Chapter 58: The Smoke Demon Knight

The standoff between the massive eye and Hugin was about to erupt when Wang Yu noticed something strange about Charles.

Though usually bold and carefree, Charles was now trembling uncontrollably, his face unnaturally pale despite his forced composure.

"What's wrong?" Wang Yu asked. He didn't think that Charles was the type to panic in such a situation.

From Charles' previous behavior, it was clear that his mental resilience was much stronger than Edward's.

"D-Demon," Charles stammered, his voice shaking as he tried to suppress his emotions.

Charles pointed at Hugin's lantern.

Wang Yu knew that Charles had a keen sense for the presence of demons and devils, but he didn't expect such a strong reaction.

It was puzzling, though this was clearly a personal issue for Charles, and Wang Yu's relationship with him wasn't close enough to ask about it.

Wang Yu turned his gaze to Hugin's lantern and scrutinized it carefully.

Because his ripples were being suppressed, Wang Yu was unable to use them to investigate the lantern. Just by looking at it, however, he could tell that something was off.

Inside the lantern, something appeared to be churning constantly. The light from the lantern came not from lamp oil, but rather the combustion of these strange entities.

"They're... all demons in there!" Charles cried out. It was a peculiar reaction.

"Take a deep breath. That's our captain you're talking about," Edward said, patting Charles on the back. Even Edward found Charles' reaction baffling.

A crisp slap rang out as Charles suddenly smacked himself across the face. His trembling ceased immediately.

"Whew, sorry about that. Old habit." Charles' condition visibly improved as his tremors ceased.

"Alright, now. Stay alert. We can't relax just because the captain's here to help us. Edward and I will hold the frontlines. You focus on causing as much damage as possible," Wang Yu ordered.

He didn't bother figuring out what was going on with Charles right now. They were in the middle of the fight—there was no time for idle chatter or digging into personal matters.

Wang Yu quickly assigned battle roles, and Charles and Edward immediately took their positions.

The three of them weren't particularly close; their trust in each other was merely that between professionals.

Even so, Wang Yu's plan was solid, and teamwork in combat was mandatory, even for strangers.

Those who failed to adapt to that reality would have perished from mistakes caused by hesitation or mistrust.

In just a few seconds, the trio adjusted their stances and focused entirely on the enormous eye, which remained partially obscured despite the lantern's glow.

At that moment, the battle between Hugin and the massive eye officially began. Hugin struck first.

Dragging his enormous axe behind him, Hugin invoked his fighting spirit, which surged like a raging river.

"He must be at least an advanced knight..." Wang Yu murmured, gauging his speed and strength. He suspected that he was still wildly underestimating their captain's strength.

The giant eye didn't seem to respond much to Hugin's fierce assault. It simply stared at him without showing any sign of movement.

But though the eye remained still, it was actually taking action. A wave of void energy emanated outward from the center of the eye, carrying immense vitality with it.

This surge of void energy seemed to infuse itself into everything in its vicinity, filling them with life force.

The surrounding buildings, bricks, mud, earth, and even the air itself—everything was affected by the wave of energy.

Strange cries echoed from all around them, identical to the sounds they had heard upon entering the depths of the territory.

"Is all of this... coming alive?!" Edward exclaimed in shock.

"By the god of light..." The sight left Charles equally incredulous.

Where the ripples passed by, all lifeless matter became animated, granted life by the Font of Life, Erphine.

Brick crumbled to reveal writhing flesh beneath. Jellyfish-like entities materialized in the air, floating as they opened grotesque, bloodshot eyes.

These strange new lifeforms immediately erupted into frenzied activity as they moved to serve their master with relentless aggression.

Bricks tumbled from the house, sprouting insect-like limbs and frantically scurrying away.

Sharp, jagged teeth extended from within, dripping with crimson blood and covered in countless barbs. With horrifying shrieks, these abominations charged at Wang Yu and his companions.

"Watch out! Get ready to fight!" Edward's roar rang out. The shield-bearing knight raised his shield high, stepping protectively in front of Wang Yu and Charles.

Hugin was undoubtedly their offensive core for this battle, but these monsters that were given life by the Font of Life Erphine seemed to be attacking everything in sight indiscriminately.

Bricks sprouting fleshy limbs, airborne jellyfish teeming with strange powers, and soil transforming into writhing, grotesque flesh creatures—these abominable lifeforms rushed toward the four knights present, the majority focusing on Hugin and a small fraction heading for the three of them.

Without any hesitation, Hugin shattered the ground beneath his feet as he charged through the relentless tide of animated horrors toward the giant eye.

His long coat billowed behind him as he swung his massive axe in alternating arcs between his hands, cleaving flesh with every swing.

With his right hand, Hugin swung the axe upward in a diagonal arc, transitioning smoothly to his left hand as the axe slashed downward.

The motion was seamless, and the axe never stopped moving. It relentlessly tore apart anything that dared to approach. The axe spun like a grinder, shredding through the horrifying amalgamations of flesh.

Fragile against the massive weapon, the monsters were reduced to a gory mess as Hugin carved a path through the ocean of blood and carnage that stood between him and the giant eye.

On the other hand, Wang Yu and the others faced far greater difficulty.

The monstrous lifeforms that seemed pitifully weak in comparison to Hugin's strength were far harder for Wang Yu's trio to take down.

Edward's shield sent a fleshy brick-turned-insect flying.

Its hard shell scraped against the ground and cracked a flagstone, but despite the visible damage, the shell rapidly regenerated.

The grotesque insect shook off its disorientation and leapt back into the fray, continuing its relentless assault on Wang Yu and his companions.

"Damn it! These things regenerate just like those flesh oozes!" Edward cursed.

He tried to draw his shield back, only to find it ensnared by a blood-soaked slime with sticky tendrils oozing from its gelatinous body.

Edward finally wrenched his shield free—only to bring the slime along with it.

The slime revealed sharp, bone-like teeth that extended toward Edward's face like a gaping maw ready to bite.

"Splat!" A sharp insect limb darted through the air, piercing the slime and splitting it apart.

The bloody mass collapsed into a puddle of rotten flesh.

Wang Yu, who had just cleaved another fleshy insect in two with his axe, had thrown the insect's severed limb like a dart to impale the slime's core.

Wang Yu was shocked. "The slime's core is still present?"

He had thrown the limb as a last-ditch effort to assist Edward, and had targeted a visibly solid mass within the slime's translucent body, a region resembling an ordinary slime's core. Under usual circumstances, destroying this core would normally kill the slime instantly.

However, these monsters were supposedly inanimate objects forcibly imbued with life.

Regardless of what they looked like, their weaknesses shouldn't have been those of the biological forms they mimicked.

Even so, Wang Yu's strike on the slime had been unexpectedly effective.

The blood slime had died just like that, without being able to regenerate via void energy.

"But why...?" Wang Yu wondered.

Even as he pondered the situation, his hands didn't slow. His sword flashed as he sliced through the air and cut down the insect swarms.

This time, Wang Yu paid closer attention. These bricks-turned-insects, the most numerous of their opponents and the easiest to deal with, generally needed some time to regenerate after having been split in two.

While most of the bisected creatures regenerated after a delay, a small number remained lifeless, collapsing like the blood slime had.

Wang Yu raised an eyebrow, suddenly feeling as though he had stumbled upon something important.

At that moment, the number of summoned creatures reached its peak. A jellyfish of air drifted unnoticed toward Wang Yu, barely perceptible with Wang Yu's physical senses. Only when it entered the range of his heavily suppressed ripples did Wang Yu suddenly sense it.

"Damn it, this isn't good!" Within its body, a concentrated surge of void energy began to gather.

Wang Yu planted his feet and executed a backward roll, but he was just slightly too slow. The energy within the jellyfish detonated before he could escape completely.

Void energy surged outward, unleashing a shockwave that engulfed everything nearby.

The creatures around Wang Yu, including the blood slimes and brick insects, were instantly destroyed by the wave.

The ensuing explosion was devastating. Bricks shattered and massive craters formed in the ground, a testament to the monstrous bomb's power.

Unfortunately, Wang Yu had been surrounded by a swarm of grotesque monsters when the explosion occurred.

While Edward had kept the creatures at bay and avoided the worst of the explosion, Wang Yu was directly caught in the blast.

The explosion engulfed Wang Yu entirely, the blood-red mist enveloping him in a terrifying display of carnage.

For an intermediate knight-in-training like him, even survival seemed impossible.

As the mist cleared, Wang Yu’s figure emerged, his body shielded by a faintly glowing barrier that flickered and dissipated. At his feet, a tarot card bearing the image of a chariot shattered into pieces.

He looked around, startled by the scene. The explosion had eradicated the surrounding monsters, but he was remarkably unharmed.

A faint, invisible shield still surrounded him, a result of his hastily cast Barrier. With two layers of protective magic, he had somehow managed to survive unscathed.

He glanced at Charles and Edward, who nodded in acknowledgment.

Wang Yu nodded in understanding. The two barriers that had suddenly protected him—one was clearly from Charles' Chariot tarot card, and the other was Edward's secret art, Steel Sunlight.

He smiled at them. His two colleagues were clearly trustworthy comrades that he could entrust his safety to.

Suddenly, something occurred to him. Wang Yu rapidly turned his head, but by the time he did so, what he had feared had already occurred.

"Boom!" A blast far more powerful than the one near Wang Yu erupted, countless times greater in scale. Scarlet mist instantly engulfed the entire street, dyeing it blood-red.

Debris flew in all directions, the force of the impact turning even small stones into deadly projectiles. These struck Wang Yu's Barrier, shattering its relatively fragile protection.

A few shards grazed his face, leaving streaks of blood behind.

Meanwhile, Edward pushed the frail-bodied Charles to the ground beneath him. He held his shield up front, protecting them both from the aftershock of the explosion.

Edward glanced solemnly toward the origin of the blast, a spot now hidden beneath a thick layer of scarlet mist.

This was a dire situation. As Wang Yu had feared, a jellyfish of air had detonated all the life-infused creatures surrounding Hugin at once, triggering an explosion dozens, if not hundreds, of times more devastating than what had occurred near Wang Yu.

Even the residual shockwave had such destructive power... Wang Yu couldn't imagine just how potent the impact had to be at its epicenter.

While he was confident in Hugin's abilities, he knew that even an advanced knight might not have survived an explosion of this magnitude.

However, something suddenly drew Edward's attention. Beneath him, Charles began to tremble again.

"Don't tell me he's shaking because he thinks the captain's dead? But with this level of devastation..." Edward thought grimly.

But then a realization struck him. This trembling—Charles' particular quirk—had another, more ominous meaning.

Edward released Charles and turned toward the scarlet mist.

"Smoke..." Wang Yu murmured as he, too, noticed it.

Emerging from the blood-red fog was the flickering light of Shugin's lantern, followed by an inexorable tide of smoke.

The smoke poured out, forcing its way through the thick scarlet mist, devouring it greedily.

The crimson vapor was gathered into one place and then drawn into something unseen.

As the scarlet fog was devoured, the scene within grew clearer.

Wang Yu saw a figure within the coiling smoke. It was formed entirely of smoke and stood tall as it held a massive blood-red battle axe. It was unscathed.

The figure carried an opened lantern, which greedily consumed the last remnants of the scarlet mist.

As it did, faint sounds of satisfied sighs and burps could be heard emanating from the lamp.

"Smoke demon..." Charles's trembling voice came from behind Edward. His pale face showed his unease; the mage's unique sensitivity to demonic presences was clearly at play.

Wang Yu observed as Hugin's body of smoke returned to physical form.

The swirling smoke surrounding him was drawn back into the lantern. Was this the supposed "smoke demon"?

It seemed that Hugin had survived the explosion by using the smoke demon's ability to vaporize.

This ability reminded Wang Yu of something from his studies, a famous, powerful potential that he had come across in a compendium of potentials at the grand library: Malevolent Possession.

"Enslaving a demon and forcibly wielding its power... No wonder the Professor was so confident. And no wonder Charles, a walking demon detector, is reacting so strongly," Wang Yu muttered.

He then raised his voice toward Hugin. "Captain, look carefully at the pupil of that giant eye! That's no ordinary pupil—it's a slime core. Destroying that core should deal a critical blow to the monster!"

This was Wang Yu's deduction based on his earlier discoveries and the goblin incident. These life-infused creatures all seemed to have a core resembling that of a slime, a peculiar trait.

He considered how the entities worshiping these strange gods—like the goblins who had served the Lady of the Night—were all mindless beings.

The Lady of the Night had even explicitly mentioned that such mindless followers could corrupt deities like them. Could it be that this Font of Life, Erphine, was suffering from the same problem?

The only difference was that its followers were slimes, not goblins...

Wang Yu thought back to the giant eye’s viscous, jelly-like green pupil. Wasn’t that a slime core? Yes, it had to be.

Hugin wasted no time. His actions showed that he had heard Wang Yu's shout.

He pulled a cigar—not a pipe—from his pocket, pressed it firmly against the axe handle, and ignited it through sheer force and speed. After taking a deep drag, he exhaled a cloud of smoke through his nose and mouth.

Ignoring the life-infused creatures once again regenerating under the influence of the Font of Life, Hugin opened up the lantern again.

The smoke he had exhaled began to writhe and contort, as though imbued with life.

It coiled up Hugin's body, wrapping around him bit by bit, then coalesced to form a massive suit of armor. The swirling mist condensed to reveal a three-meter-tall titan, a smoky colossus clad in knightly armor, wielding an enormous battleaxe formed of smoke—Malevolent Possession - The Smoke Demon Knight.