Osian's footsteps were the only sound in the silence.
He was not the kind of knight who is usually knighted by a royal family and given a ceremonial sword, but an orthodox knight of old.
His full armor and helmet were sleek and pure white, with a blue glow from within.
A pure white cloak that fluttered down his shoulders, its inner lining seemingly cut out of the Milky Way in the night sky.
The silver longsword in his hand glowed with a faint white flame.
The sight overwhelmed everyone watching: Marquis de Debussy, who was about to kill Princess Orlea, the wizard who had unleashed his magic, the Sisters, who were shivering, and the criminals who watched Bola's death from afar.
With a clatter of iron, Osian stood at Orlea's side.
Orlea stared at him as if mesmerized, then chewed her lip and bowed her head.
"That's enough."
".......""I realize your power is great. But if this is the end, there will be many more. Even you won't be able to hold them off."
Orlea thought.
Why were people dying around her?
It was her own fault.
She shouldn't be alive. She shouldn't have been in a relationship with anyone.
No, she shouldn't have been born in the first place.
"In my short time with you, I was able to fulfill my life. I have been given a great gift in a destiny that was never meant to be mine, so it is time to say goodbye."
Orlea's voice cracked with sobs.
"If I do any more, I'll just want to......live again."
When she lives, everyone around her dies.
No one wants to die but this was worse than dying.
The last thing that flashed through her mind was the image of her nanny smiling at her, telling her not to worry.
Osian looked down at her, then at the sword in his right hand.
In that moment, when his senses had been pushed to the limit and his mind had been sharpened to the extreme, Osian thought of the possibility of opening a door.
"We can live."
"What does that mean.......?"
Orlea snapped her head up. Her disbelieving eyes flicked to Osian's helm, trying to gauge the meaning of his words, whether he meant them or simply spoke them without thinking.
"You don't like the idea of other people dying because of you, and the way you act like it's your fault is rather puzzling."
Osian asked, genuinely confused.
"Why is it your fault? Isn't it the fault of the people who killed them?"
Inside the Nebula Silk, Osian heard the entire conversation outside.
His acute hearing picked up Marquis de Debussy's words clearly even with the thunder falling from above.
From this, Osian had a rough idea of what had happened to Orlea and her current condition.
"I, I......."
"Or are you afraid of what's to come after you survive here?"
Orlea pursed her lips at the direct question.
The truth was, she was afraid.
Even if she did survive this place, what awaited her would be an even harsher royal environment.
For that matter, she might as well have died here.
"You're not even angry?"
"Even if I am, there is nothing I can do."
"But choosing death? Do you think the people who died for you would want that?"
"That's......."
"I don't know, since I've never met them, but that's at least what they would have told you."
Osian's next words were enough to make Orlea's shoulders slump.
"To stay alive."
-My Princess. Please survive.
The nanny's rough, warm touch suddenly tingled against her skin as she squeezed her hand, smiling with compassion.
"No matter what happens, no matter how hard it is. You must live."
Osian raised his sword and stared straight ahead.
Marquis de Debussy, now awake, was shouting at the people around him.
"And you, how do you know that?"
"I saw it."
Osian took Princess Orlea to safety, watching her every move.
Outwardly, she had accepted death, but she was afraid of it and deep down, she had a desire to live.
Osian understood how many people had died before her, to save Princess Orlea.
How many lives had been forced upon her?
So she must want to live, even if she denies it.
"A face that pretends not to be, but dreams of hope in order to live."
In the distance, he could see the wizard working his magic.
Marquis de Debussy's men each drew their guns and pointed them in this direction.
It was a combination of mages and gunmen.
Against it stood a single knight with armor and a sword.
Outgunned, outnumbered, and outclassed, the fight was never going to fair in the first place and yet Osian didn't think he could lose.
"I'll show them."
Osian gripped his sword and lowered his stance.
In the slow passage of time, Marquis de Debussy's mouth said something.
The shape of his mouth seemed to say, "Shoot” as the trigger was pulled and the muzzle spewed fire.
The bullet was pointed at Osian and Orlea.
Osian saw it and kicked the ground as his body was shot straight ahead like a cannonball.
He couldn't dodge or move out of the way since behind him was Princess Orlea.
If he dodged the bullets here, she would be the one to die.
[Starlight Armor]
Osian chose to believe in this white armor, forged by the power of the stars.
It's not a common firearm, but a specially modified weapon used by the military, and its power is extraordinary, however the flying bullets appear in slow motion.
Osian didn't stop or try to dodge when he saw it.
He chose to charge.
The moment the bullets hit the armor.
-Ttttttting.
The bullets shattered or ricocheted off the armor's strange strength and clattered to the ground.
As if to prove that the armor was impervious to external pressure, it remained unharmed by the flying bullets.
In fact, it shone even brighter.
"What the hell are you doing, keep firing!"
Marquis de Debussy shouted at the top of his lungs.
The muzzles of the guns spewed fire nonstop, pounding like a shower against Osian's armor but Osian did not stop.
On the contrary, he closed the distance with the momentum of a bull and that's when the wizards activated the magic they had prepared.
-Flash!
A dazzling light exploded along with the magic power in the air, and a powerful bolt of electricity shot straight at him.
Osian raised his starlight sword as he ran and slashed down at the lightning.
The moment the blue current met the pure white flames, they dissolved and scattered like salt dissolving in water.
It was as if the magic that had just occurred was a mirage.
Only the residual current, a threadlike worm wriggling in the air, told him that the magic he had just seen was real and not a dream.
"Uh, how do you destroy magic with a sword.......?"
The expressions of the mage who had performed the magic and the surrounding assistant mages were stunned.
Osian didn't answer the question, there was only one thing he had to do now, to keep going, to not give up, no matter what.
That was the path Osian had walked until now.
It was the virtue of a knight.
At last, Osian was close enough to crash into the enemy line.
At the front, infantrymen with large shields stood in his way, but they could not stop his charge in full armor.
The flapping cloak on his back spread out like wings, forming a pure white ring.
With a crackling sound, the Ring of Annihilation gave him a tremendous boost that propelled him.
-Kwazizik!
The shields were shattered by the brilliant armor.
Osian was like a tank.
The soldiers in the front row were swept away like leaves in a gust of wind, splattered with rainwater and scattered everywhere but Osian was undeterred.
[Mana protection]
Defensive magic unfolded.
The combined defensive magic of the mages was so strong that even the dead Bola could not penetrate it.
However, Osian ran atop the defenses and slammed his shoulder into them.
The mages were about to laugh at him when they saw that.
-Tsk!
The defensive magic rumbled loudly, kicking up dust all around.
The wizards felt the shock reverberate through their bodies, shaking them to the core.
But at least it stopped, they thought complacently, only to see the barrier crack immediately afterward.
-Tsk. Pow.
It shattered and scattered like glass.
"Using his bare body to break our magic circle?"
"This is magically impossible!"
If you collide with a magic circle in such an ignorant way, it's only natural that you'd end up covered in blood.
But the reality in front of them was the opposite.
It was the magic circle that was shattered, and Osian still hadn't stopped.
A blue eye glow emanated from the black slits inside the white helmet that covered his face.
Seeing this, the mages felt a chill run down their spines.
They should have come up with another plan here, but Osian's performance was too overwhelming to think about one.
It was like a rhinoceros charging through a flock of frightened sheep.
Every time he took a step, the soles of his feet left deep tracks in the ground, crunching gold.
Mages fell in a spray of blood as they were swept away by his charge.
Orlea couldn't help but stare at the overwhelming and majestic sight.
A knight straight out of a fairy tale, galloping alone through the enemy lines unbowed, unstoppable, and finally, successful in breaking through.
"That's the......knight."
Orlea couldn't help but feel what knights were.
They are the ones who break through.
They are the ones who move forward.
They are those who carve their own paths and shape the future.
At this moment, the embers of an extinguished fire deep in Princess Orlea's heart were ignited by the starlight.
Boom!
Finally, the situation was quickly cleared up when the wizards directly under Marquis de Debussy collapsed.
Osian looked around at the people who had fallen.
Only Marquis de Debussy was nowhere to be seen, since as soon as he saw Osian charging at him, he fled.
It wasn't that he hadn't realized the timing was dangerous, he simply ran away because he was afraid of Osian's appearance.
Osian thought about chasing after Marquis de Debussy, but decided against it.
He couldn't leave Orlea, the one he was escorting, here.
‘Gaze.’
Osian felt eyes watching him from afar.
An uncomfortable sensation skimmed over his skin.
There was an impurity in the gaze, as if it were trying to gauge his level and a faint hint of malevolence.
It had to be a criminal from Uluaz Prison, like Croix, Attila, and Bola but they didn't make the foolish mistake of lunging at Osian.
‘Probably because they know Bola died at my hands.’
Add to that the fact that he'd just smashed an entire army of mages with his bare hands while wearing starlight armor, only a fool would come to fight him.
‘But that won't stop them.’
The vicious criminals released by the army were given a judicial bargain: kill Princess Orlea.
Failure to do so would send them back to that harsh prison once more, and they'd do anything to get to her.
‘With that in mind, I'd rather get rid of that disturbing element right now.’
Osian stared at the place where several vicious criminals were, then quickly turned his head.
*
"Did he see us?"
"Yep. He's given up on us."
A lanky, brooding man in his mid-fifties and a man in his mid-thirties with a multipurpose mechanical arm strapped to his back removed his binoculars.
"I don't know how he saw us in the first place, given the distance."
"Even if he didn’t, he took down Bola, so it can't hurt to be wary."
"Hah. I honestly don't want to fight a guy like that."
It was practically suicide to fight the man who had cut Bola down with a single blade.
But they couldn't run away either, because their bodies had already been implanted with location trackers, so they couldn't escape the military's gaze wherever they went.
‘Of course, that means we just have to somehow remove the trackers from our bodies.’
For a moment, he thought he'd pretend to target Princess Orlea but then I felt an eerie sensation behind him.
They turned around to find two women standing behind them.
"When?"
Among them, a middle-aged man in his 50s recognized the other person and narrowed his eyes.
"Alensia Hare."
A woman who bore the title of Enforcer, the highest ranking officer in Tirna's army.
He couldn't help but recognize her; it was because of her that he had been captured by Uluaz.
But he couldn't be angry with her, for she was now fully armed, especially the gaiters on her legs.
Those black, metallic boots that came up to her thighs were her special armor, the Arc Parts but there was someone even more alarming than Alensia.
Her skin, hair, and clothing were all white.
She was so beautiful that she was almost alien.
Even stranger, the white woman wasn't looking at them right now.
‘Where?’
Her gaze was directed far away, in the distance, where Osian was.
It was then that the woman in white spoke.
"I have found him, my one."
Her eyes widened in ecstasy.