Chapter 163: A Battle Beyond His Rank (3)

Standing before him, I felt the corners of my mouth rise on their own, forming the kind of smile no sane man should ever wear.

But I couldn’t stop myself.

Not after forcing that bastard onto his knees.

Of course...

The damage itself meant nothing when he would simply regenerate it soon.

But I wasn’t finished yet.

Using a little more than a third of my remaining mana, I activated the Executioner’s Sword’s strongest attack.

The massive blade began spinning around its axis like a drill.

Faster.

And faster.

Its rotation accelerated violently until it finally reached its absolute limit.

And at that moment...

I launched it straight at Aldebaran before he could finish restoring himself.

The Knight Commander immediately rose after sensing the danger of the incoming attack.

With how fast it was moving and how little distance remained between us, he didn’t even attempt to dodge.

Instead, he pulled his sword arm as far back as it could go.

Then he thrust forward with everything he had, gathering an even greater amount of black flame around his blade.

His thrust was terrifyingly precise.

The tip of his sword struck the very tip of mine.

And this time...

Our clash turned into a contest of pure force.

The momentum of my spiraling sword drove Aldebaran backward, his feet sinking into the ground as sparks erupted violently from the point where the two blades collided.

He slid back.

And back.

But in the end, he managed to hold his ground.

The moment the Executioner’s Sword began losing rotational speed, Aldebaran knocked it aside.

Even so...

He still suffered some damage from enduring the attack through his sword.

When I checked his health bar, I found that it had fallen even further.

Around ninety percent remained.

All of that...

For only ten percent.

"This doesn’t look good..."

I already knew I wasn’t in a favorable position.

Bosses like this almost always had a second phase once their health dropped below a certain threshold.

In other words...

Even if I managed to break through his armor, he would still have a way to retaliate.

He was still hiding something.

"This is exactly why I hate fighting enemies I know absolutely nothing about, damn it!!"

I cursed aloud.

A faint headache throbbed through my skull.

Pain continued radiating from my injuries and broken hand, while a growing numbness spread from my left shoulder where it connected to the mechanical Legion Arm.

My mechanical arm was incredibly powerful.

But I had no idea how long I could keep using it continuously at its maximum output.

I was gambling here.

And gambling had never been my area of expertise.

"Whatever..."

"It’s not like I have any other choice."

Once again, I decided to shut off my thoughts.

And simply lose myself in the fight.

The moment I made that decision...

Everything began moving at a blistering pace.

Time itself seemed to flow differently.

The battle descended into complete chaos.

No...

Madness would have been a better word for it.

Releasing my arsenal again and again, I relentlessly hurled weapon after weapon at Aldebaran to charge Overcharge...

Only to strike him with it and shatter his defenses all over again.

Each time, I blasted him with lightning, only for him to restore himself and strike back at me. At first, I managed to fight him on equal footing, but the damage gradually began piling up on my body.

Unlike him...

I had no way to regenerate.

Yet no matter how many wounds accumulated across my body, I never fell.

My resistance to pain was no longer human.

Every time crimson lightning erupted across the battlefield, one of Aldebaran’s knights collapsed dead, and their numbers continued to dwindle at a steady pace.

Wherever our battle passed, destruction followed.

The battlefield was reduced to ruins around us, to the point that the shockwaves and deafening echoes of our clash began affecting the other Hunters as well.

...

...

...

"Can an Elite-rank Knight... really fight like that?"

Watching from afar with undisguised astonishment, one of the Heart Hunters who had lost his team voiced his disbelief after witnessing the battle between Ethan and Aldebaran.

"Don’t lose focus! We’re still surrounded by enemies!"

Raiden’s shout snapped the Hunter back to his senses just as the sword of a Black Knight nearly caught him off guard.

Barely ten minutes had passed since the battle began, yet they had already made remarkable progress. Of the fifty knights that had descended upon them, nearly half were already dead, while the Hunters themselves had suffered relatively little damage thanks to their tightly maintained formation.

But the greatest credit belonged to Ethan.

He had taken the Knight Commander upon himself.

Every now and then, the Hunters couldn’t resist stealing a glance at the battle between Ethan and Aldebaran, and each glimpse only deepened their astonishment.

All they could truly make out were repeated eruptions of crimson lightning and black fire, accompanied by the deafening crashes of metal colliding against metal.

"He’s incredible... With that kind of strength, no one in the same rank could possibly stand against him. Maybe he really does have a chance against the Knight Commander."

Chai openly voiced his admiration as he nocked another arrow and released it with deadly precision, striking one of the blind spots in a knight’s armor.

Chai possessed extraordinary eyes capable of perceiving everything around him, allowing him to keep track of the enemies before him while watching Ethan’s battle at the same time without much difficulty.

The strength Ethan displayed had far surpassed his expectations.

For a brief moment...

It even made Chai believe Ethan might actually win by himself.

"No... He won’t."

The response that dragged him back to reality came from Alicia, the swordswoman who had remained close to protect him.

She sounded completely certain, causing Chai to frown instinctively.

"Why? From what I can see, they’re fighting evenly."

Alicia shook her head.

"They’re not fighting evenly. Ethan is getting slower, and the weight behind his sword is weakening."

"Unlike the Knight Commander..."

"His momentum hasn’t dropped at all."

Chai found himself confused by her words.

He had barely seen Alicia look toward Ethan’s battlefield at all. Her attention had remained almost entirely fixed on the knights in front of her.

"How can you be so sure?" he asked.

Without turning toward him, Alicia simply pointed to her ear.

"The sound."

"Huh?"

Chai stared at her in surprise.

How could she possibly determine something like that from sound alone?

Still, he didn’t argue and chose to take her words seriously.

Alicia might have seemed cowardly most of the time, but she was still an exceptionally talented swordswoman. And this time, there was nothing timid about the seriousness on her face.

Her desire to escape this Legacy Dungeon alive was stronger than ever.

"We need to hurry and support him before he collapses."

Chai immediately increased the rate at which he fired his arrows, though he continued preserving his strongest abilities for the Knight Commander.

The other Hunters did the same.

And while the battle between Ethan and Aldebaran approached its peak...

The young mage stationed at the rear slowly began to open her eyes.

Her staff blazed with a brilliant azure light.

Her incantation...

Was finally complete.

The tide of the battle was about to shift once again.

Because a prodigious mage was moments away from unleashing one of her most powerful spells.