“Found you.”

In an abandoned church, in the middle of nowhere. A man resembling a black leopard looked down at me while muttering as if he was possessed.

“Finally… I found you.”

Afternoon sunlight leaked through the shattered stained glass.

Iridescent brilliance shone down the man’s black hair, brightening his face.

The man’s face was covered in blood.

***

‘Scary.’

The black-haired man did not take his bright, jade-colored eyes away from me.

My knees went numb. Just looking at him made me feel like I was going to die.

Even though I wanted to step back, the corpses strewn around me blocked the way.

‘If I make a mistake now, I will be the same as them.’

Thinking about it that way, my mind was blown.

“…Father, it’s me.”

I gave strength to my trembling legs and spit out a set line. (PR/N: ‘set’ in this case meaning ‘memorized’.)

Father. It was insanely awkward to put that word in my mouth, but I couldn’t make it obvious.

“I am Lilietta, the daughter father had been looking for for 10 years.”

‘Is it too unnatural?’

But what about it? I didn’t even have time to practice my lines.

I laughed desperately. I was hoping that the trembling corners of my lips would reflect on my father’s moved expression.

All I could do now was this.

“……”

The man who was staring blankly at my face slowly raised his sword.

It felt like my heart was sinking down to my stomach.

‘What should I do? I think I got caught.’

Death was just around the corner. I was terrified and my teeth clenched against each other.

I turned around, wanting to run away, but before I could move, the man swung his bloody sword.

‘I’m going to die…!’

Clank!

With the sound of sword clashing, my whole body became warm.

Is my throat get cut and hot blood gushing out?

‘…No.’

When I opened my eyes, things were going the i opposite of what I expected.

The man threw his sword and hugged me.

My small, 9-year-old body was lifted up in the air.

Without even having time to scream, lukewarm liquid dripped onto the nape of my neck.

A liquid slightly thinner than blood. I turned my head involuntarily and almost fainted.

He was crying. Not anyone else, but Alan, the ‘Mad Duke’.

The same murderer who had those men’s heads cut and piled up next to the drawbridge shed tears of sorrow.

“It is you.”

The man hugged me and left the church.

The hand on my back was incredibly soft.

“My dear daughter, Lily.”

Peeping over his wide shoulders, I could see corpses still in their warmth.

Those who had been decapitated by these hands that embraced me.

They were the bandits who kidnapped this man’s daughter 10 years ago.

The heads that rolled here and there would soon be stuck by the blue window and would be shown in the drawbridge.

‘I might end up like that too.’

I managed to save my life, but my fear did not go away.

No, I was more scared than before.

‘If the truth was revealed.’

I wrapped my arms around the man’s neck and hid my distorted expression.

Thump, thump, thump.

It felt like my heart was about to come out of my mouth.

I barely endured the insult and swallowed the truth that only I knew.

Mad Duke, Alan. I am not your daughter.

***

All the tragedy started this morning. The name of the town I lived in is ‘Ant Cave’.

With an open pit in the middle of the vast land, it was the most underdeveloped place among the slums.

On a sunny morning, as usual, I was wandering around the ant cave, begging for food.

Then a fat man came up to me and asked.

“Don’t you want to be a precious child?”

The man also said, ‘I’ll give you everything you want.’ Tasty food, clean clothes……

I had no choice but to be tempted as I had already been starving for four days.

I followed him with a single hope – ‘Is it possible?’

As everyone would have expected at this point, he was a kidnapper.

The man entered the dark alley and threw me into a carriage.

I rolled over and bumped my head on a board that popped out.

At that moment, I realized that I’d die today.

Up until now, I thought I was going to starve to death, but surprisingly, that wasn’t the case.

It might be better to starve to death.

Because I was about to have my throat cut off by some crazy guy.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

The horse-drawn carriage departed without a chance to run away.

I crouched in vain and pondered the future I had just envisioned.

‘I will be killed at the place this carriage is heading to.’

The reason for knowing this fact was simple and ridiculous.

‘This world is fiction.’

I originally lived in a world completely different from this world.

My memories of my previous life weren’t perfect, but even then, it seemed like it was as bad as it is now.

Because the feeling of dying alone in the cold darkness was vivid. Then I reincarnated.

And I was also an extra to the dark fantasy novel \ that I read in my previous life.

“Noisy, red ant.”

The fat man who kidnapped me approached me while calling my nickname.

He came one step forward, squatted down, and asked a random question.

“Do you know who Lilietta von Bauner is?”

It was a familiar name. If I didn’t answer, he was likely to hit me, so I nodded calmly.

“The princess who disappeared 10 years ago….”

“Yeah, no matter how young you are, you must have heard the princess’ name. After all, the ant cave belongs to the duchy.”

The man patted the stubble on his chin for a moment, then smirked.

“We are going to meet Lilietta’s father. Duke Alan von Bauner.”

Alan von Bauner, ‘The Mad Duke’.

I had never seen him in person, but I had heard rumors about him.

Isn’t he the duke who rules over the vast territory of the northern empire, and the head of a prestigious family that even the emperor can’t treat him recklessly?

If there’s any downside to that perfect man, it’s just that his youngest daughter, Lily, was kidnapped when she was a baby and he went mad.’

He was a person who had absolutely nothing to do with me, who was just a beggar.

…At least until today.

“I don’t have time, so I’ll tell you right away. I was the culprit who kidnapped Princess Lilietta 10 years ago.”

The fat man first revealed his identity and then glanced at my face.

You must have thought I would be surprised, but unfortunately, I had no choice but to move my eyes like a calf.

‘I already know who you are.’

Except for the chilling moment of death, I couldn’t remember exactly how I lived in my previous life.

But was it because of the instinct to live? I only sparsely remembered the contents of \, which I had read in my previous life.

Not everything, but only the part where I appeared.

‘This man’s name is Thomas, the criminal who kidnapped Princess Lily, and the leader of the bandit ‘Walpurgis Night’…’

I was grinding my teeth, loudly, without realizing it.

‘You’re a damn bastard.’

The man in front of me was the one most responsible for my reincarnated death.

At that moment, while I was swearing inwardly, Thomas scratched the back of his head and continued explaining.

“Ahem, and… the princess died 10 years ago.”

I was belatedly surprised. What Thomas said was something I didn’t remember.

‘Is Lily dead? Ah, no wonder… the rumors I heard were a bit strange.

The reason Thomas’ bandits kidnapped the princess was for money.

But he had never demanded a ransom for Lily from the mad duke in these many years.

‘The child who was supposed to be exchanged with the ransom was dead.’

After all, very few children came back alive after being abducted.

Even in the ant cave where I lived, many children were abducted and never to be seen again.

I had personally witnessed moments of horrific disappearances many times.

As I hugged my knees in terror, Thomas leaned his head toward me.

“You don’t need to know the details, just remember one thing.”

Gulp, I swallowed my dry saliva. I didn’t know about the princess’s death, but I roughly remembered what this man was going to offer me.

“This is what you say when you meet the duke. ‘I am Lilietta, the daughter father had been looking for for 10 years.’”

…Even though I already knew it, it sounded so ridiculous.

“Do you understand what I am talking about? From today on, you are living as Princess Lilietta. I kidnapped you 10 years ago, but until today, when I give you back to the duke, I have raised you like a real daughter.”

In other words, it meant that I needed to impersonate someone’s dead daughter.

Thomas stopped babbling and pointed to himself with his thumb.

“After deceiving the duke, ask him to spare this Thomas. By referring to the grace that I raised you.”

The purpose of this bizarre fraudulent play was obvious to anyone looking at it.

To calm the mad Duke Alan, who was furious at the loss of his daughter.

Until now, he was still chasing Thomas, who stole his daughter.

‘You bastard, you have no idea what’s going to happen next.’

I secretly smirked.

Seriously, what can you expect from someone who lost someone else’s daughter and offered a fake one?

To be honest, I wanted to scream like this in front of Thomas.

‘If we go on like this, we’ll both die together, you idiot!’

Now, I was lucky to realize that I am currently reincarnated, but in the original version, I get scared as soon as I see Alan and blow away the entire truth.

I said, ‘I’m not Lily! I don’t know that uncle!’, and the furious Thomas yelled at me, ‘You can’t even do this right!’ and was beheaded by Alan.

Thomas’ men who were next to him were also stabbed to death.

I didn’t care about the bad men, but the problem was that Alan killed me as well.

‘He’s a mad man anyway. He must have thought Thomas and I were on the same team, but I’m still nine years old!’

It was difficult to expect mercy from Alan.

\ is a dark fantasy novel.

In a cruel world without blood or tears, Alan was the outright villain.

‘What do I do? What should I do…?’

If I told Thomas what was about to happen, he wouldn’t believe it.

However, if I stayed still, it would repeat the tragedy of the original, like a poisoned mouse.

‘If I had recovered my memory a little earlier, I would have run away immediately… No, it’s no use thinking about the past now.’

I wrapped my hands around the nape of my neck, which had goosebumps, and shook my head desperately. I had to find a way to survive somehow.

If we kept going like this, we’d end up with the same fate.

‘Let’s run away before we run into Alan. I’ll have a chance to escape at least once!’

***

There was no such a chance

A few hours later, the back of the wagon cart opened, revealing an abandoned church.

It was the meeting place of Thomas and Alan.

Thomas grabbed me and dragged me into the church.

Giant, armed men were standing impatiently around the statue of the goddess. They were Thomas’s minions.

According to memories from a previous life, the bandits who kidnapped Lily were the only ones gathered here.

“It’s old.”

One of the bandits gave me a worn-out girl doll in my arms. He seemed to be trying to create an innocent image, but I didn’t think it would help much because the doll’s hair was as red as mine. It was just tacky.

“It’s about time. Everyone, go back to your places.”

At Thomas’ command, the men dispersed in unison.

Seeing those giants hiding in the shadows, I guess a thief will always be a thief.

‘Poor bastards. You don’t even know that you are destined to be cut down by that mad duke anyway.’

Of course, it was not the truth.

Of all the people here, I am the most pitiful one. My stomach was still throbbing because I was kicked by Thomas as I tried to escape from the carriage.

I couldn’t let go of my regrets, and while I was looking around for a way out, Thomas slapped me in the back of the head.

“Be quiet, fire ant. Are you going to miss your chance to become a princess?”

I wanted to spit on Thomas’ face like a camel, but I resisted. If I didn’t resist now, I’d only get beaten more later.

“It’s all right, there’s so much resemblance.”

Thomas said, gazing at my face the whole time we waited for Alan.

His eyes seemed to hold a greater sense of wonder than his fear of being able to fool the mad duke.

‘I heard Lily was abducted a week after she was born… how much do I look like a newborn baby?’

I desperately tried recalling . Maybe I could find a rope to get out of this situation in the novel.

I roughly chewed my lips; my lips became torn and a small amount of blood hovered on the tip of the tongue. At that moment, the contents of the novel popped into my mind.

‘It was ten years ago that Lily was abducted. The civil war between the imperial family and the noble family was severe.’

Alan, the Mad Duke, stood on the side of the imperial family and fought fiercely against Count Albrecht, the vanguard of the anti-imperial faction.

So, the day Lily disappeared from the baby’s room, Alan mistook Count Albrecht as the culprit who kidnapped his daughter.

The anger of a parent who lost his child was beyond imagination.

Alan immediately went into the county and put Albrecht to extinction.

‘It was a fatal mistake. The real culprit, Thomas, fled to the western continent, taking advantage of Alan’s futile space.’

Alan, who later realized the real culprit, pursued Thomas by every possible means, but it was too late.

The western continent where Thomas fled to was a land eaten by monsters a long time ago and a lawless land for villains who fled the empire.

Whether his ability to escape was inversely proportional to his personality, Thomas managed to hide well there. For a whole 10 years.

‘Well, it seems that this is the end of his way of always escaping like a loach.’

Earlier this year, good news flew to Alan, who had been living in sorrow. He managed to catch one of Thomas’ minions.

‘I heard he was tortured and killed horribly. I don’t even want to recall the original description.’

It was easy to find the remnants once they stepped on the tail.

Despite the fact that his escape was insignificant, Thomas’ minions were captured one after another like string sausages.

Thomas felt a sense of crisis and summoned all the men with their leashes attached.

He didn’t mean to apologize to Alan, but to carry out a crazy mission.

“Let’s take a kid who looks just like her and use her as Lilietta! In return for giving back his daughter, we’ll beg him to save us!”

Red hair like roses, emerald eyes, fine features. Above all, the hair was so similar to baby Lily that the duke would be surprised to see.

That was me.

‘….I’m in trouble.’

The more I thought about it, the more there was no answer. Alan was mad for a longer time than I’m alive.

I’m just a normal kid, how can I avoid a man like that?

“I’ll be able to sleep comfortably after I hand you over to the duke.”

Thomas, the mastermind of everything, swept his chest.

Have you had a hard time all this time?

More than half of his blond hair was white.

‘He has gone completely insane.’

How could you think of living comfortably after touching someone else’s precious daughter.

I was angry at the overreaching brazenness, but I grabbed the necklace on my neck and tried to calm my heart.

For now, I had to focus only on surviving.

‘Should I run away when Alan goes wild?’

I pictured a plan in my head.

When the door opens, Alan will enter the church, take the sword from the enemy hiding nearby, and decapitate him…

Thinking that far, I touched my chest.

Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

What kind of powers does an extra have? There was no way I could get out of the grip of a charismatic villain so easily.

‘But then what?’

At the crossroads of life and death, tears welled up in sorrow and anger.

I didn’t want to cry, but no matter how mature my soul was, the tear glands of a child did not listen to me.

‘Why am I always an extra?’

A drunken father, mom who left home not long after giving birth to me. Cold, hungry and dangerous days in an ant cave.

It was hard enough to grow up and I couldn’t believe that I’d die before I became an adult.

There was no way I could accept that fate….

‘….I’ve been working so hard.’

Life would get a little better if I kept working hard. And one day, there would be a day when I could scoop up a huge whipped cream cake. That was what I thought.

‘I thought so, I thought so!’

“I don’t want to die.”

I murmured. I never wanted to be killed like this.

Instead of giving up, I gritted my teeth out of frustration.

At that moment, a clever idea suddenly came to mind.

‘There was a description of Alan’s surprise at the sight of his fake daughter. He was confused whether she was his real daughter or not until she told him the truth. Then….’

It might fail.

But even so, it would be better than doing nothing.

I swallowed my tears and raised my head.  Although I am an extra, I still want to live.

Creak, the door to the church opened.

Thump, thump.

A man with a good appearance appeared under stained glass, which scattered a brilliant light.

Black hair that was a little messy, dark green eyes, and black uniform that looked good on him.

A strong impression like a black leopard was overwhelming at one glance.

Alan found me and stopped in place. His eyes widened as if he had seen something that shouldn’t have existed.

Up to this point, it was the original I knew.

I made an angelic smile with all my might.

“Father.”

There was only one way to survive.

I’ll be the real daughter of the Mad Duke.

***

“It’s different from your promise! You said that if I return your daughter, you will save… Argh!”

The tragedy happened as expected.

Thomas died as soon as he said his character’s lines, which were as bad as his personality.

It would have been a big deal if he revealed about me before he died, but fortunately Alan’s hand was faster than Thomas’ tongue.

Unlike the original, I survived safely.

‘It was a good thing so far.’

But after putting out the urgent fire, there was another problem.

I was now riding the main carriage of the Duke of Bauner’s with a mad duke who was supposed to kill me according to the original.

The doll in my arms, which received all my anxiety, was crushed to the point where it was no longer a human-form doll.

“….Lily.”

I was afraid to breathe in peace.

What if he takes the knife out because the way I breathe is different from his real daughter?

“Lily?”

“Yes, yes?”

I noticed Alan’s voice belatedly and looked up.

Because of the tension, the tone of my voice came out high.

Inside, I slapped myself up to come to my senses, and Alan muttered in a crawling voice.

“…I’m sorry.”

I was perplexed with a sudden apology.

Alan, who looked down at me with sad eyes, held his hands together as if he was praying.

“I’m to blame, all of it.”

His eyes were deep, as if recalling the distant past.

I didn’t think it was an apology for killing the bandits in front of a 9-year-old child.

I hesitated over how to react.

‘If I stay still, will I cover half of it? No, rumor has it that Lily was an angelic baby. But I wonder if there are any newborn babies who don’t look like that…’

After agonizing for a while, I carefully grabbed Alan’s little finger.

Alan opened his eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe my warmth.

I carefully whispered, after going through the words in my head several times.

“It’s not father’s fault.”

Alan’s shoulders trembled.

His eyes, what should I say? There was no other description but the phrase ‘I received a salvation’ could describe it.

Rattle!

Then the carriage bounced. Alan hugged me almost at the same time as the sound of a wheel bump.

“Lily!”

The strength of the arms tightening around my whole body was amazing. I felt like every bone that hadn’t even grown was going to be crushed.

“Are you okay?”

‘It’s suffocating!’

At this rate, I was going to die because of the choke instead of beheaded.

I was about to get out of his arms, but the carriage shook again.

‘The road is very rough….’

….I thought so, but my vision gradually declined.

I didn’t fall down. The carriage I was riding on was overturning sideways.

Thud!

Soon, with a huge sound of shock, my eyes went black as if the lights had gone out.

I was startled and floundered my limbs like a drowning man.

‘What, what’s going on…! Oh, it’s Alan’s cloak.’

Alan’s black cloak covered my face.

After removing the thick fabric, I unknowingly swallowed my breath.

Alan’s eyes were shining blue, like a carnivore’s.

It was not a metaphor, it was literal.

I looked away in embarrassment and noticed something strange. The cloak that obscured the view was removed, but the surroundings were still dark.

I lifted my head involuntarily and then froze on the spot.

‘….What is that, that.’

Through the carriage window that stretches up to its roof, a strange sight I had never seen before was unfolding.

“Come on, Lily.”

Alan took me, who was speechless, in his arms and slowly walked out of the carriage.

The surrounding scenery seen when outside was even more spectacular.

The sky in the middle of the day, which had been sunny until just now, was black as if it had been painted with ink.

The night didn’t come. The sun was still shining in the distance.

The boundary between the bright and dark skies was as clear as a drawing.

How could such an absurd situation be possible…

‘The sky… has fallen.’

There were no other words to express it other than that.

There was a large hole above the top of my head.

Beyond the huge hole, there was no star nor moon, only darkness.

When I was dazed as if I was dreaming, Alan mumbled lowly.

“I wanted to arrive before the barriers around here were broken… but it’s a little late.”

Barrier?

It was a word I had often heard when I was still begging.

The barrier of the World Tree protects us from evil spirits.

I didn’t really care what it was, but…

‘Wait for a sec. What happens when the barrier is broken?’

Thud!

“Argh!”

I was thinking about it for a while, then I involuntarily hugged the doll at the loud noise.

Fortunately, the sound was not heard from nearby.

A dark shadow fell over the distant sunny sky. It was like a giant slamming his fist from above the clouds.

Thump, thump, thump.

The sky was shredded as if it had been scraped off with a rake. It was a surreal scene, like a dream.

As I opened my mouth blankly, Alan gently stroked my hair.

“Lily, do you know how to count?”

Why all of a sudden?

“Uh… yes.”

“How far can you count?”

I can count endlessly, but if I tell him the truth, it’s gonna be suspicious, right?

‘But if I’m too stupid, he might think that I’m not like his daughter…’

I pondered and spread out three fingers.

“Up to 300.”

“I see.”

Alan took off his cloak and wrapped it around me.

The end of the cloak dragged on the floor, perhaps because of my short stature.

It didn’t look this big when he wore it.

“Count to 300 here. I’ll come back before you’re finished.”

“Duke, Princess! Are you okay?”

As soon as his words finished, a man with messy yet somewhat styled brown hair ran towards Alan and me.

It was the young man who introduced himself as the duke’s exclusive aide before boarding the carriage.

“Nike, bring me my sword.”

Alan indifferently gave orders to his aide.

Then Nike groaned and rolled his feet.

“Duke, you want to subdue the evil spirits yourself? It’s dangerous!”

“You talk a lot. Don’t talk, just bring it.”

“I can’t! There are no knights to assist now. That damn kidnapper told us not to bring them!”

“Then let’s do this. You stay here and protect Lily with magic.”

“Wa, wait a minute! I’ll give it to you!”

Nike hurried to the carriage. When he returned, he held a sword the size of an adult in his arms.

Alan took the great sword and disappeared into the forest.

He looked at me anxiously before he completely went away, but he did not come back.

“The Duke, really. No one can stop him.”

After Alan disappeared, Nike sighed and drew on the ground with his long magic wand.

It was not drawn with a ruler, but an accurate pentagon was made.

The rest of the servants who had approached all of a sudden gathered inside the pentagon.

“Princess, I will make a concealment magic. Please stand inside the magic stone for a moment.”

Nike took a transparent jewel from the belt and set it down, one at each vertex of the pentagon.

A mysterious glow emanated from the jewel.

I guess that was the magic stone I had only heard of.

I made sure he wasn’t looking at me and slipped back.

‘Now is my chance to escape.’

I didn’t know what Nike was doing, but it was certain that if I missed this moment, I wasn’t sure when another chance to escape would come.

First, let’s avoid the fate of dying at Alan’s hand. So there was no reason to sit, count, and pretend to be the dead Lily any longer.

If I entered the duke mansion like this, there was zero chance of escaping, and if he found out about the fact that I was fake later, I would be taken to the torture room.

‘Get ready… and go!’

…I shouted that to myself, but in the end I couldn’t even get out of the pentagon and stood tall.

It was not that someone stopped me. It was an instinct springing from the depths of my heart that grabbed my ankle.

‘It might be more dangerous to run away like this.’

I am a child, 9 years old, but I went through all sorts of things in the slums.

The emotion I learned there was fear, not curiosity.

Especially, being reckless without knowing what was going on.

Someone might look at me and say while kicking his tongue, ‘There’s no cuteness in this child.’ But this was my way of surviving.

Because where I lived, not a single mistake was tolerated.

‘For now, let’s be quiet. At least until we pass through the collapsed sky…’

The moment I raised my head with that thought, I froze in place.

There was a long head in front of me. As black as the hole in the sky, a black monster was pushing his face towards me.

What should I call this…?

There was no other way to describe it other than ‘a lump that mimics humans’.

It looked like a two-legged walking tree covered with mud.

“Uh….!”

I covered my mouth with the doll as I was about to scream.

Nike, who suddenly approached behind me, said in a whisper.

“Pri, Princess, be still. I just completed the concealment magic. If we’re inside the magic circle, evil spirits can’t see us…”

Even Nike, who said that, was terrified and clenched his teeth as if he was about to pee.

Even though the forest wind wasn’t strong, my whole body trembled like an aspen.

Just like when I first met Alan at church.

‘Oh, I see.’

I had the same feeling back then.

‘That’ is more than enough to kill me in this place.

Wooo, wooo. The monster raised its chin and cried out.

It was a terrifyingly strange and mourning cry, and it was distinctly different from that of a wild beast.

A small question popped into my mind, dazed by fear.

‘…Why?’

I think I heard that cry somewhere before.

It was not a memory of a previous life. All that remained were the contents of \, and even that was hazy.

But it was weird. I was sure I’d heard of it at least once in my 9-year-old life.

After a moment, the monster turned its head. Fortunately, it didn’t notice me and seemed to go the other way.

Phew, Nike breathed a sigh of relief.

At the same time, as I was about to sweep my chest.

“Bleerrghh!”

The servant behind Nike vomited.

He stared at the monster with his eyes as if he had lost his mind, then sprinted to the other side.

“I, it’s an evil spiriiiit!”

“Hey, it’s dangerous…!”

Another servant beside him reached out his hand out of the pentagon.

Nike hurriedly covered my eyes, but it was too late.

Flop!

Ah, I’d seen it all. Even the monster who noticed the pretence and turned its head, and the servant who was hit by a rake.

“Arggghh!”

The servant who was trying to save his comrade fell forward, spouting red blood.

His mournful screams were cut off along the way.

Between Nike’s trembling fingers, the scattered bloodstains were blurred. It was a sight I could never understand.

‘That monster… What is it?’

If it was a beast, it would hunt to fill his hungry stomach.

However, after killing a person, the monster which called ‘evil spirit’ retreated as if it was no longer interested. As if the act of killing was the goal.

“No. The magic stone…”

Then Nike mumbled.

“The concealment magic… has been lifted.”

A magic stone flew away from its place.

It seemed the servant who had just died kicked it while he was struggling.

Silence continued for a while. Then there was chaos.

“Hiiiyyy!”

“Go away!”

Wait! We can re-deploy the magic!”

No matter how much Nike shouted, it was no use.

The servants, who were in a panic, got out of the pentagon and scattered.

Drrr.

At that moment, my feet rang as if there was an earthquake.

I ran to Nike quickly and bumped into him.

It was an action based on a momentary instinct rather than a thought.

As soon as Nike and I rolled into the grass, the ground that had just been quiet rose up.

The ground cracked roughly like a cookie hit by a fork.

The demons crawled out of the collapsed crack.

It wasn’t just one or two. How many of those were there in total?

‘Three, four. Five…….’

Flop!

Even before I could count, the evil spirits swung their hands at Nike as if they were about cleaning up impure water.

Nike flew away helplessly.

It seemed that he didn’t die because he made a shield just before being hit, but blood flowed from his head.

This time, the evil spirits surrounded me. I didn’t know why, but they didn’t kill me right away, they looked at me closely.

Do they want to see in which direction to cut me?

Facing extreme fear, I couldn’t think of anything.

My vision had turned hazy.

It seemed that the tear glands of the 9-year-old responded earlier than my sense of reason.

Tuk.

Suddenly, something touched my chest. Five sharp, root-like things that circled the heart.

Even an idiot knew what it was. These were the evil spirit’s claws.

The sickle of the reaper was placed in front of my heart.

‘I….’

Just before I died, I made my only wish.

‘I want to live.’

Whoosh!

At first I thought it was the sound of my flesh being torn apart.

However, no matter how long I waited, I did not lose consciousness, I was fine.

I slowly lifted my eyelids. And then I blinked a few times to make sure I woke up properly.

The whole sky was dark as if the barrier had been completely torn.

Only the magic stones scattered here and there emitted a soft light.

Thanks to it, I was able to see clearly. The corpse of an evil spirit split in half, and the man standing on it with his eyes glowing blue.

Alan raised his sword and struck it without hesitation.

Whoosh.

In a single action, the evil spirits were swept away like seashells hit by the waves.

I squeezed my mouth like a carp and shouted.

“Behind, behind!”

Kwack!

But it was already too late.

The head of an evil spirit that fell from the sky ****** its sharp teeth into Alan’s shoulder.

Unlike me, who became white, Alan simply raised one eyebrow and muttered.

Although it was far away and I couldn’t hear the voice, the shape of the mouth was visible.

–Protect.

Grrrrr.

The roar of the beast shook the ground.

The man’s spine, the line wobbled and rose.

Joints twisted upside down like a four-legged animal, ripping apart the blood-stained uniform.

Shiny black hair grew and covered his muscular body, and his jade-colored eyes grew long.

I shuddered. The Mad Duke….

‘Crazy, he has become a beast.’