The brighter the moonlight in the sky, the darker the shadow beneath it.
It was a shadow cast by the headless knights who were still climbing the wall.
The headless knights, who had been hidden as if dead for decades, were happy to now reveal themselves under the impious banner.
"Arnstein would be a suitable place to announce the beginning."
The woman dressed in black mourning clothes stood with her back to the moon.
Everyone in Arnstein watched the woman who looked like a drop of black water floating in a blue moon.
"Now everyone is looking at me."
Ramashtu, the Black Woman, had been waiting for a moment like this for a long time.
That moment when everyone in the world looks at you.
She wanted to capture the attention of a world that had tried to ignore her, no matter how many innocent people died burning and how many parents who lost their children cried.
"If everyone had done this from the beginning, it would have been better."
Ramashtu, a fallen saint who chose harsh resistance against the world instead of obedience to God.
She knew very well that more intense colors than anyone else's were needed to paint something in this hardened world.
To achieve that color, she did not hesitate to paint a completely black darkness over her pure soul.
Boom!
Thus, her world was represented tonight.
Ramashtu began to laugh joyfully as she watched the Arnstein mansion collapse before her.
"What's happening? It's not the first time you've seen a dragon fragment."
Thump-!
The man laughed while the sword cried.
With a dragon fragment that didn't fit hanging from my heart.
Seeing Frausen smile with all his faded colors, Vlad felt more sadness than strangeness.
"…No, this is not right."
All this time I've been following your footsteps.
However, there didn't seem to be any trace of the glorious sword master that Vlad had hoped remained in the man who had become completely ragged.
"Aren't you the Sword Master?"
The night was too deep.
It was so dark and dense that everything he saw seemed strangely distorted.
Under such a dark night sky that seemed to erase the color of Joseph, the Sword Master he followed, Vlad had no choice but to raise his sword again.
"…A young possibility, the place where it should be, and a fair reward."
There were small children in the city of Moshium who couldn't wake up from their dreams.
There were also women who died suffocated in a fog-filled town, crying black tears.
"These were all principles you taught me to protect."
He wasn't someone I admired just because he was high up.
I admired him because he was right.
However, the person in front of him now insulted all the achievements and principles he had followed. Vlad felt as if his efforts were being denied.
"…Then what are you doing here?"
The world I admired up close was completely rotten and crushed.
Now that I finally faced the stench of Frausen, Vlad felt an unbearable repulsion.
"This is not a Sword Master."
Clenching his teeth, Vlad raised his sword towards Frausen.
A Sword Master was someone who could paint the world with his sword.
And now Vlad had taken up his brush to erase the ugly world before him from reality.
"Today I will erase you from here."
From Vlad's eyes, a golden line began to extend.
The line that followed the will flowed along the sword and extended directly towards Frausen, but the eyes reddened with anger were something that could not be helped.
"The rules of the Sword Master. I haven't heard them in a long time."
"Shut up!"
Kwaaaaaaaaaaa!
Vlad's world began to approach Frausen, who laughed at the path he had followed.
Frausen let out a groan as if he were truly in trouble when he was pushed against the wall by a strong blow that was quite different from the previous one.
Among the dragons or knights, none in this era had pushed Frausen as much as Vlad was now.
"There was a time when I tried to follow those rules."
"Then why did you change?!"
The two swords faced each other, pushing against each other.
Although both were silver in color, their wills were different, so they repelled each other.
"…People always change. You're a naive young knight."
The balance of the swords began to tilt towards Vlad.
It was because of the weight of Frausen, who understood reality after following his dreams.
Kihano told Vlad to wield his sword for young possibilities.
"Even if it's a young possibility, there are times when you must sacrifice it for the greater good."
Kihano said that if you were in the right place, you had to do what you had to do.
"Even if you are in the right place, there are times when you must close your eyes."
And always receive only the fair reward.
Vlad still remembered the weight of the fair reward that Godin had dropped on his head.
"And sometimes, you must be even more ambitious than the fair reward."
"Shut up! Damn bastard!"
But the words of honor from the Sword Master began to fade.
The young knight who had followed his path was being gradually wounded by the words spoken by the old emperor after yielding to reality.
"A false person like you has no right to say those things!"
Vlad's eyes were turning redder as he looked at Frausen, as if he could no longer bear the words spoken by a mere corpse.
It was like the gaze of a dragon that easily defined who the other person was.
Vlad's heart, already burning with anger, trembled even more at the brilliant skills of the Sword Master playing with the clumsy strength of the dragon.
[No, Vlad! Don't fall into the world of dragons!]
Kihano, the voice he valued within him, shouted not to do it, but Vlad's eyes turned bluer, rejecting everything that tried to shake his world.
At Frausen's words, which completely ignored the beliefs he had held and followed until now, Vlad began to pour out the burning anger he had been holding back for so long.
[Vlad!]
"Haaaa!"
With emotions he could no longer control.
Vlad's tightly clenched fist suddenly gripped the crying sword.
The dragon-slaying sword turned sinister along with the light emitted by its owner, and became so red-hot that it even forgot its origins as a star.
"I will trample you so you can't say anything more!"
The long, sharp fangs and blue eyes of the knight had turned pale. The knight's name was Vlad Dragulia.
Vlad's world, shaken by anger, suddenly resembled that of his father whom he had never seen.
"…It's a dragon."
The other side of Vlad, driven by anger, was the world of the dragon he had inherited.
Frausen, who finally discovered traces of a dragon in Vlad's world, which had many sides, did not hide his confused expression and asked if he had also changed.
"And I am a Dragon Slayer."
There was a dragon running down the hallway.
However, the world reflected behind the dragon was no longer the brilliant golden color seen before, but a sinister blood-red.
Frausen raised his sword towards a sinister world that was no longer worthy of respect.
Thud!
The Dragon Slayer's sword that pierces the most perfect dragon, destroying and shattering the sinister world of dragons.
Thus, a young writhing dragon was caught by the tip of the sword that had been thrust.
"Argh..."
It was once a sword that could have been wielded, but now it was a silver knight who had pierced me.
The silver knight protruding from Vlad's back trembled slightly towards the brightly shining moon today, remembering the young knight he had seen at the World Tree.
"You've done well until now, Vlad Aureo."
The blood flowing from his mouth splattered on Frausen's face.
But why did Frausen's heart grow cold even though the dragon's blood was right in front of him?
"But in dragon form, you can't stop me."
"…Gah."
Crrr!
The sensation of pulling it out was more painful than when it pierced.
Vlad shuddered involuntarily from the chill of the sword that felt like it pierced his entire body.
"I'll try to remember the name Justia. At least it deserved that."
As the sword withdrew, the world inverted.
The ground was closer and the sky farther.
Thud!
After falling from the completely broken wall of the second floor and hitting the ground, Vlad's eyes were filled with a bright and clear moon he had never seen before.
And the appearance of a man approaching me, covering the moon.
"…Lord Joseph."
The sword was still clenched in his hand as if he wanted to keep trying, but the look in Joseph's eyes was extremely cold.
Seeing those eyes, strength slowly left Vlad's hand.
"…It's not true, is it?"
With black hair and black eyes.
The eyes that always looked at me with the bright window behind them were there now.
The black eyes always seemed like they would never change, but today they looked so unfamiliar that I couldn't bear it.
"Say it's not true… please."
The ground I lay on was cold, but the sight my eyes saw was even colder.
Vlad spoke sincerely to Joseph, who looked down at him, but the only response he heard was the cold winter wind.
Vlad let out a small cry to Joseph, who looked at him in a world that had turned upside down.
"You no longer have anything else to repay me, Vlad."
Despite Vlad's pleas, Joseph's body moved farther away.
Towards the black woman in front and the black carriage that brought her.
Each time Joseph got into the wolf's mouth-like black carriage that looked like a coffin, the world Vlad had built shattered horribly.
That world was created by Joseph, who approached me one winter day when I wandered with only a sword in my hand.
"Kuhff..."
Perhaps because of the blood he was losing, or maybe because of Joseph's gaze, Vlad gradually shrank from the piercing cold.
"Aaah!!"
Joseph was slowly disappearing from his blurry vision.
Vlad shouted loudly to look here and not there, but when Joseph turned around, his back was solid without the slightest disturbance.
"No! Khg...! It's not true."
The night was cold and the moonlight heavy.
Just like the winter they met.
Joseph's back was fading more and more due to Vlad's tears mixed with blood.
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