The darkness didn't last. One moment I was staring at the Duke's blade, the next, my lungs were screaming for air.
I woke up in a room that smelled of expensive beeswax and cold stone. My chest felt tight, bound in thick linen. I winced, touching the fabric.
The Duke had cut me—I saw the steel move—yet here I was, patched up and lying on a bed that probably cost more than my entire village.
Why spare a me? Why waste medicine on a "rat"?
"The guest is awake," a voice whispered.
I bolted upright, my head spinning. A maid and a butler stood by the door, their faces as expressionless as carved marble. They looked through me, not at me.
"His Grace is waiting," the butler said, gesturing to the massive oak doors. "You might follow me."
My legs felt like lead. Walking through the halls of the Ducal estate, my mind remained a chaotic mess.
The Duke of the North never missed his mark. If my heart was still beating, he had a purpose for it.
We reached the study. The air inside felt heavy, thick with the scent of old parchment and expensive tobacco.
The Duke sat behind a desk carved from a single block of obsidian.
He continued writing, the scratching of his quill sounding like a knife on bone.
"Sit," he rumbled.
I sat. My heart hammered against my ribs.
"You are a villager from the borderlands," the Duke said, finally looking up. His grey eyes were like ice floes.
"Born to a farmer, no magical aptitude, no formal training. A nobody. Perhaps even less than a nobody."
He leaned forward, the pressure in the room doubling.
"Indeed, it is quite a mystery. How does a boy who should barely know which end of a sword to hold manage to disarm a noble-born scion? Your technique... it exists in no military manual I have ever seen."
I swallowed hard. He was dissecting me with his gaze. "I've spent my life watching people fight. I moved where it felt right."
"A lie," the Duke said flatly.
"Very well. Keep your secrets for now. Those boys in the alley—I placed them there. I required Alisa to break.
I needed to see the 'Rose' bloom so I could finally decide whether to keep her or hand her to the Inquisition."
My stomach turned. He'd used his own daughter as bait for a pack of wolves just to check her stats!?.
"You ruined that test," the Duke continued, his hand resting near a silver letter opener. "I intended to remove your head for the interference. Perhaps the only reason you still breathe is because
Alisa remained tethered to her senses. Your presence, for some reason, calmed the storm."
He stood up, towering over me.
"You shall be her personal guard. You will eat where she eats, sleep at her door, and watch her every breath."
I froze. Personal guard? To the Third
Calamity? If I refused, he would kill me right here. If I accepted, I was signing up to be the first person she incinerated when she finally lost control. There was no real choice.
He's not asking, I thought, a cold sweat breaking out on my neck. He's just deciding how I'm going to die.
"I accept," I whispered.
"Very well," the Duke said, turning back to his desk. "See that you do not make me regret the bandages, boy."
The butler led me out of the study. My chest throbbed with every step.
That bandage was not just a patch. It was a leash.
"Enter," the butler said, stopping at a massive door adorned with silver roses. "The Young Lady has been... restless."
I pushed the door open.
The room was a palace in itself, filled with mahogany bookshelves and silk drapes. In the center, Alisa sat on the edge of a canopy bed.
She looked tiny. Fragile.
Nothing like the "Third Calamity" who beheads the Hero in Chapter 5.
She looked up. Her crimson eyes widened.
"Leo!"
She flew off the bed, stumbling over her hem before skidding to a halt right in front of me. Her trembling fingers hovered over my bandages.
Dark sparks of mana danced under her pale skin.
"Father... he did this, didn't he?" she whispered. Her voice broke, right on the edge of a panic attack. "I told him to leave you alone! I told him you were just a boy from the village!"
The air pressure in the room spiked. It was suffocating.
Think, you idiot, I told myself. If she loses control here, the Duke will deem her 'unstable' and we both die.
"I did not follow you to the Capital because I am a hero, Alisa," I said, forcing a calm tone. "I followed you because I am the only one who knows how to fix that wooden bird you keep crying over."
The pressure vanished instantly.
She froze. A deep, embarrassed flush crept up her neck, matching the color of her eyes.
"You... you remember that?" she mumbled, looking at the floor.
"Hard to forget someone who cries that loudly," I teased, gambling heavily on this fake backstory.
"I did not cry that loud! Hmph!" She puffed her cheeks, turning her head away to hide her red face.
For a second, she just looked like a normal, easily flustered ten-year-old girl. It was actually cute.
But then, her shoulders dropped.
"I thought you forgot," she whispered, her voice incredibly small.
"You promised you would always protect my back... but everyone here looks at me like I am a monster, and if you.. maybe forgot everything."
She looked back up at me, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.
"After all... you are my only friend, Leo."
My chest tightened. Not from the sword wound, but from sheer guilt.
I was not her Leo. I had no idea about any childhood promise. But seeing the future "Villainess" standing here, desperately clinging to a village boy just so she would not be alone...
It hit me. The game developers were incredibly sadistic. They made her suffer just to build a boss fight.
The door behind me creaked open.
A maid stepped in, holding a silver tray with two porcelain cups. She kept her eyes glued to the floor.
"Tea is served, Young Lady. And for the... guard."
I glanced at the maid.
Then, I saw it.
Right behind her left ear, partially hidden by her collar. A faint, jagged black tattoo.
A "Cursed Brand."
My blood turned to ice.
I knew that texture. I knew that lore.
That mark belonged to the Inquisition's suicide spies.
Wait. The Church does not infiltrate the Ducal estate until Chapter 3! Why are they here now?! I looked at the steaming tea.
If Alisa drank that, the "Demon Awakening" would not happen later.
It would happen right now. That tea was a mana-destabilizer. The Church wanted her to go berserk so they had an excuse to execute her.
"Wait," I said, stepping between the maid and Alisa.
The maid stopped. Her eyes flickered up to me.
"Is something wrong, Sir Guard?"
The maid stared at me. Her expression was perfectly blank, but her grip on the silver tray tightened.
"Protocol," I said, making my voice sound as flat as possible. "As the
Young Lady's new personal guard, I must test her food."
It was a bluff. A stupid one. I was wearing a blood-stained burlap tunic.
Real guards wore steel.
The maid smiled. It was not a warm smile. It was the look of a predator realizing the prey was looking back.
"His Grace did not inform the staff of this new... protocol," she said, taking a step closer.
Danger. Danger. Danger. My gamer instincts were screaming. In the game, the Church's 'Shadow Nuns' had an aggro range of exactly two meters.
She just crossed it.
"Leo?" Alisa asked, stepping out from behind me. "What is going on?"
"Stay back," I ordered.
The maid did not hesitate. The polite facade shattered.
She dropped the silver tray. As the porcelain teacups shattered against the stone floor, her hand blurred toward her apron.
A silver stiletto flashed in the dim light.
She lunged. Not at me. At Alisa.
If this were reality, I would be dead.
But this was DOOM. I had farmed this exact mob archetype hundreds of times in the Cathedral dungeon. I knew her attack frames perfectly.
Step left. Duck.
I moved before she even swung. I grabbed the falling silver tray by the edge and swung it upward like a shield.
CLANG.
The stiletto pierced the thick silver metal, the blade stopping exactly two inches from my left eye.
The sheer force of her lunge sent a shockwave up my arm, tearing my newly stitched chest wound wide open.
Searing pain exploded in my ribs.
"Die, demon spawn!" the maid hissed, trying to wrench her blade free from the tray.
The air in the room instantly turned freezing cold. The shadows stretched and twisted, crawling up the walls like spiders.
I looked past the maid. Alisa was floating an inch off the floor.
Her crimson eyes were glowing with a terrifying, absolute darkness. The
"Third Calamity" was waking up. If she slaughtered this spy with dark magic, her mana would corrupt entirely. The Church would get exactly what they wanted.
"Alisa, NO!" I yelled.
I let go of the tray, stepping fully into the maid's guard. I did not have a weapon
But I knew the hitboxes.
I grabbed the maid by the shoulders and drove my forehead directly into the bridge of her nose.
CRACK.
A critical hit. The maid's eyes rolled back, her legs giving out, and she collapsed into a heap of black and white fabric.
Silence crashed back into the room.
The freezing pressure vanished instantly. Alisa dropped back to the carpet, her knees buckling. She stared at the unconscious assassin, then looked up at me.
Blood was dripping down my face from the headbutt. My chest was bleeding heavily through the linen bandages. I probably looked like an absolute nightmare.
"Leo..." she whimpered, large tears finally spilling over her cheeks.
"You... you are bleeding again because of me."
I wiped the blood from my eyes and forced a tired, cardboard grin.
"I told you," I panted, leaning against the heavy oak bedpost so I would not fall over. "I promised to protect your back. Alisa"