The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 24

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 24. The Prey Takes the Bait
When had it started?
Only now did he sense the Demonic Energy coiled secretly all around him, converging on his position.
‘……So they’ve come.’
But the level of Demonic Energy he felt was far higher than he’d anticipated.
When he’d captured Amerus, the public story had been that his father and Sir Gunter had eliminated the Mage.
So if those creatures came after him again, he’d expected an enemy roughly Amerus’s caliber.
‘This is in a different league altogether. 3-Circle…… or perhaps even 4-Circle? No, surely not…….’
What was certain was that his Demon Devourer ability couldn’t quite gauge the threat’s true strength.
“Young master?”
“Ah, no, it’s fine. This sticky substance is just getting to me. Keep working. And be careful of the saliva, all of you.”
Munno patted Roman on the shoulder as he spoke, then slipped another fireworks signal from his pocket into the man’s hand.
Roman looked at Munno with a puzzled expression, then his eyes hardened slightly as he caught the subtle gesture—Munno’s finger pressed briefly to his own lips.
“I’m going to check the rear exit over there—make sure we haven’t missed any monsters.”
Munno gestured broadly toward the forest’s outer edge as he spoke.
And.
“Yes, of course. You should do that.”
Roman played along convincingly enough, and Munno hoped he’d understood the real meaning behind the words.
‘If they’re who I think they are, they won’t want witnesses.’
Judging by Amerus’s behavior, their goal was to abduct him.
If he deliberately separated from the group, they’d have no reason to touch the soldiers.
In fact, as he moved farther from his companions, he felt the Demonic Energy around him shift and move in response.
The circle of Demonic Energy closing in on its prey with almost deliberate precision.
Munno’s tension ratcheted higher still—he could feel the meticulous control behind every movement.
‘I need to warn Sir Gunter and Karina…….’
If he’d known an enemy this difficult to gauge was coming, his father would have…….
‘No, wait.’
If the Glutton Knight had been following him, they might never have made their approach in the first place.
And no matter how powerful a Mage might be, if they weren’t a Mage-Knight, they wouldn’t be a match for him.
……He had to believe that.
“I need to send a retreat signal…….”
The moment he stepped out of the forest, Munno muttered to himself and pulled out another fireworks signal, frantically scrubbing at the fuse.
The one he’d given Roman might not ignite, so this one had to…….
Fwiiiiish.
But the attempt ended in pathetic failure.
The moment he pulled the fuse, the spark that should have caught the powder simply died.
And a biting chill began to wrap around him.
‘Damn…….’
He was frowning, trying to locate the source of the Demonic Energy, when.
Whoooosh.
The red light he’d been trying to launch suddenly shot skyward from deep within the forest where the soldiers were.
‘Well done, Roman!’
And.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
Immediately after, a massive pillar of ice erupted from that same location.
– Aaahhh!
The screams of soldiers pierced the air.
“Damn it!!!”
Without thinking, Munno bolted back toward the forest where his men were positioned.
‘I was hoping there’d be no witnesses…… Yes, to be absolutely sure, I’d have to kill them all. Fool! Idiot!’
The moment he threw himself forward with renewed speed.
[Freeze.]
A chilling voice cut through the air, and simultaneously an indescribable cold swept across everything around him.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
His body, mid-sprint, crystallized in an instant—transformed into a massive block of ice.
[For such a small insect, I had to come in person…… .]
In the next moment, a voice thick with naked irritation echoed across the clearing.
KABOOOOM!
[……What!?]
The ice block shattered into fragments, and Munno’s body was hurled free from the frozen prison.
“This damn bastard!!”
Even as fury roiled through him, the chill had at least cleared Munno’s head enough for him to abandon chasing where the ice pillars had erupted and instead sprint toward the source of that magical aura itself.
Northward from where the soldiers stood.
– Mage! Kill him!! Devour him!!
As the seething rage surged, the voice of the Demon Devourer began to ring through his mind.
‘All right. Do as you wish.’
The moment he decided to yield to that cry—
Munno, who had until now deliberately kept his consciousness separate and held the Demon Devourer in check, began to release that violent self completely.
Crack.
His pupils darkened to the whites of his eyes, and his frame swelled further, hurtling toward the target far more rapidly than before.
“What the hell——!?”
Alten Roon, a 4-Circle Mage belonging to the Demon Cult Northern Division, could not help but be startled.
He knew well enough that composure and calm were virtues of a mage, but there was no way to remain unshaken when a 1-Star knight shattered his magic and came charging forward.
‘How?’
A mere foot soldier should have become an ice statue with a single gesture, yet this wretch was breaking through his magic.
A 1-Star Hard Body Practitioner with Metal Control ability.
According to the intelligence he had received, this made no sense.
His sharp mind naturally grasped for a plausible explanation.
‘No—I must have unconsciously weakened my power to capture him.’
Yes, that had to be it.
I must have poured less mana than when I was dealing with those wretches he brought with him.
So in his next spell, he decided to invest considerably more mana.
Not that it mattered if his prey died in the process.
Thud.
‘Endure, whelp.’
Wishing the target luck against his spell, he drove his staff downward, and a keen, biting cold spread outward.
As a mage, he was unlike those inept Spirit Users—he could deliver his full power in any environment—but it would be foolish not to exploit this frigid setting all the same.
Crackle.
Once more a wave of ice surged forth, engulfing the whelp charging toward him from three hundred meters ahead.
But it lasted only a moment.
Crack.
“Gyaaaah!! I’ll kill you!!”
Boom.
The wretch tore straight through the massive ice wave and came charging on.
With frost clinging to his hair and his face gone pale blue, he had unmistakably pierced through Alten’s magic.
Eyes black as pitch with no whites showing, and tremendous muscles rippling up through his leather armor.
He looked like a barbarian warrior from ancient legends of the Northern Region, and a sense of oppression washed over Alten unbidden.
‘Oppression? In me?’
The moment Alten recognized his own emotion, his bewilderment transformed into fury.
“Insolent——!”
Whelp or not, any Hard Body Practitioner would close a three-hundred-meter gap in moments.
There was no time for deliberation.
‘He must have some special resistance to cold.’
Thud.
With that snap judgment made, he unleashed a wave of flame at his opponent instead.
Roar.
A wave of fire spreading radially outward.
A 3-Circle spell—the highest level he could cast without incantation among those available to a 4-Circle Mage—poured across the enemy’s front.
Channeling his full power as a 4-Circle mage.
The instant he grasped what he’d done, regret flickered.
‘Damn——’
However limited instant-cast magic might be, this surpassed what a 3-Circle mage could produce with full preparation.
A mere ability-user like a Hard Body Practitioner—let alone a lowborn knight at the basest tier—could not possibly survive it.
‘But I need him alive!’
And yet.
Whoosh.
Breaking through that wave of flame, four strands of black Metal Chains erupted forth, closing the final distance.
“Huh!?”
A transparent barrier reflexively manifested to block them.
Boom.
The moment he flicked the Metal Chains, the shield shattered without warning.
‘How—!?’
There was no time to understand why.
“Die!”
From behind where the chains snapped back, a youth glowing red-hot swung a Great Sword heated to incandescence down like lightning.
His vision whited out.
He could feel it coming.
‘This is death…….’
Without ever properly using his specialty—magic—he was about to die pathetically through carelessness.
Nothing filled his mind but bitter resentment, again and again.
And then.
Crash!
A figure in Black Armor erupted upward before him with a deafening boom.
“You would leave me behind, Alten?”
A man clad entirely in black plate, a Black Helmet pressed firmly on his head.
“Roman!”
“As always, the frontline is mine to—”
Bang!
“—guard.”
Crash-bang.
Roman simply charged forward and drove the enemy back.
Watching the opponent bounce away helplessly, Alten pressed a trembling hand to his chest.
‘What—startled? By that boy? I was startled by him?’
The thought ignited Alten’s fury. He drew his Magical Power surging upward again and roared.
“Pin him down! I’ll finish this!”
“Yes—”
Bang!
“—I obey.”
Watching Roman charge at the enemy once more, Alten summoned his mightiest incantation.
‘I’ll grind him to dust, scatter him as powder.’
Crack.
In this moment, with his proud dignity dealt a mortal wound, he gave no thought to the Cult’s orders.
A low hum filled the air.
“Not even a Mage, this wretched boy!!”
Though the youth—known only as a 1-Star Hard Body Practitioner—was now holding his own against a 3-Star Demon Knight, wielding both a Great Sword and those strange Metal Chains, Alten didn’t see it.
The boy had Metal Control, after all; naturally he’d have an edge swinging crude iron around.
It was only the sight of this worthless boy clawing desperately to survive that sickened him.
Crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash-crash.
As the drawn Magical Power resonated with his whispered incantation, a tempest of flame and frost began to spiral around him.
Through the roiling storm of burning Demonic Energy, he saw someone leap onto the battlefield.
Bang!
“A Demon Knight!?”
Crash!
“A Mage’s slave—how dare you claim this ground!!”
A knight in Heavy Armor, swinging an enormous Halberd.
“Go—”
Bang.
“—young master!”
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.
“I shall handle this one!”
With the arrival of the armored knight wielding that crudely enormous Halberd like a madman, pressing Roman hard,
“Grrrrr.”
the youth with the Metal Chains let out a feral snarl and hurled himself toward Alten again.
In that brief moment, what Alten felt was absurdity.
And how could it be otherwise?
A knight in Heavy Armor, likely around 3-Star, had just been ordered to deal with a mere 1-Star boy—one with the odd ability to control metal—while Alten himself stood ready at full strength.
Not in the half-guarded state he’d been in before.
‘He must have judged me by how careless I was just now.’
Now, even without Roman, he had the certainty to incinerate both of them in an instant.
“Kahahaha!”
He couldn’t help but laugh.
These contemptible mayflies needed to be taught their place.
First, that arrogant whelp who’d crept into view and was now firing four Metal Chains at him.
“Scatter, winds of Cold Flame.”
With a simple incantation, a portion of the inferno raging around him lashed toward the young mage.
Even a portion of it was 4-Circle magic—an attack imbued with principles of the Demonic Way far beyond the 3-Circle instant-cast spells the whelp had managed to endure thus far.
A magic of ruin where flame and cold and wind—elements that by nature’s law should never coexist—were made to dance as one.
A true fragment of magic, touched by the great truth that only those chosen by the Foreign Gods could learn—a truth that transcended, mocked, and trampled upon the world’s natural order.
He had no doubt whatsoever that it would reduce the creature to scattered ashen ice shards.
And so it did.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
A strangled cry tore from the creature’s throat.
The charging form was engulfed in the maelstrom and hurled backward.
But then—
“Shriek! I’ll kill you, Mage!”
The creature came hurtling forward again, not merely intact but seeming to swell even larger than before.
“What—!?”
The instant four Metal Chains stretched toward him, Alten’s heightened senses detected his magic distinctly weakening and scattering as they approached.
In that moment, understanding crystallized.
‘Those chains—they’re an Artifact. Anti-mage grade, no less.’
Of course!
Now he finally grasped why the whelp had survived his magic thus far.
But even so—
“Hmph. An Artifact crafted by some Spirit User…!”
It had to have limits.
If mere possession of such a trinket allowed anyone to face a high-rank mage, the Mage Empire would never have come to exist.
Besides, that Artifact had already consumed fragments of 3-Circle and 4-Circle magic multiple times over.
“Perish alongside your Artifact!”
The flames roared.
The perfected Cold Flame—a tempest with half his power invested—erupted outward in all directions toward the creature.
Even if those chains were an Artifact of the grade possessed by the Iron Kingdom’s very king, the 1-Star Hard Body Practitioner wielding them could never withstand the shockwave of force unleashed here.
Yes. It had to end like this.
And yet—
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
The creature’s form vanished in the red and blue maelstrom; Alten smiled—but only for a breath.
A thunderous roar split the sky.
— I’ll kill you!!!!
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom.
The moment Alten caught sight of the monstrosity hurtling toward him again, Metal Chains fluttering in its wake, his skin erupted in gooseflesh.
“Shriek!”
The creature, howling ceaselessly, was swollen far more grotesquely than before.
Its skin bore the marks of both freezing and burning everywhere.
And yet, as black veins bulged from those very wounds and blood poured from its mouth—
the chains remained pristine.
No Artifact, regardless of its design to counter mages, could consume this much magic without showing some sign of degradation.
Which meant it was not an Artifact at all…
‘That creature. It devours magic!’
He could not accept it.
It was absurd.
Logically, it should have been impossible.
Yet if no other explanation was remotely possible, then impossibility became fact.
“Impossible!”
Confronted by a sight that shattered his understanding of the world, Alten burned once more with a mage’s fury.
‘How dare it—to consume magic that reigns supreme over all natural law?’
That reality was unbearable.
Mercifully, the creature’s condition suggested it had nearly reached its breaking point.
“Die!”
He was certain the remaining Cold Flame tempest alone would finish it.
In this moment, he could crush the delicate sprout that might otherwise bloom into a mage-slayer.
‘I will kill it. Without fail.’
At that thought, Alten Roon poured every ounce of his remaining strength into the Cold Flame storm.
It was not a judgment made on courage alone.
The creature charging at him like a beast was clearly already wounded—badly so, from the look of it.
His calculation was simple: there was no way he could survive this final assault.
But in that moment.
Whoosh.
A small, sharp sound, and suddenly his throat burned.
‘What—?’
He tried to speak, but his voice wouldn’t come.
His hand flew to his neck, and he felt hot liquid pouring across his skin.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.
A searing pain bloomed across his entire body all at once, and his Magical Power scattered like shattered glass.
“Ugh—?”
He spun around on instinct.
A gaunt woman wielding a gleaming Three Swords stood before him, her eyes cold and murderous.
Only then did Alten Roon realize that his body was riddled with countless puncture wounds.
‘I… how did this happen…’
His vision blurred in a single heartbeat.
“No! He’s mine!!”
Some absurd cry reached his ears—
And then his consciousness simply stopped.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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