“Just a little farther!”
While Seiichi and company were causing cosmic-scale chaos in the Eastlands, deep within a forest near the borders of the Kingdom of Windberg, a separate group was sprinting for their lives.
Panting, soaked in sweat, a girl gasped as she stumbled over the roots underfoot.
“Haa… Haa… M-My legs…”
“Lady Hino! If we stop here, they’ll catch us!”
The sharp cry came from Karen Kannazuki, a girl wielding divine power, a priestess chosen by heaven itself.
Having finally broken away from the hero’s group, Karen Kannazuki and her companions had since rendezvoused with Agnos and the rest of Class F. Together, they were now fleeing from the grasp of the Kaizell Empire, aiming to reach the Kingdom of Windberg, one of the few regions still outside imperial control.
But their escape had not gone unnoticed for long.
Now, the furious shouts of pursuing imperial soldiers echoed from behind, crashing through the stillness of the forest like the roar of an angry tide.
“After them! Don’t let them get away! The Kingdom of Windberg’s border might be guarded by the Knight of the Sword or even the Black Paladin! If they make it across, we may have to fight those two! We might be strong, yes, but squaring off against them is no easy feat. Listen up, do not let them cross that border!”
The soldiers of the Kaizell Empire, all of them now ascended to the rank of Transcendant, were not so naïve as to think they’d lose to the likes of Windberg’s elite. They harbored no fear of the famed Knight of the Sword, Louisse, or the grim specter known as the Black Paladin.
Even so, the fact that Windberg still remained unconquered was proof enough that taking them head-on was more trouble than it was worth. It wasn’t cowardice; it was cold pragmatism. They wished to avoid unnecessary damage and losses.
Yet in this particular pursuit, they had one key advantage: there were no “Mountains” in the way.
In the Kingdom of Windberg, “Mountain” wasn’t always a literal term. Along certain stretches of the border lay a so-called “Mountain” that was, in truth, the slumbering back of a massive magical beast. It never stirred under normal conditions, but should too many humans tread upon it, the creature would awaken, shaking off its mossy disguise and moving as a living force of nature.
Naturally, the Kaizell Empire avoided that route in any offensive maneuver.
But as fate would have it, Karen’s group had taken a path with no such guardian beast, no “Mountain” to protect them. The soldiers, unhindered, gave chase at full speed.
“Hey, Kannazuki-senpai! How much farther?!” gasped Shouta, his voice ragged with desperation.
“I don’t know…” Karen’s breath came hard, her body aching as she pushed forward. “But we have to keep running!”
Their feet pounded the earth until, at last, they burst out of the forest.
And what lay before them… was nothing.
Just an open plain of waving grass, stretching endlessly to the horizon.
“No way…”
Up until now, they’d managed to shake the Kaizell Empire’s pursuit by darting through the forest, using the thick cover of trees and brush to their advantage. But that shelter had vanished. The path ahead stretched out into open grassland, flat and completely exposed. With nowhere to hide, it was only a matter of time before they were caught.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. This is what we’re dealing with now?” Agnos muttered, his voice tight with disbelief as he stared at the plain unfolding before them.
“It can’t be helped,” Blud responded bitterly, arms crossed. “None of us knows the geography of Windberg well enough to avoid this.”
The whole group stood rooted in place, momentarily stunned by the hopeless sight before them, until the Kaizell Empire’s soldiers finally caught up.
“Well, well… You really made us work for it,” one of them sneered as he stepped forward with deliberate menace. “Not sure how you pulled it off, but it looks like those bracelets aren’t working anymore. No matter. We’ll just bind you again. This time with something even stronger. And you will be telling us exactly how you managed to break free.”
“Tch!” Karen gritted her teeth, fury and frustration flaring in her eyes.
Though she held the title of hero, Karen’s level wasn’t especially high. And in truth, none of the group had much in the way of fighting power. Meanwhile, over a hundred of the Kaizell Empire’s elite Transcendants had already surrounded them, their overwhelming presence suffocating any hope of escape.
That hope, however, hadn’t yet died in everyone.
A sharp, furious voice rang out. It was Nojima Yuuka, a friend of Airi and one of the girls who had fled with Karen.
“Oh, give me a break! We’ve kept our mouths shut long enough, and now you think you can just say whatever you want?! You’re the ones who tricked us to begin with! So what if we ran? What’s wrong with that? And now you wanna rob us of our freedom again? Like hell we’ll let you!”
“She’s right, you know,” Agnos added, stepping forward with a cocky grin. “Why the hell are you acting like you’ve already won, huh? What gave you that bright idea?”
His voice cut sharp as a blade, laced with open defiance and aimed straight at the Kaizell soldiers. Blud pressed a hand to his forehead, exasperated.
“Now’s really not the time to be picking a fight…”
“Can’t really blame ’em, though,” Airi said with a light shrug, voice dry. “Feels like we’re at the ‘last desperate stand’ part of the story, you know?”
“Airi, even if that’s true, maybe don’t say it out loud?” someone muttered beside her.
“Whatever,” grumbled Amakawa Rumi, one of Yuuka and Airi’s close friends. She threw up her hands, exasperated. “I’m just saying that if anyone asks me to run again, I will scream. My legs are done.”
Right beside her, Noa Shimizu let out a similar cry of frustration, clearly in no mood for more exercise.
Of everyone present, it was Yuuka’s group that stood out, their voices loud and their defiance unmistakable. The rest remained silent, expressions clouded with unease or tightly drawn in wariness. Each person reacted in their own way, but none dared challenge what loomed before them.
Not that it mattered to the soldiers of the Kaizell Empire. Their gazes were cold, unfeeling. Whatever fear or resistance these fugitives showed, it was irrelevant.
“Say whatever you want. This is the end of the line,” one of the soldiers declared flatly. “Take them.”
The Kaizell troops began to advance, step by deliberate step, closing in on Karen and the others with the clear intent to restrain them.
Everyone there knew it was over. That creeping finality settled in their bones. But just as the thought struck…
Something changed.
“Huh?”
One soldier stiffened, his brow furrowing as a strange sound reached his ear. It was faint at first, like distant ringing. He shook his head, tried to ignore it, but the noise grew louder and sharper. Soon, other soldiers began to shift uneasily, glancing around. It became clear it wasn’t just in his head.
“What the hell is that?! What’s making that noise?!”
“I’ve never heard anything like this…”
Karen and the others heard it too. They exchanged anxious glances and instinctively scanned their surroundings. Then, one of the soldiers looked up. His gaze locked onto something above, his mouth opened, but no sound escaped.
“What the—?!”
The others followed his gaze skyward and saw something massive falling from the sky.
And then—
ZUSHHHAAA!!!
A cataclysmic impact slammed into the earth, unleashing a deafening shockwave. Karen instinctively threw her arms over her head, bracing herself against the blast as a storm of wind and dust exploded outward, battering everyone where they stood. The ground seemed to scream beneath them.
Then, suddenly, everything went silent. Gradually, the wind died down, and the tremors faded.
“What… What the hell just happened…?” Karen whispered, trembling as she slowly lifted her head.
Her eyes widened.
A massive fissure had split the earth open between them and the Kaizell soldiers. It cut through the field like a clean, precise wound, as if the world itself had been cleaved by a single stroke.
She wasn’t the only one who noticed.
The stunned soldiers of the Empire stared in disbelief until one of them finally broke.
“What the hell is this?!”
They had finally cornered Karen and her group. The Kaizell Empire’s soldiers had them right where they wanted until that impossible rift tore the earth apart like a blade splitting two opposing forces. Now, with a gaping chasm dividing the field, the soldiers could do nothing but stand and stare.
The fissure wasn’t just large, it was absurdly vast, stretching easily over five hundred meters wide. Even trying to go around it was futile; the cleft extended beyond the visible horizon, as if it had no end.
How could something like this happen so suddenly? What kind of force could carve a wound like this into the world?
Just from the impact alone, it felt like something that could have cleaved a planet in half. That the earth itself remained intact was the real miracle.
But Karen didn’t have time to stand in awe.
“Hah! Everyone, run for it! Now’s our chance!”
“R-Right! I don’t know what the hell that was, but I’m not sticking around to find out!”
“Wait! Hey! Stop! Stop right there!”
The Kaizell soldiers shouted after them in vain, voices shrill with frustration, but there was no way across. The massive rift had cut off any hope of pursuit.
As their enemies screamed curses behind them, Karen and the others turned and bolted, vanishing into the grasslands. This time, they escaped for real.
They kept running across the plain, pushing forward until the winded silence gave way to a new sight ahead.
A formation of armored soldiers.
Karen’s group skidded to a halt.
“W-What is that…?”
“Don’t tell me we’re getting pincered?!”
Their bodies tensed. Could this be a second detachment of Kaizell troops? Had they walked right into a trap?
But as the frontmost soldier raised a flag, Blud narrowed his eyes and exhaled.
“No… it’s not them. That’s the flag of the Kingdom of Windberg.”
For the first time since their flight began, they were finally standing before what looked like soldiers from their destination. The tension in the group began to loosen, ever so slightly.
And yet, they couldn’t let themselves relax. Not yet. There was still no way to be sure who these soldiers really were.
That wary stillness hung over them until one soldier stepped forward to represent the group: a woman named Louisse.
“You’re the students of my mentor, aren’t you? What on earth happened to you all?”
Her tone was puzzled, but familiar.
And with that one recognition, with that one familiar face, Karen and the others finally knew that they had made it. They had truly escaped.
And not one of them had any idea that the massive rift that saved them was the lingering aftermath of a single strike. A blow delivered long ago, somewhere at the edge of the universe, when a human faced the King of the Night.