The Vanity of Knights
The ones who don't even wear armor—what kind of knights are they?
The ones who don't even wear armor—what kind of knights are they?
"Guh...!"
Bloody foam bubbled from the upper-grade knight's mouth. Kyle gave his wrist a short twist. With a wet schlick, the blade slid sideways and severed the windpipe cleanly. When Kyle yanked his sword free, the knight collapsed to the floor, spewing more blood.
"How did he suddenly get so fast...!"
Derrickson’s face twisted in pure shock as he shouted. Kyle offered no reply. He was already moving again.
Slice!
The arm of the nearest middle-grade knight flew off from the shoulder down. Before the scream could even escape, Kyle’s foot shattered the man’s knee. Crunch!
He stepped past the collapsing body and slit the throat in one smooth motion. Blood sprayed. Kyle charged through the crimson mist toward his next prey.
"Aaaagh! Stay back!"
One lower-grade knight raised his sword in terror. Kyle didn’t bother meeting the blade. He drove an elbow into the man’s jaw, shattering it, then rammed his sword into the gut.
Shunk.
The scream never made it past the lips. The sword withdrew, and the body crumpled.
"Damn it!"
"Stop him!"
Clang!Clang-clang-clang!
Derrickson and the remaining upper-grade knight attacked at the same time. Kyle didn’t take either strike head-on. Derrickson’s slash carried terrifying power. The other knight’s thrust was equally lethal. Yet the flaws in their romance-novel-style swordsmanship were glaring.
‘All show, no substance.’
Kyle’s blade slid diagonally along Derrickson’s sword. Aura scraped against aura, spraying sparks. Kaaang!
The instant the sword path faltered, Kyle drove his blade into Derrickson’s side.
Shunk!
"Graaagh!"
Derrickson vomited blood and staggered back. True to his rank as an upper-grade knight, he retreated the moment he was wounded. The speed with which he pulled away—provided it wasn’t a fatal blow—set him apart from the middle-grade knights.
In that opening, another middle-grade knight lunged at Kyle’s back.
"Die!"
Kyle didn’t even glance behind him. He pivoted on his toes. His sword drew a low arc.
Slice!
The knight’s thigh split open deeply. As the man fell, Kyle’s blade stabbed into the nape of his neck.
Shunk.
Blood pooled across the floor.
What followed was a massacre.
The Golden Lion Knights tried to overwhelm him with numbers. But numbers only matter when there is proper coordination. And these men had a fatal weakness long before that.
‘What kind of nerve lets them fight without armor?’
Every member of the Golden Lion Knights wore only their formal uniforms—stylish black-and-gold attire adorned with lion insignias on the shoulders, sleeves, and chest. It looked impressive. It carried dignity. It was the sort of outfit noble young ladies would cheer over.
But on the battlefield, in Kyle’s eyes, it was garbage. Wearing something like that in war was just asking to be turned into a pincushion by arrows.
‘Even the righteous sects weren’t this bad.’
If they had been wearing proper steel plate, he wouldn’t have been able to slaughter them so easily.
"If you’d worn proper armor, you wouldn’t be suffering like this," Kyle muttered as he cut down yet another middle-grade knight charging at him.
The remark made the surviving knights bristle with rage.
"How dare you suggest that we, proud knights, should wear the same crude lumps of iron that common foot soldiers wear!"
"Do not insult a knight’s pride, you worthless scoundrel!"
Even Derrickson, bleeding as he retreated, raised his voice in fury.
‘Seriously, I just can’t understand how knights think in these romance-fantasy worlds.’
It wasn’t just from his perspective as the former leader of the Blood Cult. Even drawing on memories from his previous life in Korea, Kyle found it incomprehensible. The mindsets of his two past lives differed greatly, yet both agreed on one thing regarding these romance-novel knights.
‘The fact that people who call themselves knights refuse to wear armor and insist on uniforms is strange from the start.’
Kyle’s sword was undeniably fast and lethal. But if they had been wearing armor, roughly seventy percent of his attacks would have been blocked or greatly weakened. With armor, they could have even infused their own aura to deflect his.
Yet the reason they refused to wear it—the reason they considered it humiliating—was painfully simple.
‘It just doesn’t look cool.’
To the eyes of women who read romance-fantasy novels—or the women of this world—armor lacked appeal. Contact with a knight in steel was uncomfortable. It ruined the elegant lines of a knight’s body. It was purely for the sake of looking impressive to noble young ladies.
That was why they clung to their uniforms. They wore clothes suited for social parties, not battle. Most of them had never even set foot on a truly dangerous battlefield.
‘The truly brutal wars were all fought by Grandfather’s generation anyway.’
A knight existed for the battlefield. The moment they forgot that and began mistaking their role for romance and showmanship, their fate was sealed.
"That’s not a knight’s pride—it’s the pride of a mannequin meant to entertain women," Kyle said, continuing his slaughter.
"Mannequin?!"
"What a tasteless scoundrel who knows nothing of a knight’s elegance!"
Perhaps because so many of their comrades had already fallen, murderous intent now burned in the knights’ eyes. No longer did they seek to subdue him—they clearly meant to kill.
Yet Kyle handled their desperate attacks with ease. A slight shift of his blade was enough to deflect them completely. The moment a knight’s sword slid aside, his armpit became exposed—a gap that plate or chain would have protected. Even aura could have blocked the strike.
But there was only thin fabric there now.
Kyle’s sword plunged in without resistance.
Shunk!
"Aaaaargh!"
The blade pierced beneath the armpit. The knight screamed in agony. Kyle twisted the sword, slashed it free in one swift motion, and withdrew.
Spluuurt—!
Blood gushed from the wound.
‘Posing like that leaves them full of holes.’
The knights who continued to charge exposed countless new weaknesses. Kyle never missed a single one.
Splurt—! Splurt—! Shunk—! Spluuurt—!
Knights kept falling. The waiting room was drenched in blood in moments.
"Aaaagh! My arm!"
"Fall back! Get back!"
"Block him! I said block!"
"Monster…! It’s a monster!"
Kyle didn’t stop. Soaked in blood, clothes torn to shreds, feeding on the pain from his own wounds, his sword grew only sharper. Crueler. He wasn’t in a frenzy. Every cut was cold, calculated.
It didn’t take long. Yet in that short time, more than half the Golden Lion Knights had been destroyed. One upper-grade knight lay dead with his throat pierced.
The other two staggered, suffering deep wounds. Of the twenty-five middle-grade knights, ten were dead and twelve had lost arms or legs. Among the lower-grade knights, eleven of twenty lay bleeding on the floor. Very few still stood.
The waiting room floor had turned into a slick mire of blood. Broken swords and severed limbs littered the ground. Every breath carried the thick metallic stench of gore deep into the lungs.
And in the center of that carnage stood Kyle.
"I was hoping you’d entertain me a little more," he said, the corner of his mouth twisting into a grin. Blood dripped steadily from the tip of his sword. His breathing was ragged, yet his eyes shone far clearer than before. A bloody crimson glow that even swallowed the color of his irises gleamed with terrifying intensity.
"M-monster..."
One lower-grade knight stumbled backward.
"That’s not human..."
Kyle shook his head at the words.
"No. You’re all simply too weak."
Right then—
Creeeeak.
The waiting room door opened. Footsteps settled onto the pool of blood.
It was Valgrim Hartvalt.
The former Duke of the North stepped over the threshold and swept his gaze across the room. The corpses covering the floor. The groaning knights. The blood-soaked ground. And Kyle standing at the center of it all.
Valgrim took a deep breath of the iron stench that stung his nose.
"Hoh."
A ferocious smile spread across his lips.
"You certainly made quite the mess."
Inside the blood-drenched waiting room, the former Duke wore an expression of utter satisfaction.
"These men were never true knights to begin with," Kyle replied to his grandfather as if it were obvious. "If they had worn proper armor, I wouldn’t have been able to do this."
Derrickson’s face twisted at those words. While trying to staunch his bleeding, he exploded with fresh rage at Kyle’s continued talk of armor.
"Your Grace! That damned armor nonsense again! How far do you intend to insult us?!"
Valgrim’s eyes turned toward Derrickson.
"Hoh… so wearing armor is shameful?"
"Y-Your Highness."
Derrickson flinched under the gaze. The former Duke’s stare was ice-cold. Still, he forced his chin up. He believed he was in the right. Even if that scoundrel had massacred the Golden Lion Knights on this scale, he was convinced a knight’s honor remained untarnished.
"That is correct, Your Highness! How could a noble knight of the great Hartvalt Duchy ever don the crude lumps of iron that lowly foot soldiers wear?!"
A noble knight who wielded aura was different from crude commoners. Only elegant uniforms were permitted. The knights, suppressing their pain or groaning in agony, looked to Valgrim with expectation. They believed he would punish the scoundrel.
‘No matter how much interest His Highness the former Duke has shown that scoundrel lately, this has crossed the line!’
A brief silence fell.
Then Valgrim spoke.
"How very strange."
His eyes held nothing but cold contempt for Derrickson.
"Those who followed me for decades as we carved out this northern land—all of us wore those very same crude iron armors and helmets while rolling around the battlefield."