The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 63

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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 63. The Knight of Ravenous Appetite
“Gwaaaaargh!”
“Aaaaagh!”
Soldier Aaron thrust his spear forward, his eyes squeezed shut, unleashing a cry that was part scream, part battle roar.
Terror at the massive, fur-covered giant looming before him—close enough to crush him where he stood—sent a tremor through the point of his weapon.
‘Mother…….’
In the instant Aaron’s mind resigned itself to death,
—Screeeech.
the great, hairy humanoid creature threatening him—a Yeti—split cleanly in two.
And in its place descended a stout, middle-aged knight wreathed in wisps of steam(?), his massive frame unmistakable.
“My Lord!!”
“Never retreat! If we fall back, our families die!!”
“Y-yes, my Lord…….”
Aaron stared in a daze as the great scarlet-gleaming greatsword carved through the creature before them, and a sob of relief broke from his throat.
Then—
—Fight!!
Crack.
Crunch-crunch-crunch.
Slash.
His gaze followed slowly across the Lord’s figure as he charged forward, grinding the monsters before him to dust.
—For our families!
The Lord’s voice rang out again and again.
Not for himself.
“For family…….”
Mother.
Aaron gripped his spear again, picturing his elderly mother at home, kneeling in prayer to the seven gods on his behalf.
And trying hard to ignore the slight dampness in his breeches, he shook out his unsteady legs, planted his spear, and pushed himself to his feet.
Now that he thought about it, that was what he’d heard most often when he’d volunteered as a soldier and begun his training.
The soldiers of Drasen had not been taught loyalty to their Lord.
Rather.
—Every monster I slay means one member of my family lives. Thrust with that resolve in your heart!
They had been taught to raise their spears only with the determination to protect their people—their families, to be precise.
That training had allowed him to overcome, if only barely, the terror of death.
And.
—I lead the charge! Follow me!!
Following close behind the Lord ahead, who swung his crimson greatsword with more ferocity than anyone else,
Aaron too began to quicken his pace, bit by bit.
Though fear still gripped him, there was something about the Lord’s reckless charge that held an almost hypnotic allure.
So to overcome his fear, he summoned a cherished memory.
—You have talent, Aaron.
—It’s the Hard Body Technique. Not the hodgepodge that mercenaries learn, but the ancient art—simple, grounded in fundamentals. Recite it like a mantra, awake or asleep, or even in dreams. The point is…….
The Hard Body Technique that Larry—his neighbor, though now Sir Larry the Knight—had taught him.
“The point is to transcend my limits and expand myself.”
—Slay the monsters, and my family lives.
—Keep slaying monsters, and perhaps I’ll awaken, surpassing my limits.
—Then I can become a Knight…….
“And live well.”
His mother, a widow left to raise a single son, could live in a warm home, served good meals, cared for.
“I can do this.”
Slay the monsters, protect his family.
Transcend myself and transform my life.
‘I can do this.’
And so, with each step forward, that yearning began to devour his fear,
and Aaron’s heart began to beat faster, bit by bit.
The same rhythm he’d felt in the moment he’d nearly died—but his spirit had shifted.
And that single, simple transformation of will drew forth an entirely different action from him.
“For the territory, for Drasen!”
From terror, to courage.
Aaron’s footfalls, as he charged forward with a cry, began to quicken all on their own, faster and faster still.
“Haaaaah…….”
Lian Drasen tightened his grip on the cursed blade Slayer and swung it left and right with renewed force.
Flash.
Screech.
Boom!
Wind Slash.
The foundational Secret Technique of Drasen Greatsword Technique bisected five pack-leader Nolls blocking the front entirely in half.
But for all the vigor of his swordplay, his mind was beginning to quicken with unease.
‘What in the gods’ names is happening?’
The more he swung his blade, the more he surveyed his surroundings, the more baffled he became.
Monsters in every direction.
The swarm of thousands upon thousands showed no sign of ending.
He’d ridden out initially to intercept a pack of Nolls led by an abominable yeti, but somehow the varied creatures of the Northern Mountain Range had come pouring forth and encircled Drasen’s elite in a suffocating net.
‘Damnation.’
He who was born a Knight and had sworn to die a Knight harbored no fear of this situation.
What he could not fathom was simpler than that.
There should have been a predator-prey hierarchy among the monsters themselves, a food chain of consumption and being consumed.
‘How are the monsters forming alliances with one another? How does that even make sense?’
A situation he had never encountered in his lifetime.
Yet there was only one thing he could do now.
Kill the enemy before him.
“Sir Gunter! Rodney!”
Slash.
“Kreeeeee…….”
As the Wind Slash unfolded once more, a colossal lizard the size of a house split cleanly down the middle and fell limp to the ground.
Its bulk, many times greater than the blade’s sweep, was severed with surgical precision, spilling hot blood across the earth.
A marvel wrought by the Mana Blade that erupted from his Artifact, Slayer.
Thud.
As the massive corpse collapsed, the surrounding monsters recoiled in disorder.
Through the gap, expected voices reached him.
“Yes! My lord!”
“Here, my liege!”
The strongest Knights in Drasen aside from himself had closed in without a sound.
Lian turned his sword toward the front without so much as glancing at them.
“We cut through the center. I need to see the face of whoever’s orchestrating this madness.”
He could not sense the Demonic Energy of monsters as his son Munno could.
But the superhuman perception of a 4-Star Knight and decades of battlefield experience had granted him a strange gift—the ability to read the flow of Military Energy and divine its source.
Of course, that was no small feat for most men.
– You truly have one fine talent, that much I cannot deny.
Recalling the words of Enock Trian, his liege and master, Lian’s lips curved into a savage smile.
“But my lord, your body—”
“The expenditure is too great!”
Sir Gunter and Rodney were not wrong.
The layers of flesh he’d painstakingly built up were already more than half depleted.
‘But I cannot afford to retreat.’
The hesitant monsters were already gathering before him again.
He could not exhaust himself slaughtering mere cannon fodder.
“So you two clear them out. I’m conserving my strength to reach the true architect of this calamity.”
Lian moved before his subordinate Knights could even respond.
“Hah!”
And then he charged headlong toward the epicenter of the Military Energy he had detected.
Sir Gunter and Rodney followed in his wake.
“Curse it, Rodney!”
“Yes! Right behind you!”
The two Knights, wielding identical Halberd-Spears, galloped to either side of Lian and began laying waste to the monsters.
Slash.
And Lian himself, refraining from the Secret Techniques that would burn through his energy reserves catastrophically, relied instead on the simple fundamentals of Greatsword Technique to carve through the enemy ranks.
Of course, exhaustion still accumulated with each passing moment, but such weariness was routine for him.
After all, there was no record of the Glutton Knight ever falling to fatigue alone.
‘Starved into collapse, yes—but never mere tiredness…….’
Even as such frivolous thoughts crossed his mind, he continued to swing Slayer again and again, driving ever forward toward the epicenter of the Military Energy he sensed.
And so, beyond the ridge where they had pierced through the forest of monsters, they came face to face with a creature of unbelievable scale.
“KRAAAAAAWWWW!”
At a dizzying height: a massive body crowned with a lion’s head, and behind it, the vast wings of an eagle.
And.
“Ssssshhhhiiiiick.”
A tail shaped like the head of a serpent.
Thump.
“Grrrrrrr.”
The creature, whose very breath alone blackened the surrounding forest in an instant, fixed its gaze upon them.
An estimated 6-Tier monster.
The source of the crisis was right before their eyes.
“B-Behemoth!?”
“My lord!?”
Sir Gunter and Rodney turned to Lian Drasen with startled eyes.
He understood the meaning in their gaze well enough, yet Lian was smiling.
He didn’t know why a monster that should have dwelt deep in the Northern Mountain Range was here now, or how it was commanding the other creatures.
But there was only one thing he had to do regardless.
“…Damn it, if I mess this up, I die today?”
“My lord?”
“Fall back. Sir Gunter, Rodney. I’ll handle this one. You’ll only get in my way!”
“My lord!!!”
“Impossible!”
“Do it!”
Lian Drasen brushed aside their protests and charged directly at Behemoth.
The massive creature’s face twisted slightly at the sight.
As if to say: You dare challenge me?
In truth, it was a reckless move.
Monster rank was determined by the standard that at least three equally-gifted ability users were required to defeat one safely.
In other words, the 4-Star Rank Lian Drasen could never defeat the 6-Tier monster Behemoth.
By any reasonable measure, that was the conclusion.
But the man himself thought differently.
‘I can do it.’
His epithet, the Glutton Knight, had been earned after he hacked a 5-Tier monster—the Snow Troll—to pieces.
At least in short, decisive combat, he was confident he transcended his rank as a superior warrior.
And now, even if he couldn’t—
‘I must.’
He was Lian Drasen.
The lord of the Drasen territory, and a knight bound by the duty to protect all who dwelt there.
If he left that monster unchecked, the domain would be destroyed.
So.
‘I will see it through, whatever the cost.’
He did not second-guess himself when duty called.
“KWAAAAAAANG!”
As Behemoth’s breath—thick with Demonic Energy that fouled the world itself—surged directly toward him.
‘The first step is…’
Acceleration.
“Whoooosh…”
Crack-crack-crack.
He rapidly burned through his body’s thermal reserves, transforming himself into wind.
That wind cut through the black tempest and surged toward the creature’s head.
And.
‘Swift strike, swift victory.’
Flash.
‘Hear me, my blade.’
He activated all of Slayer’s functions at once and raised his sword high.
And as the Space Slash—the Secret Technique of the Drasen Greatsword Technique he had mastered upon reaching 4-Star Rank—was about to flow forth.
Flash.
Behemoth’s tail—or rather, the serpent’s eyes at its tip—suddenly gleamed, and that sickly yellow light burrowed into his mind.
– Obey me!
For an instant, his thoughts went white and his concentration shattered.
At that same moment, his vision suddenly warped.
A suffocating dread washed over him—his body adrift in darkness, untethered and alone.
Then the black space began to constrict around him, tightening like a fist.
He knew what it was.
‘The Slayer has mental magic defense too?’
Impossible. Unthinkable.
As his mind grew distant and he thought he’d die so pathetically, a face flickered through his thoughts.
His wife. His sons.
And himself, standing beside them.
A Knight does not retreat.
Those words—the motto he’d hammered into his sons since childhood—jolted him awake.
But knowing that truth didn’t instantly conjure a way to escape.
Only one thought came to him.
‘The Slayer amplifies all functions according to the wielder’s power.’
So he would surge every ounce of his strength to its limit.
Even for a moment.
Even if it cost him his life.
Before, he’d said it as a jest; now it seemed he truly would have to burn his lifespan away.
Nothing came easy. Never had.
‘My love. My boys……’
Would he see them again?
Lian Drasen pushed the weakness aside and steadied himself.
He recalled the Secret Technique of his house—impossible for one at 4-Star Rank in the Hard Body Technique, yet he dredged it from memory.
He gripped his blade once more.
And.
‘Double Acceleration.’
He chanted the incantation, pouring every drop of energy from his body into the technique.
Pain exploded through him—indescribable, all-consuming.
‘Uhhhhgh—’
His body and soul compressed to a pinprick, wrung out like a rag.
Yet in proportion to that agony, a torrent of power flooded through him.
And at some point, he became aware.
The barrier that had blocked his vision for so long was beginning to crumble.
‘This is the fifth time……’
In that instant.
Flash.
The illusion binding him fractured and shattered.
Crack-crack-crackle.
But breaking a 6-Tier demon beast’s sorcery with merely the Slayer’s auxiliary functions—was it truly possible?
Only part of the black space shattered; the rest held firm.
Lian Drasen fought with vision so limited he might have been staring through cracks in a broken window.
‘Damn……’
In that worst of moments, as he forced his body to move, he glimpsed something.
Through the fractured haze, he saw what looked like black metal chains—and in that same breath,
Crash!
the illusion shattered completely.
And.
“Father!!!”
A familiar voice pierced his ears, snapping him fully back to himself.
‘How pathetic—’
Crack.
His wasted frame surged with brutal strength, tearing free from the monster’s tail and serpent head that had been swallowing him whole.
“Screeeeeeeeeeech!”
Thud. Thud. Bang.
The Behemoth thrashed wildly, while his son danced through the chaos in frenzied evasion.
Vision spinning, sight tangled,
he roared.
“Son! Cover my back!!”
And he poured every current of seething power into his blade.
The sensation of his body tearing apart twisted somehow into a dark, intoxicating rapture.
And then.
The massive beast before him was torn asunder.

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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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