At that moment, the knight vaulted into the air, his Sword of Disasters poised to pierce through the wall. Then he, Raon, and everyone else speeding toward him heard the sound of laughter.
It was Cale, laughing in disbelief. When he finally spoke, he sounded completely at ease. “I knew those damn bears were shrewd.”
The knight’s eyes wavered.
Only a moment ago, Cale had heard Mary’s voice. The necromancer had kept quiet in her invisible state, but she’d broken her silence to convey an urgent message. “Some bears I’m not controlling are on the move!”
Cale chuckled as he eyed the bear corpses racing over as if trying to stop the knight. There were some live ones in the mix—bears who had been playing dead.
He shifted his gaze to the knight pretending to rush at him. “You’re a clever bastard too.”
The knight was charging at Cale as if he’d abandoned all hope, but it was just a farce. “Oh, you saw through it?” He grinned, the hatred vanishing from his eyes. This, too, had been an act all along.
As he withdrew a magic scroll from his pocket, the bears sprang into the air, taking out scrolls of their own. They were about to teleport away.
“Catch them!” Gashan urged his men.
At the same time, the count bellowed, “Fire!” The catapults and archers started shooting at the bears.
“I may have lost, but I’m not ready to die just yet.” A smile formed on the knight’s serpentine face. The features revealed after his helmet’s destruction were decidedly snakelike, reminiscent of an imugi—a lesser dragon—that had yet to become a full-fledged dragon.
Still laughing to himself, Cale faced the one person who had caught on. While everybody else made a mad dash for Cale, Choi Han alone had realized something was amiss. Now he used the dead wyverns as a stepladder as he bounded into the air, almost perfectly in line with the knight’s movements. If he stepped on just one more wyvern corpse, he would reach the knight.
Raon separated from Cale, casting magic with a forepaw.
Choi Han pushed off the final wyvern’s head and launched at the knight, whose attention was still focused on Cale. He took full advantage of the man’s distraction.
The knight ripped the teleportation scroll, and he began to disappear. “This is for you, the bastard who has received a dragon’s protection…”
This time, his smile twisted with genuine rage. A human protected by a dragon deserved only death.
He swung the Sword of Disasters to block Choi Han’s flying assault, still speaking to Cale. “I’ll be back soon to finish you—ugh!”
Something had lanced him straight through.
The knight let out a moan, slowly lowering his head to see what had hit him. “Is that…my sword?”
It wasn’t the Sword of Disasters, though it was similar. He sensed the power of hurricanes, hailstorms, and volcanoes in this sword. Though it was fake, it resembled his own quite closely.
A childish voice sounded in his ear. “You’ll die first.”
The knight couldn’t see anyone at first. Then two eyes appeared from thin air—dark blue and shimmering brilliantly, with the slit pupils distinct to dragons. These eyes alone materialized to greet the knight.
Crackle!
A spark ignited, and the knight started to teleport. Even so, the sword impaling him drilled into his body.
Those dark-blue eyes opened wide, refusing to let him escape.
“Augh! Ghk!” The knight coughed up blood once again.
Choi Han didn’t miss that momentary opening. In the split second that the Sword of Disasters weakened, he used his black aura to lop off the knight’s arm.
Slash!
The severed arm reappeared as it moved out of the magic’s sphere of influence. Yet the knight had no time to focus on this. The Sword of Disasters returned and surrounded him once again. It destroyed the fake blade, but Raon’s power had already invaded his chest. The magical faux sword took on the shape of a dragon’s foot and sank its claws into his heart.
Crackle!
As the knight clutched at his chest, his Ancient Power born of natural disasters—the power that most closely resembled a dragon’s, which could only be defeated by Dragon’s Breath or a dragon’s bodily attack—smashed Raon’s magic sword.
Clang.
As the magic broke, a serpentine essence emerged from the knight’s stomach, around the spot where his energy center would be. His other Ancient Power had finally stirred to life.
Mary gasped, and a chill shook Cale to the core. At the same time, he saw the knight whistling soundlessly. Could it be…?
A shout tore from Mary’s throat. “I-I can’t control them!”
Cale read the movements of the knight’s lips: I told you, I can’t die yet.
Something clutched Choi Han’s ankles, and he glanced down to find a wyvern corpse. Even in death, the wyverns were slaves to the dragon slayer; the creature could never escape. The wyvern corpse shook violently, its skin hissing and popping like boiling water.
“Dodge it!” Cale snapped.
The creature was about to explode.
Those wyverns had chased the knight all the way to the wall. If they erupted, the wall and the tigers would be in danger. Cale couldn’t extend his shield to cover the catapults and the archers; if he did, they wouldn’t be able to attack the bears. There were also quite a few soldiers stationed along the wall.
Cale grimaced. This was why he hated wars.
Finding Cale’s consternation entertaining, the knight couldn’t hold back his mirth. “Ha ha ha!”
Crackle.
His form faded. This was the moment he’d been waiting for—with Choi Han restrained, Mary unable to control the wyverns, and Cale with no energy left to use his Ancient Powers. The dragon also continued to use nothing but magic.
The knight had planned for all of this.
Boom!
One of the wyvern corpses exploded, and that marked the beginning. The troops closest to the knight—those who were trying to escape with him—got caught up in the blast.
“Ahhh! Why are you doing this to us?!”
The wyvern’s explosion didn’t differentiate between friend and foe. Bears were also killed in the blast.
“Aaaugh! How could you?!”
“N-no! Ahh!”
The tigers retreated, gaping at the bears in horror. The knight was slaughtering the wyverns and the bears alike to carve a path for his escape.
He’s killing his own allies?
As dozens of wyverns exploded simultaneously, Cale hastily activated his shield to cover the soldiers.
Watching the chaos, the knight laughed. He didn’t know why nature had granted Ancient Powers to someone so weak, but the powers usually chose masters with similar temperaments to their own. That was why most average humans could only handle one.
Weakling scum.
There had to be an explanation for why a shield Ancient Power had selected this punk as its master. Everything in this world had a reason behind it. He scoffed at the redheaded fool, who overused his power to save the soldiers when he should’ve been focused on catching his enemy. Then the knight raised his head one last time.
“Skreee!”
A shadow swallowed up the ground near the wall. It belonged to a creature everyone had been too preoccupied to worry about: the fifteen-meter white wyvern. Even it had been unable to resist its master’s summons, dragging its injured body all the way to the wall.
The wyvern’s master then gave it one last order: “Die.”
With a great shriek, the wyvern fought against the command. Yet the beast was bound and had no choice but to obey. Nearly the size of a dragon, the monstrosity surged toward the wall—or, more specifically, toward Choi Han. He was its one and only target, the one most likely to get in its master’s way.
Choi Han’s shoulder was already injured, and Raon had no methods left to combat a dragon slayer. If that dragon slayer was already running away, though…
“Raon,” Cale said at last, “help Choi Han.”
Beside him, Gashan roared, “Duck!”
Cale squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact.
BOOM!