Three Minutes of Joint Combat
Three minutes. Under normal circumstances, it was nothing. Not even enough time to properly sip a cup of tea, a fleeting span that vanished after walking down a short corridor. But three minutes in the heat of battle was different. One wrong breath could mean death, one delayed judgment could send someone collapsing. Especially now, with the mana core in the Central Sealed Area on the verge of rampaging and the priest of the Black Moon driving a shadow army straight at us.
“Break through the left flank!” Siella shouted.
Three black knights charged simultaneously. Their armor wasn’t real metal—it was closer to black smoke given form. Yet every time their greatswords came down, the air itself tore apart and the inscriptions carved into the sealing chamber floor trembled.
Siella deflected the frontal greatsword with her scabbard and severed the left shadow’s arm with her drawn blade. The old Siella would have pressed the advantage without hesitation. But this time she didn’t. She deliberately took half a step back after the cut.
Rhea filled the opening. A spear of blue frost flew in from the side and pierced the shadow’s leg.
“Two more behind you, Siella.”
Rhea’s voice was cold but precise. Siella didn’t answer. Instead she dropped low and spun. Her red hair blazed like flame amid the black smoke as her sword cleaved through the necks of the rear shadows.
“Confirmed.”
The short reply came only after the attacks ended. Their coordination was unnaturally perfect. Not because they liked each other—on the contrary, they still clashed whenever they spoke. But in combat it was different. Rhea read the entire battlefield while Siella tore through the most dangerous frontline threats. Because their methods differed, the gaps between them shrank.
Aria’s holy arts covered our rear. She no longer threw herself forward recklessly. When a shadow priest tried to spread black curses, Aria didn’t block them head-on. Instead she raised a barrier of light at an angle. The curses struck the barrier obliquely, their flow broken so they spilled across the floor—where Noel’s violet magic circle sliced them apart.
“Good. Just like that,” Noel said, one hand resting on the sealing formula. “Don’t take them head-on. These curses have an affinity for holy power.”
Aria caught her breath and nodded. “Yes. I know.”
Her voice trembled, yet it didn’t break. Only days ago she had seemed nothing more than a gentle saintess candidate. Now she endured on the battlefield with remarkable tenacity. She had shifted from charging ahead to save others to supporting everyone from behind so they wouldn’t fall. The change was visible.
“Lord Kyle, two shadows behind you!” Aria cried.
I turned. Two shadows in the shape of black mages were preparing spells aimed at Noel. She couldn’t move while focused on releasing the seal. The violet formula was already intertwined with the sealing inscriptions on the floor; if she lifted her hands, the mana core’s cracks would widen further.
I had to stop them.
Don’t get hurt.
I had promised Aria. Not by throwing myself in harm’s way to protect others, but by finding a way for all of us to survive together.
I didn’t charge straight at them. Instead I stepped onto one of the sealing inscriptions. A scene from the original novel surfaced in my mind—the floor runes in the Central Sealed Area weren’t mere decoration. When mana flowed through them in a specific direction, they generated a brief repulsive force.
I couldn’t inject mana. But unstable mana still leaked from my damaged circuits. Pain gathered beneath my soles. The runes flared blue. My body was shoved sideways half a beat faster than normal, letting me slip past the trajectory of the shadow’s spell.
“Hah!”
I swung my sword low and severed one shadow’s leg. The moment the blade sank into the shadow, there was no sensation of cutting real flesh—only the resistance of slicing through cold ink.
The second shadow raised its hand to launch a curse, but it aimed not at me but at the floor behind me. As I tried to dodge, black chains wrapped around my ankle.
“Damn it.”
My body stiffened. The shadow’s fingertips reached for my throat.
Then a crimson sword flash descended. Siella. She landed in front of me and cut off the shadow’s hand.
“Moving cleverly is fine,” she said, breathing hard, “but trying to handle everything alone is still idiotic.”
“Thank you for saving me.”
“It was only natural.”
Siella severed the chains around my ankle. “Fall back.”
“Understood.”
This time I retreated without argument. Siella glanced at me for a brief moment.
“Listening so obediently feels strange.”
“I want to live.”
“Wise choice.”
In the center, Rhea was holding off Rowen’s shadows. Her frost magic did more than freeze enemies—it reshaped the battlefield, bound the shadows’ feet, and opened paths for Aria’s holy arts. Yet even Rhea wasn’t flawless. The aftereffects of the mental assault she had suffered at the imperial pavilion still lingered. Outwardly she showed no sign of disorder, but after firing three consecutive frost spears, her fingertips trembled ever so slightly. The frost itself felt rougher than before.
“Your Highness, right shoulder.”
At my shout Rhea immediately twisted aside. A black spear grazed her shoulder, drawing blood.
“Lady Rhea!”
Aria tried to send holy arts her way, but Rhea raised a hand to stop her.
“It’s just a scratch. Maintain formation.”
Her voice was calm, yet I saw her fingertips shaking.
I clenched my teeth. “Noel, how much longer?”
“One minute and forty seconds!”
Still too long.
Rowen raised his hand beneath the mana core. Black feathers began to swirl around him.
“Stories dislike resistance,” his voice echoed once more. “No matter how much you struggle, the greater flow will be corrected. It always seeks the weakest point—guilt, distrust, obsession, doubt. And lies.”
His final word was aimed directly at me.
Lies.
My hidden identity. The original novel I knew. The future I hadn’t spoken of. That single word dug deeper than I expected.
“Kyle.”
Rhea’s voice anchored me.
“Don’t listen to him right now.”
Siella spoke as well. “If you let pointless words shake you, you’ll be cut down.”
Aria’s holy arts touched my back.
“Lord Kyle, it’s all right. Please look ahead.”
Noel laughed while gripping the sealing formula.
“Rowen, save the psychological warfare for later. It’s far too obvious right now.”
Rowen’s expression hardened for an instant.
“Obvious?”
“Yes. You look the most impatient of all.”
At Noel’s words the feathers around Rowen stirred violently.
I steadied my breathing.
“That flow you speak of,” I said, meeting Rowen’s gaze, “seems to fail quite often.”
Rowen’s eyes locked onto me.
“How arrogant.”
“You’ve already failed to sever our connections three times, and you still can’t break through after more than a minute.”
Noel chuckled behind me. “Nice provocation.”
“I was a villain once, after all.”
Rhea let out a tiny laugh. Siella smirked. Even Aria, looking as though she might cry, managed a smile.
Rowen’s face stiffened.
“Then make your exit like a proper villain.”
A massive shadow erupted from the cracks in the mana core. This time it wasn’t human-shaped. A black lion—bearing the crest of the Diaren ducal house.
My heart sank.
The black lion roared at me. The air itself split.
In that moment, lines from the original novel flashed through my mind.
—The black lion of Diaren was the final pride of the fallen house.
—Kyle Diaren died having sullied that crest.
Rowen spoke.
“I’ve prepared a role for you as well.”
The black lion charged.
Rhea raised a wall of frost, but the lion shattered it. Siella met it head-on with her sword, yet was overpowered. Aria’s holy arts couldn’t fully purify the black lion’s body.
This wasn’t about my relationships. It was my past—more precisely, Kyle Diaren’s past. A ruined house. A ruined body. A ruined reputation. And the name of a villain who was meant to die.
The black lion leapt at me.
I didn’t run.
“Kyle!”
Multiple voices overlapped.
But this time I didn’t wait for someone to protect me. I raised my sword. My mana circuits screamed.
The Diaren ducal bloodline crest. In the original novel, the protagonist had revealed the fake crest on a dagger. That meant the true Diaren crest reacted to blood.
I dragged my thumb across the blade. Blood welled up.
The old lion crest engraved on the sword’s hilt darkened.
In that instant, the twisted mana circuits in my chest pulsed with heat.
“I’m not Kyle Diaren?” I stared at the black lion. “We can argue about that later.”
Dark light bloomed from the blackened crest.
“Right now, the one surviving in this body is me.”
The black lion descended upon me. I swung my sword. It wasn’t perfect swordsmanship, but this time mana flowed along the blade.
Claw met sword.
Bang!
The impact traveled up my arm. I was pushed back but didn’t fall.
Siella moved to my side.
“That was a decent strike.”
Rhea took position on the opposite side.
“But you can’t do it alone.”
Aria’s holy arts touched my back.
“We promised to survive together.”
Noel shouted, “Thirty seconds!”
The black lion charged again.
This time I didn’t try to stop it by myself. Rhea froze its feet, Siella severed its forelegs, and Aria purified the black energy. I drove my sword into the opening.
The black lion screamed. The Diaren crest blazed black.
Then its body collapsed.
Noel’s voice rang out.
“It’s over!”
The inscriptions on the sealing chamber floor lit up all at once. The cracks in the mana core stopped spreading.
Rowen’s face twisted.
“Impossible…”
I looked at him while catching my breath.
“Stories,” I said, blood dripping from my fingertips, “are apparently easier to rewrite than you thought.”
Rowen’s eyes burned black.
“Then we shall proceed to the next chapter.”
His body began to dissolve into black feathers as he attempted to flee.
Siella moved.
“You think I’ll let you escape?”
But Rowen only smiled.
“You’re already too late.”
His gaze turned toward the darkness beyond the mana core.
“Because the protagonist has begun to move.”
With those words, Rowen’s body scattered.
Silence settled over the sealing chamber.
The protagonist.
The true protagonist of the original novel was finally stepping onto the stage.