Selene watched intently as more and more dust coalesced into the knight’s armor. Though she now suspected that he was the carriage driver, she wasn’t sure of her own status on that carriage—after all, she had been chained up when she woke up! The idea that the owner was into BDSM was certainly a possibility, but she could just as easily have been a prisoner, a hostage, or a victim of human trafficking…

And looking at that horse, split down the middle, half flesh and half bone, and the knight who looked nothing like a human, she suspected that even if he had been the owner of the carriage, he wouldn’t have shown her any mercy…

While she was considering her options (mostly random thoughts), the knight suddenly spoke.

“#￥#%￥@......#............##%￥@￥%”

Selene, whose mind had been wandering, snapped back to reality, hesitantly and uncertainly asking, “Uh… It’s nice to meet you?”

But the moment she spoke, she wanted to slap herself. Though her weakness and recent exertions prevented her from doing so, the knight fulfilled her wish—a wide, sharp blade was pressed against her neck.

“!#@%@%#......#......%#????”

This time, the tone was clearly questioning. But Selene was observing the blade, which seemed to have just formed, the dust swirling in and out. She didn’t pay attention to the incomprehensible question.

The knight took a step forward and, with unimaginable strength, pressed down on the blade, forcing it through Selene’s neck and pinning her to the ground.

“@#%@%......@#￥......#@......!!!!!!!!”

Blood flowed from Selene’s neck. Before the cold temperature could freeze it, it left a large crimson stain on her clothes. Selene was now completely alert. The hardships and struggles of the past few days, along with the memories of the plane crash, flooded back, overlapping with the image of the tall knight in front of her… A nameless fire ignited within her.

Selene glared at the indistinct head of the knight. She saw the two holes where the eyes should have been on the helmet and, with unwavering determination, replied, “I don’t understand.”

The knight’s empty eyes were fixed on Selene’s face. His gaze made Selene feel as if cold, smooth snakes were crawling on her body. But the anger and courage within her gave her the strength to speak again:

“You don’t understand human speech? I said I don’t understand!”

The knight’s gaze shifted slightly. After a moment of silence, he moved his wrist and began to draw on the ground with the blade. Seeing Selene’s defiant expression, he continued to draw symbols on the ground.

Selene was stunned for a second, then realized that he was writing. This knight could communicate!

She looked at the words he was writing with his large sword.

“False God… servant… what do you hear…” Selene frowned. The knight’s mental state seemed unclear. He not only didn’t know how to speak, but frequently missed words. She could only guess what he meant by the words he wrote. “In the Lord’s dream… in the place where this profane thing fell…”

What a mess… Selene felt a headache coming on. Besides the language of this world, she hadn’t inherited any of the memories of the body’s previous owner. She had no idea what he was telling! Not only that, she didn’t understand anything about this world! What False God, what Lord, what profane thing… Who understands this stuff?

“I don’t know. I have amnesia,” Selene answered crisply.

But the knight didn’t seem to hear her. He continued to write on the ground with his large sword. Selene, not getting any answers, decided to see what he wanted to say.

“Lord’s dwelling… life in dreams… %￥%# Mittal, antidote research… anomaly from the heavens, they %￥#%@ Church… Lord burns everything… the heretical church will be destroyed… stealing #&# False Day will soon end…”

Selene frowned. It was becoming increasingly difficult to read. She had only inherited the language and hadn’t had the opportunity to use it in the days since she arrived, so she wasn’t fluent. And the knight’s mental state seemed to be deteriorating further. The sentences he wrote were still understandable, but the gaps were becoming more significant, and there were also some symbols that weren’t words.

She managed to deduce that this knight worshipped an all-powerful god. These believers had formed a church to worship this “Lord,” but then some being from the heavens destroyed their faith, and their church disappeared, and their Lord also vanished… Honestly, this “Lord” was pretty pathetic…

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And she was a “servant of the False God.” He had brought her here to have her listen to the “Lord’s” voice. But something unexpected had happened, and he himself had become this half-dead state. The body’s original owner had also died suddenly, before they could even leave the carriage.

The two, one writing on the ground with his sword, the other concentrating on deciphering the words, didn’t notice a sudden flash of light in the words the knight had initially written. More and more red light was gradually appearing from within those words.

“…. Sacrifice in Alorn %￥&… You %￥#@ Lord %￥&… & I ￥*… ￥#@￥@ Element… holy flame…”

The knight’s writing became increasingly difficult to decipher. Selene even suspected that those strange symbols were just random patterns he was drawing, because she couldn’t find any useful information. Unable to make out anything from the patterns, she looked away.

The knight remained immersed in these bizarre patterns. He wielded his heavy sword like a pen, and Selene even sensed a barely perceptible fervor in his movements, like an unthinking devotee… Given that this guy’s brain was made of dust, this seemed quite reasonable.

“Ah… the blood’s flowing more and more…” Selene’s eyes noticed the wound on her neck. She could feel her body temperature dropping. “Damn it, why am I going through all this…”

A terrible life, a terrible flight, a terrible transmigration, post-transmigration hellish survival in the wilderness… This must be the work of some crappy, fake-powerful being. Abandoned by her old parents, raised in an alley, brain-damaged, with underdeveloped cerebellum, low IQ, a fake-powerful god deliberately torturing her, and feeling like the difficulty wasn’t high enough, throwing in a physically abnormal, similarly parentless, iron-clad can to torture her…

As she vented her anger at the possibly-existent god, Selene suddenly saw the spectral horse look at her.

After a series of verbal exchanges, Selene, weakened and exhausted, fell to the ground, gasping for breath. The knight’s blow hadn’t killed her immediately, but the wound was severe. It might have severed some vein. Or maybe it was just her already weakened body that couldn’t handle it anymore. She felt the world spinning. All the colors were mixing together… She even felt as if she saw flames in the sky.

Flames?

Selene turned and saw flames burning on her body. The blood gushing from her wounds was staining her body crimson, and crimson flames were burning, using the blood as fuel. It was the color of the sea of fire she had seen in that space.

Her blood-stained clothes connected to the earth, the canopy covered in ice crystals, the hallways, the temples… Everything she could see was unconsciously beginning to burn, a surging sea of fire spreading outwards from her blood.

No… not all the flames came from her blood. They were also shooting out from the words the knight had written. Selene could even see red points of light emerging from the words, expanding and growing in the air, eventually transforming into flames that fell into the snow. But the knight remained seemingly unconscious.

More and more patterns were drawn. More and more flames leaped from the words.

The patterns seemed to form a complex structure. A barely perceptible emotion came from the ritual, and Selene vaguely felt that this emotion was… “anger,” intense rage.

The flames of anger burned the solemn temples and corridors. The intense flames illuminated the entire forest. Burning branches fell into the snow like comets… Only when the entire forest was engulfed in flames did the knight suddenly stop.

As if suddenly regaining his senses, he stared intently at Selene’s flame-engulfed body. A non-human voice, sharp and raspy, emerged from his throat. “Servant of the False God…”

He raised his sword high and slashed down at Selene, who was lying on the ground. The sound of the blade tearing through the air hadn’t yet reached Selene’s ears when the heavy blade struck its target. The sound of steel cutting through flesh was clear.

He had struck his longtime mount.

“…Dare to affect my mind…” The knight, without hesitation, continued to exert force. The blade sliced the horse in two, bones and flesh falling to the ground.

He raised the blade again, a grinding sound coming from his mouth.

“This isn’t the power of the False God… it’s mana responding to you. It’s the elements disturbing my mind… This scale of magic… you’re a ‘Regressor’!”

Two flames leaped from the fire, like two ropes, seizing the knight’s arms. The flames seemed to have taken on a physical form, and a gigantic will descended upon the surrounding sea of fire, causing this raging inferno to act like a living being. The flames on the ground erased the words the knight had written. The melted snow and flowing water formed new patterns. A more complete “ritual circle” was gradually taking shape.

The knight struggled violently. The initial flames were quickly extinguished, turning into scattered points of light, but new flames immediately appeared, filling the gaps. More flames rose from the ground, intent on engulfing him.

“You’re stalling… you want to bring down power from the Elemental Plane…” The dust within the knight’s helmet swirled violently. Rage and hatred emanated from within, then turned into devotion. “Lord, bless my sword and armor. Let me cut down the heretics for you…”

Selene felt her consciousness becoming increasingly hazy. The knight’s cries, and the crackling of the flames burning the trees, slowly faded into the distance. Blood flowed from the horse’s corpse, mixing with her own blood, forming a pool of blood on the ground. From the edge of the pool, a small amount of blood defied gravity and flowed upwards, filling the final empty space in the ritual circle.

Selene closed her eyes.

The knight’s desperate struggles, his cries, and the tearing sound of his sword echoed, a faint light appearing in the center of the ritual circle. The surrounding flames surged—

Just before the sword struck Selene, a blazing pillar of light formed in the air. Intense flames surrounded Selene’s body, dissolving the knight within the fire. The knight’s final words were consumed by the flames.

In the last moment of her consciousness, Selene heard him shout a single word.

“Shinten!!!!!!”