Chapter 451

Enkrid reacted. Dunbakel and Rem moved.

Arrows tore through the pitch-black sky.

A few torch stands were knocked over.

In Enkrid’s mind, everything unfolded like a picture.

In a moment of crisis, his instincts gleamed cold as ever. A blade of intuition sliced through the darkness.

“Half will survive.”

Some of the hostages tied to the poles were moments away from death.

The massive spiders had no intention of keeping them alive.

It was a purely calculated attempt to break morale.

Monsters thinking that far?

Unbelievable—but this wasn’t the time to question it.

What mattered was how many could be saved.

He couldn’t save them all. Beneath the pale-blue glowing stones, a giant spider raised one of its legs—long and pointed enough to be called a spear.

“Exactly half.”

He could throw something and kill it, but that wouldn’t save anyone.

Will activated. With eyes that could see an inch ahead, the prediction expanded, revealing fragments of the future—intuition’s vision.

But even so, there was nothing he could change.

In the meantime, Rem and Dunbakel had already killed two spiders.

An axe and a curved blade split monster skulls.

Enkrid reached another one, thrusting his firesteel.

He lunged, striking swiftly and boring a hole through the monster’s head. He stabbed, withdrew, and planted his feet again.

Even after seeing an unchanging future—was he supposed to give up?

Enkrid didn’t.

Whether it worked or not, he stepped forward toward the next.

There were nine poles in total.

Even if he charged, some would die. That was the image drawn on the canvas of the future he’d seen. But still, he wouldn’t stop.

And then—silver light sliced through the canvas.

Fwoooosh.

A monstrous spider’s leg, just as it was about to stab a hostage, was cleanly severed.

Enkrid froze mid-sprint. He forgot to breathe.

He thought he’d seen a knight’s sword?

No—he’d been mistaken.

What does it mean to cut cloth alone?

Why is she called a calamity?

The mercenary king thrusting spears at impossible angles.

Ragna’s lightning, striking down with incomprehensible force.

Shinar’s sword, taking impossible shapes.

And now—this.

Oara moved with impossible speed. Her sword—like a brush—redrew the image on the canvas.

She had been farther away than Enkrid.

And yet now, she was everywhere.

There were six poles with hostages that Enkrid couldn’t reach—and there were six Oaras.

Divine skill, born of violent speed, unfolded before his eyes.

Where once he’d felt a thrill watching her strike, now ecstasy flooded his entire body.

This—this was what he wanted to do.

This was what he wanted to see.

This was what it meant to be a knight.

Oara, of the Red Cloak Order, swept through the spiders with her sword.

Her blade became rain named “calamity,” pouring down upon the monsters.

“She’s not bad.”

Rem muttered in awe.

“Ahh.”

Dunbakel let out a breath of admiration.

Enkrid’s eyes chased Oara’s sword relentlessly.

“Hahaha!”

Oara laughed aloud.

With a single, ordinary longsword, she struck down spider after spider, each with heads as large as a human torso.

Simple, repeated movements.

Exactly as she’d once taught.

“Fancy swordplay? Not necessary.”

Her voice seemed to echo in his ear.

She stabbed, slashed, cut, and struck.

That was all it took. And with her laughter, her strikes became fiercer, her kicks thundered like maces, and her speed quickened.

One of the spider monsters opened its mouth and spat a bundle of thread. The mass was larger than its own head.

Oara’s sword cut it in half.

From the split thread ball burst dozens—no, hundreds—of tiny baby spiders.

They rained down over her head, no bigger than a finger each.

But that didn’t matter.

He couldn’t see it, but Enkrid was certain—Oara must’ve scoffed through her nose.

And then her sword bloomed.

A flower of afterimages, formed from dozens of thrusts.

Pibibibibibik!

A dozen baby spiders died at once. All from her blade.

Though Enkrid had watched, it hadn’t been long. The battlefield had changed in a flash.

The hostages appeared. Oara displayed her knightly might. All within a few breaths.

Then, Oara lowered her sword, took a deep breath, and shouted:

“All units—fall back to position!”

Hearing that, Enkrid began retrieving the hostages one by one and tossing them back.

Rem caught them and passed them behind.

“Fuck—Oara!”

Rowena’s man screamed, lifting a hostage onto his back. It was Rowena.

The other soldiers grabbed one each and started retreating.

“Close the gate!”

Enkrid glanced back. He saw Millio’s corpse, and a few fallen soldiers.

If they’d responded the moment he shouted earlier, Millio might’ve lived.

But Millio had thrown himself in to protect his subordinates.

That wasn’t something he calculated.

It was instinct—his body moved on its own.

Still, it was a damn shame.

He’d never get to chase his dream now.

His dream of marrying Oara was over.

The dead cannot walk beside the living.

But Rowena lived.

“Don’t die! I’m here now!”

The soldier carrying Rowena shouted again and again as he ran.

Do flowers bloom even in the Demon Realm?

It was a saying that floated around the city.

Because here, people lived—and loved.

They were what Oara wanted to protect.

“Captain, you just gonna keep watching?”

Rem asked. It was different now. What they’d seen from atop the wall couldn’t compare to the number of monsters oozing out now.

It was horrifying.

And it wasn’t the end.

Before Oara, a pitch-black figure lunged forward and swung its sword.

Enkrid’s eyes caught it.

Not one sword—many.

So fast they looked like dozens of afterimages.

Dadadadadadang!

Oara’s blade moved, parrying every strike. She responded to each one, chaining in counters, even adding a thrust at the end.

But the attacker pulled back and evaded.

Enkrid saw it.

It was a bizarre form. A monstrous spider standing on two legs, the other six extended like arms.

“A variant,” Lua Gharne said, pulling out her whip.

The spider monster, wielding eight white blades with its legs, had a face eerily close to a human’s.

Pale skin. Where eyes should be, dozens of split, ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ insect-like pupils.

A single round hole for a nose. No mouth.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

Its eight legs were blades—twisted, fused, woven together.

“Well, well. Is this the new lover you picked out, Jericks?”

Oara laughed. Even when nothing amused her, she laughed anyway. That was Oara—the laughing knight.

“Master!”

Roman burst from behind Oara, shouting.

“Fucking monster bastards.”

On the other side, the short-haired blonde stepped up. The four squires fell back.

At that moment, another volley of arrows rained from the gray forest.

They hadn’t even had time to collect Millio’s body.

Enkrid raised his shield, blocking them. The others blocked or deflected on their own.

No arrows came near Oara or the junior knight by her side.

Instead, the eight-limbed bipedal spider stood before Oara—an eerie standoff.

A monster on knight level.

Why couldn’t there be a world with knights and no monsters?

Because monsters strong enough to fight knights still existed.

This was one of them.

Its dozens of red eyes glinted across its pale face.

“Kkhiik.”

To Enkrid’s ears, it sounded like the thing was laughing.

“Having fun flirting with some new chick?!”

Oara taunted. Her resolve was ironclad.

The spider, radiating overwhelming pressure with its eight bladed limbs, didn't faze her in the slightest.

She raised her sword. The spider shifted aside.

And from behind it emerged an owlbear.

An owl’s head on a bear’s body. Two abnormally large hands appeared.

When it clenched its fists, they looked like they had boulders attached.

Its puffed-up feathers made its arms and body seem even bigger.

“Oh? That one’s no joke either.”

Rem commented.

Enkrid agreed. The moment he saw it, a chill ran down his spine.

Her heart was pounding.

A powerful monster—this one was clearly no amateur.

“You bastards really went all in, didn’t you?”

Oara opened her mouth.

The two monsters charged. The knight’s blade clashed with the monsters’ weapons.

A speed beyond the limit drew long trails through the air like fireworks.

Those trails overlapped, scattering light into an explosion of color.

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tang! Clang! Clang!

Explosions rumbled in between the strikes.

The two junior knights only looked for an opening to intervene.

But it wasn’t something they could jump into lightly.

It was two-on-one, but it didn’t feel like Oara had the upper hand.

And this wasn’t the end.

Dada-dada-dadak!

There was a monster firing arrows.

And from beyond the Demon Realm, more monsters began to crawl out.

It was a wave.

The tide that Oara had been holding back was now crashing down upon Thousand Brick.

Oara swung her sword wide in a horizontal arc, pushing the two monsters back slightly, then shouted:

“Enki! Aisia! Protect the city!”

She would handle the rest of the battle.

The two junior knights guarding her immediately backed her up.

Aisia was nowhere to be seen—she had already gone to eliminate the monsters firing the arrows.

“This is a pain.”

Rem spoke and drew his axe. The number of approaching monsters wasn’t something bullets alone could solve.

Enkrid also drew his swords. Acker in his right hand, Firesteel in his left.

Was Oara going to be pushed back? It didn’t look like it.

She handled the eight bladed limbs of the spider and the owlbear’s fists with skillful grace.

“What if it were me?”

He could never handle it so easily.

The two monsters perfectly covered each other’s weaknesses.

How would one break that formation?

“Ragna’s lightning blade.”

That would do it. Could he replicate it with his own white lightning?

No. He knew at a glance—it was impossible.

Enkrid turned his gaze away from Oara’s fight. While she battled, he had his own role to play.

Kkiririk.

A grotesque cry, followed by the rapid patter of legs scraping the ground.

The spiders crawling out of the darkness were horrifying just to look at.

Enkrid chose to strike that horror down with his blade.

Crunch. Crack.

Acker’s blade split the head of a spider that had crept up to his chest height.

Rem fought beside him. His axe was achieving similar results.

Lua Gharne assessed the situation and spoke.

“We just have to hold.”

At her words, Dunbakel visibly relaxed.

Enkrid could hear the shouts of soldiers who treated the casualties from the arrow fire as just another fact of life.

“Oara!”

He’d heard it last night from Roman.

That shout—Oara!—was Oara’s name.

These were people protected by Knight Oara.

They were the ones who lived in the city shaped by her conviction.

If Oara fought for them—

Then they would fight for Oara.

And for the city.

After slaying four spider monsters with his blades, Enkrid lifted his gaze for a moment.

He was just following a feeling—pure instinct. It was like someone had whispered that someone needed to watch ahead.

Inside the forest. A monster emerged—one that looked different from the spiders.

It stepped out between the gray trees of the Demon Realm, treading on black soil.

“Jericks, you really went all out.”

Oara said it as she blocked and countered the Arakne and Owlbear’s attacks, carving out a brief moment.

Even the two unusual monsters backed off for a second.

“Were you targeting me all along?”

She asked.

The ghoul, of course, didn’t reply.

And Oara smiled.

Enkrid hadn’t grasped the full picture, but he understood one thing clearly:

They were outmatched.

Jericks—her ex-husband. The monster now sustaining the Demon Realm.

The one Oara wanted most to kill.

Killing him would collapse the Demon Realm. After all, it was like an enormous colony, wasn’t it?

And yet, here he was.

It was a challenge.

Coincidence upon coincidence always creates inevitability.

Oara had torn apart the Demon Realm again and again.

The monsters could think.

The Twin Blood Moons.

The number of monsters gathered.

From a monster’s perspective, there was only one way to end the threat.

Kill Oara.

All those coincidences had led to this day.

Finally, Enkrid’s gaze settled on the ghoul.

Blue skin. A torn mouth. No nose, just a gaping hole. Jet-black eyes with no pupils.

Dangling arms, tipped with half-hand-length claws. The skin of its arms looked unnaturally tough.

As if it was holding swords.

Enkrid noticed its stance.

The way it walked was different. Those arms could easily be used like blades.

And at the tips of those claws—poison. The kind that could infect a knight with a single scratch.

Unlike the rest of its skin, the claws were a deep, dark color—like soot.

So black they seemed to absorb the light of the Twin Blood Moons.

Ultimately, the creature’s stance resembled that of someone trained with a sword.

“The Demon Realm evolves its monsters.”

Lua Gharne said.

Enkrid didn’t fully understand the how, but the result stood right in front of him.

A single ghoul had been born in the Demon Realm.

It observed humans, fought them, and barely survived.

Oara had said she’d let Jericks slip away three times.

Each time, he grew stronger. Each time, he grew more cunning.

And now, this was the result.

A monster that evolves.

A monster that trains, that refines itself.

The ghoul’s mouth twisted into a grin.

He had stolen even Oara’s smile.

Guuuuuuuuuuh!

The ghoul burst into laughter.

At least, that’s how it sounded to Enkrid.