"How is this possible? Two Kings of Knights...?"
"Is this a hallucination? The armor could be fake, but the sword in his hand..."
"Damn it! Send a signal to the Kings to retreat from the grove! If we fall, they'll be caught in a pincer attack!"
After deciding to pursue, the remaining Four Kings left behind sixty-three knights and most of their heavily wounded to guard the perimeter, both as a precaution and to protect the Mages recovering their magical energy.
When the knights guarding the camp saw Guinevere and her sixty-three knights suddenly appear, bearing King Arthur's banner, they panicked briefly before quickly forming a defensive formation and firing magical flares into the sky to signal an attack.
This battle pitted the Four Kings' sixty-odd knights against Guinevere's sixty-odd knights, an evenly matched force in terms of numbers.
Yet as the Knights of the Four Kings sized up their enemy's formation, they felt even greater dread than when they had first faced the King of Knights' army.
In this era, warfare typically consisted of knightly charges. However, due to the immense cost of training knights—nearly all of whom were scions of noble houses raised in diverse environments—each knight followed a distinct tradition, making it nearly impossible for a group of knights to unite as a cohesive force.
"Your Highness, your words were indeed true," one knight said. "These battles aren't wars—they're just glorified brawls among knights. In all of Great Britain, only we can truly be called a Knight Order!"
Currently, the only Knight Academy in all of Great Britain existed within King Leodegrance's Territory, Guinevere's birthplace.
Drawn by Guinevere's propaganda and various other reasons, numerous knights flocked to the academy. There, they were retrained, learning the true meaning of collective action and mastering the same magical and martial techniques as Guinevere herself.
At that moment, as Guinevere and the sixty-three other knights ignited their magic circuits, overflowing with bloodlust and madness, and as their savage energies coalesced into a single, crimson line, they ceased to be a scattered band of warriors. Instead, they became the first true Knight Order of this era.
And as always, Guinevere led the charge, spearheading the Knight Order's assault.
"Tear them apart!"
"Yes, Your Highness!"
A single harp note resonated, followed by sixty-three voices echoing in unison. After advancing steadily to a certain distance, the Knight Order surged forward, tightly following Guinevere and forming a spearhead formation behind her.
Meanwhile, as the spearhead hurtled toward them, the Knights of the Four Kings, still arranged in neat ranks, momentarily faltered. It was the various enhancement spells cast by the Mages that roused them from their daze—spells that had served as a warning shot, signaling Guinevere's approach.
When the primary Magecraft, a meteor shower, rained down, it once again proved ineffective.
At the heart of the arrowhead, Tristan, the only knight radiating a distinct magical aura, opened his eyes and drew his cherished Fairy Bow, Failnaught.
"Sing of pain, sound the wails. Failnaught: Phantasmal Music of the Painful Lament."
Though not a Heroic Spirit, Tristan possessed power comparable to those who were. In fact, for beings who had already been formidable in life, becoming a Heroic Spirit—while granting them a Class—often meant having their true strength restrained, preventing them from unleashing their full potential.
Tristan's Fairy Bow sang, and strands of magical energy wove into a net across the sky, shredding the enemy's descending Magecraft into dust. The enemy Mages erupted in curses once more.
Emboldened by this, the enemy knights charged forward, hastily forming a crude, arrowhead formation in imitation of Guinevere and her knights.
Guinevere's Knight Order, honed by countless battles, maintained perfect synchronization in their charge. In contrast, the enemy formation disintegrated almost immediately, their knights' uneven speeds causing it to collapse into chaos.
"Die!"
A hundred meters, ten meters, five meters. As the enemy's strongest knight thrust his lance, Guinevere leaned slightly to evade it. As the two riders crossed paths, her swift follow-up strike severed the knight's head.
Then came the second, the third, until her blade had pierced through everything before her, bringing the panic-stricken enemy Mages into view.
She did not falter, continuing her charge until the iron hooves of her and her Knight Order had crushed every enemy Mage underfoot.
Throughout this slaughter, the enemy Mages hurled various small-scale Magecraft and deployed magical artifacts.
When all the knights' magical energies were linked together, they gained an extraordinary Magic Resistance that no large-scale spell could penetrate.
"Your Highness..."
"Turn back, charge again, and leave no enemy alive."
Normally, Guinevere would spare surrendering foes. But these vermin had dared to launch their war on her wedding night with the King of Knights. After crushing the border towns, they had chosen to slaughter every man, woman, and child, looting and pillaging without mercy.
"Yes, Your Highness!"
In a single charge, Guinevere's knights lost six warriors, but the enemy's knights were reduced to less than half their original number. This disparity was further amplified by the enemy's inability to form a proper charging formation, preventing most of their knights from even engaging Guinevere's forces.
They formed a net, while Guinevere's forces acted as a cone. Once the cone pierced the net, no entanglement could occur. Should the enemy dare to reform their net, it would only be smaller and weaker the second time around.
"Cough... hack... So, he's not the King of Knights after all..."
On the other side of the pierced net, a gravely wounded knight chuckled weakly. He had survived the charge despite being at the spearhead, but at the cost of his left arm, severed by Guinevere's blade.
This encounter confirmed the identity of the suddenly appearing second King of Knights.
"King Leodegrance's monstrous princess, Tristan the 'Child of Sadness,' and the invincible Berserker Knight Order under her command. They are indeed a single entity, just as the legends foretold...
Ahem... Just as the King of Ireland feared, this princess and the King of Knights have become one. No kingdom in Great Britain can stand against them now."
"Captain, what should we do...?"
"What, you want to abandon the King and flee?"
The knight captain paused, seizing the moment before Guinevere's forces charged forward, and barked orders:
"You, ride to the main camp and tell Knight Torna to accelerate his advance. Order him to bring reinforcements at full speed, but warn him against direct confrontation. If possible, use ordinary soldiers to exhaust the enemy's momentum!
As for the rest of us here, we must hold out as long as possible to secure the King's retreat. On my command, scatter and adopt hit-and-run tactics. Avoid direct engagement with their cavalry.
I've heard that the magical link binding this Knight Order can't last forever!"
In that critical moment, the knight displayed remarkable quick-wittedness, effortlessly conjuring a lie that even Guinevere and the Knight Order couldn't have maintained.
This lie, however, successfully bolstered morale, and his order to execute harassing tactics was endorsed by knights sworn to different kings.
Unbeknownst to these loyal knights, their four kings had been slain shortly after charging into the grove during a counterattack led by the King of Knights, Kay, Gawain, and others.
Now, the knights in the grove not only received news of the external enemy assault but also learned of their kings' deaths, plunging them into barely concealed panic.
"Kill them all!"
Two hours later, the battle concluded. The King of Knights' forces suffered eight Round Table Knights and over sixty ordinary knights killed in action, while the enemy—twenty-odd mages, over seven hundred cavalry, and more than thirty thousand foot soldiers—refused to flee. Only a handful of knights and fewer than ten thousand ordinary soldiers surrendered to the King of Knights.