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“Your Highness?”

“Soon it will come back. If we can’t stop it, this time we will be annihilated.”

“What kind of bastard. Who is coming…”

The prince caught a glimpse of him frowning, and then looked up at the sky above the ruined castle walls.

“We need to divert his attention.”

Jin Katrin shouted after belatedly grasping the situation.

“Stop talking crazy! Why would Your Highness do that! I’d rather be the one to do it!”

At that, the prince said without turning his head.

“It’s big. But surprisingly nimble. The warlocks’ wyverns are not accustomed to rapid strikes, they wouldn’t last for even a moment.”

When Jin Katrin tried to argue with that ominous statement.

Shiver.

Suddenly, his body began to tremble.

“T-this…”

“There’s not much time. If we wait too long, the wyverns will refuse to fly again.”

Prince Doris turned his head.

Standing with his back to the flames, the prince’s face was obscured by dark shadows.

But Jin Katrin knew.

The prince was smiling.

“Y-your Highness?”

Jin Katrin’s heart thumped and his chest tightened.

“Jin. When you get back.”

At the prince’s words, his face turned pale.

“Please inform His Majesty and my older brothers.”

“Please what! Your Highness can say it yourself!”

Jin Katrin stubbornly refused.

But to no avail.

The wyvern knights suddenly approached, and they forcibly dragged and tied him to his wyvern’s saddle.

“Doris! Damn you son of a bitch! What are you doing!”

Jin Katrin shouted loudly after he was tied to the saddle without even being able to resist properly due to his shivers.

“Thank you for everything. Jin.”

The prince grinned as he climbed onto his wyvern.

“Doris! You fucking bastard! You’re insane! What the hell are you doing!”

Jin Katrin shouted incessantly with his cracking voice.

But the prince, with the visor of his helmet pulled down and his spear held securely under his arm, was no longer looking at him.

“Team 1, follow me! Team 2, escape with Jin and the rest of the wounded! Those who remain will help the infantry retreat!”

“Doris! Doris! You bastard!”

“Team 1! Take off!”

As soon as his words finished, the prince and about ten wyverns flew up.

They shot straight into the burning red sky.

“Irene! Fly!”

Left alone on the ground, Jin Katrin screamed.

However, his wyvern Irene, which usually faithfully obeyed his words, did not listen to his command this time.

He did not know whether it was afraid of the powerful enemy or if it wanted to save its master.

“Damn it! Doris! Irene! Doris!”

Shouting like a madman, he looked up at the red sky with a pale face.

Ten wyverns rushed at the gigantic monster that appeared at the far end of the sky.

“Kaechonnn!“

A loud roar echoed.

Flash.

The sky split, and a burst of light poured out.

The monster that was hit directly by the light stopped.

Ten wyverns emerged from the light and spread out, stabbing the monster’s wings and body.

The monster flapped its wings vigorously.

Hwaag!

Caught in the gust of wind, several wyverns lost their balance and staggered.

Kwag.

A disoriented wyvern was snapped into the monster’s mouth.

Hwareureuk.

A sudden burst of flame swept through three wyverns.

The remaining wyverns did not back down.

They attacked the monster by repeatedly charging at it and breaking away.

Then, they gradually led the monster away from the fortress.

Kyaaaag.

Unable to withstand the heat surrounding the monster, a wyvern cried out sadly and crashed.

A wyvern with burnt wings clung to the monster.

Hwareureureuk.

And then it turned to ashes and disappeared.

The remaining wyverns continued to attack the monster.

“Ready to evacuate the wounded! Team 2, move out!”

In the meantime, the Knights of the Sky carried as much of the wounded as they could and flew high into the sky.

“N-no!”

The wyvern Irene was also with them.

“Please! Irene! Please! Doris!”

Jin Katrin screamed.

However, his wyvern flew into the sky, ignoring its owner’s cries.

Towards the other end of the sky where Prince Doris and the monster were.

“Ah…”

Jin Katrin looked back with a distraught face.

Of the five remaining wyverns, one of them was falling headlong with both wings torn off.

* * *

“That was the last I saw of His Highness.”

After Jin Katrin finished speaking, I closed my eyes tightly.

‘It’s an honor to meet the person at the center of all the rumors. I am Doris Dotrin of the Dotrin Kingdom.’

I could still see the young man’s face as he spoke to me with an innocent smile.

The image of him recklessly rushing at the empire’s knights in order to help me and the delegation was as clear as if it had happened yesterday.

I could hear his voice vividly from when he had tried to befriend me with flattery and when he had scolded me saying that I could leave the front lines at any time.

‘Let’s be friends.’

I couldn’t forget the look on Doris’ face as he held out his hand with a bright smile.

Whether he and I were really friends, I didn’t know.

The only thing certain was that he considered me a friend and that I didn’t hate him either.

My heart throbbed.

It was different from when I was forced to leave behind my uncle, or when I lost swordsmen1 right in front of my eyes. It was different from when I faced the queen’s corpse, and it was different from when I could no longer see Ophelia.

My chest felt tight, as if it was being squashed under a large stone.

“Seeing as the monster didn’t reappear while our troops were retreating, His Highness must have held onto it quite tenaciously. Out of everything, he was the best in Dotrin in terms of persistence.”

I opened my eyes at the quiet voice.

“Even His Majesty would need to go all out when His Highness was being stubborn.”

Jin Katrin, with his usually well-groomed hair hanging down messily, chattered incoherently.

“Ah, really. And Our Highness was the best at running away and hiding. He got into a lot of accidents, so he was good at running away and hiding.”

The half of his face exposed through his loose hair was covered in burns.

“No one has witnessed the end of His Highness. So, I’m sure. His Highness is surely alive. There are just some circumstances preventing him from coming back right now. His Highness will definitely return.”

Occasionally, light flickered in his hazy eyes.

“Perhaps His Highness will come this way. If His Highness headed north, this place is closer. So when Our Highness comes…”

Looking at those eyes that were just pitiful rather than awkward, I sighed.

“Jin. I got it, stop.”

It was a pity to see what had become of the previously bright young man.

Maybe it was because I saw in him the image of my knights after losing me.

My heart felt heavier than ever.

“Go back and rest.”

At my words, Jin looked at me blankly.

“Our Highness regarded Your Highness the Crown Prince as a true friend.”

Then, after a while, he asked me.

“Isn’t it the same for Your Highness as well?”

It was only after seeing the uneasy shaking in his eyes that I could understand why the man before me had run all the way here without even taking care of his wounds properly.

“Doris.”

In response, I opened my mouth and gave him the answer he wanted.

“Was my friend.”

Jin smiled brightly.

He left with such a bright face.

Only then did the wyvern knight who had been standing silently in the back begin to speak.

“4 corps of the main army, and the 4 corps that answered to them. 6 knights, including Royal Knights, have been wiped out. All of the corps commanders were killed, and among them were some you knew.”

“I knew them?”

“I heard that His Highness had interacted quite a bit with His Excellency Burg Berten during the previous war.”

If it was Burg Berten, he was the old nobleman of Dotrin who had always been by my side in the last war.

There were times when it was annoying because of his nagging, but he was also one of the people who had treated me well.

He had said that he would no longer participate in war because he was getting older and his reason had clouded.

Right. This was war.

I had forgotten for a while.

The person that I had laughed and chatted with yesterday might disappear from my side today, and the person next to me today might no longer be with me tomorrow. This was fucking war.

I felt like I had come face to face with the true nature of war, which I had temporarily forgotten about because of our victories so far.

“He said he would retire, why would he follow me to the battlefield?”

“To repay the good will and friendship shown by Your Highness in the previous war, he led his family’s troops and participated.”

“Hah.“

A sigh came out.

Meanwhile, the wyvern knight continued to speak.

To summarize, the damage caused by Hwaryong was so great that it had become impossible to maintain the current front lines, so they would take a step back in order to reorganize.

This also meant that the number of front lines our kingdom had to handle would be at least double of what it was now.

“How about your monarch?”

At that time, the king who had been silently listening at the side asked the wyvern knight.

“He was depressed for a while, but he quickly brushed it off and is now working on reorganizing the military. Even if it’s impossible to do so immediately, he’ll gather up the troops and begin advancing again as soon as possible, so we hope that you can continue to fight courageously until then. He also said that the Knights of the Sky could work as the eyes and ears of your kingdom if necessary.”

After saying that, the wyvern knight also left the conference room.

As the messenger left, silence fell.

But the atmosphere was strange.

The king, Vincent, Arwen, Eli, Adelia, and Carls, almost everyone was staring at me.

Normally, I would have brazenly asked what they were looking at, but this time I couldn’t.

So I quietly turned my head away from their gaze.

* * *

After staying for a few days, Jin and the wyvern knight left the citadel, and a week afterwards we received new information.

There was one piece of good news, and two pieces of bad news.

First of all, the good news was that Hwaryong, which had disappeared after attacking the Dotrin Kingdom, had reappeared in the central part of the empire, and had made a mess of that region.

There was no way the imperial army had led Hwaryong to the heart of the empire, so it was entirely thanks to Doris that Hwaryong had headed in that direction.

The bad news was that there were more than a few people who had seen Doris and his wyvern fall while engulfed in flames, after he had avenged himself by leading Hwaryong to the central part of the empire.

And the last piece of news was that a large number of imperial troops which had originally been dealing with the civil war were now advancing towards this place.

There were as many as 60 legions, a large army of 120,000.

Our side only had 10 legions of 20,000 people. It was truly an overwhelming power difference.

Not to mention, it wasn’t just the numbers.

Among the empire’s troops that were moving south, there were also 20,000 knights under the direct control of the imperial family.

The army of the real empire was on a different level from the weaklings that the kingdom had faced so far.

The skills of the paladins and knights and the quality of the soldiers would be incomparably higher than before.

It was truly a crisis.

However, the kingdom was not shaken in the slightest.

“The time has finally come.”

The emperor was not the only one who had been waiting for the right moment.