"Woo... woo!"
A muffled horn sounded from outside the city.
It was the signal to retreat.
Gawain's brow tightened, but he did not look back. His gaze remained fixed on the shadow looming overhead, his golden eyes blazing like fire.
"Traitor. You collude with barbarians and butcher your own people!"
"Traitor? Heh. Why such arrogance? Why such denial? Why do you call yourselves human? Britannia must be destroyed. You must be wiped out."
On the dragon's back, the man wrapped in black mist, his face indistinct, looked down with disdain. His voice was low, slow, and heavy.
"If this island is to be defiled by humanity, then I will restore it to its primal state with my own hands.
I will turn great Britannia into hell.
A dark paradise where humanity can never again live..."
Vortigern, the Vile King.
The contemptible king who had summoned foreign tribes in an attempt to claim Britannia for himself was an existence the Round Table could not understand, and one they all despised.
What a mad declaration.
The fiery-tempered Knight of the Sun wore a cold expression. The Holy Sword in his hand, filled with the power of the sun, flared with blazing solar flame as he shouted at the shadow coiled overhead.
"My Holy Sword is the embodiment of the sun. It purifies all filth. Vortigern, Vile King, fall here! Flame Mist!"
If the King's sword was a sacred blade that gathered the light of the stars, then his sword was the image of the sun itself, an iron hammer that burned away evil.
Moreover, as the Knight of the Sun, he had once been blessed by a saint and possessed a special constitution.
From nine in the morning until noon, and again from three in the afternoon until sunset, the power he held would triple.
And right now, it was exactly noon.
Boom!
The knight, carrying both the saint's blessing and the protection of the sun, swung his blade with confidence. The low-ranking Dragonkind shrieking and diving along its path screamed as they turned to ash.
Behind him, fully armed Enforcement Knights gathered beneath his banner and cheered loudly.
Through twelve dynastic wars, under the leadership of the King and the knights, they had been unstoppable. No darkness could ever halt the advance of light.
They had broken into the fortress city and routed the main force of the foreign tribes. Even if the King of the North had come in person, the enemy had only the Vile King alone.
And a pack of beasts mixed with dragon blood.
Their own side had the nearly unharmed Knights of the Round Table and elite soldiers.
The enemy's defeat was already certain. There was no need to regroup, gather strength, and fight again.
This was a battle they could win easily. Their King had no need to take action personally.
That was almost their shared belief.
Yet facing the blazing pillar of fire striking straight toward him, Vortigern, atop the dragon's back, merely lifted his hand, closed his fingers in the air before him, and murmured softly.
"Light Devourer!"
In an instant, darkness like an ink-black dragon poured from Vortigern's body. It was like molten iron spilling across the sky, burning through the vault of heaven. The radiance born from the sun was swallowed in the blink of an eye.
Even now, at high noon, everything within sight was pitch-black. No one could see their own hand before their face.
A moment later, the dark figure on the dragon's back lowered the arm clad in savage iron armor. The red-black mist coiling around him grew even thicker.
Light Devourer. As its name implied, it was the ability to devour light, to seize the light that filled the earth and turn it into his own Mana.
It could even swallow the light released by Noble Phantasms. Only legendary Divine Constructs could shatter this nearly unsolvable darkness.
"Wh..."
Gawain's pupils shrank sharply, disbelief filling his face. The Enforcement Knights were just as speechless.
Yet that instant of hesitation was already tied to death.
At that moment, the man on the dragon's back curled his fingers and gripped the air. The surrounding darkness instantly compressed into a pitch-black longsword wrapped in crimson patterns.
"Vile King's Hammer, Inverted Dawnlight! Take this head-on, and die!"
With that cold roar, Vortigern's iron arm swung down. A heart-stopping red-black pillar of light, compressed to its limit, was violently released.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A massive mushroom cloud rose from within the fortress, and thunderous roars exploded outward.
Where the darkness reached, human bodies twisted, iron melted, and the city walls collapsed like candles, as if scorching dragon breath were dissolving all things upon the earth.
With that single strike, hundreds of Enforcement Knights, who had been like land tanks, and their soldiers were vaporized. Everywhere the eye could see was lifeless silence.
No, there was still something.
Vortigern lowered his gaze with a frown, the space between his brows gradually tightening.
Crash...
Within the scarred ruins, piled rubble shifted and slid away. A figure covered in scorch marks propped himself up with his sword.
The once-proud Knight of the Sun now had shattered armor. Every violent cough brought bright red blood foam from the corners of his mouth. Even standing before Vortigern, he swayed as if about to collapse.
"As expected of the Knight of the Sun, stubborn Gawain. To think you can still stand."
From the dragon's back, dim yellow serpentine pupils looked down silently, and a trace of surprise appeared on that pale face.
Among the Knights of the Round Table, Gawain had always been famous for his exceptional talent and sturdy body, making him renowned for how well he could take a beating.
And "triple Gawain," blessed by the saint and bathed in the noon sun, was even more vigorous, an endurance-type monster that left others with no way to deal with him, nicknamed "the strongest gorilla on Earth."
So even after that terrifying blow that melted the earth's surface, the invincible Sir Gawain had ultimately endured it.
But the enemy's praise, spoken after the tide had turned, sounded especially grating now.
Besides, even though he had survived Vortigern's heavy strike, Gawain's body had already reached its limit. Before this monster even more monstrous than himself, he had lost the strength to fight. The Holy Sword forged by fairies in his hand had lost all light.
Vortigern, the Vile King, the dragon that devoured the radiance of Holy Swords. Just as light and darkness walked side by side, the more sacred his opponent was, the thicker the darkness became.
His Holy Sword, Excalibur Galatine, had its radiance stolen away. He had been completely defeated.
"You are an eyesore. Drown in this darkness."
At that moment, Vortigern sensed several presences rapidly approaching from around him. His dim yellow snake-like pupils glanced toward Gawain, who was barely holding himself up amid the ruins. The red-black demon sword in his hand gathered a sinister light once more as he coldly pronounced the Knight of the Sun's end.
"Whoosh!"
"Bang!"
At the critical moment, a brilliant flash of golden light shot in from the distance and clashed with the red-black demon sword.
Amid the piercing ring of metal, Vortigern's descending demon sword was knocked aside by the burst of Mana.
The Vile King's brows tightened, and a cold gleam passed through his eyes. He immediately raised his left hand, gathering a pitch-black magical projectile in his palm, intending to finish off the defeated Gawain first.
"Boom!"
But a silver-white pillar of light, like starlight falling from the heavens, pierced through the air and forced Vortigern back once more atop the dragon's back.
Amid the shaking earth and the neighing of warhorses, the King of Britannia, clad in fully enclosed silver-white armor, rushed in with a two-meter-long metal knight's lance tipped with a massive silver-white point.
As he neared the battlefield, the King leaned sideways and pulled from the ground the weapon that had stopped Vortigern, then returned the sword to its sheath.
The King's sword, the Sword of Selection, Caliburn.
Its golden radiance, once comparable to brilliant stars, was now like a faint campfire.
He had only survived because the King had shielded him.
And the King's Holy Sword had lost some of its radiance because of his recklessness and incompetence.
Gawain's pupils contracted slightly, and shame colored his face.
***
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