The Devouring Knight -
Chapter 109 - 108: The Silence of Victory
Chapter 109: Chapter 108: The Silence of Victory
Jason Ravenshade strode into the clearing like a storm made flesh.
Every step cracked twigs, bent roots, shook the ground. The forest seemed to recoil from him. His spear gleamed with runes, heat rippling from its point.
Lumberling didn’t wait.
He lunged forward with a shout, spear striking like lightning. Jason parried, sparks bursting as metal kissed metal. Their weapons clashed again, then again, faster, harder, until Jason spun and slammed his elbow into Lumberling’s ribs.
Lumberling hit the ground with a grunt.
Skitz was already moving. A silver flicker. A dagger aimed for Jason’s throat.
Jason turned. Caught it.
Not the blade, Skitz’s wrist.
The True Knight’s gauntlet crushed down.
Crack.
Skitz screamed and twisted, breaking free, barely dodging a follow-up swing that split a tree in half behind him.
Shade struck next, dropping from the canopy in a blur of black limbs. He slammed into Jason with the weight of a charging beast, driving the man back a dozen steps.
Jason growled and thrust his spear upward. It flared with mana and pierced Shade’s outer carapace, drawing a screech of pain and ichor.
But Shade didn’t let go.
He wrapped three limbs around Jason’s torso and tried to drag him down. Jason planted his boots, muscles bulging, and hurled the spider off with a roar.
Skitz reappeared behind him, dagger aimed for a tendon, but Jason spun without looking, his spear swinging in a wide arc that forced both Skitz and Shade back.
Lumberling rose, breath ragged, and charged again.
Their weapons met in a flurry of strikes. Spear hafts cracked, boots slid over blood-slick earth. Lumberling ducked a killing thrust and retaliated, slashing Jason across the side, a glancing blow, but the first to draw blood.
Jason’s eyes narrowed.
"You’re all still standing," he said, voice quiet. "Impressive."
He stepped forward, fast, too fast, and smashed the haft of his spear into Skitz’s face, sending the goblin skidding into the underbrush.
Lumberling struck again, but Jason caught the spear mid-air, wrenched it from his grip, and snapped it halfway down the shaft.
Then he kicked him in the chest.
Lumberling crashed into a tree and slumped to his knees, gasping.
Shade leapt again, but this time Jason was ready.
His spear, burning now with mana, carved a line across Shade’s belly. The giant spider staggered, legs trembling, ichor leaking in rivulets. He hissed and tried to hold Jason down again, but Jason drove a boot into his center mass, forcing him back.
The three stood, barely holding position.
Bloodied.
Breathing heavy.
Exhausted.
Jason rolled his neck slowly. "Still not enough."
.....
The forest burned at the edges, smoke curling into the sky like the dying breath of war.
Only one battle remained.
Lumberling stood with blood trickling down his jaw, muscles screaming, spear cracked along the haft. Beside him, Skitz crouched low, one eye swollen shut, breathing sharp and shallow. A few feet behind, Shade, legs trembling beneath his massive frame, clicked his mandibles and hissed, ichor trailing from a deep gouge across his abdomen.
And across from them stood Jason Ravenshade.
Not a man.
A force.
A monument to strength.
His armor was cracked, dented, but his eyes still burned. His spear gleamed with mana, veins of white light dancing across its length. His breath steamed in the cold air.
The silence between them was shattered by a single voice, Krivex, positioned far in the trees above, bow drawn taut.
"Don’t die," he muttered. Then loosed.
Thunk!
The arrow struck Jason’s shoulder, but barely dug in. Jason’s arm shifted, muscles bulging as he tore it out and let it fall.
Then he smiled.
"I’ve had enough of this dance," Jason growled.
The ground shook.
Mana surged.
His spear pulsed.
Thundering Lunge, his ultimate skill.
A streak of lightning burst beneath his feet as Jason launched forward, faster than thought, his body propelled by mana, spear-first, directly at Skitz and Shade.
There was no time.
Skitz widened his eyes, too injured to dodge.
Shade raised a limb, too slow.
And then,
Clang!
A shield.
Lumberling.
He had thrown aside his spear and grabbed a fallen Pentaline shield, bracing just in time.
The spear slammed into it with a thunderclap.
The force sent all three of them flying.
The ground cracked beneath his feet. Trees bent outward as if from an explosion. Shade reeled back. Skitz was thrown like a ragdoll. Even Lumberling, braced behind a shield, felt ribs creak from the shockwave.
"Still standing?" Jason muttered, lifting his spear again.
But something had changed.
His stance faltered.
He swayed... just slightly.
Breath uneven.
From the Edge of the Field
The captains watched, tense, weapons gripped tight.
"This is his limit," muttered Gobo1.
"That Knight is tiring," Vakk said. "But so is our Lord..."
They didn’t move forward.
They couldn’t.
This fight was beyond them.
But they didn’t sit idle either.
"Volley!" Krivex shouted.
Whoosh, thunk!
Arrows rained from the trees.
Smoke bombs arced through the air, erupting with clouds that obscured Jason’s vision. Spears hurled from hidden angles forced him to reposition constantly.
Every breath was pressure.
Every second, a distraction.
Lumberling stood again, teeth gritted, left arm limp. Skitz crawled to his side, daggers reversed. Shade emerged from the smoke, still bleeding, but eyes locked.
"Together," Lumberling muttered, "we finish this."
Jason turned, sweeping his spear to keep them at bay, but he was slower now. Each movement had weight. His mana reserves were thinning.
Shade lunged first, four legs slamming down to corner him.
Jason turned, struck.
Skitz blinked behind him, slashes across the back.
Jason pivoted, stabbed back.
Lumberling closed in, teeth clenched, blood roaring in his ears.
He felt it, not hesitation, but something close.
A momentary sag in Jason’s strike. Not weakness.
Exhaustion.
The weight of a man who had given everything, and found even that wasn’t enough.
Lumberling met the blow, his cracked spear shaft groaning under the strain. He twisted, just enough to knock the angle wide...
Then he drove forward.
His spear punched through bent silver plate, past resistance, through flesh and light.
Into Jason’s heart.
Jason’s eyes went wide. Then narrowed.
For a second, they locked, two warriors bound by blood and fury.
Jason gave a breathless laugh. A dry, rasping thing.
"So... this is how I fall? To a group of monsters?"
He laughed. Not bitterly. Not cruelly. Just... tired.
"...Fitting, I suppose."
He let the words hang.
No rage. No denial.
Just disbelief.
Maybe even irony.
Lumberling said nothing. There was nothing left to say.
He wrenched his spear free.
Jason staggered.
A tremble passed through his legs.
Then he sank to one knee, like a man kneeling at the end of an oath.
His hand gripped the ground once.
Then stilled.
And fell.
A pulse echoed through the air.
Essence Devour
Lumberling staggered as tendrils of invisible force surged into his chest, drawn from Jason’s dying core. The world dulled for a breath, colors muted, time slowed.
And then the memories came.
A flash, Jason kneeling before a silver-haired man in obsidian armor. "You will be my blade. My will made flesh."
A boy standing before his first fallen foe, hands trembling, tears mixing with blood. "He wouldn’t drop his sword..."
Steel clashing in endless drills. Firelight glinting off trophies nailed to a cabin wall. Laughter in a garden once, with a girl whose face blurred and vanished into smoke.
And then...
Lumberling.
Seen through Jason’s eyes.
A shadow. A trick. A lie.
A man unworthy of war.
Jason’s final thought rippled like a whisper across the void.
Then silence.
Lumberling opened his eyes.
Jason Ravenshade was gone.
Only his essence remained.
(You have devoured the True Knight’s essence. 1500 Essence absorbed. Absorbing a portion of the True Knight’s memories and experience.)
(You have learned the active skill: Thundering Lunge Lv.0 (1/1000))
The forest was quiet.
No cheers. No cries.
Only smoke.
And the silence of a giant brought low.
.....
Smoke still lingered in the air, but the fighting had stopped.
The army of Earl Cedric Ravenshade lay in pieces, crushed under discipline, terrain, and unexpected fury.
Skitz collapsed beside Lumberling, wheezing. "Told you we could take him."
Shade lowered himself behind them, legs folding beneath his massive body, breath ragged.
Lumberling looked down at Jason’s body. There was no pride in his eyes. Only exhaustion. And understanding.
"I didn’t win," he said quietly. "We all did."
Around them, the captains began to approach. Slowly. Respectfully.
The war was over.
But something far greater had begun.
...
Far from the forest, where Jason fell. Somewhere within the borders of the Pentaline Empire.
Novgord had been a city of learning and discipline. Its streets were lined with dojos, merchant halls, and towering structures carved from stone and pride. It had stood for centuries, resilient, stubborn, structured.
Now it was dust.
The air shimmered with residual mana. Buildings had been flattened, their foundations glowing faintly from the aftermath of spellfire. Blackened stone and molten glass littered the streets, still warm to the touch.
And standing amidst the ruins...
Elves.
Dozens of them, cloaked in robes of moonlight and sapphire, their eyes glowing faintly with arcane might. They moved without urgency, their footsteps leaving no imprint, as if the very earth refused to mark their passage.
Each one of them exuded power.
Magic clung to them like a second skin, controlled, but ever present.
They weren’t just mages.
They were warriors of the arcane, each one equivalent to a Stage One Knight or beyond.
They hadn’t just defeated the city.
They had erased it.
One elf stood at the heart of it all.
Floating above the debris on a platform of shimmering mana, a woman gazed down in silence. Her presence demanded attention, not through sound, but through stillness.
Her hair, long and blue as moonlight on water, swayed gently in the heatless breeze. Her skin was porcelain pale. Her robes, embroidered with silver and star-thread, glowed faintly with wards and ancient glyphs.
Perfect. Terrible. Cold.
She hadn’t spoken since they arrived.
Not even as the city burned beneath her gaze.
Then, quiet footsteps.
One of her subordinates approached and bowed deeply.
"Your Grace... we’ve found no trace of her."
The woman said nothing.
The subordinate continued, eyes downcast. "No magical residue. No blood. If she was here... she’s gone."
A long pause.
Then a whisper.
"Keep searching. There must be something."
Her voice was soft, softer than the wind, but it sent a chill through even her own ranks.
She floated gently down to the blackened stone, her boots landing without sound. As she walked through the remains of the marketplace, her hand reached out, fingers brushing against a half-melted stone pillar, one of the auction hall’s columns.
If she were here, she would’ve hidden. She would’ve resisted.
Her jaw clenched.
Then, quietly, almost too faint to hear, she whispered, "Where are you, Sylra...?"
A memory flickered in her mind: two girls sitting under a tree in the floating cities of their homeland, laughing beneath starlight. One of them wild and free. The other, reserved but watching her with hidden admiration.
They had made a promise to see each other again.
But one had been taken.
And the other had stayed behind.
Her eyes rose to the west, toward the heart of the Pentaline Empire.
Toward the chain of events that led here.
She didn’t need to declare war.
Her silence was enough.
She turned, her cloak trailing frost as she ascended into the air once more, hovering above the ruins.
Her soldiers followed without question, vanishing into mist behind her.
And the city of Novgord, once proud and alive, was left in lifeless stillness.
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