How to Live as a Genius Knight in a Fantasy World - Chapter 52
52.
As Argan struck the sword towards the demon, he felt something peculiar.
A force he had never been aware of before was writhing mercilessly within his body.
“What is this?”
In a sensation that felt like the world had slowed down, he struggled to extract the writhing force from within him.
It was almost like an instinct.
Just like a child growing in the mother’s womb, eager to come out into the world, the energy growing within him was trying to emerge into the world.
It writhed restlessly, as if frustrated by not finding a proper exit within his body.
In the overwhelming sense that his body might burst at any moment, Arghen took a breath he had repeated for days as if embedding it into his body.
And that one small movement changed everything.
The movements of his swordsmanship matched his breathing, his heart seeking intense power at that moment.
The aura that had been accumulating in his body for years finally cracked open and revealed itself to the world.
The radiant aura enveloped his sword, and the blade, surrounded by a blue light, sliced through the demon’s leg.
In the unbelievable act, Arghen, who had cut the demon’s leg, suddenly paused.
“Watch out!”
At the urgent shout, Arghen regained his senses.
The massive body of the demon, missing a leg, was lunging towards Arghen.
Having just awakened the aura, he couldn’t die so insignificantly.
Arghen, throwing his body with all his might, rolled on the bloodstained floor.
Struggling to rise, Arghen raised his arm and gazed at the aura vividly entwined in his sword.
For a brief moment, deep regret flickered across his face.
To gain this light, how much had he sacrificed?
Compared to the years he had spent sweating, even the slightest regret could be consumed by the blue light in an instant.
Arghen, awakened from his regret, approached the demon trying to rise again.
No matter how strong, being off balance meant being unable to do anything.
Failing to rise, the demon succumbed to Arghen’s consecutive attacks in vain.
Arghen, briefly gazing at the motionless corpse, turned towards his next target.
Although Arghen had awakened the aura, the situation did not favor the punitive force.
The number of demons clearly outnumbered the punitive force, and it was impossible for the soldiers’ sheer strength to completely block them.
What they managed to withstand was thanks to the sacred magic of the priests.
An advanced sacred magic, requiring dozens of priests for casting, spread out on the ground they stood upon.
Demanding immense sacred power in return, such large-scale sacred magic, showing more power than expected, was the decisive reason for the creation of the priesthood.
Darkness was bound to disappear in the face of light.
The vitality and resilience of the punitive force increased rapidly, while the power of the demons decreased significantly.
The knights were indeed showing overwhelming power on the sacred ground.
The power they displayed was so remarkable that the experienced Count Tigrun couldn’t help but marvel.
Despite the countless demons pressing forward, their bodies stood firm on the ground without yielding an inch.
Their hearts, tempered by faith, remained steadfast, and their robust bodies relentlessly moved, decimating the enemies.
Of course, there were also knights who showed overwhelming power despite not handling sacred power.
“Rohan, was it…”
The gaze of the Count, who resembled the symbol of a senior knight, swept across the battlefield to the young knight who was engulfed by a giant demon, burning like a flame with his aura.
In fact, from the Count’s perspective, the knights’ performance could be fully anticipated.
He had clashed swords with them in his youth and had witnessed them fighting demons numerous times.
But the power displayed by this young knight was close to miraculous.
Considering the roughness still present in his movements and the level of aura emanating from his sword, he was clearly no ordinary knight.
Yet the sword he wielded possessed a power close to that of a senior knight.
Having not grown up consuming various elixirs from a prestigious family, nor possessing innate divine power, it was beyond the Count’s comprehension.
However, what mattered now was not solving his curiosity.
The viscount, who briefly glanced at Rohan relentlessly fighting off demons, turned his gaze back to the demons in front of him.
As the hell gate unfolded on the ground, Wyvern riders soaring in the sky were also engaged in a fierce battle.
Their mission was to shoot down the warlocks hovering in the sky.
However, in reality, evading their attacks was not an easy task, let alone shooting them down.
Empowered by the jewels obtained from Arden Castle, the warlocks unleashed overwhelming magic without restraint. The sorcerers riding on Wyverns had to contort their bodies constantly to dodge the attacks.
While the punitive force was struggling, the situation at Frederick Viscount’s castle was far from favorable.
Countless demons pressed towards the crumbling walls, and knights hurriedly descending below the walls swung their swords, but stopping their massive assault was no easy feat.
Even as lords who had reached the rank of senior knights descended below the walls, pushing back the demons’ onslaught with great effort was impossible.
Intermittently, the magical artillery on the walls fired projectiles, but they could not reach near the dragon’s vicinity and only plummeted.
Amidst the chaos on the walls, the warlocks’ magic poured down like rain.
Due to the lack of anti-aircraft capabilities at the viscount’s castle, merely defending against the warlocks’ magic was challenging, let alone thinking of a counterattack.
Pulling out siege weapons like ballistae, they attempted to fire, but reaching the airspace where the warlocks lingered was futile.
Truly a perfect asymmetry of power.
“Sigh…”
A deep sigh escaped the viscount’s lips, keenly feeling the disadvantageous situation.
Knights overwhelmed by the incessant onslaught fell one by one, and magic-depleted sorcerers could no longer hold on and slumped on top of the walls.
As the kingdom’s forces undeniably faltered, a sound akin to a whistle began to echo on the battlefield.
“What… is that sound?”
At the strange sound resembling an animal’s cry, the viscount, who was immersed in despair, slowly raised his head.
“That is…!”
In the twilight-hued sky, the viscount’s eyes widened as he spotted an unexpected presence.
Parting the clouds, a herd of beasts dyed pitch-black the sky.
Elves vanished into the forest, and the once sacred beasts now only recorded in history revealed themselves once again in the kingdom’s sky.
“Griffins…?”
Ascending to the rank of senior knights, the viscount, far exceeding the level of an ordinary human, accurately discerned their true nature.
Beasts with the body of a lion and the head and wings of a bird.
“Certainly, elves were known to ride them predominantly.”
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Recalling this new fact, the viscount scanned the sky once again.
Furrowing his brow with intense concentration, his eyes caught the figure on top of the griffins.
“Elves, they are elves…”
In response to the viscount’s realization, the surrounding priests also noticed the newly appeared beings on the battlefield.
At the appearance of this crossbreed race, now only existing in folklore, their eyes, brimming with faith, also held a hint of doubt.
Anxious and expectant gazes turned towards the sky, and as an elf attacked, a black magic sorcerer plummeted, causing cheers to erupt from all directions.
“Elves, the elves are attacking the black magic sorcerers!”
“We can win this! Just hold on a little longer!”
For reasons unknown, the suddenly revealed elves were clearly hostile towards the black magic sorcerers.
Their summoned spirits continuously unleashed magic, and caught off guard, the black magic sorcerers began to fall to the ground one by one.
The elves’ actions were not limited to the sky.
Giant deer that emerged from the northern great forest, breaking through the dry plains, raced across the barren fields.
To launch an attack on the castle, dozens of spirit magics rained down upon the demons densely packed to the extreme.
Though the demons suffered significant losses and belatedly rushed towards the elves, the spirits imbued in them were sharp enough to confront the dark creatures.
As the situation rapidly shifted with the sudden appearance of the elves, a sense of panic crept onto the faces of the warlocks.
“Ha, Harken. How should we deal with them?”
While each griffin was not a formidable force on its own, if hundreds of griffins were carrying elves, the narrative would completely change.
Even if they were black magic users with black gems, their numbers were at most a few hundred.
Considering the wyvern riders who appeared alongside the punitive force, the numerical disadvantage became even more apparent.
Harken, with a furrowed brow, scanned the battlefield once more.
The nearly overrun castle, with the arrival of the elves, was pushing back the demons and despite sustaining massive losses, the punitive force tenaciously held on and resisted.
The biggest issue was, without a doubt, the sudden appearance of the elves.
The ground demons suffered a tremendous blow from their unexpected onslaught, forcing the warlocks who were launching one-sided attacks from the air to use magic to fend off the elves’ assault.
Amidst the intense anger he felt, Harken’s cold rationality incessantly calculated the outcome of the battle.
A battle that was supposed to end in overwhelming victory was gradually tilting towards the defeat of the warlocks.
Observing the demons being pushed back more and more, Harken, at last, put an end to his long hesitation and made a decision.
“There’s no other option anyway.”
As the situation was already turning against them, the enemy still had one last move.
Duke Karl.
In an already unfavorable situation, if even the master joined, there would be no way for them to win.
“Yes, it’s a decision that’s already been made.”
Shaking off the last remnants of his humanity with a single nod, Harken retrieved a dark red stone from his pocket.
The remains of a demon that had devoured countless humans and spawned numerous demons before reverting to its original form.
Holding it close to his chest, Harken chanted an ancient spell.
“mmm…”
Intense dark magic emanated from the black gems he held, and the remnants of the demon, reluctantly leaving its host, slowly seeped into Harken’s body.
Despite the excruciating pain of flesh tearing and bones breaking, Harken’s incantations continued endlessly.
The moment the remnants of the demon were completely embedded in the warlock’s heart, Harken’s breath ceased.
As Harken lost his life, his body was completely filled with dark magic, and his soul was bound to the demon.
Within his soul, which had not yet departed his body, the voice of the demon echoed.
A dark voice incessantly crying out for destruction, death, and suffering.
The connection with the demon granted immense power, but it completely distorted everything that made up Harken as a human.
Amidst the pressure that seemed to shatter even his soul, Harken, now with a new body, opened his eyes.
The first thing he felt upon coming back to life was a sense of power that made him feel capable of anything.
The uncontainable dark magic, now materialized, enveloped his body like a cloak, allowing him to manifest dozens of dark magics with just a thought.
He had truly reached the pinnacle of a warlock.
The melting of the flesh that could not withstand the dark magic was just a minor side effect.
For Harken, who had shed the skin of a human, it held little significance.
Glancing briefly at his hands, now reduced to mere bones, Harken finally began to move towards the center of the battlefield, accompanied by the corpse dragon.
Having sensed Harken’s awakening, the black sorcerers who had been milling around aimlessly flocked to his side.
“Harken, sir…!”
“A lich…!”
Although the black sorcerers who recognized his achievement expressed surprise, there was little joy for Harken, who had shed his human guise to be reborn as a new being.
No, instead, what crossed his mind was a question.
“Why on earth are such creatures being held by insignificant beings like gnats?”
As Harken, newly reborn as a different entity, he couldn’t comprehend his past self at all.
Swayed by petty emotions, he had distributed treasures to those undeserving.
It was a foolish and reckless choice, but fortunately, it wasn’t a huge issue.
Once they had approached willingly, retrieval was always an option.
With a casual gesture from Harken’s decision, the black sorcerers floating around were swiftly stripped of their dark powers and plummeted to the ground.
The few surviving black sorcerers attempted to flee in great alarm, but escaping the clutches of the lich, who had reached the pinnacle of dark magic, was impossible.
The transfer of all the dark powers they had accumulated in their lifetime and the gems crafted from Arden’s people to Harken’s grasp took but a moment.
The black sorcerers all met their demise at Harken’s hands, and the earthly creatures were rapidly perishing under the combined assault of humans and elves.
The gazes of the multitude gathered on the plain began to converge on the still-hovering corpse dragon and the lich.
They had indeed realized that these were the kingdom’s most formidable foes, the adversaries of life itself.
The griffins, now bereft of their foes due to the black sorcerers’ annihilation, circled the corpse dragon, and soon, a myriad of spirit magics began to pour towards the lich.
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