Chapter 265: The Tin Knight and The Banquet of Madness (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 265: The Tin Knight and The Banquet of Madness (5)
“Damn it, how, how could things get so twisted!”
“I told you we should have retreated somewhere else first! At this rate, we won’t even be able to escape! We’re all going to be cornered and killed!”
“That’s right! If we had just moved to the Duke’s territory or Nemea Castle before raising our army, this wouldn’t have happened!”
“Cut the crap, you morons! If we had made such an obvious move, do you think that cunning Empress would have just sat back and watched? This was the best way to catch her off guard! You all agreed to this, and now you’re blaming me?”
The Council of Elders was cornered.
Their seizure of the Imperial Palace had failed, and every report from the provinces was grim.
No, even those “grim reports” had stopped arriving at some point.
There’s a saying that no news is good news, but applying that maxim to the current situation was an overly optimistic fantasy.
Watching the Council members shriek at each other, assigning blame, the head of the Council of Elders wore a bitter smirk.
As they spat and shouted with bloodshot eyes, he could see none of the dignity befitting the Empire's most prestigious families.
After all, things like grace and nobility stemmed from having room to breathe. It was foolish to expect such qualities from men who were backed into a corner.
The fact that the Duke they had confined had never shown such a wretched side, even at the very end, made this theory somewhat less credible, but the head of the Council of Elders chose to neatly ignore that fact, completing his self-justification.
The Duke had to be ‘a foolish head who brought ruin to his bloodline with his poor judgment,’ not ‘a politician who valued compromise and balance.’
Only then could the coup they orchestrated be seen as a grand decision for the sake of their bloodline, rather than an ugly struggle to survive a power grab.
“All of you, be silent. What good will come of us fighting amongst ourselves now?”
“Council Head.”
“We have that child, Hilda, and we have Werner. They will never let them get inside.”
In Werner’s case, he was being forced to fight, with his family held hostage, but the Council Head saw no need to mention that part.
It would become a massive problem later, but it didn’t matter if they couldn’t survive the present.
“B-but if we just wait here, the situation will only get worse. We need another plan.”
“There is one.”
With those words, the head of the Council of Elders looked down at the floor.
A secret among secrets, treated as top-secret even within the ducal family, known only to the family head and other key figures of similar rank.
A true last will, separate from the Lion Duke’s publicly known testament, heard only by his biological children.
「—When the angel in crimson armor descends upon the earth, open my coffin. So that I may greet her.」
His descendants did not know the true meaning of those words.
By hiring skilled and tight-lipped mages, all they had learned was that some extraordinary magic had been cast upon the coffin where the Lion Duke slept, and that the nature of this magic was something akin to resurrection.
Because the legend was so vague, it wasn’t something they could build a core plan around, but now, they had to grasp at straws.
If, by some miracle, the Lion Duke were to be fully resurrected, he could overcome this crisis with ease. And even if it were only a temporary and incomplete resurrection, it could still be the turning point they needed to change the twisted tide of events.
Of course, this meant completely ignoring the Lion Duke’s own last words… but wasn’t this all for the sake of the family?
The head of the Council of Elders firmly believed that the Lion Duke would understand, that it was all for the sake of his descendants.
*
There’s a saying that in the country of the one-eyed, the two-eyed man is the anomaly.
Among a ‘bloodline where most members possess outstanding martial talent,’ having ‘ordinary talent’ was, in itself, a rarity.
Unfortunately, in a negative sense.
A man named Werner von Lennart was a perfect example of this.
While his peers toyed with and hunted down ferocious beasts with their innate physical abilities, he had to flee from the same beasts, narrowly escaping death.
While his contemporaries mastered the basics of over a dozen weapons before choosing one to specialize in, Werner couldn’t even fully master one: the art of the bludgeon.
Physical ability, resistance to poisons, rapid recovery, an innate sense for martial arts—he was denied even a single one of the qualities his kin were born with, qualities the exceptional among them possessed in their entirety.
On top of that, Werner’s era was an age of war.
Before the Iron Blood Emperor’s ascension, the days were filled with the Empire and the Magic State washing blood with blood, burying grudge with grudge.
The Lion Duke’s bloodline had the duty to protect the Empire, and to fulfill that duty, the youth of the bloodline had to burn their lives away.
In the midst of it all, Werner fought on and somehow survived.
Lacking the talent for dazzling and technical swordsmanship, he took up a club, the only weapon he was average with.
By being constantly attacked and wounded, he engraved the art of protecting his body into his very instincts.
He fought, and fought, and fought, and fought.
He survived as his seniors looked upon him with pity, as his genius peers who had garnered so much attention died, and as his juniors who had risen through the ranks far faster than him fell.
By the time he had become an old man who, by all rights, should have been buried long ago.
Werner was no longer called a dullard, but by another title.
The Lion of Nemea, the man with a hide that no attack could pierce.
The Empire’s strongest warrior, standing higher than any other martial artist on the continent.
And though the age of war had ended and his fame was treated as a relic of the past by the younger generation, the skill and experience he had accumulated layer by layer had not vanished.
Clang!
The moment the Tin Knight’s sword struck Werner’s shoulder, a sharp metallic sound rang out.
It wasn’t because he wore special armor.
—Concentrate mana on the point of impact to reduce damage.
It was a basic technique for any warrior who could wield mana, simply honed to its absolute limit.
The Tin Knight immediately tried to follow up with another attack, but Werner paid it no mind and swung his club with all his might.
Straightforward and crude, but tracing a supremely practical trajectory, the club collided with the Tin Knight’s shield.
KAANG!
The Tin Knight’s incredibly heavy body was sent flying backward like an empty tin can.
The force of the impact was truly terrifying.
The club, only slightly larger than a baseball bat, carried the destructive power of a wrecking ball from a construction site.
It was power that could tear a human body apart like a water balloon and easily turn most metals into scrap.
Most notably, his stance didn’t waver in the slightest, even while being attacked.
The sight of him taking any of the Tin Knight’s attacks with sheer grit while stubbornly swinging his club was utterly menacing.
Faced with a terrifying offense where a single direct hit seemed like it would be an instant knockout, the Tin Knight…
[The ‘Tin Knight’ marvels that this is a real-life version of super armor!]
…was truly, seriously, having the time of its life.
If it were just a matter of high defense, Mombi, whom it had fought in the north, was the same. But frankly, her actual combat skills weren’t that impressive.
In contrast, while Werner’s club was crude, it was packed to the brim with martial skill built through countless experiences.
Furthermore, while at a glance he seemed to be charging in recklessly, trusting in his sturdy defense, he was actually subtly adjusting his steps and posture to suppress any unnecessary damage.
For the Tin Knight, he was a truly delightful opponent.
The mana supplied remotely through the line, the firepower needed to pierce that golden defense, and the mana required to use it. The joy of weighing supply against consumption, finding the opponent’s openings, and analyzing and conquering a powerful boss piece by piece was truly exhilarating.
Werner, on the other hand, had to admit his misjudgment.
“…He’s even more than I thought.”
From their first meeting, Werner had realized the Tin Knight was a monster.
This in itself was quite remarkable.
Extremely few had ever succeeded in grasping the Tin Knight’s strength without prior knowledge.
This was because the Tin Knight was a magic doll.
It was impossible to gauge its strength by its physical conditioning or to estimate it by the amount of mana it held.
Moreover, the unconscious tells that humans reveal through their posture or attitude were completely absent from the doll’s body.
If one had to point to a clue, the quirks in its every action were one of the few, but in the Tin Knight’s case, the uniqueness of its soul made even this difficult to discern from an outside perspective.
Therefore, Werner’s realization of the Tin Knight’s strength was less a matter of logic and more a flash of intuition.
The kind of intuition only those who have crossed the threshold of life and death countless times can obtain.
However, even Werner had not thought it was ‘a monster to this extent.’ No, he couldn’t have.
The Tin Knight’s skill was on a transcendent level.
‘…To think the day would come when I’d be overwhelmed in terms of combat experience. This isn’t a matter of mere decades. Even if a man were to pour his entire life into the battlefield, he could not match the experience this knight has accumulated.’
Zero.
That was the number of effective hits Werner had landed on the Tin Knight since the battle began.
In short, he hadn’t managed to land a single proper blow.
One might argue that the Tin Knight hadn’t landed an effective hit on Werner either, but there was a world of difference between ‘getting hit and being fine’ and ‘not allowing a single mistake when one slip-up means the end.’
On top of that, the Tin Knight was improving its swordsmanship, shield work, and footwork in real-time, pressing Werner further.
‘The skills he has built are those of a straightforward knight, yet the way he uses them is like a hunter specialized in observing the enemy, finding their weakness, and finishing them off.’
Werner sensed his defeat.
He had planned to put up just enough of a fight to deceive the Council of Elders’ eyes before stepping aside anyway, but it seemed his opponent would surpass him in a fair fight, no tricks needed.
Besides, judging by the eerie mana enveloping the mansion and the quieting commotion, it was unlikely the Council of Elders would be calmly observing his actions and threatening his family.
After smashing various parts of the room under the guise of battle to eliminate any potential surveillance, Werner steeled his resolve to withdraw.
“You… no, I pay my respects to your skill, Sir Knight.”
CRASH! SLICE!
“It is difficult to fathom the journey you have walked. Normally, I would wish to see this to the end, but the situation is urgent.”
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
“Let us sheathe our swords, and go catch the culprits…”
CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG!
“……”
What? Why isn’t it stopping?
The thought that it might not understand words crossed his mind, but that didn’t seem right. When they first met and when this battle began, the Tin Knight had clearly shown it could communicate, even if it didn’t speak directly.
Then why?
[The ‘Tin Knight’ insists that the royal mesugaki is its disciple’s share, but this one is its own!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ passionately argues that it wants to skip dialogue boxes, not boss fights!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asserts that it’s much clearer to just beat everyone down than to waste time wondering if this is a ploy, a tactic, a fake surrender, or a real one!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that lion-like protective aura is cool, so it must teach it to its disciple!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ declares that you’re not going anywhere until it’s finished analyzing your techniques!]
The Tin Knight’s will-o’-wisp-like eyes flashed menacingly.
The Lion of Nemea broke out in a cold sweat.
He was a man who felt no fear on battlefields where blood flowed and flesh flew, but the madness before him seemed to be of a different breed altogether.
This was a sentiment shared by most who got involved with the Tin Knight.