Eternally Regressing Knight Novel - Chapter 964

Chapter 964: Chapter 962 – A Mage

Chapter 962 – A Mage

Not every noble owned a mansion in the capital.

Only those overflowing with Krona or the select few who received royal stipends despite lacking their own territory could afford one.

Nemilla Potail was simply an ordinary noble who had sought refuge within the household of the Duke of the Fertile Lands.

Her only asset was a small vineyard belonging to her family.

Naturally, because Krang had pinpointed her as one of the demonic minions, the Duke of the Fertile Lands had deliberately taken her in.

He had a perfect excuse, too.

Wasn’t it public knowledge that the Duke controlled half of Naurillia’s wine trade?

When Nemilla Potail had come knocking, it was the perfect justification to grant her residence.

Looking back now, her true target had undoubtedly been the Duke himself.

But the meticulous groundwork this minion had laid vanished like a burst bubble overnight.

It was only natural; the dead can accomplish nothing.

The four maids she had kept close had suddenly fallen bedridden with severe body aches, but that was an issue not even worth mentioning at this point.

‘What the hell happened here?’

Andrew carefully examined the corpse.

The traces of demonic energy were glaringly obvious.

Nemilla was a demonic minion.

Because he was already aware of her true identity, he had been lying in wait within the Duke’s estate.

Naturally, this was under the direct orders of Krang and Duke Marcus.

‘In a single strike?’

No, it wasn’t a single strike.

It was a single thrust.

That was the correct assessment.

She wasn’t decapitated; she was stabbed to death.

He had no idea what this minion was capable of or what kind of abilities she possessed, but…

‘Does this make any sense?’

He was utterly bewildered.

Andrew’s mind became a tangled mess.

However, given his position, he couldn’t afford to show his shock outwardly, so he simply maintained a stoic expression while intently scrutinizing the corpse.

“Commander.”

Andrew turned his head at his subordinate’s voice.

Staring at the corpse wouldn’t yield any more answers anyway.

The only evidence left behind was a single fatal wound, and a fleeting glimpse of the back of someone who had completely obscured their physique beneath a pitch-black hood and a matching heavy cloak.

Could he possibly identify the culprit with just that?

Not a chance in hell.

Yet, given his current position and the situation, he couldn’t exactly stand there looking completely lost either.

“Did I not order you to keep everyone out?”

Andrew asked with deliberately feigned sternness.

His subordinate put on an incredibly awkward expression and replied.

“His Grace the Duke has arrived.”

Andrew had ordered the area cleared, but that obviously didn’t apply to the owner of the estate.

The Duke of the Fertile Lands was the absolute master of the ground they were currently standing on, and a Duke of Naurillia.

Guided by the subordinate, the Duke quickly entered the room.

“What happened here?”

Naturally, the Duke also knew exactly who and what the dead person on the floor was.

“It was an assassination,” Andrew replied, standing at perfectly rigid attention.

There was no other way to describe what had transpired last night.

“An assassination?”

Who would assassinate a demonic minion, and why?

The Duke’s eyes were filled with exactly those questions.

Meeting the Duke’s gaze, Andrew had absolutely nothing to say.

Truth be told, he felt as if the job he was supposed to do had been snatched right out from under him.

‘Who was it?’

His Majesty?

Duke Marcus?

Just then, a loud clatter of frantic footsteps echoed from outside the room where the body was being kept, and a lieutenant burst in.

“Commander! We have a massive situation on our hands!”

“What happened?” the Duke of the Fertile Lands asked in his stead.

“Several people were murdered overnight.”

After enduring several major upheavals, the public order in the capital city of Naurill had stabilized significantly.

While there were still occasional brawls involving vagrants or thugs drawing knives in the dead of night, it was incredibly rare for wealthy merchants or nobles to be murdered.

Ever since public safety had been strictly enforced, it was practically unheard of for an upstanding commoner to be stabbed to death in the night, let alone fall victim to human trafficking or armed robbery.

Yet, despite that… five people had been murdered in a single night.

And they were all nobles or highly prominent figures.

Andrew ran until his feet blistered trying to contain the situation, but he failed to stop the vicious rumors from spreading through the capital.

Words without legs easily scale walls, walls have ears, and doors have eyes.

Even if you try to bury it, rumors spread in the blink of an eye.

“A serial killer targeting nobles.”

“They say he kills indiscriminately, without any reason.”

“Hmph, ridiculous. He’ll never breach my personal guard.”

“Who dares pull such a stunt?!”

“Is this a scheme orchestrated by the Empire?”

Rumors ran rampant through the capital.

Every wild theory imaginable was being thrown around.

Halfway through, Andrew completely gave up on trying to control the narrative.

‘This is entirely out of my hands.’

Then what was the one thing he could do?

“So this miserable bastard wants to play, huh?”

Andrew immediately dedicated himself entirely to hunting down the culprit.

He scattered City Guard soldiers across every corner of the capital, desperately searching for anyone remotely suspicious.

***

Perhaps it was entirely thanks to this chaotic distraction.

Demonic minions weren’t exclusively embedded in high-ranking positions.

Many were hidden in the shadows, strictly assigned to gather intelligence.

One such minion, disguised as an elderly peddler, hadn’t the faintest idea that this sudden string of murders was specifically targeting their network.

‘Who the hell is doing this?’

Could it be the work of another minion?

He had no idea.

He was just as clueless as everyone else.

***

“There are five remaining Lords of the Demonic Realms—the ones we call demons—but they don’t seem to be on very good terms with each other, do they?”

Krais spoke while perched on the edge of the bed.

Looking at everything that had transpired and the current flow of events, it was an obvious deduction.

With Krais’s level of insight, spotting the cracks was inevitable.

“Do you think the bastards who sent these minions are actually communicating with one another? Holding a cooperative meeting every few months? I highly doubt it.”

What was the core implication behind his words?

They hated each other.

They had absolutely no reason to share intelligence.

Therefore, they effectively acted as a smokescreen for one another.

It would take them time to crane their necks, reach out, and pull back that smokescreen to see the truth hidden behind it.

“Once the rumor of a serial killer targeting nobles spreads, they will be utterly confused. They will inevitably hesitate for a moment, won’t they? And while they hesitate, we finish the job.”

In some ways, it was an incredibly bold move; in others, it bordered on a pure gamble.

But according to Krais’s calculations, the odds were more than favorable enough to risk it.

After all, he had two Knights and a Mage at his disposal, didn’t he?

‘And they aren’t just any Knights.’

They were Enkrid and Rem.

While the true extent of the witch Esther’s capabilities remained largely a mystery even to Krais, if he factored in her performance on the previous battlefields…

‘Their resolve to fight and slaughter actual demons is sky-high. Minions will be wiped out without a trace.’

Amidst a swirling vortex of thoughts, calculations, what they possessed, what they knew, what the enemy knew, the stance the enemy would likely take, predictions, speculations, guesses, and absolute certainty… Krais carved out a clear path forward.

“Well then, I wish you luck again tonight.”

Standing there in his pajamas, he cheered on the three as they prepared to depart.

They would likely be up half the night again, and while they would undoubtedly be perfectly fine tomorrow, he certainly wouldn’t be.

He needed a full night’s rest for his brain to function at peak capacity.

He had to sleep well to ensure he made zero mistakes when responding to unforeseen variables.

All of this was a strictly enforced behavioral pattern born from a relentlessly logical and highly efficient mindset.

“…He is so obnoxiously irritating. Let’s just chop his head off too,” Rem voiced a highly reasonable opinion.

“I could also temporarily detach something far more important to a man than his eyeballs,” Esther stated, vividly demonstrating the diverse range of services a witch could provide.

Krais’s pupils vibrated violently.

He immediately locked eyes with Enkrid.

Surely the Captain won’t agree with them, right?

Staring into those eyes filled with sheer suspicion, questioning, and blatant anxiety, Enkrid finally spoke.

“Later.”

“…Excuse me? Later?!” Krais asked in utter shock.

What exactly are you going to do later?!

Enkrid casually finished his thought.

“It’s best not to do anything that would make Nurat cry.”

Tossing back a few words that perfectly blended lighthearted jokes with genuine threats, the three of them vaulted out the window once again.

It was the second night.

“Esther?”

The moment they landed, Enkrid called out to the witch.

He imbued the question purely into the way he said her name, and the witch understood instantly.

“If you are asking whether I am tired, I could do this every single night for a year without issue.”

Because Enkrid had literally lived the exact same day for an entire year straight, he fully understood exactly what that entailed.

Therefore, her words didn’t sound like empty boasting.

If it was Esther, she was fully capable of it.

And when it came to stamina or fatigue, neither he nor Rem had anything to worry about either.

While the large-eyed bastard wishing them luck in his pajamas was undeniably irritating, the truth was, this entire operation was barely a warm-up for them.

“Is there any chance this is actually dangerous?”

Yesterday, right before they began the operation, a highly anxious Krais had asked exactly that.

Rem had simply scoffed.

“Even if a Lord showed up personally, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

The source of that overwhelming confidence likely stemmed from the new shamanic arts he had recently comprehended and his monumental achievement of eradicating the source of Silence.

People derive confidence from experience.

That holds true whether you are a genius or a dullard.

Enkrid was exactly the same.

Because he had repeated the same day countless times, violently overcome hellish situations, and finally reached his current level, he possessed absolute confidence.

“Let’s split up tonight.”

That was why he suggested this.

Yesterday they had moved as a unit, but looking back, gauging the level of the minions hadn’t been difficult in the slightest.

In that case, splitting up to escalate the chaos and further complicate the situation wasn’t a bad idea.

The core strategy was to execute seemingly irrational, chaotic actions masked behind entirely opaque intentions.

While the enemy was desperately trying to calculate what the hell they were doing, they would simply finish the job.

“At the very least, we must absolutely prevent them from ambushing the Empire’s envoy inside Naurill’s borders, exactly as they desire.”

Exactly as Krais had stated.

Enkrid was sprinting toward that singular goal.

It was the second night.

The number of patrolling soldiers had doubled compared to the previous night, but that wasn’t an issue.

‘Assimilation.’

Enkrid walked silently down a dark alleyway.

He passed directly next to a homeless man emitting a stench that made Dunbakel’s sweaty odor seem pleasant by comparison.

The homeless man didn’t even feel the slightest shift in the air.

And just like that, he encountered another demonic minion.

This time, the target was a bastard known as the ‘Noble of the Night’.

So he managed to slither his way into the capital, did he?

He was the master of a guild whose name had recently been quietly spreading through the capital’s underworld.

To put it bluntly, it was a criminal syndicate, though those who utilized its services politely referred to it as an ‘information guild’.

The Guildmaster, who had been scribbling away with a quill pen at his desk, abruptly lifted his head.

Writing with a quill in absolute darkness without a single candle lit?

That was a feat impossible for an ordinary human.

In the pitch-black room, two glowing crimson eyes stared into empty space.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

It was the third-floor study of a lavish mansion situated just past the alleyway.

Enkrid had picked the lock on the main gate, quietly ascended the stairs, waited patiently for a servant to open the study door, and simply slipped inside.

Yet, he hadn’t expected the opponent to actually sense his presence through all of that.

‘My Assimilation was compromised.’

It was a simple conclusion drawn from observing the opponent’s reaction.

Was he caught because he couldn’t execute it as flawlessly as Jaxen?

No, that wasn’t it.

Two glowing red eyes were locked onto him.

Those were not the eyes of a human.

The quill pen writing in the dark, the glowing eyeballs, the demeanor, the stench, and the reaction speed—every single variable screamed that the entity before him was not human.

“Are you a vampire?” Enkrid asked.

He stood perfectly straight, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword.

While Rem had left his battleaxe behind because it drew too much attention, Enkrid hadn’t.

He carried Today with him.

His Engraved Weapon let out a low hum, transmitting a subtle vibration that only he could feel.

It was responding to his words.

Even before the opponent could answer, the sword had spoken first.

“Where did they manage to hire an assassin like you?”

The bastard snapped his fingers.

Crimson liquid coalesced in the air, transforming into a lethal blood arrow that shot directly at him.

It launched almost simultaneously with the snap of his fingers.

It was that blindingly fast.

Of course, Enkrid was faster.

His sword cleanly cleaved the crimson arrow in two.

However, the vampire hadn’t let his guard down.

The spell he had prepared was an arrow that would never stop until it struck its target.

Meaning, even if the blood arrow was shattered, the liquid would instantly reform and launch itself at the enemy once more.

It was a hidden trump card meticulously prepared for a sudden ambush, but that trump card was brutally shattered.

The blood caught on the blade violently lost its cohesion and splattered harmlessly across the floor.

“Spell Break?!”

The stunned vampire violently shot up from his chair.

Resonating perfectly with Today, Enkrid swung at the rising bastard’s neck.

Stepping forward with his right foot, he lashed the blade horizontally from left to right, keeping it perfectly parallel to the ground.

He had stepped into a world completely devoid of sound, yet every single movement was exactly as he had learned when he first picked up a sword.

No, it was several steps beyond that.

Back then, he had simply focused on drilling the movements without truly understanding the mechanics of power, but not anymore.

‘Shift the center of gravity.’

The kinetic energy generated from his back foot surged up through his calf and thigh, spiraled through his core, traveled down his arm, and exploded directly into the blade.

Furthermore, he perfectly aligned the angle of the blade with its trajectory.

He swung it parallel to the ground, keeping the flat of the blade rigidly fixed without the slightest tremor.

‘Grip the hilt softly, like holding an egg.’

The exact moment he felt resistance upon meeting the target he intended to cut, he clamped down with his pinky finger, injecting explosive power into the grip.

The leather wrapping the hilt pressed firmly into his palm, making it feel as if he were tightly gripping someone else’s hand.

It was the process of perfectly recalling and executing every single fundamental he had ever learned.

“Even I’ve rarely managed to execute a strike where I felt that level of absolute unity with my blade.”

The words one of his instructors had once said flashed briefly through his mind.

Enkrid swung his sword within a world far sharper and more vivid than ever before.

A strike like this was something even Rem or the other Knights would struggle to casually parry.

The same applied to Cypress, the old knight Bartolo, or the Eastern Mercenary King Anu.

So how could a mere vampire possibly block it?

Yet, in that split second, the bastard actually began chanting a spell, and simultaneously managed to draw a dagger halfway out of its sheath.

That reaction speed alone was worthy of high praise.

Though it was ultimately meaningless since he was already dead.

Sliiiiice.

For a sound produced by a blade severing cervical vertebrae, flesh, and muscle, it was terrifyingly quiet.

The blade passed cleanly through, yet the head didn’t even fall off.

“Who do you think you are, daring to trespass here?!”

Furthermore, the vampire actually survived long enough to speak those words, fully draw his dagger, and even finish chanting his spell.

As he muttered a few more syllables, thick blood began pouring from his neck.

Because it was dark, the blood looked pitch black.

Neither the spell nor the dagger ever fulfilled their purpose.

Because their master was already dead.

After finishing his swing, Enkrid stared blankly at the sword in his hand.

‘Are you teaching me swordsmanship now?’

It was a profoundly bizarre experience.

It felt as if his Engraved Weapon had just forcefully recalled a forgotten sensation and transmitted it directly into his mind.

“Huh? Wait, why is it doing this? Gurgle…”

The vampire desperately clutched at his own sliding neck.

Naturally, it was utterly futile.

His head hit the thick carpet with a dull thump, and his kneeling body immediately collapsed.

The bastard’s corpse rapidly disintegrated into gray ash, staining the expensive rug.

Enkrid leisurely walked out of the mansion.

‘The clouds…’

Tonight was significantly darker than yesterday.

Relying on the rough map he had memorized, he walked down the alleyway, mentally calculating his next target.

Before he had taken even a few steps, a pitch-black mass suddenly shot toward him from above.

His hyper-sensitive senses detected the incoming projectile, and he instantly evaded.

He threw himself sideways, grabbed a protruding rock from the alley wall, and vaulted himself to the top of the wall.

It was an athletic feat that would put a master acrobat to shame.

The projectile that had grazed the ground shot back up, arched high into the air, and began circling above his head, emitting a loud, high-pitched whirring noise.

Enkrid’s gaze snapped to the side.

Atop the roof.

In the dead of night, a bastard draped in a pristine white robe stood holding a staff, staring directly at him.

His face was entirely obscured by his hood.

‘A Mage.’

He didn’t even need to analyze it to know.

A second later, the black mass circling in the sky violently dive-bombed him once again.

***

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***

If you enjoy the series and want to get more chapters early, head over to https://payhip.com/Samowek

Next 100 chapters – 25e [Be sure to message me on discord for any information]

[SHOP BEST BUY] – 50e – Every chapter translated – Latest WN-1110+ daily chapters from monday to friday for a month.

-KNIGHT – Cost 20e – Chapters 1040-1110 + daily chapters from Monday to Friday for a month

I welcome you to join our discord https://discord.gg/RY7BbJpeAZ

**ANY INFO ONLY APPLIES TO THE LATEST CHAPTER HERE ON WEBNOVEL**