“So that’s how it is… Lady Aphelia truly deserves to command the Sacred Lion Knight Order. With power like that, it just makes sense.”

Heat rushed to the girl’s cheeks, a blush blooming like sunrise. She tried to change the subject, hiding her ignorance under nervous chatter. The technicians saw her fluster like a startled sparrow and only traded knowing smiles. No one scolded the rookie. Hands moved like a river of steel, tuning knight armor for Aphelia.

Her companion chuckled, weary and warm, and rubbed the crown of her head—she wasn’t even shoulder-high to him. His palm fell like a steadying breeze.

“You’ve still got a lot to learn. Aphelia’s strength isn’t because she’s our Knight-King. It’s because she’s Aphelia. Back in the Armored Knight Corps, she was already an expert at slaying armored knights.”

An expert against armored knights?

The girl’s gaze drifted to the figure stepping into the knight armor. Wonder glazed her eyes like frost. In her world, the Armored Knight Corps took shape only three years ago—when the Human World and the Dark World finally went to open war, a storm that forged the corps overnight.

They didn’t fail that storm. When the armored knights marched into hellfire, the battlefield flipped like a tide. The fiercest among them wore Gospel Church insignia—the Sacred Lion Knights—but what carried their name across the world was a tall, scarlet-armored beauty: Aphelia.

You can’t tell their first appearance without speaking of Aphelia’s blaze of glory. Three years ago, in the Iceland Raid, Aphelia led the Sacred Lions straight into the largest Dark World portal. She crossed the threshold like a swallow vanishing into cloud.

An hour of silence fell, heavy as winter snow. Under the world’s held breath, Aphelia returned with Duke Abel—the Progenitor of Werewolves—dragged back in chains. She paid with more than half her order, and still walked through the gate like a blade through night.

The world erupted, a kettle set to boil.

Before that, humanity only bled to hold the line against beasts spilling from the portals. Spies sent across never returned with full truths; some were devoured before reaching home, others twisted into thralls, leaking what little they knew like cracked jars.

Even if those agents lacked the deepest secrets, what spilled still bit into human nations. One by one, states stopped sending shadows into the Dark World; the cost burned like salt in a wound.

But Aphelia’s first battle yanked the Progenitor of Werewolves into daylight. If not for witnesses, no one would have believed it. The footage showed Aphelia hauling that hulking beast through the portal, her armor stripped to a skeletal frame. The image struck every nation like a thunderclap.

That Progenitor had ravaged our battlefields not long before. To hide the existence of armored knights, the nations swallowed their pride, bowed to humiliation, and drove it back with terrible losses.

Now, the armored knights had slapped the Dark World’s elites across the face. Aphelia added a second blow, a knife driven straight into the heart.

So people began to speak of Aphelia—the woman whose figure, face, and strength seemed crafted to perfection—as if she were born a symbol of power. Her past was mist. Some whispered she was a Dark World plant.

Then Aphelia laid out the trophies of her hunts, heads of creatures that would take several old hunters a lifetime to fell. Nations stared, speechless, the room going still as a monastery at midnight.

They gave her another name: Heretic-Slayer. Aphelia became legend by simply existing. If anyone watched over human dignity from within the dark, it was the hunters led by Aphelia.

“You’ll understand soon. Watch her training, and you’ll see—Aphelia’s power wasn’t conjured from thin air. Don’t get cocky just because you came out of the Mithril Vault.”

“I—I’m not cocky!”

He ruffled her hair again, teasing like a cat batting yarn, then guided a mechanical arm to fetch parts Aphelia needed. Seeing her senior already buried in work, the girl flushed and hurried to help, a small spark jumping to flame.

When the armor sealed, the tall, commanding beauty vanished from sight. In her place rose a giant of steel—scarlet braided with dark gold like sunset crossing armor. A mask like a hungry demon split open, revealing Aphelia’s cold, stunning face.

“Lady Aphelia, how does it feel?”

The technicians clipped on gear with practiced hands—weapons ready to spill frightening firepower. Mechanical arms danced like spiders, tightening seals and locking the hull to keep pressure steady, the giant becoming a cathedral of iron.

“Feels good. Sync should be higher today.”

When they cleared away, Aphelia stepped off the mount. In the airship’s aft bay, she flexed limbs like wind through pines. The sight was unreal—a three-meter titan crowned with a goddess’s face, beauty carved into steel.

Aphelia didn’t care for the strangeness. She flipped backward, light and quick, as if the armor weighed nothing. She borrowed corners like stepping stones, landed without shaking the deck, her motion smooth as a swallow’s arc.

“Prepare to launch. Ahead lies the heart of the battle. Even a Leviathan-class airship shouldn’t get cute and close in. This ship’s worth way more than what I’m wearing.”

A rare joke from Aphelia.

But her frost-edged face delivered it like winter rain. The technicians, unused to their icily dignified commander’s humor, forced thin smiles and fitted the steel frame around the armor, hands moving like clockwork in a quiet chapel.

Seeing them, Aphelia sighed, soft as a falling leaf. Unnoticed, she’d begun to drift from the human road. She said nothing more, lay into the frame, and let them roll her toward the launch cradle, a knight resting in a steel coffin.

“Holy Casket ready. Entering launch rail.”

On the escort airships, the same line sounded, a chorus like bells across fog. In the sealed casket, Aphelia felt the push into the cradle. Mechanisms whirred—a hive of metal breathing—and she closed her eyes like a priest at dawn.

“Hallelujah.”

At once, the sky darkened. A stroke of black Thunder fell through the clouds, a spear from night. Blood and fire braided the field below; human and Dark World alike lifted their faces, sensing something descending like fate.

The black casket howled downward, wind shrieking like banshees. It struck the monstrous ranks like a cannon-shot torn from its barrel. The weaker scattered into pulp beneath the iron prayer.

Steam burst from the casket, a white dragon exhaling. A silver cross slammed out of the black box, lighting the night like a star. The human legions roared—the Sacred Lion Knight Order’s signal flare, the mark of the Evangel Church.

Every flare meant an armored knight had landed safe. Sixty flares climbed and kindled the sky, a constellation forged from iron.

Soldiers who’d been dying inch by inch wept, tears hot as fresh steel. They grabbed their weapons again like men rising from graves and opened up on the beasts, alchemical firearms barking like wolves.

Those guns barely bit the monsters, but fear had been burned out like fog in the sun. The Sacred Lion Knight Order had descended from the clouds.

For humans, it was hope. For the Dark World beasts, it was a nightmare finally returned upon the dreamers. They’d given nightmares for years; now the battlefield turned, and the armored knights were the cruel dream.

Twisted werewolves lunged, hungry to rip the nearest casket. The black caskets flared open, plates exploding outward like iron petals. The blast shoved the werewolves back, power hitting like a hammer to bone.

The giant inside had already dropped free of the rack. Aphelia’s finger settled on the trigger, cool as moonlight on steel.

Her body moved like instinct given shape. Her eyes drank the battlefield; her stance carried her forward, a wave breaking on rock.

Sword swinging, flames spilling.