The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 59
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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 59. The Third Evolution
“How dare the Temple dogs!!!”
With a shrill cry came a torrent of massive flames.
It carried an energy so terrifyingly vast that Chloe had never experienced anything like it in her entire life.
Fortunately.
“Danger……!”
Crack-boom!
In that instant, Mayer threw himself in front of her and shielded the inferno with his body.
“Ugh…….”
The blow alone was enough to deal him tremendous damage.
As the flames died down, an old woman radiated an ominous aura from between the embers.
At a glance, she seemed no weaker than the witch from before.
And that wasn’t all.
“It’s that woman!?”
Behind her stood the very witch they’d been chasing.
‘Damn it, what do I do?’
The moment she gritted her teeth, Paladins rushed up from the floor below.
“Witches……!”
“Kill them……!”
“You vermin!?”
Several voices overlapped in chaos.
Chloe watched as the squalid old woman—looking like something out of a fairy tale—unleashed another massive burst of flame toward the Paladins.
And behind her, that beautiful bureaucrat stretched out her hand toward Chloe.
A devastating explosion erupting from those delicate fingers.
‘I have to run.’
The moment that thought crossed her mind, she grabbed the back of Mayer’s neck urgently.
Simultaneously, she twisted every joint in her body—ankles, hips, spine—and used the rebound to catapult herself backward with impossible speed.
A ghostly reversal of direction, as if she’d flipped her entire body front-to-back in an instant.
Chloe’s characteristic ability to maximize bodily flexibility and reaction speed manifested in full.
Bang!
She burst through the fourth-floor window alongside Mayer, hurling them both into empty air.
As she plummeted, her eyes caught sight of Munno below, gaping stupidly upward at the upper floors.
His muscles bulged grotesquely, as if they might tear at any moment, while he stood there dazed.
‘What the—?’
Moments ago, the 5-Star Demon Knight with ghostly skill that she and Mayer had been fighting suddenly went limp and died pathetically.
When she saw the Metal Chains wrapped around his legs, she’d guessed that Munno had done something.
She knew he was on the floor directly below them.
But the explosion happening right now on the fourth floor wouldn’t stop at just destroying that level.
At this moment, she had no way to help Munno.
All she could do was.
“Everyone, evacuate……!”
Call out a warning, praying her voice would reach the other Paladins and Munno.
Chloe twisted her body in midair and nearly managed to land on the ground.
Nearly.
Crack-boom!
A far more powerful explosion obliterated the entire Market Residence.
“Ah!”
Unable to land, she grabbed Mayer and instinctively twisted to place him on the ground, using his body as a cushion as they tumbled across the earth.
Crack-boom!
Thud-thud-thud.
Thump.
Bang.
“Are you alright!?”
Mayer, clad in Heavy Armor, had been forced into a backward roll from the fourth-floor height, landing belly-first.
And she’d added her own weight on top of him besides.
Given a Paladin’s durability, he should have been fine.
“Ugh…… You’re…… trying to kill me…… Cough.”
But his thoughts, as he coughed up blood, seemed to differ.
Still, there was no time to worry about that now.
“Hah!”
All she saw in that moment was the glint of sickly yellow light dancing through the dust where the Market Residence had crumbled.
But she threw herself forward without hesitation, Mayer close behind her.
That split-second judgment saved their lives.
Crash!
From the lightning that scorched their former position pitch-black and erupted in blazing, lurid yellow.
“Damn it, a Mage!”
Rapid-fire thwack, thwack, thwack.
The moment she steadied herself, Chloe instinctively drew her bow and loosed a volley of arrows into the empty space where her enemies should have been, obscured by swirling dust.
Though she couldn’t see them, her instinct and experience—those of a woman who’d reached 4-Star by just thirty—seemed to have traced their position well enough.
– How tiresome!
Crash!
The next instant, another massive fireball slammed down exactly where she’d been standing.
An attack so devilish it carved out a crater the size of a modest building in a single blow.
She shuddered anew at the sheer horror of a Mage’s power.
‘Damn it, how the hell am I supposed to—’
Even a Mage of equal rank could barely manage one-on-one; these things looked like monsters two or three tiers higher, no matter how she assessed them.
‘No, it’s got to be two tiers higher.’
Even that wounded witch alone had been more than she could handle.
And now one more intact monster had appeared.
“Cough, cough. This really is going to kill me—”
Wait!
She’d forgotten about Mayer while dodging.
She hastily pulled the half-charred Mayer out of the flames.
Covered in burns across his entire body, Mayer glowered at her with eyes that still burned with fury, then closed them and began to recite something that sounded like an incantation.
And immediately after—
“O Divine One.”
Whoosh.
Mayer’s armor shattered in places, his entire body covered in burns—yet in an instant, most of it had healed.
‘A Paladin, after all.’
But the price—
– Holy Power!? There you are!
Crash!
The enemies invisible in the dust now knew their location, and fresh spells came pouring down.
Crash, crash, crash, crash, crash.
Crack, crack, crack, crack.
Bang!
“Ugh!?”
Chloe seized Mayer by the back of his neck once more, and somehow ‘withstood’ the torrent of lightning, black tendrils, and freezing assault that rained down on them.
Then she fired back with arrows just as quickly.
But—
Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.
– How irritating—!
All she saw was a whirlwind sweeping through, scattering the dust away.
“I have to conserve arrows—”
“Me, me first—I should c-conserve—”
“What!?”
Crack.
“O Divine One.”
Mayer healed his wounds with Holy Power once more, but this time he threw himself forward without relying on Chloe’s hand.
“Hah!”
Even though no spell was coming down on them.
“What are you doing right now—?”
“…Mm.”
When their eyes met awkwardly, Mayer pointed upward.
“Look there!”
As the dust from the Market Residence’s destruction was swept away by the gale—
Two women became visible, hanging suspended in the empty air.
They radiated an aura so eerie and unsettling that even those insensitive to Demonic Energy could feel it.
“Damn it.”
“I, I only have ten arrows left.”
“I’ll try to draw them out…….”
The situation had spiraled into chaos, yet neither of them seemed to have lost the knight’s spirit—that stubborn refusal to surrender, that certainty that a way could be found.
But then.
“What?”
They hadn’t dared to hope that anyone else from their party had survived.
– What……!?
When they saw the knight in black armor hurtling toward the monster mages from the dust-settled ground, they could only doubt their own eyes.
“It can’t be……?”
A long, steady breath.
Exhilaration flooded through his entire body.
The flesh that had grown one more stage was incomparably more resilient than before, and the armor on his limbs had likewise become tougher, more potent.
But what reassured him most of all was this:
The armor on his limbs had grown as well, transforming into Full Plate Armor that now sheathed both his upper and lower body completely.
More than enough to replace the shattered remains of what he’d worn before.
The peculiar sensation of cutting through empty space suggested its form had changed in interesting ways, but he had no time now to admire the design.
Yet one thing was certain.
Now that his armor cloaked both limbs and torso.
‘All I need to do now is protect my head against most magical attacks.’
Of course, the problem was that the enemies facing him were anything but ordinary mages.
But that elevated consciousness and heightened physical prowess flooded him with a confidence that he could do anything.
And furthermore.
Crack.
Now that he’d reached the 3-Star realm, the expanded mana reserves meant his “blade” too had grown larger and more solid.
‘Acceleration.’
As the surrounding time seemed to slow, he sensed an enormous energy moving within his body.
Hum.
He felt his body wasting away as the heat within him burned away.
But it wasn’t as severe as before.
Most of the energy seemed to be consuming mana instead of body heat.
And that sensation sparked a new possibility in his mind.
‘Maybe I can actually do this?’
He even wondered if he might finally resolve his father’s long-held ambition—the secret wish of the Drasen Family—but he had no leisure to dwell on that now.
Instead, his memory turned to the fourth-stage secret technique of the Drasen Family that his father had once shown him.
Right now, he felt certain he could reproduce it.
‘I can do it!’
Gripping sound.
With his increased strength, he seized the sword’s hilt hard.
Every muscle in his body arched his upper body backward, stretched to the limit of its elasticity.
And then.
‘Space Cutting.’
Flash.
The black Two-Handed Sword, swung like a lance of light itself, struck directly through the Protective Barrier encasing both mages.
Crash!
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.
A black line was scored across the transparent barrier, and through that fissure, rough winds poured down from the sky to the earth below.
The Drasen Family’s secret technique—that simple, crushing force that carved through the air with raw power, and whose very shockwave could sever steel several meters away.
That straightforward, brutal power had shattered the Protective Barrier of a 6-Circle mage.
But only one of them.
“How dare you……!”
The Old Woman Witch’s sharp, brittle voice spilled out her shock.
The Red-haired Witch beside her had deflected the Space Cutting’s shockwave with her own barrier, and was already summoning a Blue Flame in her palm once more.
“Die!”
Blue Flames cascaded down, carried on a voice thick with malice.
The moment he saw them, he could sense it.
These flames carried far deadlier force than all the magic that had rained down before.
And.
‘I can’t block this.’
It far exceeded the magical power his armor could absorb.
In that instant.
Whoosh.
Munno extended four Metal Chains from his limbs, wrapping them around the witch’s Protective Barrier, and used the recoil to spin his body through the air.
Crash!
A Blue Flame streaked past beside him.
At the same moment, the Metal Chains absorbed the witch’s Protective Barrier in an instant, and he felt Mana surging within his body.
The instant he closed in on his enemies again, he could see the witches’ pupils dilating and knew it with certainty.
I truly am the natural predator of Mages.
Within that exhilarating certainty, a massive Two-Handed Sword tore through space once more.
Flash.
But then.
Boom!
That decisive blow failed to pierce through the hooked-nosed Old Woman Witch’s ‘crimson’ Protective Barrier that suddenly materialized.
“Cough.”
In exchange, he watched the Old Woman Witch cough up blood and stagger through the air.
“If I’d only had my Magical Tool, you wouldn’t even……!”
Even hearing her regret-laden excuse left him unsatisfied.
His body, unable to shatter through the Protective Barrier, was already ricocheting dozens of meters away through the void.
But.
‘I’ll kill them.’
Driven by that obsession alone, Munno extended the Metal Chains again.
The chains tearing through the air to seize the two witches were more than twice as long as before, boasting an effective range of nearly fifty meters.
Yet.
Crash.
It proved insufficient to hunt down a Mage opening distance in the void.
But he couldn’t simply remain idle.
“Hah!”
Crash.
The Two-Handed Sword, hurled forward with a sweep of his arm, transformed into a short spear and tore through the sky.
Yet.
Bang!
That feeble attack only made the Old Woman Witch cough up more blood; it dealt no serious damage.
As Munno plummeted toward the ground, he saw the Red-haired Witch’s hand ignite with Blue Flame once more.
‘Damn it……’
In that dizzying moment.
Flash.
A brilliant Holy Light fell from the heavens, piercing straight through the space where the two witches stood.
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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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