The dissonant, harmonizing chime echoed through the void of Reine's mind, pulling him back from the cold gray of death into the blinding, dusty heat of the Herlem plains.
He didn't stand this time. He sat, his breath hitching, his jaw so tight it felt like his teeth might crack.
"I'm a fool," he hissed, the disappointment dripping from his voice. "I thought this was a storybook. I thought a miracle meant I was suddenly a hero."
Behind him, the veteran's voice rose, a familiar soundtrack of bitterness and insults. Reine blocked it out. He closed his eyes, his mind replaying the Knight's movement like a flickering film reel.
The Knight didn't vanish, Reine realized. He moved. I felt the mana discharge. It wasn't a spell; it was a mechanical explosion. He's a Sovereign Blade user, but he's using his Mana Core as a combustion engine.
Reine stood up. He didn't run to the Commander. He didn't warn the platoons. He had 30 minutes, and he spent ten of them staring at his own legs. He began to flood his lower extremities with mana, but he didn't distribute it evenly. He focused it into the deep muscle tissues—the glutes, the quads, the calves.
"If he can do it, I can do it," he whispered.
He triggered the discharge.
For a fraction of a second, Reine experienced the world in a way no human was meant to. The scenery didn't blur; it smeared. The wind didn't hit his face; it punched him. But the human body is not built to be a projectile.
Without the "Reinforced Vessel" of a high-ranker, Reine's 100% output was a death sentence. As he moved, the G-force hit him like a falling mountain. His tendons didn't just strain; they snapped with the sound of wet violin strings. The pressure in his skull spiked, rupturing the capillaries in his nose and eyes. A thick, hot spray of blood coated his lips as his vision was instantly swallowed by "G-Loc"—a black cloud of unconsciousness caused by the blood being forced out of his brain and into his feet.
He collapsed forty feet away, a heap of broken meat and shattered ambition.
Reine lay in the dirt, gasping. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass. He couldn't move his legs; they were useless, purple-bruised weights.
"Hey! Kid! What the hell happened?"
A young soldier—a boy not much older than Reine—rushed over, his face pale with horror. He saw the blood pouring from Reine's eyes and the way his legs were twisted at unnatural angles. He scooped Reine up, hoisting him over his shoulder. "Who did this? Was it a Paekl scout? Talk to me!"
Reine's throat was filled with copper-tasting bile. He tried to form the words. The warning. The disaster.
"Ar... arr... ow..." Reine wheezed, his voice a jagged rasp.
"Arrow? You got hit by an arrow?" the soldier asked, looking around frantically at the empty, quiet sky. "There are no arrows, Reine! Stay with me!"
"N... no... Arr..." Reine tried to warn him about the arrows, but the air in his lungs was gone.
Screee.
The sky darkened. The first volley arrived. A black shaft hissed through the air and punched through the back of the soldier carrying him. Both boys slammed into the dirt.
Reine didn't die instantly. For the first time, he felt the true, unvarnished horror of the battlefield. He lay there for minutes, his vision blurring and clearing, watching the soldier who tried to save him twitch and go still. He felt the cold seep into his limbs. He felt the flies. He felt every shattered bone in his legs screaming as the blood loss finally turned the world into a dull, humming grey.
The harmonizing sound played again—but this time, it sounded like a funeral dirge.
Reine slammed back into reality. He didn't just stop swinging his sword; he fell to his knees, clutching his chest, his face a mask of pure, primal terror.
The previous deaths had been "clean"—a flash of steel, a snap, and then nothing. But the phantom pain of the ruptured tendons and the long, cold minutes in the dirt remained burned into his nervous system. His hands shook so violently he had to bury them in the dirt to make them stop.
"I felt it," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I felt all of it."
He looked at his legs. They were whole again. But his mind was starting to fracture. He realized now that the "Second Chance" wasn't just a gift. It was a torture chamber. If he didn't find a technical solution—a way to handle the pressure—he would eventually go insane from the sheer memory of the pain.Reine didn't wait for the veteran to speak. He didn't wait for the scout. He didn't even look at the sky.
He turned and bolted.
"Vangalf! Where do you think you're going, you coward?!" the veteran roared, but Reine was already a blur of white hair and desperation, tearing through the tall grass toward the dense treeline to the North.
I can't do it, Reine thought, his lungs burning. The Knight, the G-force, the tendons snapping... I'm not a hero. I'm a fifteen-year-old boy. I just want to go home.
He crashed into the forest, thorns tearing at his skin, his boots skidding on damp moss. He ran until his heart felt like it was going to burst through his ribs. The sounds of the camp faded, replaced by the eerie silence of the deep woods. He was free. He had escaped the script.
Then, the silence broke.
Snap. A dry twig breaking. Not the "Snap" of the loop, but the sound of a hunter.
A Paekl scout stepped from behind an ancient oak, his face painted with black soot. He didn't say a word. He just lunged. Reine tried to draw his practice sword, but the scout was faster. A serrated combat knife plunged into Reine's side—avoiding the liver, avoiding the heart.
The scout wasn't looking for a quick kill; he was looking for a distraction. He twisted the blade, carving through muscle and nerve. Reine collapsed, a silent scream dying in his throat. The scout left him there, bleeding out slowly in the dirt, a "warning" for any other deserters.
Reine lay in the leaves for twenty minutes, watching the ants crawl toward his open wound. He felt every cooling degree of his blood leaving his body.
Snap.
The 5th Loop.
Reine was back. He didn't even breathe. He just turned South.
He ran toward the supply lines, hoping to hide in a wagon. But the Paekl cavalry had already circled around. A group of riders spotted the lone recruit sprinting across the open plains. They didn't use swords. They used a "Mana Net"—a web of burning Aether cables that wrapped around Reine, searing his skin and pinning his arms to his sides.
They dragged him behind a horse for three miles. The friction of the earth stripped the skin from his back and legs, exposing raw white bone. He was a screaming mass of red by the time the horse stopped. One of the riders looked down, bored, and crushed Reine's throat with a heavy iron boot.
Snap.
The 8th Loop... the 10th... the 12th.
Reine tried to hide in a hole. A Paekl mage found him and used a "Suffocation Field," slowly pulling the oxygen out of his lungs over the course of five agonizing minutes.
He tried to surrender. They cut off his hands and left him to drown in a shallow puddle of mud.
By the 13th Loop, Reine didn't move.
He sat in the trench, his back against the cold earth. His eyes were bloodshot, staring at nothing. The veteran was shouting, but Reine couldn't hear him over the screaming of his own memories. He could feel the phantom pain of the fire, the dragging, the knife, and the G-force all at once.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking so violently he couldn't even hold his sword.
"It's a cage," Reine whispered, a hysterical, broken laugh bubbling up in his chest. "There is no 'away.' There is only the Knight. There is only the 30 minutes."