Chapter 161 Guardian Knight

When Nial reached Bella and stood beside her, he let down Mathias before averting his focus back to the direction of the six Guardian Knights.

He was aware of the Guardian Knight's existence as he had read something about the different type of existing Runic armaments.

The Puppet-type was deemed quite rare because they were extremely complex and cost-intensive to produce.

That was what he had read in one of the books they had collected.

There was not much Nial knew about Puppet-type runic armaments, just that they existed.

'I should have read more about them, maybe I would have gotten a clue of their weakness…'

While Nial began to curse himself inwardly, Mathias had regained his focus. His heart was beating rapidly owing to the near brush with death.

Just a mere second of distraction would have cost him his precious life which he had received for the second time. Only due to Nial's quick reflexes and presence of mind was he still alive.

With slightly trembling hands, Mathias reached for the Tier-1 Blackwood wand before he bit his lower lip, telling himself that he should not be nervous.

Being calm was the most important right now which was why Mathias took a deep breath while Nial retracted the veil of dark energy once everyone was ready to battle.

'I shouldn't waste a lot of mana for now…'

Nial's fighting style was mostly focused on using powerful weapons as well as gaining an advantage with his dark energy and black miasma.

To be of great use, each move in his fighting style required large amounts of mana.

That meant his strength would decrease drastically the moment he was drained of mana.

Even Mathias and Bella understood this clearly, which was why it was not surprising for Nial to retract the dark energy, unveiling the six Guardian Knights that had been distracted for a moment.

While Bella had quickly put on the Tier-1 protection chestplate that was also able to increase the wielder's physical strength to a certain degree, the Tier-1 Dragonflame spear had already manifested in Nial's hand.

By touching the two rings on the spear's shaft, Nial felt a deep connection to the Dragonflame spear. This was a reassuring feeling which made him feel a bit confident. Next, he inserted a trace of mana in it to ignite the tip of the blade.

Changing his combat stance at once, Nial began to smile as he had sensed something intriguing.

The Guardian Knights didn't break through the thin layer of dark energy before. Because they were inanimate existences they didn't know fear.

In fact, there was not a trace of sentience within them.

But there was one thing they seemed to have gotten added in the runic constellations that were responsible for their behavior- a sense of danger!

Being able to sense danger was quite important. However for mindless existences to receive such a trait was quite intriguing in Nial's opinion.

However, it was also risky because one could use it against the Guardian Knights as long as one was able to find out this secret trait!

Blasting forward without hesitation, Nial created a batch of six dark energy needles. Each Guardian Knight was targeted with one of them.

The dark energy needles were extremely fast, crossing a distance of more than five meters in a moment.

Yet, upon reaching the range of the Guardian Knights, something astonishing happened to the needles.

While two Guardian Knights easily evaded the dark energy needles, three Guardian knights blocked the attack with their longswords.

What was even more surprising was that the last Guardian Knight did not block the attack but it cut through the attack using its fast speed to its advantage.

At this moment, Nial noticed that the Guardian Knights had not been mass-produced products that possessed the exact same runic constellations but they seemed to have acquired a mind of their own.

'So they're not the same?' He figured, averting his trajectory at once to reach the Guardian Knight on his left.

Despite requiring slightly longer to react than ordinary beasts, the Guardian Knights' speed made up for this.

They were, at least, as fast as agility-focused beasts at the 10th Origin rank. This exceeded Nial's highest possible speed by quite a bit, preventing him from overwhelming his opponents with a high-velocity surprise attack.

To Nial, it was not even surprising that some Guardian Knights had been able to deflect his dark energy needles.

He didn't use much dark energy to create them and their speed had been half of what they would be able to achieve if used in their peak state.

Restricting his attacks' lethality was necessary as he was not sure how strong the Guardian Knights' defenses were, and neither how advanced their combat recognition was.

Puppet-type runic armaments were not only for show. They could also observe and analyze the combat style of their opponents easily.

Nial did not know this for sure but he had been presuming this because the costs to create a single Puppet-type runic armament were way too high for them to be playthings, or punching bags!

That was enough reason for him to restrict his strength and mana consumption until he would learn more about his opponents.

At the same time, he was not alone which was quite helpful as Mathias created several layers of Earthen walls between Nial and the five other Guardian Knights.

The Earthen walls wouldn't hold the Guardian Knights back for a long time but the single second he gained from Mathias' intervention was more than enough for Nial to reach his designated target.

Bella appeared right next to him, both [Celestial transformation] and [Outburst] activated at once.

She clearly sensed the dangers radiating from the Guardian Knights and the threat they posed to their lives. Thus, despite knowing that they would be able to gain a huge fortune by keeping the damage on the runic armaments as low as possible before selling them, Bella used all her strength at once.

Even the strengthening runic constellation of the Tier-1 protection chestplate was fully unleashed, increasing Bella's combat prowess further.

Darkish flames shrouded the Dragonflame spear as Nial inserted dark energy into the spear instead of mana, creating the mutation of the flame that was supposed to ignite around the Dragonflame spear.

Clearly sensing the danger from both sources of mana in front of it, the Guardian Knight retreated as programmed to step back, and joined the other Guardian Knights to fight their opponents together.

The other Guardian Knights could also clearly sense Nial and Bella's mana fluctuations by using the range of perception that had been inscribed in their circuit of runic constellations.

That was how they sensed their opponents, to begin with. Existences without a trace of mana wouldn't be detected that way, but such beings were not able to harm the Guardian Knights so they could be ignored.

At least that was what one would usually think.

Nial and the others were all in possession of mana, and it was impossible for them to perfectly conceal their mana either.

Given that, the three of them were detected by the Guardian Knights, who tried to eradicate the infiltrators.

At that moment the Guardian Knight they had attacked reacted. It swung its longsword at both Nial and Bella with a rapid pace.

Blocking the attack that was even stronger than the Lesser Titan youngling's punches was close to impossible for Nial.

That was owed to the fact that he would be blasted into Bella upon impacting on the longsword.

Nial could sense that quite directly which was why he wanted to evade the slash.

Yet, before he could even move, Nial nearly stiffened when he realized that Bella was still next to him. She didn't seem to be inclined to evade the Guardian Knight's slash.

If Nial were to evade the attack but Bella wouldn't, she was bound to face the attack all by herself.

However, that was exactly what Bella was planning to do.

She shot past Nial the moment she sensed what Nial wanted to do.

'I will block the attack, and you use the momentum to kill the Guardian Knight!'

That was what Bella wanted from Nial. She knew that the shortswords were not strong enough to pierce through the Guardian Knight's defense.

Bella was clearly able to sense that as her weapons were simply too weak. She owned Common Myth weapons after all!

Nial's Tier-1 Dragonflame spear, enhanced by dark energy was simply stronger, which was why she wanted to support Nial with the opportunity he needed.

The moment she cross-blocked the longsword that impacted on both shortswords, Bella groaned instinctively.

'So powerful!' Bella could only think, realizing that the Guardian Knights were far stronger than she could have imagined.

Even ordinary beasts at the Prym rank would not be able to possess the brute force and speed required to initiate an attack as the Guardian Knight in front of them was able to exert.

And that was only the might of one of the six Guardian Knights!

Bella's expressions grew worse the moment she realized how dangerous the ancient ruin's palace was. She had some expectations about this place's dangers, but it exceeded her imagination, by a bit.

However, it was only a moment later that Bella's body was blasted backward.

Her eyes widened, upon hearing the sound of crumbling metal. Her shortswords, the weapons she treasured dearly were breaking apart in only one encounter with the Guardian Knight in front of her!

Despite being shocked for a moment, a sly smile manifested on her lips.

"Destroy the runic constellations on their shoulders!" Nial suddenly shouted the moment the Dragonflame spear's blade had pierced through the Guardian Knight's chest.

Under normal circumstances, Nial would have never attacked the Guardian Knight from the front side. If his senses weren't betraying him, the Puppet-type runic armament was even stronger than the Lesser Titan youngling.

However, the dangers he perceived were something he had to ignore because his range of perception was unable to detect anything within the hollow Guardian Knight.

Several runic constellations prevented other beings from sensing the inner parts of their body, which was why Nial had not been able to sense the mana-supplied runic constellations within the Guardian Knights.

This was also the reason why he didn't know where to attack the Guardian Knights to defeat them in an instant

At least, that had been the case before, until the blade of the Dragonflame spear pierced through the Guardian Knight.

For a moment, the isolation around the Guardian Knight had crumbled, allowing Nial to sense thousands of rather small runic constellations that had been inscribed within the Puppet.

The information that flooded his mind was overwhelming but Nial accepted every single bit of it. This allowed him to digest the pieces of information rapidly.

He had even gotten to know where most of the main runic constellations were located. It was the exact same spot he had shouted out a moment ago for his friends to target.

Nial revealed the most important piece of information to Bella and Mathias, who could only nod their heads.

But even then the tension in their body was still overflowing as the danger of the Guardian Knights was still present.

However, it was just at this moment that the surrounding temperature increased drastically. The Visor of the Guardian Knight turned blackish as dark flames emerged from it.

At the first glance, both Bella and Mathias thought that this was a reaction of the Guardian Knight, indicating that it was becoming stronger, or that its defensive mechanism was activated.

But that was not the case, at all. Rather, the darkish flames indicated that it was weakened as it were Nial's flames that burned through the inner parts of the Guardian Knight.

Using his dark energy in combination with the Dragonflame spear's unique function to ignite flames, Nial chose to burn the Guardian Knight from the inside out.

Being burned from the inside would usually cause severe damage. Unfortunately, the runic constellations within the Guardian Knight did not get burned.

They were merely damaged to the extent that the Guardian Knight ran in the wrong direction the moment it sensed the danger it was exposed to.

Oddly enough, the direction of the Puppet's choice was straight towards the other Guardian Knights that had made their way through the last Earthen wall Mathias had created between them and his team.

With the appearance of five more Guardian Knights, the battle became more intense, even more so because Bella's most treasured weapon had been destroyed.

However, instead of feeling scared or desperate about what to do, Nial could only smile, while a new pair of weapons manifested in Bella's hand.

They were Tier-0 shortswords, weapons that were far stronger than the Common Myth shortswords she had wielded before.

"Looks like I cannot continue holding back anymore!"

**

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