Chapter 92
Sian looked so thin—more like he was in a full-blown panic.
‘He’s been like this since I said I’d abandoned him to the devil—can’t even breathe properly.’
I gave him a few seconds. I couldn’t press too hard. A cornered rat will bite the cat; Sian might snap if I pushed him.
After a long moment his lips trembled and he asked, “…My lady, what is it you want from me?”
“Simple. April is going to the Evelyn camp. She’ll accompany them only as far as the third floor. But if that happens, I don’t think Lady Yeniel will sit still. Or maybe others will, too? Everyone’s been watching me the whole time on the third floor. What if they start talking in front of everyone?”
My voice chilled bit by bit.
Ah—stay calm. My goal is to get Sian to ‘betray’ them.
Sian’s eyes reddened. “You knew… you knew everything?”
He looked like he was about to cry. I smiled brightly in front of him.
“If I’d known, what would be different? The only thing we need to talk about is the part Sian must work on anyway.”
He’d already figured it out in his head. He might even anticipate more than I had planned.
“Now there’s nothing left for us to do together.”
He wore the wounded look of someone who thinks I’ve abandoned him first. What a joke—I was the one who wanted to cry.
After a long pause Sian spoke in a faint, wavering voice. “I can’t deceive Lady Yeniel perfectly. There are too many holes. If Lady Yeniel only takes the item, maybe it’d be fine, but if she goes to Lady Evelyn’s side and, by chance, the people there look healthy… Lady Yeniel will suspect.”
“Isn’t it Sian’s job to think of that and clean it up?” I giggled.
As if he were testing whether he would give the reply I’d pictured in my head, like he already had an answer I’d planned and was trying it out. To be honest, I didn’t know exactly what would make Yeniel stop suspecting me either. He’s smart and panicked—he’d figure something out.
In the distance I could see the tide of troops running toward the defense tower. Sian stared numbly at the horizon, packed with knights.
There were far too many of those monsters.
Time to go down. I gripped my halberd and prepared to fight.
I didn’t need to hear more from Sian—him asking how to fool Yeniel was already an acceptance of my plan.
“…”
It was oddly quiet; when I looked up, Sian was silently crying. His eyes were rimmed red.
“Don’t be like that. You should be happy April is leaving. If April disappears, Sian, you’ll be the only combatant left here. Even if you can’t summon a high spirit and are useless, even if you make the mistake of sending April to their side—no one will abandon you.”
Memories of the times I’d traveled with Sian flashed through my head.
A person’s heart doesn’t get cut cleanly. Those tears meant something—just a little bit of softness.
Sian was a very emotional person. Unlike Yeniel.
He couldn’t hide his feelings well; once emotions mixed in, he couldn’t make purely official judgments.
The wounded look he showed when he asked if I’d deceived him. The reaction as if he’d fallen into the hell he feared. And now, the prickly, proud man unexpectedly crying.
Sian liked me—quite a lot, it seemed.
Not some status-bar affection notification—this was the real Sian, and I realized it.
“I’ll go. Anyway, I was going to take the rewards here since I fought alone—of course it’s mine. And yes, you deliberately withheld them even though you knew we were hurt. But that’s our relationship, isn’t it?”
I glanced back, then went down toward the defense tower. Time to dive back into the battlefield.
‘There was that monster in the banquet hall who needed the First Emperor’s heart. This must be related to the defense game somehow.’
It was an event that doesn’t appear in normal mode—only in hard mode.
If I went down to the battlefield, Sian would likely go back to the banquet hall and cover for me with Yeniel. He’d fabricate a reason why I ended up with Evelyn’s side, or if he couldn’t, he’d set up a backstory that made it look like he’d had to send me there for some reason. In short, he’d sow the seeds.
Sian would handle it.
“…But there are way too many of them.”
Coming down from the tower, I ground my teeth at the tide of enemies.
Hard mode, seriously? There’s difficult, and then there’s this. Ridiculous.
One against several hundred.
“Saying ‘several hundred’ sounds nicer than it is,” I muttered—those figures assumed Yurel and I split them between us.
The problem was… the endless line of the First Emperor’s knight-specters stretched out with no end in sight.
I could hear hooves, see the choking dust storm.
No matter how awakened someone is, facing an army alone is impossible.
But to survive you had to keep fighting.
I ran, almost flying.
At the front of the formation were swordsmen.
I leapt and sliced the swords from hands of the charging knights.
Thud—!
Several knight monsters flew away in an instant.
Still, they looked like ordinary knights—weaker than the special units that show up each round.
I cut and cut without pause, sending the next wave of knight-monsters scattering.
I tried to clear as many as I could with big swings to keep the area around me open. If I got surrounded here, I’d actually die.
Superior physique didn’t help much in a situation like this. Weapons would stab at me from all sides; how could I avoid them? I can’t shrink my body. There was no trick.
I scanned the battlefield for Yurel and ran toward the center.
At one point I nearly slipped. Continuous fighting had worn down the heels of April’s shoes.
Watching each other’s backs with Yurel looked like the better option.
The enemies poured in like a black wave. No matter how many I cut, they kept coming.
Where was Yurel?
For a moment I calculated that Evelyn might still be recovering from a curse—perhaps she was tending to Evelyn and hadn’t come out.
‘I’ll try to hold them off alone for now.’
The rule of every defense game was to prevent the tower from being destroyed.
As long as the mage’s mansion didn’t fall, we were good.
We might not have to stop every last one; success could be met if the stronghold didn’t fall for a set time.
A stillness settled over the field at some point.
A command seemed to be giving the knight monsters orders; a ring formation started to surround me from a distance.
The knights moved in a circle, drawing closer.
‘I need to break through that side.’
I ran, parrying the blades aimed at me and dodging ordinary arrows.
Extreme focus made the world slow down.
For some reason, at a certain moment I began to see the sword paths. I could see the directions of attacks and know how to deflect or slip away.
It was quiet. And clear.
Was this the swordsmanship talent that had helped the Sharon marquis family’s swordsmen succeed through generations?
[How dare you.]
Suddenly a dark cloud cast itself over the battlefield. A deep-blue lightning bolt dropped dead center.
Szzzz—!
It hit just where I had been running. I grit my teeth and looked away from the white, flickering bolt.
There was nothing left where the lightning struck. The ground lay blackened as if to mark the hit.
[How dare you bring troops into my mansion! I will kill you all!]
A voice boomed over the battlefield and seemed to rake through my head.
I cut myself on purpose to snap back to reality.
I looked up at the sky.
What I’d thought was a storm cloud was actually enormous black smoke. From the tone, it was the great mage.
Defense game result tally
3–0! Congratulations on your victory!
Tip. There are events you can win by “escaping”!
A tip window popped up explaining the final boss in normal mode is something you can never kill.
I turned around. I had to run.
Because an impossible natural disaster was sweeping in from the distance.
The knight corps were being wiped out. Storms, lightning, thunder—these things swept across the horizon and erased the enemies.
But no matter how fast humans run, it’s hard to outrun a force of nature.
I ran at top speed, lungs burning, but the archmage’s magic was faster. At some point I had the feeling I was the one being chased rather than the other way around.
Boom—!
A blue lightning bolt ripped the air and struck right in front of me.
Between the archmage, who attacked as I approached, countless knight monsters coming at me, and the archmage closing in—something told me this was the end.
Nothing came to mind then.
At that moment, something like a glass horse flashed by and drew up beside me.
A desperate voice shouted, “Grab onto me, Lady April!”
Evelyn had appeared, urgently reaching out to me.
