🗡🗡🗡
IT was just a flash.
The silver sword twisted and stretched out like a snake, mowing down the entire region. It was like a beast sloppily devouring the sky and the earth. Mountains were shattered, the earth was split, and the supply lines were broken apart. Their battle lines had collapsed, and they were no longer able to rebuild their shattered formations. The flames of war illuminating the dark night stretched outwards in no time at all.
After the merciless assault from the air, their defeat was assured.
“Kill every last one of them,” the enemy emperor ordered without emotion, looking down at them from the night sky that burned red. “Children, women, infants—it makes no difference. It’s not worth letting that woman’s family live. They’re worthless. Insects. The fact that they’re alive is a crime.”
That voice was more callous than a blizzard in the dead of winter, freezing everything around him.
“But don’t give them easy deaths. Gouge babies’ eyes out in front of their mothers. Torment wives in front of their husbands. Force siblings to kill each other. Make them apologize for being born, make them scream for death. Crush everything—their hopes, their love, their dreams, their ties to one another. Leave nothing behind—just as they did to me!”
It was a massacre. Jill looked up, her eyes rounding into saucers at this unimaginable order. The enemy emperor’s golden eyes gleamed at the angry shouts and shrieks rising up underneath him, a vicious laugh spilling from his lips.
This heinous, cursed emperor… This insane ruler, who enjoyed crushing and tormenting others, never caring about anyone… The reality that Jill had refused to believe before she saw it for herself was right before her eyes.
I’ll stop him!
Gripping her sword, she kicked off the ground with all the magic power she could muster, aiming for the emperor far above her. This was war, but she wouldn’t stand for a massacre involving innocent civilians. But there was something she wouldn’t stand for even more.
This man wasn’t that kind of enemy.
His silver magic soaring across the night sky, only to protect his people, had once been a truly beautiful sight to behold. Although this man had been her enemy, she had been captivated by the brilliant way he secured victories, executing the finishing blow with the fewest casualties, and then ordering a retreat with a calm smile on his face… He even looked noble.
When did he become like this?
The emperor suddenly looked up. As Jill rushed towards him, he made a gesture like he was swatting away an insect and shot a blast of condensed magic power towards her. Jill caught it with both arms outstretched, clenching her teeth. She concentrated power into her arms, and just as she shouted with effort, the blast of magic in her arms vanished, popping like a balloon.
At the loud bursting sound, everyone on the earth and in the sky fell completely silent, almost as if they had come to their senses. Even the emperor who had ordered this tragedy stared at her with a surprised look on his face.
She had made him look back. Jill felt such a boost from this that she forgot that she had almost died. “We lost!” she shouted. “I admit it! So, pull your troops out of here!”
The emperor furrowed his beautiful eyebrows slightly. “Why are you giving orders when you’re at a disadvantage?”
Jill hoped that she could reason with him. He turned his extraordinarily good-looking face towards her, and Jill stood tall.
“If you really want to torment someone, just torment me. I’ll be your prisoner of war—so don’t lay a hand on anyone else.”
The emperor looked Jill up and down, as if he were observing a living curiosity.
“The god of war’s daughter,” he muttered, a mocking sneer on his thin lips. “Very admirable. But in the end, you’ll be pathetically crying and screaming, ‘Why me?’”
“A weak man like you could never make me cry.”
“Weak? Me? You have some nerve saying that to the Dragon Emperor. I’ve had enough. I’m going to kill you, here and now.”
“Then are you a stronger man than me?”
The upper corners of the Dragon Emperor’s lips lifted, but he failed to smile. He looked Jill directly in the eyes for the first time. Jill thrust the tip of her sword straight at his golden, ferocious eyes.
“How can you truly be stronger than me when you bury your sorrows like this?!” she shouted.
For just a split second, those gold eyes shone, almost meaningfully—but then that light went out. “I’ve lost interest,” the emperor said abruptly in a flat voice. “Troops, pull back!”
Jill, who hadn’t thought he would actually pull his troops out, spoke without thinking. “Really…? Hey, answer me! You’re really not going to capture me?!”
“What’s the fun in capturing a woman with no sexual allure like you?”
Then the Dragon Emperor vanished into thin air like a mirage, leaving behind Jill, dumbstruck.
The only other thing left behind were the vestiges of the emperor’s magic power, fluttering around like the flapping wings of butterflies. The Rave imperial soldiers had all vanished too. The battle was over shockingly quick.
Jill’s mind, however, could not be calmed. After a beat of silence, she flew into a rage.
“I-I-I have no sexual allure?!”
All of Jill’s subordinates tried to pacify her. This battle had been just a few days before Gerald had charged her with a litany of false accusations.
And, maybe, six years in the future.
Well, it doesn’t matter if it was yesterday or six years in the future. This is all a dream, after all. It must be a dream…
Jill hoped that when she woke up, she would be alive.
If such a thing were possible, she hoped that she had miraculously gotten caught up in some tree branches or something and had passed out. If her brilliant adjutant was actually safe and had carried her away, all the better.
But the place where Jill was laying now was so warm and soft… She awoke with a jolt. She jumped upright, as if she were waking up in the military barracks.
The large flower that had been adorning her hair fell, and her tied-back hair came undone, spilling down over her shoulders. She opened her clenched hand, but it was smaller than it had been in her memory of the battle. Her legs, buried in a deep crimson down quilt with a gold embroidery design, were short too.
Jill suddenly felt a breeze and climbed down from the bed barefoot. Sunlight was streaming in through a gap in the thick curtains on the window. She stood on her tiptoes and looked outside. It was a familiar courtyard.
“…Is this a castle…guest room?” she wondered aloud.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
The man who entered from the adjoining back room was the man who had just been in her dream.
Hadis Teos Rave—younger than in her dream, but there was no mistaking it. This was the beautiful emperor of the neighboring Rave Empire.
Jill involuntarily clenched both hands into fists. If this was six years earlier, they were not yet at war with the Rave Empire. So right now, he was not an enemy. She knew this, but with the memory of her personal experience with the emperor’s devastating power on the battlefield fresh in her mind, she couldn’t relax.
Jill was unsure if he knew how she was feeling or not, but Hadis walked up to her with brisk steps and crouched down in front of her.
Silence stretched throughout the room, broken only by the ticking sound of the second hand on the clock. As this extraordinarily good-looking man stared her down, Jill tried very hard to keep her cheeks from twitching, and after a while, Hadis spoke.
“I want you to propose to me again.”
“…What?”
“I want to make sure this isn’t a dream.”
Jill was so stunned that she accidentally let her guard down. But Hadis was staring unwaveringly at her, waiting for her response. As Jill looked back at his determined eyes, for some reason the battle dog that lived in her parent’s house sprang to mind.
H-He gives off a very different impression than he did six years in the future…