—Excruciating pain.
The injuries on his body hurt so intensely that he teetered on the edge of consciousness. But, more than the pain, he worried about his comrades fighting beside him—and whether the people were managing to evacuate safely.
Fueled by sheer will, the captain of the guards forced his eyes open, using his remaining hand to wipe away the blood from the slit he could still see through. Once again, he took in the battlefield around him.
There, a purple-haired girl, graceful as a butterfly, stood.
She wielded a scythe nearly as tall as she was, and the red ribbon tied to her arm fluttered in the breeze.
A flicker of a flame…
He wasn’t sure if this was a hallucination brought on by his impending death or if a true savior had arrived, but either way, it couldn’t shake his resolve to fight alongside his comrades until the end!
As he strained to stand up through the pain, a cold voice broke his movement.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t try getting up right now just to get in the way.”
The purple-haired girl glanced back slightly, her eyes remaining fixed on the monster as she spoke again.
“If you don’t want to die by my hand, then stay down and stop moving.”
“…Who… who are you?”
“What a stupid question. Is now the time to be asking where people come from?”
Though her tone sounded like mockery or frustration, the captain saw no impatience in the girl’s poised expression.
She simply adjusted her stance, then murmured quietly, “But since you asked… remember this well. We are Wildfire.”
—We?
Wasn’t she alone?
Could there be other reinforcements?
Before he could find out, darkness took him, leaving him with only those questions. His last sight was of the girl charging once more into the fray, and he wanted to call out to her but fell into unconsciousness.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers, seeing their captain down, pushed forward with a desperate fury. Upon reaching his side and confirming he was still breathing, they breathed a collective sigh of relief.
However, breaking through the enemy line would be far harder than entering it. Now, they were nearly trapped here, with the single piece of good news being that they’d bought time for the people to evacuate.
Even if they fell here… they would fall with no regrets.
But still, there were those among them who refused to give in to death, their eyes locked on that lone, reckless girl as she plunged into the mass of monsters.
There was something familiar about her combat style.
A scythe was a notoriously difficult weapon to wield, rarely chosen due to its high risk of friendly fire and poor synergy with team tactics.
But, in the Silvermane Guard’s training courses, they’d been taught the basics of wielding weapons like the scythe.
Of course, it was a mere theoretical lesson; true mastery required extensive training and a skilled teacher.
And that girl, though her technique was unique, tore through the enemy ranks like a storm, leaving deep, relentless cuts in her wake.
The techniques she used were nothing like what they’d learned, yet somehow they felt an odd familiarity in her movements.
Perhaps it was just their imagination, but in this desperate moment, they clung to the sight of her as a sign of hope.
And so, a group of soldiers broke away to join her in battle.
At this moment, Seele completed another attack, her gaze flicking to the soldiers rushing to her aid without betraying joy or annoyance.
The monsters here—she could handle them on her own. Unlike that storm-bringer from earlier, she’d already gauged the strength of this “frozen brute”—far inferior to her.
She held her scythe upright; its faintly glowing edge untouched by a single shard of frost.
This creature had no resistance to her powers—in fact, it was susceptible to her quantum abilities.
Though she couldn’t fully understand the nature of these effects, she had a sense of which monsters fell more easily and which ones felt like hacking through a tortoise shell. And that was all she needed to know.
After a brief pause, Seele planted her toes into the ground, rocketing forward at a speed few could match.
The Frost Wanderer she’d injured earlier had since risen again. It extended both arms, drawing the unfortunate Everwinter Shadows it had crushed earlier into its twisted abdomen, absorbing their energy to sustain itself.
Then came a roar—!
Frost erupted from its belly, swiftly covering the street before it. The ground froze in an instant, forming a slippery, frost-coated surface that encased everything in its icy grasp.
Even the soldiers’ armor took on a frosty hue, their limbs growing stiff, making every movement harder to execute.
Seele glanced down at her coat with a slight frown; the all-encompassing frost hadn’t harmed her but did bring some discomfort from the cold—hardly enough to hinder her movements.
Yet, her would-be allies were now caught in a deadly trap.
With a silent sigh of annoyance, Seele slipped back into the Quantum Realm, her figure vanishing in a ripple of space.
The Frost Wanderer instinctively raised its defenses, aware that the human had used such tactics to attack before, its bulky form unable to match her speed.
It could crush weaker enemies easily, but against a swift opponent, its massive frame left it vulnerable.
Despite its lack of conscious thought, the fractured mechanics restored by the Realm’s energy granted it a ghost of its former instincts.
Yet the expected attack didn’t come. Instead, the girl reappeared beside the encircled soldiers, dispatching their attackers in mere seconds.
But as quickly as she cleared the battlefield, so long as the monster lived, it would continue to summon more Shadows.
Sensing a chance, the Frost Wanderer absorbed even more Shadows, and the crystalline armor covering its body extended, eventually forming a triangular shield.
In its calculated mind, this was the optimal strategy.
As long as it could hold off her attacks, it could outlast her, exhausting the human woman.
But, just as the creature solidified its resolve—
The purple-haired girl struck once more, but this time was different. In the instant before their collision—
Utilizing the Quantum Realm, her form burst into a swarm of butterflies, dissipating at the shield’s very edge.
Realizing with a sudden dread, if it had emotions, the monster sensed quantum energy surging behind it.
In the next second, her scythe slashed through its legs, deftly avoiding the freezing mist expelled from its vents, claiming two of its mechanical arms on her way out.
As critical alerts flooded its core, it desperately tried to absorb the surrounding Shadows, only to find none remained standing, its unrestrained consumption having inadvertently freed the humans from the encirclement.
Now, it was the one under siege.
Without the energy it craved, its icy armor began to weaken, growing brittle.
More pressing was the quantum mark left on its body from multiple attacks. With its form now drawn into the Quantum Realm, it was overwhelmed by an unstoppable flood of quantum energy.
And in that moment, Seele reappeared—
With the precision of a seasoned butcher, her scythe carved along the seams of its mechanical form, each slash meticulously dismantling it. As the final strike dislodged its head, she wrenched it free and raised it high above her head.
Only then did the Frost Wanderer’s body dissolve into nothingness, conceding to death at last.
The surviving guards roared in triumph, their voices echoing like thunder.
—
Frontline of the Forbidden Zone.
Bronya gripped the letter in her hand so tightly her knuckles turned white, her heart seething with anger.
If she had to summarize its contents—
Abandon the guards on the frontline, using them as a human shield to secure her retreat.
How could her mother even issue such a command?
To her, these soldiers were more than mere assets; they were people who had chosen to fight in the name of preservation, warriors who shouldn’t be reduced to sacrificial pawns for the sake of an order cloaked as “necessary retreat for the greater good…”
These men and women, who’d joined the frontlines to protect, were not expendable pawns to be discarded on someone’s whim.
Bronya bit her lip, silver eyes flashing with anguish.
She couldn’t understand—why had her once-kind mother transformed into this unrecognizable figure?
Even in the worst of times, how could she, as the Guardian, be the first to surrender to despair?
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