The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 71

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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 71. You Again!?
‘Demonic Energy!?’
Despite the great distance, an eerie unease crashed over him. And…
the hair on his entire body stood on end with a sense of impending danger.
In that instant, Munno instinctively grabbed the hatchling dragon and dove to the side.
Whoosh.
Metal Chains burst from his feet, their thrust propelling him clear like the wind itself.
Flash.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
Boom!
Yellow lightning bolts rained down overhead in rapid, ceaseless succession.
“Damn it all!?”
Munno jerked his head up instinctively, but the dawn sky above revealed nothing.
Or rather, there was nothing to see.
At a point in the empty air over a hundred meters high—a distance he could never reach even if he died and came back to life—the Demonic Energy coalesced once more, and his senses locked onto it with perfect clarity.
And the feel of that Demonic Energy was deeply familiar.
“That bastard!?
The moment Munno ground out the words, the temperature around him plummeted.
Crackle-crackle-crackle.
“Hup!”
Whoosh.
Bang!
He swung the Metal Chains, absorbing the encroaching Magical Aura as he resumed his sprint.
Burst!
At the same time, a ‘blade’ he hurled by pure instinct became a razor-edged projectile and shot toward that point like an arrow.
But.
– Clang!!
His blade flashed at a point in empty space, bounced back, and dissolved.
“Ugh!”
The forced dissipation of Spirit Magic brought with it a nauseating, gut-wrenching agony.
His running stride faltered without warning.
And then yellow lightning crashed down again.
Flash.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
‘Damn!’
His face drained of color in the searing electric current.
“Mya!”
The hatchling dragon in his arms cried out, louder than before.
And then.
“Huh, what?”
The burning pain coursing through his body seemed to ease in an instant.
And in that moment, acutely sensing the flow of Demonic Energy, Munno’s eyes widened as he looked down at the infant dragon in his arms.
“You?”
The Demonic Energy within the magic seemed to split between the Armor and the young dragon, each absorbing it in turn.
“Miya!”
Crackle. Crackle.
The hatchling, arcs of electricity dancing from its mouth, was chewing on it as if savoring a delicious treat.
More precisely, the Demonic Energy contained within that lightning.
“You…”
As astonishment and bewilderment left him speechless, the temperature plummeted once more and blade-sharp winds tore through from all sides.
Frost magic turning the world to permafrost, and wind-blade torrents that threatened to shred everything in their path.
‘Damn!’
Whoosh.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
Munno wrapped Metal Chains around himself from all directions, clutched the hatchling to his chest, and charged through the magical onslaught.
In the process, the gaps the Metal Chains couldn’t cover allowed wind-blades and frost to seep through.
“Mya!”
But just as before, his Armor and the young dragon absorbed nearly half of the magic between them, leaving him unharmed.
“You really…?”
“Mya?”
“No, that was brilliant!”
One surprise after another. But there was no time to dwell on why.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
He had to keep moving without pause to evade the enemy’s relentless barrage from a position he could never reach.
Flash.
Crash!
“What—what in the—”
Over the frozen wasteland that spread across dozens of meters in every direction, over the razor-sharp wind blades that carved through that same radius, lightning fell once more.
Armor and metal chains, and beyond that.
“Mew!”
The young dragon was absorbing the magic too, but since the armor was metal, there was no avoiding damage from electrical attacks.
At least with the young dragon’s presence, the burden he himself had to bear was dramatically reduced—that much was a mercy.
‘The dragon’s one thing.’
Its ability was startling but welcome, secondary concerns notwithstanding.
The magic pouring from that familiar demonic aura was utterly different from last time.
‘How is she unleashing it so relentlessly?’
But there was no time to think deeper.
Crack-crack-crack.
“Ugh!”
Bang!
He burst through the cold, scattered the lightning, and dove into the forest.
Then dozens of fireballs began raining down on the space where he stood.
Boom!
Crash.
It wasn’t the blue flame that had nearly consumed him in a single stroke before, but even so, the entire forest around him was completely engulfed in fire.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.
She was aiming at the forest, not him.
He tried to absorb the falling fireballs, but there was no way to prevent the forest from becoming an inferno.
‘Damn.’
The relentless cascade of magic was one problem.
‘How do I bring her down.’
Even jumping with the aid of the metal chains and throwing them again from the apex would fall far short of that altitude.
It was clear the enemy had deliberately chosen her position, but he couldn’t think of any way to overcome that height.
Boom!
Crackle-crackle-crackle.
“Damn it!”
He simply ran on instinct, desperate to escape this hellscape of flame and lightning.
Then.
“Mew!?”
As the temperature around them spiked sharply, the young dragon startled and looked about in alarm before burrowing into his arms.
“It’s all right. It’s all right, little one.”
Munno held the creature tighter at the sight.
That frightened expression, seen for the first time, reminded him what his true priority was.
‘Rather than catching that witch.’
Saving this child came first.
Or more precisely.
“I’ll take you to your mother. Don’t worry!”
Munno shouted as if swearing an oath to himself, plunging through the forest.
A route was forming in his mind.
He couldn’t turn back to Drasen now, not in this situation.
He couldn’t fathom the devastation a witch who vanished into the air and rained destruction from above would inflict on his domain.
So.
‘I’ll skirt Drasen and head for the Northern Mountain Range.’
If the monsters that infested the Northern Mountain Range could create an opening for him against that witch, perhaps—
‘Though she’ll attack me first anyway.’
But no other strategy came to mind.
“Hold on tight!”
“Miya…”
Whoosh.
Clutching the young dragon close, Munno unleashed the metal chains from his limbs and burst forth in a dazzling, acrobatic sprint across sky and ground alike, evading the falling lightning.
The moment the burning forest fell away and the plains came into view.
Crackle-crackle-crack.
“Hell yeah, this is working!!”
Whoooosh.
He skated across frozen ground like he was gliding on ice, pouring on speed.
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
When a massive earthen barrier loomed up before him, he scaled it using the Metal Chains, vaulting over in a single bound—or else.
When even that wasn’t an option.
“Hah!”
Crash!
He simply drove through it at full gallop, smashing the obstacle to pieces.
Meanwhile, the sight of him hurtling forward with no thought of counterattack—just blind, relentless pursuit—grated on someone’s nerves. Someone who needed to stop him. Or kill him.
“The slimy bastard……!!”
Karin’s voice came sharp with frustration, even as she unleashed a barrage of spells from behind Invisibility and a shield, her position warped by a barrier that twisted space itself.
She had every reason to be.
‘I’ve studied this so hard.’
The method to deal the killing blow to the one who’d sabotaged her plans turned out to be deceptively simple.
Attack from a height no knight could ever reach, just like now. Rain down magic until he broke.
Climbing to a height beyond the reach of those cursed Metal Chains was hardly difficult for her at all.
But this—this situation, she’d never anticipated it.
“This cockroach of a man!!”
Flash.
Boom-boom-boom.
Lightning that fell toward him the moment she finished casting—he absorbed it straight into his body as though it were nothing.
Ice had no effect on him whatsoever.
Wind he simply broke apart, earth he vaulted over without slowing.
Explosive magic—the moment she began the incantation, he was out of range. Fire attacks might as well have been aimed at empty air; he was too fast to hit.
Bringing the Cerberus, artifact staff capable of channeling three incantations near-simultaneously, suddenly seemed pointless.
“Damn this wretched creature…….”
Rage boiled up in her chest, and phantom pain throbbed from the prosthetic ankle where her left foot had been severed.
“How does he keep interfering like this?! How?!”
When she’d arrived at the meeting point with the shadow carrying the Egg, she’d found him there—actually roasting a wild boar.
Even though it wasn’t far from Drasen, the spot was a remote corner of the Plains, at least ten kilometers away, surrounded by nothing.
Without the exact coordinates, even she would have struggled to find such an ordinary forest in such an ordinary field.
Yet somehow he’d planted himself there and dealt with the shadow.
And beside him was something that looked like a juvenile Wyvern, or perhaps a dragon spawn hatched from the Egg.
A black reptile—at least it was unmistakably a beast spawn.
He’d robbed her of the very ‘tool’ meant to lure the Calamity.
‘They told me it was some kind of unknown Egg, but how in the world did he even hatch it?’
Nothing made sense, but the clash itself had clarified one crucial thing.
The most important fact of all.
‘That creature definitely absorbs magic.’
A chosen one, a mage, faced with something so fundamentally abhorrent she couldn’t bear it. An anomaly that should be torn to shreds, burned until nothing remained.
Just looking at him stirred in her an almost irresistible urge to rend him limb from limb.
The problem was his capacity to absorb magic exceeded her estimates by more than double.
From that point, the situation spiraled beyond her control.
‘If everything had gone to plan, I would’ve pinned his feet in the initial exchange and left him half-dead.’
Her amplified Magical Power channeled through the Cerberus, cascading spell after spell—it held more than enough force for that.
Or failing that.
‘I should’ve poured everything into it from the start. Just killed him.’
But that hadn’t been an option.
– As long as he still breathes.
Those orders from above had forbidden her from deploying her greatest weapon, the Gehenna Flame, in the opening volley.
And the loach she’d failed to catch at the outset kept slipping further beyond her effective range.
Grit.
“You’re not getting away.”
Flash.
The staff—a Magical Artifact shaped like three-headed dog, Cerberus, its shaft splitting into three branches.
The gems embedded in those eyes blazed with light, and her body began to glide through the air as though skating on an invisible surface.
And still, the magical barrage toward the ground never ceased.
In that instant, Karin made a decision.
‘At this rate, my mana will run out first.’
She had no intention of fighting a prolonged battle against a creature that seemed to replenish its vitality by absorbing magic.
Yet she couldn’t simply let it slip away.
In the end, there was only one option left.
‘Lure it in…. We’ll see which of us goes first—you or me. Let’s find out.’
From the few glimpses she’d had of its temperament, it would never ignore bait.
While cloaked in Invisibility, Karin’s form—her protective barrier reinforced by another layer—began to descend at an angle.
‘Those Metal Chains….’
She calculated the distance and range within which it could leap, pinpointing the radius where she’d place herself just barely within reach.
And that silent signal carried clearly to Munno, still fleeing.
‘What…?’
Boom-boom-boom-boom-bang.
Crack!
Vaulting over explosions, sliding across ice, absorbing lightning with his body, cutting through wind blades with raw force, leaping over earthen barriers—
Munno, now running almost as if he were enjoying the parkour, caught a glance at the empty space behind him.
‘She’s going to lure it in?’
The enemy’s intent was transparent.
The problem was how tempting it sounded.
Simply running away didn’t sit right with him.
As his mind raced with how he might turn the tables—
“Mya?”
The young dragon in his arms tilted its head.
It contentedly lapped up the Demonic Energy it had plucked from the earth mound they’d just bounded over.
“Ah….”
That sight shifted something in Munno’s thinking.
Without this creature—one that absorbed Demonic Energy at a level rivaling his own Armor—he’d never have made it this far.
But holding it made counterattacking impossible.
‘No weapon either….’
To forge a blade anew, he’d need metal, and he had no time to stand still and draw metals up from the earth.
And beyond all that….
He’d made a promise.
“Little one, wait just a bit longer. I’m going to find your mother!”
“Mya!”
Boom-boom-boom-bang.
Instead of scheming further, Munno simply drove harder through his legs and surged forward.

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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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