I AM EXTRA IN A SHONEN MANGA

Chapter 226 - 220 – Tashi Arc (3) The Dragon Knight?

The plains of Tashi burned beneath a bruised sky. Ash drifted like black snow, and the scent of iron and smoke clung to every breath. The once-quiet village had turned into a field of echoing roars and shattered ground.The twins stood across the battlefield Alaric and Selene pale, ethereal, almost untouched by the carnage around them. Their eyes glowed faintly, like dying suns.

Selene tilted her head, studying Khael as her voice rang out, soft yet cutting through the din.

"Who are you?"

The wind shifted, carrying the crackle of energy as Khael stepped forward. The crimson aura around him pulsed, faint scales gleaming under the light of burning voidborn corpses.

He lifted his chin, his voice steady, deep unshaken.

"I am Khael Corzedar."

At that name, Selene froze. Her lips parted, her eyes widening as realization struck her.

"Khael Corzedar… you mean—" she whispered.

Her tone trembled between disbelief and recognition.

"The Dragon Knight."

The title rolled through the air like thunder. Even the voidborn nearest seemed to hesitate, their hissing momentarily silenced by the weight of that name.

Alaric's golden eyes flickered curiosity, then greed, then something like fear. He turned to his sister, a dark grin slicing his face.

"So if we hunt you down…" his voice was low, almost a purr, the promise of violence laced between the words.

He glanced toward the bleeding horizon, the memory of Vince's strike still burned into his shoulder.

"…we're going to be—"

Selene's voice overlapped his, almost whispering, as if finishing a prayer.

"Free."

Khael looked between them, the wounded twins, their bodies still marked by Vince's fury, and yet their will unbroken. His crimson aura shimmered brighter, scales flickering along his neck like molten light.

He repeated their word, voice quiet but sharp enough to cut.

"Free?"

He stepped forward, eyes burning.

"You think freedom comes from killing others?"

Alaric smirked, rolling his sword in his hand, golden eyes narrowing.

"Freedom comes from breaking chains," he said coldly.

"And your existence, Dragon Knight, is one of those chains."

Khael's gaze hardened, his dragonfire aura blazing brighter, the wind itself beginning to hum around him.

"Then come break me."

Alaric's lips curled.

"Heh… we intend to."

Before either could move, Juno's shout cut across the plains raw, alive.

"DON'T FORGET ABOUT ME!!"

He burst from the smoke, blood splattered across his jaw, his body still thrumming with the energy of the Fifth Gate. The ground cracked beneath his feet as he slammed a palm into a cluster of voidborn, the creatures exploded into mist.

"You talk too much!" Juno roared.

He tore through another line of monsters, his movements all fury and precision.

Ceyla Nox, further back, struck down three voidborn with a single crack of lightning, her eyes sharp and unyielding. Her voice echoed faintly, exhausted but steady.

"We're holding them but not for long!"

Andromeda Ban and Matthew Lomwel stood at the edge of the village, corralling terrified villagers into the last safe path. Andromeda, his coat tattered but clean somehow, still found time to grin, shouting between orders:wo, strike, pivot, advance. The Taishin captain's presence turned panic into choreographed survival. His hands were cruelly effective: a palm to the throat, an elbow to the spine, a heel to the temple gestures that taught the shadows where the face of the world still bled.

"Keep pushing!" Robi barked, voice gravel and coal. He grabbed a collapsed spearman, hauled him up by the collar, and shoved him into a gap. "You don't stop. Not now."

Matthew and Andromeda, freed to help, shepherded the last of the villagers into Robi's escort. Matthew's iron-field and Andromeda's echo-wall combined with the Taishin wedge to make a moving fortress. Sae and Junjun, bright and fierce, ran along the edges, nipping at the heels of any Shadow that strayed too close to the fleeing families.

Juno, mid-spin, felt the gap close where Robi had opened it. He caught a flash of the man's face a map of victories and losses, a grin that was as much pity as amusement. In that attention there was no vanity, no preening. Robi fought because the next man's life was his concern.

(Keep the line. Keep the hearts. Keep the names.) Juno thought, and his body obeyed.

Alaric stepped forward again, sword singing a note of challenge. "Your village's champion shows more bite than your masters taught him," he commented, voice velvet wrapped around iron. "Perhaps we underestimated the locals."

Robi wiped blood from his knuckle with the back of his hand and chuckled. "We're not locals," he called back, voice bright with a soldier's arrogance. "We're survivors." He pivoted and smashed his elbow into a voidborn's sternum; it crumpled like someone had snipped a support line. "And we don't like teeth on our children."

Selene's smile thinned. "So loud." She lifted a hand; shadow-needles sprouted in the earth and launched with cold precision. One struck the ground between Robi and a small cluster of villagers, and the soil screamed as the voidborn began to crawl through itanother strategy, another threat.

Robi felt the shadow-needle nick his calf small, a cut that burned but he only grinned wider. The cut would scar but not stop him. "Nice trick," he said, eyes bright. "But do you have a trick for a whole village that refuses to die?"

Selene looked at him as if tasting the answer. "You'll find your tricks dull quickly."

Khael's blade flashed, swallowing the shadow-needle as it passed, and in that instant the twins' attention split. Alaric saw Khael's movement and the calculation went through his face, the twins were opportunists; they fed on chaos. Robi, by anchoring the villagers and forcing the fight into a meat-and-bone fray, had denied them the feeding ground they needed.

The battle's pitch changed. It was no longer only a hunt for the twins; it became a test of will. Robi's shouts became the drumbeat behind which villagers stood straighter. Children stopped hiding and watched with wide eyes as their captain, the man who'd once held Crimson turned terror into a lesson.

For a breath, amid the thunder of fists and the hiss of disintegrating voidborn, Alaric's golden gaze flicked toward Selene and softened a sliver before the mask of hunger slid back into place.

"This will be fun," he whispered, and lunged.

Robi met him with both arms, bone and callus answering the blade. The impact rang through the field. Robi's face set in the smile of a man who had been called back into the river of battle and had realized he was not yet ready to drown.

The twins had come to finish what they had begun. The village and its captain had come to make sure they didn't.

And in the center of the roar, Juno's fists kept moving, Khael's wings of wind kept clearing lanes, and Robi crimson-armed, thirty and unbowed kept turning panic into resistance, one brutal, honest strike at a time.

To be continue