Chapter 269: The Tin Knight and The Banquet of Madness (9)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 269: The Tin Knight and The Banquet of Madness (9)
“Agh, seriously! Is this a troll's nest or something?! Why do they just keep coming, one after another!”
[The 'Tin Knight' says that this is what it's like to fight a major power!]
[The 'Tin Knight' says he probably can't block everything from that guy, so she needs to watch her own back!]
“What?”
Dorothea was momentarily taken aback by the Tin Knight's words.
It was incredibly rare for her familiar to show such a sign of weakness.
But there was no time to ask for a detailed explanation.
[The 'Tin Knight' shouts to get down!]
Adelaide was the only one who could react to the Tin Knight's shout in time.
Adelaide grabbed the waists of Dorothea and Sophia, who were healing her, and threw them to the ground. An instant later, something swept over their heads.
Slice!
Lying on her back, Dorothea tilted her head back and saw it.
“Hah.”
A sound like a gust of wind escaped her lips.
Everything taller than an adult's waist had been sliced away.
Buildings, trees, and the undead Dorothea had summoned—all without distinction.
Staring at the sight of everything in her view cleanly bisected, her mind froze in sheer disbelief before she could even begin to analyze it logically.
‘Wait, then what about him?’
Startled, Dorothea shot up and looked ahead.
There, the Tin Knight and the Lion Duke were locked in a terrifying clash.
Shwing!
The Tin Knight narrowly dodged the Lion Duke's sword with a roll.
The Tin Knight seized the brief opening to stab precisely at the Lion Duke's neck, but the duke launched a counterattack without so much as flinching.
The moment sword met shield, a deafening roar erupted, and the Tin Knight's body slid backward.
The Lion Duke ignored the Tin Knight and tried to charge toward Adelaide, but the Tin Knight slammed his shield into the duke's side first.
This time, it was the Lion Duke's turn to be sent sliding sideways.
Immediately after, the Tin Knight's sword shone with a blinding light as his mana drained away.
SHWAAAAAAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dozens of slashes, unleashed in a single breath, tore into the Lion Duke's entire body.
The sword energy, having shattered the black armor, lunged forth to carve into the Lion Duke's flesh beneath.
However, the Lion Duke's body, wreathed in mana like golden flames, repelled the attack head-on.
Several scratches appeared and drew blood, but they were far from fatal.
The Lion Duke's eyes pierced the Tin Knight.
Whether he now recognized him as a threat or realized he couldn't slaughter the Lennarts without getting past him, a powerful fighting spirit erupted from his body.
Clang! Clang! Crack!
After three exchanges of blows, the Tin Knight's sword broke as if it could take no more.
Immediately after, a chilling violet lightning crackled from the Lion Duke's sword.
Crackle!
The Tin Knight initially moved to block the attack with his shield, but for some reason, he pulled it out of the sword's path.
Slice!
As a result, the Tin Knight's left arm was severed from his body.
No, to be precise, it was torn off. The force behind the attack was so immense that the wound looked less like a cut and more like it had been mauled by a great beast.
Despite the shocking sight of his entire forearm vanishing, the Tin Knight didn't panic.
As if he had expected as much, he quickly rolled and retrieved his severed left hand and shield from the ground.
“Sir Knight!!”
With a cry that was almost a scream, Adelaide shot forward.
The Lion Duke, his armor shattered, fixed his eyes on Adelaide, his sword about to strike down once more.
But the Tin Knight, who had closed the distance in an instant, cut the attack short with a body slam.
[The 'Tin Knight' shouts, "Attack!"]
As if responding to her teacher's call, Adelaide's sword struck the Lion Duke's side.
Thunk!
“Ugh!?”
Adelaide's eyes widened in shock.
It felt like she had swung her sword into a bundle of incredibly tough, elastic fibers.
The slash, powerful enough to reduce a large carriage to scrap in an instant and cleave a heavily armored knight in two, armor and all, had stopped without penetrating even a coin's depth.
Thwack. The Lion Duke's hand seized Adelaide's wrist.
Adelaide tried to pull her hand away, but she was once again stunned.
‘What is this strength...!’
Ever since she'd grown proficient in wielding the power of her belt, Adelaide had never been outmatched in physical ability.
Yet the Lion Duke's strength, as he tried to wrench the sword from her grasp, was greater than hers. And this was despite Adelaide gripping the sword with both hands and her full body weight, while the duke held it with just one.
[The 'Tin Knight' shouts, "Dropkick!"]
Without a shred of doubt or hesitation, Adelaide instantly followed the Tin Knight's command that entered her mind.
Hanging from the Lion Duke's left hand, she curled into a ball and then, with her full weight and momentum, kicked him with all her might.
As the Lion Duke's body lurched and lost its balance, the Tin Knight—who had somehow swapped the sword in his right hand for his shield—slammed it into the duke.
The blow, imbued with immense mana, sent the Lion Duke flying backward with a blast of wind pressure.
Dorothea and Sophia rushed to their side.
“Hey, you, what happened to your arm!”
[The 'Tin Knight' insists this is better than having his shield shattered!]
In other words, there were attacks that would shatter the shield even if the Tin Knight tried to block them.
Realizing the threat anew, Dorothea grumbled but placed a hand on the Tin Knight's left shoulder.
As she poured in more mana, separate from the remote supply, the wound's restoration speed increased dramatically, and the arm reformed to its complete shape.
Dorothea asked, short and to the point.
“Give me a plan.”
[The 'Tin Knight' requests a shield reinforcement and a new sword from Dorothea!]
[The 'Tin Knight' tells Dorothea that aimed attacks won't land properly anyway, so she should scatter wide-area attacks!]
[The 'Tin Knight' asks Sophia to protect their allies from being caught in Dorothea's attacks!]
The two women reacted instantly.
Dorothea's staff tapped the Tin Knight's shield, and a barrier that should have deployed as a sphere to protect its user was instead compressed, coating the shield's surface.
A white light emanated from Sophia, enveloping the Tin Knight and Adelaide, harmonizing with their mana without interfering.
And the moment that work was finished—no, half a beat sooner—the Lion Duke charged the party.
Adelaide leaped forward to buy time, followed by the Tin Knight, who gripped a sword Dorothea had summoned from thin air.
KRA-KOOOOM!
The moment the Lion Duke's and Adelaide's swords clashed, a tremendous shockwave erupted, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Outmatched in weight and destructive power, Adelaide couldn't hold her ground and was pushed back, but the time she bought was enough for the Tin Knight to arrive.
The Lion Duke swung another terrifying slash as if to shatter the weapon again, but this time, the result was different.
The shield, layered with the Tin Knight's mana manipulation, shock deflection, and Dorothea's barrier, brilliantly blocked the Lion Duke's strike. This meant the conditions were now perfect for the Tin Knight to utilize his skills.
BOOM! CRACK! THWACK! CRUNCH!
The Lion Duke's barrage of attacks was truly ferocious.
Each blow split the earth and made the air scream. The sight of his golden hair whipping about like a mane made it instantly clear why he had earned the title of Lion Duke.
But the Tin Knight did not yield.
When he lacked strength, he preempted his opponent by taking a stance that made it difficult for the duke to exert his full power. When he was outmatched in speed, he controlled the distance so the duke couldn't capitalize on it. He countered by seeing through the torrent of destructive sword energy and severing its flow.
With every clash against the Lion Duke, his mana drained in chunks, but with Dorothea nearby, a much smoother remote mana supply covered the consumption.
His other companions weren't idle, either.
Realizing that any ordinary undead would be swept up in the aftershocks and crumble just by getting near the two, she began to indiscriminately saturate the surrounding area with malice and curses.
The Lion Duke was unfazed by the malice, which would have been life-threatening for an ordinary person to even breathe, but when she raised the output to the point where even building debris began to melt, his movements started to slow.
Of course, at this level, it would have been difficult for the living Dorothea and Adelaide, and even the inanimate Tin Knight, to avoid the ill effects. However, Sophia's holy power protected them, allowing the damage to be inflicted solely on the Lion Duke.
Beneath the armor shattered by the Tin Knight, the Lion Duke's exposed flesh slowly began to succumb to the poison.
And it was Adelaide's role to inflict more wounds on his body so the poison could spread more effectively.
BAM! KABOOM! KRA-KOOOOM!
Each time Adelaide's sword struck the Lion Duke's body, a noise that was hard to believe came from a clash of metal and flesh rang out.
Her determination was clear: if she couldn't cut him down in one blow, she would do it in dozens, or even hundreds.
Of course, it wasn't an easy task.
The Lion Duke's body, reinforced with mana like golden flames, was like a natural fortress. Light, probing attacks didn't even leave a scratch; only when Adelaide put her entire body into a strike could she land a meaningful blow.
In other words, she had to expose a massive opening with every single attack.
A tactic that was nothing short of suicidal against a foe as strong as the Lion Duke.
But Adelaide didn't hesitate. She wasn't afraid.
She had faith that her teacher would block any attack aimed at her.
The Tin Knight lived up to his pupil's trust.
Facing the Lion Duke, a veritable storm in human form, he didn't back down an inch, blocking every single one of his ferocious attacks.
And at last, the Lion Duke lost his strength and staggered.
The slashes of the Tin Knight and Adelaide left a large, X-shaped scar on his body.
Just as Dorothea, watching from behind, clenched her fist in triumph...
RUUUMBLE-KRAKOOM!
A sudden clap of thunder echoed from the sky, and soon, a light rain began to fall.
Normally, it would have been nothing more than a natural phenomenon.
A common occurrence, something that had happened countless times all over the world, just happened to be taking place here.
But the Lion Duke was looking up at the sky.
As if he were assigning some meaning to this event, as if a fragment of his submerged ego had been stirred.
And then, lightning struck.
Not from the sky, but from the ground.
BZZZZZZT!
As violet lightning erupted from the Lion Duke's entire body, he began to regenerate as if time were reversing.
His skin, which had turned a deathly black from the poison, returned to its original color, and the wounds carved all over his body filled in.
His armor was still broken, and the mana emanating from him had diminished somewhat, but physically, he had returned to a near-perfect state.
Sophia analyzed the phenomenon.
“It seems he's activated the body's own healing abilities to their absolute limit.”
“Is this his trump card?”
“I wish it were, but if my guess is right, he can probably do it over and over again unless we drain all his mana or kill him instantly.”
“That's cheating!!”
After letting out a lamenting complaint, Dorothea looked ahead once more.
She had no desire to repeat a war of attrition against an opponent who could regenerate an unknown number of times.
This was especially true because the Lion Duke wasn't some mindless berserker who only smashed the enemy in front of him; throughout the battle, he had repeatedly shown that he understood the core of the fight by targeting Dorothea and Sophia whenever he had the chance.
‘The Jabberwock? No, that might work in another dimension, but summoning it in the middle of a city would be a catastrophe. A curse bomb? I can barely track their movements as it is. How am I supposed to hit him with a thrown bomb?’
Just as Dorothea was lost in thought...
“...I'm truly curious how things must have gotten twisted to lead to this. At this point, I'm seriously tempted to just throw all of you into the heavens. I feel like if you stayed for just a week, you'd turn the entire place upside down.”
A voice that went beyond dumbfounded, tinged with a hint of lament.
Seeing Algind descending from the sky in the arms of the masked stranger, Dorothea unconsciously spoke in the Tin Knight's style.
“The ranged DPS has arrived.”