The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 41

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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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Episode 41. Found Them
“The stripling from Drasen means to investigate my household? Now?”
Kain Trian’s expression had crumpled entirely.
A reaction that made the Count’s earlier claim of having already spoken to him seem hollow.
As Klam drew breath to say something, sighing softly—
“Are you refusing the orders of Count Enoch Trian, then?”
Muno’s voice rang out from behind, cutting him off.
Kain’s face crumpled further.
“Should I simply tell the Count, ‘The Crown Prince says he doesn’t wish it’?”
That grin irritated him enough that he glared at Muno with murderous eyes.
“I’m questioning the procedure, the procedure! How dare you show up without even a notification—!”
“So even if it’s an order from the Count, the Crown Prince’s permission and proper procedure are necessary first? I’ll relay that exactly as you’ve said it.”
“…You, an upstart boy without even a title…!”
“A knight’s title, then? Which the Count himself conferred upon me.”
As Muno produced a Silver Identity Plaque from his pocket and smiled brightly—
“You, you, you bastard…!”
Kain’s face flushed as if it might explode at any moment.
‘This is rather amusing.’
So this was why one should stand in the right line.
The sensation of having the highest authority of House Trian at his back felt wonderfully refreshing.
Though admittedly, something felt off about it.
‘Is he really being this obstinate?’
But his companions seemed to think differently.
“You, what do you think you’re—”
“Don’t overdo it.”
…Why is he saying that to me? Damned inconvenient.
Muno caught the whispered exchange between Klam and Rasmia with one ear and let it pass.
The more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed.
‘This can’t be the work of someone truly this stupid.’
If a man could be provoked into such sudden rage by the taunts of a mere boy, his father would never have warned him to be careful of him.
The Count had entrusted the lands to him with warnings about his narrow temperament, yet the intelligence that had earned that responsibility was nowhere visible now.
‘It doesn’t appear to be magic, though…’
His gaze naturally shifted to scan Kain’s surroundings.
“You rely on your father’s backing now and speak so boldly, but have you imagined what will happen when this is finished?”
Words he forced out in a trembling voice as if barely restraining his rage—words arrogant on their face—
yet they didn’t reach Muno’s ears at all.
‘Not a fake…or anything like that, either.’
No matter how carefully he searched, he could find no trace of magic about him.
Which meant that Kain, reputed to be clever by those around him, was actually making such an obvious blunder.
There had to be a reason for it…
‘Hmm?’
Then, among those surrounding him, one person caught in Muno’s perception.
The moment his expression twisted—
[Muno, among the attendants…]
Rasmia’s voice came on the wind, confirming his suspicion.
“You dare to disrespect me—!”
“How curious. Such an oversensitive reaction. Might there be someone here you need to impress?”
“…!?”
Kain’s face contorted again, his forced composure slipping.
“…What nonsense are you spouting!?”
A beat late, he shouted, but the eyes around them had already followed Muno’s gaze to the row of attendants beside him.
Then one of the middle-aged attendants who had been standing with bowed head alongside the others smiled and looked up.
In that instant, the attendant’s body flashed and vanished, and in his place appeared a portly, pleasant-faced middle-aged man—
while a guard beside him transformed into a wrinkled, white-haired old knight with a hawk nose, clad in gleaming Half-plate Mail.
“Ah, well. Since this isn’t an official visit, we were only trying to avoid notice for a moment, but it seems the young prince’s eye caught us anyway. My apologies, Collid. I was the one who suggested we hide…”
“It’s fine. I consented to it as well.”
The portly middle-aged man bowed his head to the old knight beside him, then turned to gaze at Muno with a smile.
“So you are Drasen’s genius knight? Might you have received the blessing of spirits as well? Or perhaps you are rather House Trian’s storm…?”
As the glib middle-aged man’s voice rang out, his gaze sliding briefly toward Rasmia—
“House Aslan? Crown Prince, what does this mean…?”
Klam’s brow furrowed as his gaze flickered between the middle-aged man, the elderly knight, and Kain in turn.
The gray shield crest emblazoned on the elderly knight’s armor and the middle-aged man’s luxurious robes spoke plainly of their allegiance.
Yet Muno, the very one who had discerned their identities, felt a tremor of shock run through him.
He lacked the ability to sense the Spirit Magic of Light radiating from this middle-aged man in the first place.
What had caught his attention was something else entirely—the prey. It was an alien energy hiding beneath the scent of Mana, just a shade thicker than he’d expected.
Specifically, the Demonic Aura he sensed from the elderly knight.
‘The Demonic Aura is unmistakable, but something else is bothering me. This is…….
A Demon Swordsman.
Some dismissed them as Demonic Soldiers or the like—a Body Hardening practitioner bound by contract to demons.
The Demonic Aura he sensed was weaker than the 4-Circle mage he’d seen before.
But the level of Body Hardening Technique was impossible to gauge carelessly.
It carried a weight even heavier than Klam’s or his father’s.
Which meant at minimum…….
‘5-Star Rank. Possibly higher…….’
And beyond that.
‘Did he take something? Why are his eyes like that?’
Muno’s expression tightened as he watched the elderly knight’s wide, glistening eyes fixed directly upon him.
Exposing this man’s true nature right here would cause absolute chaos.
If that knight and the Spirit mage were enemies…….
‘I need to tell Grandfather about this.’
Composing the turbulent thoughts within, he forced himself to ignore them and turned his gaze to Kain instead.
“But I’m curious—what brings a knight and Spirit mage from House Aslan all the way here, my lord?”
Kain merely fixed a sour expression and held his tongue, leaving it to the portly middle-aged man to step forward again.
“Ah, Count Kain……. Well, not quite yet, is it? Your Lordship had requested a marriage arrangement between your daughter and our house, but since that fell through, I came to confirm the matter personally.”
Ah.
Only then did the family name Loanna had mentioned come to mind anew.
Before Muno could speak, Klam, his expression sharp with irritation, stepped forward first.
“Without the permission of our lord? And with a 5-Star Rank knight and a 4-Circle Spirit mage at that!? This is open provocation—a declaration of war against House Trian!”
His voice rang with fury and tension.
The middle-aged man lowered his head respectfully and replied.
“That may be how ordinary noble houses conduct themselves.”
“What nonsense is this……!”
“How could anything concern the Northern Bulwark himself, Count Enoch Trian, merely because we operate in the shadows? Count Kain consented precisely because he understood this.”
“……Hm.”
“In truth, if you ask why we proceeded discreetly, it was to spare the Northern Bulwark, whom we revere deeply, any further trouble over past misunderstandings. Is that not so, my lord?”
“Ahem. Indeed.”
“My lord! Yet this remains a clear breach of protocol. His Lordship has every right to lodge a formal complaint with House Aslan……!”
“Of course! My liege will offer sincere apologies in full. Before that, I, the illusionist Razman, beg your pardon on behalf of House Aslan for our deception of House Trian.”
Though the logic was hardly persuasive, faced with such deference, Klam had no choice but to yield ground.
“……Your apologies had best be genuine.”
“Naturally. Is that not so, Collid?”
“It is only fitting. House Aslan’s generosity is not so petty. You need not worry.”
Strange that such men had been lying in wait.
To press further in this situation would be to invite conflict.
And if fighting truly came to pass.
‘We’d be the ones bleeding. Damn it.’
Fortunately, Klam raised his voice no further.
Yet Muno caught the moment Kain’s face flushed slightly and his jaw clenched—a detail not lost on him.
‘So the man is thin-skinned after all.’
He would have wanted to preserve face before the duke’s emissary(?), then.
It seemed senseless to Muno, but even in his previous life, there were those who staked their lives on something so hollow as reputation.
‘Pathetic, really…….’
But that was not what mattered now.
What bothered him far more was the slightly unfocused glaze in the Demon Swordsman’s eyes—as though he’d taken something.
‘To handle him safely, I need to inform Count Enoch about this.’
What did trouble him, however, was a single worry.
Even if he told the Count, how could he point to this man as a Demon Swordsman when he was concealing his nature through ‘that technique’? What proof did he have?
If this man revealed no trace of Demonic Aura before witnesses, things would become truly difficult.
He was not an opponent Muno could suppress through his own efforts.
‘The Count will have to force his hand and subdue him. Then the veil breaks. Like with Moeno. But how?’
A serious problem had just emerged.
But then again.
‘Once he’s caught my attention, I can’t just let him walk.’
Those eyes that had met his so suddenly, that faint crimson flush creeping into the old knight’s gaze—no matter how he looked at it, something was deeply wrong.
Come what may, he had to do something about it.
“Well, as for the Duke’s uninvited guest, the Crown Prince can receive him as he sees fit. In any case, I have some questions to ask on the First Seeker’s behalf. Prince Kain, I’d like to know—who did you share our route with when Klam and I left for Konnel?”
Of course, the answer to that question already seemed to have presented itself.
“You dare, in this situation—”
Muno could see Kain’s teeth grinding, his face flushing crimson and then pale by turns, but this wasn’t the moment to concern himself with that narrow-minded fool.
Even as Muno’s gaze remained fixed on Kain, all his attention was actually directed at the hawk-nosed elderly knight beside him.
Then, abruptly.
“By way of apology, I’d like to teach this young man a thing or two.”
The hawk-nosed old knight with the sharp features, Collid the Demon Swordsman, had uttered something utterly absurd.
“…Pardon?”
What sort of sudden lunacy was this?
“You can’t be much past twenty, yet it seems you’ve undergone two Evolutions already. More than I’d heard, in fact. As a senior in years, I’d like to show a young prodigy a wider view of the world.”
It sounded like complete madness at first hearing.
One had to draw the line somewhere with such nonsense.
‘More than he’d heard? How does he—’
The way he spoke as though he knew Muno left him deeply uneasy.
‘Of course he knows. If he’s one of their pawns.’
Yet even accounting for that, something felt profoundly off.
That gaze pursuing him with such relentless intensity—it reminded him of a drug addict he’d glimpsed once in his past life.
‘Surely he hasn’t been using drugs. Or is Demonic Aura worse than drugs? Could he really be that mad?’
He tried to conceal his growing unease.
“Pardon? Sir Collid? What’s this about, suddenly?”
It seemed the proposal felt equally strange to the others.
But the moment Collid gestured with his eyes, the Spirit Magic user Razman turned toward Muno with an awkward smile.
“Ah, in any case, this is a good opportunity, Prince. Sir Collid stood against the wall of 5-Star Rank for twenty years, yet never abandoned his training—and finally achieved Evolution. He is a true model for any knight, and you would surely learn much of value from him.”
‘So he was trapped for twenty years and sold his soul… wait.’
As he smirked inwardly at the thought, a strange feeling suddenly washed over him.
He was saying it as though he was proud of it?
His reaction just moments ago, too.
Could it be…?
“…You don’t know?”
“Pardon?”
“Ah, no, it’s nothing.”
Come to think of it, Kain had no reason to align himself with a Mage.
Unless the shallow-minded fool was actually even more stupid than that.
‘Common sense says Kain doesn’t know.’
Then what of this Spirit Magic user?
‘I can’t tell. Whether he’s in on it or not.’
This was no situation to gamble on uncertain ground.
Just as he was about to make an excuse.
Rasmia’s words from earlier suddenly crossed his mind.
– The more you commune with spirits, the more naturally you’ll come to understand. Why we despise Mages…
That a Spirit Magic user would naturally come to hate Mages.
He needed confirmation.
“…Do you know about me?”
“Of course. The prodigy knight of Drasen. The name that’s drawing the hottest attention in the Northern Region right now. What a stroke of fortune, to meet you in secret like this. As they say, even brushing sleeves is destiny…”
The flecks of spittle from the heavyset man Razman were hardly a concern at this moment.
“Are you also aware that I’ve become entangled with Mages lately?”
“Pardon? Ah, yes, I’ve heard. Those accursed creatures in this northern land…”
In that instant, the flash of revulsion that crossed Razman’s eyes was brief but unmistakable.
If that was an act, Razman would be an actor for the ages.
The moment that thought registered, his mouth moved of its own accord.
“Yet you’re asking me to fight that old Demon Swordsman?”
“…What!?”
At that remark, the illusionist Razman’s eyes went wide.
‘He really doesn’t know!’
The moment certainty crystallized in Muno’s mind.
A sharp crack.
Razman’s neck—impossibly, unbelievably—tore free and flew into empty air.
‘This insane—!?’
The extreme, unimaginable violence froze him in place.
As Razman’s corpse tumbled slowly through what felt like thickened time, the hooked-nosed old man came hurtling toward him, eyes bright as fresh blood, his lips twisted in something like a smile.
Eyes blazing crimson, utterly lucid in their madness.
No one, seeing them, could mistake him for sane.
‘He really is insane—!?’
The madman’s longsword rushed at him with impossible speed.
Beside him, Klam drew a spear; Rasmia’s body erupted in white wind—both movements stretched and slow in Muno’s perception.
And then.
Bang!
A reeling impact crashed down upon him.

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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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