The Knight Who Devours Magic - Chapter 98

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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 98. It’s Her
The thugs came charging forward with swagger and noise.
They likely believed that numbers and momentum would carry the day, one way or another.
But they never even got close to Munno.
Crack.
“Ugh!?”
Bang.
Crunch.
“Metal Chains…….”
Snap.
Four strands of Metal Chains danced freely through the air, lashing the thugs or coiling around them, shattering bones and rendering them combat-ineffective in seconds.
Against stronger opponents, the Metal Chains served only for mobility assistance or the occasional surprise tactic.
But against amateurs like these, each one was a lethal weapon.
So naturally.
“A Mage!”
Cries like that began to ring out.
“Don’t talk nonsense……!”
Whoosh.
Crack.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
The fool who’d uttered such ridiculous screams received especially thorough treatment—every bone in his body pulverized.
It took only a few minutes to leave all thirty-odd thugs sprawled before their own headquarters, utterly broken.
“Ghhh…….”
“My back, my back…….”
“Gurgle.”
The thugs lay scattered, their spines shattered or limbs completely crushed.
Only a precious few still had consciousness enough to speak.
Yet Munno’s gaze remained glacial, untouched by pity.
If anything.
Thud-thud.
“Lower body paralysis at minimum, maybe an arm or two completely destroyed. Repairing damage like that will cost you. Won’t it?”
He raised his voice deliberately as he walked toward their headquarters, making sure they heard every word.
“If you could afford a priest capable of healing wounds like these, you’d naturally try to hide it from lowlifes like yourselves. Though I doubt any of you will even make it to the Temple.”
A few of the thugs flinched at his words. He turned to see the crowd of poor onlookers gathering, their eyes fixed on the fallen men.
‘If they’d lived right, they’d have people to care for them, people who’d help them reach the Temple. If not…….’
……then they’d finally receive the karma they’d earned.
Watching several impoverished locals begin to creep toward the fallen thugs, Munno raised his voice again toward those still inside the building.
Then.
“Should I bring the whole building down, or go inside and clean up the garbage personally…….”
He tracked the movement of metals stirring frantically within the structure.
‘Running away, are we?’
When he sensed one particularly irritating pattern of motion.
“Hide all you want~ but when I find you~.”
Crack.
“You’re dead!!”
He charged straight into the building.
Bang.
The moment he burst through the door, daggers flew at him from both sides.
Of course, since they were metal, the ambush meant nothing to Munno—but he didn’t even bother to block.
He simply.
‘Idiots…….’
Clink.
Ping.
The daggers bounced harmlessly off his Armor without leaving a scratch, and he sent Metal Chains lashing at the throats of those who’d thrown them.
Crunch.
“Choke——”
“Gack!”
“I’m not killing you. Don’t panic.”
“Gurgle.”
“Even if I’m not a Mage, I don’t kill ordinary humans on a whim.”
Of course, everything below his neck would soon stop moving.
“So don’t you dare run!”
Hoping the ones inside the building would hear him, he pressed forward.
This strange structure — dozens of squat houses connected as one — had such a labyrinthine interior that finding his way was nearly impossible.
Tap-tap-tap.
The moment he detected frantic movement behind a wall, a commotion he could sense even without his metal-sensing ability.
Munno simply kicked the wall.
Crash!
The ramshackle wall didn’t break — it shot inward whole.
Screams echoed from the other side.
“Ugh!?”
“Aah!”
“A, a monster!”
Monster, his foot.
Bang.
He punched through the displaced wall and stepped beyond, where men half-crushed by it came into view.
Confirmation finishing work.
Crack.
Rather, confirmation of injuries.
“Ugh…”
He made certain to shatter the spines of the fallen ones.
Clang.
One man managed to dodge a flying wall section and drew his blade.
“W-why would an upper-ranked knight do this to us…!”
“Oh, spirited, aren’t you? However…”
Whoosh.
Without needing to raise a hand himself, Munno’s Metal Chains lashed across the man’s abdomen.
“Urgh…”
“Just the spirit, then.”
Crack.
He snapped the man’s neck, but only slightly.
Only enough that his breathing wouldn’t quite stop.
Just a gentle touch to the temptingly prominent first and second cervical vertebrae.
“Look, I said I’m not killing you! Stop running and come at me!”
Yet the movements of those throughout the building remained unchanged.
After that.
Crash!
Crack.
“Kkkgh…”
Bang!
Thud.
“Khack.”
Crack.
The same scenario repeated in succession.
‘Scattered in all directions, running like cowards.’
Just as irritation began creeping in over having to search the entire building piece by piece for one man.
‘Basement?’
A cluster of metals, moving rapidly toward the basement’s massive metal mass that had caught his attention since earlier.
‘What’s this?’
But finding a path to the basement among the tangled corridors proved difficult.
“Damn it!”
He’d just collapse everything.
Munno drew his ‘blade’ and swung without hesitation.
The enormous Two-Handed Sword came down on the ramshackle building’s floor.
Crash!
The ground rumbled and collapsed.
Through the fallen floor, Munno leaped downward toward the level below.
And.
Crash!
Everything tumbled down.
He proceeded to smash through the floor in rapid succession, tearing a straight path toward the direction where the massive metal presence was detected.
* * *
“What kind of damned bastard is this…….”
Ted, the bald man with tattooed skin, scratched his head irritably as he bolted toward the vault in the basement.
“Clear it out, now!”
“Yes, at once!”
To be honest, the situation had struck him as almost comical at first.
Seeing the intruder’s face, which looked far too young beside the brutal armor, he’d even been pleased at the thought of claiming that remarkable-looking suit for himself.
Based on the apparent age—somewhere around twenty—he’d assumed the boy couldn’t be stronger than a 1-Star Knight at best.
But then.
The moment he watched that child wield chains unlike anything he’d ever seen, reducing thirty-odd subordinates to corpses without effort, Ted knew surrender was his only option.
Never mind the uncommon weapons that looked like Artifacts; just watching the movements that controlled them told him everything.
‘At least 2-Star or higher.’
The man before him was in a different league entirely—a warrior of genuine power, while Ted had barely awakened in the twilight of his mercenary days before drifting into the back alleys.
Only then did those nicknames he’d overheard recently come flooding back: Street Destroyer, Black Knight, and the like.
The Kingdom’s Holy Child, they called him.
A young monster who supposedly had even caught the attention of ‘that person’—someone Ted didn’t dare think about too closely.
Why would a monster meant for the grand stage come tearing through this squalid little hovel?
“What bastard drew the attention of a High Knight!? Answer me!?”
“I—I don’t know…….”
“Quiet!”
Rumble, rumble.
“Damn it, move faster!”
Steeling himself with the resolve that if this fool who’d caused this disaster somehow survived the monster, he’d beat him to death personally, Ted pressed forward desperately.
Even if he had to abandon the hideout itself, he couldn’t leave the vault’s treasures behind—there’d be hell to pay otherwise.
“Boss! Maybe we should just escape with our lives—!”
“Shut your mouth! Tribute payment is due soon! If I can’t pay, that monster is the least of my worries—I’m dead either way!”
“Then…….”
“Grab only the valuables and bolt for the Training Facility! The secret underground passage from the basement connects to that area anyway!”
“Yes, sir!”
All these years of cultivating a backer and making tribute payments had been precisely for a situation like this.
Of course, he also had the responsibility of supplying discreetly trained talent to that backer.
The benefit was mutual—he could make use of the half-talents who’d failed to awaken at the Training Facility but survived, folding them into his organization.
‘If I can just reach there, there’s another monster who can handle this one.’
The backer’s backer, in other words—people operating under orders from someone so far above Ted’s station he couldn’t even lift his eyes to their face, sent here to execute some sort of operation.
One of them had sprung from this slum.
Her distinctive appearance was impossible to forget.
‘That Hybrid Woman.’
The mutt with sharp features and brown skin, devoid of any softness or femininity—not even fit to work as a courtesan.
The memory of her looking down on him with contempt still made his blood boil, though he knew better than to show it.
‘Damned bitch, I lifted her up myself and she doesn’t even have the decency to be grateful.’
Unfortunately, that very woman held a commanding position among those operatives, so there was nothing he could do.
At least, not until yesterday.
In any case, if those people were involved, they’d be more than capable of handling this monster.
Clinging to that one hope, Ted began running deeper and deeper into the basement.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
All the while ignoring the violent vibrations drawing ever closer.
But after that desperate dash,
“Ha, I’ve arrived!”
the moment he reached the massive vault—
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
Bang!
“Yes. I’ve arrived too.”
The monster dropped down from directly above his head.
“H-how—!?”
Bingo.
Munno’s smile turned ice-cold as the tattooed bald man’s eyes went wide.
So this was Ted—the thug the southern gang members had mentioned.
The head of this extortion ring, a piece of garbage so worthless the word itself felt generous.
The men around him were probably mid-level trash of the same stripe.
“Fine.”
As he was about to kick the man aside with that careless reply, he noticed the bastard flinch.
Movements too sharp for an ordinary person. Though it hardly mattered.
Crack!
“Gahhh…….”
One way or another, they were all the same.
“Boss……!”
Whoosh.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
The other trash who rushed at him fell silent as Metal Chains snaked out and silenced them where they stood.
Crack.
Snap.
Snap-snap-snap.
He made sure to give special attention to the cervical vertebrae one and two, which seemed particularly visible today, giving those bodies his blessing for the afterlife.
“G-gasp, w-why…… why are you d-doing this?”
The bald man’s pallid face remained in his grip for a reason, though.
“That vault—yours?”
“Eh? Ah, yes. Y-you’ll need me alive to open it…….”
“Hmph.”
Crack!
Ignoring the man’s words, Munno swung his Great Sword down like lightning, cleaving clean through one side of the vault.
“Hm, fairly solid, isn’t it?”
Munno shook out his tingling hands and let out a satisfied laugh.
‘If I’d tried to cut the whole thing through, that would’ve been embarrassing.’
Still, the result was satisfying.
Munno gazed at his own Mana Blade, which flickered across the sword’s edge like grey flames, and smiled with approval.
With an Artifact-class Two-Handed Sword forged from 2-Star Metal Spirit Arts and the Mana Blade layered upon it, he’d unleashed enough destructive power to slice through a portion of the heavy metal vault in one stroke without any special technique.
Of course, he’d also weakened the vault slightly using his Metal Domination ability.
Screeeeak.
Grrrrind.
He wrenched the half-destroyed vault door open by force.
“Oh……!”
Gold coins and jewels filled the interior.
And several documents laid atop them.
“Hieeek…….”
Ted’s face, already drained of color, turned white as bone. He collapsed in place and began crawling backward on his backside.
But Munno barely glanced at him, busy examining the vault instead.
The moment he’d made a rough calculation, his expression darkened.
“Damn it. How much is this? You’re telling me you raked in this much by running children?”
At a glance, it far exceeded Drasen Territory’s annual budget.
Even for a place like Ironheart, it strained belief that some back-alley thug was keeping this much money in a vault.
And then.
“I… I was only. D-doing what my superiors told me to. P-please, spare me. My lord.”
Ted saw Munno’s shocked expression and threw himself flat on the ground.
“Right. I didn’t snap your neck because I want to hear about these ‘superiors’ of yours.”
Munno smiled coldly and approached the man.
“……Yes?”
“Your men—they fought like soldiers or assassins. Not just street thugs. Who’s backing you? Who’s your real master?”
As he’d been dealing with these bastards, that old rumor about the Ted Family’s connection to the nobility kept surfacing in his mind.
But then.
“Ah, I… that is…….”
Just as Ted opened his mouth.
Thwick.
A small arrowhead suddenly jutted through his forehead with a soft sound.
“What!?”
The arrow, registered by his senses the moment it flew, had pierced straight through its target.
Thump.
Ted’s eyes went dark. He pitched forward onto his face.
Munno’s gaze locked onto the arrow that had punched through the tattooed bald man’s skull.
An arrow he’d thought he’d seen before—one he never expected to see again in this narrow underground corridor.
And only then.
Snap.
The black aperture that had been open somewhere behind where Ted lay collapsed was now closing, and he caught sight of it.
A passage that had been invisible mere moments before.
‘A secret passage?’
The instant that thought crossed his mind, he threw himself toward that darkening void without thinking.

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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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