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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 193
🕑 Added 2025-02-08 17:14:46 +0000 UTCMy spear slid past the berserk knight’s guard and streaked toward his shoulder, but it was only by bringing up his arm to divert the path of my spear that he avoided getting skewered, and my spear that was covered in Primal Aura tore apart his pauldron.
While my spear was extended beyond him, the knight used my over-extended posture to strike at me, but he had fallen for my trap. While stepping back to avoid the incoming sword strike, I angled my spear against the knight’s now pauldron-less shoulder and viciously pulled back my spear. This let my abnormally long spearhead that was covered in Primal Aura slice into the knight’s shoulder.
With a fluid motion of my spear being withdrawn, a gout of blood sprayed out of the knight’s right shoulder, making his whole right arm hang limp. As we stood facing each other to reassess each other, I noticed his sword glow brighter.
But just as I thought he was readying for some kind of superpowered attack, I noticed his injured and limp arm start to recover from its limp state and start twitching. That was when my attention was brought to the wound on his shoulder. The wound was rapidly knitting itself back together right before my eyes, and within seconds, the knight was rotating his previously wounded shoulder to test its condition and clenching his fist to test his grip.
That… was just not natural, even in a world with magic. When I was taking my Healing Magic course at the Royal Academy, we often went to hospitals to get experience in healing, and even when we saw professional healers reattaching severed limbs, they did not heal anywhere as fast as this.
I don’t know why, but seeing that my opponent would not break so easily brought a feral smile to my face. The only thing that was spoiling the fun for me was a small voice in the back of my head warning me about something, asking me to pull back, but I ignored it and charged in to see how far I could go with my Primal Aura.
This time, as we charged each other, I saw the knight smile through the opening in his helmet while noticing an opening in his abdomen. When I struck, my spear pierced his armor, which had long lost the power of its enchantment, and ran the man through.
But just as I pulled back my spear for another attack, the knight grabbed my spear with one hand and struck it down with his sword. Without hesitation, I released my spear, sidestepped the chop, and threw a haymaker right at his face.
When my fist impacted the knight’s helmet, I heard the clashing of metal and felt the metal of the helmet deforming around my mailed fist. The feeling was intoxicating! It was so intoxicating, in fact, that I forgone drawing my other weapons and started raining punches and kicks on the knight.
The berserk knight tried to fight back the extremely close-range fighting by bringing his sword closer to his body, but it was futile. From the first few blows, it was clear to me that this knight was not very versed in unarmed combat. A punch to the shoulder, a jab at his upper arm, and a light kick to his inner calf were all it took for me to open up many more openings and rain more blows on my new punching bag. Not to mention, the spear still sticking out of his gut was not helping his situation at all.
At this point, the knight’s helmet was so deformed I doubted he could properly see out of it. So, in his desperation, the berserk knight decided to forgo defense and started taking wild swings at me, even with his sword in hand. That gave me a huge opening to grab one of his arms he threw out in a punch and threw him over my shoulder.
But instead of slamming onto the ground, the knight’s body was stuck mid-air, and when I looked up, I saw the wooden golem Dad summoned by breaking the totem, holding my opponent upside down by his torso.
I was about to shout at the wooden golem to put down my opponent so I could continue the beatdown when the golem crushed the knight like an empty drink can. This made blood burst out everywhere, especially from me, who was right below.
As I conjured water to wash the blood away from my eyes, I saw the impossible. The berserk knight was dropped on the floor before me. His once burly armored chest compacted to the diameter of my calf.
By all accounts, the man should be dead as a doornail, but despite that, his head was gasping for air that could not fill destroyed lungs, and just like when I sliced his shoulder, the sword he was still holding was glowing brighter than usual. At first, it was a steady glow, but when it failed to do anything, it pulsed brightly. With each pulse, I noticed that the edges of the crushed breastplate were bending a little, but ultimately, as the pulse receded, the crushed metal bent back.
This cycle carried on for a good ten seconds before the light of the sword died out, and once that happened, so did the knight holding the sword.
I stared at this phenomenon in wonder. Nothing I learned came anywhere close to having artifacts that can keep someone alive from such grievous injuries. But as my Primal Aura burned, another thought came to my mind. How dare this piece of wood take away my prey!
Just as I was winding up for a punch to turn this stupid wood golem into tinder for stealing my kill, Dad’s voice snapped me out of it. “Luke! Are you ok?”
As I turned to Dad, the wooden golem lumbered past me toward the sounds of battle. That was when a thought came to me. There were more of those knights with glowing swords, more chances to test my power!
As Dad shouted something that I was not paying attention to, I pulled my spear out of the crushed knight and rushed out of the keep to join the battle before the wooden golem beat me to the punch.
