📍 Inside the Spell — The Forest
The forest smelled of damp earth and iron.
Sakura moved through the undergrowth with her dagger low, the blade catching the fractured sunlight in brief cold flashes. She wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist. "Where are the goblins? I was just hunting them."
Then — a twig snapped.
Kiyoshi's hand clamped onto her wrist, yanking her backward so hard her feet left the ground for a half-second. His voice tore through the stillness:
"Sakura, RUN!"
She turned.
The Goblin Elder stood fifteen feet tall at the tree line. Its gnarled fingers — each one the length of her forearm — gripped a splintered tree trunk like a club, the roots still dangling from the torn end, dripping clots of dark earth. Behind it, ten Goblin Chiefs ranked in a loose half-circle, their yellowed tusks dripping saliva that hit the forest floor in slow heavy drops.
Her stomach dropped.
An A-rank monster.
She checked herself without thinking. B-rank. Level 8.
"This isn't possible," she whispered.
They sprinted.
The forest fought them every step — roots erupted from the ground like skeletal hands reaching up, tearing through the soil, snagging their feet mid-stride. The setting sun had dropped to the horizon and the light it threw through the canopy was deep red, painting every surface the colour of an open wound, the shadows stretching long and sharp like reaching claws.
"Kiyoshi, STOP!"
She seized his arm and pulled him to a halt. She pointed up.
Eyes. Hundreds of them. Cold and glowing in the branches above — packed into every tree, every shadow, every space between the leaves where darkness lived. Goblins. Everywhere. The branches sagged under their weight and still they were silent, still, waiting.
Every direction. Completely surrounded.
Their routine C-rank extermination had become a slaughterhouse.
Kiyoshi's sword was in his hand and it was trembling. "We can't fight this. It will take two to five A-rankers to defeat the Goblin Elder."
Sakura's nails had cut into her palms without her noticing. "We kill the Elder. The rest will flee."
"That's suicide!"
She looked at him. Her jaw was set. Her eyes did not waver.
"Then let's die trying."
She activated every skill at once.
[ Shadowstep — Active | Speed +50% ]
[ Bloodsharp — Active | Blade penetration +30% ]
Her body burned with adrenaline.
"Sakura, hurry!"
She lunged at the Elder, aiming for the tendons behind its knees. Her dagger screeched against its hide — barely a scratch. The monster laughed, a sound like grinding bones, before swinging its club.
The impact sent her flying.
She crashed into a tree, her ribs cracking, blood filling her mouth.
"HEAL!" Kiyoshi's voice was raw. Warmth spread through her chest — one of his last two spells.
"Stop wasting MP on me!" she coughed.
"Shut up and MOVE!"
She rolled as the Elder's club splintered the ground where she'd lain. She leapt into the trees, zigzagging between branches, [Shadowstep] carrying her fast and low. The monster roared below, its arms sweeping through the canopy in long brutal arcs, missing her by inches.
With a scream, she drove her dagger into its left eye.
The Death Howl came.
An A-rank skill — [ Soul Shriek ] — a vicious wave of weaponised sound that ruptured her eardrums and tore through every sense at once. Blood trickled from both ears as she fell, her vision swimming, the world tilting and refusing to right itself.
Kiyoshi was on his knees across the clearing, still healing her. His face had gone grey. His MP was almost gone.
"NO! STOP!" She tried to scream it. Her voice was completely gone. Nothing came out.
One heal left.
With her last strength she stabbed the other eye and, on the way down, drove her blade across its belly — splitting it open from one side to the other in one long tearing line.
The Elder grabbed her. Its fingers closed around her body like a vice, crushing her already broken ribs, and hurled her into the dirt from twenty feet up.
Then — it collapsed. The slow enormous tilt of it, the ground-shaking crash rolling through the soil beneath her.
[ Level Up ]
[ Level Up ]
[ Rank Up: A-rank, Level 1 ]
She didn't care.
Kiyoshi was face-down in the dirt.
"Heal… Heal…" His fingers twitched against the ground — muscle memory, the motion his hands had been making for the last ten minutes still running after everything else had stopped. His sight was blurry.
The remaining goblins fled. The hierarchy was broken. The forest went silent in under a minute.
Sakura crawled to him, her hands slipping in his blood before she found his coat. Her lips were shivering. She pulled herself alongside him and looked at his face.
"Kiyoshi? Hey — look at me." She kept her voice as steady as she could. "We won. We're going home now. You will be alright, ok?"
He coughed. Blood came up dark and thick. He turned his head, let it go, and looked back at her with the most exhausted smile she had ever seen.
"You… forgot my rank…?" Barely enough air behind the words. "I'm just… C-rank… you know what happened when… MP hits zero."
"SHUT UP!" Her voice shattered. "Just — just stop talking!"
She hauled him up, his blood soaking through her shirt immediately, warm against her skin. And ran.
📍 Town Gate — The Fountain | Sunset
The town gate loomed ahead. Beyond it — the fountain, glowing gold in the last of the sunset light, beautiful and indifferent.
"Put me down," he whispered.
"NO—"
"Sakura." His breath was shallow. "It's over."
She lowered him onto a bench beside the fountain. Her tears were already falling onto his chest. She pressed her hands to him and could not make herself take them away.
"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"
He smiled weakly. "Hey… if we got married… what would we name our kid?"
"Stop it," she sobbed.
"Saki." Barely a sound now. "'Sa' from Sakura… 'Ki' from Kiyoshi."
Her tears broke completely. She bowed her head down toward his knees, her shoulders shaking. "I should have—"
His hand found her cheek. Almost nothing — the last of his strength going into that one small movement, his thumb tracing the line of her face slowly.
"It's not your…" He started. Stopped. "I am sorry I am…"
Then —
He kissed her.
Soft. Barely there. The last thing he had.
And never breathed again.
Sakura sat very still.
The fountain moved behind her. The sky above the rooftops shifted from orange to deep red to the first dark edge of night.
"Hey…" Her voice was completely flat. Emptied out. "Wake up. This isn't funny."
Silence.
"I'm still scared of the dark…" Her hands tightened around his lifeless hand, both of hers wrapped around his. "You promised… you promised you'd stay…"
Then —
A sound so raw it scattered the birds from the rooftops — a burst of wings rising into the darkening sky all at once. Then silence again.
In her mind, his voice whispered:
"Be happy. It's not your fault."
But her soul had already fractured beyond repair.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Twenty-Six ✦
World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Twenty-Six
ENTRY 114 — THE MP ZERO CONDITION: KIYOSHI
For most adventurers, less MP means exhaustion — disabling but not life-threatening. The body recovers with rest.
For Kiyoshi, he used a healing spell continuously even after his MP hit 0 then the spell takes magic from internal magic (magic which helps body functions) to live, and that led to a critical condition. HP was taken as a secondary fuel source. which will cause internal bleeding and rapid systemic failure.
End of Chapter Twenty-Six Codex.
"The spell gave her a victory and took him anyway. That was always the point."