Chapter 181: The Knights of Briol (3)

Yuri gripped his sword.

The Imperial cavalry units were infiltrating from various points, attacking the top of the wall.

Although the knights of Briol were fighting more valiantly than expected, it was not an easy battle.

Suddenly, Yuri sensed a powerful energy within his perception. He turned in that direction.

An Imperial knight in black armor was leaping calmly using a spring-loaded launcher.

Unlike the others, he moved effortlessly. From mid-air, he precisely judged his landing spot and landed firmly, his cape billowing.

Two nearby Briol knights lunged at him.

Crash!

In an instant, both were sent flying.

Yuri curved his lips slightly in a cold smile. The aura of his sword began to burn with a murky color.

The battlefield is a place of killing and dying, but he couldn’t stop his emotions from stirring at the sight of his comrades dying.

Yuri approached the enemy.

The sharp aura he radiated made the knights between them instinctively back away.

The Imperial wore no helmet, so his face was visible.

“Are you Yuri Briol?” the Imperial knight asked.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Hares, knight of the Empire.”

“Squadron commander?”

“No.”

He raised his sword.

“Just a knight.”

Yuri nodded. In truth, the enemy’s rank or affiliation didn’t matter. There was no time to waste on talk.

He immediately launched into an attack, slashing his sword.

At first, Hares remained calm, but his expression gradually hardened.

He was surprised by Yuri’s skill. But Yuri didn’t mock or provoke him.

He simply began to carry out the work of killing with precision.

He aimed at the legs to distract, occasionally at the nape or chest to convey the threat of a lethal strike.

Bit by bit, Hares changed his movements. He pretended to defend low but deliberately left his upper body exposed. He wanted to bait an attack to counter.

But that was exactly what Yuri had foreseen. From his superior position, he could clearly see each of the enemy’s attempts.

So he purposely fell for the trap. He feinted low, and just when his opponent left his upper body open, Yuri drove Guilty straight into the opening.

Then, Hares’s body moved with inhuman flexibility, like a snake, dodging the thrust.

“So that’s what it was…”

Yuri muttered.

At that moment, chaos energy surged from within Guilty. The sword’s trajectory, free from physical laws, pierced through the enemy’s body.

Hares’s eyes widened.

Under normal conditions, he would have dodged that attack. But Yuri’s sword defied all logic. The countless possibilities of chaos were impossible for an ordinary person to predict.

Hares relied too much on his own defensive technique. That allowed Yuri to defeat him with ease.

Hares, eyes wide with disbelief, collapsed. Yuri turned his gaze from the corpse.

It was over.

Hares had been a strong enemy—even stronger than the Commander of the Eighth Division he’d faced earlier.

His movements were so odd that Yuri couldn’t identify his style, and since he called himself merely “a knight,” he likely didn’t belong to any formal unit.

He surely had a complicated history. But all of it ended beneath Yuri’s sword.

There was no time for mourning or tribute. Yuri erased Hares from his mind and sought the next enemy.

On this battlefield, Hares’s death was no different from an ant crushed underfoot.

A new enemy stepped before Yuri.

“Are you Yuri Briol!? My name is Thanasto! I’ll be the next Commander of the Sixth Squadron! Hahahaha!”

Yuri responded immediately with his Whirlwind Sword technique. Enhanced with chaos energy, the infinitely repeating fractal vortex became more savage than ever.

The technique tore through Thanasto’s body. He could no longer laugh. With one arm flying off, he fell to the ground trembling and crawled backward.

Having lost his right hand, he could no longer serve as a knight.

Yuri didn’t finish him off. Killing an enemy without combat power wasn’t worth it.

Besides, his misery might help demoralize the enemy.

Yuri raised Guilty and shouted,

“For Briol!”

Then, the entire wall erupted in cheers. Thanks to the advantage of the terrain and rising morale, Briol was holding back the enemy attack better than expected.

Yuri didn’t stop.

There were young knights who didn’t seem ready to be there, and old ones fighting like it was their last war.

He brought them all down. Guilty was already glowing red, drenched in blood.

Then, Yuri found a worthy opponent.

“Yuriii Briioooool!”

Someone screamed his name. Turning, he saw a knight falling like a projectile from the sky.

Yuri backed away immediately.

The impact of the landing shook the wall.

“What a damn piece-of-junk castle. Is this your fault? So all I have to do is kill you?”

His tone oozed madness.

Yuri met his gaze. He could sense traces of black magic. This knight had clearly been altered by it.

Yuri realized the Imperial army was increasingly resembling that of his previous life.

“And who are you?”

“You don’t need to know!”

The knight launched into a frenzied attack. Each swing of his sword sent a wave of cutting energy.

He used mana recklessly, showing no signs of fatigue. Clearly, he was being sustained by black magic.

Yuri’s eyes gleamed fiercely. A regular Imperial knight was already a worthy opponent—but one corrupted by black magic was unacceptable.

He raised Guilty and blocked the blow. The impact ran through his entire body.

“That all you’ve got!?”

The Imperial knight roared, swinging his sword downward. Yuri dodged to the side. The wall’s floor shattered.

Yuri assessed his opponent’s strength. It was tightly concentrated—like Yalta’s.

Whatever the method, the Empire had created another knight with similar destructive power. And surely, the Empire would continue to grow stronger.

Yuri grimaced as he approached.

The knight swung his sword like a windmill and struck again. Yuri blocked with Guilty, but the impact was immense.

He stepped back, and the enemy attacked again.

“All you do is run!?”

Yuri deflected the sword with a graze and moved in. At that moment, the enemy kicked.

“Kh!”

Yuri raised his arm to block. Pain pulsed through his body.

The enemy backed off, swinging his sword toward Yuri’s head.

Yuri ducked to dodge. Then he dropped lower and lunged for the enemy’s legs.

Another kick came his way. Yuri rose quickly and shifted laterally, escaping the enemy’s range at the last moment.

He slashed Guilty toward the enemy’s side. The enemy twisted his body just in time, reducing the blow, but the sword still grazed his flesh.

Blood splattered. The enraged enemy turned and lunged at Yuri.

Yuri dodged side to side. Like a matador provoking a bull, he infuriated the Imperial knight, who began screaming madly.

He looked around as if ready to lash out at someone else, but the other knights kept their distance, not daring to intervene in the duel.

Atop the wall, it was just the two of them locked in combat.

Yuri wiggled his fingers.

“Come, wild pig.”

As if on cue, the Imperial knight charged. This time, aware of Yuri’s moves, he slowed just before impact and kept a close watch.

But Yuri had no intention of backing down against a restrained opponent.

This time, he met him head-on. When the enemy struck, Yuri countered immediately.

Caught off guard, the opponent dropped his sword. Yuri’s blade sank into his shoulder. Blood spurted, and a groan escaped his lips.

Riding the momentum, Yuri kicked the enemy in the chest. As he fell, Yuri drove Guilty toward his head.

The enemy turned his head to avoid it, ending up with a slash across the cheek.

His face was covered in blood. Yuri looked down at him and let out a mocking chuckle.

The enemy, face red with rage, began to thrash and howl.

Yuri stepped back.

The enemy sprang to his feet and charged at him. He truly looked like a wild boar.

“Are you really going to keep attacking with that nonsense?”

Yuri didn’t want to drag the fight out any longer, so he provoked him. Any other knight wouldn’t have fallen for such a crude trap—but this one wasn’t particularly smart.

Roaring, the knight swung a massive slash with his sword.

Yuri smirked to the side.

On the battlefield, one must remain calm. A single mistake can ruin everything.

And the price is your life.

Yuri dodged with the bare minimum of distance. The closer he got to the blade, the greater the opportunity that opened up.

Yuri made full use of that narrow margin.

He twisted his torso to its limit to concentrate force, and with the added power of chaos, he unleashed an upward slash.

At that moment, the enemy still hadn’t regained control of his sword.

The spinning strike cleaved his body. Guilty entered below the ribs and exited through the clavicle on the opposite side.

The enemy’s body was cleanly split in two.

His insides were exposed. Through the spraying blood, Yuri watched as the upper half of the man’s body fell.

With the same combat expression frozen on his face, he died without even realizing it.

Yuri murmured,

“On the battlefield, that’s a good death.”

The lower half of the body followed, and with it, all the organs spilled out. The stench of blood and decay filled the air.

But it didn’t end there.

A remnant of black magic, invisible to others, still lingered in that body.

Yuri observed it carefully.

And just then, the enemy’s hand lying on the ground grabbed his ankle.

“What…?”

He shuddered and tried to pull away, but couldn’t shake free. The enemy’s torso crawled along the ground, baring his teeth, trying to bite Yuri’s leg.

But before he could, Yuri drove his sword into the man’s face. The enemy bit down on Guilty—and lost all his teeth.

Even so, he didn’t stop. With only his gums, he kept trying to gnaw the blade.

His face was tearing grotesquely.

It was a repulsive sight. Yuri shook Guilty forcefully and smashed his head.

The body stopped moving.

Yuri muttered,

“Are you a zombie or something?”

A creature that existed only in legends. A kind of undead that returned from death—but unlike a death knight, retained no humanity.

No matter how many times you killed it, it would keep chasing the living.

Could black magic really create something like this?

There was no time to think. He was in the middle of a war.

Around him, the battle continued. Corpses of enemies and allies piled up on top of the wall.

And on top of them, the knights kept fighting.

It looked like he wouldn’t be able to rest until sundown.

“Hey!”

Yuri shouted as he ran. Jared was struggling against two enemies.

“Jared, what are you doing?!”

“Save me, please!”

Yuri, just like he had with the last opponent, launched himself like a projectile and slammed into the Imperial knight.

The knight was sent flying straight off the wall. A pitiful retreat.

Only one Imperial knight remained. Seeing Yuri, he glanced back and forth between him and Jared, clearly terrified.

“Hey, you’re already—”

Yuri was about to crack a joke and finish him off, when suddenly he turned his head.

He focused his gaze on the center of the Imperial camp. Someone was walking toward the launch equipment.

“Damn it…”

It was someone he’d hoped not to see today.

Black armor.

A black mask instead of a helmet.

The Black Knight.

He was moving.

“That’s the Black Knight, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The angle of his path was headed directly toward Yuri. And as Yuri kept watching, their eyes met.

“He’s coming this way?”

Indeed, the Black Knight started to run.