Chapter 639: I Am Not Stupid

Chapter 639: I Am Not Stupid

Karen's remark was merely a polite response, devoid of any other intent; since the other party had spoken of preparing a coffin for him, he had simply returned the courtesy by offering to reserve one in kind.

Yet, the moment those words were uttered, a manservant, who had been lurking in the peripheral shadows awaiting his moment to strike, abruptly snapped his eyes open.

A great existence has extended an invitation to you; what you must do next is to listen to the guidance of your new destiny with a posture of utmost devotion.

Alfred then began to count again in his heart, three out of twelve;

If he could successfully claim this one, it would be four out of twelve;

Ah, from a quarter to a third.

For the longest time, when the young master's twelve coffins would finally be filled had been a persistent anxiety for Alfred, so much so that for a period, whenever he saw someone who even slightly met the criteria, he would instantly wish for their swift demise so they could move into a warm, comfortable coffin.

However, as the young master's strength grew, the threshold for lying in the coffins naturally rose as well, causing the scope of eligible materials to become increasingly narrow.

It was a pity that Neo still hung on by a single breath; if he were to die, he could at least fill one of the vacant slots.

Though Neo had seemingly once told his young master that if the young master dared to awaken him after his death, the first thing he would do upon waking was commit suicide.

But to Alfred, this was hardly a threat; if worse came to worst, he could simply seal him away immediately after awakening, plunging him back into a deep slumber.

Then, whenever his power was required, they could just unseal him again.

Alfred did not believe for a second that if Neo woke up and found his young master in danger or in need of him, he would willfully close his eyes and insist on fulfilling his suicide vow; he would undoubtedly help when it mattered, of that there was no question.

Just like earlier up above, when the young master said "sell them off," everyone else had chimed in with agreement, while he alone remained silent.

Because he knew perfectly well that the young master would never abandon the Director of Investigation; that was his friend, a friend who met the standard of the word "friend" in its truest sense.

Adjusting his emotions, Alfred closed his eyes once more and transmitted a message to the others through the psychic chain.

Next, the young master's side would be the main battlefield, while his own side needed to perfectly grasp the timing to join the fray.

Thanks to that massive explosion, which had obliterated all the preparations here, the grand necromancer who was supposed to be fighting on his home turf had now become half-blind within his own "house."

A smile suddenly tugged at the corner of Alfred's mouth, for another thought had struck him: if the fate of this grand necromancer was already predetermined, then could the upcoming battle... be considered a job interview?

This had to be treated with absolute seriousness and gravity, after all, it concerned future benefits.

...

Those with steadfast faith can always maintain a positive and optimistic mindset.

But Karen's current mood was not nearly as beautiful as Alfred's.

For before him, Commander Daan turned his palm downward, and instantly the rock beneath his feet began to melt and rise, directly forging a blade of molten lava.

More magma began to spread rapidly across his skin, weaving a dense, intricate web before establishing a state of dynamic equilibrium.

A plume of black mist materialized behind him simultaneously, out of which stepped a woman clad in dark armor; her face was obscured, but she possessed an extraordinarily flowing mane of hair.

Her arms wrapped around Commander Daan from behind, enveloping the commander in a shimmering shroud of light.

In the next instant, the commander moved.

His speed was not exceptionally fast, lacking that quality of vanishing like the wind; in fact, as he crossed the distance from his original spot to the front of Karen, Karen even had time to mentally weigh several methods of response.

Ultimately, Karen chose not to withstand the blow directly; although he dearly wished to truly test the defensive capabilities of the Dragon God Armor, it was no reason to stand rooted to the spot and engage in a brute-force clash with a traditional warrior.

However, the moment Karen retreated, he realized his choice was a mistake.

As the lava sword slashed down, though the blade missed Karen, the moment its edge descended, Karen immediately sensed the air behind him being instantaneously vacuumed away, as a terrifying atmospheric pressure began to constrict his movements.

The commander pressed forward, striking at Karen once more, and though he missed again, after this second strike fell, Karen felt the oppressive pressure intensify, as if invisible hands were forcing his body closer to the commander.

It was a truly bizarre method of combat; in the face of it, opponents with nimble footwork and high speed were reduced to little birds with broken wings.

Karen sought to break free from this suffocating state, but the commander's slashes suddenly grew swifter, and though not a single blow connected, Karen felt as if he had been cast into a sealed chamber that was continuously pumping out air.

The wings of Qianmei unfurled, beginning to aid Karen in resisting this oppressive force, while simultaneously, a magic cube appeared before him, spinning rapidly as Karen began to construct a defensive array.

Finally, under the relentless barrage of slashes, even Qianmei could no longer hold out, forcing Karen to take the initiative and lunge forward, swinging the Sword of Diamans with his right hand to clash with the commander.

Clang!

The two greatswords hacked into one another, sending sparks flying in all directions.

At the start, Karen successfully blocked this strike, considering it a somewhat forced match of equals, but once the first wave of force subsided and Karen prepared to shift his weight, the commander's side unleashed a surge of power double that of the first;

Immediately following was four times, and finally, eight times!

The rapid accumulation of force was like crashing ocean waves; before the previous wave could recede, the next had already taken over, creating a terrifying amplification.

The Sword of Diamans was instantly pressed down, its edge catching against Karen's shoulder, where the Dragon God Armor blocked it, but as the sheer weight of the impact bore down upon him, Karen was forced to drop to one knee.

Buzz!

Gripping his greatsword, the commander continued to exert force, the two heavy blades locking at Karen's shoulder, forcing Karen to bear an immensely powerful, physical weight.

Fortunately, the Dragon God Armor successfully protected Karen's body; had it been the Sea God Armor, it would likely have shattered by now, since the Sea God Armor belonged strictly to the realm of spells and was not a tangible object.

Even with such powerful defense, Karen could not afford to stop resisting, otherwise he would merely be fighting inside a tin can, destined to be played to death by his opponent's shifting tactics.

Suddenly, the commander retracted his sword, raised it high, and hacked down at Karen once more.

This was an attack style that completely abandoned all defense; if Karen wished, he could risk a lethal trade to cleave the opponent through the waist, though he himself would also be split in two, together completing the simplest two-directional bisection of the human body.

But the problem was... the opponent was an undead summon, possessing a status no different from a puppet; Karen would have to be completely out of his mind to choose to trade his life with a mere puppet.

Driven by necessity, Karen could only raise the Sword of Diamans once more to parry.

Clang!

The two greatswords collided yet again.

Unsurprisingly, it began in a state of equilibrium, whereupon the opposing force began to multiply.

Thud!

The Sword of Diamans was forced down to Karen's chest once more, and relying on the formidable defense of the Dragon God Armor, Karen managed to channel a portion of the pressure into the armor, letting it help him absorb the damage.

This time, Karen noticed the commander's body before him; the areas previously swathed in magma were evaporating with extreme rapidity, while from beneath the commander's feet, a constant upward flow of lava rushed to replenish it.

If he could employ eight times the power on the very first strike, he certainly wouldn't save it for later; wouldn't it be far more satisfying to just hack him down with consecutive blows?

But the reality was that the initial force was already the absolute limit this summoned body could exert; the subsequent forces were an amplification of power drawn from the surrounding environment, using his own body as a medium.

He was using his own body as a lever.

By comparison, Karen felt that his own method of using armor purely as armor seemed somewhat too primitive.

Nevertheless, being able to quickly analyze the opponent's combat style while being suppressed and beaten truly did justice to the characteristics of the Inmeris family's belief system; just like Gray, the member of the Hound Squad who had taught Karen close-quarters combat, who had been utterly shocked by Karen's learning capability, as there were times when Karen could turn a move Gray had just used right back against him in the very next exchange.

Combat was indeed the fastest way to recognize one's shortcomings and enhance one's strength, provided, of course, that one survived.

The commander withdrew his sword once more, and after a brief moment of release, an intensely profound exhaustion washed over all of Karen's muscles.

A simple exchange, a simple clash of blades, yet Karen had already been suppressed to a wretched degree.

When the third strike descended, Karen had no choice but to lift the Sword of Diamans to block it again.

Just like before, the force came crashing down wave after wave, and Karen felt that this third strike was already his absolute limit; if he took one more, every muscle in his body would face the risk of tearing.

Although he had not shed a single drop of blood so far, the pressure had not leaked in the slightest, completely absorbed by his own physical frame.

However, just as the amplification of this third strike reached its peak effect, the magic cube, which had already moved behind Karen, stopped spinning.

The formation was complete.

A black hexagram manifested beneath their feet as the protective array flared to life.

"Isolate!" Karen commanded.

Concocted in haste without proper materials, such formations rarely yielded pristine results. Their efficacy was dubious at best, and their longevity severely compromised—especially when strained under immense duress.

Yet, a fleeting moment was all Karen required.

The formation's boundary instantly snared both Karen and the Commander, shearing them away into an environment severed from the outside world.

Caught at the absolute zenith of his borrowed might, the Commander found his support instantly severed. His physical form, which had served merely as a conduit, was suddenly forced to shoulder the entirety of the crushing burden.

A succession of sharp, explosive cracks rang out.

Breaches tore open across the Commander's body, and a amber fluid, indistinguishable from blood, erupted in violent spurts as he stumbled backward in rapid retreat.

Such was the inherent limitation of a member of the undead; the grand orchestrator of his movements remained the archmage. To put it simply, these reanimated entities, forged long ago with the aid of his comrades, retained those comrades' unique capabilities, functioning akin to a hardwired sequence of battle techniques.

While Morindi could dictate the execution of these forms, she was ultimately a mage, not a warrior. Her capacity to improvise and adapt to a shifting battlefield was severely restricted, rendering the assault rigid and mechanical.

Had it been the living Commander himself, he likely would have exercised extreme caution the moment Karen began tracing the formation; nor would he have mindlessly repeated the same technique thrice merely because it initially found its mark, unless the disparity in their power was truly insurmountable.

Morindi, however, lacked the nuance to perceive such depths. Thus, to an outside observer, the Commander had unleashed three furious, imposing slashes upon Karen, who managed to parry each one in a state of wretched disarray, only for the Commander's own body to suddenly rupture.

Karen surged to his feet, swinging the Sword of Diamans in a fluid arc, intending to cleave the Commander's ruined vessel to pieces.

Yet the Commander relinquished his grip on the molten blade. Even as Karen's strike shore him in two at the waist, his detached torso plummeted forward, arms extending to lock Karen in a grappling hold reminiscent of a contortionist's embrace.

In an instant, Karen felt himself utterly pinned—not by the rigidity of wood or stone, but by the immovable weight of a mountain.

A fatal miscalculation.

Karen realized he had blundered in the exact same manner as Morindi. While Morindi was ignorant of a warrior's martial instincts, he himself was blind to the fluid methodology an archmage employed when cycling through undead summons.

To her, the damage or destruction of a summoned minion was a perfectly mundane occurrence; her focus remained anchored on the seamless execution of the next sequence.

Just as Karen found himself ensnared by the severed torso, a woman’s upper body emerged from within the shriveled, black heart resting beneath Morindi.

She possessed a mane of crimson hair and a countenance of stark austerity. Crossing her hands beneath her frame, she rapidly condensed a terrifying spell before parting her lips to release a brilliant beam of scarlet light.

The Commander had not been the sole undead entity Morindi deployed during this engagement. Before he was ever regurgitated, this woman had already been summoned within the putrid humors of that heart, held in reserve.

These variables had been meticulously factored into Morindi's calculations; this was her method of engagement.

The scarlet beam struck Karen squarely in the chest without deviation. The Dragon God Armor shimmered with a pale, protective radiance to absorb the impact, yet the crimson light vanished entirely just before colliding with the plate.

In the very next heartbeat, it erupted out from behind Karen's back.

Though it had failed to breach the armor's physical exterior, it had achieved a tangible, penetrating effect.

Karen spat a mouthful of fresh blood and sank to his knees, his mouth agape.

The Dragon God Armor, possessing a defense that bordered on the miraculous, had just failed.

It was not due to any betrayal on Kanna’s part; Kanna had been unfailingly dutiful, focusing solely on protection and executing Karen's intent without flaw.

The fault lay in the fact that Morindi, upon identifying the armor, could not possibly have neglected to alter her mode of assault.

If blame were to be assigned, it belonged to the reality that those who once followed beside Norton were, without exception, monsters.

Even in the present era, they would not suffer by comparison to the exceptional youths surrounding Karen.

One could not even characterize them merely as geniuses, for they had already achieved monumental success in their endeavors. Had they not met untimely demised or suffered the consequences of betrayal along the way, every single one of them would now occupy the highest echelons of power, ruling as arbiters over the vast Church of Order.

The Sword of Diamans clattered to the earth. Karen's posture collapsed from a kneel to a prone stance, his forearms braced against the ground.

As blood spilled continuously from the corners of his mouth, a faint, crimson spark began to leak from the seams of his armor.

The Dragon God Armor began to recede, and Kanna returned to Karen's back, slipping downward before staring at him in utter disbelief.

With the armor withdrawn, a distinct, circular brand of crimson ash was visible against Karen’s chest—the marker of a fatal strike.

The crimson flames grew in intensity, gradually enveloping Karen's entire form. His features twisted in agonizing torment as he struggled against the bizarre, crimson corruption.

…

"Hold your ground!"

Alfred issued the mandate across the psychic link.

"No one moves without my express order. Though this apostate appears grievously wounded, one can never ascertain how many hidden summons remain in

Melinda raised her hand, pointing toward Neo, who sat just behind and to the side of Karen.

"He managed to trick me the exact same way several times today.

So, at least for today, if you try that same trick again, I won't believe it."

"Ah..."

Karen let out a sigh upon hearing the explanation, turning his head to look back at Neo.

Neo blinked.