A little while later, a guard swoops down to inspect the strange bubble that Clevatess’s body is trapped in. He’s puzzled—surely Clevatess should’ve been able to break free, so why is he still stuck inside? The guard, Gart, gives the bubble a kick, but it’s ridiculously solid, far beyond what he can break.
Just then, Rod appears around the corner and introduces himself. He saw Gart fly down and assumes flight must be his magic ability, so he asks for a favor: he needs Gart to fly him to the capital of Heiden. By now, Drel and his army must have started their attack, and Rod insists he has to stop them.
At first, Gart plans to ignore him, but he remembers watching the earlier fight from a distance—he clearly saw Rod get utterly stomped by Drel. So why would Rod want a rematch now? Rod admits he probably doesn’t stand a chance, but someone has to stop Drel before he reaches the Forge of Heiden. If Drel gains access to it and fuses it with his magic, a catastrophic calamity will sweep across the land.
The mention of “magic” reminds Gart of something Zathier had said before this mission. If calamity really is coming, maybe he should look into it—and Rod could serve as the perfect cover story. So Gart agrees to help, but only under two conditions: first, once they arrive, Rod has to assist him with his mission for a while; second, Rod isn’t allowed to ask any questions about who Gart really is.
Rod asks what happens if he breaks the deal. Gart bluntly replies that he’ll kill him. Rod says he can’t betray his homeland, but otherwise he accepts the terms. With that, Gart unfurls his wings and tells him to hold on. So Rod grabs onto his ankle, and the two head off toward Hitat.
Meanwhile, inside the capital, Clen is still struggling to open the forge seal with Luna’s help—it won’t budge. Smashing through feels like a bad idea, so he decides to try from above. Leaving Neruru to watch over Luna, he leaps up to the forge chimney. The heat blasting out is overwhelming—hot enough to reduce any ordinary Dark Beast to ash. But Clen is no ordinary Dark Beast; he’s built different. With zero hesitation, he dives in.
Of course, halfway down, he realizes maybe he isn’t that built different—the heat is brutal. He manages to hide in the shadow of a loosened brick to escape the furnace’s intensity. Even dormant, the forge’s power is immense, and Clen would love to examine it up close… but he’s fairly certain stepping inside would roast him alive.
Then he notices something alarming: the forge doors are wide open. Even worse, Neruru lies unconscious outside, and Luna is missing. Moments later, the mysterious figure who approached Neruru earlier steps out of the shadows, holding Luna in his arms. To Clen’s shock, the man is none other than King Heiden himself. But judging by his decayed body, he should very much be dead.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the battlefield, Alicia is still fighting Drel—and it’s not going well. Drel mocks her, sneering that she’s nowhere near as strong as her father. As much as she hates to admit it, he’s right. She can barely keep up and eventually gets knocked back into a squad of Drel’s soldiers. But they’re small fry, not worth her time. Brushing them aside, she frantically searches the battlefield for Drel’s whereabouts.
She spots him heading toward the castle, so she wastes no time and rushes to catch up. As soon as Drel lands on the wall, the queen and her remaining soldiers immediately fire more arrows at him, but at this point, it’s nothing more than a minor inconvenience. He effortlessly slices every arrow in half.
The arrows may not have harmed Drel, but they did buy enough time for Alicia to catch up. She strikes him with a rising sword slash. Unfortunately, that very technique was originally developed by Drel himself, so he easily blocks it and counters with something far stronger—the Dragonfly Sky Slash. Hundreds of slashes rain down on Alicia, but to Drel’s surprise, she emerges with all her limbs intact. Impressed, he praises her talent, saying it’s only natural for the daughter of a swordmaster.
But Alicia doesn’t want empty praise. Raising her sword, she demands to know what happened between Drel and her father, and why Drel killed him.
Drel explains that her father, Margo, was once his friend. They trained in the same sword school and even competed against each other for the title of Hero. Alicia is shocked—this is the first time she’s ever heard of such a thing. Drel, equally surprised that she doesn’t know the story, puts away his sword and begins recounting how he came to be known as Drel the Dragon Slayer, while her father gave up on the path of becoming a hero.
Twenty-five years earlier, Drel and Margo faced each other in a tournament to determine who would wield the very first regalia, a weapon forged under the orders of King Heiden. At that time, the two were still very close friends. As the tournament began, they agreed to fight with everything they had.
In the end, Margo emerged victorious. Though disappointed by his loss and the missed chance to become a hero, Drel congratulated his friend with good sportsmanship. As the champion, Margo was bestowed the title of Swordmaster and entrusted with the regalia. From that moment onward, he was bound to the duties of a hero—fighting dark beasts and protecting humanity.
When Margo drew the regalia from its sheath, he immediately felt its overwhelming power surge through him. But the king warned him that the weapon was incomplete. Every regalia possesses a soul, and the first being slain by it becomes the soul trapped within. The king urged Margo to choose his first target wisely.
Later, Margo and Drel met in a tavern to discuss the future. Margo revealed his plan to assemble an expedition force for his first mission. He wanted to begin with weaker threats, since accidentally slaying something insignificant—like a dark beast bug—would waste the regalia’s first soul. For his first true target, Margo considered going after one of the northern dragons.
Hearing this, Drel panicked and warned him not to attempt something so reckless. While he understood that Margo wanted a powerful darkness sealed into the regalia, targeting a northern dragon was a death sentence. These dragons served the Dark Beast Lord Van, and no one could challenge them at that time. Worse still, they lived in the perilous snowy mountains—terrain impossible to traverse with an incomplete regalia.
But despite the warnings, Margo insisted it was the only choice if he ever hoped to stand against a Dark Beast Lord in the future.
Drel was already skeptical about Margo’s chances of defeating even a regular dragon, let alone a Dark Beast Lord. The legends claimed that heroes would eventually overcome the Dark Beast Lords, but Drel never truly believed those stories. Still, he knew better than anyone that Margo was the strongest swordsman of their time. If anyone could accomplish such a feat, it would be him.
Margo stood up and told Drel they needed to begin preparations for the expedition. Though fully confident in their ability to slay a dragon, things turned out far worse than he expected. The snowy mountain terrain was brutally harsh, and while they spotted a dragon fairly quickly, the creature spotted them as well. It immediately unleashed a torrent of flammable stomach acid, wiping out the entire expedition force in a single attack. Only Margo and Drel survived.
Seeing how dire the situation was, Drel urged Margo to retreat, but running wasn’t an option—the dragon would simply hunt them down. Their only chance was to kill it before it killed them. That was easier said than done, especially since the dragon stayed airborne, well out of their reach.
Thinking fast, Margo came up with a risky plan. He told Drel to use the Rising Dragon Technique—on him. It was the only way to get close enough to the beast. Though reluctant, Drel obeyed, charging straight at Margo and striking him with the Rising Dragon Slash. The maneuver worked perfectly. Launched high into the air, Margo came down on the dragon, shredding its wings to pieces. The beast plummeted to the ground, setting the stage for Margo’s final battle.
From the sidelines, Drel could only watch in awe as Margo unleashed an extraordinary performance. Even grounded, the dragon remained ferocious—but Margo proved fiercer still. With each swing, his strikes became sharper, more precise, and more relentless. For the first time, Drel began to believe that his friend truly might slay the dragon.
But tragedy struck at the worst possible moment. Just as Margo prepared to deliver the finishing blow, his foot snagged on a rock for the briefest instant. That tiny opening was all the dragon needed. With one swift strike, it tore off his foot—along with his last hope of victory and his dream of becoming a hero.
Realizing the end had come, Margo hurled his sword to Drel and shouted for him to finish the fight before the dragon silenced him forever beneath its stomp. Drel, still reeling from the shock, barely had time to process what had happened. But he knew what he had to do. Seizing the regalia, he charged straight at the weakened dragon.
Thanks to the immense damage Margo had already inflicted, Drel was able to decapitate the beast with one decisive slash. Standing over the dragon’s corpse, he could hardly believe what he had just done.
Drel turned to check on Margo, ready to tell him that they had actually slain the dragon. But before he could, the regalia began absorbing the dragon’s soul. Drel felt the immense power flooding into the blade, strengthening him like never before. Yet, as the process finished, he suddenly sensed a terrifying presence behind him. The battle had drawn the attention of the Dark Beast Lord Van.
The next thing Drel knew, he awoke in a puddle of his own blood. Strangely, his body was perfectly intact. Somehow, he had survived. From there, Drel managed to carry Margo and one other survivor back to the city. Afterward, Margo retired from the path of a hero and lived out the rest of his life—until Drel eventually killed him.
Though he had earned the title of Dragon Slayer and was hailed as a hero, Drel never truly believed in the hero legends. He was convinced the stories were riddled with lies, and that the most important truths were being concealed by the royal family.
The queen insisted she had no idea what he meant, but nothing she said could sway him. When Alicia asked if he thought magic was the missing truth hidden from the legends, Drel confirmed it. He explained that ever since the day he encountered Van, the voices in his head had been telling him so. And now, he knew exactly what needed to be done.
Calling upon necromancy, Drel summoned the skeleton of an undead dragon and used it to knock Alicia off the wall before flying away on its back, intent on claiming the forge for himself.
On the ground, Alicia survived the fall, though her arm and leg were badly mangled. Gritting her teeth, she used the dark ichor to heal the injuries, though the pain was excruciating. Through their mental link, she tried warning Clevatess that Drel was heading for the forge—but Clevatess silenced her.
Something far more pressing was unfolding before his eyes: the King of Heiden was about to throw his own grandson into the forge.
