Chapter : 629
The wait was the purest form of agony he had ever known. Every second the knight advanced was a second his control frayed, a second the Major General screamed to be unleashed. The garden had become his own personal crucible, and he was being burned alive by his own inaction.
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The Curse Knight advanced, each step an act of desecration. The air grew thick and heavy, tasting of ozone and old graves. The students on the lawn were succumbing rapidly to the curse's debilitating effect. Their limbs felt like lead, their minds filled with a creeping, irrational despair. Master Horatio, his face beaded with sweat, maintained his weak protective ward, but it was like trying to stop a flood with a teacup. He was a scholar of theory, not a battlemage, and he was hopelessly out of his depth.
“Stand back, you fiend!” the old professor managed to shout, his voice trembling but defiant. He positioned himself between the knight and his cowering students, a frail, white-bearded shield against an encroaching nightmare. “This is sacred ground! You have no right!”
The Curse Knight didn’t even deign to look at him. His focus was absolute, a predator’s unwavering gaze locked on the fallen form of Airin. He raised a gauntleted hand, and a tendril of purple-black energy, a whip of pure curse magic, lashed out. It didn’t strike Horatio; it simply brushed against his warding spell. The fragile shield of light shattered with a sound like breaking glass, and the old professor was thrown backward, collapsing in a heap, his staff clattering to the ground. He was not seriously injured, but his spirit was broken, the magical backlash leaving him gasping and powerless.
With the final obstacle removed, the knight continued his slow, inexorable march toward Airin. The sheer, overwhelming terror of the moment had frozen her in place. She could only watch, her heart hammering against her ribs, as the embodiment of her worst fears drew closer.
Lloyd, watching from his window, felt his control slipping. The cold, calculating Major General was being consumed by a white-hot, protective rage. Move, his instincts screamed. Intervene. Annihilate. But the strategist held him in check. Not yet. Revealing your hand too early is a fatal mistake. Wait for the board to shift.
And then, the board shifted.
A new sound cut through the air, sharp and clear as a trumpet call. “For the Lion and the Light!”
From the archways of the main Academy building, they appeared. A flash of silver and gold, a vision of disciplined, righteous fury. At the head of the formation was a figure who moved with the grace of a panther and the authority of a queen. Princess Isabella, her face a mask of cold, regal rage, her silver-gilt cadet-officer’s uniform gleaming in the sun, her hand already on the hilt of her sword.
Behind her, a dozen members of the Royal Lion Guard fanned out, their movements a testament to years of brutal, elite training. They were the Princess’s own, the well trained warriors in the kingdom, and their presence was a statement. They formed a living wall of polished steel and unwavering resolve between the Curse Knight and the terrified students.
“Altamiran dog,” Isabella’s voice was low, but it dripped with glacial contempt. “You have made a grave error. This Academy is under the protection of the Crown. These students are subjects of the King. And that young woman,” she said, her eyes flashing as she gestured toward Airin, “is my scholar. You will take not one more step.”
The Curse Knight finally stopped. He turned his helmeted head slowly, as if noticing the princess and her retinue for the first time. A low, rumbling chuckle echoed from within the helm, a sound that grated on the nerves like grinding stone.
“The little lioness comes to protect her pet,” the knight mocked. “Your courage is admirable, Princess. And utterly pointless.”
Isabella’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. She drew her sword, a magnificent blade that hummed with latent power. “You will find the teeth of the Bethelham lion are far from pointless. Captain Eva!”
“Your Highness!” A tall, powerfully built woman with a severe expression and a captain’s insignia on her armor stepped forward. Captain Eva of the Lion Guard, a warrior whose reputation was almost as formidable as the princess’s own.
“Secure the students. Get them clear,” Isabella commanded without taking her eyes off the knight. “The rest of you, with me. We will teach this cur the price of trespassing in the lion’s den.”
“Yes, Your Highness!” the guards roared in unison.
Chapter : 630
The battle began. The Lion Guard moved as one, a wave of disciplined steel charging across the lawn. Their blades, empowered by their own spirit energy, glowed with a soft, golden light. They were a righteous host, a force of order against the knight’s encroaching chaos.
Their charge was magnificent. It was also utterly futile.
As the first guards reached the knight, they swung their swords in powerful, synchronized arcs. Their blades did not clang against his armor. They passed through a shimmering, almost invisible field of dark energy that surrounded him. The curse aura acted as a perfect, intangible shield, deflecting their physical attacks while simultaneously sapping their strength.
With every failed blow, the guards grew visibly slower. The golden light on their blades flickered and dimmed. The curse was like a poison, seeping into their very spirits, turning their strength to weakness, their resolve to doubt. The knight didn't even bother to counter-attack. He simply stood there, a bastion of darkness, letting his malevolent aura do the work for him. He was a fortress, and they were waves crashing uselessly against his walls.
Isabella watched, her fury mounting as she saw her elite guards being worn down, their power draining away with every passing second. This wasn’t a battle. It was a slow, agonizing execution. She knew then that conventional tactics would fail. This was a foe that could not be beaten by steel alone. Gripping her sword tighter, she prepared to enter the fray herself, ready to pit her own considerable power against the suffocating darkness of the Curse Knight.
Princess Isabella was a storm of silver and gold. She moved with a speed and ferocity that belied her royal station, her blade a blur of light as she wove through her flagging guards and engaged the Curse Knight directly. Her personal spirit, a fierce and noble creature of light and power, roared within her, pushing back against the encroaching curse with sheer, indomitable will.
“Your aura is a coward’s weapon!” she snarled, her sword striking the knight’s dark shield with a percussive blast of energy. Unlike her guards, her attack had an effect. The dark shield buckled, and the knight was forced to take a step back.
For a moment, hope flared. The remaining students, who were being herded to safety by Captain Eva, watched with wide eyes. Perhaps the princess, their indomitable leader, could turn the tide.
The Curse Knight let out another of his grating chuckles. “A strong will. The King’s blood runs true. But even the fiercest flame must eventually run out of air.”
He began to fight in earnest. His movements were economical, precise, and brutally effective. He didn't use flashy techniques; he used the curse as his primary weapon. With every parry, a wave of debilitating magic washed over Isabella. Her armor, which should have felt like a second skin, began to feel like a leaden weight. Every swing of her sword required more effort than the last. The air itself felt thick, resisting her movements, a swamp of invisible malice she was forced to wade through.
Lloyd watched the duel from above, his analytical mind dissecting the fight with cold precision. The knight isn't just projecting a static aura, he realized. He's actively manipulating it, focusing it on his primary target. It's a psychic and spiritual attrition. He’s not trying to overpower her; he’s trying to suffocate her spirit.
Isabella was a lioness, fighting with all the pride and fury of her lineage. She roared her defiance, her spirit flaring brightly, pushing back the darkness with a sheer force of will that was nothing short of heroic. She landed another blow, scoring a deep gash across the knight’s breastplate. But the victory was hollow. The effort it took cost her dearly, and she stumbled back, gasping for breath, her face pale.
The knight, in contrast, seemed tireless. The curse was his native element. The gash on his armor sealed itself with tendrils of purple shadow. He was an engine of despair, and his fuel was limitless.
“You see, Princess?” the knight taunted, his voice a low drawl. “Your strength is a candle. Mine is the abyss. You can only burn for so long before you are consumed.”
The tide of the battle turned decisively. The knight went on the offensive. His own blade, a wicked-looking sword of black, serrated steel, became a blur. It was no longer just deflecting; it was attacking. Isabella was forced into a desperate defense, her movements growing slower, her parries weaker. The curse was winning. Her spirit, which had burned so brightly, was now a flickering flame, guttering in the suffocating darkness.
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Chapter : 631
Her guards tried to re-engage, to aid their princess, but they were too far gone. They could barely lift their swords, their bodies heavy with the curse’s poison. They could only watch in horror as their leader was systematically broken down.
With a final, contemptuous flick of his wrist, the Curse Knight shattered Isabella’s guard. Her sword was torn from her grasp, spinning through the air before embedding itself in the lawn half a field away. She stood, disarmed and exhausted, her chest heaving, her body trembling with the strain.
The knight raised his dark blade, its edge humming with a malevolent energy. He was not going to kill her. That was not his mission. He was going to humiliate her, to break her, and then claim his prize. He prepared to deliver a final, contemptuous blow that would knock her unconscious, leaving his path to Airin completely clear.
In his office, Lloyd’s control finally snapped.
The time for observation was over. The time for calculation was over. The princess was defeated. The guards were neutralized. Airin was defenseless. The board was set for the final, tragic move.
And he was the only one who could stop it.
To hell with the consequences, the Major General roared in the silent chambers of his mind. To hell with the cover. To hell with being Professor Ferrum.
He closed his eyes. In the secret, hidden dimension of his Soul Farm, his second spirit, the demon king of fire, opened its burning eyes. Lloyd reached out with his will, not just inviting the power, but commanding it.
Iffrit. Awaken.
Down in the garden, as the Curse Knight’s blade began its descent toward the defeated princess, the world was consumed by fire.
It was not an explosion. It was a release. A wave of pure, incandescent crimson energy erupted from a single point in the air between the knight and his prey. It was a silent, suffocating wall of heat so intense that the very air seemed to shimmer and turn to glass. The grass in a fifty-foot radius instantly vaporized, not burning, but simply ceasing to exist, leaving behind a circle of scorched, blackened earth. The ancient rose bushes that had stood for a century were reduced to fine, white ash. The moisture in the air hissed and evaporated.
The Curse Knight was thrown back, his dark magic shield flaring violently as it was battered by a force of pure, elemental annihilation. He landed in a heap, his armor smoking, his curse aura flickering like a dying candle in a furnace.
Everyone—Isabella, her guards, the students, Captain Eva—stared in stunned, terrified silence at the source of the inferno.
A figure stood in the center of the scorched circle, seemingly untouched by the cataclysmic heat. He was cloaked and wore a featureless, blank white mask. A low, menacing aura of controlled fire radiated from him, a stark and terrifying contrast to the knight’s cold, debilitating curse. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He simply stood there, a silent, menacing judgment.
And then, behind him, the air began to tear. A rift of pure, molten heat opened, and from it, a being of nightmare and legend stepped forth. Nine feet tall, clad in armor of obsidian and magma, wielding a greatsword wreathed in roaring, untamed flame.
The White Mask had arrived. And he had brought a god of destruction with him.
The Curse Knight, a being of fear and despair, looked at the colossal fire demon and its silent, masked master, and for the first time, his mocking laughter died in his throat, replaced by the cold, metallic taste of genuine fear. He was confronting a power that felt just as dark, and infinitely more absolute, than his own.
—
The silence that fell over the Academy garden was not peaceful. It was a heavy, suffocating blanket of pure shock, the kind that follows a lightning strike so close it leaves the world devoid of sound and thought. The very air, once thick with the cloying, life-draining pressure of the Curse Knight, was now clean and sharp, smelling of ozone and the clean, searing heat of a forge. In the center of the scorched, blackened circle of earth, the White Mask stood as a figure of absolute, terrifying stillness.
Behind him, Iffrit, his demonic familiar, was a monument to the concept of annihilation. The nine-foot-tall being of magma and shadow rested its colossal, flame-wreathed zanbatō on its shoulder. The crimson flames that danced along the twelve-foot blade did not crackle with simple heat; they writhed with a hungry, sentient light, eager to consume, eager to unmake. The combined spiritual pressure of the masked man and his spirit was a physical weight, a force that crushed courage and demanded an instinctual, primal reverence.
Chapter : 632
Dozens of meters away, where he had been unceremoniously flung into the ancient stone wall, the Curse Knight stirred. A groan of tortured metal and pained breath echoed in the silence as he pushed himself up from the crater of rubble his impact had created. His magnificent, rune-etched armor, a symbol of Altamira’s dark power, was horribly dented and scored. A concave depression marred the backplate where the zanbatō had connected, and fine wisps of smoke curled from the over-stressed joints. The debilitating curse that was his primary weapon, the aura that had neutralized a dozen of the King’s elite Lion Guard, now felt like a thin, pathetic whisper, a morning mist trying to challenge the raw, oppressive heat of a volcano.
His professional training, the brutal indoctrination that had forged him into an elite weapon of the state, was at war with the primal, screaming terror that had taken root in his soul. He was a Curse Knight of the highest order. He had walked through battlefields as a living plague, his very presence enough to break the wills of heroes and scatter the resolve of armies. He had never, in all his years of service and slaughter, encountered a power like this.
The man in the white mask and his demonic partner were not warriors. They were a force of nature, an apocalypse in waiting, a localized extinction event. The power they wielded was not simply strong; it was absolute.
“Who… are you?” the Curse Knight’s voice rasped from behind the featureless black steel of his helmet. The sound was no longer the confident, mocking boom of a superior predator. It was a harsh, strained, and desperate query. It was a question born of tactical necessity—he had to identify this impossible variable for his report, should he somehow survive—but it was also a question of genuine, existential dread. He needed to know the name of the power that was about to erase him from the world.
Lloyd, hidden behind the blank, emotionless fa?ade of the mask, did not grant him the dignity of a reply. He couldn't. His voice, even if he tried to alter it with his power, had a unique timbre, a specific cadence. Princess Isabella had heard him speak. Captain Eva had heard him speak. Too many people in this garden could potentially recognize it, and a single word could unravel the entire, fragile tapestry of secrecy he had so carefully woven. His identity as the meek Professor Ferrum, the bumbling Lord Ferrum, was his most crucial shield. He would not risk it for the sake of a dramatic retort. His silence was his armor.
For the same reason, his most insidious and unique power remained dormant. He could have ended this fight before it began with his Black Ring Eyes. A simple “Seal of Severed Perception” would have plunged the Curse Knight into a silent, sightless void, leaving him a helpless, stumbling target. But that power was a signature of the Austin bloodline, a power so rare and mythical that its use would be an irrefutable confession. His mother had wielded it in the training hall. For him to use it here would be to scream his identity to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the great noble houses. His father knew of his awakened Steel Blood. His mother knew of his awakened Eyes. But no one, except his parents, and Ken, knew he could command two Transcended spirits and wield their elemental might as his own. He was a walking paradox of secret powers, and maintaining that secrecy was the cornerstone of his survival.
So, he remained silent. His judgment would be delivered not with words, but with fire and steel.
He shifted his grip on the six-foot broadsword he held. It was a simple, unadorned practice weapon he had summoned from his personal inventory, but in his hands, it had been transformed. It was no longer a mere blade of steel; it had become a conduit for Iffrit’s very essence. The metal glowed with a deep, internal, crimson light, as if it contained a molten core. The flames that licked and coiled along its edge were not the chaotic fire of a normal blaze; they were tendrils of pure, conceptual annihilation, hungry and eager to consume.
He took a single, deliberate step forward. The sound of his boot on the scorched earth was unnaturally loud in the ringing silence. Then another step. His advance was slow, measured, each footfall a drumbeat counting down the final seconds of the Curse Knight’s existence. This was not a battle; it was a ritual. This was not a fight; it was a judgment. The White Mask was the executioner, and the court was now in session.
