After Miko's light pulled me back, my vision began returning — slowly, piece by piece.
But somewhere between consciousness and the dark, the child came back.
He was playing in the dirt, idly sifting it through his fingers. Then he looked up at me.
"Just give up. Why are you putting yourself through all this?"
I tried to answer. He threw dirt at me.
"You're so stupid."
I tried to move. To get up. He placed his foot in front of me, smiled, and drew three circles on the ground with his finger.
I stared at them.
He looked up and said: "I wonder which one you'll choose."
He wiped one circle away.
Then disappeared.
Then I heard them.
Carmela and Seijo — screaming my name:
"Tai. Please get up."
My body was stone. Completely unresponsive.
Then: "You promised you wouldn't leave us alone."
Did I promise them that?
Something moved through my blood. I pulled in a breath. Felt myself sinking — all the way down — until I was close to the bottom.
I closed my eyes. Opened them.
The area had been wiped out completely.
Elf soldiers were organizing, forming lines, defending. But Carmela and Seijo were on their knees, crying and screaming:
"Tai. Please don't die. Don't leave us."
I started pulling air in, trying to rise.
The three-horned demon noticed. He walked toward me.
"Do you even know how to quit? Just die."
He kept coming.
"I'll kill you without any suffering. You were a threat to the king."
I started calculating his strength, planning around it. But those words caught my attention. A threat to the king. The same king? Or a different one?
"Who is your king?" I said.
"My king is the Demon King — Diablo. Did you want to know his name before you died?"
"I'm not dying. I asked for his name so I could insult him with it."
His face darkened. "Seems like you've chosen death. The king won't refuse."
While he moved toward me, I was threading the wire into place where my left arm used to be.
I cleared the debris off me. Brushed the dust from what remained of my clothes.
He took a slow breath. His horns began to glow — The kind of glow that comes before a finishing strike.
"What?" I said. "Are you just a bull?"
His pace quickened. I braced for the damage that was coming.
The distance between us closed. I stood — barely — and leveled the sword at his face.
He laughed. "You think that sword will kill me?"
"A bull kills. Unless you get a proper grip on it. Right now I'm buying myself time. That's all."
He smiled, hiding his anger behind it. His horns burned brighter.
He charged.
I took one breath, locked my grip and shoulder around the hilt, and held my ground.
He jumped — a long arc — and came down headfirst like a bomb.
I drove both feet into the earth and held the sword with everything I had.
His head met the blade.
Sound disappeared for one full second.
Then a sharp ringing punched into both ears, and a flood of white light swallowed his features, his burning horns, everything. A wave of heat scorched across my face like live embers. The impact tore the air from my lungs entirely.
My closer knee buckled against my will. The heat locked up both arms until I was certain they would tear at the shoulder. The sword between my hands was screaming — the metal itself screaming under the pressure — throwing blue and red sparks directly into my exhausted eyes.
Then the explosion released its shockwave.
A wall of ash, dirt, and sparks blasted into my face. My vision shuddered violently. My body sank into the earth, feet carving a groove in the dirt as the force drove me backward.
Dust rose thick as a curtain — but through it, through the smoke choking my lungs, I could still feel the direct weight of his skull pressing against my blade. His eyes, burning with rage, through the haze. Inches from my face.
I bit down until my teeth nearly broke.
I redistributed my weight in the middle of that burning dark.
I was not giving him another step.
I brought the wire out from my left arm and aimed it at his horns.
I broke one of the three.
His power lost containment. Everything detonated.
The sound wall collapsed with a crack that left me completely deaf — nothing but a high-pitched ringing bouncing inside my skull. A surge of flame swept across the area, turning the white smoke into a glowing ember that swallowed the demon completely.
Chunks of rock exploded from above and rained down as charred debris. The ground shook under my feet with each wave, as if the force itself was trying to erase me.
I held the sword.
The demon flew. I drove the blade into the earth to stop myself.
My feet scraped violently against the ground.
The Decay Blade was still active. His severed horn landed between my feet.
He started regenerating. His rage built. He raised both hands and wrapped them in fire.
His strength doubled. I could hear the spirits and the trees screaming from the pain of it.
I ran the wire across my upper body and concentrated Enhancement Magic on my pelvis.
I pulled the sword from the earth and went at him. He came at me.
His right hand rose and hit me across the chest.
I raised the sword and cut him from chest to stomach.
He hit my face. I drove the blade into his left shoulder.
He kept regenerating. I kept taking damage.
He swung wide — trying to cut me in half. I dodged. But I heard something tear.
Pain flared. He used it immediately.
He came down on me with everything — hit after hit — and I blocked until he punched the sword itself. I stepped back.
Then he drove his hand through my right side.
I moved the sword to my left hand. Wrapped it. Cut off his right hand.
Blood ran. He stepped back.
"Fighting you was entertaining."
I smiled. Leaned on the sword. Stood again.
Then something glowed in my left hand.
I looked down.
The shield.
I smiled — blood covering my face — and shouted at him:
"The fight didn't end. It just started."
He smiled and launched himself forward at full force.
I raised the shield.
He hit it. His body recoiled.
That was my opening.
I pulled the sword from the earth and cut off his other hand.
He stepped back. Tension flooded him.
I felt something close to joy. I was fighting. Really fighting.
When he saw me smiling, his body trembled and he pulled back fast.
"What's wrong?" I said. "Are you scared? Come face me."
"Are you a monster?"
"Why not?"
He looked at his severed hands regenerating, then looked at me.
"I thought you wanted to deliver my head to your king. But all I see is a frightened cat backing away."
He said nothing.
"Is that an admission? Come on. It's too early to retreat."
"Fine. As you wish."
I raised the sword.
"Looks like you've started thinking about how to survive me."
He came at me like an arrow. I welcomed it.
His right hand rose to hit me — I moved to block — and he kicked me in the left side instead.
The smile didn't leave my face. I grabbed his foot with both hands. He tried to pull free. I cut it off.
He retreated fast, regenerated the foot, and pulled the fire from his hands.
"What now? Going to pull something else out of those horns?"
"I'm ending this fight with this strike. Get ready."
"Come on. You won't escape what's waiting for you."
He inhaled. Purple fire poured from both hands.
The pressure became enormous. The ground was breaking apart around us.
I closed my eyes and poured everything into my right arm.
He launched — fast as a bullet, and I felt the approach before I saw it.
His right arm rose and hit me across the face.
I raised the sword and cut through his left arm.
He hit my right hand. The sword flew.
He regenerated instantly and tried to hit me again. I caught the arm, wrapped it, and ripped it from the socket.
I held it like a weapon and drove it through the center of his chest.
He planted his right foot and punched me in the stomach with everything he had left. It was devastating. Blood came out of my mouth.
The wire spread and wrapped around him.
I pulled my feet free and drove forward — both of us bracing, both of us ready.
I put everything remaining — Enhancement Magic, mana, all of it — into my fist and hit him.
He hit me in the same fraction of a second.
The two strikes met simultaneously.
The sound wasn't a punch. It was the sound of a massive boulder shattering a meteor.
A circular shockwave detonated from the point of impact, blasting dirt and debris outward in every direction. Part of my jaw went numb immediately under his fist, while my mana-loaded strike buried into his face and snapped his head backward with brutal force.
The world shook.
We flew apart in opposite directions — like two shells fired from cannons — tearing through air and earth, leaving two parallel lines of destruction behind us before we stopped inside a thick cloud of dust that smelled of burning and iron.
The impact had generated its own storm. What was left of my shirt tore away completely. The trees moved fast, bending their branches to slow me down before I hit.
I landed against a distant tree.
I couldn't see the three-horned demon.
But I could see the one still holding Miko.
I tried to move.
My body refused.
I started coughing blood.
My vision narrowed — little by little.
The sounds faded.
Then silence. Total silence.
Into that silence, a voice I knew — quiet as a whisper, heavier than all the wreckage around me:
"Tai…"
I forced my eyes open. Nothing but absolute dark.
"Miko?"
"Yes. I'm here."
Her voice carried weight she was trying to hide. Before I could read it, she continued, firmer:
"Listen carefully. We don't have much time."
I pressed my lips together. Cold moved through my chest.
"Are you alright?"
Heavy silence.
The kind that answers without words.
I didn't give her time to build a softer version.
"Don't lie to me."
Her answer came wrapped in a faint smile I couldn't see — but felt in the slight break in her voice:
"I'm alright. Because you're still fighting."
I didn't understand how I was hearing her.
"Listen carefully," she said. "We don't have enough time."
"Wait — what do you mean, not enough time?"
"Tai. I'm speaking to you telepathically. Listen to me."
I was tense, lost. No idea what to do.
"What?"
"It doesn't matter. I trust you. I trust that you'll protect me and save me again. But you need to take care of the siblings."
Tears ran down my face.
"Don't go. I don't know where you're going. Wait. I'll save you right now."
"Tai. It's alright. I know you'll save me. But promise me — promise me you'll protect the siblings."
I tried to stand. My body refused.
I grabbed the sword and dragged it across myself to force the adrenaline up.
My body still wouldn't rise.
The tree lifted me — physically raised me — and threw me toward Miko.
She was in front of me again.
But the three-horned demon was moving toward the siblings.
I reached for Miko's hand.
She turned her wind magic on me and sent me toward the siblings instead.
No.
No.
No no no no—
Miko, don't go—
Why does everyone sacrifice themselves to save me?
Am I just a burden?
I know they do it because they love me. But what about what I feel? I want to save the people I love. I don't want to be alone again.
Miko disappeared.
The two remaining demons disappeared with her.
I fell toward the siblings.
But I didn't fall…
I died.
End of Chapter 49