Chapter 21: Death Knight

The ticking of my enhanced status gnawed at the edge of my thoughts, every heartbeat a reminder that my time was running short.

My gaze locked onto the six Zombie Dragons ahead, each one encased in glittering ice, grotesque sculptures frozen mid-snarl.

With my speed magnified, the distance between us vanished in a blur.

Cocytus cleaved the air with each swing, its icy edge singing.

Six strokes, sharp, merciless and the six abominations shattered like brittle glass, fragments of frozen scale scattering across the barren frosted land.

I scanned the battlefield, breath misting in the cold haze.

Just as Uncle Hekken had said, the liches lingered behind their frozen pawns, their skeletal forms half-entombed in ice. I surged forward.

The first fell easily, split in two by a single strike. I raised Cocytus for the next blow…

but a shadow fell over me.

Instinct roared louder than thought.

I brought Cocytus up just in time, steel colliding with steel in a shriek of sparks.

The impact hurled me backward like a broken doll, air ripped from my lungs.

The world spun until I crashed against something warm and soft.

Janbo. He had thrown his body into the path, enlarging himself mid-leap to cushion my fall before I struck Lahir’s walls.

Blood gushed from my lips, burning down my throat.

Pain screamed through my nerves.

My right arm still clung to Cocytus, but my left was gone, cleaved clean.

If not for the greatsword’s block, I would have been cut in two.

“RAKIII!” Reimei’s and Lily’s voices cracked the air, heavy with panic.

I forced a grin, though my vision wavered.

But the copper tang of blood is still on my tongue.

“Are you okay, Raki?” Zid’s voice trembled, his father already planting himself between me and the advancing figure.

I staggered, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “Coin… Double Toss.”

The twin coins spun into the air, flashing silver as they landed, both on heads.

A pulse of magic surged through me, fire and frost in my veins.

Sensation returned, phantom flesh weaving into being, I could feel both arms once more.

From the haze of smoke and shadow, the figure emerged.

A knight, clad in blackened steel, both hands clutching tainted blades that dripped with malice.

His voice rasped, heavy with contempt.

“Are you certain you are human?”, the Black Knight asked.

“I never forget a face,” the Black Knight sneered, his voice like steel dragged across stone.

“Especially not the Ice Demon who is the master of this region. 

If not for those three meddling humans, Elira would have burned beneath my blade three years ago”, the Black Knight added.

Father Damian’s expression darkened, fury etched deep into his features.

His voice trembled, not with fear, but with rage.

“Death Knight Morgan… So fate allows me to face you while I still draw breath.”

He turned sharply. “Zid, get Raki inside the walls of Lahir. Quickly!”

“Hurry!” he barked again, urgency cutting through the din.

But I stepped forward, blood still on my lips, determination burning hotter than the pain.

“No… Father Damian, Zid, buy me some time. I’ll handle that Death Knight.”

Father Damian’s eyes narrowed. “At best, we can give you half a minute.”

“That’s plenty,” I answered, gripping my azure greatsword, Cocytus tighter.

Light bloomed as Zid and his father raised their voices in unison.

“May the light of God flood this body with His grace, Fourth-rank Magic: Holy Aura!”

Morgan scoffed, lowering his tainted blades.

“Do you truly believe an old priest and his young apprentice can chain me down?”,Death Knight Morgan mocked.

But Zid’s voice thundered, his fist cloaked in searing brilliance.

“God blesses my strike with His light to scourge all evil, Fifth-rank Magic: Holy Fist!”

The Black Steel Katar gleamed white as Zid struck.

Sparks erupted, Morgan caught the blow between his twin corrupted swords, sneering in defiance, yet the force staggered him just long enough.

In that fleeting heartbeat, Father Damian’s chant rose above the battlefield.

“God, let Your presence descend, sanctify this ground so all evil shall be judged! Sixth-rank Magic: Divine Judgement!”

Radiance exploded outward.

The earth itself trembled as the Death Knight sank to one knee, dragged down as though the very light of heaven pressed him into the dirt.

“Card,” I whispered, and the Divine Tool appeared in my hand, the Cards of Ability, shimmering with sacred power.

“Flip.”

The deck spun in a flurry of blinding light, cards shuffling faster than the eye could follow, until one halted mid-air and turned over on its own, glowing with destiny.

“The Emperor…” The words slipped from my lips as I raised the card, its weight thrumming with unseen power.

“Exoplizo.” The command echoed not only in my voice but deep within my mind, reverberating like the toll of a celestial bell.

The world around me shattered.

I opened my eyes in a realm not my own, a dimension woven of symbols and shifting images, words older than time itself scrawled across an endless void.

Though foreign, they seared into my mind with perfect clarity.

Knowledge surged into me like a flood, each letter and image crashing into my consciousness until I thought my skull might burst from the weight of it.

When I returned to myself, the battlefield had shifted.

Death Knight Morgan was already rising, shaking off the effects of Father Damian’s Divine Judgement.

“Dice, Magic Penta Roll!”

Five dice materialized, spinning wildly before clattering down, two fives, two fours, and a three. Twenty-one.

“Raki, are you ready?” Zid’s voice trembled, his face pale as the Death Knight walked slowly toward us, relentless.

Morgan’s laughter grated like rusted chains.

“You Seresians never cease to irritate me, always clutching at the scraps of a sleeping god’s power.” His two blades dragged furrows in the ice as he advanced.

He raised his swords to cut Father Damian down who is focused on keeping Divine Judgement active.

“GROVEL TO THE GROUND!”words left my lips with the weight of a decree.

The Death Knight faltered, his armored knees buckling, crashing to the thin ice in shock as though the world itself had turned against him.

“Raki, was that your doing?” Zid asked while clutching his bleeding right arm.

I tightened my grip on Cocytus, my eyes never leaving the death knight. “So… this is the monster who slew Reimei’s parents, and Lily’s father.”

Morgan snarled, his voice breaking with fury.

“What sorcery is this?” He clearly has no idea what is happening.

I drew a ragged breath. “I don’t know myself… but if it has a name, it would be this: Divine Magic, The Emperor’s Authority.”

“Are you alright?” Reimei’s voice carried through the clash, her steps hurried as she broke past the line, Lily trailing after her.

“Sorry Raki, I couldn’t stop her,” Lily admitted, her bow still clenched tightly in her hand.

“This is the Death Knight who slew Lily’s father and your parents, Reimei. Do you have anything you wish to say to it?” I asked, my voice cutting through the silence.

“Nothing,” Reimei replied coldly.

“Lily?” I turned to her.

“I also have nothing to say,” she whispered, her staff trembling in her hands.

“TURN TO NOTHING!,” I commanded in a cold harsh voice.

The words left my lips like a decree, my sword Cocytus gleaming as its edge pointed at the groveling knight.

“I see… you are the Sleeping God’s summon…” Death Knight Morgan rasped, his voice breaking apart as his armored form crumbled into dust, scattering on the frozen wind.

Divine Magic, The Emperor’s Authority. Words given form, made absolute so long as my magic outweighs that of my target.

“SHATTER!,” I uttered, aiming the words to the hordes of frozen Undeads.

The command resonated through the battlefield.

The two half-frozen liches and the ranks of undead lizardmen cracked all at once.

The ice-clad bodies burst apart, fragments scattering like shards of broken glass.

But the liches’ unfrozen halves twisted grotesquely.

Black fluid seeped from their splitting flesh as hundreds of ruptures tore across them, refusing to let death take them cleanly.

“THAW!,” I commanded, Cocytus glowing faintly as my will spread outward.

The ice blanketing the field dissolved, turning to water that seeped into the soil.

With my senses slipping and the weight of Cocytus growing unbearable in my grasp, I quickly put the greatsword back into my Divine Gacha inventory.

The icy greatsword vanished from my hands, its cold presence vanishing as my control over it faltered.

“Did we… win?” Zid asked, his voice weak as Father Damian worked to mend his wounds.

“We endured,” Father Damian corrected, his tone heavy.

“Now, we only need to hold on until High Priestess Selena raises the barrier,”Father Damian added.

At last, the exhaustion I had been holding back surged over me.

My body and mind gave way, eyes dimming as a veil of light descended gently from the heavens.