Eternally Regressing Knight Novel - Chapter 965

Chapter 965: Chapter 963 – Even Better

Chapter 963 – Even Better

Something far darker than a night sky choked by storm clouds shot toward him.

In a split second, Enkrid intuitively felt that the incoming mass was alive.

Whether it was alive or dead didn’t change how he needed to react, but the sensation naturally followed.

The black mass elongated, taking the shape of a blade’s edge as it flew at him.

Enkrid perceived it as a concentrated thrust.

It was a direct application of what he had just learned through his Engraved Weapon moments ago.

‘Treat the sword as an extension of my own body.’

Once he perceived and accepted that, reacting became significantly easier.

Enkrid gripped his sword with one hand and thrust it forward.

The two thrusts collided.

It was a clash of absolute precision, tip to tip.

A feat of extreme acrobatic mastery.

Vwoom.

The exact moment the sword and the black mass collided.

The air vibrated as the black mass finally revealed its true form and violently clamped down on the blade.

His intuition that it was alive had been spot on.

It resembled a bat, but possessed far longer claws and feet bulging with pulsing blue veins.

Those grotesque feet tightly gripped the blade of Today.

In an instant, a massive, crushing weight loaded onto his sword.

The moment the deformed bat seized his blade, Enkrid violently yanked his right arm back, planted his right foot firmly into the ground, twisted his left ankle backward, and threw a devastating punch.

A flawless striking technique slammed directly into the bat’s torso.

Naturally, it was a punch heavily laden with Will.

Bam!

The bat was launched backward with a dull thud, violently skipping across the alleyway floor like a stone skipped across a pond.

Blood poured endlessly from the bat’s mangled body.

Because it was the dead of night, the blood looked pitch black even to Enkrid’s eyes.

Was it actually black blood?

Or was it red?

Not that its actual color mattered in the slightest.

“Ta murus henya.”

An unrecognizable language spilled from the Mage’s lips.

For a brief moment, Enkrid genuinely missed his horn-flute dagger.

If he had something to throw, he could have shoved it right into that bastard’s mouth the moment he started chanting.

Of course, just because he didn’t have a dagger didn’t mean he was going to stand still.

Gripping his sword, he launched himself straight at the Mage’s position.

It was the charge of a true Knight.

The speed was on an entirely different level from the dash Andrew, a mere semi-knight, had displayed earlier.

There was no deafening explosion; he simply deleted the space between them.

In some ways, the speed rivaled a teleportation spell.

Because without even blinking an eye, he had vanished and reappeared right in front of the target.

He had fully intended to ignore whatever spell the bastard was casting and simply cleave him in two, but his mind changed in a fraction of a second.

‘He’s not here.’

Prior to the battle, Enkrid had sharpened all of his senses to their absolute limit.

Because his intuition and instinct screamed at him, he halted his blade right before he swung.

‘An afterimage.’

He had a rough idea of what the Mage’s spell was meant to do.

The bastard had left an illusion in his place and completely repositioned.

A moment later, he reappeared on top of a different roof.

“Henya, henya, henya.”

He rapidly chanted three consecutive spells.

He had absolutely no choice but to do so.

Because Enkrid had instantly pinpointed the Mage’s new location and charged at him.

‘He knows how to fight.’

It was a purely instinctual realization.

This Mage was highly experienced in combat.

At some point, they had descended from the rooftops down to the ground.

They were on the outer road leading directly toward the Royal Palace.

The two of them touched down on the sparse patches of grass growing alongside the meticulously paved flagstones.

Because this wasn’t an area frequently patrolled by guards, there was no one else around.

Homes were fundamentally prohibited from being built this close to the palace walls anyway.

“Tremble.”

Even while desperately evading, the Mage had continuously muttered under his breath, ultimately casting a spell directly onto Enkrid.

In an instant, Enkrid’s vision went pitch black, and his ears popped, feeling exactly as if he had been violently submerged underwater.

He couldn’t see, and he couldn’t hear.

For a spell cast purely to buy time, it was of an exceptionally high caliber.

However, because Enkrid’s sixth sense and intuition were sharp enough to trace the very trajectory of the spell, it was ultimately useless.

Gripping Today, he thrust straight forward and viciously twisted the blade.

Snap—

It wasn’t a sound he physically heard, but a noise echoing from deep within, like the snapping of a harp string.

With that, the spell was shattered.

“…What the hell.”

The Mage openly displayed his sheer bewilderment.

No matter how experienced the swordsman was in combat, wasn’t this utterly absurd?

Yet, even while shocked, his hands continued doing their job.

He formed another hand sign, injected his mana, and completed a new spell.

‘He’s got a lot of tricks up his sleeve.’

Enkrid thought to himself as he charged after him once again.

Above the bastard’s hands, the grotesque bats materialized once more.

And this time, there were two of them.

The black bats elongated into the shape of spears and violently lunged at Enkrid.

He had already seen this trick once.

Enkrid ruthlessly lashed his sword left and right at the two incoming spearheads.

When swinging left, he anchored his power in his right foot; when swinging right, he anchored his power in his left foot.

Empowered by catastrophic physical strength and blinding speed, this continuous sequence of simple movements transformed into a barrage of strikes bordering on the miraculous.

CRACK!

Both bat-spears were violently shattered, their severed halves dropping to the left and right.

In that exact moment, Enkrid had a strong premonition that this fight would just devolve into a repetitive loop of what had just happened.

‘If I let him slip away here, is he just going to keep running and endlessly spam spells at me?’

Or he might decide to completely disengage and flee.

Enkrid instantly discarded any lingering thought of capturing him alive.

He also discarded the idea of trying to handle this quietly.

Enkrid’s thighs bulged violently.

The seams of his thick, black clothes couldn’t withstand the sudden, monstrous expansion of muscle and ripped open.

Riiiiip.

Accompanied by that sound, Enkrid stepped into the world of absolute silence and accelerated once more.

Because it was difficult to perfectly execute the intricate mechanics of swordsmanship or properly load kinetic energy into a strike while moving at this speed, he was essentially just swinging his sword recklessly.

However, the sheer brute force loaded into the blade was more than enough to effortlessly cleave through a solid stone golem.

“Demui—”

The Mage couldn’t even finish the final syllable of his incantation.

The Spell Object harboring thirty-four distinct defensive spells embedded into his body was equally useless.

Half of those thirty-four spells only activated when the master consciously perceived an attack, meaning they failed to trigger.

Ten of the remaining spells manifested far too slowly to intercept the blindingly fast blade.

The final eight continuously active defensive objects did trigger, but proved utterly futile.

The constantly active defensive spells—which compressed wind into a physical barrier, projected an invisible wall of pressure to shove Enkrid away, and transmuted the Mage’s flesh to the density of steel—were completely ignored.

Enkrid could afford to casually disregard all of it.

Thwack!

BOOOM.

The visceral sound of a neck being severed exploded simultaneously with a deafening roar akin to a violent hurricane.

Having taken a stance with one knee bent and his sword extended far to the side, Enkrid slowly pulled his blade back and looked over his shoulder.

A spherical cage of crackling lightning violently erupted around the Mage’s decapitated body, emitting a harsh bzzzt noise.

‘Some kind of delayed defensive spell?’

It had triggered far too late.

“What exactly are you?”

Enkrid finally spoke.

Severing a neck and then asking a question felt exactly like something Rem would do, but it was an undeniably strange moment, making it hard not to ask.

Even after having his head cleanly lobbed off, the Mage remained alive for a brief moment.

He desperately clutched his severed stump, frantically trying to work some kind of magic.

Enkrid simply stood completely still and watched the spectacle.

‘As if that would ever work.’

Spell Killer or not, he had heavily infused his Will into that last strike.

He had severed the neck using a blade of Will forged through the stage known as ‘Formatting’.

Formatting didn’t just mean haphazardly sharpening the blade with Will; it inherently contained the three stages of Transfer, Penetration, and Injection.

To put it simply, Will is intent, meaning Enkrid’s absolute intent was violently injected directly into that severed stump.

Therefore, if he wanted to reattach his head, he would first have to completely overcome the sheer Will Enkrid had injected.

That wasn’t something a mere spell could solve.

“This… is impossible.”

Naturally, the Mage attempted to use his own Will and desperate desire as a weapon to reverse his own death.

He simply lacked the necessary strength of Will.

Hadn’t Esther marveled the last time he demonstrated something similar?

This time, it was the turn of the Mage who had abruptly ambushed him on his way back to marvel.

And he did exactly that.

“How?”

He gasped in disbelief.

“To think I would be killed here…”

Violently denying reality.

“The Will of Astrael shall absolutely—”

He died sputtering a pathetic vow of revenge exactly like a third-rate villain.

The severed head, which had been artificially forcing air through its vocal cords using sheer mana just to speak, finally fell silent.

“Shall absolutely what?”

Enkrid asked the empty air and gave his sword a sharp flick.

The blood clinging to the blade splattered onto the flagstones with a wet smack.

Naturally, the blade hadn’t sustained even a fraction of damage.

Even if it were an exceptional masterpiece of a sword, it would have been perfectly normal for it to shatter upon executing a strike like that.

You could call it a fundamentally ignorant, brute-force swing.

‘Now that I think about it…’

That blonde bastard from the Demonic Realm had swung his sword at exactly this kind of speed, yet still managed to flawlessly weave in the mechanics of kinetic energy and the profound mysteries of true swordsmanship.

Naturally, he seamlessly integrated Transfer, Penetration, and Injection into every single strike as well.

After organizing a few thoughts in his mind, Enkrid immediately vacated the area.

“What happened here?!”

“What was that?!”

“Do not lower your guard! Keep your eyes peeled!”

The noise must have been incredibly loud.

And given what had transpired last night, every single soldier in the City Guard on patrol was undoubtedly on high alert.

Those who heard the commotion were currently swarming toward his location.

Enkrid slipped back into the darkness and melted into the city.

As he did, he cast a glance over his shoulder and saw the Mage’s corpse rapidly dissolving into nothingness.

The clothes he wore, his tools, everything disintegrated into fine ash.

In an instant, the only thing left behind were the visceral traces of a brutal battle.

He sprinted through the city’s alleyways, perfectly utilizing the cover of darkness.

Simultaneously, he locked onto his next targets.

He still had his quota to fill for the night.

The number of targets he needed to eliminate tonight was three.

The remaining two were lower-ranking nobles, both holding administrative positions within the Royal Palace.

***

“They have a hostage.”

The very first minion attempted a pathetic, desperate trick.

“Please, save my son.”

He was a bastard who had literally offered his own son as a sacrifice to a demon.

Ten years ago, his merchant guild was on the verge of collapse.

But after a sudden streak of impossible luck where every venture succeeded, and he managed to run several treacherous trade routes without a single mercenary escort, he used the profits to buy himself a noble title.”

That was the exact moment this noble had sold his son to a demon.

For the sake of his own safety and future.

If asked whether every single human being was inherently good and righteous, Enkrid would firmly answer ‘no’.

Hadn’t he seen far too many of these exact kinds of bastards while wandering the continent?

In that regard, there was definitely a part of him that could somewhat understand the mindset of the blonde swordsman.

‘Wicked men.’

If you spent your life endlessly witnessing people who sold their own flesh and blood just to secure a better tomorrow, wouldn’t it be entirely natural to grow to resent the world itself?

The world was dark precisely because of sons of bitches like this.

Enkrid casually severed the minion’s neck.

The bastard’s blood was red.

He hadn’t actively accepted demonic energy into his body; he had simply acted as an agent for a demon to amass Krona.

Through that exact method, he had acquired six new wives and offered five separate sacrifices to the demon, not including his own son.

***

The next target was an incredibly simple-minded bastard.

Despite being a mere administrator, he had willingly consumed a drug laced with demonic energy.

“They didn’t just send a Knight, but an actual assassin? Did the King deduce my true identity? Or is this the work of the other factions? Or perhaps the pathetic scheming of my political rivals? Regardless, I have terrible luck.”

The administrative noble had desperately craved physical power.

On the day he was brutally beaten by a colleague over a trivial dispute, he sold his soul to buy strength.

Through that bargain, he gained bulging, monstrous muscles simply by breathing, and acquired the raw strength to crush a bronze goblet with a single hand.

In exchange, his body became entirely sterile, he lost every single hair on his head, and thick black blood coursed through his veins.

“Was gaining strength really better than keeping your hair?”

Enkrid asked out of genuine, pure curiosity.

“I’m not bald! I shaved it!”

The bastard erupted in furious rage and charged.

His entire body shifted to a sickly gray hue as his physique ballooned to the size of a giant.

The exact moment his massive fist came crashing down, Enkrid’s sword moved.

In a single strike, the bastard’s body was cleanly bisected.

His grotesquely enlarged heart violently spewed black blood everywhere.

Chunks of flesh began rapidly extending from that very heart, attempting to resurrect into some new, horrifying form.

Enkrid’s boot casually crushed that attempt into nothingness.

He ruthlessly stomped the remaining heart into a bloody paste—Squash.

Black blood violently splattered in all directions, centering around the crushed heart.

Because they had fought in the incredibly tight confines of a small room, blood had heavily splattered across Enkrid’s clothes and face, and the pants he had ripped while fighting the Mage earlier were still torn open.

And so, with one leg completely exposed, he returned to the Royal Palace.

***

“Looks like I wasn’t the only one who ran into some trouble tonight?”

Rem was currently standing there with his mask, cloak, and the entire top half of his shirt ripped to shreds.

“Yeah. A Mage blocked my path,” Enkrid replied.

Esther arrived slightly later than the two of them.

“It was Astrael.”

She, too, had encountered a witch who had deliberately blocked her path.

Because she blurted that out the moment she arrived, Enkrid and Rem simply stared at her.

That single sentence wasn’t nearly enough of an explanation.

While Esther didn’t possess the talent to tell an engaging story, she knew exactly how to pierce straight to the absolute core of an issue.

“The magical society known as Astrael has allied themselves with the demons.”

It was a simple, crystal-clear conclusion.

Krais had used his brain to exploit a gap in the enemy’s defenses, but the enemy hadn’t just sat back and taken the beating either.

It meant that among the demonic minions, there was someone capable of instantly reacting and strategizing.

Furthermore, it was an incredibly fast response and a remarkably brilliant countermeasure.

“There are three reigning Masters within Astrael. One of them personally stepped forward for this operation.”

Esther stated calmly.

If asked whether this constituted a crisis…

They had been through far too much.

While Astrael was undeniably a terrifying threat…

She had also completely overwhelmed the witch who challenged her earlier and killed her effortlessly.

Right before she died, hadn’t the witch widened her eyes in sheer terror and asked?

“How can you possibly be at such a level?!”

She was desperately asking why the gap in their power was so insurmountably massive.

The witch was one of the personal disciples raised directly by a Master of Astrael, and an absolute master of combat magic known as a Warlock.

Yet Esther hadn’t suffered a single scratch while fighting her.

The flow of the battle was brutally simple.

Esther systematically dismantled and shattered every single spell the female Warlock cast, closed the distance, and literally smashed the woman’s skull in with her bare fist.

With her skull caved in and pieces of her brain scattered across the floor, the Mage hadn’t lasted long before dying.

It was one of the fundamental weaknesses of a Mage.

If you violently smash the head required to chant incantations, they cannot properly cast spells.

Naturally, the Warlock had been wrapped in layers of Spell Objects containing defensive magic, but shattering spells of that caliber was child’s play for Esther.

The dead Mage had violently melted away into nothingness due to a curse placed upon her by the Master of Astrael.

It was a shame she hadn’t managed to loot anything useful from the Mage’s corpse, but what could she do?

For now, they simply had to be satisfied with the fact that they had effortlessly crushed the trick the enemy tried to pull.

“Let’s discuss this again in the morning,” Enkrid stated.

Regardless of what happened, they were going to see this operation through to the end.

The ultimate goal was to completely purge the capital of every single minion.

Perhaps an even better opportunity had just presented itself.

Because it felt as though they had gone beyond simply eliminating a few straggling minions and were now violently yanking up the entire root system they had planted.

Enkrid washed up and piled his clothes into a corner.

He felt like he probably needed to just burn them.

When morning came and they relayed the events to Krais, he reached a conclusion remarkably similar to Enkrid’s.

“Actually… this feels exactly like an opportunity.”

***

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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**