“The one across the way has already been sent back to the void. Many thanks to the Divine Being for the heavy-handed assist—hey, I’m serious. The first wave hit like a storm and it’s done. What’s left is a thin drizzle you can’t mop up no matter how many you kill. So it’s down to low-tier mobs for grinding levels and gold—that’s how my master told me to put it for you. No, you three weren’t the intended audience. In my master’s script you’re predicted, not planned. He doesn’t intend to steer your path. Do whatever you like. It won’t matter.”

Vega sat straight at the carved, expensive desk. Her tone was deliberately playful, like bells in a quiet chapel. She repeated the speech in Hebrew, in Chinese, and in Old English.

Steel sang like winter wind. Three heroes came from afar, blades already bared: a cruciform sword; a sword and shield; a pair of twin knives.

She rose. From the skirts, she drew the weapon called “Venom Tusk,” set it on the desk, squared it, then placed both hands flat below her navel. She offered a solemn courtly salute, as steady as a temple lamp.

As for why? The dying are due more courtesy, never less. Even if it’s wasted like rain on stone.

“I only want to know this. How will you convince me not to kill you?”

The Holy Knight strode up to the desk. Both hands slammed down. His left gauntlet smashed iron to hardwood with a CLANG that shook the air like thunder.

Only his left hand wore a gauntlet. The odd full-plate on his body was hollowed out in broad swaths, with only key points wrapped in thickened steel bars. It was armor like a ribcage, made for a specific dance.

Its owner was either a fool with bizarre taste, or a veteran who’d trained to defend with chosen points. A man honed where it counted, like a cliff with hidden iron bones.

Just as her master had described. Not a human-supremacist, yet long practiced in the habits of human supremacy. And a body too fragile, compensated with special-forged shell.

Vega held his gaze a moment. Laughter rippled out of her like light over still water.

“What’s so funny?”

“No, no. Nothing. Only now I think I get why my master admires you. You have the same eyes. Truly. The same stubbornness. The same mercy-less edge. The same way you cling to the trivial, yet perform a proud indifference as if it costs you nothing. Sir Holy Knight, indulge a stray curiosity, or call it a joke. Did you once think you were someone grand?”

If her master spoke true, this Holy Knight was easy to read. Pity came first, then the line of his shape: a childlike dream still clinging, a fool who wanted to be a hero. A bright kite caught on a thorn.

“…”

“From your face, I’d say you’ve forgotten your past. Mortal souls have poor tolerance for death. Even dragged back by a Divine Being, they lose most of what they were. Heroes of the end times, who took the heads of countless demons, also know these fogged hours. It’s—too funny.” She paused, like a wind chime stilling. “Forgive me. That was sentiment, not mockery. Forget what I said.”

“What do you know—about me?”

The Holy Knight’s face darkened, like stormclouds packing over a ridge.

Heroes exist, but those as pure as the Savior Saint are rare. Most fight for their home. For a lover. For the one thing they want to guard. They happen to save the world. They happen to stand on that peak.

The script. The Demon King Army moved by the script. Even these heroes were the same, measured tight by the Demon King’s abacus.

Vega didn’t care for her master’s flair for drama. She was ready to mend the stage whenever it tore. Among the three maids, she was the most devoted. The world could burn or bloom—so long as her master had fun. She hadn’t expected it to go this smoothly. Now she tasted what he meant by “a transcendent vantage.”

We are all our master’s chess pieces. The calamity in a girl’s skin let a dangerous smile bend her lip. And I am willing.

She lifted her voice in an operatic lilt, a curtain rising to meet the line in the script: “You were a Savior hero marked by calamity. In the final clash, you gave up your heart. And much more. My master tells that tale for leisure. In his coy, smoke-and-mirrors style, so errors are likely. I won’t swear to the details.”

“You know me too? Who am I? What do I want to protect?”

The Assassin lunged, all night wind and black water. He fisted her maid collar and hauled her up. A dark aura bled off him; where it brushed her chest and neck, a misty ash-white bloomed, like hoarfrost kissed by soot.

The Night Watcher stayed calm. He didn’t move. His brow folded like a closed fan.

“A godspawn is still a godspawn. Divinity is a universal cheat. Lost memories, soul decay, body collapse—almost all waived. Oh, if only your friend had that too.” She tilted her head, a knife’s gleam at twilight. “All right. I apologize. Malice is my instinct. Please don’t kill me.”

“Begging for your life, monster?”

The Holy Knight cooled in a heartbeat, like iron plunged in water. The Assassin didn’t. He kept his grip, blade snug to her throat, questions pressed tight as a garrote.

Good. That was right.

In the original history, the Assassin—the one returned from the dead country—stumbled forward in fog. He had iron will but no remembered target. He didn’t need much attention.

The Holy Knight was different. He shepherded the Black Iron Age into the Clay Age. He broke calamities. He saved the world. A mind that let reason rule feeling. He and the Night Watcher were the keystones of this squad.

“It’s just the optimal choice.”

The sentence fell like a stone in still water. It had weight. You’ll understand.

“Wait a second, Miss Assassin.”

“Don’t you want to know—”

“I want to wring it from her. But—”

“I won’t kill you. Tell me where that Demon King is—”

“Don’t you think something’s off? Because I surrendered too fast? It’s simple. Most of my power is sunk into the Time Ruins behind us, suppressing beasts invading from the outer realms. I’ve got no spare strength to fight you.”

The world began to tear like wet canvas.

Time skipped and broke over the sea behind Vega. A jagged heartbeat. Through the rifts, you could glimpse an obelisk propping up the heavens, a sky and earth washed scarlet, and—

—endless monsters, stampeding this way like a black tide.

“A thousand beasts come? Drag a thousand shadow-bodies from the dark. Ten thousand beasts charge? Bring ten thousand shadows to crash back. My master’s name is Savior Demon King Andor. Friend to humankind. A fail-safe ring against the world’s destruction.”

The end of another timestream was projected into this Time Ruins, and Vega let the heroes catch a hummingbird’s flash of it.

Their shock flared like lightning across their faces. She nodded, satisfied, and smiled.

“I hope—no, I ask you to protect the ‘me’ here. This anchor that lets me remain myself in the human world. Cut down the murlocs, the crayfish-men, and the other monsters closing in, so I can keep the pressure on the Time Ruins. I can die and revive. But if the beasts break through the Time Ruins’ gate, that’s a catastrophe. Preliminary estimate: the Purified Nation Helena and the Mountain-and-River Nation Kavat are wiped out.”

This, too, was a branch of the script. Her master had personally scouted the kingdoms’ defenses and run the numbers. Whether the heroes killed her, walked away, or helped grudgingly—it all fit the script.

There was a preferred direction, sure. At most a nudge, a lantern set by the road.

We won’t bend the story’s course. We don’t care about a good or evil end. We only want the results that bud from the side branches. Her master had said it again and again.

“Until when?”

They were heroes, not in name only. After a stretch of thought, as expected, they chose the option the script liked.

“Six days from now. When the lords who’ll sign the peace in SkywardCity arrive to take over the defense of the Time Ruins.”

“I agree.” “…You win.” “We’ll do it your way.”

Good. Six days, and the heroes were held.

Vega smiled. For one so stern-faced, that smile was rare as a flower on frost.