* * *

“Why shouldn’t we meet and fight Cynthi?” 

Hyron’s small voice caused Cadel to startle, immediately pressing a finger to his lips. Peeking cautiously around the collapsed walls of the maze, he made sure no one was nearby before quietly whispering.

“I made a promise not to act recklessly until Kunra’s technique is finished. We have to wait here quietly until then.”

After running for some time, they finally reached the entrance to the collapsed maze. It was far from the front lines, and the stacked walls of the maze provided a good hiding spot. This seemed like the best place to wait while Kunra completed his work. Cadel glanced up at the sky and bit his lip.

“He plans to uproot the entire garden. Compared to Lord Hyron’s attack, he’ll wipe out all the High Demons there at once.”

Even from this distance, the heat was still palpable. Surely, there was a protective barrier keeping the knights safe, so he wasn’t worried about them. 

‘But when this broken system interface resets…… that’s what I’m truly worried about. What will happen then?’

The anomaly in the system interface had started the moment Kunra made his move.

「??ime? remaini ?moval: ?? hours ?? minutes ?? seconds」

「?olling? variab??」

「On ?lure, ??pena?」

The partially broken system window unsteadily occupies one side of the field of vision. Will this system window be fixed once Kunra finishes the task? Whatever happens, the power that had been threatening Hyron had to disappear.

‘For now, I have no choice but to stay hidden, just as Kunra said. I can’t make Kunra’s decision meaningless.’

He held his breath, carefully stiffening his body as much as possible. Hyron still didn’t understand Cadel’s intentions, but he didn’t ignore his request. As long as Hyron’s cooperation was there, it wasn’t impossible to get through this crisis.

It was at that moment.

“Cadel! Where are you?”

The familiar voice, which shouldn’t have been heard, echoed through the collapsed maze.

“Lydon……?”

Although he had been told to join the battlefield, the voice that was heard was undoubtedly Lydon’s, and Hyron reacted to it before Cadel did.

“Lydon! Stay away, get farther from here!”

“Father……?”

Cadel, barely holding back the curse that instinctively wanted to come out, grabbed Hyron’s arm as he tried to get up in a hurry.

“Lord Hyron, you can’t make loud noises……!”

“It’s already too late. There’s no way Cynthi, who must be desperate to find us, wouldn’t have noticed Lydon’s presence. We need to get Lydon to safety before we’re attacked.”

Why, of all times, was he not listening? Frustrated, Cadel hurriedly stood up. Lydon, upon spotting Cadel’s head peeking over the wall, showed a look of relief.

“Lydon, don’t come over here! There’s a High Demon nearby! It’s the one we fought in the Human Realm. I don’t know her exact location, so fly quickly to the garden where Kunra is……”

“What? Cadel? I can’t hear you clearly!”

Despite Cadel’s urgent warning, Lydon moved closer. As the distance shrank, cold sweat began to form. Hyron looked ready to rush out and protect his son immediately. There was no way he could let such a tragedy happen.

“Lord Hyron, stay here. I’ll go meet Lydon and tell him to go back. If he flies away, the chances of encountering Cynthi will be lower.”

“But……”

“Please, Lord Hyron. Follow my instructions.”

“……Alright.”

Seeing Cadel’s desperate eyes, Hyron reluctantly hid his body behind the wall again. Once he confirmed that, Cadel immediately ran toward Lydon.

‘I’ve already set up a magic circle around Lord Hyron. Even if Cynthi approaches while I’m dealing with Lydon, the trap will activate, so it’ll be fine. It’s best if we don’t get spotted in the first place, but……’

Right now, Lydon was nothing but resentful. No matter how unruly a fairy he was, he had never acted up at such a critical moment. What kind of useless whim was this?

Gasping for breath, Cadel ran over and quickly grabbed Lydon’s arm. Lydon let himself be pulled along but was persistently scanning Cadel, searching for any new wounds.

“I kept waiting, but you didn’t come, so I got worried. What were you doing here with Father? Have you still not found Kash? Just leave Kash alone! If you really need him, I can just—”

“Listen carefully, Lydon.”

Cadel cut him off and cupped his cheek. His gaze, capturing Lydon’s bewildered expression, was firm, but beneath it, an unhidden anxiety wavered.

“Cynthi is alive.”

“Cynthi……? You mean that High Demon we saw outside?”

“Yes. She’s the one who set Kash free. And right now, she’s after Lord Hyron’s life.”

“Father’s?”

Lydon’s expression subtly twisted. It was already shocking enough that Cynthi, whom he had thought dead, had returned alive—but now, she was after his father’s life? It didn’t feel real. As Lydon instinctively turned to look at Hyron, Cadel firmly grabbed his face, holding it in place.

“I can’t explain everything right now, but Cynthi will do whatever it takes to kill Lord Hyron. However, the threat won’t last long. You saw Kunra rampaging in the garden, didn’t you?”

“……Yeah.”

“We just need to hold out until Kunra stops. If we can endure until then, Lord Hyron will be safe.”

“What does a lizard going on a rampage have to do with Father’s safety? No, wait—why don’t we just kill Cynthi from the start?”

“If anyone kills her, it’ll be me. Lord Hyron and you must not use your strength, no matter what.”

“Why me?”  

“If you get involved, Lord Hyron will instinctively try to protect you. So trust me, Lydon—go back for now.”  

Lydon’s expression showed that he didn’t understand Cadel’s words at all. And even Cadel himself knew he hadn’t given a convincing explanation. But he believed in Lydon. There was a deep bond between them—trust that went beyond reason. Even without full understanding, he trusted that Lydon would follow his words. That he would leave this place and return to Kunra’s side. Or so he thought.  

“No. I’m staying.”  

“What? You can’t stay! If you do, Lord Hyron will be in even greater danger! I know this is hard to accept, but right now—”  

“I just feel like I have to stay. That’s the feeling I’m getting.”  

“This isn’t about feelings! You need to—”  

Cadel’s frustration mounted as he raised his voice, but then he suddenly stopped, his expression hardening.  

Lydon, who had been stubbornly insisting on staying, was now grimacing in pain. His face twisted as if he were experiencing a splitting headache. Clutching his head, he spoke in a halting, unsteady voice.  

“Cadel, I…… I want to listen to you…… but right now, I just feel like I have to be here……”

Blood trickled down Lydon’s scrunched-up face. As Cadel hastily reached out to wipe it away, a sudden possibility crossed his mind.    

‘If Lydon hadn’t shown up now, Lord Hyron would have been safely hiding by my side. Because of Kunra’s appearance, Cynthi wouldn’t have even been able to sense our presence. Meanwhile, Kunra’s influence would have continued to grow, forcing the system to shift its focus away from Lord Hyron. But just by Lydon stopping by here……’    

Before Kunra’s influence could expand, the probability of a direct clash between Hyron and Cynthi would skyrocket exponentially. And the only entity that would benefit from such an event was the system—the god of this otherworld. If it was deliberately manipulating events to force a perfect scenario……

It was a chilling hypothesis, but the system had likely repeated this world’s tragedies in such a way countless times before. It wasn’t entirely impossible.  

‘But to go as far as overriding someone’s will? Does it really have the power to control everything like this?’  

No. Not even the system could treat a knight of Cadel Lytos as its puppet. Hadn’t Kunra said it himself? The system couldn’t make a living being here die suddenly without any causal link. That was precisely why it was trying to create the event of a clash with Cynthi.    

So if the system was manipulating Lydon’s will, then it must be overextending itself. Kunra’s sudden appearance must have thrown it into a panic, making it desperate to get rid of Hyron no matter what.  

‘I have to stop this. This proves that Kunra’s plan is working. I won’t let the system have its way.’

The system could never control Lydon. He was his knight, an independent soul of this world.

Cadel pulled Lydon’s pained face closer, forcing their eyes to meet.

“Leave this place, Lydon. If you don’t, you’ll regret it. Something terrible—something you should never have to go through—will happen.”

“My body feels weird……”

“Answer me!”

Even though he was suddenly suffering from a nosebleed and a terrible headache, Cadel didn’t show concern. Instead, he pressured him to leave as quickly as possible. Even through the throbbing in his skull, a wave of sadness welled up in Lydon, but rather than argue, he chose to comply.

As he slowly nodded, a brief flash of relief crossed Cadel’s face.

“If the headache doesn’t go away after you return, find Garuel. As long as Kunra is on the move, the enemies won’t be able to act freely either.”

“This is nothing.”

“Good. That’s my knight. Now go, Lydon. We’ll follow soon.”

“……Father has to be safe, too.”

“Of course. Don’t worry.”

Lydon still wanted to stay, but in the end, he didn’t defy Cadel’s command. He finally turned his back and lifted his heavy body into the air.

Just as he was about to leave Cadel’s side—

Boom! Kwa-boom!

A deafening explosion rang out from behind Cadel, one after another.

“An ambush!”

Instinctively turning around, his vision was immediately clouded by thick smoke. And piercing through that smoke—something was rising.

Cynthi.

She must not have anticipated the trap. From her shoulder, where one of her arms had been completely blown away, demonic energy was seeping out.

“Lord Hyron! Are you alright?”

Leaving Lydon hovering behind him, Cadel ran toward Hyron. With a gust of wind, he swept away the smoke, revealing Hyron, standing behind a protective wall of ice.

“I couldn’t sense anything at all. If it weren’t for the magic circle, I would have been caught completely off guard.”

In the Human Realm, perhaps—but this was the Demon Realm. In a world saturated with demonic energy, detecting the presence of a specific demon was close to impossible.

Cadel layered a wind barrier over Hyron before shifting his gaze toward Cynthi. A dense killing intent radiated from where she floated in the distance.

“……Lord Hyron, please focus on protecting yourself. Cynthi is mine to handle.”

“If we fight together, we could take her down much faster…… So, this is Cynthi? The ‘great power’ you spoke of, Cadel?”

At Cadel’s solemn nod, Hyron fell silent. If this threat only targeted him, then Cadel truly had no reason to intervene. There were far more pressing matters for him than the safety of a single fairy. And yet, if he was still choosing to stand guard.

“……I’ll do my best to keep up. You be careful too, Cadel.”

“Yes. I’m counting on you.”

The demonic energy surging from Cynthi’s body wasn’t meant to regenerate her lost arm. Her form was gradually beginning to dissolve. Realizing this, Cadel turned toward Lydon, who still hovered motionless in the air, and shouted—

“Get back and find Kash, Lydon!”

Cynthi’s killing intent must not be allowed to turn toward Hyron. Finding Kash in this chaotic battlefield would be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but even so, Cadel gave the command loud and clear.

And as if she had been waiting for this, Cynthi reacted immediately.

“I won’t let that happen……!”

Bloodshot eyes rolled wildly as she shifted her gaze—not to Hyron, but to Lydon. The demonic energy she had been scattering began to twist its trajectory.

Realizing she had set her sights on Lydon, Hyron instinctively gathered his mana—but before he could act.

“Don’t worry. I won’t let Lydon get hurt either.”

Above Cynthi’s head, a magic circle had appeared—glowing a brilliant, blood-red light.

Flames shot down like bullets, piercing straight through Cynthi’s body. Instead of bleeding, the holes left behind scattered like smoke. The demonic energy wavering in the air attempted to take shape, forming a familiar straight line.

‘Too bad for you—your siblings aren’t here to protect you. One-on-one, you’re not nearly as terrifying as you’d like to think.’

From the tips of Cadel’s outstretched fingers, a blazing inferno erupted. The flames relentlessly chased after the wandering demonic energy. If she failed to complete her technique and let her demonic energy scatter, that was no different from her own body being torn apart. If she didn’t defend herself, she would take a serious hit.

In the end, Cynthi had no choice but to abandon her pursuit of Lydon and turn her focus on the enemy before her.

‘There’s no hiding anymore. Next, I need to launch an all-out offensive to keep her from turning her attention back to Lord Hyron.’

She was an enemy that had to be taken down regardless. If Cadel Lytos personally stepped in, the system wouldn’t impose severe restrictions. If possible, he would eliminate Cynthi here and root out the seed of misfortune before it could grow.

‘Lydon won’t be able to find Kash. Cynthi must have hidden him somewhere incredibly difficult to detect. But she’ll have to keep worrying about the possibility of him being discovered. That uncertainty will create openings—and for now, that’s enough.’

The most important thing was keeping Cynthi’s killing intent away from Hyron. Diverting her attention and throwing her into confusion was the key to turning the tide.

‘We just have to get through this. I have to trust Kunra and hold out.’

Cynthi, having halted her chase, rapidly began reconstructing her body. The moment Cadel saw it, he gathered his mana once more and took aim at her.

* * *

It was a scene of pure catastrophe. Blazing meteors rained down from the sky, crashing into the earth with deafening explosions, scattering embers in all directions.

A wildfire engulfed the heavens and the land. The very air shimmered with blistering heat, threatening to melt flesh and bone. Even a single breath felt suffocating. Was this truly the work of an ally?

With barely opened eyes, Van gritted his teeth and looked up at the sky. Kunra, burning like a second sun, hovered in the air, surrounded by an inferno that spun wildly like the flames of hell. The High Demons had long since abandoned the skies, faced with the simple choice—endure or perish.

One by one, the demons descended to the ground, but the humans could not stand against them. Even those clad in scale armor could do nothing but plant their feet firmly on the searing battlefield.

Van scanned the battlefield, watching as demons collapsed one after another. Those who could not wear scale armor had instead relied on barriers, but it was futile. The barriers, melting away like shed skin, lost their power, and their bodies dried up, drained of every last drop of moisture. The demons who failed to withstand the agony perished, their corpses left behind as shriveled husks—mummified in an instant.

‘……This power is overwhelming. Terrifyingly so.’

Was this the ‘cooperative strategy’ Cadel had spoken of with Kunra? Van wanted to believe that, but there was no sign of Cadel in this chaos. When Lydon had returned from his brief absence, there had been no message. And now, neither Cadel nor Hyron, who had left with him, had come back.

‘If he sent the Scarlet Dragon here, it probably means the situation isn’t too dangerous…… but still……’

A strange unease gnawed at him. If the Scarlet Dragon was here, it must have meant Cadel knew exactly what was happening. He had a plan. But what could he possibly gain by turning the battlefield into a living hell where even their allies struggled to survive?

His unanswered questions were swallowed by the searing heat, growing more unbearable by the second.

“I have released 40% of my full power. How many more demons must die before you intervene, O god of this foreign world……?”

Kunra channeled even more energy into Cadel. Even this much should have been enough to trigger the system’s warnings. And yet, as the garden’s creatures burned to ash and High Demons fell one after another, the system did nothing.

It ignored Kunra’s rampage.

That fact alone both irritated him and wounded his pride.

“So, you deem Hyron the greater threat over me? How offensive.”

He hadn’t expected the system to be this wary of Hyron. Even when the demons were overwhelmingly disadvantaged, it still held back on restrictions. Would he have to march his true form straight into the Demon King’s castle just to get its attention?

It made no sense. What did he lack that Hyron had? If he unleashed his full wrath, this war would have ended far sooner.

What possibility had the system seen in Hyron that made it so desperate to ‘remove’ him?

Kunra’s thoughts churned with irritation.

‘Hyron is strong, yes. But he’s nothing compared to me. The sheer magnitude of our power isn’t even in the same realm. No matter how powerful a Fairy King he may be, he lacks the ability to wipe out every enemy in the garden in one fell swoop as I have. So why……?’

Even after unlocking 40% of his power, his energy flowed smoothly. Not only was he slaughtering demons, but his influence even reached the humans, accelerating their recovery. What more did he need to do to draw the system’s attention?

As Kunra fumed, his gaze caught a small speck rapidly approaching. The moment he recognized its identity, his voice reverberated through the air.

[What are you doing here?]

It was Lydon. Wrapped in scale armor yet still reinforcing himself with multiple layers of ice barriers, the fairy grimaced at the sweltering heat and shouted over the roaring flames.

“I need to get Kash! Tell me where he is!”

[Kash……?]

“You can find him, can’t you? Hurry up, we don’t have time!”

Kash—the demon Cadel had brought along as a guide. The kin of the High Demon currently threatening Hyron. Hardly worth Kunra’s concern. Expending effort to locate such an insignificant existence was unappealing.

But Lydon wasn’t going to leave without an answer. Keeping him around any longer would only be a nuisance.

Kunra deliberated briefly before casting his gaze over the battlefield. In an instant, he scanned across the scorched demon corpses, the struggling humans, and the crumbled maze ruins. Then, his forelimb moved.

[There. Hiding underground, trying to avoid my flames.]

His claws pointed toward the collapsed exit of the maze—a pile of rubble with a minuscule air hole at the top.

With a flick of his claws, a blazing projectile struck the heap. The debris crumbled, revealing a huddled figure within.

Kash.

Curled up in a shallow burrow, gasping for breath.

Lydon’s eyes flashed as he immediately dove downward.

Kunra, already having lost interest, turned away to resume counting the number of slain demons.

[……!]

Kunra’s vision turned stark white, his once-fluid energy now tangled and chaotic. A wretched sensation, like being helplessly dragged against his will.

‘Finally. The god of this otherworld has shifted its focus. But…… something’s wrong.’

The demons were already dead—most of them, at least. There were no more enemies left to slaughter. So why now? Why had the system delayed its intervention until this moment?

Hyron wasn’t dead yet. That much was certain.

A sickening sensation, as if his blood were reversing its flow, twisted through him. Then, amidst the vertigo, an unthinkable hypothesis flickered in his mind.

‘No way.’

Through his dimming vision, Kunra caught a glimpse of Lydon—descending rapidly in pursuit of Kash.

And realization struck.

‘The god of this world wasn’t wary of Hyron at all, was it? It wasn’t the Fairy King it feared—but the one he would nurture. A being that, once fully grown, could not be stopped by direct intervention…… That’s what it was trying to prevent.’

Kunra’s eyes widened at the revelation. But before he could dwell on it further—before he could even think to act—the system clamped down on him.

Faster than he had ever experienced, his consciousness was forcefully seized.