The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 52

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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 52. How did I end up here…?
“Ugh……”
Karin swallowed the groan that threatened to escape her throat without thinking.
‘Could this be any more humiliating.’
She’d failed to capture a single Experimental Subject, and had fled using her emergency escape spells in succession.
Her dignity was already shattered beyond repair, but she wanted to preserve at least a shred of self-respect.
But then.
Creak.
“Master, are you alright?!”
There was no avoiding the attention of her disciples, who kept their ears alert to every sound from the room.
“……I’m fine.”
Looking at Rasmund, a middle-aged disciple who now appeared far older than herself, Karin forced her chest upright.
But then.
Growwwwl.
That sound echoing from her stomach, at least, was beyond her control.
Fortunately, before her face could flush crimson, Rasmund bowed his head sharply instead.
“I shall bring you some soup at once.”
“……Yes.”
She found herself thinking yet again that he was remarkably perceptive.
‘That’s why I keep him around.’
The idea of triggering a signal to the disciples when her emergency escape spell, the Meteor Cloud, activated—gathering them without raising suspicion—had been his suggestion in the first place.
Tap.
The moment such a disciple withdrew, fury surged anew as she thought of the two who had dealt her this humiliation.
‘That damned muscle-bound fool! That wretched Experimental Subject brat! Both of you—I’ll show you the depths of hell itself.’
Once she imagined capturing them, subjecting them to endless experiments until their bodies were shredded, then grinding them to death slowly from fingertips to toes, her mood lifted somewhat.
And as her physical condition improved and her appetite returned, her mind finally began to work again, and a question rose to the surface.
A question about how she’d ended up in this state.
That brainless muscular oaf—he was a high-level Hard Body Practitioner, which was admittedly the worst matchup for a Mage, so that could happen.
‘But that Experimental Subject…?’
According to the information, he’d only awakened a few months ago.
That he could even use Spirit Magic was unexpected, but given that he could barely manage to create a Great Sword from metal, such a weapon was at the level of the lowest-grade Artifact—it shouldn’t have even scratched her barrier.
Yet.
‘Those Metal Chains….’
They had triggered her barrier, which was only meant to activate in the face of lethal danger.
The Bloody Barrier—a 6-Circle spell created by grinding up a hundred human lives.
What’s more.
“It seemed weakened too……”
She muttered the words aloud before catching herself and shaking her head sharply.
That shouldn’t have been possible.
Even if those Metal Chains were some terrible Mage-hunting Artifact, they had to be on equal footing to be effective.
How could chains that radiated only faint magical power threaten her life and weaken the Bloody Barrier, one of the highest-tier 6-Circle spells?
“It makes no sense. And yet……”
Moreover, the Bloody Barrier wasn’t merely a defensive spell.
If an attack threatened to breach the barrier, it was set to detonate and annihilate everything around it.
And it reacted not to her sense of danger, but solely to the preset energy threshold she had calibrated beforehand.
Yet it had detonated outright against the combined assault of that muscle-bound pig and the Experimental Subject, and despite her squeezing out every ounce of her magical power, the resulting destruction had been far weaker than expected.
‘A spell powerful enough to cause severe internal injuries.’
Of course, she hadn’t used the Bloody Barrier multiple times—it required many victims as fuel.
‘This is strange….’
As if those Metal Chains had somehow absorbed a portion of the spell’s power……
She let out a short laugh.
“……An absurd delusion. Hah.”
After suffering such an outrageous defeat, it seemed she’d begun to fantasize.
It was proof of how deeply ashamed she felt.
‘Regardless of what happens to Aslan and Trian, he’ll head to Drasen anyway. So if I get there first….’
Now that the internal injuries had largely stabilized, she began to organize her plans for revenge once her body recovered.
‘Drasen the Baron. That so-called Glutton Knight? That ridiculous backwoods knight. Well, that Slayer weapon is somewhat troublesome, but still, as long as I don’t face him head-on….’
With just the few strategies that came to mind, she was confident she could plunge that Experimental Subject brat into despair.
A smile naturally formed on her lips.
Growwwwl.
The sound came from the bed again, and irritation swelled in her chest.
“……Late?”
These disciples had never been this sluggish before.
‘These wretches…….’
It seemed they were looking down on her because she’d stumbled once in front of them.
“It seems they’ve forgotten my temperament after not seeing me for a few years.”
Ssshhh.
She gathered a modest amount of magical power without straining her body, about to chant the incantation for Punishment.
But in that instant, she felt something amiss.
She had four disciples in total, yet now she could only sense three targets bearing the mark of Punishment.
‘Surely not…….’
Her expression hardened completely, and from her body, powerful demonic energy began to gather—slowly at first, then with accelerating force.
* * *
“Guh……?”
Fortune had favored them.
Watching the bandit-looking mage wrapped in Metal Chains meet his end, Munno thought exactly that.
‘Why did he stray so far from the others?’
He couldn’t understand it, but it was certainly in their favor.
“You alright?”
“Yes.”
“Your expression looks a bit…….”
“My condition is simply excellent.”
As they entered the lower passage of the Cave, their voices had grown far quieter than before, requiring special concentration to hear each other.
But now even that concentration felt effortless.
‘Indeed, it tingles.’
The growth in power from absorbing a single 3-Circle mage was negligible, but then again—it meant he was growing, however marginally.
Like a game where leveling up comes from nothing but defeating enemies.
Moreover, the achievement he felt from experiencing his own strengthening in real-time was incomparable to any game.
Of course, the drawback was that he had to stake his actual life to make it happen.
Just thinking that was enough to quench the roiling excitement in an instant.
“We need to be careful from here on.”
“Again—position check.”
At Chloe’s words, Munno traced the demonic energy the mages had carelessly left behind, probing the terrain ahead.
In doing so, he could even identify the owners of that energy.
“Once we turn this way, there’s about fifty meters of straight passage. Beyond that, a somewhat spacious Plaza, where a 4-Circle mage and two 3-Circle mages alternate their rounds. And deep in the center, I sense that witch’s presence.”
“The exact positions of the mages?”
“The 4-Circle mage is at the entrance of the chamber across the passage. The two 3-Circle mages are taking turns resting in another chamber to the left.”
“Good. Any other changes?”
“None.”
“Excellent.”
“Pardon?”
In the moment before Chloe could furrow her brow at his cryptic response—
—a light patter of footsteps sounded, and Chloe was already dashing into the bent passage.
Simultaneously, she drew her Bow and Arrows from her back.
‘What the——!’
The instant Munno grasped what she was about to do—
—the Demon Devourer registered a sudden shift in magical aura.
All three mages in the Plaza at the passage’s end had begun casting simultaneously.
‘Could they have detected the mage?’
They’d sensed Chloe’s movements even though he couldn’t see them clearly himself?
It was unnerving, but he had no time to stand still.
Boom.
Ignoring the sound that erupted, he bolted straight into the passage.
In the distance, he saw black smoke consuming Chloe’s arrow.
“We’ve been spotted——!”
As he tried to shout, Chloe was already bounding off the wall into the shadow beyond the Torch’s reach.
Moving as if almost only touching wall and ceiling—a feat that bordered on acrobatic wizardry.
And even while inverted, she nocked her arrow again toward the mages.
‘A monster…….’
The natural movements of a 4-Star Knight that he couldn’t yet dream of imitating made him involuntarily clench his teeth.
‘Who am I worrying about now…….’
Instead of shouting further, Munno drove that force downward, stamping the ground beneath him.
Crack-boom.
And then.
– Aaaahhh!
Hearing a scream erupt from the left side beyond the black fog, he threw himself straight into it without hesitation.
‘I can’t see. And yet I can.’
It would sound like nonsense, but that was precisely Munno’s situation after plunging into the haze.
The fog disrupted every sense including sight and carried even a faint toxin — yet it too was woven from Demonic Energy.
Through the power of Demon Devourer, he could perceive everything within it as clearly as if he were touching and feeling it directly.
In the midst of this, the 4-Circle Mage seemed to have deflected Chloe’s arrow with a shield, but.
The 3-Circle Mage on the left had not.
‘One dead.’
Inside the chamber where the corpse lay, a Mage of equal rank appeared to be deploying some spell, but.
No matter how he looked at it, the one in front was the priority target.
In this fleeting moment, he felt vividly the Lightning Flame bursting from the creature’s hands.
Whoosh-rattle.
Four Metal Chains whipped out from the limbs of his charge, slashing through the darkness, and.
Crack.
Two chains from his legs planted themselves against the ground and thrust his body upward.
Boom.
In the moment he felt the massive momentum of a blazing inferno strike clean through the corridor beyond where he’d stood, passing straight through.
Crash!
A distant explosion erupted at the same instant the two chains extended from his arms wrapped around the creature’s neck and limbs.
Or more precisely, the barrier enveloping its body.
“No!?”
Creating fog to obstruct vision was your mistake, Mage.
The instant the chains weakened the barrier.
Squelch.
Munno’s ‘blade’ pierced through the Mage’s body, and.
“Guh!?”
At the same moment, the untethered Demonic Energy began to drain through the chains into his body.
Thrummmmm.
“Kh…….”
A tingling sensation entirely different from when he’d devoured the 3-Circle Mage cascaded through his entire frame.
Similar in total volume to the Demonic Energy he’d absorbed when consuming that Collid, yet far purer in essence.
‘So that’s it…….’
Now he understood clearly why Mages had a more exquisite ‘taste’ than equivalent monsters or Magic Knights of higher rank.
The Demon Devourer rejoiced within his mind, and a fierce hunger to savor this sensation flooded through him immediately, but.
‘I can’t let that happen.’
He’d already learned this lesson from a near-fatal mistake once before — repeating it would make him less than human.
Munno ground his teeth, bit his lip, and snapped his mind back to clarity, and.
While absorbing the Demonic Energy that composed the black fog to restore Chloe’s vision.
Crackle-crackle-pop.
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
He swallowed and obliterated the Lightning Magic — merely 3-Circle level — that struck the Plaza at precisely that moment.
‘Yes, that’s the taste.’
It wasn’t admiration for magic that wouldn’t convert to Vitality Force anyway.
It was the exhilaration of effortlessly crushing Mages ranked one or two tiers above him and rendering their spells powerless.
The unpleasant memories from Trian — where he’d been knocked about and barely survived on others’ aid — washed away completely.
“Well done!”
Crack-boom.
The moment the black fog cleared, Chloe came sprinting from a distance and loosed her arrow in one motion.
The 3-Circle Mage, bleeding at his companion’s corpse as his magic shattered, had his heart and throat pierced and fell dead.
There was a slight pang of waste, but he was already in an ‘overfed’ state anyway…….
‘Is this excitement getting to me too?’
That couldn’t be allowed.
While carefully containing the not-yet-fully-digested Demonic Energy of the 4-Circle Mage, he swung his blade toward the door ahead where the largest prey awaited, and.
‘Huh?’
Something felt off the moment he began the swing.
And then.
Crack!
The empty chamber visible through the shattered door confirmed his troubling suspicion.
“They’ve escaped…!?”
The exhilaration from combat and absorbing Demonic Energy began to fade, replaced by mounting irritation.
Crackle.
In that instant, a cold surge erupted from beneath his feet.

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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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