Chapter 91
Haines’s face flushed crimson.
It was because he found it utterly disgusting that men of Sword Master caliber would resort to such a cowardly ambush.
Yet despite Haines’s denunciation, scornful smiles appeared on the three men’s faces.
None of the three had any pride as Sword Masters.
“The old man sure talks a lot.”
“Maybe because it’s time for him to die.”
“Shall we see whether you’re the same?”
Sssshk!
The two Sword Masters who had been closing in on Haines twisted their bodies in an instant.
Something radiating a terrifying energy had plummeted from the sky toward them like a bolt of lightning.
Boom! Bang!
Two streaks of light infused with energy comparable to an aura blade landed precisely in their paths.
It was an attack timed so perfectly that they would have been hit if they had not dodged.
“……A War Elf?”
“Isn’t three against one a little cowardly?”
“Lady Arelia!”
“Did you see the Grim Reaper for a moment?”
Arelia landed beside Haines and beamed.
She spoke as though she knew exactly how he felt at that moment.
“That’s right. I truly thought I was going to die. I never imagined people calling themselves Masters would resort to an ambush and ganging up on me.”
“They weren’t knights to begin with. They don’t seem interested in honor or pride. Besides, I didn’t come alone.”
“I’m here too.”
Jade landed beside Arelia.
Rather than Jade being late, it was more accurate to say that Arelia had simply gone ahead first.
“The numbers match a little better now, don’t they?”
After patting Haines on the shoulder, Arelia grinned at the black knights.
All three of them were wearing identical armor.
Yet the three men were not surprised by Arelia and Jade’s appearance.
Instead, they wore knowing expressions.
“I see.”
“We felt a little bad ganging up on one person, too. Especially an old man who’s practically falling apart.”
Ssssk.
The three black knights began to move slowly.
They moved leisurely, as if each were choosing an opponent.
“Personally, I’ve always wondered how powerful a high-level spirit mage is.”
The massive black knight who had approached Jade spoke with a sinister sneer.
Though he said he was curious, the massive black knight’s eyes conveyed a different message.
They said that spirit arts were no threat to him.
Shing.
At that, Jade grinned and drew his sword.
He saw no reason to use spirit arts against him.
-Let’s smash him with a sword!
-I wonder how that confident expression will change in three minutes.
-Three minutes? I’ll bet on one!
-Come on, he’s still a Sword Master, so he should last a minute. But he does seem to possess a rather unusual power. Even I’ve never felt energy like this before.
Elestra narrowed her eyes.
She was a spirit who had lived for eons.
Yet even Elestra had never encountered anything like it. The black knights radiated an unfamiliar energy.
Strangely, all three of them gave off almost identical energy.
“Just because people make a fuss over you as a spirit swordsman, you think you’re a real swordsman? That may have worked in the Polstein Kingdom, but it won’t work on me!”
Perhaps Jade drawing his sword had irritated him, because the massive black knight roared and charged.
He moved astonishingly fast for someone of his size.
Vrrrrr!
At the same time, a thick, massive aura blade resembling his hulking frame surged upward.
It was shorter than the aura blade that had pressed Haines down, but it still looked to be a full three meters long.
“Everyone thinks that. Why does a spirit mage have a sword? But what can you do? It looks like you’re going to die to a spirit mage’s sword today.”
Crack!
The massive black knight, who had charged straight at him, was sent flying backward.
He flew backward even faster than he had charged forward.
At the sight, the black knights fighting their chosen opponents widened their eyes.
They could not believe that Jade, renowned as a high-level spirit mage, had sent a fellow Sword Master flying with a sword.
“A Sword Master?”
“It’s too early to be surprised. He hasn’t even summoned a spirit yet.”
As the black knights stared in disbelief, Arelia smiled faintly.
Jade wielding spirits was frightening, but Jade wielding a sword was just as fearsome.
“Kraaaah!”
The massive black knight, who had been sent flying helplessly and slammed into the ground, sprang to his feet.
The humiliation of crashing down so disgracefully—and of being sent flying in a single blow—made him lose his reason.
The fact that a spirit mage had overpowered him with a sword had wounded his pride deeply.
“What right does a coward who only knows how to ambush have to talk about pride?”
“Shut up, you bastard!”
“You’re the noisy one.”
Boom!
The force behind his beastlike roar as he charged was tremendous.
He rushed in with such ferocity that it seemed he would tear Jade apart.
But despite his momentum, the result was pathetic.
The aura blade he had enlarged through sheer brute force could not even scratch Jade’s aura blade.
Screech!
And Jade had as much mana as anyone else.
In fact, Jade had accumulated more mana than the massive black knight, whose mana was spilling out everywhere.
Jade demonstrated that fact himself.
“H-how……!”
The massive black knight stared in disbelief.
He was horrified to see Jade overwhelm his aura blade through sheer volume of mana.
But this was only the beginning.
Clang!
Jade pushed his opponent back using only the recoil from his arm.
Despite being only about half the massive black knight’s size, he pushed him back with astonishing ease.
Crunch!
Having pushed back the black knight, whose build was nearly twice his own, with nothing but the strength of his arm, Jade took advantage of the opening and thrust his sword into it.
He stabbed before the massive black knight could even react.
“Oh? You’re tougher than I expected.”
“Kugh!”
Jade looked surprised when the armor was not pierced by his properly driven thrust.
He had intended to inflict a serious wound even if he could not kill the man instantly, but the armor was tougher than expected.
“That doesn’t look like ordinary armor.”
“You bastard……!”
Though it had blocked the thrust, the massive black knight knew that the armor had only barely endured it. He bared his fangs and drew up all his mana.
He finally acknowledged that Jade was not an opponent he could take lightly simply because he was a spirit mage.
Since Jade was both a high-level spirit mage and a Sword Master, the massive black knight raised his aura blade to its fullest and swung it at him.
“Well, that doesn’t mean I can’t break it.”
Crack!
Jade blocked the lightning-fast slash with his left hand.
He formed an aura fist around his hand and lightly caught the black knight’s aura blade.
Crunch!
Moreover, as if to show the gap between their levels, Jade crushed the aura blade with his grip.
He crushed in his hand an aura blade that held nothing but a ridiculously large amount of mana.
Then he began a merciless beating.
He battered the massive black knight with his sword as though beating dust out of a rug.
“Gaaaah!”
Jade thoroughly battered the black knight’s entire body with an expressionless face, as though he were methodically trampling him.
The massive black knight was known as an incarnation of terror in the Arhan Kingdom, but to Jade, he was nothing more than a slightly large sandbag.
Of course, the massive black knight did not simply stand there.
He resisted with all his strength, but unfortunately, the result did not change.
Thud!
The sleek, luxurious black armor was covered in fine cracks, and the man’s face was covered in bruises.
After stripping off his helmet, Jade had beaten him so badly that his face was barely recognizable.
His sword and shield had been smashed long ago.
Yet even in such a pitiful state, the massive black knight grinned.
“You still have the strength to smile? Your two comrades aren’t doing so well either.”
“Heh-heh! We’ll win in the end. No matter how desperately you struggle, you can’t go against the tide.”
“A man who could drop dead at any moment sure has a lot to say.”
“If you meant to kill me, you would have done it already. You had dozens of chances to kill me, yet you didn’t. That means you want something from me, doesn’t it?”
“Oh? So you can think after all?”
Jade looked surprised.
He had thought the man was nothing but a simple-minded musclehead, but surprisingly, he seemed able to think.
“But you won’t get what you want. The situation will change before then.”
“You mean the tide will turn?”
“That’s right. In just a little while…… Ha-ha! They’ve arrived!”
Boom!
Joy gleamed in the massive black knight’s eyes, more than half of them hidden behind swollen eyelids.
The long-awaited reversal had finally begun.
The three men here probably had not realized in the slightest that they had fallen for the bait.
And the shock would be just as great.
“This is what checkmate looks like! Heh-heh! You’re not the only one who can use spirit arts! You fools! You even fell into our trap……!”
The massive black knight, shouting triumphantly with his battered face, suddenly cut himself off.
He could not finish speaking because the scene unfolding before him was completely different from the operation they had planned.
The explosion on the castle wall had gone according to plan, but everything after that was different.
His comrade was supposed to seize Lloyd, the Crown Prince standing atop the wall, in a single move, but he had failed.
Whoosh!
The instant the explosion occurred, Lloyd shot high into the sky, leaving his comrade staring blankly upward like a dog left staring at the roof after the chicken had escaped.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know? You used a spirit, not some other method.”
At that moment, a chilling voice sounded beside the massive black knight’s ear.
There was laughter in it, but beneath that laughter lay an icy chill.
The massive black knight felt gooseflesh rise the moment he heard it and swallowed dryly.
“Just as not all Sword Masters are the same, not all advanced spirit mages are the same. Did you really think you could hide your presence from me with the skill of an advanced spirit mage who has to dismiss a spirit the moment he summons it? Did you think I wouldn’t notice you moving underground?”
“You knew all along and let it happen?”
“Of course. Put another way, it means we can take down one Sword Master, doesn’t it?”
Boom-boom-boom-boom!
No sooner had Jade finished speaking than a bombardment rained down on the black knight wearing identical black armor.
Duke Caesars, the royal knights, and the nobles began unleashing a fierce assault.
As a result, the advanced earth spirit mage they had searched high and low throughout the Arhan Kingdom to find—and brought along for the ambush—was torn apart and killed.
The black knight had tried to retreat by using him as a shield.
Boom! Bang!
But the knights of the Polstein Kingdom were not about to stand by and let him do so.
The black knight was certainly a Sword Master, but that did not make him invincible.
If he had been a high-level or top-level Sword Master, he might have managed to escape alone somehow, but unfortunately, the black knight’s abilities were not much different from those of the other three here.
“Gheuk!”
Under the relentless assault of Duke Caesars, a top-level Sword Expert, the royal knights, and the top- and high-level Sword Experts accompanying the nobles, blood gushed from the ambushing black knight’s mouth as he collapsed.
Despite his flashy entrance, he had died in vain, proving that numbers could overwhelm even a powerful fighter.
“Huh!”
The black knights fighting Arelia and Haines let out bewildered exclamations at the sight.
They could not believe that the ambush had failed and that their comrade had died.
“You aren’t the only ones who were buying time. Neither were we.”
“Ghk!”
The massive black knight’s body trembled.
He had watched the armor of his comrade fighting Arelia shatter, the knight crumpling to the ground.
“Then I’ll take you with me!”
“Who said I’d let you?”