“Enemy attack!”

The attack began at dawn.

Weeeeee, BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!

The warning sirens woke everyone in the area, sending Peiren’s commanders and knights scrambling to their feet. Still half-asleep, they couldn’t believe their eyes.

From the east came not the sun, but a wave of flames. The red tidal wave of fire illuminated Peiren’s position like daylight as it rushed toward them, threatening to melt the fortress walls. Leah dashed out wearing only her nightgown covered by a large cloak.

“Fire Wall! Wind!”

Powerful fire and wind magic erupted from the tip of her staff. A wall of flames blocked the incoming wave while gusts of wind pushed it back.

“Ohhh! Lady Mage!”

“A mage of fire… and wind!”

The nobles who had looked down on her now gazed with admiration, but she had no time to feel vindicated. The flames were being pushed back.

‘He’s grown stronger!’

Archaik seemed to have abandoned any pretense of being human. Dragon magic poured forth openly, threatening to crush their defenses.

“Leah!”

Seeing Helix rushing toward her, Leah’s face brightened. “Where’s Karai?”

“I’ve prepared him. Take my hand!”

With Helix’s support, Leah’s flames shot up like a fountain. The display of power, reminiscent of a volcanic eruption, surprised even Leah herself. Those sensitive to mana trembled at the unnatural way all energy flows converged on her.

Archaik, leading the imperial forces, gritted his teeth and glared at Helix. ‘Has the guardian regained his power…!’

Leah’s wall of fire was pushing back Archaik’s flame tide. “At this rate, we might have a chance!”

At that moment, Archaik withdrew his flames. “Raaaargh!”

His mind-controlled magic user corps began advancing, serving as human shields.

“Ugh…!”

Leah’s face turned pale.

The approaching people, who had lost their will and moved like zombies, sent chills down her spine. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to attack them with fire magic. Unlike monsters, burning humans felt wrong. Moreover, these weren’t trained soldiers but ordinary people from border villages who had survived the poison and been conscripted.

‘They’re being used without any will of their own…!’

As she tried to push them back with wind alone, a Snake Knight hidden among them suddenly leaped forward, swinging his sword at Leah.

“Leah!”

Helix instinctively stepped in front of her. As he raised his hand, the Snake Knight turned to dust, leaving only his armor behind.

“Huh…?”

“…I seem to have absorbed too much mana.”

Hearing Helix’s words, Leah felt a chill but her mind worked quickly. “Helix, drain some mana from those zombies—no, those brainwashed people! Just enough to make them collapse from exhaustion!”

His eyes showed admiration. “Leave it to me!”

These civilians had already been sick before being conscripted. With their poor physical and nutritional condition, they collapsed helplessly under Helix’s mana absorption.

“Useless trash!”

When the human shield strategy failed, imperial knights waiting in the rear charged forward. “These weaklings were just a delaying tactic! We’ll show you why we’re called an Empire!”

Meanwhile, Peiren’s forces had used the time Leah and Helix bought to organize their formation. Shield bearers and spearmen calmly prepared for the charge.

“Receive my blessing!”

Helix infused Peiren’s soldiers with mana. With renewed morale, they blocked the knights’ charge with their bodies.

“Gah!”

However, among the imperial knights, someone wielded a weapon wreathed in flames. Another cracked a magic-imbued whip, moving unpredictably. Snake Knights mixed among the regular knights were disrupting the formation.

Their interference began to break through Peiren’s defensive line. “No, this can’t be…!”

Just then, “RAAAAARGH!”

From behind the imperial forces, a blue sword energy appeared and swept through their ranks. It was Ruyan and the Piert knights. The Sword Master and his knights tore through the imperial forces like wild beasts.

Leah called out eagerly, having waited for this moment.

“Karai!”

Flash!

A brilliant golden magical barrier spread out in front of Peiren’s defense line.

“Gack! Urgh!”

The tide of battle began to turn as imperial forces were caught between the barrier and Ruyan’s sword energy. Peiren’s army attacked from the front while the Piert knights and Ruyan methodically slaughtered the imperial forces from behind. Even the Snake Knights who had been causing chaos on the battlefield couldn’t withstand Ruyan’s sword energy.

“These worthless fools… you dare interfere with me to the end!”

Archaik raged. His golden eyes glowed fiercely as he released his dragon’s dominance to its maximum, crushing the creatures on the battlefield.

“…Urk!”

Those fighting on the battlefield collapsed in agony like grass bending in a storm. Even Sword Master Ruyan could barely stand, supporting himself by thrusting his greatsword into the ground.

The golden barrier lost its light. On the battlefield where only Leah remained standing in Helix’s arms, Archaik stared intently at the two.

“…”

In the tense standoff, Archaik’s appearance began to change. Scales sprouted on his once-human body. Claws emerged, and his head elongated and shot upward in an instant.

Transformed into a hybrid of human and dragon, Archaik glared at Leah in Helix’s embrace. Through his increasingly reddening vision, she alone maintained her color and continued to shine.

‘If not him… if you had chosen me, if you had saved me, if only you had chosen me…!’

As dark, violent mana made the air vibrate, he stretched his arm toward Leah. It was a powerful force condensed from a dragon’s final wish and obsession. Helix embraced the pale Leah with all his heart.

He had to protect her. From the monster’s mana, from his obsession, from his threats! Nothing was too precious to sacrifice if it meant keeping her safe.

Trapped in his embrace, Leah tugged forcefully at his clothes. “Don’t die alone! If we die, we die together!”

Even in this urgent moment, Helix couldn’t help but smile. In that brief instant when his tension eased, he felt a change in his body.

The final layer of the seal that had been restraining him so tenaciously peeled away. A sense of liberation, like being freed from a straitjacket weighted with stones, shot through his spine… and a familiar power filled his entire body.

“…We are not the ones who will die, Leah.”

He stepped in front of her and spoke. “Archaik, flame dragon who has taken a human name.”

Helix’s voice, carrying mana, resonated across the battlefield. “I revoke your right to mana.”

The mana stirred at the guardian’s judgment, delivered for the first time in centuries.

Whoosh, whoosh…

The dark mana that had covered the plain began to dissipate like fog. Feeling the power draining from him, Archaik cried out in desperation. “No… NO!”

At that moment, a sound echoed from the sky in response. “CHIRP-WAAANG!”

Dragon hatchlings appeared in droves overhead, crying out “Chirp!”

“Chi-Chirpy?”

Chirpy had led all his siblings to appear. The fluttering group of hatchlings was heart-stoppingly adorable. However, those affected by dragon mana perceived them differently.

“Hack!”

The civilian magic users who had been used as human shields fainted, and the Snake Knights fell into panic. Since all the Empire’s magic users had been subjugated to the Crown Prince’s dominance, they experienced utter confusion when the mental control suddenly vanished and multiple channels connected at once.

‘Crown Prince Archaik’s dominance has completely shattered!’ Leah was certain.

Now was the time to demonstrate the majesty of the new Dragonlord. She called out to the dragon hatchlings filling the sky. “Follow me!”

“CHIRP-WAAANG!”

Leah’s judgment was correct. The Crown Prince’s dominance had completely broken, and people on the battlefield began to struggle to their feet.

At that moment, Leah looked at Helix.

“…”

No words were needed. When Helix opened his arms to her, Leah embraced him tightly. As she felt mana pouring into and overflowing through her body, Helix whispered in her ear.

“The finishing blow is yours, Leah. As the next leader of magic, as the Dragonlord.”

She nodded, turned around, and stared directly at Archaik, pointing her staff at him. There was a spell she had always wanted to cast whenever she was suppressed by his mana.

“Hellfire!”

Blue flames that seemed to rise from hell itself engulfed Archaik.

***

“…”

As the Crown Prince burned in Leah’s flames, he gazed at her and the hatchlings. In the moment he felt his life ending, the veil of obsession that had covered his eyes finally lifted.

They were right. The powerful and righteous dragons. The dragons who had been exploited by humans and driven to extinction. That was just what Archaik had wanted to believe. The dragon hatchlings looked happy following Leah.

Whether dragons had been exterminated because of humans or not, it was now a distant past. It was merely a grudge between him and the imperial family.

At that moment, the dragon body that had been his true form, imprisoned in the imperial underground laboratory, also met its end. The soul of the prince trapped in the dragon’s body appeared before Archaik.

Surprisingly, he looked at peace.

“Oath-bound partner… it’s over now.”

They exchanged glances that acknowledged the end had come.

“What we swore to accomplish has been fulfilled.”

The promise between an abused boy and a hatchling used as an experimental subject had been realized, albeit in a twisted form.

The boy who had wished for the Empire’s end had truly hated the imperial family. That imperial family the boy hated was now gone.

The hatchling who had wished for human extinction had actually been lonely as the last remaining dragon. The other eggs had not been swept into experiments like him and instead had found happiness with a good human holy maiden.

Perhaps this wasn’t so bad after all. The dragons had been revived, and the imperial family had ended.

‘If I have one last regret…’

The Crown Prince blinked his increasingly blurry eyes. He captured Leah in his vision one last time.

‘I should have had you. If you had been by my side, I too could have dreamed of a future…’

As his thoughts broke off, the souls of both dragon and prince oxidized into nothingness.