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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 240
🕑 Added 2025-06-27 08:02:51 +0000 UTCI readied my stance as the Death Knight closed in on me, but just as I raised my sword to parry an overhead chop, my eyes went wide in alarm as I felt a huge spike in mana output from the Death Knight, especially from his sword.
Instinctively, instead of taking the hit, I dodged at the last second, and I was relieved I did. The rusted sword whiffed past me, but it gouged a deep groove in the ground.
From the speed of its charge and the attacks of all the undead I have encountered so far, I greatly underestimated the strength, speed, and especially the simple yet refined form of that overhead chop. Not to mention the technique of boosting his mana into his body and weapon at the last moment. This was not some simple undead I could take lightly. Even now, when we are some distance apart, the Death Knight has recovered into a stance that leaves few openings for me to exploit.
I let out a deep sigh and spoke in the language closest to the Death Knight’s dialect that I knew, while performing a martial salute with my sword and unleashing my aura. “My apologies, I have been rude for not taking you seriously. I am Luke Ironcrest, son of Baron Alden Ironcrest, knight of the realm.”
At my words, the Death Knight froze for a second before straightening up and performing what most likely is his own version of a martial salute, and said in his hollow voice, “Zor'kaan vek'thal mor'az, vek drogar ka'zul val'kaar.”
Hmm… memory-fade, name, you, me, blood-honor, fight? The best I can translate it as is that he has forgotten his name, but he will face me in an honorable battle? I guess that is a knight for you, the moment I reveal I am of noble blood, it's all about honor.
Without a signal, we both fell into our stances as we eyed each other. But I was not going to stand around and play mind games. There was a saying I heard before that I liked the sound of, “He who strikes first, strikes twice.”
I blitz towards the Death Knight with my sword in a close guard as if I was going to jab my sword out at any part of his body the moment I got close. In response, the Death Knight quickly put one foot behind the other to show me a side profile, giving me a smaller surface area to strike at. But that was just a ruse on my part.
Just before I got into sword range of the Death Knight, I took advantage of his side profile stance and put a considerable amount of strength into the foot that touched the floor to pivot my trajectory toward the side his back was facing.
This amount of strength applied cracked the floor where I stepped, and also put quite a bit of stress on my leg. I could practically feel a tinge of pain shoot up my leg, going into my spine.
But despite the stress on my body, the ruse worked, and the Death Knight was too slow to position his sword to defend his back. What I did not expect was for the Death Knight to use one of his armored arms to block my strike. But despite watching his arm move into place to block the strike, I followed through with my swing. At the very least, I could take an arm from him.
When my blade clashed with his arm, there was a loud clash, but instead of feeling my blade cut through, my blade bit into his armored and very mana-saturated arm about an inch or two. And instead of backing off from me to get some space to recover, the Death Knight used the fact that my blade was embedded in his armor.
He twisted his arm to lock his armor on my sword and used his absurd undead strength to try and wrench my sword out of my grip.
Not wanting to lose my sword, I purposely jumped in the direction the Death Knight was twisting my sword toward, coincidentally dodging his follow-up slash from the Death Knight, who was hoping to catch me defenseless.
Performing two big moves in short order with both arms left the Death Knight open for attack, which I gladly took advantage of by drawing my dagger with my off hand and jabbing it up under one of the seams of his breast plate, only for me to get sent flying back and crashing into the wall by a backhand.
This shook me, but my training took over, quickly scrambling on my feet and bringing my sword up in front of myself before my vision cleared.
Through my rattled vision, I could only see a blurry figure rapidly getting closer, forcing me to drop and roll to the side, avoiding a loud bang that shook the room.
By the time I was on my feet and my vision cleared up enough, I saw the outline of the Death Knight yanking his sword out of the wall and turning to face me. And as I looked at him, I saw my dagger sticking out of the gap in the armor where I stabbed him, and mentally faceplanted.
There was no point stabbing what is already dead. The only way to destroy the Death Knight is either through high concentrations of Holy Magic, which was an offshoot of Light Magic and a closely guarded secret of the Zagraf Theocracy, or alternatively, find the part of his body that the part of the Death Knight’s body that holds the “core” of his undeath and damage it, which was usually somewhere in the head or chest, or just hack away at enough of his body to the point that the necromantic magic, natural or otherwise, cannot be contained in the damaged vessel and disperse.
And since I do not know Holy Magic to blast the Death Knight with, I was going to need to do this the hard way. To make things easier for myself, I stepped up my Aura into Primal Aura, turning the blue haze of Aura around me into a deep violet, and what little skin I had exposed showed glowing and bulging dark blue veins as mana rushed through my body at an accelerated speed.
The transformation of my aura and the effect of its presence on the surrounding room clearly made the Death Knight flinch and raised his guard while raising his mana output to ready himself for my next move, but that was all the Death Knight was able to do before I simply disappeared from his sight.
In an instant, a small explosion erupted on the stone wall and ceiling where I kicked off while swinging my blade down from behind to split the Death Knight straight down the middle. Any ordinary warrior wouldn't have been able to react and would have died instantly, but whatever mystical senses the Death Knight possessed allowed him to see me coming and react. However, it wasn't fast enough.
As the Death Knight moved to dive forward, my sword came down and raked down his back, and as my sword tore through his armor, I could feel my blade cleaving through every rib in the way down, missing his spine, and cutting through the back end of his pelvis.
Despite my strike, the Death Knight managed to perform a forward roll, but it was when he was trying to recover to his feet that the damage showed. As he stood up from the roll, the Death Knight suddenly fell to his right.
As I observed the Death Knight try to stand up, I saw that his right arm and leg were not working, and through my mana sense, I could tell that whatever magic animating the Death Knight was struggling to compensate and return function to the right side of his body.
While the Death Knight was using his sword in his left hand to try to prop his body up, I walked over and chopped his left arm off at the elbow before flicking the arm and sword away from him. As he crumpled down face-first to the floor, I used my foot to flip him face up.
“You have fought well, Sir Knight. It is time to put you to rest.” I said to the Death Knight in the language he seemed to understand.
He looked up at me for a few seconds before saying, “Draal'kaar dosh, vek'suun.” as he rested his head on the stone floor.
I gave the Death Knight a small smile as I translated what he said in my head, “A warrior’s death indeed, but unlike most people, you got it twice.”
As the Death Knight lay on the ground, he turned to his charge, who was sitting on the altar and staring into nothing. “Dosh-kaar.” was the final word the hollow voice uttered before I brought my sword down, cutting his head and torso in half.
