Creak.

I pushed the door open.

Blood.

So much blood.

Scalding, vivid, fresh blood.

It had flooded the entire room, to the point there was nowhere to step.

“Where is this?”

I looked around. The room’s furnishings were rather old.

The patterns on the walls and windows were extremely similar to those strange motifs I’d seen in Gutongs Castle, but aside from that, there were many places that looked as if someone had taken an eraser and scrubbed them right out of the painting—huge blank patches appearing abruptly.

It was eerie.

But strangely, I didn’t feel anything abnormal about the scene. Just like that, I walked into this old, strange room, stepped over the blood flowing everywhere, and came to the very center.

A girl was lying there.

The blood was flowing from her fragile body—trickling, gathering into small red streams, as if it would never run out.

Had this girl been brutally murdered?

How pitiful.

Even though blood and long hair covered her face, I could still tell how young she was.

“Hello... do you need help?”

I crouched down without thinking, calling to her as I searched her body for a wound.

She was still alive. If rescue was quick enough, maybe I could still save—

“Ah, this wound.” After finding it, I froze for a moment.

“...”

At that moment, the girl suddenly moved.

She grabbed my hand—my hand that was about to bandage her.

That hand was extremely thin, like it would snap the moment you bent it. But I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake it off.

“I’m sorry...”

The girl murmured. And at the same time, something crystalline seemed to fall as well, mixing into the blood.

“Sorry for what... or, to who?”

After a moment of silence, I asked cautiously.

“I’m sorry...”

But the girl didn’t answer.

It was as if she hadn’t even noticed me at all. She just kept murmuring to herself:

“I’m sorry... I was too cowardly... I was too weak...”

“It’s my fault... I didn’t lead you all... I’m sorry...”

“I’m sorry...”

“I’m sorry...”

“I’m sorry...”

“So... please... save her... and them too...”

She said “I’m sorry” countless times, but when she spoke that last sentence, her words shifted—and I finally felt her gaze.

It was a gaze filled with grief.

She was... begging?

“What does ‘save’ mean? Her? Them? Who are ‘they’?”

I was completely lost and hurried to ask.

“They are...”

But before I could get an answer, I heard a crack—like glass shattering.

Cracks spread through the room, and then a deep darkness poured in.

Everything was swallowed by darkness.

Everything vanished.

I stared around blankly, still unable to process the bizarre scene and the sudden change—when I felt my body...

Drop.

A horrifying sense of weightlessness swept through my soul. It was like falling from some unknown height, so high that I had no idea how long it would take to hit the ground.

And it wasn’t only weightlessness.

Along with it came—

Pain.

Agony, like countless insects burrowing into my heart and gnawing my bones—

...

“Hss—damn, that hurts!”

I jerked my eyes open and instinctively tried to sit up.

And the tearing sensation in my wounds made it hurt even more.

“So it was a dream? Damn it.” I couldn’t help cursing.

A dead woman, flowing blood, and falling from the sky... even my nightmares were that classic. Couldn’t I at least get something new?

Like some sexy ghost lady crawling out of the TV and getting stuck halfway, or something...

“Speaking of which, where am I?”

I tossed those meaningless thoughts aside for the moment.

The last thing I remembered before losing consciousness was that Shenyi, that bastard old relic, had summoned something outrageous—and then that outrageous thing used some outrageous move.

And then An forcibly teleported me away...

“An...”

A flash of anger flickered through my eyes.

Again, I hadn’t been able to protect her.

Instead, I’d been protected by An. For a “young master,” that was really... 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

“No—this isn’t the time to mope!”

I patted my head, forcing myself to wake up.

An is still waiting for me.

I’m not dead yet. Nothing is over yet. Right now, the most important thing is to figure out what’s going on, and then—

“Huh?”

While I was thinking, I suddenly noticed something and slowly raised my hand.

That familiar warm, sticky feeling on my palm was...

Blood?

I stiffly lowered my head, and sure enough, I saw a huge amount of bloodstains on the ground.

“No way. So that wasn’t a dream?”

Or did that ghost lady feel I’d disrespected her, so she really came out to find me?

No, don’t—coming at me this boldly and directly... Liya will crush you with Holy Light, and Celicia’s Imperial Authority isn’t exactly harmless either!

Unfortunately, of course, it wasn’t some ghost lady.

It was—

“Ariel?”

Following the trail of blood, I quickly found the girl not far from me.

A girl who was even more unexpected than a ghost.

Black hair hung in messy tangles. She was covered in wounds, slumped weakly against the wall.

One of her hands was still tightly tied to the hilt of that extremely conspicuous scarlet-gold greatsword, while her other hand clenched half of a black spear.

Drip. Drip.

Blood dripped from her hair, her blade, her fingertips—drop by drop, endlessly flowing.

Filth and blood wrapped her in red. Only the pupils in those half-open, powerless eyes were still pitch-black.

“Ariel!”

I reacted immediately, grabbing her hand and checking her pulse.

Thank god. Not dead.

But it was only “not dead.”

Her mana was exhausted, her aura was exhausted, and her vitality was barely there.

If her skin under my fingers hadn’t still felt soft and elastic, I would’ve thought the thing in front of me was a dried corpse that had crawled out of a grave.

“Y-you... how did you end up like this?”

I frowned. Even as the original work’s phoenix-proud-heaven protagonist, Ariel often faced life-and-death crises.

But seeing her this bloody and miserable... this was the first time.

“Ah... you finally... woke up?”

With that weak voice, the black pupils shifted.

Then I saw the corners of her mouth curve into that signature, unruly arc again.

“Th... that’s... great.”

“Don’t say ‘great’—you’re badly hurt! Here—can you still swallow?”

I hurriedly offered her a healing potion pill and watched her swallow it with difficulty.

My brows stayed tightly knit.

These healing potions were decent quality, but they could probably only stabilize her injuries temporarily. Recovery would still depend on her own body.

Because Ariel’s injuries were just too severe.

“This bad—who the hell were you fighting?”

My gaze swept around, and then... I froze again.

More than a dozen mangled corpses were scattered messily around... yes, scattered—there were even a few piles of charred black remains.

It was a brutally bloody sight. It didn’t compare to the Evil God scenes I’d lived through before, but it was still enough to shock a person.

You could clearly tell that when Ariel fought these people, she’d had no spare focus to go for their vital points—so it was like hacking bones with a cleaver: whatever was fastest, whatever worked.

That could save a lot of effort, but it was an absolutely suicidal style—trading injury for kills.

Most importantly, from the outfits with special markings and from the bone knives scattered everywhere—most of them broken—I recognized [N O V E L I G H T] their identity.

Flayers.

“Y-you... you fought this many Flayers head-on? While you were already injured? tongrenxsw.com, your one-stop harbor for novel reading.”

I hadn’t forgotten that earlier Ariel had been knocked off a high tower by Zagu. Falling from that height—even if she was made of steel, she’d have to dent a few centimeters.

And she dragged that body into a fight with an entire Flayer squad?

Locking low HP is cheating?

“R... r-roughly...” Ariel said weakly.

“Are you insane?”

I couldn’t understand. “Why fight them head-on? With your combat experience, shouldn’t you have slipped away first?”

In my view, even though this woman was often stubborn as hell, she wasn’t a brainless berserker. On the contrary—maybe because her nutrition didn’t need to be supplied to a certain place—most of the time she was extremely sharp.

Especially in battle, her instinctive judgments were frighteningly precise. Otherwise she couldn’t be called a protagonist.

So why...

“Because...”

Ariel suddenly struggled to lift the hand that could still move and clasped my palm.

“You’d already been located by the enemy. If I ran, what would you do?”

“Located?”

I froze. In my mind, the image instantly appeared—those chains piercing through me.

Was it then?

Even though An had teleported me away, because I’d been “located,” the enemy quickly found me again.

And at that time, Ariel probably happened to pick me up. To keep me from dying at the enemy’s hands, she’d had no choice but to fight these Flayers head-on?

“I can’t... I can’t abandon you...”

Looking into Ariel’s sincere eyes, my heartbeat sped up for a moment. A kind of moved emotion rose uncontrollably from deep inside.

This woman...

She clearly hated me so much.

I’d clearly stolen her childhood sweetheart.

On normal days she looked like she wanted to swallow me alive.

And yet when a crisis like this came, she still chose to save this yellow-haired brat she despised...

“Miss Muse...”

“...”

Huh?

Miss Muse? Who?

With Ariel’s eyes recovering a little light, I finally saw clearly that what was reflected in them wasn’t some dead yellow-haired bastard she hated down to the bone.

It was...

A delicate, golden-haired, stunning beauty!

Ah.

So Miss Muse is me.

The moved expression on my face stiffened.

Damn it! How did I forget this?! This woman has always been hung up on the “Miss Muse” in her head, damn it!!

No—has the potion effect not worn off yet? What the hell did Senior Anna give me this time? Why is it so vicious?

“...”

There was no time to think about whether Senior was doing it on purpose or intentionally.

Because right now, Ariel was gripping my hand tightly with the only hand she could move, forcing a dashing smile through the pain as she murmured:

“Please run... Miss Muse...”

“The enemy will definitely catch up again=...”

“Don’t worry about me... I... I’m fine...”

“Please run...”

After saying that, this idiot fainted handsomely.

In some melodramatic domineering-CEO script, this would count as a textbook faint: the CEO carries eighteen cleavers, saves the little lamb heroine from the villain, then collapses with perfect swagger.

So brave, so selfless, so cool—like a hero in a story...

If I were a cute girl, I’d probably be completely moved by Ariel and fall in love on the spot.

Too bad.

There’s no “if.”

Me, Muen Campbell—

Even though my current appearance was female, and my cuteness, beauty, and charm were all off the charts...

Inside, I was unquestionably a pure, real man—realer than gold.

And this Ariel Bugaard—

Sex: female. Preference: female.

And the thing she hated most...

Was a male yellow-haired bastard.

So...

“What the hell... do I do now?”

Feeling targeted by fate all over again, I covered my face and wailed.