The Death of a Protagonist
It was supposed to be a childcare story.
It had taken an entire week to regroup the coalition, which had been scattered by a sudden night raid. Temur pulled a broken arrowhead from his flesh with his bare hands.
"There is no more room for compromise. To survive, we must scale the walls of Winproter. But the enemy's strength is formidable. Backed by the Imperial Court, the Empire's forces will keep coming without end."
Temur pointed a blood-stained finger at the crude map laid out on the table.
"We divide our forces into two. While I lead the main army to draw the enemy's attention, Khan! You will take the elite vanguard, bypass their flank, and strike the northern gate of Winproter's walls. We must tear their formation apart with a pincer movement."
Khan's eyes widened in fierce opposition to this perilous plan of splitting their forces.
"Father! No! There is no reason to divide our strength. Let us concentrate all our forces instead, and I will lead the charge to break through their lines myself! Trying to distract the main Imperial army with only half our numbers is nothing short of suicide!"
"Khan!"
Temur's roar reverberated through the tent. He strode over to his fuming son and gripped Khan's shoulders firmly with both hands. A heavy weight radiated from those stone-like palms—the weight of a chieftain's resolve, crushing down a son's desperate worry for his father.
"You are... the next Great Chieftain of the Krauk."
"Father..."
"We have already spilled too much blood to the Empire's schemes. We must survive. One of us... must live to lead the future of this tribe. This is an order from your Great Chieftain."
Temur's gaze was unyielding, solid as bedrock. Realizing his father was willingly marching into the jaws of death to act as a decoy for the tribe's future, Khan clenched his fists until they bled. Unable to break his father's resolve, he finally bowed his head.
"...Understood. I will lead the vanguard, smash that gate in the shortest time possible, and end this war. So please, you must survive and rejoin us."
In a peace already shattered, the tragic march of father and son began, their paths diverging.
Pushing through a raging blizzard, Khan's vanguard marched for days and nights on a detour. Finally, the northern border wall of the Winproter Grand Duchy came into view.
A massive, cold, silver wall towering between the canyons. The fortress guarding it featured unique spires, and the white wolf banner fluttered in the wind.
Standing at the front, panting heavily, the moment he laid eyes on that scenery—
"Aaargh!"
Khan clutched his head and groaned. The fragments of his past life, which had plagued him with headaches, burst through like a broken dam the moment they collided with the sight before him.
The silver wall, the white wolf, the Great Migration of the barbarian coalition driven south by the freezing climate...!
It was a web novel he had read countless times on his smartphone during his commutes in his past life. A typical healing childcare romance fantasy featuring a scarred Northern Grand Duke and a sunshine heroine: The Flower that Bloomed in the Cold Snow.
"Lord Khan! Are you alright?!"
"What on earth is happening...!"
A startled Arina rushed over to support him, but Khan, his face deathly pale, gasped for air and pushed them away.
The Great Migration War... Cornered by the pressure of the Imperial Court, the Grand Duke of Winproter chose to fight to the death... and the strategy he used to crush the barbarian coalition was...
...Instead of retreating, Reinhardt, who had launched a surprise night raid, hid in the freezing forest, leading only his elite knights.
Khan's pupils trembled.
Even through the agonizing pain of his toes rotting from frostbite, he endured for a week, aiming for the head of the Great Chieftain Temur—the man who had become his friend through their letters.
This was the beginning of the original novel.
Finally standing before Temur, Reinhardt spoke with a heavy heart.
The male protagonist, Grand Duke Reinhardt, had employed a self-sacrificing tactic to avoid being overwhelmed by the barbarians' sheer numbers.
"Through our letters, I knew you were a great leader. I am sorry. But I, too, have those I must protect. I must kill you here."
A decapitation strike: feigning a frontal assault while leading his elite detachment on a detour to personally execute the enemy's leader, Great Chieftain Temur.
If that's the case... then Grand Duke Reinhardt of the original novel isn't here at the northern gate. He must have led his detachment to launch a surprise attack on the main army where Father is!
His blood ran cold. The image of his father's final expression flashed through his mind—the father who had sent him to the safer vanguard, insisting that at least one of them must survive.
"No. No... absolutely not!!!"
Khan slapped away his lieutenants' reaching hands and spun around.
"All forces, retreat! We return to the main army immediately! We must save my father!!!"
Kicking up a flurry of snow, Khan bolted like an arrow back toward the battlefield of the main army.
The biting, razor-sharp wind tore at his cheeks, but Khan rode like a man possessed, kicking his mount's flanks with the sole, desperate thought of saving his father.
Fragments of the original novel flashed through his mind as he galloped.
Reinhardt suffered from a deep emotional wound caused by the horrors of the Great Migration War. Because of this, he could not bring himself to get close to his young daughter, Monica, treating her coldly and hurting her deeply.
But after meeting the sunshine heroine, Rose, his wounds were healed, and he finally held his daughter in his arms, offering a sincere apology and his love.
This novel was a childcare story about a scarred Northern Grand Duke discovering his paternal love. In the original, Reinhardt was a father to a child.
I don't give a damn about any of that!
Khan gnashed his teeth, his eyes bloodshot. Whether that noble Grand Duke had a daughter he cherished with all his heart, or whether he would grow into a wonderful father with a beautiful narrative, meant absolutely nothing to Khan.
If Reinhardt was a father with a child to protect, Khan was a son who had to protect his dying father.
Hold on. Please, please just stay alive!
But.
When Khan's vanguard returned at breakneck speed and reached the main battlefield led by Temur, the plains had already turned into a sea of blood.
"F-Father...!"
As Khan entered the heart of the battlefield, a horrific sight burned into his eyes.
"Ugh..."
In the middle of countless barbarian corpses, Great Chieftain Temur, draped in his massive bear pelt, knelt with dozens of spears and swords impaling his body.
"I am sorry. That we cannot march forward together."
And standing before him was the Empire's grim reaper, his silver armor stained crimson with blood. The male protagonist of the original novel, Grand Duke Reinhardt von Winproter.
"I will do my utmost."
A cold shimmer, like a winter haze, rose from Reinhardt's blade.
With a grim expression, the Grand Duke looked down at the kneeling Temur and swung his sword without a shred of mercy.
"NOOOOOOO!!!"
Though Khan's throat-tearing scream echoed across the battlefield, time marched on mercilessly.
Slash!
With a sickening sound, Reinhardt's sword ruthlessly severed Temur's thick neck.
Thud.
Dark red blood sprayed into the air as his father's body, once like a towering mountain, collapsed powerlessly to the ground.
And the head of the great chieftain rolled tragically onto the snow.
The moment he witnessed his father's death with his own eyes, something snapped inside Khan's mind.
Thump-thump! Thump-thump!
Khan's heart began to beat so violently it felt as if it would explode.
The remnants of the fever he had suffered while hovering between life and death as an infant—the blood of a Great Warrior—used his father's death as fuel, exploding far beyond the limits of humanity.
Heat rose like steam from Khan's skin, which glowed a furious red as if his veins were about to burst.
The fully restored memories of his past life tangled with a burning thirst for vengeance for the father who had given him boundless love in this life.
"GRAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Khan leaped.
Spanning dozens of meters through the air in a single bound, Khan's massive shadow loomed over Grand Duke Reinhardt, who was just about to sheathe his sword after dealing the fatal blow to Temur.
In that split second, Reinhardt's sorrowful face, faintly visible beneath his helmet, burned into Khan's vision.
"Rose... I, I betrayed my friend."
It was the scene where Reinhardt would later confess his sins to the heroine, Rose.
"Through our letters, I truly considered that barbarian chieftain my friend. I believed that with him, we could forge a path where all our northern people could live together. But..."
While Reinhardt was away at the front, the main Imperial army—whom he had believed to be reinforcements—had seized the Winproter Grand Ducal estate, taking his wife and young daughter hostage.
"In the end, to save my family... I had to slay the friend who trusted me with my own hands. The barbarians he sought so desperately to protect were dragged away miserably as the Empire's slaves. I... in the end, I failed to protect anything!"
A man forced to kill Temur with his own hands and watch the barbarians he respected fall into slavery. The Grand Duke, too, was nothing but a scapegoat of the Empire.
Within Khan's boiling blood, a brief, heavy pang of sympathy flickered.
But.
Khan's body was already slicing through the air, laden with murderous intent. His axe, burning with vengeance, was already hurtling down in an unstoppable arc.
"...?!"
Reinhardt's eyes widened at the sudden, overwhelming bloodlust descending from above.
But it was too late.
"DIE!!!"
The double-bitted axe gripped in Khan's hands slammed down toward Reinhardt like a falling meteor.
*BOOM!*
A deafening roar, as if the world itself were splitting apart, swept across the battlefield.
Clang! Reinhardt's sword, the Snowflake Claw, shattered into pieces.
And without slowing down, Khan's axe blade brutally tore through the silver helmet and upper torso of Grand Duke Reinhardt—the male protagonist of the romance fantasy novel—splitting him in two in a single strike.
Squelch! Crunch! Flesh, bone, and shards of crumpled armor exploded in all directions.
"Bella... Monica..." The names he had fought so desperately to protect spilled from his lips.
Reinhardt's lower body collapsed miserably beside Temur's corpse, spurting fountains of blood.
The son of an extra, who was meant to die as a mere stepping stone to elevate the original male lead, had killed the Northern Grand Duke. He had killed a child's father.
Drenched in crimson blood from head to toe, Khan stood tall between the decapitated Great Chieftain and the bisected Grand Duke.
Only Khan's ragged breathing echoed softly across the battlefield.
"Great Chieftain..."
"Ah, great Chieftain Temur..."
The surviving barbarian warriors, bloodied and battered, collapsed onto the snow.
Before the death of the towering mountain who had united them, the proud warriors of the north bowed their heads in devastating grief.
"Do not bow your heads!"
The warriors' shoulders flinched and stiffened.
Khan slowly bent down and plunged both hands deep into the blood of his father, Temur, which had stained the snow crimson.
Sticky, hot blood. The will to survive that his father had sacrificed his life to protect.
Khan roughly wiped his blood-stained hands across his own face. From his forehead to his chin, the blood left a vivid mark, etched like a warrior's crest.
"As of today, I, Khan, am the new Great Chieftain of the Northern Coalition."
With his declaration, Khan brutally hacked off the intact head from the Grand Duke's mangled upper torso.
Slash!
Khan raised the Grand Duke's dripping head high into the sky.
"Raise your heads! Look closely! The enemy leader, the Northern Grand Duke, has died by my hand!"
The eyes of the barbarians, once crushed by grief, snapped toward the sky.
Khan pointed toward the towering southern wall with bloodshot eyes.
"This strike force led by the Grand Duke was the absolute elite of the Empire's north! This means the bastards guarding those walls are nothing but a leaderless rabble, trembling in fear! We march on!"
Khan did not look back. Leaving his father's side amidst the mountain of corpses, he marched toward the walls, holding the Grand Duke's head high, driven solely by the legacy of survival.
"UWOOOOOOOOH!"
Their devastating grief instantly ignited into madness.
The barbarian coalition surged madly toward the walls, following their new Great Chieftain, Khan.
"T-The Grand Duke has fallen!"
"This is impossible! The Royal Guard has been wiped out?!"
The moment the Imperial garrison saw Reinhardt's severed head in Khan's hand, their morale shattered instantly.
Anything resembling a proper defense was utterly impossible.
Crash. The defensive line collapsed in an instant.
Ruthlessly slaughtering the demoralized rabble, Khan and his blood-drenched barbarian warriors finally began to scale the high, sturdy walls of Winproter.
The walls of a healing childcare romance fantasy were being brutally trampled under the bloody footprints of savages.