The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 70

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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 70. A pup……?
The moment a sharp, overwhelming pain tore through his chest and the world spun before his eyes, ‘Shadow’ had no choice but to realize something had gone terribly wrong.
‘How……?’
He’d been maintaining Detection Magic constantly—how could an enemy have closed the distance so completely undetected?
The shock of it made him slip into denial, overriding even the agony coursing through him.
But then.
The orb he’d been cradling against his body—large as a human torso—was torn away, and Metal Chains appeared from nowhere, coiling around it.
Even he couldn’t deny reality when confronted with that sight.
“No……!”
Desperation drove him to weave magic, but—
Clink-clink-clink.
In that same instant, the chains wrapped around his body, and his strength drained away all at once.
The pattern of magic forming at his fingertips crumbled before his eyes.
His eyes flew wide open.
‘This—this can’t be……!?’
An ability to destroy and absorb his very source, the power of a great Foreign God—a terrible, impossible skill.
A force that defied the fundamental truths and common sense of magic itself. Something that should not exist.
‘Such blasphemy……!’
The moment confusion gave way to fury in his gaze,
he made his choice: to pour everything he had into annihilating this abomination before him.
But.
‘The true power of divinity…….’
Before that resolve could be enacted, all his Demonic Energy was sucked into the chains.
Squelch.
Then a cold blade pierced straight through his chest.
“No……no…….”
It shouldn’t end like this.
The final Shadow—a harbinger of calamity meant to upend the entire northern Iron Kingdom—fell to the earth with an almost pathetic simplicity.
And.
“Haaah……. So this is the 5th Circle…….”
Crack-crack-crack.
Munno let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a groan, savoring the transformation coursing through his body.
His muscles and bones grew taut and unyielding; every sense expanded outward like ripples on water.
‘Mages really are different.’
He’d only just reached 3-Star not long ago, and now his physical capabilities had amplified to a peak that seemed to transcend what he’d been mere moments before.
Yet that joy was fleeting.
His body, which had seemed poised to evolve again in a single breath, suddenly halted its ascension at some invisible threshold.
His physical form alone had grown stronger, while the ‘Armor’—his greatest weapon in its current state—remained unchanged.
His body began naturally venting the excess Demonic Energy outward.
“Hm…….”
– You will only achieve your fourth evolution once you have truly grasped the nature of your own path.
His father’s counsel echoed in his mind, stirring a pang of regret.
But then he laughed aloud despite himself.
“……well, this isn’t so bad.”
Just as he’d felt in Rubl, even a 3-Star Knight who specialized in speed as much as Karina and her Magic Knight could never breach the unbridgeable gap between their abilities.
Raw physical evolution alone wouldn’t close such a chasm in skill.
A newly evolved body was no different from that of a growing boy; only talent paired with relentless effort and hard-won experience could forge true mastery.
In a single moment, he’d achieved what ordinary people would need years—decades, even—of grueling training to accomplish.
That alone was already an absurdly overpowered gift.
“A specialist assassin for mages—not a bad role after all?”
The words spilled out unbidden, and he chuckled to himself.
But it was a reasonable assessment.
He’d taken down a 5th Circle Mage in a single strike—something that would have required a grueling direct fight otherwise.
‘If monsters had been like this…….’
Even after hunting countless monsters, his growth had stagnated. Yet here, his abilities had surged in a heartbeat.
True, he’d consumed a large quantity when he first drained it, but the Demonic Energy of a Mage—beyond mere quantity or quality—carried a distinct ‘purity’ that monsters could never match.
Now he finally understood why.
‘Mages bound by direct pacts with Demons, versus monsters whose power is merely inherited through environment or bloodline. That must be the difference.’
At least there hadn’t been that woman or any other Mages present—a mercy, all things considered.
That’s right.
“A day of easy living—I suppose even I deserve that much.”
Munno muttered the sort of thing that would earn reproach from anyone listening, his conscience apparently unbothered, before turning his attention elsewhere.
The Mage had fallen surprisingly quickly, but something far more intriguing remained.
“So you’re the one who wore that shell?”
Clink.
As he pulled the Metal Chains forward, a pristine white egg came into view—easily the size of an adult man’s torso.
“What exactly are you?”
An egg that had pierced through the Mage’s deceptive double veil and made its presence known, despite even his own difficulty reading it.
The sticky taint of Demonic Energy clinging to its surroundings was potent enough to make him consider destroying it outright and absorbing its essence, and yet—
‘There’s no point in that now, anyway.’
Still, something oddly familiar in its resonance made him reluctant to strike.
A suspicious egg, cradled by a high-tier Mage.
“Could it be…?”
Only one thought crossed his mind.
—A disaster born from stealing a Monster Lord’s offspring.
But then.
“No, surely not.”
What were the odds it would turn up here, in southern Draesen, of all places?
And in the possession of merely a 5th Circle Mage at that?
“They’re not fools, these creatures.”
If they’d stolen something like that, they would’ve fled with full force toward the Empire, or even further south—there was no reason they’d linger around here playing games with an egg.
It was the most logical conclusion.
Honestly, he wanted to believe it was anything but a Monster Lord-class catastrophe.
But then, suddenly—
A fine crack began spider-webbing across the surface where his blade had struck moments before, accompanied by a soft, crackling sound.
“What…?”
Could his blow have caused that?
No, it had been shedding bits of shell all along.
If this thing hatches, will that Monster Lord take its rage out on Draesen?
In that moment, countless anxious thoughts flickered through his mind.
Crack.
A corner of the great egg broke free.
A bright yellow eye, marked with a vertical slit of black, opened into view.
“Hiss.”
A reptilian eye, unmistakably. And the Demonic Energy surged suddenly stronger.
In that instant of primal revulsion, when he felt the urge to smash the egg—
The reptile’s eye curved upward in a rounded arc.
As if it were smiling.
‘What?’
And then.
“Miya~.”
A soft, faint cry followed.
‘Is it… glad?’
That warm emotion woven through the cry amplified the familiar resonance already present in its Demonic Energy.
Crack-crack.
The egg shell fractured further, faster now.
Without quite meaning to, as if enchanted, Munno began peeling away the shell.
And then, moments later—
“Miya-ya~!”
He found himself face-to-face with a small, winged black reptile nuzzling its entire body—head and all—against his armor.
Though small, it was sizably built for a hatchling.
But the real problem was this: he’d heard tales of reptiles in this particular form before.
Countless times, spanning entire ages of legend.
“… A Dragon?”
A transcendent species that had vanished in the age of ancient mythology.
Among Divine Beasts and Demonic Beasts alike, it stood at the highest rank—a creature of legend known as the representative or even companion of gods and demons.
The Wyvern that the Dragon Duke rode, said to be a rare Divine Beast itself, was supposedly a fallen or degenerate subspecies of Dragon—
“Or is this one a Wyvern?”
The moment he said it, the small dragon (or whatever it was) stopped its nuzzling, narrowed its eyes with an air of displeasure, and bumped its head hard against his chest in protest.
“Ow.”
And, inevitably enough.
“Mew~!”
Clutching its aching head, the creature thrashed in his arms.
“Meow…….”
Its stubby front limbs couldn’t even reach its head, yet it whimpered to itself so pitifully that he found himself, quite without thinking, stroking that little skull.
“There, there. It hurts, doesn’t it? That’s why you should be careful.”
He blew gently as he petted it, and the soft, almost pliable texture felt oddly pleasant against his palm.
And besides.
“Mya?”
At his voice, the creature’s eyes went wide as saucers and it began rubbing itself against him again—a gesture he found himself not disliking at all.
No, if he was honest……. He liked it.
‘Strangely cute, this thing.’
In his past life, he’d never had the means to keep a pet, so he’d never even considered it.
“I’m discovering I rather like reptiles…….”
“Mya?”
“No, never mind.”
When he stroked not just its head but its jaw, then scratched its belly, the creature’s pleased chirping only grew more endearing.
But reality soon reasserted itself.
“So what am I going to do with you?”
“Mya?”
“Hah…….”
Was this thing really a Dragon? And before that—was it an offspring of a Monster Lord?
“Surely not…….”
Unless that dead Mage really wasn’t some Outer God, there was no way.
Yet his instinct kept insisting that it was exactly that.
‘A 5th Circle Mage wouldn’t have been incubating an ordinary monster egg. God, what a life…….’
So why had that Outer God been hiding here with a Monster Lord’s egg, only to die?
Not that he had room to lecture the dead, but he could only resent the dead man’s choices.
“What am I supposed to do with this…….”
Dragon or Wyvern, one way or another, this creature seemed to be the spawn of a Monster Lord.
He was wracking his brains.
“Meow~”
Growwwl.
And in the middle of all this, the irresponsible thing got hungry.
“……You again?”
“Mya!”
The presumed baby dragon’s stubborn insistence was almost absurd.
But he couldn’t bring himself to scold a newborn for being hungry.
The only problem was.
“What do you eat?”
He simply had no idea what to give it.
* * *
Munch-munch.
Slurp-slurp.
“Does it taste good?”
“Meow~!”
It seemed to.
A reptile the size of a human man—even if newborn, it would surely eat meat.
Operating on that reckless assumption, he watched it devour the boar meat he’d hunted with genuine relish.
At first he’d offered it raw, and it swallowed that in one gulp, then drooled profusely while eyeing the roasted meat he’d been saving for himself.
So he’d cooked some for it, and it seemed to prefer that even more.
In fact, it was going absolutely wild for it.
“Hey. My hand isn’t food.”
Lick.
“Meow~”
Ah, so that was gratitude.
The rough feeling of it licking his hand—or more precisely, his glove—was nothing but cute.
So from then on, he began roasting meat for it with even more enthusiasm.
But the amount the creature consumed was far from ordinary.
“Where is all of that going…….”
“Miya~!”
After devouring several times his own body weight in mutton, the creature rolled about with a satisfied expression, and Munno couldn’t help but feel at a loss.
But when he thought about it, it was also a familiar sight.
‘Father…….’
No—soon Rian would be the same way.
The Gluttony Body Strengthening Art came with a side effect that turned people into beasts(?) like this.
“Want to just stay in Draesen?”
“Mya…….”
Apparently that wasn’t to his liking.
Chuckle.
Every time he offered food or spoke to the creature, it responded at once—and the sight of it was impossibly endearing.
Yet even as Munno watched, he couldn’t shake the gravity of his situation.
‘This is really bad. What do I do?’
He desperately hoped the child wasn’t a Monster Lord’s offspring, but that hope seemed likely to remain just that—a wish.
Feeding the creature now while staring blankly at the sky was, in a way, no different from running from reality.
Then a thought struck him.
“What if I found the parents and returned it? Maybe they’d go back into the mountains?”
It was a notion born of desperation, thrown out almost carelessly.
‘Wait, that actually makes sense.’
Dragons were said to possess intelligence exceeding that of humans.
If he returned the child in good health, well-fed, and the parents truly possessed such superior intellect—
‘They wouldn’t destroy Draesen, would they?’
That’s what he was thinking.
But then.
“Mya!?”
The moment the young dragon’s tail stiffened, a chilling presence washed over the back of Munno’s neck.

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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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