“Poo-ha……!”

Cadel coughed painfully as he cleared his throat of the endlessly regurgitating seawater, having apparently been breathing above ground only moments before. He blinked through damp eyelids, breathing raggedly for who knew how long.

“Where am I……?”

Beneath his bowed head, he caught a glimpse of his own face. He reached out and touched the surface, his face rippling and blurring.

‘……Water. Am I on water?’

The surface was solid enough to touch. But Cadel could tell that the water he was in was not shallow; he was merely standing on top of it with special powers.

He staggered to his feet and slowly looked around. His eyes, filled with confusion, gradually turned to awe as he took in the scene around him.

“Guys……!”

In a strange space with water all around him, he could see his subordinates, floating in thin air, trapped in a round bubble of water. All of them were floating helplessly, eyes closed in peace.

Cadel, frozen in place, rushed to Yozen, who was closest to him. He reached out and touched the bubble, but couldn’t get inside. No matter how hard he pounded on it, no matter how much mana he infused into it.

If Cadel didn’t get them out now, they would suffocate. Panic and worry overwhelmed him, and only then did he realize that something was reflected inside the bubble. It wasn’t Yozen submerged, nor was it his own reflection standing before him.

‘Is he, dreaming?’

It was a scene from Yozen’s dream. Cadel’s expression relaxed as he watched the scene calmly. As expected, they were sharing the contents of a dream.

A calm island with a castle, peaceful and happy days with everyone. It was an illusion he had shattered himself earlier. But it seemed that even if he had broken through the illusion alone, he couldn’t save everyone. Even though he had managed to escape, the dreams of his subordinates continued.

In Yozen’s dream, the castle he burned was restored by the power of the ghost. He himself, who should have disappeared, remained in the vision. The fake Cadel Lytos was surrounded by his members, looking bemused and talking about something. Cadel wondered if the fake him was making excuses for burning down the castle.

Cadel stared at the unity of the group and nervously wiped the water off his face. It didn’t matter that waking them from their dreams was just personal greed, as long as he was awake. Unfortunately, they were at the mercy of their one and only commander.

“How can I break it?”

The assumption that breaking the illusionary core would awaken them was correct. But they hadn’t realized that only the person who broke it would wake up. Cadel should have told them the truth from the beginning. He couldn’t bring himself to tell them to leave their happy dreams behind.

‘If I had disappeared in the dream, my subordinates would have found a way to follow me out…….’

In their dreams, the ‘fake’ commander was still there. There was no time to wait for them to notice something strange.

‘……Calm down. I woke up from the dream. This isn’t some kind of prison that we can’t escape. There must be a way out.’

The water was everywhere. Everywhere he turned, he saw his reflection. Perhaps this was the inside of the giant bubble he’d first seen underwater. It didn’t have the fierce spinning objects or bubbles he’d seen outside, but he was sure of it.

‘If I can’t break it from the outside, I’ll break it from the inside.’

The reason he was able to wake up from the dream was because he had burned the castle, the center of the dream. If so, there must be a core here, too, that sustained the water droplet.

Cadel began to pace the space, his impatience showing. Every now and then, he checked on his subordinates, making sure they weren’t showing any signs of distress.

But no matter how much time passed, they were not distressed. In fact, they seemed calmer than ever. No wonder. The dreams they were having would be full of lovely everyday life.

The more he realized it, the more Cadel’s eyes dimmed. He was alone, busy pacing the transparent space, searching for a way out that no one would want. Little by little, the feeling of helplessness increased.

He wandered around for a while, but couldn’t find the supposed core. Finally, Cadel stopped walking, took a deep breath, pressed his trembling lips together, balled his fists tightly, and muttered.

“……Wake up.”

He wished his subordinates would give up on the dream themselves and escape to the real world, where the real Cadel was. They didn’t know he’d woken up from the dream, and even knowing that made him ache. He wished they would be willing to come to him, for he was wandering here alone.

Such an irresponsible, weak thought. The weak sob was fleeting. He slapped his cheek so hard it made a sickening sound, and his eyes blurred with tears.

‘Maybe there’s no core here in the first place. If I have to take it down, I’m going to have to use my strength.’

They couldn’t waste time here forever. Where they belonged was not in a dream. This reality was where they were. This was where their true lives were.

Cadel crouched down and placed both hands on the surface of the water. With a short inhale, he brought his mana up to maximum and released it without hesitation.

Rumble―

The flaming mana burrowed into the water, causing the water filling the space to boil and bubble. Cadel felt the vibrations shake through his body, and he released Kunra’s power as well. His pupils, constricted like snakes, flashed with determination.

He had to hold nothing back, give it everything he had. There must be no doubt that his actions were to save his subordinates. He believed that their true happiness would be no different from his own. Just as he was happy with their presence, their happiness would be right here, where they truly were.

‘This is not the kind of courage to save.’

It was simply taking the happiness they held so tightly, and placing his own hand in its place. So this was not courage, but a promise. It was a pure vow to never let go of their hands, even if it meant not giving them the happiness of their dreams.

As he continued to channel his maximum mana, the vibrations in the space intensified. Cadel focused on breaking the space with nothing else in mind, the surface of the water where he sat heated up, searing heat radiating from his skin along the rushing water. Cadel held on with all his might on the churning water.

And the next moment.

‘Van……! Yozen!’

The solid bubbles began to burst, one after another. Cadel looked up to see his subordinates plummeting through the rising water, which was almost blinding. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to call out their names.

As he watched his subordinates struggle to surface, just as he had when he first awoke from his dream, Cadel released his mana.

The water gushed forth, threatening to explode at any moment. To the freshly awakened, the space must have been chaos, as they could barely see. Still, they found Cadel before anything else.

And amidst their desperate shouts, Cadel’s efforts to stretch his mana to the limit were rewarded.

Crack!

The watery space collapsed. The transparent wall of water vanished, replaced by the dark waters of the deep.

Water rushed in through all the holes in the suddenly changed place. Reflexively, Cadel squeezed his eyes shut in agony, but it didn’t last long. The water column rose from below. The explosion of water pressure pushed Cadel’s body to the surface in one fell swoop. In the frantic rush, he thought he saw something shimmering.

“Help……!”

Cadel’s body floated upward, pushed by the pressure. Gasping for air and trying to call out for help, Cadel was speechless at the sight through the cracks of his wide-open eyes.

He woke up high in the air. The column of water that had pushed him up into the clouds had vanished like a lie.

He floundered in the air for a few moments, and then his body, unable to defy gravity, began to plummet. Cadel gritted his teeth, unable to scream, and braced himself. All he could think was that somehow he had to draw on his wind mana and save himself from a horrible death.

But before Cadel could draw on his mana.

[Took you long enough].

Kunra, whom he hadn’t thought to call, appeared. Cadel settled on his back, pressing his throbbing chest, breathing heavily.

“Kun, Kunra. My subordinates are…….”

[Look to the side].

Kunra replied nonchalantly to Cadel, who was looking for his subordinates as soon as he could. Cadel looked up and saw them draped over hiKunra’s back.

“They’re safe…….”

They seemed stunned by the series of shocks. Fortunately, they seemed unharmed. Once Cadel was sure his subordinates were safe, he made a pained sound and covered his face.

“Why didn’t you help us sooner, and now you’re here!”

[Finding the Stone of Peace is important, and if this one meddles too much, it could be thwarted by the system at any moment. You know we have to be careful].

“Still…….”

Cadel, who was about to say something more, shut his mouth. The cool breeze from the Scarlet Dragon’s wings dried his damp body.

Outside, the sun was already setting. As he stared into the sunset, feeling a bit defeated, Kunra spoke again.

[I couldn’t help you, but I did take care of what you forgot.]

“…… What do you mean I forgot?”

[You were too busy being swept away by the water column to pick up your stone. Let me go down and give it to you].

Cadel wondered if the shiny object he’d caught a glimpse of while being swept away was the Stone of Peace, which would have been discarded somewhere in the sea by now if it weren’t for Kunra.

“Thank you.”

He thanked Kunra, and after a few moments of silence, Kunra added.

[Good job, I knew you could do it].

“……I wonder if I did it right.”

[Even the happiest illusions are empty at the end, and if they had stayed in the illusion, they would have realized it sooner or later, and you saved them from that].

His tone was blunt, without the slightest hint of falsehood or exaggerated comfort. He seemed to genuinely think Cadel’s choice was the right one, so Cadel’s stiff expression relaxed, and he let out a weak laugh.

“I feel like I’m back in hell on my own terms, but…… well. At least I got one out of the way.”

「Sealing Stone in Possession: 3/7」

Cadel eyed the third sealing stone in his hand. Its translucent blue exterior was bubbling with the same rotating objects he’d seen in the water bubbles, like a shrunken version of the droplets in the sea.

“Do you know what’s spinning inside this thing, Kunra?”

Cadel asked, and Kunra, who was laying Lydon on the sand, clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“You give this one a job to do, and then you sit back and stare at the stone? How arrogant of you.”

“Not if I don’t know better.”

“You don’t care about my hard work. I’m starting to resent you.”

After landing on the island, the group didn’t regain consciousness. They couldn’t stay up the whole time, so Kunra turned human and dropped them onto the sand. He didn’t forget to mention that they’d wake up on their own, so let’s leave them be.

But his suggestion fell on deaf ears. Cadel insisted on moving his subordinates to the farthest point from the sea, and after a few moments of watching the scene in disbelief, Kunra, who had seen better, pushed Cadel aside and took the lead.

Finally, after dragging Garuel along with him, Kunra staggered to Cadel’s side. 

“It’s Moritz and Sebo’s work.”

“Moritz and Sebo?”

“Moritz, the one with the ridiculous title of Seven Knights. Sebo was the cranky one who guarded him.”

Taking the stone from Cadel’s hand, he held it high and peered inside. He wasn’t sure if it was the darkness around him that made it hard to see, or if he didn’t like the stone itself. After staring at the stone with an unappealing expression, he snorted.

“They said this one inspired them to create an amusing familiar, and there’s no such inferior one as this inferior.”

“What’s spinning in there is a familiar?”

“Didn’t you see the beast that tried to sink the island?”

“The Sea Dragon?”

“The Sea Dragon. It’s a water-spewing worm. Anyway, the main body of that monster is the little worm inside. When Moritz died, his mana, or Sebo’s power, was transferred to this worm, which is why it was able to fulfill the role of a sealing stone.”

So this sealing stone contained the Sea Dragon’s body? Cadel was intrigued by this unexpected revelation. Leaping high, Cadel grabbed Kunra’s wrist, forcing his arm down and snatching the stone away.

“It was the power of Sebo, the guardian god of Moritz, that drew us into the bubble?”

“Yes. He had the ability to create a subspace. Moritz used that subspace to create illusions to lower his enemies’ spirits.”

An illusory subspace. Certainly, it was a difficult space to escape from without a great deal of determination and willpower. He himself had narrowly escaped by putting off his choice until the last possible moment.

‘Most of the sealing stones were sustained by absorbing all the power of the heroes and their guardians. Hesonia and Stella’s were special.’

Hesonia and Stella hadn’t used all of their power on the sealing stone but had left enough to free the fairy seal. Thanks to them, Lydon was able to gain the power of liberation.

Cadel’s gaze softened as he rubbed the smooth surface of the stone.

‘This is all the sealing stone we can get, and the rest of the Stones of Peace will be found by knights from other countries.’

As soon as they had completed their search, and the replication of the Demon Realm magic circle was successful. The story would come to a final conclusion.

After a moment of contemplation, Cadel cautiously raised his head and locked eyes with Kunra.

“Even if we win this war, the system will not lose its influence over the world. So our goal is not to win the war.”

“……You mean to defeat the system in this world?”

“Yes. And in order to do that, we’ll probably have to…….”

In his hypothetical, he thought that the destruction and rebirth of the world was a test to ‘update the game’, and he didn’t think much differently now.

‘For an update, it’s important to balance the enemies and knights, but it’s also important to give them a reason to fight.’

A reason for enemies and allies to fight. So far, the only enemies in ‘Hero of Knights’ had been demons, and that wouldn’t change in the future. Even if they sealed the Demon Realm in this war, the system would still try to resurrect it somehow for the ‘next update’.

“We need to eliminate all possibility of the Demon Realm being resurrected so that the system can’t use this worldline as a ‘guinea pig’ again. To seal off the possibility of the enemies ever existing.”

If the enemies couldn’t exist, the system wouldn’t be able to experiment with the worldline. If they could do that, they would naturally be able to block the system from intervening.

As Cadel pondered this, Kunra spoke up.

“If you can block the system’s interference as you say, halfling, you will no longer be in the body of Cadel Lytos.”

“I suppose so.”

“……We won’t need to do the soul separation anymore.”

When the system exited this world, he, bound by its power, would return to his original world. It was unknown if the system would retain its power even if it provided a clear benefit.

‘Even if I am banished from this world along with the system as a result of my victory…….’

He had to do it. He couldn’t leave this world, the world where his subordinates would find happiness, as a puppet of the system. This was the world of the men he loved. He wouldn’t let them fight endless battles for someone else’s amusement.

“If the system and I are gone, I need you to protect this world. I need you to keep everything in this world safe. I need you to make sure nothing can disturb the peace here.”

Cadel’s eyes never wavered; all he wanted was a true victory. If his subordinates could enjoy a long life of happiness in a peaceful world, he was a man who could easily let go of the happiness he dreamed of.

This was the kind of man who could dazzle with a fate that no one else could endure. Reaching out unconsciously, Kunra cupped Cadel’s cheek and said.

“I swear to you. Until the day my life ends, I will not forget my promise to you.”