“What—what is… there’s something in the sky!”
“What in the world is happening!”
“Something’s not right!”
Count Paul Ellang and his knights, who had been cutting down Baron Denver and the loyalists one by one while advancing toward the Empire’s last remaining royal, halted.
Mouths agape, they stared at the crimson mana filling the heavens—and at the ancient runes forming at its center.
Count Ellang cried out in shock.
“W-wasn’t the sigil lost since the mythic age…!”
They lacked the learning to read mythic-age script.
But even so, the count and his men could feel it—the ominous pressure of that crimson tide flooding the world.
Why would a wastrel be using a sigil…
The Felberg Imperial House was, past and present, said to be the only line on the continent that carried the blood of the Star Thrones from the mythic age.
Yet in the last five centuries, not a single emperor had reawakened a sigil or the Thrones’ authority.
It had long been an open secret that the royal bloodline could no longer be expected to wield the Thrones’ power.
And yet, here and now, the Empire’s wastrel prince was using a sigil.
For Paul Ellang—who had sworn to the Five Pillars and marched here to execute the last royal—this was a disastrous turn.
Only those of the Thrones’ blood could use sigils and authority—the very foundation of the Imperial House’s legitimacy.
The reason the Felberg Empire had slowly decayed over the last five hundred years, and the loyalist nobles had dwindled, was that no royal had appeared who could use sigils and authority.
“To think the Thrones’ blood would reappear now of all times…”
If word spread that the Imperial Prince had used a sigil thought lost, the lukewarm loyalists inside the Empire might rally again.
Count Paul Ellang hesitated… and then decided.
He would kill the wastrel prince before him—no matter the cost.
“He must die.”
There was no going back to the emperor’s faction now.
Having chosen the Five Pillars, he had to leave no loose ends.
Count Ellang raised his staff and gathered a deadly surge of mana.
He was a high mage reputed to stand on par with a Grand Chevalier—a wielder of war magic that could overturn a battlefield.
“Die, Third Prince!”
Glaring at Kain, Count Ellang completed his specialty: an ice-aspected war spell.
A northern gale laden with blades of ice—converging into a towering giant of frozen steel.
The blizzard-shrouded colossus charged Kain.
“Damn it.”
Seeing the war magic bloom, Kain spat a curse.
He could feel the killing intent aimed squarely at his heart.
Meanwhile, the Star Throne that had so loudly answered his sigil now fell silent.
Because the Throne had been called by a workaround, he couldn’t exactly ask for help.
Were they just going to watch?
With the ice war magic manifesting, hope seemed to vanish into the dark.
Then—
At last, a message flashed before Kain’s eyes.
[<The Crimson Archduke, Rydel> shows favor to the Traveler. <The Crimson Archduke, Rydel>’s vassal, “The Hellfire Executioner,” will aid the Traveler.]
He had been waiting for this.
The Crimson Archduke Rydel—one of his vassals, the Hellfire Executioner, was descending.
A blinding flare burst from the sigil, and Kain sensed a vast Star Throne power falling to his side.
After centuries of oblivion, the Thrones’ authority was returning to the land.
Kain—who, not long ago, had been a modern man who only “spoke programming”—had worried whether he could control such power.
But it seemed he would not need to use it himself.
The Crimson Archduke Rydel was not a lord-tier Throne, but among the noble-tier Thrones he held the rank of Archduke, overwhelmingly strong—far beyond anything a mere workaround could normally summon.
Is it simple curiosity…?
In the game’s lore, Rydel was infamous for his whims.
The reawakening of a sigil after long ages must have piqued his interest—leading to the direct descent of his vassal.
[<The Crimson Archduke, Rydel>’s vassal, “The Hellfire Executioner,” will aid the Traveler.]
[“The Hellfire Executioner” is an apostle who exalts Hellfire, the authority of <The Crimson Archduke, Rydel>. Overcome the crisis through his power!]
The Hellfire Executioner had not fully reached the ground yet.
Recognizing this, Kain immediately channeled the sigil’s power to hasten the apostle’s manifestation.
Though Rydel himself was not descending, the Throne’s dreadful power stained the sky a choking blood-black.
“W-what… what is this…!”
“Wh-what’s happening!”
As the Thrones’ power encroached and seized the field, the enemy troops panicked in mounting terror.
They had come to storm a lonely keep, crush a meager garrison, and kill a single royal.
Who could have imagined meeting a Star Throne’s power here?
“Knights, what are you doing! Kill the prince before that thing fully descends—!”
Sensing danger, a young mage—apparently an officer among them—barked orders.
He seemed to have felt the extraordinary mana gathering around Kain.
While Count Ellang faltered, he snapped commands to the knights.
Unluckily for him, Kain’s sigil was faster.
[<The Crimson Archduke, Rydel>’s vassal, “The Hellfire Executioner,” fully descends to the mortal plane.]
A suffocating pressure of blood-black energy blanketed the field.
Following Rydel’s power, his vassal finally appeared upon the earth—
A reaper-shaped figure, forged of a Throne’s might.
Kain remembered a similar figure from the old concept art he had reviewed as a developer—one of the Crimson Archduke’s direct subordinates, the keeper of Hellfire.
Fully descended, the Hellfire Executioner raised a long, razor-edged scythe toward the battlefield.
A new message appeared.
[“The Hellfire Executioner” seeks to burn every being on the field to ash and dust.]
Every being?
Kain reacted on instinct.
“N-no!”
Burning the whole field meant allies would die too.
He shook his head, vehemently rejecting the notion.
The blood-black Executioner lowered his scythe from the battlefield—and instead extended a skeletal left hand.
[“The Hellfire Executioner” accepts your demand. Hostile entities will be selected, then execution will commence.]
Thankfully, the Executioner accepted Kain’s request—or something close enough—and the Throne’s authority was carried out.
What Kain did not anticipate—
Was that Rydel’s authority, Hellfire, channeled through the Executioner, would be a terror far beyond any mere flame-element spell.
Pffft.
In the span of a single blink, those who had leveled blades at Felberg’s last royal… vanished.
Erased, as if by an unseen rubber.
“Wh-what just happened?”
Only seconds ago, seven Chevalier-level knights had ringed Baron Denver for the kill.
Now, where they had stood, a dirty grey powder drifted on the wind.
Their very existence had been incinerated in the time it takes to disbelieve.
It wasn’t just the knights.
All across the field, Ellang’s soldiers who had been pressing the loyalists were simply… gone.
Turning, Kain saw that the ice giant Ellang had summoned, the mages and soldiers he had brought—all of them—had left no trace, as if they had never been there at all.
Only drifting ash muddied the air.
Count Paul Ellang—who had stormed Canossa to slay Prince Kain—together with his army, had been annihilated in an instant.
Baron Denver stared, slack-jawed, unable to believe his eyes.
Even having seen it, the unreality defied belief.
Then—
“L-long live Felberg!”
Before he could gather his wits, the baron heard a young knight shout the loyalist cry.
Only then did Denver remember the prince who had leapt into the fray.
He whipped his head around to confirm Kain’s safety.
For all the rumors that called him a sycophant, he was a true-blood loyalist who had long sworn himself to the Felberg line.
His eyes found Kain—and froze, words dying in his throat.
The Empire’s last royal, whom he was sworn to protect with his life, lay collapsed—bleeding profusely from every opening in his face, eyes and mouth included.
Yet despite their prince bleeding out, the imperial knights neither lifted him nor dared approach.
Perhaps because they had just watched, with their own eyes, the catastrophe Kain had wrought with a mere gesture.
Baron Denver gasped and bellowed.
“What in all hells are you doing! Can you not see His Highness is down! Rodolfo! And you, Schweissen! What are you—”
Furious, he lunged forward to give first aid—but then realized why his men hadn’t laid a hand on the prince.
He could not touch him either.
A crimson ancient sigil burned on the prince’s wrist—the mark of a Star Throne.
“L-long live Felberg…”
And so, like a worshipper struck dumb before his god, Baron Denver stood overwhelmed by reverence—unable to move.