BLOOD’S STRONGEST KNIGHT
Our sightseeing delegation had officially been divided into two separate reconnaissance groups. My unit consisted of Prince Erwin, Princess Quina, and Erina. It was the perfect, high-profile distraction. The moment we entered the bustling, labyrinthine markets of the capital's commercial district, I engineered a flawless slip.
I was lost. On purpose.
ducking into a narrow, shadow-drenched alleyway, I instantly activated the disguise locket. The 6'4" blonde frame of Will Gurberr dissolved, and my true, agile silhouette returned, cloaked entirely in the sleek crimson suit of the Crimson Card.
BZZZZT.
I tapped the side of my crimson mask, initiating a secure, low-frequency mana thread to the eagle drone hovering in the high clouds. “Hey, Grim. What exactly did your aerial grid scan uncover regarding the Blood Tyrant?”
“He is strong, Erik. Extremely strong,” Grim’s raspy voice crackled instantly through the comms lens. “The border archives don't lie. Three years ago, he single-handedly obliterated a reinforced vanguard army of five hundred elite Krane soldiers without sustaining a single, solitary scratch.”
I narrowed my eyes behind the mask, leaping onto a stone roof ledge. “So he’s a physical monster. What else did your drones find?”
“An anomaly,” Grim grunted, the static on the feed clearing. “Deep within the eastern ruins of the lower sector, there is a heavily structural, ruined building. Based on the architectural geometry, it used to be an ancient church of the Sacred Soul religion before the heresy laws took effect. My lenses picked up a lone individual sitting completely motionless inside the rubble, wearing a tattered, pure black cloak.”
“Is it the Blood Tyrant?” I asked, sprinting across the clay roof tiles, completely invisible to the crowds below.
“I don't know,” Grim admitted coldly. “But whoever he is, the raw mana radiating from his core is deeply abnormal. It is warping the local air pressure. It is definitely worth inspecting.”
“And what if it is the King?”
“Then execute him on the spot,” Grim commanded, his voice turning deadpan and ruthless. “He is the sovereign ruler. If a full-scale battle erupts, he will be forced to hold back his catastrophic output to minimize the damage to his own capital. Slaying him right there will liberate both nations. He is the single entity driving this meaningless war.”
“I see,” I whispered, checking the holographic lens display beamed into my eyes.
I dropped down into the dark, silent courtyard of the dilapidated eastern district, my black-alloy twin blades humming quietly at my waist. The grand spires of the ruined church loomed ahead like a graveyard monument.
The trap was set, the target was localized, and I walked straight into the mouth of the den.
walked straight into the center of the shattered church, my boots crunching softly on the dry ash. I didn't waste breath demanding answers, nor did I wait for a dramatic speech. In a single, fluid motion, I drew my modified black-alloy twin blades and explosively lunged forward, launching a lethal horizontal strike meant to decapitate him where he sat.
SHING!
The man didn't look up, but his body moved with an instinctive, unnatural speed. He rolled off the stone altar, my blades shearing the top layer of marble into white powder. He slid backward across the dust, his hood falling away to reveal a scarred, decaying face. He looked at my crimson suit, a hollow, bitter laugh escaping his dry lips. "So... did Ruken finally send you to execute me? Did that bastard decide a street dog like me is no longer useful to his grand design?"
I ignored his question entirely. My focus was purely on the spectral deck within my mind. To activate any card in the Death's Gambit, my devil's contract demanded strict, variables to be met in real-time. I locked my eyes onto his twitching features, mapping out the necessary conditions for my remaining deck:
🃏 [DEATH’S GAMBIT: DECK VARIABLES]
“pathetic….” I whispered, my voice echoing with a distorted resonance behind my crimson mask. “You are nothing but a hound rotting in the dirt.”
The insult snapped his fragile sanity like a twig. His hollow eyes flared with pure, animalistic rage, his jaw unhinging as he let out a manic, mind-shattering roar. Abandoning all defensive posture, he sprinted straight toward me, his massive black monstrous arm expanding into a cluster of jagged, razor-sharp flesh tendrils meant to rip me to shreds. He was attacking without a single shred of thought.
The condition for the Ace was met.
Flash.
The brilliant Ace of Spades materialized and shattered in front of my face, violently flooding my veins with the suffocating heat of the Black Flames of Hell.
I coated both of my twin blades in the pitch-black hellfire, intercepting his massive mutated limb mid-air. BOOM! The initial collision created a blinding shockwave that entirely blew the roof off the ancient sanctuary, raining shattered clay tiles across the room.
But this man was strong. Even without a weapon, his technical martial instincts survived his madness. He rapidly shifted his massive monstrous arm like a heavy iron shield, deflecting the black flames with a brutal, deafening clatter. Before the embers could settle, his left human hand whipped forward, channeling a sudden surge of pressurized wind magic that nearly severed the straps of my mask.
I ducked, but the sheer physical weight of his counter-attack caught me off guard. He stepped into my blind spot with a speed that defied his massive frame, throwing a heavy, magic-reinforced knee straight into my abdomen.
CRACK.
The impact violently launched me backward, tearing through the thick outer brick wall of the sanctuary. I crashed out into the open, ruined courtyard, my boots skidding across the stone tiles for several meters before I could reset my center of gravity. My lungs burned, and a thick taste of copper flooded my mouth. His raw strength is monstrous.
Before the dust could even settle, the black cloak tore through the smoke, pursuing me into the open courtyard.
The battle spilled completely into the alleyways of the eastern slums, turning into a brutal, grueling meat grinder. He swung his monstrous arm like a wrecking ball, pulverizing the stone facades of the vacant buildings into flying shrapnel. I vaulted off a collapsing balcony, spinning mid-air to unleash a wave of hellfire slashes, but he didn't even flinch. He simply charged straight through the black flames, regenerating his scorched tissue within a microsecond.
Our steel and flesh collided repeatedly in a frantic, exhausting rhythm. Clang! Clang! Thud!
Every time I managed to land a precise cut along his torso, his mutated arm would swell, launching a barrage of writhing flesh tendrils that forced me into a desperate defensive retreat. The sheer pressure of his aura was suffocating, grinding down my stamina with every block. I was fighting an absolute fortress of attrition. My swords felt heavier with every passing second, the intense friction of his parasitic mana actively cracking the alloy of my blades.
We traded over eighty lethal exchanges across the fractured streets, the earth beneath us shaking from the localized explosions of our energy. His swordsmanship was unrefined, driven by savage ferocity, but the sheer volume of his raw physical power completely bridged the gap.
Realizing my Ace's three-minute timer was rapidly ticking down to its final seconds, I knew I couldn't win a prolonged battle of strength. I had to exploit his feral tunnel vision.
I abruptly deactivated the black flames, entirely concealing my mana signature. The sudden drop in my energy confused his instincts. As he lunged forward for another unthinking, brutal strike—his monstrous arm raised high to crush me—I executed a blindingly fast, low-angle slide directly between his legs.
In that single fluid motion, I drove the pommel of my left sword straight into his solar plexus, momentarily locking his breath. Before he could turn his massive frame, I spun completely into his blind spot, channeled the absolute limit of my physical phantom pressure, and delivered a crushing, magic-reinforced strike directly to the back of his scarred neck.
The concussive shock rattled his brain, forcing his parasitic mana channels to instantly collapse.
The writhing black tendrils of his right arm violently shrunk back into a deformed, motionless limb. The grey-skinned knight’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed heavily onto the hard cobblestones, completely unconscious.
I stood over him, my chest heaving heavily as the crimson light of my phantom eyes flickered critically behind my mask. His vitality is unnatural. Normal men would have been decapitated by that output.
Knowing the local capital patrols would be swarming the eastern sector within minutes due to the cataclysmic noise of our duel, I didn't waste a single second. I ruthlessly hoisted the heavy, unconscious body of the fallen knight over my shoulder, activated the locket's stealth-shroud array, and melted seamlessly back into the dark night shadows before the first scout could arrive.
Where... where the hell am I?”
The grey-skinned man’s eyes violently snapped open, his voice raspy and dry as he strained against the heavy ropes binding him to the chair. He looked around the pristine, lavishly decorated bedroom.
I stood up from the corner, my 6'4" blonde disguise towering over him in the dim light. I had no intention of rushing this. Psychological breaking requires patience.
“You are inside my private quarters,” I replied, my deep, disguised voice entirely flat.
The fallen knight blinked, his confusion morphing into sheer panic as he looked at my harmless blonde hair. “What happened? Where is the monster in the crimson suit? Why did he spare my life? Who are you?!”
“About that...”
I reached up, gently tapping the silver surface of my locket. The artifact violently flared with a brilliant, blinding light. Within a microsecond, the blonde rookie Will Gurberr dissolved, and the tailored crimson suit, mask, and terrifying dual-resonance aura of The Crimson Card returned.
Before the man could even scream, I tapped the locket a second time, instantly shifting right back into the harmless blonde disguise.
The prisoner’s jaw dropped. He stared at me as if he were looking at a literal ghost. “How... how did you do that? What kind of forbidden magic is that locket?”
“Let’s not waste time discussing my secrets,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting directly opposite his bound frame. “Tell me why someone as monstrously strong as you ended up rotting like a street dog. Who is this Ruken you mentioned? And what exactly were you doing inside that ruined church?”
The fallen knight let out a hollow, self-deprecating laugh, his shoulders slumping.
“I visit that ancient church every single day,” he whispered, his hollow eyes staring blankly at the floor. “I go there to laugh.”
I narrowed my eyes beneath my blonde bangs. “To laugh?”
“To laugh at my own pathetic fate,” he hissed, a wave of profound sorrow washing over his scarred features.
He leaned forward against his constraints, his breathing turning ragged as the memories began to tear through his mind.
“Years ago... Ruken and I were nothing but starving orphans. We were taken in by the Sacred Soul church around the exact same time. Back then, I was incredibly weak, pathetic, and defenseless. But Ruken... Ruken was different. He was brilliant. He always supported me, protected me from the abusers, and promised me we would change the world together.”
The man paused, his teeth grinding as his monstrous, deformed right arm subtly twitched against the ropes.
“And around that same time, the church brought in another orphan. A young boy with vibrant, blood-red hair. His name was Kenon.”
My heart skipped a beat behind my calm facade. Kenon.
The Grand Commander of the Knight Order. The mastermind running the human weapon factories. He was raised in the exact same church as this man
I leaned in closer, the puzzle pieces violently spinning in my head. “And who... who exactly did Ruken grow up to become?”
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