It was the Imperial Year 237.
"I cannot die like this. Our rades that you slayed will weep in their graves...!"
Harsh breathing echoed from the shattered helmet. Bodies lay scattered beneath the cliff. The knight, having slain the soldiers he had once led, roared the name of the emperor with anger.
"Olivurn!!"
The emperor, too, glared at him with a cold gaze as if staring at a demon.
"Karyl...!!"
The air turned chilly instantly.
Swoosh!
The sharp sound of cutting flesh echoed.
The sword in Karyl's hand was so drenched in crimson blood that it almost seemed like it was absorbing the blood. The sharp blade had pierced through the emperor's waist.
Cough—
Crimson blood trickled down the emperor's lips as he collapsed.
"My friend... how have we come to this?" the fallen emperor spoke in sorrow.
However, Karyl felt nauseous hearing those words.
"Friend...? Even at death's door, you still don't shed your pretense."
He had been longing to say, 'I fought for you. When we unified the continent, when we fought to fulfill the Oracle. I stood at the forefront more than anyone. All for you!'
"With this, Karyl MacGovern is now a traitor to the empire," a man who had been watching all this spoke with a subdued voice. "History will remember you as the dog who betrayed the emperor who graciously accepted the filthy immigrants from the north."
His name was Narh Di Maug. Looking at the emperor's corpse, he spoke without emotion, "No one will know the truth—that the emperor was planning to assassinate the great Swordmaster Karyl MacGovern."
The Oracle War had lasted for ten years. Humanity had been fighting a prolonged war against the monsters called Tarak.
So now, when the end seemed near, how had things turned out this way?
"Olivurn.... Why did you try to kill us?" Karyl muttered in a low voice.
When he returned to his homeland after the horrific war, death awaited him instead of a welcome. Aside from him, the ten chosen by the Oracle had died. Not on the battlefield, but by the hands of the humans they sought to protect.
"None of this matters anymore." Karyl shrugged. He would no longer be here.
"You're really going to do it."
"Of course." Karyl nodded slowly. He bit his lips as he stepped on the pool of blood leaking from the bodies of his fallen comrades—the people he had turned into corpses with his own hand.
"Do you really plan to go there? Inside, there may be things even a dragon like me cannot fathom. Perhaps you'll have to fight things worse than the creatures prophesied by the Oracle." Narh Di Maug pointed at an enormous tower in the distance as he looked at Karyl.
Even the dragon could not guess the things that were waiting inside. This was Pharel—a structure that was known to host an Oracle capable of turning back time.
Pharel was also where the monstrous Tarak came from, and the origin of the catastrophe.
Grrrr...
Karyl looked at Pharel, which continued to spew out monsters, and thought to himself, 'I will go back in time. No matter what happens.'