Being a knight is not easy

Chapter 134 The Knights of Dawn

Robin's sword light wove into a web of death, and each blow precisely slashed at Cress's magic nodes.

Cress's robe was torn into seven pieces, and dark red blood oozed out of his old skin.

He stumbled and smashed a stone pillar, and the obsidian on the top of the staff suddenly cracked with a spider web pattern.

"What are you waiting for?!" Cress roared into the air, panic appearing in his voice for the first time.

But the only response he got was the sparks from the clash of Ryan's two swords in the distance - the white-haired legendary knight and another legendary knight were suppressing three black-robed wizards at the same time with exquisite sword skills and coordination, and the gravel kicked up by the sword wind carved honeycomb-like dents in the wall.

The tip of Robin's knife suddenly burst out with a dazzling silver light, and the last shield that Cress hastily erected shattered like glass.

The old wizard suddenly inserted his skinny fingers into his wound, dipped them in blood, and drew a twisted rune in the void: "In the name of the parliament -"

"boom!"

The entire wall suddenly exploded, and three floating figures emerged in the moonlight.

But the sneer that just appeared on Cress's lips froze - the three first-ring wizards were tied up like puppets with silver chains, and the other end of the chain was held in the hands of a burly man wearing a bronze mask.

"Knight Academy, Prison Legend Knight Odom." A thunderous voice came from under the mask, and dense magic-forbidden runes suddenly lit up on the chains.

The three captives suddenly let out inhuman screams, and their robes spontaneously combusted without wind, revealing the fading magical tattoos on their skin.

Cress's face instantly aged ten years.

He recognized those chains—legend has it that they were made from the vertebrae of a fallen dragon, instruments of torture forged by the first Grand Master of the Knights Templar specifically for imprisoning high-ranking wizards.

"So, you already..." The old wizard's voice was like a leaky bellows.

He suddenly crushed the crystal hidden in his tooth socket, and turned into a sky full of blood crows and flew away.

But Robin's knife was faster than the crows. The sharp blade drew a perfect arc in the air, and the thirteen blood crows were chopped into two blood mists at the same time.

Only one blood crow managed to break through, and his voice spread throughout the battlefield.

"You think you've won, but our revenge has only just begun."

Robin narrowed his eyes slightly. He had deliberately held back the last blow in order to leave a tracking mark on Cress.

He would not miss the opportunity to eliminate the Wizard Council, but it was not convenient to do it now, so he deliberately let Cress escape. After finishing things here, he would sneak over and eliminate Cress and his gang together.

Robin's fingertips gently rubbed the hilt, feeling the tracking mark hidden in the scabbard getting slightly warm.

He looked in the direction where the Blood Raven disappeared, with a cold arc at the corner of his mouth.

"Let him escape?" Warden Odom turned his bronze mask towards Robin, the runes on the chains still flickering.

Robin didn't answer, but simply patted the scabbard at his waist.

A deep laugh suddenly rang out from beneath Odom's mask. "Good boy, you've even learned the methods of the 'Witch Hunter'."

Just as Elina was about to ask further questions, she heard Marquis Sonata coughing in the distance.

The old marquis knelt on one knee, leaning on his broken sword, black blood oozing from the wound on his chest - it was the cursed wound left by Cress's initial attack.

"Save him first." Robin stepped forward quickly, pressed his right hand three inches above the Marquis' wound, and his face instantly became solemn.

Robin said, "Marquis Sonata, your condition is somewhat serious. You need to seek help from a priest as soon as possible."

A military chaplain immediately arrived behind Marquis Sonata. "I'm here to examine the Marquis."

"Lord Odom." Robin interrupted without looking up, "The slums in the east of the city need to be cleared out." His voice was soft, but every word was weighty.

The bronze mask was silent for a moment, and then the chains tightened suddenly.

The three unconscious wizards were dragged into the air like rag dolls. "In three days, I want to see the complete interrogation report." Odom's figure gradually merged into the shadows, and the sound of chains still echoed on the stone wall as he finally disappeared.

When the Marquis's breathing finally stabilized, Robin suddenly held down Elena's hand as she tried to support him.

His ears trembled slightly - there was the sound of a fallen leaf being crushed in the rubble three meters away.

"It seems there are still rats." The moment the Tang sword was unsheathed, a cloud of purple smoke suddenly exploded twenty steps away.

Robin's blade precisely cut through the smoke, but only cut off half of the melting puppet's arm.

The cross section of the arm revealed a strange structure of gears and blood vessels intertwined, and a recording crystal was pinched at the fingertips.

Ryan kicked the puppet's remains away: "This thing from the Mechanicus Church? When did the Wizard Council collude with them?"

Robin lifted the recording crystal with the tip of his knife, revealing the flickering countdown runes within. His pupils suddenly constricted. "Everyone, stand back!"

The moment the crystal was thrown into the air, it exploded into a sky full of light points. These light points unexpectedly formed a three-dimensional map in the air - this was exactly where they were at the moment. The red dot representing Kress was flashing somewhere in the north of the city, with a line of scarlet text next to it:
[Western Knight Academy, you have offended an unprecedentedly powerful enemy. We can join forces and overthrow the rule of the Wizard Council.]

"I see." Robin looked at the legendary knight Ryan with a confused look on his face.

"Sir Knight, what is the Mechanicus?"

Robin's Tang sword was still hanging in the air, and the tip of the sword was stained with a strange grease that seeped out of the puppet's arm.

When he turned to Ryan, he found that the legendary knight's expression had become extremely solemn.

"The Mechanicus." Ryan's blade suddenly hummed, as if sensing something. "It's an existence even older than the Wizarding Council."

Elina suddenly gasped and picked out a gear from the puppet's wreckage.

There was a line of small words engraved on the inner ring of the gear: [Flesh and blood are weak, machinery is eternal].

"Three hundred years ago, during the Cataclysm." Ryan drew three overlapping circles on the ground with the tip of his sword. "The Wizard Council, the Mechanicus, and our Knights were allies in the fight against the Abyss."

He suddenly smashed the gear with the hilt of his sword, and a few drops of fluorescent liquid burst out from the metal fragments.

When the liquid hit the ground, it corroded a deep pit that emitted white smoke.

"Until they start transforming living people into..." Ryan's words were interrupted by a roar from the distance.

Everyone turned their heads to look, and suddenly the sky in the north of the city was split by a blue light. In the beam of light, the shadow of a giant gear could be vaguely seen slowly rotating.

Robin's pupils suddenly contracted - that was exactly the direction Cress fled.

Ryan thrust the blood-stained sword into the ground, and the metal and stone slab collided with each other, making a crisp clanging sound.

He looked towards the north at the gradually disappearing gear shadow, and a hint of reminiscence flashed in his eyes.

"Three hundred years ago, when the abyssal rift first appeared in the center of the continent," his voice suddenly became like the tolling of an ancient bell. "Back then, there was no Knight Academy. Only twelve knights who inherited the legacy of ancient heroes formed the original 'Knights of the Dawn'."

(End of this chapter)