Dark Fantasy: Magical Eye Knight – Chapter 203

Chapter 203: Freezing Sea

 

Thud!

 

The window shattered on the floor. Thum, thump. Even as we speak, the castle is crumbling.

 

Cracks spread throughout the floor, walls, and ceiling, with only a few pillars remaining to support the roof.

 

“You can’t have everything.”

 

Jayvir murmured while kneeling on both knees.

 

“Isn’t that correct, Russell?”

 

Russell, who had just adjusted his grasp on Final Frost, approached gently and nodded. Jayvir’s lips twisted into a tight smile as he noticed Russell nodding.

 

“It’s hard to obtain, and even harder to keep.”

 

Jayvir’s head raised gradually. But as Russell drew nearer, the height difference between them grew larger, so Jayvir couldn’t raise his gaze beyond Russell’s chest.

 

“What a dirty, tough world.”

 

Slash!

 

A burst of light, similar to lightning, rushed across Jayvir’s neck. Jayvir’s head, chopped off at an angle, landed on the floor with a thump. The cross-section was smooth.

 

Russell, who had beheaded Jayvir with his axe, glanced up. Where he had stabbed his greatsword, Livenbus’s body was pinned to the wall, its limbs stretched wide.

 

“Stop playing dead.”

 

“……Heh. Did you know?”

 

“From the very start, I merely left you alone because I wanted to see what tricks you’d pull.”

 

The body of Livenbus, with its head torn open and fastened to the wall, sank downward. It poured like a liquid.

 

It fell to the floor with a heavy sound and sticky viscosity, as if black oil were leaking, and then rose from where it had fallen.

 

Livenbus stood up, black slime trickling down its limbs and legs. There was no face. To be precise, there was something that could be called a head, but its facial characteristics were horribly disfigured.

 

Where there should have been eyes, there were two mouths; where there should have been a nose, there were two tightly separated eyes. The area where the mouth should have been was flat. The ears, which were supposed to be on either side, curled up into circles.

 

Livenbus, with a non-human visage, communicated through the two mouths in its eye sockets.

 

“I had been working on this plan for more than six months. I never expected it to go wrong like this, but”

 

“Who are you?”

 

Russell, his eyes now softly flashing purple, interrupted him. His eyes viewed Livenbus’s body strangely.

 

Its inside was unusual in addition to its hideous aspect. It seemed as if the cracks drawn on a glass window became the shape of a human.

 

A faint glow and deadly air escaped through the cracks.

 

Livenbus tilted its head in curiosity as it watched Russell’s eyes shine and stare at it.

 

“Curious, those eyes. Do they merely foretell their opponent’s next move, or do they sense the flow of magic? It appears you can see my form.”

 

Russell did not ask twice. The Nahilnir, which had been shoved into the back of Jayvir’s kneeling corpse, rose up on its own and was seized by Russell. Russell swung the greatsword directly at him.

 

At the end of the air-splitting trajectory, Livenbus appeared to be about to be smashed to bits or impaled by the greatsword and thrown into the wall, just as before.

 

Clang!

 

However, that did not occur. As he raised his arm and extended what could be considered a hand (with more than ten fingers), the greatsword, which had been traveling at breakneck speed, came to a halt in mid-air.

 

With a loud bang, the visibly split field of view distorted, as if a fine crack had formed in the emptiness.

 

Livenbus gasped in admiration as he saw the blade projecting slightly from its left palm.

 

“That’s an incredible speed. If I had been a little slower, I would have been cut in half.”

 

Crack!

 

At that point, the deformed breach in space was repaired with the sound of cracking glass, and the greatsword was repelled. Spinning around, the greatsword that had been soaring upwards was quickly stopped by an invisible force and restored to Russell’s right hand.

 

Russell noted that the wound on Livenbus’s left hand had vanished and the flesh had darkened much more than before.

 

Whack!

 

At that point, Livenbus pushed his right hand into his own chest. Then he moved his arm around, as if looking for something in his pocket.

 

“This isn’t it, and neither is this… Oh, here it is.

 

Livenbus, who had been muttering to himself, gently removed his right hand from his chest. He was holding a bone whip.

 

“Have you asked who I am? Of course, I am not the former owner of this body. He was a coward. A coward who used the appearance of others to conceal his own hideous appearance. For such a man, drugs were a wonderful way to transform reality into a dream. I am Girard. I am a member of Rihelatur.”

 

Livenbus, who had lifted the ominous-looking crimson whip, spoke with two mouths.

 

“Arise!”

 

A piercing sound echoed as he swung the whip, leaving a deep mark on the floor. What mattered was not the strength of the whip or the sound that could break an ordinary person’s heart in a single breath.

 

Something moved in the sea of blood that flooded the decaying hall. At first glance, it appeared to be a four-legged monster. However, no beast in the world goes around with its bright red muscles and white bones exposed, without skin or hide.

 

The monsters of the underworld crawled out into the intermediate realm via the blood, obeying the call of the whip’s lord. The many red tentacles crawling on their backs, as well as the glistening teeth in their elongated skulls, were disgustingly repulsive.

 

“You have been too reckless. It’s incredible that you have such strength for a mere human, yet you’re still only a human.”

 

The monsters that had emerged from the blood were already fairly formidable. Russell, who could sense their powers, noticed that there were precisely 122 of them and stared at him.

 

“You’re trying to buy time.”

 

“You figured it out? What a shame. It would have been nice if that fine head and those muscles were ours.”

 

Girard, who was chuckling, quickly stopped laughing. The two lips in his eye sockets communicated.

 

“Kill him.”

 

Kyaaaaa!

 

With that command, the strangely formed monsters leapt from the earth and charged at Russell in unison.

 

Russell did not instantly respond to the monsters swarming in from all sides, instead observing their appearance.

 

Their magical abilities rivaled those of human knights. There is no uniform test to become a knight, although there are certain minimal criteria.

 

The first is to perceive magic; the second is to gather magic within oneself; the third is to be able to use magic for physical enhancement; the fourth is to be able to emit magic outside one’s body; and the fifth is to be able to solidify that magic around a sword or other tool. If one meets these five qualifications, they can become a knight.

 

And the amount of magic power emitted by approaching monsters, as well as the physical conversion of magic power manifested by their roars, were comparable to that of such knights.

 

Their power is scary, since they can easily kill a hundred men if tossed into a throng.

 

Russell guessed what the strange, misshapen monster named Girard was aiming at. He had waited for Russell to deal with Jayvir, and he had expected him to handle these monsters.

 

His purpose to deplete Russell’s substantial magical power and stamina was all too evident.

 

He wasn’t sure what preparations he was making, but the depletion of magical energy and stamina was an absolutely crucial factor in a confrontation with a superhuman.

 

If one lacks the strength to raise a weapon or if that weapon is lost, one will be forced to dance on the stage that the opponent has prepared ahead of time.

 

His thoughts ended in a flash. When he brought his senses back to the world, sharp, magical claws were about to shred him, mere inches from his face.

 

Eerie flesh sprung up from the ground beneath his boots in front, behind, left, and right, as well as from where some had dug in.

 

He stayed calm in the face of the monsters’ sparkling eyes, teeth, and claws, as well as the saturation of magical power that approached his nostrils.

 

“Freezing Sea.”

 

A word pronounced with a sigh. However, what happened next was remarkable.

 

Kwaaahhhhhh!

 

The huge magical force spilling from him suddenly transformed into a freezing cold. Through his powerful will and familiar medium, the magic power transformed into the master of ice, coating everything around him and imparting a touch of frost.

 

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.

 

Ice sheets over five meters high sprang up, clashing and intertwining with one another before splitting even more abruptly, covering all in sight.

 

Even the dried bloodstains on the floor froze and fractured, forming crimson grains of sand.

 

The same was true for the monsters’ bodies.

 

The monsters, who had raced forward with incredible might and a freezing cold that chilled them to the bone, flailed their forelegs in vain before collapsing.

 

Girard, who had been channeling magic into Jayvir’s lifeless body behind him, exclaimed in surprise, his hands joining together in an intricate hand seal.

 

“What an ice spell in this place!”

 

At the same instant, he cancelled the hand seal and thrust both hands forward. The scenario was such that he was about to be engulfed by a white wave the size of an avalanche falling from a snowy mountain.

 

Similarly to how he had previously obstructed the Nahilnir, space was split in all directions, displaying the scene from multiple angles at once. It resembled a broken mirror, reflecting the front, side, top, and bottom.

 

A blast of frigid air blew over it.

 

The wave of chilly air, which seemed to last forever, stopped with a single wave. However, the end consequence was a scene that resembled a North Sea glacier.

 

The decaying structure had stopped collapsing. Russell had gathered and released a surge of cold air, which had crept into the fissures and frozen them solid.

 

A white breath slipped and blasted through the frozen beasts.

 

Russell appeared to have not escaped the chilly air, since his body was tinted white. However, as he shook his shoulders, the white ice crystals trickled down.

 

In the white world, the only man wearing a black coat and having black hair moved. It resembled a black stone sliding across a white checkerboard.

 

“Were you planning to summon anything from Jayvir’s corpse, using blood as a means to summon demons from the underworld and buy time? It’s so clear that even mentioning it feels embarrassing. Don’t you agree?”

 

Boom!

 

As soon as he finished speaking, a portion of the snowfield erupted, and Girard appeared. He appeared black in a world of white, as if a shadow had emerged.

 

Girard, whose distorted eyes and mouth made it impossible to detect his expression, peered around before looking at Russell.

 

“If this is the case, then a physical battle is the answer after all.”

 

And his body was separated in two. Even Russell, who had seen many things, had never seen anything like this before.

 

It seemed as if the flesh and bones of a human had detached completely. Despite the fact that he had separated into two bodies, Girard appeared to be fully aware of his surroundings and had not lost his ability to think coherently.

 

“I knew most of the stories about you weren’t rubbish, but this was beyond my expectations. I see why the guy in the black robe warned me to be wary of you.”

 

“Do you know him?”

 

“We share the same goal. Why? Are you happy to see him?”

 

“Where is he?”

 

“He must be watching this place right now.”

 

Russell quickly recognized that Girard’s remarks were untrue. If someone were watching them, Russell would have detected their gaze.

 

Russell said nothing more and re-adjusted his grip on his firearm. Girard also raised his bone whip.

 

“You made a mistake by covering everything in ice. You, a warrior, cannot rush around on an ice rink as if it were flat ground. Don’t you think it’s ridiculous of you to limit your own movements?”

 

“I appreciate your care. Let’s start by removing the mouths in your eye sockets.”

 

Russell’s axe swung at lightning speed, removing half of Girard’s head.

 

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