Chapter 37: The Wolf Uproar - 7

It's coming.

■■■■■■———!!!!

With a thunderous roar, the lion charged.

[Holy Maiden’s Ring effect.]

[The hostile target’s stats are reduced by 10%.]

Its stats should definitely have been cut by ten percent.

And yet, as if that meant absolutely nothing, the bastard showed no sign of slowing down.

[Activating [Insight of One Who Has Seen the End].]

[Predicting a thousand possibilities.]

The instant the lion lunged—

in that split second, like a shattered mirror, a thousand possible attacks the lion might unleash poured into my head.

[Discerned possibilities: 5]

Out of a thousand, I found five.

I reinforced my legs and arms with mana through [Orlando’s Muscle Cultivation Method].

Then I put my shield forward and met it head-on.

The reason I was trying to face that lion with its insane monstrous strength from the front—

well, sure, the spirit of chivalry was part of it.

Hiiiiiing——!!!

But it was also because I had support backing me up from behind.

[A blessing of many colors settles over your body.]

At Rocinante’s cry, four colors layered themselves over my body.

[Defense temporarily increases slightly.]

[Movement speed temporarily increases slightly.]

[Physical stats temporarily increase slightly.]

[Vitality and mana recovery temporarily increase slightly.]

Buffs poured in along with a flood of notifications.

A blessing only Rocinante, who could wield the power of all four elemental spirits, was capable of using.

Calling that ability overpowered still wouldn’t be enough.

Of course, the moment it cast the blessing, it immediately hopped back behind Dolnesia, but…

That didn’t matter.

I looked only forward and took the lion’s attack head-on.

KWA-A-A-A-ANG——!!!!

An overwhelming shock slammed through the shield.

"Cough!"

It felt like something inside me had been wrecked, and something rose up from my gut.

A metallic taste spread through my mouth.

So this was internal injury.

I'd only ever seen symptoms like this in novels, but experiencing it firsthand hurt like hell.

Still, I held it.

Sancho and Dante rushed in from both sides in perfect sync.

From the left, Dante swung his frost sword.

From the right, Sancho brought down his great scythe.

And from the front, I slashed with [Logres Quick Sword Form].

But—

Crunch!

The lion caught Sancho’s great scythe in its jaws and stopped it.

With its left hand, it blocked my sword, and with its right hind leg, it stopped Dante’s frost sword.

In that tiny span of time?

And fine, maybe my sword was one thing, but it stopped sword energy with its bare body?

What kind of body was that…

The bastard didn’t even give me time to think.

It flung away the great scythe it had in its mouth, sending Sancho flying, twisted its body and kicked Dante away with its left leg—

and while still gripping my sword with its left hand, it smashed hard into my shield with its right fist.

It was probably trying to disarm me…

The impact forced me a step back, and I had to taste blood again, but—

"Sorry, but I'm pretty confident in my grip strength too."

I didn’t let go of the hilt.

Then this time I kicked it, and the lion went flying as its hand slipped off the blade.

I immediately reinforced my legs with mana and chased after it.

In terms of raw physical ability, even with the blessing on me, it was still above me.

Maybe because it was acting on instinct, but its battle sense even seemed better than mine.

It was just a corpse moving around without any intelligence or ego at all.

And yet it was this strong?

It was probably the strongest opponent I'd faced so far.

It might even be stronger than Angelica.

But—

In technique alone, it was inferior to Angelica.

Maybe because it was undead, it lacked skill.

In that case—

I had to stake everything on the one thing in which I could surpass it.

I would kill it with the strongest technique I could use.

That man’s secret art, the one that poured the principle of a frenzied dance into a single sword.

'[Mad Orlando].'

The strongest skill I could use right now.

With a sword imbued with cold frost, I filled it with violent emotion—

and swung.

The lion took the powerful storm writhing from the blade with its whole body.

While it reeled, I kicked its body.

Frost swords formed all around us, then shot toward the beast as it was hurled into the air.

Skewered in midair, the lion's movement was pinned in place.

I didn’t miss that opening.

Using the ice pillar Dante had created as a foothold, I charged at the lion again.

At the same time, Sancho swung his great scythe at the lion’s back, and the wolf sent its clones charging in.

Once more, the dance of madness began.

That last [Mad Orlando] had already burned through about thirty percent of my mana.

I had roughly half left now.

My mental strength wasn’t especially high, so I’d been relying on Rocinante’s blessing for mana recovery.

If this dragged on, we'd lose.

I had to end it fast—

And then—

The lion suddenly looked straight at me.

■■■■■——!!!

Still in midair, it lightly dodged Sancho’s scythe and the wolf’s attack, grabbed my wrist—

"Damn it…!"

and slammed me into the ground.

"Cough!"

This was beyond just internal injury.

That attack had wrecked my organs badly enough that I spat blood.

My vision blurred too.

Since falling into this world—

had I ever been hit this hard before?

It hurt like a motherfucker.

If not for [Dragon Strength], that attack would have retired me on the spot.

If I’d known this would happen, maybe I should've put some points into mental strength too.

And after flinging away even the wolf and Sancho, the lion used the ceiling as a foothold and launched its body straight at me.

What?

Instead of finishing off the wolf and Sancho, it wanted me dead first?

Fuck, this is bad.

Can I even dodge this?

"Ian!"

As Dolnesia shouted at me, Rocinante—who had stayed back until now—finally moved.

It fired a spear of flame at the lion as it came crashing down to smash me.

The flaming spear struck the lion directly, knocking its trajectory slightly off, and thanks to that I barely managed to evade it.

I swung my shield upward, and the lion blocked it with its fist.

Then a frost sword, aiming for that opening, shot toward the lion.

The wolf’s clones tried to restrain its movements, but—

■■■■■■———!!!!!

The lion’s roar shook the cavern, and as the terrain Dante had created began to collapse, everything was blown away.

God damn it, that son of a bitch.

Just how much did that asshole crank up the difficulty?

Damn it.

My head was ringing and my stomach churned.

"Ian, are you okay?!"

"Don’t come over here."

I stopped Iris as she tried to run to me, then barely forced myself back to my feet.

If Iris had awakened as a saint, that might be different, but with how things were now, stepping in would be no different from suicide.

Sorry, but right now, she would only get in the way.

As I used my sword as support and somehow got up, the wolf came over.

"Are you all right, Ian?"

"I don’t think any bones are broken yet."

It wasn’t that our attacks did no damage to the lion at all.

Its left arm, shredded by [Mad Orlando] and Dante’s frost swords, was hanging in tatters.

The problem was that every single one of its attacks outclassed all the damage we were dealing.

And maybe because it felt no pain, it kept using that mangled left arm as if nothing were wrong.

If there was one saving grace, it was that it was obsessively targeting me.

Even during our combined assaults, it only dodged or countered Sancho, the wolf, and Dante’s attacks. It never tried to attack them directly.

It also didn’t go after the relatively fragile Iris, Dolnesia, or Haede.

The way it kept throwing me around, the way it tried to take my sword—

was that because of that notification saying it had noticed the existence of a star?

Seriously, what a pain in the ass.

■■■■■■———!!!

The damage was steadily piling up, but…

How much did we have to beat it before the thing finally died…?

"Are you okay, Ian?"

"For now."

Dante was holding his own too, but his expression was grim.

"Your mana?"

"I think… I can fire off maybe three more big ones…"

Fuck, this is bad.

"I’ll bind its feet."

The wolf stepped forward and took its stance.

"I’ll stop its movement somehow. Hit it with the strongest attack you can use right now. If you do that, even that thing won’t be able to withstand it."

"You’ll get caught in it."

"That's exactly why I'm saying it."

The wolf said it calmly.

"I don’t have any attachment to life anyway."

As it summoned its own clones, the leopard and the lion—

"So even if I die here, it doesn’t matter. There’s no one who’d grieve for me if I died."

It answered that way with no emotion in its voice at all.

And I—

"Quit trying to look cool."

I didn’t like that one bit.

"What?"

"Can you even bind it? I told you, didn’t I? I'm the wall here."

"With that body, what wall are you trying to—"

"This much'll heal if I spit on it."

I was so dumbfounded.

What did it mean, saying it had no attachment to life and would just die however it pleased?

Even that dead corpse fighting over there was doing so because it still had regrets.

So there was no way someone alive like you could truly have no attachment to living.

"If the one I worked so hard to save dies right in front of me, I've got a feeling I'd sleep pretty badly after that."

Don’t die.

"Your body hasn’t even healed, and you're talking about stopping that thing…"

"I have to stop it. If I'm the only one who can stand in front of it and block it."

Then I have to stop it.

I will stop it.

If I’m the only one here who can stand and hold that thing back—

then all I have to do is be the one who blocks it.

Endure unbearable pain.

Fight an enemy you cannot defeat.

Reach for a star in the night sky that cannot be grasped.

That was what I had always thought a knight should embody.

But—

"This much, I can endure just fine."

This was pain I could bear.

"And it's not on the level of something I can't beat."

[Activating [Insight of One Who Has Seen the End].]

[Predicting a thousand possibilities.]

[Discerned possibilities: 14]

Out of a thousand possibilities that should have been impossible to see, I could see fourteen—and its left arm was already hanging in tatters.

"That thing isn’t some unreachable star."

If I couldn’t even catch this, could I really call myself a knight?

"So the day you die isn’t today. Regrettably for you."

"Why go this far? There's an easier path. If only I sacrifice myself—"

"I know."

I cut him off.

Of course I knew.

There had always been an easier path.

If I had thrown the cursed necklace instead of the glove and ambushed them.

If I had just stood there and watched the slap happen.

If I had skipped the self-introduction and attacked right away.

If I had simply accepted the penalties and acted in the opposite way.

Things would have gone much more easily.

I would have taken them down more easily too.

I wouldn’t have had to go through those nerve-racking sword matches.

And I probably wouldn’t have ended up the star of that godawful imperial family knight provocation circus.

Even so—

I just didn’t want to do it that way.

"If the path where no one is sacrificed is a little harder than the path where someone is—"

I leveled my sword at the lion.

"Then of course I'll bet on the first one."

"Unbelievable…"

The wolf let out a hollow laugh.

Yeah.

Instead of standing there expressionless and naked like before—

laugh like that.

And first of all, live.

Even if your heart is broken.

Even if you’re an extra worse than a supporting character.

Even if you’re just a third-rate villain with no story left after losing.

That still isn’t a reason you have to die pointlessly.

So struggle a little.

[The ability of [Oath of Chivalry], communication with the [Stars of Knights], has been connected.]

At that moment—

a notification window appeared before my eyes.

[The peerless knight likes your story.]

[The peerless knight’s influence decreases.]

[Trait [Flower of Chivalry] has been unlocked.]

What?

At the sudden notification—

I felt something surge up inside me.

[Flower of Chivalry]

The more you seek to protect someone, and the more you try to stand against an impossible foe,

the more your two legs will unfailingly strive to reach the stars.

Just as the peerless knight did, and as the other knights did.

◈ Your stats increase when you are trying to protect someone.

◈ The stronger your opponent is compared to you, the more that stat increase is amplified.

I still hadn’t awakened aura.

But I had the feeling I could now face that thing on equal footing with my body alone.

And—

the same seemed to be true for the lion.

The lion, which had been staring blankly at me as if about to enter phase two—

■■■■■■———!!!!

let out a howl.

Then it suddenly tore off its own dangling left arm.

It rammed that arm into the ground and pulled something out.

The left arm stuck in the earth lengthened into a handle, and at the end, a double blade formed.

But though it looked double-bladed, one of the blades was shattered.

It was an axe.

The beast pulled the axe from the ground and roared.

■■■■■■■———!!!

And in that thing’s stance, there was form.

Even though it was only an undead creature craving life.

Even though it was nothing but a corpse imitating the memory left in its body.

I felt like I understood what it was trying to say.

It was imitating a knight.

Yeah. So you're like that too.

I properly equipped the sealed [Prydwen] and readjusted my grip on my sword in my right hand.

"Don’t interfere."

"What?"

After saying that, I slowly walked toward the thing as it tightened its grip on the axe and took my stance.

This wasn’t merely a fight between beast and man.

I thought of it as a ridiculous duel between a man who wanted to become a knight and a beast that had once been one.

Thinking that—

"Ian de Logres."

I gave it my name.

■■■■■….

And as if answering my name, the lion let out a low growl.

[Oath of Chivalry activates.]

[The [Stars of Knights] are watching you.]

Along with the notification sound of [Oath of Chivalry] activating once more—

KWA-A-A-A-A-ANG———!!!!!

My sword and the lion’s axe crashed into each other.

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