As Yuri cut down Valfua, a question nagged at her mind.
This battle wasn’t much different from the exhausting fights they’d had against the Empire before.
The Empire’s half-monster soldiers were tricky opponents, but they didn’t feel significantly stronger. If things continued like this, victory in the skirmishes seemed within reach.
So why, then, had Cedric—who had summoned a god from another realm—bothered to expend so many troops?
“Your Highness.”
Before she knew it, Jared appeared at her side. Despite the heavy breathing from their training, he had managed to keep up. Nearby, Roland was also cutting down enemies.
“You’re going after that guy, right? Roland said he senses a strong aura of dark magic around him.”
“That’s right.”
“Leave it to us.”
Jared slung his sword over his shoulder, just as Yuri often did.
“It’s not yet time for you to step in, Your Highness.”
“I don’t trust it.”
“Just leave it to us.”
“Really?”
Yuri smiled faintly.
“Alright. I’ll leave it to you.”
Jared nodded and stepped forward, moving with sharp agility. Each step he took sent sprays of blood into the air.
He was stronger than she had expected.
In a way, it was only natural. To face a powerful enemy meant growing stronger oneself—that was the way of the world.
Yuri Briole was no exception.
She gazed toward the distant horizon. At the heart of this land, now unrecognizable in shape, Cedric awaited her alongside the god from another realm.
She had come this far to kill him.
Summoning the power of chaos was now as natural as breathing. The mental turmoil Moyongchan had warned her about no longer troubled her—it was like a recurring headache, a part of her now.
Cedric, the enemy, had shaped her into this.
Yuri gripped her sword tightly. Just as she was about to move forward—
“Yuri Briole.”
“Roland.”
“I’m curious about your thoughts.”
Roland approached after killing an Imperial soldier and rifling through his corpse.
He was already stained with enemy blood.
“Why prepare a fight like this? Aren’t they weaker than expected?”
“The real force must be behind them.”
“So why drag things out? I want to hear your opinion.”
“You probably won’t like it.”
“I’m not expecting anything good.”
“First possibility: reconnaissance?”
“They must already know our full strength.”
“But maybe they want to see us again.”
“And the second?”
“Clearing out the leftovers?”
Roland looked at Yuri.
She smiled wryly.
“Look at them—they’re half-finished rejects.”
“So they’re just burning through troops?”
“Cedric’s trying to remake the world his way. Do you think he’d need these kinds of things in his perfect dream world?”
The troops deployed in this battle felt like half-orcs.
Neither fully human nor completely consumed by dark magic to gain immense power, they were like illegitimate offspring caught in between.
Cedric might be planning to wipe them all out and build his own dark magic empire.
Yuri thought this was the more likely scenario.
Roland smirked.
“Is there a chance something’s gone wrong, and they’re dragging things out for no reason?”
“No. You saw it. He succeeded. Don’t hold onto false hopes.”
“I see.”
Roland raised his sword.
“So these are just the small fry he sent to deal with us.”
“Yeah. But don’t underestimate them.”
“Don’t worry.”
Though not as strong as expected, these enemies were no pushovers. They resembled the black-clad Imperial soldiers they’d faced before.
Yuri saw this as another butterfly effect she had caused.
Originally, the Empire had maintained its black army continuously, even until Cedric traveled back in time.
Cedric slowly and surely took control of the Empire and changed the world.
But everything twisted when an enemy like Yuri Briole appeared.
This Cedric was impatient.
The very existence of half-broken, discarded troops meant things weren’t going entirely according to his plan.
So even if he had summoned a god from another realm, Cedric might not be in full control. Maybe, as Roland suggested, he was stalling for time.
But Yuri refused to cling to hopeful expectations.
She had to fight assuming the worst.
“I’ll leave those two to it. I’ll clean up here.”
Jared swung his sword wildly, chasing after the leader, with Roland following close behind.
It wouldn’t be long before they caught him.
Yuri turned her gaze. Not only Briole’s forces but also troops from other nations were fighting without much difficulty.
To minimize her allies’ casualties, Yuri scanned for powerful enemies.
Like the Valfua she had just killed—enemies that were troublesome for ordinary knights but posed no problem for her—were scattered everywhere.
Suddenly, one of them lunged at her first. It hesitated as if unable to meet her gaze, then raised its sword and charged.
“Aaaargh!”
Its upper body was intact, but its lower half slithered along the ground like a snake.
Yuri drew Guilty.
Seeing it, her thoughts cleared.
No matter how many thoughts crowded her mind, when someone raised a blade against her, she had to fight. The battlefield was full of enemies. There was no time to waste on idle thoughts.
She aimed to end the fight quickly.
She parried the enemy’s strike, then with overwhelming force, pushed it back and plunged her blade into its exposed chest. The sword pierced through.
The creature bled and collapsed. Yuri swung her sword again to finish it off completely.
Too easy.
If they charged her despite dying so quickly, there was only one reason.
A greater will was directing them from behind.
“Your Highness!”
Suddenly, a knight called out to her.
“You’re too deep in!”
“Is that so?”
Yuri was already deep within enemy lines. Surrounded, it would be difficult to escape without killing them all.
But she stepped further in.
“I’m going deeper!”
She said this and swung Guilty.
There were so many enemies that no matter how she swung, blood would fly.
The knight shook his head watching the spray of blood, then swung his sword at nearby foes.
With every swing, red liquid splattered.
She cut down enemy after enemy.
The numbers didn’t dwindle.
As Yuri slaughtered them herself, a dark energy approached.
She deliberately ignored it until it came close, then unleashed a Soul Slash, cutting it down.
The dark magic energy recoiled, wounded.
“What’s this?”
Opaque tentacles surrounded Yuri from all sides.
She stared at them.
“Not bad at all.”
“And who are you?”
A hooded mage appeared. For a moment, she thought of Cory, but this figure was much taller.
The mage slowly pulled back his hood.
Beneath was a skull-like face—no flesh, just hollow eye sockets flickering with a dark red glow.
Yuri somehow knew who he was.
A name flashed through her mind.
“Aizen?”
“Oh, you remember.”
He was a mage dispatched from the Empire alongside Ragna during the Alliance battles. She’d seen him use Dispel magic occasionally.
“It’s your fault.”
Aizen thrust his skull forward.
“You’re the reason I became like this.”
“What nonsense?”
The red glow in Aizen’s eye sockets flared brighter.
“If you hadn’t been there… I would have been closer to ‘Him’!”
Dark magic surged violently from his body. The Imperial soldiers nearby turned their heads toward Yuri, as if Aizen had shifted their target onto her.
Yuri felt a cold sensation wrap around her shoulders.
Dark magic.
“I’ll kill you and return to ‘Him’!”
She infused Guilty with Soul Slash energy and cut through the dark magic surrounding her.
But Aizen kept summoning black tentacles. Each time he used dark magic, his body shattered like fragments scattering.
He was sacrificing himself for the spell.
“Ughhh!”
Imperial soldiers encircled Yuri, and a massive tentacle swung down like a club over her head.
Yuri tried to step back, but the soldiers clung to her, preventing escape.
Her body was held fast.
Guilty was stuck in one soldier’s body.
Then, black translucent tentacles began striking fiercely.
If she stayed still, she’d be hit.
Yuri exploded the Soul Slash energy.
A small blast erupted.
The Imperial soldiers surrounding her shattered into pieces. Blood and flesh splattered across the ground like paint.
Then Yuri swung Guilty upward.
The tentacle descending toward her was sliced cleanly.
“Damn!”
Glowering at the groaning Aizen, Yuri pushed off the ground and moved.
Aizen flailed, trying belatedly to use dark magic again, but he lacked the strength to stop her.
Yuri shrugged off the clinging translucent tentacles with her hands and feet, then drove Guilty into Aizen’s chest.
“Ugh…”
She knocked him down and pulled the sword free.
There was no flesh inside his robe, but something clearly formed his body.
Yuri stabbed Guilty into his chest once more.
The red glow in Aizen’s eyes flickered wildly.
“I don’t want to kill my comrades in the Alliance like this…”
Yuri looked down at Eisen and spoke.
“When did it start?”
“Heh heh…”
Eisen’s jaw shifted.
“Of course, from the very beginning. Ha ha ha…”
“Did you realize the Alliance forces were just a ploy by the Empire?”
“Of course. You messed up a lot of things because of that.”
“Then die.”
As Yuri raised her sword again, Eisen said,
“Killing me won’t help. The world will be remade by Him anyway, and I’ll be resurrected then. As His loyal servant…”
It seemed he had been instilled with some kind of belief that death was meaningless to him.
Yuri shook her head.
“No. That won’t happen.”
“You don’t know anything…”
“I have the power to scatter black magic. Ever heard of it?”
Yuri layered the energy of her Soul Slash over her sword, slicing through the air a few times. The remnants of Eisen’s black magic began to crack and then faded away as if they had never existed.
Eisen’s laughter faltered.
“Your soul, your life force, whatever it is—it will simply be wiped clean.”
“W-wait. Don’t say things like that…”
“Didn’t hear that? Then Cedric must not have cared much for you. He probably just sent you here to die.”
“That’s not true. He entrusted me with a great mission. For the next world…”
“Just stalling for time until you rot?”
Yuri smirked, leaning forward.
“Let me make this clear. If I catch you, there’s no resurrection or anything like that. My sword will completely erase your black magic. Souls tainted by black magic like yours won’t be left behind.”
“Wait—”
“Die.”
Without letting Eisen finish, Yuri drove her sword into the space between his eyebrows.
Eisen tried to turn his head, but Yuri’s strike was faster.
The blade pierced the center of his skull.
A black smoke-like substance seeped from the hole in his skull, but it was crushed and scattered by the energy of Yuri’s Soul Slash.
“Ah…”
Eisen’s death rattle, like a sigh, drifted through the air before vanishing.
Yuri withdrew her sword.
“Phew…”
Raising her eyes, she saw the Anti-Empire Alliance soldiers fighting the half-monster Imperial troops. They were all drenched in blood, locked in a frenzied battle.
It was literally a demonic battlefield.
Yuri let out a brief laugh, then moved forward again. The demon soldiers inhabiting this hellish place advanced toward her.
“Cedric, are you listening?”
Yuri spoke to them.
“You’ll end up just like that guy.”
Cedric was probably hearing her words.
To him, watching the battle unfold, Yuri sent her resolve.
“I will kill you for sure.”
Unexpectedly, a reply came.
[Is that so?]
One of the Imperial soldiers standing before Yuri opened his mouth, and Cedric’s voice flowed out.
As he approached Yuri, he said,
[Yuri. Threatening me is one thing…]
Yuri’s eyes widened at what followed.
[But you should’ve taken care of your woman first. Ha ha ha ha…]