Chapter 31
Chapter 31
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: The Sword Duke
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In *Knight Saga*, the Sword Duke Ishgard was a being comparable to the Elder Dragons.
He was incredibly strong and a figure of great renown, but he existed only in the lore. He had no notable events, nor did you ever actually encounter him. He was merely part of the background.
But just like the Elder Dragons, his existence was not one to be taken lightly.
He was the master of the Demon King Mitra and the final bastion protecting the Sanctuary of the Sura.
When Zephyr ascended to the throne of the Demon King, he did not intervene, saying it was only natural for the strong to become king.
When the Hero Locke invaded the Demon World to defeat the Demon King, he was, for some reason, nowhere to be seen.
The Sword Duke Ishgard.
A being once known as the Sword Demon or the Sword God before the Demon King Mitra took the throne.
One of *Knight Saga’s* mightiest figures, shrouded in a veil of mystery.
Now, with the Demon King Mitra afflicted by illness, the strongest in the Demon King's castle was not one of the five Great Generals.
The strongest was the monster of the Sura, from whom even the Demon King had to seek guidance.
It was the Sword Duke Ishgard.
&
The moment the Sword Duke drew his sword, the world transformed.
One could say the very air had changed. It would also be correct to say that an invisible force had blanketed the entire central plaza.
Felicia held her breath, and Ingong felt a sensation similar to when he had faced the Demon King.
It was different from when he had sensed the strength of Caitlin or Chris. Ingong felt as if he were witnessing a wonder of nature. A colossal waterfall, a cascade of lightning, an erupting volcano.
In his current state, it was impossible for Ingong to even fathom how powerful the being before him was.
The immense aura radiating from the man with the spear was still present. But he no longer dominated the situation as he had when he first appeared.
Karak swallowed dryly. Karma sank to the ground without realizing it. And in that instant, the man with the spear kicked off the ground.
A burst of blue energy erupted, momentarily piercing the Sword Duke's absolute pressure. A thrust as heavy as a mountain yet as swift as a flash of light was unleashed, but the Sword Duke did not move from his spot. He simply swung his sword.
Felicia didn't even know what had happened. A massive wave of energy swirled, and with a violent roar, the ground split open. It was as if a giant beast had raked the earth with its sharp claws.
The man with the spear hurried his second attack. The spear, spinning with the man, drew a large arc as it rained down on the Sword Duke, and again, the Sword Duke’s feet remained planted. A second sonic boom shook the central plaza.
And a third.
The Sword Duke finally took his first step. At that moment, the man threw his spear aside. He drove into the Sword Duke’s space and unleashed an explosion of blue energy!
It was a literal explosion. The blue energy, once condensed into a single point, swelled to tens, hundreds of times its size, and a tremendous roar swept across the entire central plaza. Felicia, watching, screamed.
“Sword Duke!”
It wasn't over. The real explosion was yet to come. From the deepest part of the blue flames that filled their vision, an incredible power could be felt. It was a force that seemed capable of bringing down not just the central plaza, but the entire fortress.
And in that instant, the explosion split in two.
It was cleanly bisected, as if cut by a sword, and then vanished.
There was no understanding the principle behind it. Faced with the blue energy splitting in two and disappearing, the party could only stare in astonishment.
Karak stood frozen, his mouth agape, and Karma wet herself a little. And Ingong pulled Felicia into an embrace.
“Gah?!”
Felicia cried out in surprise at the sudden movement, but Ingong didn't stop. He pulled her down, making her crouch beneath him, and shouted.
“Green Wind!”
White Eagle obeyed Ingong’s command. It spread its metal plates wide like wings, protecting Ingong and Felicia from the new explosion.
*KABOOM!*
*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*
A series of explosions rang out. From within Ingong’s arms, Felicia looked past White Eagle and finally understood what was happening.
The Shadow Puppets were exploding.
Some embraced the Dungeon Guardians as they blew up, while others exploded quietly where they stood. A few of them detonated near Ingong, but White Eagle’s force field blocked all the attacks.
“Prince!”
Karak raised his tattered shield to protect himself and Karma. Instead of answering Karak, Ingong looked past White Eagle and grasped the meaning of the chain explosions.
They weren't self-destructing to damage Ingong's party. They were all committing suicide to completely erase any information about themselves.
The man with the spear. He was strong. It seemed plausible that he could have slain the zombie dragon single-handedly.
Yet a warrior of his caliber had chosen to self-destruct. The Sword Duke's overwhelming strength was one thing, but the man's ability to make such a choice without hesitation was also astonishing.
Who was he? And who were the ones who sent him?
The simultaneous explosions didn't last long. After confirming on his mini-map that the Shadow Puppets had been annihilated, Ingong released Felicia and stood up.
“Good job, Nokba.”
At the light praise, White Eagle whirled toward Ingong. As expected, Green Wind's thoroughly peeved voice echoed in his mind.
‘Master! I am not Nokba. If I am Nokba, then Karak is… Karak?’
A vision of Green Wind’s face, her eyebrows furrowed in a V-shape as if to say *That’s not right*, flashed in his mind. Ingong chuckled, retrieved White Eagle, and checked on the rest of the party.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m fine. Just a little startled.”
Still sitting on the ground, Felicia caught her breath and shakily got to her feet. Looking over at Karak, he was helping up Karma, whose legs seemed to have given out. It looked like the time had come to retire the new shield he’d gotten at the Demon King’s castle.
Finally, Ingong turned toward the Sword Duke. The man who had bisected the spearman's explosion with his sword was now striding toward them.
Felicia whispered from beside him.
“That’s the Sword Duke. The one who gifted you the dragon hide.”
At the needless introduction, Ingong nodded and collected his breath. Even knowing he was an ally, his heart pounded.
At last, the Sword Duke arrived before the party.
He was tall. His face bore many wrinkles, a testament to his age, yet strangely, he didn't look weak or old. It wasn't just because he had displayed such monstrous strength moments ago. His frame was imposing, and there was not a trace of a frail old man about him.
Ingong tried to check the Sword Duke's status but soon gave up. The single slash that had blocked the explosion didn't seem to have been an ordinary strike for the Sword Duke, but it was impossible to even guess how much of his mental energy it had consumed.
He stood before Ingong and Felicia, smiled faintly, and then suddenly reached his arms out toward Felicia.
“Sixth Princess!”
By the time she realized what was happening, Felicia was already high in the air. The Sword Duke had unceremoniously shoved his hands under her armpits and lifted her high, as if she were a small child.
“Aack! Put me down!”
Felicia shouted, her face turning red, but the Sword Duke didn't listen. Instead, he laughed even louder and tossed her into the air. Catching her by the waist as she came down, he began to spin around and around on the spot.
“Hahaha! You’ve grown so much! The last time I saw you, you were just a tiny little thing! You’ve become a beautiful young lady!”
“Put me down! I said, put me down!”
As a red-faced Felicia cried out, the Sword Duke just let out a hearty laugh, spun a few more times, and finally set her down on the ground.
“Throwing a tantrum like that, you’re still a child after all.”
The Sword Duke grinned like a rascal, while Felicia sank to the ground, panting too hard to even argue. Karak and Karma just blinked, their faces showing they had no idea what they had just witnessed.
Could this mischievous old man before them truly be the same monster from moments ago?
As a finishing touch, the Sword Duke patted Felicia’s head before turning to Ingong. Startled, Ingong instinctively assumed a defensive stance, which drew a satisfied smile from the man. He crossed his arms and spoke.
“Ninth Prince, did you like the gift?”
The Sword Duke's gaze was fixed on Ingong's Dragon Scale Greaves. Snapping back to his senses, Ingong composed himself and answered quite calmly.
“Thanks to you, I was able to craft some fine equipment. Thank you.”
Although there was no blood relation between the Sword Duke and the Demon King’s children, he was a master-like figure to the Demon King. He was also an elder of the Sura, the paternal family of the Demon King's children, so to exaggerate a bit, he could be considered something of a grandfather.
Seeing Felicia, who was typically informal with everyone, use honorifics, Ingong figured it was best for him to do the same.
“I am glad to see you’ve made good use of it.”
Unlike with Felicia, had he never met Shutora before?
In the Sword Duke's eyes, there was no sign of the same warm welcome he’d shown Felicia, but rather a sense of curiosity.
He glanced around at the half-destroyed highest-grade Guardian and the shattered remains of the Black Dragon Partisan before asking Ingong.
“So, what happened here?”
After a moment of thought, Ingong revealed everything he had surmised. It wasn't a secret directly tied to his own safety, and given the scale of the matter, he felt it was an issue that the Demon King’s castle should handle.
Felicia, who had been listening idly while occasionally glaring at the Sword Duke, began to look flustered midway through.
“They were targeting brother Zephyr?”
“Probably. It’s not certain. But the man with the spear said something along the lines of us being here instead of the Second Prince, who had briefly left his post.”
He couldn't bring himself to call Zephyr "brother," so he referred to him as the Second Prince.
Karak tilted his head at Ingong’s words and asked.
“Hmm, I didn’t hear anything like that. How about you, Princess? You have the best ears among us.”
Felicia's hearing had been proven several times on the Enger Plains. She shook her head.
“I didn’t hear it either.”
The distance had been considerable, and the spearman's appearance itself had been too shocking.
Karak asked Ingong again, this time cautiously.
“Prince, this may be a strange thing to ask, but could it have been an auditory hallucination?”
“No, it’s hard to explain, but I definitely heard it.”
Ingong himself didn't know why he had been able to hear the man's voice. But it was definitely not a hallucination.
Felicia nodded.
“It’s strange, but it makes a lot of sense. In fact, it feels like it solves a mystery. Not just me, but almost everyone in the Demon King’s castle thought brother Zephyr would be the one to handle this mission. If they orchestrated this whole situation to lure him out, it would explain General Kashubal's death and their delayed assault on the fortress.”
It seemed Felicia had also pondered the same questions that had occurred to Ingong.
“The problem is, for what purpose were they targeting brother Zephyr?”
The simplest answer was to eliminate Zephyr, but Felicia didn't think so. As she wasn't a warrior, she couldn't properly gauge the strength of the man with the spear, but she didn't believe that preparations of this level would be enough to take down Zephyr, the strongest of the Demon King’s children.
Of course, there were variables. It was possible that, in addition to the man with the spear, they had other things prepared for Zephyr.
The drake ogre Mustafa and the skeleton king Vakarova who appeared on the Enger Plains.
The zombie dragon and the man with the spear who appeared at Thunder Doom Fortress.
Just as tension crept into everyone’s expressions, the Sword Duke spoke.
“I have a general grasp of the situation. It’s quite an interesting story.”
His face was as placid as it had been when he first appeared. Ingong asked.
“Sword Duke, do you have any idea who they might be?”
“Not particularly. This is the Demon World. Scum like this have always been around, now and in the past. They’ll probably still be here in the future when you, Prince and Princess, have come of age. The countermeasure is always the same.”
Instead of a playful smile, the Sword Duke clenched his fist. It was a simple gesture, yet it held a power that overwhelmed his surroundings.
“To become strong. If you cultivate the power to overcome any danger, all problems will be solved.”
It was simple, but it was certainly one of the answers. Had he not just overcome the crisis that befell Ingong’s party with his immense strength?
Karak gazed at the Sword Duke with eyes full of respect, and Karma’s eyes began to sparkle.
Only Felicia sighed as if in disbelief and said.
“More importantly, Sword Duke, what are you doing here? Though you did save us.”
The Sword Duke's appearance had been even more sudden than the spearman's. But Felicia already had an idea of the answer, as did Ingong.
The Sword Duke looked at Ingong and said.
“I came to meet the Ninth Prince.”
It was the answer they had expected. But Ingong and Felicia waited for the Sword Duke's next words. The Sword Duke obliged their expectations.
“It seems the Demon King has taken a deep interest in the Ninth Prince. Word that the audience hall was turned upside down reached even me, holed up in the Sanctuary.”
‘Sanctuary?’
Ingong tilted his head for a moment. According to the lore of *Knight Saga*, wasn't the Sword Duke supposed to be living in seclusion, wandering various lands?
The Sword Duke continued.
“As the Sixth Princess knows, I must spend most of the year in the Sanctuary. So I couldn't just sit and wait.”
Sanctuary.
The first thing that came to mind was the Sanctuary of the Sura. The homeland of the Sura, its location unknown even to Zephyr.
It made a certain amount of sense. Perhaps the Sword Duke was something like a guardian of the Sanctuary.
Having reached his own conclusion, Ingong focused again on the Sword Duke's words. The Sword Duke stared intently at Ingong and said.
“The Demon King never acts without reason. If the Demon King did something unprecedented at the audience, it was because he had a good reason.”
It wasn't a simple whim or a change of heart.
There was something special about the Ninth Prince.
“So I became interested as well, and now that I’ve met you in person, my interest has grown a little more.”
The Sword Duke looked at Ingong. His expression was the same as before, but his eyes were different. It felt as if he were being pierced by the Sword Duke’s gaze.
The Sword Duke smiled. He lowered his stance to meet Ingong’s eyes.
And just as the Demon King had done, he did something he had never done for any of the Demon King’s other children, including Zephyr.
“Ninth Prince, would you like to learn a thing or two from me?”
The Sword Duke’s tutelage.
As if on behalf of everyone in the Demon King’s castle, Felicia let out a cry of astonishment.
&
< Chapter 11 - The Sword Duke > End