Chapter 177: You think this is a K-drama here?

"You’re coming to offer your life as a pair?"

He struck the ground with his fist. The gravity no longer fell as pressure, concentrated on the area where Kaiser and the approaching Olivia stood.

Kaiser used both swords to parry.

*CRACK*

"KUH! FUCK *cough*"

A sinister crack sounded. He spat a jet of blood, his blades trembling dangerously, threatening to slip from his grasp.

"You should leave, Olivia!" he shouted, his voice distorted by effort and pain. "I’ve got this!"

She stopped a few meters away, short of breath, her gaze meeting his. Despite the visible terror on her face, there was an unshakable determination.

"No," she said, her voice firmer than he would have believed. "I can’t leave you here, Kaiser."

She took a deep breath, as if gathering her courage.

"I don’t know why you’re risking your life for me. Actually..." She hesitated, searching for words in the chaos. "I think I’m starting to understand. In the same way you want to protect me... I can’t leave you here and escape. It’s impossible."

Kaiser clenched his teeth so hard he thought they might crack. "Idiot..." he breathed, but the word was laced with frustration mixed with an emotion he refused to name.

"Just Cleopatra... Get away from here and I’ll be back soon."

Godwin slowly turned his head toward Olivia, almost ignoring Kaiser for the moment.

Olivia looked at him and smiled slightly.

"No use asking, I won’t do it Kai~"

’Does she want me killed or what?’ Kaiser screamed in his mind.

"Oh... how touching, this little scene," he said with a cruel smile that didn’t reach his cold eyes. "Very well. Give me the Pendragon claymore, bitch."

He pointed a finger at Kaiser, who was struggling not to collapse.

"Or your shitty lover won’t survive the next second of the fury of Michael’s chosen one. Choose your next words carefully."

The gravitational pressure increased another notch, threatening to flatten the already badly injured Kaiser.

Godwin’s contemptuous words echoed, but for Olivia, the world seemed to distort for a moment... all of it faded, replaced by the damp coolness of a stone corridor in the quarters reserved for the palace maids.

...

That year

Olivia was five years old. Her small body shook with silent sobs, buried in the simple but clean bodice of her mother. The woman, a gentle beauty with hands worn by work, rocked her softly, one hand in her silver hair.

"Mom," little Olivia hiccuped, "Father is ashamed of me. He won’t even carry me on his shoulders like he does with Adrian. He looks away when I pass by."

Her mother placed a soft kiss on her forehead. Her smile was tender, but her eyes, a resigned gray, carried the fatigue of a thousand silent battles. "Don’t worry, my treasure. He does it for your own good."

"To protect me from what, Mom?" Her big golden eyes, drowned in tears, searched for an answer on her face.

"Every day I have to do as you say: ignore the mean looks, pretend not to hear their mockery, greet Adrian from afar without ever approaching. But I don’t understand." A new wave of tears rose.

"Why did the empress slap me today? I just asked for a fruit at the table... She said I was an insolent little beggar."

Pain was visible on the woman’s face. She hugged her daughter tighter, as if to absorb all her sorrow into herself.

"I’m sorry, my heart. So sorry. Sometimes... love takes twisted paths. What your father and I shared... it was real, once. But things change. And you, my little angel, had to suffer the consequences of those changes."

Olivia’s childish logic rebelled. "How can it be your fault, Mom? It’s Dad who has another woman now! An empress! Why doesn’t he marry you? You’d become empress instead, and I... I’d be legitimate. I wouldn’t have to hide anymore."

Elara closed her eyes for a moment, a long sigh escaping her lips. "It’s... more complicated than that, darling. Much more. Love... is a complex emotion you’ll learn to unravel as you grow up. You can’t understand right now."

"Understand what, Mom?" the little girl insisted, her grief turning into frustration. "What do I have to understand?"

Her mother looked at her then, and in her eyes, beyond the sadness, the only certainty she could offer as an inheritance. She took Olivia’s round face between her calloused but so gentle hands.

"Listen to me carefully, Olivia. True love... the kind of love worth fighting for, worth risking everything... is a rare thing. It doesn’t bend before life’s trials." Her voice lowered, becoming more solemn.

"When you find someone who, despite everything, despite themselves sometimes, is ready to sacrifice anything for you, to put themselves in danger to protect you, to see you not as a tool but simply as you... then, my heart. Then, you may have found true love. Remember that."

The memory faded as quickly as it had come, bringing Olivia back to the hell of the present. Her mother’s voice, worn but clear, echoed in her skull, overlapping with the vision of Kaiser, bloodied, exhausted, standing between her and Godwin.

"...ready to sacrifice anything for you..."

Olivia looked at Kaiser slumped against her. His body had a multitude of wounds: multiple bruises, a left arm bent at an unnatural angle, and above all, a wheezing, raspy breathing that brought bubbles of blood to his lips. He was on the edge of the abyss.

"Why are you protecting me, Kaiser?" she murmured, her voice broken by emotion.

Kaiser painfully opened his eyes, a grimace of pain distorting his features. "*Cough*... *spit of blood*... To be completely honest," he panted, "I hadn’t planned for my own ribs to perforate my lung in my plans for the day."

Despite the horror, a trembling smile, mixed with freely flowing tears, appeared on Olivia’s face.

"Me neither, I hadn’t planned... to put myself in danger to protect a man."

"You think this is a K-drama here? Bunch of idiots," Godwin yelled, exasperated by this dialogue. His patience was at its end. He raised both hands.

Kaiser, the closest, felt his bones groan. But his eyes, vaguely conscious, suddenly widened at something else. "Wh... What is that?"

The ground beneath them, the rock itself, began to rumble with a deep sound that had nothing to do with the volcano. A different power, foreign yet emanating from Olivia, unleashed itself.

An elemental mana of a density and quality Kaiser did not know she possessed.

’I thought she was limited to Arcane mana and Datalion temporal magic. How was this possible?’

Godwin’s wave of gravity, on the verge of reducing them to pulp, met this new energy. There was a dull shock, a dissonance in the air. Godwin himself, surprised, stepped back one pace, his arrogant face showing incomprehension. He went on the defensive, his flame aura crackling to counter this unexpected force.