Chapter 1

Taiwan Edition Translated from the Land of Light Novels

Scanning & Input: Angel Chobi

In front of the young girl and a smaller girl, the fully armored person raised the longsword in his hand, preparing to swing it down.

It seemed as if he was mercifully going to end their lives with a single strike, a sword raised high in the sunlight, gleaming.

The girl closed her eyes, her lips tightly pressed together, not out of her own will, but out of resignation to this fate. If the girl had the strength,

perhaps she could have resisted the enemy in front of her and escaped.

But ──── the girl had no strength at all.

Therefore, there was only one outcome.

That was the girl was about to die here.

The sword swung down ─────

───── but she felt no pain.

The girl opened her tightly closed eyes.

First, she saw the sword that was about to swing down but suddenly stopped.

Next, she saw the owner of the sword.

The knight in front of her seemed frozen in mid-air, his eyes looking towards the girl's side. His defenseless appearance strongly indicated that he was feeling an intense fear.

Drawn by the knight's gaze, the girl involuntarily turned her face in the same direction.

Thus ───── the girl saw despair.

All she could see was darkness.

A thin, endless blackness. A semi-elliptical blackness emerged from the ground. The scene was filled with a mysterious aura and an indescribable, intense unease.

Is this a door?

The girl couldn't help but think so.

After her heart skipped a beat, her thoughts were confirmed.

Something seemed to emerge from the darkness.

At the moment she saw it clearly ─────

"Ah ─────!"

───── the girl immediately let out a hoarse scream.

It was an opponent that humans could never defeat.

In the already skeletal skull, two hollow eye sockets glowed with a flame-like red light. Those two red lights coldly stared at the girl and the others, like a predator fixating on its prey. In the bony, fleshless hand, a staff was held, both sacred and terrifying, embodying all the beauty of the world.

Dressed in a black robe adorned with intricate decorations, it seemed to be the embodiment of 'Death' born from the darkness of another world.

The air instantly froze.

As if in reverence to the supreme being, time itself seemed to forget to move.

The girl was dazed, forgetting to breathe.

In this state, as if the world had stopped, the girl gradually found it difficult to breathe and began to draw deep breaths.

The death messenger had appeared to take her to the underworld. The girl immediately noticed something strange, as the knight who had intended to kill her from behind remained frozen.

"Gaah ────"

A sound that was not quite a wail reached her ears.

Whose mouth did this sound come from? It seemed to be from herself, or from her trembling sister behind her, or from the knight with the sword in front of her.

The bone, devoid of any flesh, slowly extended its fingers ─── then, as if to grab something, the hand stretched over the girl towards the knight.

Although she wanted to turn away, she was too afraid to move her gaze. She felt that if she looked away, something even more terrifying might appear.

"─── Heart Grasp. Grasp heart" (Note: The English words should be in small print below the Chinese, for convenience, they are presented this way)

As the embodiment of death's hand clenched, the girl heard a loud metallic clanging sound beside her.

Although she dared not take her eyes off 'Death,' driven by curiosity, the girl turned her gaze and saw the knight lying on the ground, motionless.

Dead.

Yes, he was dead.

The danger that almost cost the girl her life was thus easily resolved. But now was not the time to be happy. Because 'Death' had only transformed into an even more intense form.

Under the gaze of the terrified girl, 'Death' approached her.

The darkness in her field of vision continued to expand.

It would surely swallow her whole.

The girl, thinking this, tightly embraced her sister.

The thought of escape no longer existed in her mind.

If the opponent were human, perhaps she could have held out some hope and struggled. But the being in front of her could easily crush that hope.

She hoped to die without pain.

The girl could only hope for that.

Her sister, trembling all over, clung to her. Wanting to save her life but unable to do so, the girl, feeling useless, could only apologize. She could only pray that her sister would not feel lonely because she was walking the path to the underworld with her.

Thus ─────