The feast was a chaotic explosion of sound and smell, a primal celebration that felt more like a riot than a military victory. Men were dancing in the mud, fueled by cheap, fermented ale and the sheer, intoxicating adrenaline of not being corpses. Huge fire pits roared, their flames licking at the dark sky and casting flickering, orange shadows over piles of greasy roasted meat and overflowing mugs of bitter beer. The raucous laughter of men who had survived a massacre—one that, by all rights, should have happened—echoed off the canyon walls like a defiant scream against fate.
Reine sat on a weathered log, positioned well away from the circle of dancers. He leaned back, his spine pressing against the rough bark of a dead tree, his eyes locked on the moon. It hung above the Herlem border like a silver coin, beautiful, cold, and utterly indifferent to the blood spilled beneath it.
He wasn't celebrating; he was calculating.
Five hours, he thought, his fingers digging into the fabric of his thighs until his knuckles turned white. Five hours since the moment my head should have left my shoulders. No Snap. No dissonant, glass-shattering chime. Just the heavy, oppressive silence of a future he hadn't written yet. It was a terrifying sensation—the lack of a safety net. In the previous loops, death was a reset button, a way to escape the consequences of failure. Now, every second felt like walking on a tightrope over an infinite abyss.
What if I accidentally slip into the campfire right now? The thought was a dark, persistent itch in his brain. Will I have to face that Knight again? Did I break the loop cycle by driving him off? Or is the curse simply waiting for the next obstacle to crush me? The uncertainty was a physical weight, more exhausting than the 50% mana output he had forced through his veins earlier that day. He was overthinking, spiraling into the "What-ifs" that came with being a man who had died thirteen times in a single afternoon.
"Sir, you're doing that thing again," a voice broke through his internal monologue.
Argol sat beside him, his presence smelling of mud and woodsmoke. He looked at Reine with an expression that sat somewhere between awe and genuine concern. "Sir, I have been wondering about this one question. It's been rattling around in my head since the ridge."
"Yeah, go ahead," Reine replied, his voice a jagged rasp, worn down by shouting and the metallic tang of the blood that had recently leaked from his ears.
"What's your goal, sir?" Argol asked, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur so the celebrating soldiers couldn't overhear. "I'm sorry if I'm coming off as disrespectful, but after seeing your face when that Knight retreated... you didn't look relieved. You looked like a man who had finally conquered a mountain. It was almost as if you had already lost to him a dozen times before, and today was the first time you stayed standing."
Reine stared into the fire, the orange light dancing in his predatory pupils. "My sister," he replied simply.
Argol blinked, tilting his head like a confused hound. "Sorry sir, I didn't quite catch that—"
"My sister was sold as a slave to the high nobles," Reine interrupted, his tone turning ice-cold, the kind of cold that could freeze the marrow in a man's bones. "The Vangalf name was stripped of its honor, and she was the price paid for a debt she didn't owe. I have to bring her back."
Argol paused, the gravity of the statement sobering him up. "But... why join the army to do that? If you're a specialist, couldn't you just... find her?"
"Power," Reine said, finally turning his head to look directly at Argol. His eyes were hollow, reflecting the campfire like two burning coals in the darkness. "I need institutional power. They are high nobles, Argol. They exist in a world where gold and bloodline are the only languages. They won't even grant me an audience if I don't have the strength to demand it. I need to climb the ranks. I need to become so formidable that the very mention of my name makes them tremble."
Argol swallowed hard, his eyes wide as he processed the sheer scale of Reine's ambition. "So your goal is to be stro—"
"No," Reine cut him off, his voice rising with a sudden, sharp surge of motivation that cut through the noise of the feast. "It's to become the strongest. To conquer the world!"
The Outburst and the "Vortex" Fear
Argol jumped, his face turning a vivid, embarrassing shade of scarlet. "SIR, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT... CAN YOU STOP INTERRUPTING ME!!"
The sudden, high-pitched shout caused the nearby soldiers to stop mid-laugh. A dozen heads swiveled toward the log, eyes widening at the sight of two recruits shouting at each other. The raucous atmosphere dipped into an awkward silence as the veterans tried to figure out if a fight was about to break out.
Argol's face went from white to bright red in a second. He cleared his throat, suddenly fascinated by the dirt between his boots, desperately wishing the ground would swallow him whole.
Reine didn't yell back. He didn't even flinch. He simply leaned forward, the firelight highlighting the sharp, unnatural angles of his face. He took a slow, menacing bite of a piece of roasted meat, staring Argol down with a gaze that suggested he was contemplating exactly which part of Argol's anatomy would be the easiest to sever.
"Soldier," Reine mumbled through the meat, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "You have gotten quite comfortable with me, haven't you?"
"Si-sir... I am sorry!! I didn't mean it! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! PLEASEEEE!!"
Argol's brief moment of bravado shattered into a thousand pieces. He began to plead, actual tears springing to his eyes as his imagination ran wild. To him, a "Vortex Level 4 Specialist" likely had a hundred different ways to end a man's life without leaving a trace. He imagined being "redacted" right there on the log.
The soldiers nearby just shook their heads and returned to their ale. "Look at those two idiots," one veteran muttered to his companion. "The white-haired one is a sadistic bully and the other one is a pathetic crybaby. How did they survive a Sovereign strike? Must have been luck."
Argol stopped crying mid-sob when he realized Reine wasn't actually moving to strike him. He wiped his face with a grimy sleeve, his eyes suddenly lighting up with a different, frantic kind of energy.
"So, sir... you want to conquer the world? If that's the case, then you need me. You're a specialist, sure, but you're... well, you're a bit out of touch. I know the lay of the land. Everything. Ask me anything—wait, stay right here, sir! Don't move!"
Argol scrambled to his feet, fueled by a manic excitement, and sprinted off toward the tents to retrieve his gear.
The Three Pillars and the Versaint Map
Reine sat back, watching the orange-haired boy vanish into the darkness. He felt hunched on his log like a lonely, brooding cub, waiting for his only ally to return. The firelight flickered against his pale face, casting long, dancing shadows that seemed to mock his isolation.
What even is the Snap? he wondered again. He had been too occupied with the visceral experience of dying in his previous loops to actually analyze the metaphysical mechanics of his curse. Was it a gift from a god? A glitch in the fabric of Versaint? Or was it something far more sinister, a cycle designed to break his mind?
The atmosphere around him suddenly shifted, turning dark and weirdly absurd—the same skin-crawling sensation he'd felt during the absolute agony of his 13th loop, when he had given up on living.
"Ugh, even the thought of that time creeps me ou—"
"SIIIR!! I've brought it! The map!" Argol yelled from afar, sprinting through the mud with a rolled-up parchment held high above his head like a holy relic.
"A map?" Reine asked, blinking back the dark memories. "For what, Argol? And why do you even have a high-level military document in your personal kit?"
"Sir, don't whisper this to a soul, but I'm actually quite fond of geography," Argol whispered, leaning so close to Reine's ear that his hot breath made the white streaks in Reine's hair flutter. "I've memorized the topography of this continent since I was old enough to crawl. It's the only thing in this messy world that actually makes sense to me."
Argol sat beside Reine and unfurled the thick, yellowed parchment onto the grass. The sounds of the party—the clinking mugs, the off-key singing—seemed to fade into a serious, heavy hum as they looked down at the world of Versaint.
"This world," Argol began, his voice dropping into a scholarly, lecture-like tone, "is called Versaint. It consists of five unique continents, each with its own ecosystem of power. We are currently on the Human Continent, which is fractured into eight warring territories known as the Eight Divine Kingdoms."
He traced a finger over the borders. "If the Eight ever united, we would be the most formidable force in existence. But that's a fairy tale; the kingdoms are locked in a permanent, bloody stalemate. We just battled the Paekl army—and make no mistake, sir, they are the strongest. Why? Because they are the only ones who have mastered all Three Pillars of Power."
"What are these Three Pillars?" Reine asked, realizing with a sting of shame how little he actually knew about the world he intended to conquer. His education at the Conservatory had been cut short by his family's ruin, leaving him with a sword in his hand but a void in his head.
Argol looked at him with genuine, unfiltered shock. "Wow, sir... for someone who was a noble, you're impressively uneducated. The Pillars are the foundation of all combat. First is the Sword Path, which our kingdom, Herlem, specializes in. Second is Martial Arts, the specialty of the northern Kranth tribes. For both of these, you need to cultivate a Mana Core—which, fortunately, we both possess."
Argol's expression turned grim as he pointed to the eastern reaches of the map.
"Then there are the ranks of power. We've managed to scrape into the Intermediate rank, which is the only reason we're still breathing. Above us is Advanced, then High Advanced. The Knight? The one who nearly ended us? He was likely between High Advanced and Master—the fifth rank."
We're only at the second rank, and that monster still wiped us out like we were insects? Reine thought, his stomach dropping into his boots. He clasped his hands together, leaning his elbows on his thighs as a cold, prickling sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
"Above Master is Grandmaster," Argol continued, his voice trembling slightly at the mere mention of the title. "And at the absolute peak... the seventh rank... is the Divine Master. Legend says they can rewrite the very laws of the Pillars. But no one has seen one in three hundred years. They're myths. Gods in human skin."
If a Master is that far above us, a Divine Master might as well be the sun, Reine thought. He put a hand to his chin, a bead of sweat rolling down his face as he stared at the map with an over-exaggeratedly serious, concerned expression.
"And the third Pillar is Magic," Argol added. "The Erlj Kingdom is unmatched there. But Paekl... Paekl is proficient in all three. You saw it today; they had a vast contingent of mages supporting their vanguard. They don't just fight; they orchestrate destruction."
"Why are you talking about the enemy with such reverence?" Reine asked, his voice sharp. "They were five minutes away from ending your life."
"It's not reverence, sir. It's reality," Argol said, snapping his gaze to Reine's. "You want to conquer the world, right? Then I'm the perfect person to help you! I'll be your eyes, your brain, and your tactical advisor. In return, you help me reach my goal!"
Reine went quiet again, lost in the implications of the power gap. If he was only an Intermediate, he had a mountain to climb before he could even look a High Noble in the eye.
"SIR! YOU KEEP DOING THAT!" Argol shouted, leaping up from the grass. Once again, the nearby soldiers stopped their drinking to stare. Argol turned scarlet for the third time and sat back down, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Si—"
"Sure," Reine interrupted, his tone dry. "I'll accept your help. Now, what's your dream, Argol? What could a geography-obsessed recruit possibly want?"
"...My go—"
"REINE VANGALF! ARGOL ORLON! FRONT AND CENTER!" The voice boomed across the camp, amplified by mana. Commander Elena was standing on a makeshift wooden stage near the largest fire pit, swaying slightly with a half-empty bottle of high-end wine in one hand and a commanding, drunken glint in her eyes.
"GET UP HERE, YOU BRATS! THE EIGHTH KINGDOM HAS A GIFT FOR OUR NEWEST 'SPECIALISTS'!"
The murmurs swept through the camp like a plague. To the veterans, Reine and Argol looked like children playing dress-up in blood-stained leather. They didn't believe the runts had forced a Master to retreat—except for the "Dad" veteran in the third row, who watched Reine with tears of fatherly pride while physically muffling a grumpy old soldier trying to scream insults.
"SILENCE!" Elena's roar killed the noise instantly. "Argol! Step forward!"
Argol scrambled onto the stage, trembling as Elena presented him with the Aether-Glass Navigator, a magical mapping device. He bowed until his forehead nearly hit the wood, clutching the relic as if it were holy.
"REINE VANGALF! COME FORWARD!"
Reine climbed the stairs with a calm, predatory gait. Elena gave him a long, drunken glare. "From this moment onwards, you are promoted to Intermediate Rank!"
The crowd gasped, but Elena wasn't finished. She produced a long object wrapped in red cloth. "This sword is Aurelian. I won it years ago, but it never obeyed me. See if you fare better."
The crowd erupted in fury. "He doesn't deserve it!" they chanted. Elena silenced them with a snarl, but as she turned back to Reine, she flinched. He was wearing the smile of a maniac—a dark, twisted expression of pure satisfaction.
Reine took the blade. As he began to draw it, a brilliant, holy white-and-gold aura erupted, blinding the front row. The air grew cold. Is he the Chosen One?
Then, the light died. The sword went dull. It refused to budge another inch, locking tight in the scabbard. It had tasted Reine's soul and found the flavor repulsive.
"The sword rejected him!" a soldier jeered. The camp exploded into mocking laughter. Even Argol covered his face in shame.
"I want this sword," Reine growled, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, stubborn fury.
He didn't try to commune with the metal; he fought it. It was a literal arm-wrestle between a boy who had died fourteen times and a sentient relic.
"I don't care if I'm not the Chosen One," he hissed, his dark intent beginning to choke the sword's holy light. "I am the one who owns you. You do what I say."
With a sickening, metallic screech, Reine forced the blade out. He didn't draw it; he mugged it. The holy aura tried to flicker, but Reine's oppressive will crushed it until the steel turned a dull, resentful grey.
He stood on the stage, holding the legendary weapon like a common club, looking down at the army that hated him. He had broken the loop, and now, he had broken the legend.