The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 35

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

Episode 35. You’re going to die to that worthless bastard
“But this young man is the head of the Trian Investigation Corps……?”
“That can’t be right. My brother went to the communications room, Kalton.”
“Ah, yes. Of course. Then this person is…….”
“Muno Drasen. The eldest son of the Drasen Family.”
“Ah? But why…….”
“Shh. Just watch.”
Muno listened to the conversation between Lasmia and the knight behind him with half an ear, letting it pass, while his gaze remained fixed on the middle-aged man on the bed.
“You’ll need to keep your voice down too. As you can see…….”
He ignored the elderly attendant’s cautious words as well, even as the man tended to the patient.
And once more, he focused his senses on the Viscount Moeno Konnel.
A sharp-featured middle-aged man lying on a large bed with a ghastly pallor.
His face was completely bloodless, and two-thirds of his entire body was wrapped in bandages. From the wounds that peeked through, it appeared he had suffered severe burns.
By all accounts, he looked as though he were teetering on the edge of death.
But Muno’s senses told a different story.
– A well-laid table…….
No!
Forcefully suppressing the Demon Devourer that stirred within him, Muno studied the viscount with cold eyes.
‘Only the shell is damaged…….’
His heartbeat and breathing were irregular, his body temperature elevated—all the vital signs that appeared on the surface were indeed those of a critical patient.
But within the viscount’s body, Muno felt a thick, sticky Demonic Energy concealed in shadow.
And he could sense that this Demonic Energy was ‘hiding’ the body’s life force.
It was as though the energy sustained life by propping up his vitality in small increments, only when the wounds threatened to worsen.
A person who couldn’t see through this mechanism might very well misdiagnose the viscount’s condition.
The way Tinel’s case had been—Demonic Energy obstructing recovery.
“He hasn’t regained consciousness since that day.”
“Hm…….”
The attendant’s words only made Muno snort derisively.
‘He’s awake. His mind is sharp.’
Because Demonic Energy clung thickly throughout the viscount’s entire body, Muno could sense it with certainty.
It was almost like a living map that the Demonic Energy created.
He could even see the process of the Demonic Energy moving according to signals from the viscount’s brain, regulating his life force.
‘He’s at roughly the third Circle.’
For him to perceive it in such vivid detail, yet for a priest or Spirit Speaker to miss it?
“Lasmia, do you sense Demonic Energy from the viscount’s body?”
At his question, Lasmia looked at him with an odd expression and shook her head.
“I can only distinguish it if a mage is actively casting spells or using their magical power directly. Mere traces are beyond my ability.”
“Could you explain that in more detail?”
“Our Spirit Speaker perceives whether magical power exists by watching the Spirits that compose the world cry out and disappear or retreat. When the young master extracted Demonic Energy from Tinel’s body earlier…….”
“And the priests?”
“Ah, they’re similar to us, but more direct. Holy Power itself reacts to Magic and stokes hostility toward it, or so I’ve heard.”
He couldn’t know for certain, but even this rough explanation seemed to clarify the situation.
He himself felt the very existence of Demonic Energy directly.
In contrast, Spirit Speakers and priests sensed magical power only after passing through an additional layer.
‘They have a technique for hiding their magical power so that Spirit Power or Holy Power doesn’t react to it.’
Now that he grasped this principle, at least vaguely, a particular pattern in the flow of Demonic Energy within the viscount’s body caught his eye.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Ah, it’s nothing.”
Muno swallowed his words, wary of the viscount’s knight, Kalton.
And he turned his gaze back to the viscount.
Confirming that he alone could see through their method brought a strange satisfaction, but another question arose as well.
Mages by nature have frail bodies.
The Demonic Energy they wield is a power that defies the world’s laws, yet their bodies themselves are constructed according to those very laws—human bodies made of this world.
Some even said that was the only weakness of a High-rank Mage, so widely was it known.
If someone deliberately maintained a Comatose State for days on end, even a healthy body would break down.
But if a mage—already frail by nature—did such a thing, he couldn’t begin to guess how far the side effects would go.
‘Yet to go this far…….’
Well, true enough.
If Death’s blade was falling toward you, there would be nothing you wouldn’t do.
‘Right. Even play dead if you must.’
He likely wanted to recover somehow after the Drasen storm passed and resume his aristocratic pretenses.
But still…….
“I’m told it’s been over four days now, but how is he managing food?”
“We carefully raise the lord’s body and trickle soup and water into his mouth bit by bit. Though he spits out more than half of it…….”
The sight of the attendant looking down at the marquis with such concern struck Muno as so absurd that his true thoughts slipped out unbidden.
“……What a stubborn bastard.”
“Young master?”
“Mind your words, young master. Even for an investigation corps…….”
He dismissed Knight Kalton’s angry remonstrance cleanly.
There seemed no need to wait any longer.
“I think I can wake him right now. May I?”
“What?!”
Just as everyone startled at his matter-of-fact statement.
“I’ll take that as permission.”
Whipt.
‘First, keep him from running.’
An Iron Chain burst from Muno’s right hand and wound itself around Marquis Moeno Konnel in an instant, binding him tight to the bed.
“What——!?”
“What are you doing!?”
Ignoring Lasmia and the knight’s cries of alarm, Muno concentrated his focus.
Striving to control the Demon Devourer that desperately wanted to consume all of the man’s Demonic Energy at once.
‘Can’t devour him now. Too many eyes and ears.’
But there was another way to stimulate the Demonic Energy.
For instance.
‘Disrupting that technique that keeps the aura from leaking outward.’
Sssshhh.
The Demon Devourer’s power moved with extreme restraint, brushing against the flow of Demonic Energy.
Specifically, it disrupted the pattern of Demonic Energy that had been maintaining the concealment of his aura.
And in that instant.
“No!!”
Moeno Konnel, who had lain like a corpse, jolted upright and screamed.
“Huh!?”
“My lord!?”
“How——!?”
The moment all eyes snapped toward him in shock, the marquis’s body released a chilling aura that now anyone could feel, rippling outward in every direction.
“Ah……!”
“A mage!?”
“Surely the lord isn’t……!”
Hearing those voices, Moeno’s bloodshot eyes fixed on Muno with fury.
He realized everything had been exposed.
“You——you dare interfere with that one’s technique!?”
Black flames began erupting from Moeno’s entire body, his voice a tortured shriek.
But.
Muno was confident he could subdue even a third-Circle Mage if they exerted themselves fully.
“Hmph…….”
Whooooom.
With Muno’s scoff, the black Iron Chain lashed forward and, dismissing even the enemy’s final throes, scattered the magical pattern before it could manifest.
“No!?”
“……Pathetic.”
“How? How——!?”
The spell shattered instantly.
Moeno’s trembling face laid bare his despair.
And the magecraft he had forcibly disrupted sent a violent backlash surging back through its caster.
Whooooom.
“Ack.”
Thump.
“Cough. Cough.”
Moeno spewed blood from his mouth, his complexion now ashen.
Even as the patient lay there coughing crimson—his whole body scalded and wrapped in bandages—the attendant who had been nursing him dared not approach.
“H-how did the lord…….”
“My lord…….”
The kind of aura that ordinary people couldn’t help but feel—disquieting, repugnant, and utterly terrifying.
That very aura now cloaked Moeno Konnel’s body, and it made even his most devoted followers recoil in revulsion.
And yet.
“He wasn’t even a collaborator, and he’s a mage? How did he manage to conceal it so perfectly……!?”
The Spirit User, one of the ability holders most hostile to mages, stood frozen in shock.
In this moment, only one person remained composed.
“What’s there to be astonished about? That impostor who posed as an administrator fooled you all just as cleanly, didn’t he?”
Muno, who had bound the mage in Iron Chains, flashed a grin and then approached the bleeding marquis with deliberate slowness.
And then a fist sheathed in distinctively forged Black Combat Gloves—metal-reinforced—came crashing down on the critically injured man’s head.
Crack!
“Ugh……!”
Thud.
Crumple.
As the marquis’s body flew past the bedside and crumpled to the floor like a paper doll.
Muno made a gesture toward the knight behind him, who was still watching the scene with vacant eyes.
He’d been cautious just in case, but when he’d subdued the marquis, Kalton hadn’t attacked him—and now, seeing genuine shock in the knight’s expression, it became clear that he and the marquis weren’t in league.
“Sir Kalton? Would you fetch the priests for us?”
“Why, why?”
“Why? We need to treat him, obviously.”
Muno chuckled softly and pointed.
Blood was streaming from Moeno Konnel’s head, pooling across the floor in glistening rivulets.
“If you don’t bring them quickly, he’ll be dead soon, I’d say.”
As if hearing those words, Moeno the marquis convulsed and trembled where he lay.
‘You did that to him……!’
The knight Kalton could do nothing but clamp down on the words surging up his throat and turn to flee.
* * *
“……You’ve rendered us tremendous service, truly.”
Tinel’s face remained ashen.
But since there was no one else to manage the crisis, he’d forced his still-recovering body to the great hall.
Having offered that brief praise to Muno, he turned his gaze to the bound, prostrate figure of the critically injured man in the center of the hall—Moeno Konnel, the marquis.
Quivering lips and clothes drenched in blood.
A criminal so grievously wounded that he couldn’t even kneel properly, forced instead to lie down.
The priests had spent a day treating only the surface of Moeno’s wounds; he was now little more than a half-corpse.
“……Still, couldn’t you have subdued him a bit more gently?”
“He suffered an Internal Injury when his own Magic backfired while attempting to cast.”
Hearing Muno’s excuse, Tinel could only offer a rueful smile as he observed the distinctly caved-in side of Moeno’s skull.
‘An Internal Injury that caves in the skull—is such a thing even possible?’
Still, he had no heart to reproach the hot-blooded young man further.
“Father Gloss. Is it certain that this criminal—the marquis—has regained consciousness?”
The elderly priest standing beside the prisoner nodded in response.
“As a mage, Holy Power couldn’t be fully applied to him, but fortunately he’s not a High-rank Mage, so we were able to treat the burns properly. His mind should be intact.”
A mage.
“Hah…….”
At the priest’s confirmation, a collective groan escaped from Konnel’s people gathered nearby.
Muno quickly scanned them for any possible accomplice, but no Demonic Energy remained to be felt.
And so, having finally accepted reality, Tinel exhaled a long breath and looked again at the criminal—or rather, at his former comrade, once a fellow servant to the same lord.
“Was this the reason you were so passive in the suppression ten years ago? Moeno, why would a nobleman like yourself ever dabble in Magic? Surely you knew that path leads only to ruin.”
In the great hall, with the Investigation Corps leadership and Konnel’s retainers all watching, Tinel’s voice alone rang out in the quiet.
Moeno twitched, and a low voice emerged from his lips.
“Quit
your spouting
…….”
A barely audible whisper, difficult to catch.
“What?”
At Tinel’s question, Moeno—eyes still shut—spoke a bit louder.
Cough.
“Quit your…… damned…… spouting. Don’t…… Tinel.”
Cough. Cough.
Moeno, spewing blood, barely managed to lift his head while lying prone.
Bloodshot eyes fixed on Tinel standing at the center of the mob. Everyone could feel the madness burning behind them.
“What? What did you say? Are you in your right mind, Moeno Konnel? Have you lost sight of what you’re facing?”
Tinel’s incredulous voice rang out.
“I know. That’s why I’m saying it…… I’m going to die anyway……!”
Moeno Konnel’s pallid face suddenly flushed crimson. He gritted his teeth and bellowed.
“The Deus Kingdom—once a minor realm among minor kingdoms—embraced Magic and became an empire commanding the continent! Magic is nothing but power, power!! What’s wrong with using it? You fools!”
“Ha…….”
“That’s why this kingdom won’t advance! That’s why this cursed backwater is such a pit!”
“Insane talk…….”
“I just wanted to rise in status! I just wanted power! I meant to use it to contribute to Trian, to help the kingdom! That’s all!”
His voice grew louder, more desperate with each word.
“Ahahahaha!”
A burst of cruel laughter erupted beside him.
“You madman. What? Nothing but power? You didn’t know the organization you joined conducts human experimentation and offers humans as sacrifices?”
Muno’s voice ground with barely restrained fury. Moeno Konnel snorted at him.
“So what? If everyone can advance through the sacrifice of insignificant people, what’s the problem? That narrow-minded thinking is what ruined this country!”
Having already abandoned life, Moeno Konnel shrieked like a man seized by convulsions.
The behavior of someone utterly mad.
Logic never reaches those who have lost their minds.
But.
“One of those insignificant people was me.”
Raw, primal emotion—rather than reason—can penetrate even madness.
Muno’s absolute fury broke through, touching some corner of Moeno Konnel’s fractured mind.
“……What?”
“That’s right. You’re going to die at the hands of that insignificant bastard today.”
“That can’t……!”
Watching Moeno Konnel’s face drain of color, Muno drew his fist back and swung.
Crack!

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