The shouts of killing from behind were fading from her ears.

Losing a sense was bound to feel wrong. The cause, she knew, was tied to her memories.

She knew who she was, knew what she was living through right now, and knew what she was supposed to do afterward.

The mountains and rivers her eyes caught were racing backward behind her. Fleeing with that scenery was the clanging battle symphony that belonged to the battlefield alone.

At some point, the girl who’d regained her mind and fallen into confusion widened her eyes. A thin silver line struggled free from the corners of her eyes and slid down.

Why am I crying?

The girl named Cai quietly counted every family member she knew.

From the one-eyed giant as huge as a mountain, down to the mini little demons shaped like insects, they all floated up in her mind.

Every time a face surfaced, Cai would speak up and ask the big hound carrying her:

“Did he make it out?”

“Not only did he make it out, he even went ahead of us to the shelter.”

Cai asked the same question over and over, and the big hound gave the same answer, out loud, just as many times.

“Is Big Sis safe too?”

That was the last question. The big hound didn’t speak. It just nodded its heavy head.

There was no better answer than that. Cai decided she could relax…

She should have been able to relax.

For some reason, there was a dull ache in her chest, as if she’d forgotten someone.

When she went through every member of the family, it felt like she’d left out the single most important face, thrown it somewhere behind the rest of her memories.

The person behind that face didn’t leave her with a particularly good impression.

He was not gentle. On the contrary, everything he did had a bratty, willful streak, and he especially loved messing with people.

If anyone deserved to be called “awful,” he fit that label perfectly.

Someone like that, even if she forgot him, wasn’t worth regret or longing.

Yet the pain in Cai’s chest never stopped.

If a heart could crack open, then the deep fractures across hers were growing, one line after another.

She could barely stand it. She wanted to change something about the situation.

But how was she supposed to change it?

Forward meant life. Going back meant death.

Right now, what Cai should have been prioritizing above all else was getting away from this place as fast as possible, not wasting time standing still.

And even if she could change things—who would she be changing them for?

She tried to hold on to that leftover face in her mind, but each time she tried, it slipped away.

Since her own memory had already declared that this so-called “forgotten person” didn’t exist in this world at all, then what was she clinging to?

The more reasons she found to deny it, the more Cai decided to stop thinking.

She didn’t give up chasing that “illusion” in her head; she only gave up thinking it through. She simply let her mouth shout a single word:

“Stop!”

The four paws that had carried her for hundreds of meters heard the sudden shout and instinctively slowed down.

The big hound feared this request more than anything. Even though it obediently followed her order, its mind was still working, still trying to stop this strange behavior.

“Please don’t do this. If I just push a little harder, I can get you to a safe place. Then we can meet up with everyone…”

“I’m not meeting up with everyone. I’m going—back to the battlefield!”

“…What did you say?”

For a split second, the big hound doubted its own sharp hearing.

It turned its head, incredulous, to look at the girl on its back. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a joke on that tear-streaked face.

The bad feeling it had was, unfortunately, dead-on.

The big hound couldn’t pretend it hadn’t heard that demand. After a long silence, after Cai spoke up again, it had no choice but to listen to her earnest plea:

“I’ve got this gut feeling. It’s more reliable than my memories. It keeps echoing in my heart with the same message over and over, telling me countless times to go back and find someone.”

“Who is that person?”

“The one I need to go back and find… is called ‘Cai.’”

The big hound just couldn’t process that. It blurted out at once:

“You’re going back to look for yourself?”

“No. What the pup was talking about was the ‘good old nun’ from before. She’s already dead. The girl who was reborn on the same day—her name is Cai.”

“Right, and aren’t you that reborn girl?”

Cai shook her head. Once her head stilled, her gaze shot forward, filled with steel, and her voice carried a firm resolve.

“I’m not Cai. I’m just the wraith left behind by that nun. The real Cai isn’t here.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t get it. Can you say it simpler?”

“If I keep following you forward, I’m going through a process—‘degrading from a person into a wraith.’ Only if I turn back to that battlefield can I ‘return’ to being Cai.”

The nun and Cai—two identities for the same person, one after the other. It could also be seen as two completely different people.

The one who swallowed everything, held prejudice against demons, and hated fighting—that was the kind-hearted nun.

The one who knew how to rebel, who laughed and brawled alongside demons, who would fight people for the sake of her beliefs—that was Cai, who’d been born from someone’s salvation.

Her will was rock solid; she put on a look that said she’d stay stubborn to the bitter end.

The big hound knew its limits. It understood that not just it—even if Hawky were here—no one could shake Cai’s resolve.

And still, it had to stop her. Not for any other reason, but for the sake of its Boss.

Think about it:

When the demon horde pulled back, all unwilling, and begged the Boss to “come back alive” before they left, what did the big hound do?

It did nothing.

Out of all those demons, it alone accepted reality. It alone understood one thing most clearly:

The Boss was never coming back.

It knew the Boss had chosen his last resting place, and it hadn’t stopped him. Did that mean it wasn’t loyal?

It was exactly the opposite. The big hound had chosen to watch its king charge toward death, just so he could finish the last thing he wanted to do.

There are many kinds of loyalty. Stopping someone when they’re being an idiot is the common kind.

Knowing they’re being an idiot and saying nothing, then making things as easy as possible for them—that’s a rarer, more precious kind.

Because this was the first time the big hound had met a master it truly wanted to serve, when the king asked, it carried Cai off the battlefield and did one last job for its Boss.

Facing a request that was almost like a final wish, how could the big hound not give its all?

“You can’t go!”

So when Cai, guided by that intuition, chose her own fate, the big hound answered with stubbornness that didn’t lose to hers.

If Cai tried to go forward, it would plant its four paws, sprint past her, and stand in her way, its massive body blocking the only path as it panted hot air and made itself clear:

“If you’ve really decided you have to go back, then you’ll have to run right over me first!”

To Cai, it was like seeing a stone lion come to life in front of her.

The big hound’s bared fangs looked nothing like its usual obedient self. As its sharp teeth flashed, a hint of a beast-king’s aura swelled from its body.

By now, everything was clear.

If Cai didn’t actually fight, she’d never make it back to the battlefield.

Two conflicting wishes—both kind at their core—were about to slam into each other.

In the next instant, the ground in front of Cai split apart, inch by inch.

The opponent’s shadow shot toward her from afar, moving so fast the naked eye could barely track it, and slammed hard at where she stood.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Three dull impacts rang out.

On pure instinct, Cai dodged the incoming attack. The trees just behind her weren’t so lucky.

By the time the big hound’s charge lost some of its momentum, the head that had been thrust forward was already smashing through, sending three big trees flying one after another.

Just seeing those poor trees was enough for Cai to understand she couldn’t fight it head-on.

She’d picked up plenty of sword-fighting experience. Cai’s specialty was technique.

When it came to raw destruction, though, she couldn’t match the big hound. That thing was at least Batterfield Harvester‑class.

If brute force won’t do it, use tricks.

The big hound scraped its claws across the ground a few times, then suddenly lunged.

Facing the threat of defeat, Cai suddenly raised one arm. Her hand clenched around the outstretched cruciform sword, and she slashed straight ahead.

Seeing her fight back, the big hound chose not to take the hit. Its body twisted slightly on the spot, trying to slip past the blade right from the start.

No matter how much power it had, it always kept to the same style: wild but cautious, trading attacks step by step.

This time, though, it miscalculated completely.

Here’s what happened:

Judging from their positions, Cai and the big hound were standing at two different angles.

So when the big hound rushed in, Cai also stepped in to meet it, swinging her sword mid-charge.

In reality, that strike was a feint.

She was waiting for that one moment—the instant the big hound twisted its body to avoid the strike and slowed its movements.

In that window, Cai’s body flipped up. She leapt onto that furry back, grabbed with her left hand, and clamped down hard on the big hound’s neck.

It looked almost exactly like a rider taming a warhorse—except that compared to a horse, whose killing power was limited, a fanged canine beast was much, much harder to handle.

Once it realized it’d been tricked, the big hound ran and leapt wildly across the ground, trying several times to throw the girl off its back. The results were… not great.

Cai had a tight grip on its fur. It was like she’d fitted reins onto a horse. How could she be shaken off that easily?

But the big hound did manage to come up with something.

Not long after it calmed down a bit, once its body was ready, it suddenly broke into a full sprint.

As they sped forward, Cai watched the big hound charge straight at a big tree ahead, just like before.

Only this time, right before the impact, all four paws rose and it sprang up the trunk.

Its hooked claws sank deep into the bark, keeping its massive weight from crashing back down.

The big hound pushed off again and again, climbing straight up the tree. In no time, it reached the fork where the trunk split in two.

It had reached a height it had never been to before. Then, with a kick from its hind paws, it leapt higher, body rolling in the air as it spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees in empty space.

The violent, sweeping motion threw Cai’s balance off. She didn’t manage to keep her center of gravity, and during the spin, she fell, back-first, toward the ground.