“Headmaster!”

Alan’s voice trembled with anguish. In that moment, overwhelming regret gripped his chest—regret for his reckless defiance just moments earlier.

That elder from the NK Kingdom was clearly no ordinary opponent. Alan should have known better. And now, because he failed to control his emotions, he had dragged Headmaster Gayle into this mess… into death.

The moment he shouted the word “headmaster,” Alan stood there, stunned, unable to say another word.

The other students of Sirius Academy weren’t much better off.

Francis and Fort stared wide-eyed at the place where Old Gayle had been standing. That location was now gouged open by the elder’s black magic beam—a massive crater, dozens of meters wide. Thick, choking smoke billowed above the impact zone, so dense that not even a single detail could be made out from within.

As for Blanche—the only female student of Sirius Academy, and also Old Gayle’s direct relative—her condition was even worse.

Everyone watched as Blanche’s legs gave out beneath her. She collapsed to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.

“Why… WHY?!”

Her cry was heart-wrenching. Alan’s heart ached painfully just listening to it.

“…The headmaster’s gone. We should… we should get out of here.”

Francis’s voice was heavy, his expression ashen. But he knew—more clearly than anyone—that what they had to do now was protect the final ember of Sirius Academy’s legacy, in hopes that one day it might blaze again.

“Hmph. You want to run? Not that easy.”

Hovering in the air, the old man sneered. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned four smaller black magic arrays, each aimed directly at Alan and his three companions.

The terrifying black beams roared to life once again, blasting forth from the arrays with devastating speed.

This time, there was no way they could dodge in time.

“Kh… Don’t you dare… lay a hand on my students!”

Suddenly, from within the smoke-filled crater, a deep, gravelly voice echoed.

In the next moment, the elder in the dark blue robes watched in disbelief as the black beams he had fired—just moments away from striking Alan and the others—suddenly bent and twisted in mid-air, veering sharply off course and shooting backwards.

Light doesn’t bend. Not unless someone had the power to rewrite reality itself.

Realizing something was wrong, the elder’s head snapped toward the crater where Old Gayle had fallen.

Sure enough, emerging slowly from the smoke was a figure—aged, worn, but still standing tall and unyielding.

It was Old Gayle.

He had unleashed a powerful gravity spell at the last second, redirecting every single death beam toward himself, sparing his students from certain death.

The elder clicked his tongue in annoyance. But then his expression shifted—first to confusion, then to outright disbelief.

“You… how are you still alive? How can you be alive?!”

Old Gayle raised a single fist, and with a sneer, hurled the redirected beams straight back at the elder.

“Kill me? You’re not even qualified.”

Boom!

Just as the black beams passed the elder’s side, Old Gayle detonated the mana he had hidden within them.

Caught completely off guard by the unexpected explosion, the elder didn’t have time to evade. He had no choice but to take the hit head-on.

As the mana shockwaves dissipated, the elder reappeared from a different layer of clouds—his previously unshaken expression now smeared with a touch of disarray.

He locked eyes with Old Gayle below and ground his teeth.

“Fine. I was careless. Looks like to destroy Sirius Academy, I’ll have to start… with you.”

And with that, the elder vanished.

He seemed to have slipped into an entirely different dimension.

The black magic arrays he’d previously constructed began to fragment, transforming into a series of gaping rifts in space.

Old Gayle didn’t hesitate. He leapt into the nearest spatial rift without a word.

Before disappearing, he released a series of mana signals, clearly directed toward Alan and the others:

“Run. Now!”

“Run?”

Alan stood frozen, watching as the rift swallowed Gayle’s figure entirely. He didn’t need to guess—he knew the old man was heading off to fight that dark-robed elder in some alternate space.

But escaping wasn’t that simple.

Because the NK Kingdom wasn’t the only force that had come to hunt down Sirius.

All around them, the cloud cover trembled with mana fluctuations. The sky was full—overflowing—with magical auras, like countless stars twinkling above.

These weren’t here by coincidence. They were all here to kill Alan and erase Sirius Academy from existence.

And they would not leave until they had achieved that goal.

Fall back? Preserve strength for a comeback?

“Where there’s life, there’s hope”? That logic worked for everyone else…

…but not for Alan.

He couldn’t run.

He couldn’t escape.

“You feel it now, don’t you? That creeping despair?”

Suddenly, a cold voice sounded from behind him.

Alan whirled around—and saw Stephen, standing not far away, accompanied by the white-robed woman who had frequently appeared by his side.

The smirk on Stephen’s face was twisted with glee.

“With Gayle gone, and the other students too far to intervene… now, let’s see if you can still act as defiant as you did before.”

He raised his sleeve slightly. Alan could feel it—Stephen was gathering an immense, dangerous amount of mana.

“There’s only one fate waiting for you—death!”

Stephen launched his strike.

The fragments of space torn apart by the black magic arrays began to sharpen and solidify into deadly blades.

Yes—Alan was a magus. Yes—he had mastered the six basic elements. Yes—he had all kinds of strange skills and techniques.

But this… this was a blow capable of cutting through space itself.

No matter how powerful Alan was, there was no way he could survive this.

This was it.

The end.

Alan clenched his fists and began channeling his mana again.

If he was going to die—then he would die fighting.

He would take this old dog Stephen down with him!

“Stop!”

Just as Alan prepared to face the space-shattering onslaught—

A soft, golden glow enveloped his body.

The next thing he knew, he had been teleported to another spot, now standing safely beside his companions.

Alan blinked in confusion, then turned back toward where he had just stood moments ago.

There—he saw a man.

Wielding a sacred book of prayer, standing tall like a divine sentinel, Daniel, Archbishop of the Church of Steam and Magic, collided head-on with Stephen.

“Bastard! You church people should’ve stayed out of this! Are you seriously choosing to wade into this mess?!”

Daniel’s reply was cold and sharp.

“Hmph. Stephen, weren’t you the one who stirred up all this chaos in the capital to begin with? The Church has every right—and every obligation—to intervene and restore balance. You are a blight, and it is our duty to remove you.”

Even as Daniel and Stephen clashed, another figure tore through space and appeared on the battlefield.

His thunderous voice echoed as he shouted at Stephen—

And that man was none other than the former Emperor of the Plantagenet Kingdom—

Denken!