Chapter : 633
The Curse Knight’s terror, a cold and paralyzing thing, finally broke under the pressure of the White Mask’s inexorable advance. It shattered and was instantly replaced by the desperate, hot fury of a cornered animal. His training, his indoctrination, the very core of his being as a knight of Altamira, screamed at him. He would not die cowering. He would not be executed like a common criminal. He would die on his feet, his sword in his hand, a testament to the might of the kingdom he served.
With a guttural roar of pure, suicidal defiance, he charged. His own black, serrated sword, a wicked thing that hummed with the foul energy of his curse, was held high. He would meet this silent, fiery demon head-on. He would force this monster to acknowledge him as a warrior, even in his final moments.
Lloyd met the charge. The Major General’s mind, cold and precise, saw the opening the instant the knight committed his weight forward. There was no need for elegant swordsmanship, no call for a feint or a parry. The simplest, most brutally efficient solution was a direct counter-assault.
He lunged, the man and his spirit’s power acting as a single, unified entity. He did not need to roar; the screaming flames of his sword spoke for him. The two blades, one of cursed, black steel and the other of pure, crimson annihilation, met in a cataclysmic clash that sent a shockwave of force and superheated air ripping through the garden.
The sound was a deafening, discordant shriek. It was the sound of warring concepts, of despair striking against destruction. Sparks flew, not of simple steel, but of violently reacting magical energies—purple and black curse-light warring against the incandescent crimson of Iffrit’s flame. For a heart-stopping second, the two warriors were locked in a stalemate, a perfect, terrible tableau of black malice versus fiery judgment.
But the stalemate was a carefully engineered illusion.
While the Curse Knight poured every last ounce of his strength and cursed energy into holding back the fiery blade before him, a shadow fell over his back. Iffrit, the towering demon king, had moved. For a being of its colossal size, its motion was deceptively, unnervingly swift. It had taken a single, silent step forward, raising its twelve-foot zanbatō, the weapon a flowing river of molten steel and roaring, untamed flame.
Lloyd, feeling his spirit’s intent through their psychic bond, pressed his attack with renewed ferocity. The flames on his own sword erupted, forcing the Curse Knight to focus all his waning power, all his will, all his attention on the immediate, existential threat of being melted where he stood. It was a perfect, two-pronged execution. Lloyd was the anvil, holding the enemy in place. Iffrit was the hammer, poised to strike the final, decisive blow.
The demon king of fire swung its greatsword.
The motion was not the frenzied chop of a berserker or the precise slash of a duelist. It was a lazy, almost casual, horizontal swing. It was the motion of a bored giant swatting a fly. There was a contemptuous ease to it, a sense of absolute, unquestionable superiority that was more insulting than any taunt. The massive, flat side of the flaming blade, a wall of pure kinetic and thermal energy, connected with the Curse Knight’s back.
The impact was a sound that broke the world. It was a singular, deafening BOOM that was more like a thunderclap than the clang of metal. The force of the blow was absolute, irresistible. The Curse Knight’s body was launched from his feet as if he had been fired from a siege catapult. He flew, tumbling end over end through the air, his armored form a helpless, black ragdoll against the afternoon sky. His trajectory ended with a sickening, final crunch of stone and steel as he crashed into the far garden wall, which buckled and fractured under the immense force. He collapsed in a heap of broken armor and shattered pride, a discarded toy cast aside by a bored and irritated god.
A profound silence returned to the garden, broken only by the hungry, eager crackle of the flames that still wreathed Lloyd’s sword.
Every single witness—Princess Isabella, her face a mask of disbelief; Captain Eva, her hand frozen on the hilt of her sword; the elite Lion Guard, their exhaustion forgotten in the face of this impossible power; the students, their young realities shattered—was frozen in a state of profound, comprehensive shock. Their minds, which understood the world through the lens of ranks, tiers, and known abilities, simply could not process what they had just witnessed.
Chapter : 634
A Curse Knight. A legendary warrior feared throughout the kingdoms. A strategic-level asset who had single-handedly neutralized a dozen of the Royal Guard and defeated the Princess of Bethelham herself, had just been… swatted. Like a pest. The casual, overwhelming, and almost disdainful nature of the dominance was a concept so alien it shattered their fundamental understanding of power.
This white-masked man and his demonic familiar were not just powerful. They were not just Transcended. They were operating on an entirely different plane of existence, playing a game whose rules were unknown to mortals. The chasm between their own strength and the strength of the White Mask was not a gap; it was a void, an abyss so deep and so wide that it defied comprehension. They were mortals who had just borne witness to the quiet, terrible wrath of a true, and terrifyingly real, god of war.
The dust and powdered mortar from the shattered garden wall settled in a slow, silent cascade. The Curse Knight lay in a crumpled, broken heap amidst the rubble, a testament to the futility of his defiance. The sheer, disproportionate power of the attack had not just defeated him; it had humiliated him, reducing his formidable presence to that of a discarded piece of trash.
He stirred, a groan of tortured metal and agonized breath signaling that, impossibly, he was still conscious. With a will forged in the cruelest fires of Altamiran indoctrination, he pushed himself up from the wreckage. His left arm hung at an unnatural angle, clearly broken. His magnificent black armor, once a symbol of fear and authority, was now a mangled wreck, the backplate caved in, the joints screaming in protest. He staggered to his feet, his body a symphony of pain, but his spirit, the spirit of a zealot, was not yet extinguished.
He turned to face his nemesis. The mocking, confident sneer of the warrior was long gone, replaced by a grim, fatalistic resolve. He had failed his mission. He would not survive this encounter. The power gap was an uncrossable ocean. But he could still serve his kingdom. He could die as a knight, not as a victim, and he would take his secrets with him to the grave.
Lloyd watched him rise, a flicker of something that might have been professional respect touching the cold calculus of his mind before he ruthlessly suppressed it. The enemy was wounded, but still a potential threat. The judgment was not yet complete.
He did not give the knight a moment to recover his balance or his wits. There would be no dramatic monologue, no final exchange of philosophies. There would only be the swift and brutal application of overwhelming force. This time, the attack was a blur of pure, unadulterated speed.
He channeled the fiery essence of his spirit partner, Iffrit, not just into his blade, but into his very being. Small, controlled jets of incandescent crimson flame erupted from the soles of his armored boots, a primitive but brutally effective form of rocket propulsion that was utterly alien to this world’s understanding of movement.
With a sharp, guttural roar of displaced air, he launched himself forward. He was no longer running; he was a missile, a white-masked meteor streaking across the fifty meters of scorched earth that separated them. He appeared before the stunned and still-reeling Curse Knight in a disorienting flash of heat and motion.
His fiery broadsword, now an extension of his will, became a whirlwind of crimson light. The assault was not a series of individual strikes, but a single, continuous, flowing onslaught designed to overwhelm and destroy.
The first strike was a high feint, aimed at the knight’s helmet. The Curse Knight, his reactions honed by a lifetime of life-or-death battles, instinctively brought his own cursed blade up to block. The clang of their swords meeting was a deafening, explosive sound.
CLANG!
The second strike, delivered before the echo of the first had faded, was a lightning-fast upward slash aimed at the knight’s sword hand. Again, the knight’s instincts saved him. He parried, the impact of the blow sending a jarring, numbing shock up his already damaged arm.
CLANG!
The third was a vicious horizontal sweep aimed at his torso. He managed to get his sword in place, a desperate, clumsy block.
CLANG!
The Curse Knight was a master swordsman. Even battered and facing a demigod, his training was so deeply ingrained that he had managed to parry the first three blows of the blitzkrieg assault. But he was fighting a power that was conceptually his enemy. The sheer, overwhelming heat radiating from Lloyd’s blade was a physical force, melting the cursed energy that reinforced his own sword, weakening the very steel with every desperate impact. He could feel his weapon groaning, threatening to fail.
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Chapter : 635
And Lloyd’s true assault had only just begun. The first three strikes were a test, a calibration. Now came the storm.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth strikes were a single, continuous, flowing motion, a beautiful and terrifying symphony of destruction too fast for the untrained eye to follow. The fiery blade no longer met the knight’s failing sword; it found purchase on his body.
A brutal slash across the chestplate sent a shower of molten slag flying through the air. A precise thrust pierced his shoulder pauldron, the fire-infused steel melting through the cursed black metal as if it were wax. Another lightning-fast strike shattered his vambrace, exposing the flesh beneath to the searing heat. The Curse Knight was utterly overwhelmed, his defenses crumbling, his body being systematically dismantled by the relentless, fiery assault. He was no longer a duelist; he was simply a target being butchered.
The final blow of the combination was not with the sword. Lloyd spun, his movement a blur, and delivered a powerful roundhouse kick to the knight’s chest. The kick was amplified by a controlled, percussive burst of fire from the sole of his boot. The knight was sent stumbling backward, his chestplate caved in, the last of his breath driven from his lungs. His cursed sword, its energy finally extinguished, clattered from his numb, useless fingers.
He was disarmed. His armor was breached. His body was a canvas of horrific burns and molten metal. He was utterly, completely defeated.
Lloyd stepped forward, the inhuman calm of the White Mask never wavering. The tip of his glowing, crimson broadsword came to rest against the knight’s throat. The heat was so intense it caused the air to hiss. The metal of the knight’s gorget began to glow a dull, ominous cherry-red.
The battle was over.
The interrogation was about to begin.
He leaned in close, his masked face an impassive, white void just inches from the knight’s helmet. The Major General’s voice, filtered through his will and stripped of all human warmth, emerged as a low, menacing whisper, a sound meant only for the damned.
“Who sent you? And how did a Black Spirit user like you bypass the Academy’s wards?”
The promise of imminent, agonizing death hung in the air, a palpable pressure emanating from the glowing tip of Lloyd’s sword. The Curse Knight, broken and defeated, slumped against the fractured wall, the world a haze of pain and the encroaching grey of his own failure. He heard the whispered questions, simple and direct, backed by the authority of a power that could unmake worlds.
And in that moment of absolute defeat, something within him solidified. The fear, the pain, the humiliation—they all burned away, leaving behind the cold, hard diamond of his fanatical zealotry. He was a weapon of Altamira. A weapon’s purpose was to serve, and if it could no longer strike the enemy, its final act of service was to deny the enemy its secrets.
To speak would be to betray his kingdom. To reveal his contacts within Bethelham would be to betray his order. It would be a disgrace far worse than death. His life was already forfeit. His soul, long ago pledged to the curse that gave him his strength, was already damned. All he had left was his silence. His final, defiant duty.
A grim, bloody smile touched his lips beneath the black helm. “You will get no answers from me, demon,” he rasped, his voice a gravelly mix of absolute defiance and a strange, liberating despair.
Lloyd’s only response was to increase the pressure of his blade by a fraction of an inch. The metal of the knight’s gorget began to glow a brighter, angrier red. The smell of superheated steel and the faint, sickening scent of burning flesh filled the air. The knight let out a choked gasp of pain but did not break.
“This is not a negotiation,” the cold whisper of the White Mask came again. “I have my ways of extracting information. They are… unpleasant. The pain will be exquisite, and it will last for a very, very long time. And in the end, when your mind is a screaming ruin, you will tell me everything. The only choice you have now is how much you suffer before you do.”
Chapter : 636
He let the threat hang in the air, a promise of a hell far worse than a quick death. But as he watched the knight’s body tremble, he saw it wasn't from fear. It was from the effort of resisting, from the sheer force of will the man was exerting to maintain his silence. This was a true believer, a man so thoroughly broken and rebuilt by his masters that his own survival was a meaningless concept. Conventional interrogation, even with the application of extreme pain, would be a slow and inefficient process.
And he did not have time.
He was an anomaly on this battlefield. His very presence was a disruption that would soon draw the attention of the Academy’s true powerhouses. Headmaster Valerius was no fool. Other powerful mages would be converging on this location. He had to conclude this engagement and disappear before he was forced into a confrontation he was not prepared for.
The Curse Knight, sensing a flicker of something—hesitation? uncertainty?—in the masked figure’s posture, saw his chance. A final, desperate gambit. A path not to victory, but to a martyr’s denial. He could not defeat this monster. But he could deny him his answers. He could take his secrets to the grave, and in doing so, perhaps take this fiery demon with him.
His mind, now crystal clear with the terrible, ecstatic resolve of a man about to embrace oblivion, focused on a single, forbidden ritual. It was the ultimate pact, the final offering a curse-bound soul could make. A life for a life. His own life, for one final surge of abyssal power.
His lips, cracked and bloody behind the black steel of his helm, began to move. He began to chant.
The words were not of any human tongue. They were guttural, ancient, and filled with a profound sense of cosmic loss and primordial corruption. It was the language of broken pacts and damned souls, a dialect of the Abyss itself, each syllable a razor blade scraping against the fabric of reality.
Lloyd’s enhanced senses screamed a warning. The magical energy in the air, which had been dominated by the clean, raw heat of Iffrit’s power, was suddenly contaminated by something else. A new energy was rising from the Curse Knight, something cold, dark, and utterly foul. It was the energy of a soul being deliberately, willingly, and joyfully unmade.
“Stop him,” Lloyd commanded Iffrit through their silent, psychic link.
But it was already too late. The ritual was too fast, its casting time measured in heartbeats, fueled by the knight’s absolute, suicidal resolve.
With a final, triumphant, shuddering gasp, the knight spoke the last words of the dark incantation, his voice echoing with an otherworldly, abyssal resonance that made the very stones of the garden weep.
“Ein verlorenes Leben!”
A Lost Life.
The effect was instantaneous, and it was horrific. The Curse Knight’s body convulsed with a violence that shattered the last of his ruined armor. A thick, viscous, black fluid—something that looked like ink but felt like liquid despair—erupted from every joint, from the visor of his helm, from the very pores of his dissolving flesh.
The fluid was not lifeless. It writhed and coiled like a nest of sentient serpents, a torrent of living shadow that quickly and completely consumed him. The sickening sound of cracking bone and melting steel was lost in the wet, slurping sound of his physical form being broken down and repurposed. He was not just dying; he was being erased, his body and his very soul becoming the fuel for a final, terrible transformation.
Lloyd took a half-step back, his fiery sword held at the ready, a profound sense of alarm washing over him for the first time. He had faced assassins. He had faced monsters. He had faced political intrigue. But this was something new. This was the desperate, final act of a true believer, a transformation into something that was no longer human, no longer even a warrior. It was a self-inflicted damnation.
The fountain of black ink swirled and coalesced, pulling itself together into a single, amorphous, pulsating mass on the scorched earth. The armor was gone. The sword was gone. The man was gone. In his place was a shimmering, pulsating blob of pure, unadulterated malice. It was a creature born from a shattered soul, a demon of last resort. The battle was not over. A new, and far more unpredictable, nightmare had just begun.
