Their short rest at the clock tower was over. After exactly one hour, Yuto rose to his feet.

They had not been attacked while resting, but he did not consider that fortunate. The enemy already knew about them. If they were not attacking, it meant they were gathering every available fighter and waiting.

“Yuto.”

Levian handed him three aether potions. She had brought five bottles. They had shared one during their rest, and she would keep the remaining bottle for emergencies.

“Thank you.”

Yuto quietly expressed his gratitude and stepped outside. The resting Iron Horses raised their heads to look at him. Despite the punishing journey, there was not a trace of resentment in the loyal Evomon’s eyes. He stroked their manes a few times, untied their tethers, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“We’re moving out.”

When Yuto pulled the reins, the Iron Horses stepped forward on their heavy forelegs. The aether dove now flew straight toward the royal castle.

Three crystals remained. The closer they drew to the castle, the more the purple mist turned blood-red. It was proof that the aether contamination had reached a critical point.

Destroying the eighth and ninth crystals was sheer pandemonium. Just as Yuto had expected, the enemy’s defenses were stronger and more aggressive than before. Dozens of archers rained arrows from rooftops and behind rubble, while orc warriors in heavy armor blocked the streets.

“Flokiro, the right!”

Yuto leaped from the driver’s seat as he shouted. Using Void Step, he reached a rooftop and immediately unleashed Void Touch.

Black haze reached out in the shape of hands, seizing the crossbow-wielding bandits by their upper bodies all at once.

CRUNCH!

Bones shattered, and corpses dropped to the ground. Meanwhile, down below, Flokiro raised a massive firestorm and broke the orcs’ formation.

“Wind Blast!”

Levian joined the fray with a powerful spell of her own. A wind of aether burst from the tip of her staff, blowing away the skeletons guarding the crystal. Seizing the opening, Yuto smashed the ninth crystal.

BOOOOM!

The restless spirits freed by the crystal’s explosion scattered with screams.

Only one crystal remained now, and the royal castle was right before them.

* * *

At last, they reached the square before the royal castle’s main gates. The scene awaiting them was so horrific it seemed designed to test Yuto’s sanity.

The tenth and final crystal was as enormous as all the others combined. It was like a tower of crystal rising in the center of the square. He could not begin to imagine how many restless spirits were imprisoned inside it.

At the heart of that enormous crystal stood people dressed unlike any they had encountered so far. Their pitch-black robes looked woven from shadows, and they carried staves made of human bones. Inside the dark hoods concealing their faces, yellow eyes glimmered like ghostly flames.

Black Mages. At last, he had come face-to-face with the masters of the vermin defiling this city.

Nor were the Black Mages alone. Orc champions in heavy armor guarded every approach to the crystal in rank upon rank. The human criminals captured and forced to labor were nowhere to be seen.

“Ah...”

It was neither the orc champions’ bulk nor his fury at the Black Mages that arrested Yuto’s gaze. Beyond the defensive line, he met the stares of two pitiful beings looking straight at him.

Armor draped over bones stained pitch-black. Purple eyes burning behind helmets. Yuto trembled when he recognized their armor. It belonged to the royal guard charged with protecting Belkain’s royal castle. The guards who had once sworn loyalty to Belkain’s royal family were now death knights, their very bodies denied rest by the Black Mages’ evil magic.

“Ah... Aah...”

A groan escaped Yuto’s lips. Before his regression, the royal guards had been his swordsmanship instructors. In place of his father, the king who had died so young, those knights had taught Yuto how to fight.

“You filthy vermin... How dare you... How dare you!”

Yuto remembered every royal guard’s name. They had shared drinks with him, devoted themselves to the royal family, and fought with their lives on the line even on the day Shiro betrayed him. Knowing those knights had been turned into death knights filled him with maddening rage.

WHOOOOSH!

Void aether erupted from Yuto’s entire body, running wild. Behind his back, Void Touch writhed savagely, three or four times its usual size.

[“Kill the intruder.”]

The Black Mage’s command shook the square. The instant it was given, the two death knights drew their swords and charged. To them, those words must have sounded like a royal decree.

“Levian, Flokiro! Handle the orcs!”

Yuto bellowed and sprinted forward. He wanted no one else’s help in freeing the death knights’ bodies.

BOOOM!

Void Touch collided with a death knight’s cursed sword. Once the mightiest knights in Belkain, they barely yielded even against Void Touch.

Not enough.

They had been far stronger in life. These death knights, created by forcibly using their bodies without corrupting their souls, could not match the strength they had possessed while alive. That made this a vile desecration of both the dead and the name of Belkain’s royal guard.

“Aaaah!”

Yuto’s anguished cry tore through the square. Two Void Touch hands lashed like whips, battering the death knights, but the knights who had once been Belkain’s finest would not fall easily. Though their flesh had rotted away and their souls had been stripped from them, the forms of their swordsmanship still lived in their bones.

The death knights’ precise combinations probed the gaps in Yuto’s defenses. From those sword strokes, he recognized who they were.

“Sir Kael, Sir Delma...!”

Emotion welled up inside him. He felt on the verge of tears. Kael and Delma. They had been the strongest knights in the royal guard. How many times had they scolded him while teaching him the sword? Swallowing his tears, Yuto adjusted his grip on his dagger. He used Void Step to leap through space, appearing behind a death knight.

But these were the masters who had taught him swordsmanship. Without even looking, they raised their shields and blocked his strike.

BOOM!

The shock wave drove Yuto backward. Seizing that opening, the orc champions raised their massive axes and moved to fall upon him.

“Yuto!”

Levian screamed and swung her staff. But the enemy’s attacks were far too swift and fierce. The barrier she conjured shuddered beneath the orc champions’ monstrous strength, threatening to shatter at any moment.

Then it happened.

“Aaaaah!”

As Flokiro raced past Levian toward Yuto, pure white flames unlike anything they had ever seen exploded from his body. This was no mere release of aether. The harrowing tragedy they had witnessed together, Yuto’s anger, and the desperate wish to protect his partner had all come together.

The light of evolution swallowed Flokiro. Within the blazing flames, his small frame began to swell rapidly. His dainty forepaws transformed, sprouting sharp claws capable of rending stone, and his short fur streamed outward like a mane of sunlight, wrapping around his entire body.

What burst from the flames was no longer a small, mascot-like Evomon. It was a sacred beast as large as a house, red and blue flames streaming like a mane from its entire body.

“Flo...kiro?”

Evomon evolved through their bond with their partner and the sharing of aether. But evolution was uncommon, and for an outsider to witness the moment firsthand was rarer still.

BOOOM!

Charging amid flames, the beast slammed into the orc champions. The heavily armored warriors flew into the air as though struck by a carriage at full speed. The beast opened its jaws wide toward the sky, and a searing beam burned the champions to ash.

“I’m not Flokiro now. I’m Flokai.”

Flokai spoke with his flame-wreathed teeth bared. Having undergone this evolution before the regression, he felt no elation. Far stronger was his anger at himself for allowing Yuto to fall into danger. If only this body had accumulated more aether, he could have gone beyond the first evolved form and become a Plock Knight. Suppressing his regret, Flokai moved.

Bounding back, Flokai abruptly caught Levian’s hem in his teeth and gently tossed her onto his back.

“Yuto mustn’t be interrupted.”

Levian was briefly bewildered at finding herself suddenly astride him. She was also afraid the flames pouring from his body might burn her.

“Th-this is...”

To her amazement, Flokai’s flames did not burn her in the slightest. They felt warm, but not hot. Levian soon collected herself and nodded.

“Raaaaar!”

At Flokai’s roar, the ground seethed like lava. With Levian on his back, he shot toward the orc champions’ formation like a bullet.

BOOOM!

Every sweep of his forepaw sent heavily armored champions flying, crumpled like sheets of paper. Riding on his back, Levian raised her staff as she felt the overwhelming aether pouring from him. Not only her own aether but Flokai’s as well flowed into her staff.

“Fire Rain!”

Flokai’s flames and Levian’s magic spread out. Fiery rain began pouring down upon the champions’ heads. Alarmed, the Black Mages unfurled magical barriers like umbrellas, but the rain of flames pierced them and turned the square into a sea of fire.

While the orcs screamed and burned to death, Yuto could focus entirely on his duel with the death knights.

Sir Kael’s shield met Void Touch head-on, barring Yuto’s advance.

BOOM!

The ground sank beneath the dull impact. The instant Yuto staggered, Sir Delma closed in, his sword darting like a snake toward Yuto’s neck.

Yuto barely escaped with Void Step. It happened in a split second. The cold blade grazed his cheek, leaving a deep cut. The yellow eyes burning behind the helmet held no emotion, yet Yuto felt a terrible sorrow in their light.

The swordsmanship those two were using was the very same they had taught Yuto. The sword they had taught him so he could protect himself was now being wielded to kill him.

That knowledge made him feel as though his heart were being carved out. Gripping his dagger tight, Yuto plunged straight in.

“Sir Kael... was never... this slow!”

Having learned all their sword techniques, Yuto could read their movements. Void Touch struck hard beneath Sir Kael’s shield, knocking it upward and opening a gap in his defense. Catching Sir Delma’s successive blows with his other Void Touch hand, Yuto thrust his obsidian dagger.

CRUNCH!

But Sir Kael’s sword caught Yuto’s dagger. Though his skeletal body moved stiffly, his strength was not to be dismissed.

“Intru...der...”

Sir Kael’s jawbone clattered as it produced a voice. Those words held no will of his own. They were merely a response generated by the Black Mage’s command. But at the sound, Yuto’s eyes darkened into a pitch-black abyss.

“Do not... defile their voices...!”

Surging emotion squeezed his heart. With every heartbeat, Void aether poured through his entire body.

CRRRUNCH!

The two Void Touch hands wavering behind his back merged into one, taking the shape of an enormous reaper’s scythe.

Sir Delma thrust his sword from beside Yuto, but Yuto vanished with Void Step. As the death knights turned their heads to search for him, he was already above them, bringing down the reaper’s scythe.

BOOOOM!

The power of the Void erased the evil magic dwelling in the death knights’ bones at its very source. Sir Kael’s shield tore like paper, and Sir Delma’s sword shattered into fragments.

“Enough... Enough...!”

Yuto spoke in a trembling voice as he guided the scythe.

SLASH!

The blade swept through the reeling death knights’ necks. The negative aether forcing their bodies to move was devoured by the Void, scattering into smoke laced with screams.

The yellow light faded in their severed heads. As every last trace of aether driving the knights was consumed, their bodies creaked and sank to the ground.

Just before their bones collapsed completely, Yuto saw peaceful souls within the helmets’ dark openings, as though, for the briefest instant, they had regained their original forms.

[“Thank... you...”]

At those words, so faint they might have been imagined, Yuto bit his lip until it bled. He shed no tears. What he had to spill today was not tears, but the blood of the enemies who had done all this.

Yuto turned his head.