"Hahhhk!"
Air. Revan sucked in a desperate breath, his lungs expanding violently as if he had just surfaced from drowning in a deep ocean.
His eyes snapped open, staring wide at the night sky.
The stars above him were still spinning dizzily.
The acrid smell of burnt wood, the metallic tang of blood, and the sharp scent of ozone assaulted his nose, replacing the sterile emptiness of the white void he had just visited.
"Ugh..."
A groan escaped his lips. It was a low, raspy sound born of pure agony. The moment consciousness returned to his physical brain, the pain arrived like a tsunami.
'What the hell... what happened?'
'I'm... still alive?'
His bones felt like they were vibrating from the surging Mana—feeling as if a violent tide was raging inside him, screaming to burst free.
He blinked, confusion clouding his mind. By all calculations, the backlash from the Elixir combined with his injuries should have killed him.
Or at the very least, left him in a vegetative state. Yet, here he was. Breathing. Thinking. And feeling pain.
Revan tried to move his numb fingers with great difficulty. Every time he tried to twitch a digit, searing pain shot from his palm all the way up to his shoulder.
After all that struggle, his fingers only responded with a weak twitch. He tried to lift his arm, but it refused to budge.
"Are you quite done playing dead?"
A cold, indifferent voice cut through his dazed thoughts.
Revan slowly turned his head to the side. The movement caused a sharp spike of pain in his neck, but he ignored it.
There, sitting elegantly on a large rock amidst the destruction of the crater, was Sylvia.
She had returned to her pristine state. He didn't know how she did it, but the dust and debris of the battle seemed to refuse to touch her skin.
Her black gothic dress was immaculate, and her silver hair was perfectly styled. A silver cross pendant rested against her collarbone, catching the moonlight with a cold glint.
She sat with her legs crossed gracefully, looking every bit the noble she was.
In her hand, she held a long, thin smoking pipe. She took a slow drag, then exhaled a puff of purple smoke that slowly vanished into the night air.
It was a scene filled with a terrifying dissonance.
Physically, she was just a girl who had barely turned sixteen—an age where her biggest worries should have been academy exam scores or dance party drama.
Her skin was still as smooth as adolescent porcelain, and her face still held traces of youthful innocence that hadn't fully faded.
Yet, the way she held that smoking pipe, combined with the cold apathy in her eyes as she sat amidst the slaughter, shattered that illusion completely.
It was the soul of a tyrant trapped in the body of a princess.
"You were out for ten minutes," Sylvia said, glancing at him with her Pale Violet eyes.
"For a moment, I thought I would have to find a new servant. It would be quite a hassle to train another dog from scratch."
Revan forced the corner of his lips into a thin smile, though deep down, he was annoyed by his Master's words.
'Training another dog, she says...?'
'Hey, My Lady... is your sense of humor really this twisted? Wasn't she the one who insanely ordered me to slaughter a group of Experts and a Master in just five minutes?'
'Even a toddler holding a sword for the first time knows that's suicide.'
Slowly, he pushed his body to rise. His arms trembled violently, threatening to give out at any second, but Revan gritted his teeth and forced his body to obey.
As he managed to sit up, he realized something.
A faint, warm energy was circulating around his heart. It wasn't his own Aura. It was... Magic. High-tier healing magic.
Revan looked down at his chest. The gaping wounds had closed. His shattered ribs had been knit back together.
Even the pores that had been bleeding earlier were sealed. It wasn't a perfect heal—his body still felt like crushed gravel—but it was enough to keep him from being dragged through Death's door.
Not even high-tier magic can heal wounds in an instant...' Revan muttered internally.
He looked back at Sylvia with confusion.
The girl didn't look at him. She was busy staring at the moon, acting as if she hadn't just wasted precious Mana to save a servant.
As previously established... in this world, Mana is existence itself.
For a mage, healing another person isn't just chanting a spell to close flesh wounds. It is a sacred and dangerous act where the mage must carve out a piece of their own existence, then pour it into the broken vessel to patch the leaking life force.
Especially with Revan's condition earlier... He wasn't just injured. He was practically dead. His body was destroyed, and his soul was already half-dragged into the current of nothingness.
To pull a life back that had sunk that deep required a massive anchor of existence.
And what was crazier.
Sylvia's natural elements were Gravity and Destruction, not Healing. Forcing destructive Mana to perform restoration is a brutal inefficiency. The conversion ratio is terrible.
To patch up Revan's dying life, Sylvia likely had to burn at least seventy percent of her total Mana reserves. The girl sitting there was now just a hollow shell trying to look tough. But behind her flat expression staring at the moon, Revan could imagine how exhausted the soul behind those Pale Violet eyes truly was.
"My Lady... was it you who healed me?" Revan asked softly.
Sylvia exhaled another puff of smoke.
"Don't misunderstand," she replied coldly.
"I simply cannot have my property dying on me before the job is fully done. It would tarnish my reputation."
Revan fell silent at that answer, his brain trying to process the logic that didn't make sense.
'I really can't understand this woman...' he thought.
staring at Sylvia with a complicated gaze.
'A moment ago, she threatened to kill me if I failed. Her killing intent felt more real than death itself.'
'But the next moment? She does the most illogical thing: Swapping a huge chunk of her own life just to drag my corpse back from hell.'
Revan shook his head slightly, the corner of his lips twitching to hold back a disbelief laugh.
'Threatening to kill, but refusing to let me die...' 'Is she the definition of a severe Tsundere? Or does she just have a terrifying case of Dissociative Identity Disorder?'
A deep frown appeared on Revan's forehead, and he quickly shook his head to dismiss the thought.
'No... that's not right.'
Why? Because in Legends of Valtheris, Sylvia von Vespera is a perfect monolith of ice.
She is the absolute definition of a cold-hearted Villainess.
There is no programming code that inserted Tsundere traits or fickle split personalities into her. In other words, this woman would discard a dying servant without blinking.
Then, a wild hypothesis slowly crept into Revan's mind.
'Is this... the butterfly effect of my actions?' Unlike the original Revan who could only whine, he had served her since childhood with absolute competence. He did her dirty work, became her shadow, and always cleaned up her messes without a word.
'Is it possible... that my insane dedication over the years unintentionally planted seeds of care in her frozen heart?'
'....'
Instantly, Revan's face paled. His eyes widened, and his expression turned into pure horror.
'Impossible.'
He hurriedly brushed the thought away with a violent shake of his head, shuddering at the mere imagination of it.
'That's impossible. I'd sooner believe a dragon became a vegetarian.'
Sylvia von Vespera? Harboring a speck of care for another human? Don't joke around.
That woman is a monster who lacks the capacity to feel empathy.
Unknowingly, Revan had just hurled a very rude internal insult at the person who had just saved him.
It was the definition of biting the hand that feeds you.
However, of course Revan thought that way. He had a strong alibi for his prejudice: Ignorance.
Revan didn't see what happened after his consciousness faded. He didn't witness the rare post-battle moment.
The moment where the "Ice Queen" stood before Vargos's corpse—not with a gaze of disdain, but with a gaze of acknowledgment.
Revan missed the one scene where Sylvia paid genuine respect to an enemy with an iron will. He didn't know that his Master, beneath her cruelty, held a strange respect for those who dedicated their lives to pure strength and martial prowess.
If only Revan had seen that side... maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't be so quick to label her a heartless monster. But unfortunately, for Revan who was asleep at the time.
Sylvia remained Sylvia: A cruel Boss who only cared about the end result.
"My Lady... what became of that Warrior?" Revan asked, carefully breaking the awkward silence.
His tone was calm and careful, ensuring he didn't offend the Ice Queen.
Of course, it was a rhetorical question. Revan didn't need an answer to know Vargos was dead. No human could survive a direct hit from Sylvia's pure gravity.
However, it wasn't Vargos's death status he wanted to dig into. The question was just an opener. A key to unlocking the answer to a bigger question: The Motive.
Revan narrowed his eyes, his brain spinning fast behind his exhausted face.
'Why?...'
'Why would a Duke's Daughter, who usually sits prettily on her throne, willingly descend into a filthy field like this?'
'Why did she give me that insane five-minute deadline as if the world would end if we were a second late?'
His memory drifted back. Right before his consciousness was forcibly dragged into darkness by the Elixir's Backlash, between the ragged breaths and slowing heartbeat, his ears had caught fragments of crucial information.
Vaguely, he heard the final exchange between his Master and Vargos. Something about 'biting the hand that feeds you' and 'not knowing your place.'
Revan stared at Sylvia, who was sitting on the rock, with an investigative gaze.
'A theft?'
'Did they steal something? Something valuable enough—or dangerous enough—to make Sylvia von Vespera come out of her lair in the middle of the night and rampage?'
Revan was baffled.
As Sylvia's right-hand man, he knew nothing about this. Neither what was stolen, or even who "they" were.
And this was what shocked Revan, because during the action, he hadn't had time to think about asking 'who are they' or 'what are you doing.'
Sylvia, noticing her servant's sharp gaze, didn't turn around. But her calm voice carried over the night wind to Revan's ears.
"He died with his duty fulfilled," Sylvia answered ambiguously.
"Or rather... failed to fulfill his duty."
The girl turned slowly, staring at Revan with serious eyes that held a dangerous glint. Sylvia snorted softly, then tossed a small object toward Revan.
"Catch."
With reflexes that had mostly recovered, Revan snatched the object from the air. When he opened his palm, his eyes narrowed as he looked at the object now glowing dimly under the moonlight.
It was a small crystal, red as blood.
However, it wasn't the color that made the hair on Revan's neck stand up. It was the subtle pulsating sensation radiating from it—like holding the heart of a living creature that was beating fast.
Revan recognized this disgusting sensation. He had read about it in the Game Wiki.
"This is..." Revan swallowed hard, his eyes widening as he looked at Sylvia.
"An Illegal Mana Catalyst?"
[Crimson Tears]