him in an urgent voice. Cadel turned his head reflexively and saw Van clutching a length of coiled rope.

“……What is it?”

“The rope has lost its pull, I think he lost his grip.”

“Lydon…….”

Cadel’s face went white in an instant, his trembling eyes reflecting the realization that what he had feared had happened.

“We have to go in and get him!”

Pulling the half-unattached rope out of the well, Cadel eagerly grasped the end and tried to tie it around his waist, but was stopped by his subordinates.

“Leader, you going in there will only increase the number of people we have to save. I’ll go.”

Lumen snatched the rope from Cadel’s hand and secured it around his waist. Beside Lumen as he prepared to enter the well, Yozen spoke.

“I’ll try to channel my dark energy. It’ll be hard to detect properly underwater, but if Lydon’s alive, I’ll be able to sense it.”

Cadel nodded heavily, grateful for his subordinates’ help. After all this training, he couldn’t even tend to one drowning man. He was almost angry at his apparent helplessness.

“Don’t worry too much, Knigth Commander. Sir Lydon will be fine.”

Garuel patted Cadel’s slumped shoulder, comforting him. He sounded so sure that Cadel tried to calm his agitation. Panicking here would only make it harder to help Lydon when he really needed it.

“Let’s go down, then.”

With that, Lumen stepped into the well. Cadel watched nervously as he entered.

“Poo-hah!”

A burly man stuck his head out of the well, splashing water in all directions.

“Lydon!”

He shook his wet head from side to side, cold drops of water trickling down the back of his head. Cadel rushed to Lydon, leaving behind the drenched Lumen in disbelief, and wrapped his arms around Lydon’s face.

“Are you okay? How did you lose the rope? I was worried!”

Lydon didn’t seem to realize how much he had worried Cadel; he smiled weakly, rubbing his cheek against Cadel’s palm. The sunlight caressed his damp lashes, moistened cheeks, and tanned lips, enhancing his smile. Cadel’s fierce demeanor from a few moments ago was quickly dampened by the innocent smile.

“You’re really…….”

“Look at this, Cadel! It’s so deeply embedded, it’s hard for my little body to get it out. I had to use both hands, so I threw away the rope.”

Lydon lifted his arm out of the water to show what he had in his hand. It was a deep turquoise-colored stone. Inside the smoothly polished stone, a ripple of energy pulsed like a wave, and Cadel grabbed the stone from Lydon’s hand.

「Sealing Stone in Possession: 2/7」

A system window popped up, indicating that the second sealing stone was obtained.

* * *

In front of an old house in the village of Bene.

Deciding to stay the night in the village, they chose an empty house and entered. The subordinates prepared dinner with the ingredients they had brought with them and the fruits they had picked, and Cadel was kicked out of the kitchen without knowing what was going on and had to wait until the meal was ready.

It was a choice made by the subordinates in recognition of their commander’s physical strength and his culinary skills, but it was a poor choice for Cadel himself. 

Alone, watching the sunset, his mind was racing.

“There is nothing more useless than worrying about the future.”

So far, only his own search had yielded the sealing stones, but soon the Knight Order of other countries would find them, one by one. When they had collected all of them, they would enter the Demon Realm through the portal they had researched.

It would not be an easy battle, and it would be a dangerous one. He knew that every little bit of preparation would bring him one step closer to victory. Still, it was hard to calm his nerves.

‘This is a war that 209 transmigrators have failed in, and I don’t think I can lead them to victory. ……I don’t know what I can do.’

All he had was his determination to protect his members and his blind love for them. Without the system-granted buff of ‘Will of Cadel Lytos’, he was nothing more than a coward who couldn’t even face the demons.

He must win, but the lack of certainty of victory was what crippled him most of all. The failures of those before him seemed to pile up and weigh down on his shoulders.

He sighed heavily, rubbed his tired eyes, and slowly lifted his head. Then, as he looked up, the outline of a figure slipped into his blurred vision.

“Kunra?”

Cadel looked up, startled by the sudden appearance. Kunra looked down at him and clicked his tongue briefly.

“For a guy who’s supposed to be saving the world, you’re kind of sluggish.”

“……I can be sluggish before dinner. I can’t be motivated all the time.”

“You may lose motivation, but don’t lose confidence. As long as you have this one by your side, you won’t fall apart.”

He stood tall in front of Cadel, who leaned against the brick wall. Cadel couldn’t help but chuckle at the commanding gaze he was receiving.

“If I could take away a tenth of your confidence, I think every day would be more enjoyable.”

“I doubt it, you’d need a lot more to raise those slumped shoulders.”

“Why are you judging someone else’s shoulder angle?”

“The way you’re being sarcastic, I’m guessing you’re not completely helpless.”

“Who said I was being sarcastic?”

Kunra’s eyes crinkled playfully as Cadel rolled his eyes in annoyance. He ruffled Cadel’s hair, then hooked a hand through the small of his back as he leaned against the wall, pulling Cadel toward him.

“What is it all of a sudden?”

“I need to talk to you in private.”

“Why not here? The others are in the house.”

“You know there are some good ears out there, and I’ve already got a couple of them on their toes, so let’s move before we get into trouble.”

If it was something that his subordinates couldn’t hear, it had to be system-related. Cadel hesitated for a moment but soon began to follow Kunra.

* * *

Kunra led Cadel to the front of the village chief’s house at the beginning of the village. Cadel stepped inside, looking around at the cold furnace and the axes on the wall.

“Why the chief’s place? It doesn’t look like there’s anywhere to sit.”

“I figured this would be a good place to get out of earshot of your pesky subordinates. If you want to sit, sit on the floor. You’ve got a frail lower body, and you want to be sprawled all over the place.”

“What? Why are you suddenly picking a fight?”

“I’m just stating a fact, and you’re not even being courteous.”

Kunra pretended not to hear Cadel’s scoff, stumbled over to a large anvil, picked it up, and threw it in his face.

“I have another memory.”

Another memory. A quick, grim stare flashed across Kunra’s face.

‘Come to think of it, Kunra said he had a memory lapse, so maybe what he told me wasn’t the whole story.’

As if what he knew now wasn’t bad enough, he wondered if he was about to be given an additional task to accomplish. As Cadel listened nervously, Kunra continued.

“There was no Cadel Lytos in those memories, not even a war for lack of a better word, just a battle between humans and demons, and it was repeated.”

“If there was no Cadel Lytos in the battle……. Are you saying that the transmigrator’s soul entered another human’s body?”

“Probably, yes. But I don’t remember who that human was, or what he looked like. I can only vaguely recall his presence. Of one thing I am certain, it doesn’t matter who he was. What matters is the battle itself, the repetition.”

The battles between humans and demons in Kunra’s memory were much more modest than the current Demon War. Kunra had the same sentiments after each battle.

‘A battle of weak things, so boring.’

If you only looked at the battles, they were nothing more than petty squabbles. But the battles, like this Demon War, were repeated over and over again, destroying worldlines. And when the cycle ended. Kunra noted the point at which the cycle of world annihilation was broken.

“The battle ended with ‘human victory’. Only when humans won did the world allow life here a ‘future’. Just like this Demon War.”

Silent for a moment, as if choosing his words, Kunra met the confused stares directed at him and concluded.

“The ‘system’ that sent you to this world is ‘testing’ something through the destruction and rebirth of worlds.”