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Blinding white lightning surged outward.

Beneath it, I was sprawled on the ground in a wretched state.

The attack had pushed my body beyond its limits.

Naturally, the backlash weighed heavily on me.

But I couldn’t afford to let my guard down.

There were too many deviations from the original scenario this time.

In the original canon, I could have been sure that Vulcan was defeated, but now, I couldn't be certain.

“Guh-hah!”

I spat out the bile rising in my throat and forced myself upright.

My entire body quivered, and my bones ached with a piercing pain.

The price of overextending my strength.

I staggered to my feet, forcing my eyes open and fixing my gaze forward.

As the current dissipated, the silhouette of a man emerged.

There stood Vulcan, battered and broken.

No matter how powerful he was, he couldn’t possibly remain unscathed after being struck by the magic of an ancient dragon, the divine power of a saint, and the Goddess’ Proclamation of Victory all at once.

Drip—

Black blood trickled from Vulcan’s mouth,

proof that the internal damage had reached deep within him.

Yet, he did not fall.

Instead, a swirling darkness seeped from his form.

The power he had gained through his pact with the Abomination.

Snap!

But it didn’t last long.

The dark energy flowing from his body scattered and faded.

A slight tremor flickered at the corner of Vulcan’s eye.

Centriol and Acrede had successfully repelled the Abomination,

while Grantoni and Vinesha had reverse-summoned it back to the Otherworld.

Vulcan had no more moves left.

Coughing up blood, he struggled to stand.

“I… I can’t fall in a place like this.”

“In a place like this?”

I spat out blood-tinged saliva.

My body continued to tremble, but I clenched my fists tightly,

driving my will through the pain.

“I’m giving everything I have to bring you down. And to you, that’s nothing more than ‘a place like this’?”

I once again invoked the ancient dragon’s magic.

Even the dragon’s lingering remnants resisted, but I forced them down,

wringing out every last ounce of power.

“If that’s how you see it, then your defeat here is only natural.”

A fool who gazes into the distant future but cannot see the present.

Blinded by what lies ahead, you will lose to someone like me,

someone who claws his way forward through the now.

I made sure he understood that.

Soon after, Vulcan let out a hollow chuckle.

To him, this had to be the most absurd thing imaginable.

To think he would be brought down not by fellow heroes,

but by some nobody he had never even heard of.

There was no greater humiliation.

But reality could not be denied.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Hannon.”

“No, not that name.”

Vulcan seemed to have realized that my appearance was a disguise.

Of course, someone adept at manipulating mystic forces would naturally detect the Veil Bandages.

After all, even Lucas had judged that he couldn’t avoid Vulcan’s perception during his infiltration and made the choice to escape.

My eyes flicked backward.

Because of the lingering smoke, Xenia still couldn’t grasp the situation on this side.

So, I turned back to Vulcan,

facing him squarely and raising my hand.

“Vikamon.”

I no longer bothered to attach the surname.

I had been excommunicated from the Niflheim family anyway.

Upon hearing the name, Vulcan lowered his head slightly.

“I see. You weren’t ‘just another fool’ after all.”

Once again, his corrupted flames flared up,

but unlike before, they no longer carried the same overwhelming heat.

“You’re the heir of Zerion, aren’t you?”

The heir of Zerion?

I had no idea what he was talking about.

There were rumors that the Niflheim Count’s bloodline was descended from Zerion.

After all, Xenia wielded divine magic.

‘And I use the ancient dragon’s magic myself.’

It wouldn’t be strange if Vulcan mistook me for a descendant of Zerion.

“Zerion… it seems your magic was right all along.”

Muttering to himself, Vulcan spread his arms wide.

The corrupted flames he barely managed to summon blazed violently.

“But even so, I refuse to fall here. Vikamon, was it?”

The corner of Vulcan’s mouth twisted into a smirk.

My eyes gradually widened as I realized his intent.

That bastard…

“See you again.”

And with that, Vulcan slammed his hands together.

In that instant, his entire body erupted into corrupted flames.

It was Vulcan’s new Phase 3.

Escape.

“Musika!”

The corrupted flames carried a soul-incinerating spell.

With it, he was planning to burn his own soul,

reduce it to ashes, and transfer it into another vessel.

‘Because he had made contact with the Otherworld through the Abomination, this was possible.’

When he fought Lucas, he had remained until the bitter end.

But against me, he chose to run.

I called for Musika, but there was no response.

Clearly, she was still preoccupied with holding back the Abomination in the Otherworld.

Clenching my teeth, I glared at the burning form of Vulcan.

That damned bastard.

I won’t let the scenario be twisted like this.

I kicked off the ground and charged toward him.

“You?!”

Isabel’s voice rang out in a shriek as she finally grasped the situation.

For a brief moment, the promise between Sharin and Seron crossed my mind.

But I was already reaching out for Vulcan.

It’s fine.

I don’t intend to die.

All I wanted was to stop him.

I wrapped my arms around the burning Vulcan,

and in that moment, the corrupted flames engulfed me completely.

* * *

My scattered consciousness slowly returned.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself gazing at a vast field.

A sunlit field.

I stared at it vacantly for a moment,

then shook my head, regaining my senses.

Just moments ago, I had been fighting Vulcan.

So why was I here now?

I pressed a hand against my forehead,

then recalled how I had lunged at Vulcan,

determined to seize his soul before he could escape.

‘I really am reckless.’

I had always known I was willing to throw my body on the line,

but even I was surprised by my own desperation.

I realized that this place was, in fact, someone’s grave.

Two gravestones stood on the field.

Bathed in sunlight, they appeared serene and peaceful.

As I stared at them for a moment, I heard footsteps in the distance.

When I turned my head, a man was walking toward me.

A man with deep crimson eyes, tinged with fiery amber.

In his arm, he held a bouquet of flowers.

I recognized him.

He briefly appeared in the intro when Flame Butterfly Act 5 began.

One of the heroes introduced in that scene.

The Fallen Flame, Rosli.

Though it was my first time seeing him in person, there he was.

A gust of wind swept by,

causing both of our hair to scatter in the breeze.

Instinctively, I raised my hand in a knife-hand stance.

Under normal circumstances, I might have been caught off guard,

but I had come here to finish Vulcan.

Rosli gazed at me indifferently, then finally spoke.

"I didn’t expect you to follow me this far."

"I’m a bit persistent, you see. Is this… your soul world or something?"

"No, not just my soul world."

Rosli turned to look at me.

"You could say it’s both yours and mine."

Our shared soul world.

The moment he said that, my eyes widened.

Because the hand I had instinctively raised felt strangely familiar.

‘This appearance…’

It was the same form as when I had introduced myself as Ryu.

The form of my real-world self, not the game character.

"You called yourself Vikamon, yet you look completely different. I can’t even see your face."

He can’t see my face?

I raised my hand and touched it.

I could feel my nose and eyes as normal,

but to him, it seemed my face was entirely obscured.

Rosli muttered as he stared, but then abruptly trailed off.

"No… maybe that’s not entirely true."

What did he mean by that?

I couldn’t tell, but Rosli walked toward me.

There was no hostility in his movements.

As I took a step back, he walked past me and knelt before the family graves,

placing the bouquet down.

"Once, I wanted to save this world too."

I knew.

That was why he had fought so hard,

why he was hailed as a hero.

"But the world destroyed my world."

Rosli’s family.

They had died at the hands of the Zebra Kingdom,

the very nation he had sacrificed himself to protect.

The kingdom sought to use Rosli as their pawn.

To that end, they took his family hostage

and forced him into the battlefield as a mercenary.

In those days, Rosli was known as the Mercenary King,

his name feared across the Great War under the Zebra Kingdom’s banner.

But by the time he returned, having ended the war,

his family had already been long dead, buried in secrecy.

The royal family offered a formal apology,

begging for his forgiveness.

The citizens held a procession to mourn his family,

lamenting his tragedy.

But to Rosli, it was all the more despicable.

The world was demanding that he forgive them,

when he himself had never granted that forgiveness.

In the end, Rosli snapped.

He let go of the last thread of his sanity.

He sought to burn the world down in his rage.

Though the heroes eventually defeated him, his rampage was only narrowly stopped.

The world couldn’t bear the shame of admitting

that one of their heroes had fallen.

Thus, Rosli’s downfall was erased from history,

hidden in the shadows of the past.

That was how Rosli’s grudge against the world came to be.

"I can’t stop hating this world."

Rosli was broken.

The only thing left in him was hatred for the world.

That hatred was what he had passed on to Vulcan.

The man before me was both Rosli and Vulcan.

"Why do you struggle so hard for this world?"

Why did I fight so desperately for this world?

"Because I’ve already given up once before."

The day I let everything go due to my injuries.

That day, the emptiness I felt was like the world itself had crumbled.

I didn’t need anyone to understand.

It was simply what I had felt.

That was why I never wanted to feel it again.

The Flame Butterfly arc in Academy Slayer

was my second chance at having a world that meant everything to me.

"I see… then you and I will never see eye to eye."

From Vulcan’s body, the Fallen Flame once again began to surge.

"The moment you charged at me while I was crumbling into ash, you and I were forcefully bound by this shared soul world."

The field turned pitch-black,

the light vanishing entirely.

The sky itself darkened into a nightmarish void,

an ominous aura spreading.

"This means that when one of us becomes the master of this world, they will gain dominion over the body as well."

The third eye on Vulcan’s forehead opened,

black tears streaming down from it.

"My reincarnated body is already reduced to ash. The only thing left is your flesh. I’ll make good use of it."

"You won’t enjoy it much."

I smirked, my knife-hand still raised.

"It’s a body with nothing but stamina anyway. Not much to gain from it."

If he took it, he’d only be disappointed.

Though, of course, I had no intention of letting him have it in the first place.

"We’ll see about that."

Rosli—no, Vulcan—smiled cruelly,

his lips curling into a wicked grin.

The final battle in the soul world had begun.