As soon as I arrived in front of the door,
—Whoosh! Bang!!
I mercilessly struck the door with a slash and blew it away.
It wasn’t as if I’d come here to have tea. I’d come here to fight, so why would I carefully open the door?
For all I knew, the monsters could be standing behind it with spears, ready to stab me the moment I entered.
I passed through the place where the door had been and entered the castle.
“Ha·· I expected as much.”
The black demonic energy pressing down on me··· hadn’t been expected, but honestly, it didn’t seem like a major problem.
The rows of corridor-style rooms I’d have to check one by one—I’d expected those even before entering.
It was one of the situations I had only ever imagined during my life as a mercenary, and one of the ones I least wanted to experience.
And it probably wasn’t just mercenaries like me. Knights would feel the same, wouldn’t they?
Because both of our professions had probably cleared the inside of a building at least once.
For knights, it would be things like suppressing criminal organizations; for mercenaries, things like domestic violence or break-ins.
And every time a mission or request like that came up, we probably all thought the same thing.
‘Ah, this is fucking awful.’
Rooms are trickier than you’d think.
There are lots of places to hide, and since you’re fighting at close range, the opponent gets plenty of chances too.
Unless you start by tossing in a small explosive magic tool made by the Magic Tower, it’s honestly one of the more stressful places to deal with.
To make another comparison, it feels like entering, with no information whatsoever, a workshop that some mage obviously designed to be advantageous to himself.
But there were several rooms like that.
And right now, I didn’t even have any magic tools, so I had to check them with my own body.
But if I decided not to check because it was annoying and dangerous, ignored them, and went to fight the floor boss, only for monsters to suddenly pour in from behind··· then there would truly be no answer.
“Fuck··.”
In the end, I decided to check every single place here, one by one.
***
Sometimes I think this.
Of course, it’s good to weigh this and that in order to survive,
but for your mental health, ignorance really is medicine.
‘How is it that, unlike what I was worried about, there wasn’t a single monster?’
Yeah.
My stamina was drained for nothing, and I gained absolutely nothing.
At times like this, there was no way curses wouldn’t come out of my mouth.
Still, it was a relief the castle only had three floors.
If it had gone up to five floors like the imperial palace, with multiple buildings too, I really would have gone insane.
‘Now then·· let’s take a look at what the final floor looks like.’
With my stamina steadily dropping, I climbed the last staircase.
—Thud. Thud.
When I reached the third floor, fortunately, there weren’t any rooms in particular. There was only a path leading to some building located toward the rear.
I walked toward it.
Unlike before, the farther I walked along that path, the more demonic energy pressed down on me.
After taking a few more steps in that state, when I started to feel that enduring it with pure physical ability was becoming difficult,
—Fwoosh!
I wrapped my body in burning aura and protected myself from the demonic energy.
I don’t know why I made that judgment.
I just had a feeling.
A feeling that this was what I needed to do.
“Oh··.”
Once I wrapped my body in aura, I could clearly feel that moving had become much easier than before.
To anyone else, it would probably look as if I were setting my own body on fire,
but that would be a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding.
This is actually really effective.
···.
Anyway,
I endured the growing pressure and kept walking forward.
Hoping there would be something there that would let me leave this place.
By the time I reached the end of the path, carrying that hope,
—Wooooong!!!
The aura wrapped around my entire body blazed fiercely, as if sounding a warning.
“!!!”
At the same time, I sensed something in front of me,
—Bang! Bang!!
and immediately fired slashes into the darkness.
—Shhhh··.
A thick cloud of ashen dust spread out.
However, the one inside it that had awakened my survival instincts, unlike the noisy surroundings, was merely standing there exactly as it had been at first.
—Clank. Clank.
I heard the sound of metal pieces making up armor locking together.
As if it had awakened from a deep sleep.
A monster in black armor.
A Death Knight revealed itself from within the darkness.
“Wow, f··· I really hit the jackpot, didn’t I?”
Death Knight.
A monster with more points that set it apart from other monsters than one might think.
Starting with the fact that it only appeared in dungeons, every weapon it used was a sword.
Depending on the individual, some Death Knights could converse, while others were consumed by madness and attacked everything around them indiscriminately.
A monster that required at least an intermediate Expert to deal with, even in the case of the weakest individual.
That was a Death Knight.
Because their appearance rate was extremely low, most people assumed they would never encounter one and didn’t even bother memorizing information about them.
But looking at the one before my eyes, which seemed considerably strong, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe their appearance rate only seemed low because most of the people who met them died and never returned.
—Flash!
An ominous red glow spread from between the gaps of its helmet.
I immediately took my stance and prepared to respond to its movements.
If it had seemed like an individual in poor condition, I would have attacked right away.
But in a case like this, where its movements were natural the moment it woke and I couldn’t estimate how strong it was, standing still and trying to gather information was also a decent choice.
“Wise.”
The creature respected my choice in a grating voice that sounded like metal being scraped.
“Ugh.”
When I reflexively frowned because of its voice, the Death Knight briefly stopped speaking and quietly waited for me to adjust.
“It seems you have little experience clearing dungeons. To be this sensitive to sound.”
“I have to keep my ears open so I can respond to where enemies are coming from. If I blocked my hearing while facing someone I have no information on regarding sound-related attacks, that would make me an idiot.”
“Hmm···.”
The Death Knight fell into thought for a moment, then said,
“You do not yet have the qualifications.”
With that, it sheathed its sword again.
“What?”
When I looked at it with a bewildered expression, it continued calmly, as if it were only natural.
“Though I am a knight who has fallen into ruin and become a monster, I still wish to remain a knight. If so, then it is only right that I uphold chivalry.”
Hearing those words, it wasn’t difficult for me to realize what the monster standing before me had once been.
The reason Eladrien crossed over into the human world.
A being that vanished several hundred years ago.
A knight.
Not the kind now scattered everywhere, merely a means of proving the martial strength known as Expert,
but someone truly noble in character, worthy of respect from others, and one who upheld his own code called chivalry.
And at the same time, one who had been his master’s most loyal and unbreakable sword.
This monster had been such a knight.
Ah, for reference, I wasn’t particularly surprised that the monster had once been human.
I hadn’t mentioned it in advance, but it was practically common knowledge that monsters were originally ordinary living beings who had been corrupted after being affected by demonic energy for a long time.
The Lunia Church was also conducting research on restoring monsters to their original state.
Of course, the prevailing theory was that restoring them was still impossible.
Anyway,
“I do not swing my sword against the weak.”
After saying that, the Death Knight stood still and did not move.
Since I had gained some breathing room, I observed my surroundings and looked at the wall behind it, which was stained especially black, and thought.
Beyond that wall, there was probably a path that would let me leave this floor.
I looked at it and pondered for a moment.
Since it seemed to consider itself a knight in its own way, and since it could understand speech, I should probably ask it a question.
But I didn’t know what to think of it or how to treat it.
Since it thought of itself as a knight and even spoke··· was it a knight who had merely become a monster?
Or just a monster?
‘This is unexpectedly troublesome.’
Since it hadn’t minded when I spoke casually to it at first, maybe I could just keep doing that?
After making my judgment, I carefully spoke to him.
“Is there, by any chance, a door out of this place behind you?”
“There is.”
Fortunately, just as I’d expected, the Death Knight answered honestly without showing much resistance.
Not speaking falsehoods without good reason was also part of chivalry, after all.
“Then can’t you just step aside?”
Since I’d asked with some expectation and received a satisfying answer, I asked him with even greater expectation.
“That will be difficult. My lord commanded me to guard this place.”
Unfortunately, it seemed that expectation had been too great.
“Then what do I have to do to pass through here?”
“Defeat me through a fair and honorable duel. As long as my eyes are open, no one may pass through this place.”
I wasn’t sure whether I should consider this situation fortunate or think I was fucked.
Well, sure··· it was definitely better that this was a Death Knight I could talk to rather than one that had lost its mind and was just swinging its sword around.
It hadn’t been ordered to eliminate all intruders either, so it wasn’t politely telling me to draw my sword and challenging me to a fight. It was simply saying it would guard this place.
If this were outside,
‘Oh my, thank you very much. Bow, bow. If you’re saying you’ll just let me go, I won’t refuse and will simply pass by ^^.’
It would have been a good situation where I could say that.
But this was a dungeon.
If I couldn’t pass behind the Death Knight, I would starve to death here.
“How do we have a duel? You said I don’t have the qualifications. If you’re going to just stand still because I don’t have them, does that mean I can attack you one-sidedly?”
“If you can, try it. See what happens.”
At that unexpected answer, I looked bewildered, but still said,
“Then I won’t hold back··.”
I infused aura into my sword again and swung it at him.
‘What? He’s just standing there?’
Deep down, I had thought he might have only said that and could still react, so I kept paying attention to his movements while swinging.
But he remained standing in the same posture as ever.
And then,
I soon learned the reason.
—Ting-ting-ting!!!
An invisible black barrier had spread out between the Death Knight and me.
“What is this?”
As I looked at the barrier in confusion,
“Have you heard of the Knight’s Oath?”
the Death Knight kindly began explaining the barrier to me, as well as what I had to do to pass through this place.