Black Knight
The Black Knight’s muzzle was locked onto us with deadly precision.
At the same moment, the Dracore’s weight shifted hard to one side, its toes gouging deep into the earth. The upper torso pitched forward, and the entire machine tensed like a spring coiled to the breaking point.
Then, in that razor-thin instant, a blinding flash erupted from the Black Knight’s barrel.
I kept my eyes fixed on its muzzle until the very last moment. The trajectory I had etched into my mind projected perfectly onto reality. The cockpit’s violent shaking, the crushing pressure on my lungs—everything vanished.
All external stimuli cut off. My entire being narrowed to a single point.
—Bang!
A shattering crash exploded from directly behind us. It wasn’t a dodge. It was a precise evasion born from predicting the shot itself before it even left the barrel.
But the Black Knight didn’t stop there. Without hesitation it opened up with rapid fire, a relentless storm of bullets hammering toward the Dracore.
I crouched low and agile, slicing a zigzag path through the crowded buildings. I slipped past walls with inches to spare, barely rounding corners, evading every shot.
The instant its magazine ran dry, I seized the opening. I poured on speed and charged straight at the Black Knight.
The distance refused to close. It kept retreating, as though it would never allow close-quarters combat. It knew that with its Outer Force, any ranged attack against it was pointless.
Once it finished reloading, another barrage followed. I ducked back among the building frames. Walls exploded into fragments, but I survived the moment.
The Black Knight used that brief window to pull away even farther. The gap between us had grown wider than before.
At this rate, I would never break through.
So what the hell was I supposed to do?
Countless thoughts flashed through my mind. In the space of a heartbeat I ran through dozens of scenarios, but none felt decisive. My combat experience was pathetically limited, and calculations based on incomplete data could never yield a meaningful answer.
Which meant the only option was to rely on the one being who possessed the most combat data of all.
Luna would know what to do.
Luckily, words weren’t needed between us while Coupling linked our minds. Without hesitation I yanked Luna’s control lever and plunged directly into her consciousness.
What should we do in this situation?
“Hah… s-stop…!”
What came back was not a clear solution but Luna’s stifled moan.
She still had the strength to resist?
What a damn troublesome woman. Even on a battlefield where lives hung by a thread, her refusal to cooperate properly made fury boil up inside me.
So in that instant I couldn’t hold back the impulse. I raised my hand and brought it down hard on her ass without a shred of hesitation.
Smack!
“Kyaa…?!”
The startled jolt that ran through Luna’s body flooded straight into me through the Coupling. The sting that raced across her buttocks carried far more than simple pain—shame, and a strange, seething heat.
Even that irritated me, so I slapped her ass again.
Smack!
“Hngh… ah… ugh…!”
Emotion overloaded. Luna’s whole body shuddered violently, and a sobbing breath she tried to suppress rippled back through the feedback.
In that tangle of confusion and shame, Luna’s final line of resistance finally collapsed.
I reversed the very technique she had used to dominate so many partners, twisting the flow until I reached the core of her mind.
Luna’s pulse twisted.
Her heart hammered wildly. The Coupling’s flow shook with irregular turbulence.
From within that chaos I dragged Luna’s consciousness into the center of my own.
She tried to resist, but it was already meaningless.
Her captured consciousness spun around me. From that center I asked her once more.
So tell me—what do we do? How do we win?
Beyond language, it was less a question and more a command.
Finally, something flowed from Luna’s mind. It had neither shape nor voice, yet it contained exactly the answer I needed.
I seized it and opened my eyes.
Inside the Dracore cockpit. In real time, barely a second had passed.
But that sliver of time had been more than enough for the Black Knight to finish aiming. The instant my eyes opened, a muzzle flash was already roaring toward us.
I gave Luna the order without hesitation.
—I’m using Outer Force. Get ready.
The moment that intent reached her, an immediate response surged back from Luna.
Two consciousnesses overlapped, generating a powerful wave that traveled all the way to the Dracore’s core.
What came next was pure instinct.
The Dracore’s hand thrust forward. In an instant, deployed Outer Force wrapped around the machine’s front like a shield.
And right then, the Black Knight’s bullets slammed home.
—Kwa-gwang! Kang!
The Outer Force barrier vibrated in rapid succession. A crushing pressure like a hammer blow to the skull engulfed my entire body, but the shield held without a single crack.
This was enough. Trusting the barrier I had created, I sprinted at full speed through the storm of bullets.
My pace was on an entirely different level from before.
The instant Luna’s consciousness fell completely into my grasp, the machine responded as though it had become an extension of my own body.
The Dracore’s joints read my intentions and moved a fraction ahead of them. Everything I needed prepared itself without me having to ask.
In this moment our two minds fused into a single purpose.
Closer. Even closer.
Before the Black Knight could empty its magazine I closed the distance and drew the built-in blade.
The Black Knight responded in the same instant, drawing its own blade.
The two machines collided.
Metal screamed against metal as the blades clashed. The shock raced up my arms and into my shoulders.
Rather than meet force with force, the Black Knight instantly retreated a step then lunged forward again, launching a counterattack. Its blade sliced upward at a sharp diagonal, carving a lethal arc toward the Dracore’s flank.
The movement was as precise as a predator fixing its prey in its sights.
I raised my blade to intercept. The impact rattled my entire frame and knocked me back a step.
It used the opening to swing horizontally from the left. I reflexively crouched the machine and curled the blade inward, letting the attack slide past. Then I reversed the flow and drove my own blade toward the Black Knight’s side.
But it had predicted that too. Blades scraped with a screech of sparks, and the Dracore’s joints groaned under the strain.
We traded blows without missing a single opening, blades flashing again and again.
The air’s resistance turned to searing heat along the metal. Every collision of blades birthed sparks from the clashing Outer Force.
In that chaotic storm where the atmosphere itself seemed to rupture and reform, I sorted through the feedback pouring in from Luna and chose my next move.
Twist the wrist, shorten the angle, pour Outer Force into the blade tip and strike a half-beat faster.
Dozens of decisions and counters unfolded within a single second. Every sense burned white-hot.
Normally it would have been impossible to handle such movements alone.
But the expanded consciousness granted by Coupling was not simple addition. It was a new existence born from the multiplication of two minds and senses.
The instant those overlapped minds and senses condensed to their limit—
I exploited the microscopic opening created while dodging an attack. Using it as a fulcrum, I twisted the machine and poured every ounce of Outer Force and velocity into the blade’s edge.
The compressed power shot forward in a straight line and pierced the Black Knight’s core.
For a moment the Outer Force convulsed.
Pressure bloomed outward. A gap finally tore open from within.
Crack—!
The Black Knight’s chest armor twisted and ripped apart. Irregular waves of Outer Force leaked through the torn black metal.
We were almost there. I gripped the blade tighter and tried to press forward, one step, then another.
But the machine slowed.
Visibly. Painfully.
The reaction speed was wrong. The joints moved as though they were fighting me. I tried to raise my head and assess the situation.
My vision swayed in slow motion. Thoughts began to sink. It felt like the circuits in my brain were snapping one by one.
Then a hot sensation trickled across the bridge of my nose.
Blood.
It gushed, filling my mouth with the taste of iron. At the same time my mind grew distant.
—Overlord.
The word rose in my fading thoughts, and consciousness plunged into darkness. Everything I had been controlling slipped through my fingers like sand.
I clenched my teeth. I couldn’t fall yet.
I just had to finish it.
But my will no longer mattered. My senses began to fade one by one as though the power had been cut. My vision warped completely.
All feedback vanished. A hollow emptiness where the Coupling had been swallowed me.
And in that instant, the Black Knight’s movements changed.
It had caught my faltering motion. Without hesitation it swung its blade again. A thunderous crash tore one side of the cockpit wide open.
The sickening screech of ripping metal. The blade’s tip grazed right beside me, brushing the nape of my neck.
I was going to die. Every nerve in my body screamed that single fact.
Instead of pulling away, I leaned the machine toward the Black Knight.
Running now would only delay death. So I might as well attack.
With the Dracore already impaled, I drove my blade into its body. An Outer Force barrier had formed around it in the meantime. Our two energies collided, and within that violent tremor I felt something shatter.
Whether it was me or the enemy, I couldn’t tell.
In that breaking moment my consciousness sank into darkness.
When I regained awareness, an unfamiliar landscape stretched before me.
There was no trace of the battle with the Black Knight. Only a world of ruins and ash remained.
Buildings lay collapsed like a war zone. Black smoke rose from the streets while flames crawled across the asphalt. The air stank of burning and echoed with screams that might have been hallucinations.
I was still trying to comprehend what I was seeing when a chilling presence and a heavy sound came from nearby. I turned—and saw an Outer.
The instant I witnessed the monster’s form, I reflexively dropped low and threw myself into the nearest ruined building.
I pressed my back to the wall, struggling to steady my breathing, when I suddenly sensed a small presence behind me.
…Who is it?
I held my breath and slowly turned around.
From behind a pile of collapsed debris, a young girl with silver hair matted by ash and blood stared straight at me.
“Who are you… oppa?”
The silver-haired girl kept her eyes fixed on me and asked the question with extreme caution.
