Prologue

Only now do I concede my defeat!

Ianna’s face was distorted in pain.

……But I don’t regret anything!

She burst out in laughter as she spat out bloody phlegm at the feet of the savage beast before her.

You arrogant, impertinent bastard!

Ianna laughed like she was crazy as bright red blood poured out between her open lips even as the insects scattered around the savage beast’s golden eyes buzzed noisily by her ears and even as the scream-like metallic grating was directed at her.

The silent savage beast opened his mouth and said,

“Even if it was that very obstinacy of yours that led you to your death?”

“Yes. I paved my own path during the entire course of my life!”

Ianna straightened her body, which had been sprawled out over the ground, and raised her arms. Blood had been pouring out of heart, which was beating violently and heatedly, for a while now. The lone sword that had penetrated precisely through her heart on the left side of her chest dangled with the rhythm.

Thump…….

It was her stiffening heart, not her mouth, that spat out her death rattle. And yet, it obeyed her powerful will to die only after saying her piece and clung to life like prey writhing between the jaws of a beast.

“I regret nothing. For all of this happened as a result of my choices……!”

Ianna said clearly, as though her body temperature wasn’t dropping as rapidly as it was, as she stared solely and directly at the black beast in front of her. She continued,

“Do I…… cough look remorseful to you?”

Another spatter of fresh blood spilled onto the ground. The gaze that had been instantaneously drawn to the vivid blood slowly returned to its original place as though it was being pulled back by a magnet.

“…….”

There was something tenacious about the golden eyes that were staring plainly at Ianna’s face. Ianna was as familiar with his gaze as she was with her own body.

Slowly, the savage beast said,

“Of course not. After all, you’re Ianna Roberstein.”

“Indeed, you’re the one who’s remorseful, you bastard, because you desired me! Ahahaha!”

And that’s why you were defeated by me too. You’ve lost!

The way she laughed boldly and prattled irritating words until her very last breath threw Arhad’s, the savage beast whose nerves were on edge and felt as though his whole being was ablaze, mind into chaos.

“You infuriate me. Die.”

The coldness of his voice, colder than the northern wind, brought a smile to Ianna’s lips. Her smile was stained with blood. Her crimson hair, her crimson lips, her crimson blood. Ianna, who was crimson from head to toe, dyed Arhad’s golden eyes in her color. He scowled as though he was staring at something blinding.

Ianna spat out blood as she saw Arhad furrowing his brow in her dimming vision.

“You are more pit……iful than I, Arhad Roygen. Just how did it…… cough, cough.”

“……You really are a woman who deliberately drives people insane.”

Arhad, who had been listening quietly to her scorn-filled words, finally replied with his golden eyes shaking in fury. He continued,

“I have never met anyone as greedy as you. I’m remorseful, you say? Nonsense. I don’t regret the days when I pined for you. But this is the end of my unfulfilled desires for you, as well as the end of your damned stubbornness! I will never again have any reason to see you or long for you!”

He was not only resigned, but also enraged. The strange light pouring out of his radiant golden eyes looked like it would strangle Ianna at any moment. He continued,

“So hurry up and just die already! Just burn, so that I’ll never have to see even your corpse!”

“…….”

Ianna’s body slowly crumbled down to the cold earth as she quietly watched over Arhad, who could not even breathe properly because of his fury. She looked so pathetic compared to her notoriety and the colorful assortment of achievements to her name. But still, Ianna regretted nothing. She wasn’t even upset.

Everything had happened as a result of her own choices. Death was simply her final destination after choosing only the paths that antagonized Arhad because she had wanted to emerge victorious against him so desperately she could have gone mad. There was no reason for her to regret.

She looked up at Arhad Roygen in her fading vision —no, at Arhad Ro Ralzo Bahamut, the Emperor of the Bahamut Empire— as he looked down at her with eyes devoid of light as she lay dying.

After avoiding him all this time, she accepted him only now after she had acknowledged her defeat at his hands.

“You always defeated me, but…….”

Ianna, whose crimson hair was sprawled over the dirt, curled her bloody lips into a faint smile. She continued,

“You were a great companion……. I see, so that’s how it was…….”

Arhad Roygen, who was more like her than any other. That was why they were so fixated on only each other, why they were so madly obsessed about only each other. If there was a difference between them, it was only that one wholeheartedly wanted to have the other, while the other wholeheartedly wanted to defeat him. This was the very reason why they ended up this way despite each being the other’s sole companion.

And, in the end, Ianna had conceded her complete defeat only now as she lay dying. She gave Arhad a sincere smile —not one smeared with hostility— for the first time ever only moments before her death.

‘Ahaha, I feel so refreshed now that I’ve conceded my defeat.’

She giggled to herself not with her motionless facial muscles, but with her heart. However, the golden light in Arhad’s eyes as he looked down at her had paled away when he heard the brief mention of being companions escape her lips.

“Shut up, you infuriating woman! What do you think will possibly change if you say that now after you’ve thrown yourself headfirst into battles to the death all this time?!”

Ianna smiled gently one last time as she watched the emperor shout in an uncharacteristic rage in between blinks.

He was right. However…

Their eyes met, and Ianna said,

“This life……is over. But……in the next, I won’t be your enemy……but your……knight…….”

If there is a next life, I will offer up my sword to you.

Still, regardless, I have no regrets about my life, which I’ve lived more fiercely than any other.

Ianna breathed her last breath without being able to get the words out.

A brightly burning flame was pathetically extinguished.

And so, Ianna Roberstein, a duchess of the Kingdom of Roanne in her own right and the strongest swordswoman on the continent, died at the hands of the Conqueror Arhad Roygen, the emperor of the Bahamut Empire.