The Wall of Reality Is Far Too High
To be completely honest, getting my hands on her in the first place had been a total accident.
Unlike the characters you pulled through the gacha, she was a story-reward unit stumbled upon while grinding through the main questline. If I remembered correctly, the backstory went that her parents had abandoned her, and then the orphanage threw her out, which was when I came along and took her under my wing.
Naturally, every single gamer lost their collective minds over her.
A seven-star character was something with drop rates lower than winning the lottery. To hand out a unit like that completely free of charge was, to all of us, the sweetest gift from heaven imaginable.
Of course, not a single soul realized the truth back then. The developers hadn't handed us an act of goodwill; they had handed us a goblet laced with lethal poison.
It all began with a single forum post.
Everyone had assumed it was ordinary bait, an innocuous troll thread. But inside the post lay a scene of sheer carnage: a screenshot showing the free seven-star unit standing all alone in the ashes after brutally slaughtering every other character on the player's roster.
Because the game offered ridiculous degrees of freedom, that account was permanently doomed. No matter how much cash the poor bastard poured into summoning new heroes, that freebie unit would just spawn in and butcher them over and over again. As far as I recalled, the guy ended up having to uninstall the game entirely.
The comment section beneath the post had erupted into utter chaos.
Countless wallet warriors had mobilized every trick in the book to tame her.
Affection grinding.
Level grinding.
Skill grinding.
And every other exploit under the sun.
Yet all that effort did was buy a little extra time. When the trigger condition arrived, a bloody rebellion was mathematically guaranteed. In the end, the vast majority threw up their hands and surrendered in despair.
But who was I?
"Screw it. Fine, let's see who breaks first."
I combed through mountains of data and parsed every skill tree, identifying every single unit flag likely to spark a mutiny. And the second their rebellion event triggered—
Click—!
A single button pressed, and the insurgent was suppressed in mere seconds flat.
Just like that, the dreaded rebellion had been smothered with absurd ease. Since nothing else went wrong afterward, I had just left her on the back burner, figuring everything was settled.
Never in my wildest nightmares did I expect the one person I least wanted to see to track me down. And for her to be the second one, no less.
Words Elena had tossed out not long ago echoed in my mind.
"Pride and Betrayal will probably try to kill you on sight. Oh, and Duty and Purity too! Those two basically had 'I'm gonna murder him' as their daily motto!"
"……"
I cut my gaze toward Selena, who was watching this unfold from a distance, and sent her a sharp look.
Run.
With her physical specs, she was more than capable of escaping on her own. I assumed she would read the room and bolt without looking back, but instead—
"Hate to break it to you, but I don't run away. Ever. You know how I am, don't you?"
Selena has activated Javelin Throw (B).
Her spear burst from her grip, rocketing straight toward Mordred.
However.
"Irritating."
A single flick of the hand.
With just that careless gesture, the spear reversed its trajectory in midair, hurtling right back toward Selena and impaling her clean through the abdomen.
"Ke-heck—!"
I ripped my eyes away from Selena, who had been incapacitated in a single exchange, and turned back to the figure standing right before me.
"Holy shit on a cracker."
Mordred was kneeling on both knees, gazing up at me with an expression that weighed heavier than lead.
What kind of lunatic situation was this even supposed to be? Assuming she wouldn't recognize my face in this new body anyway, I decided to play dumb and address her like a stranger.
"W-Who might you be?"
"……"
"Acting like this with someone you've only just met could cause a misunderstanding…"
Shwaaaa—
A chill of pure, suffocating death rolled off her glazed, lifeless eyes. My survival instincts screamed at me: one wrong syllable here, and my life was forfeit.
Whether she had help or figured it out on her own, there was no hiding it. I dropped the act and spoke truthfully.
"Mordred… right?"
"It is me, Captain. All this time… I have yearned so desperately to see you. There was so much I wished to tell you, so many things I swore to say to your face…"
"Uh, ah, yeah. Sure. But hey, could you maybe back your face up just a tiny bit while we talk?"
She was way too close. When someone closes the distance until their nose is practically brushing against yours while wearing that expression, it stops being intense and starts being downright terrifying.
I reached out to gently nudge her face back, but the moment I moved—
"Why do you push me away? Is it because of the sins I committed in the past? If so, I shall carve open my own belly this instant to prove my loyalty to you, Captain—"
"Hey! Hey! You crazy bitch! What kind of suicidal garbage are you talking about?!"
I slapped my hands down to stop her because she genuinely looked ready to disembowel herself right there. On top of that, I had a sinking premonition that shoving her away might trigger an instant Nice Boat bad end. While I was frantically calculating an escape angle—
Yeong So-so has activated Annihilate (B+).
Unlike her previous wild swings, this slash was compressed into a lethal, singular point. It slammed dead-center into Mordred.
Caught completely off-guard, Mordred went tumbling backward through the dirt. Yet when she stopped rolling, there wasn't so much as a scratch on her flesh, let alone a wound.
A single breath.
In the tiny fraction of a second when Yeong So-so exhaled to recover from the recoil of her strike, a sword shimmering with pale white-gold drew itself from Mordred's hip.
Mordred has activated Throne Shattering (SS).
Black qi bled like viscous ink from the white-gold blade. She merely swung it. That was all.
Yet a cataclysmic shockwave of intertwined white and crimson surged forth, swelling to an apocalyptic scale capable of blanketing the heavens as it hurtled straight for Yeong So-so.
Yeong So-so has activated Heavenly Demon Sword Technique (SS+).
Yeong So-so unleashed an ocean of demonic qi she had never revealed before, her inner power boiling to a fever pitch.
Second Form: Demonic Sky Flash
It was her supreme secret art, backed by the entirety of her internal cultivation. The moment the techniques of two seven-star characters collided in midair, fractures rippled across empty space itself. The sheer aftermath of their clash transcended physical laws.
KWA-AAAAAANG—!!
Blown away by the violent backlash, Yeong So-so was hammered into a massive tree trunk, blood gushing from every pore of her body. She had already completely blacked out.
By contrast, Mordred dusted off her shoulder and turned back to me.
"Captain, did you take such flimsy garbage as your companion? I can treat you far better. If you wish, I will surrender every secret treasure I have ever gathered to you."
"Oh, well, that part sounds a little tempting…?"
"Then—"
"Still no."
Because anyone with working eyes could tell she was not in her right mind. Her neck was tilted at an unnatural, grotesque angle as she stared at me, her expression fractured and twisted. It looked eerily familiar, and as I racked my brain, a notorious piece of fan art from the game's forum flashed across my mind. That yandere illustration where she kidnaps the player, ties him up like a roast pig, and spends eternity together…
"Captain. My Captain. Just who on earth is that woman? Why did you abandon us to do something like this out here? I missed you. A hundred days, a thousand days, two thousand days without end, I pined and wished and burned to meet you. So please… please…"
Mother of God—!
Whatever words came after were drowned out as my legs moved on pure reflex, carrying me backward. None of this made an ounce of sense, but one conclusion was crystal clear.
The Knight of Betrayal had no intention of killing me. On the contrary, if she caught me, I was destined to spend the rest of my miserable life locked away in a cage.
Why the hell is she like this?!
I had no memory of ever treating her particularly well. All I ever did for her was…
Level grinding.
Skill grinding.
Weapon grinding.
Armor grinding.
Affection grinding.
Item grinding.
Talisman grinding.
Et cetera…
"……"
Holy crap, I pampered the hell out of her, didn't I?
I doubted these characters understood the material value of those resources, but that was the only logical reason left. Without hesitation, I drew my sword.
Her average stat line hovered around SS-rank. Mine was a pathetic D-rank. So-so was probably an A-rank, and Selena sat somewhere between E and D. The probability of winning was flat-out zero, but the odds of survival weren't entirely non-existent.
Reading the look on her face, she was about to pull something catastrophic. It was the exact face someone makes right before blowing up their own life.
Skill activated: Concealment (S).
To test her reaction and combat prowess, I erased my presence with Concealment. But Mordred merely stamped her boot against the earth, and by the drift of the dust kicked into the air, she pinpointed my location instantly.
"You crazy psycho…!"
"Captain, why are you running from me?"
"Hate to break it to you, sweetie, but I have no desire to sit down for dinner with a mental patient. Got that?"
Aware that applying even a fraction of her strength would turn me into red mist, she held back, turning our skirmish into a frantic game of tag where she lunged to restrain me and I scrambled to dodge. But my insult must have pierced her armor; tears of blood began streaming down her cheeks as she pursued me.
Wait, is she crying because I called her a mental patient…?
A flicker of pity sparked in my chest, but I had zero intention of letting her grab me. One look at those completely unhinged eyes was enough to make my knees tremble.
Skill activated: Yang Demon Sword Technique (B).
Scarlet flames coated my blade. I swung purely to threaten her, but the moment the tip clashed against her plate armor, one brutal reality crashed through my mind.
The enchantments I had personally embedded into the armor of every Round Table knight back in the game:
◈ Physical Reflection
◈ Magic Reflection
◈ Divine Power Disruption
◈ Curse Immunity
If I remembered the stats right, that set reflected every offensive skill ranked C or lower…
"Ah, shit."
The flames that had surged toward her inverted and rocketed straight back into my face.
KWA-AAAAANG!
I barely deflected the brunt of it, but my left arm ended up severely scorched. Am I genuinely brain-dead? How the hell did I build her gear myself and completely forget what it does?!
Looking up, I saw Mordred spiraling into panic, terrified that she was the one who had hurt me. Her gaze had turned so thoroughly cracked that I was ready to throw in the towel and accept my fate—when suddenly, a voice echoed in my mind.
The serene resonance washed through my head, instantly cooling my panicked thoughts. And then, a pure white radiance enveloped us.
??? has activated Teleport (S).
There was only brilliant, blinding light.
In an instant, the three of us vanished without a trace, leaving Mordred standing completely alone in the clearing.
She had wounded her Captain with her own hands. He had fled from her. And she had seen the raw terror carved into his eyes.
Unanswered questions churned endlessly through her mind. To her, he was the entire world, her parent, and the sheltering fence that kept the dark at bay. And that very person was running away from her.
Tears of blood leaked down her cheeks, dripping onto the desecrated soil. A vast ocean of despair raged violently within her chest.
If she tracked his mana signature right now, finding him would be child's play. But the lingering image of the look he gave her anchored her boots to the earth. She sank to her knees, weeping inconsolably in the silence of the woods.
She cursed herself for hurting him. She cursed the cruelty of their reunion. Over and over, she drowned in her own self-loathing.