Chương 404: Chapter 393 - The Oath-Torn Knight

Alonso stared ahead as Pablo's mutated summon exterminated every foe in its path with almost effortless ease. Of all the possibilities he had considered, this had not been one of them. Pablo had used Will neither to boost himself nor to conjure something out of nothing, but to alter his Awakening itself and push it a step further. Then again… wasn't that the essence of Will? A force that bent reality toward belief, that compelled the world to comply with conviction. He smiled.

Not only because Pablo had grown stronger, but because he understood what this change truly meant. His friend had found his path. He had reached inward, confronted the core of who he was, and accepted it fully. Alonso felt genuinely happy for him. After another wave fell, Pablo turned and sent him one more piece of Grade 2 gear the Thralls and Drudges had dropped.

Alonso caught it, gave it a brief glance, and stored it inside the Storage Bag Gregor had handed him, the so-called "surprise gift" after he finally agreed to his request, and decided to take on a mid-tier Dungeon. Grade 05 – Storage Bag Can store up to 49 Dungeon items (Gear and Tempering Materials) Cannot store [Corrupted] items Does not consume a gear slot, but only one of its type can be held at a time Current capacity: [8/49] He had not even known such an item existed in this stage.

It had not appeared in the Guild's database he had skimmed, though being Grade 5 likely explained that. Maybe he simply didn't have access to such info as a silver-rank. He grinned. It was truly convenient to have someone backing him like this. It felt good, for a change. Minutes passed as they advanced, the corridor twisting into unexpected dead ends more than once. That surprised him. He would have assumed at least Pablo or Leonie had memorised every line of the Guild's briefing on the Dungeon.

Still, perhaps that was the point. As they moved, the pace steady and controlled, Alonso felt a flicker of boredom and sent Pablo a brief pulse, checking whether he could multitask while maintaining control over the summon. The reply came almost instantly." Yes. What's up?"" Alright, I'll say it. That was cool. Didn't see that coming."" Turns out that advice from a certain overconfident swordsman wasn't complete nonsense."" You've been waiting to say that, haven't you?

"Alonso shot back." Anyway, did The Tower give it a proper name?"" Eh? Well, yes. It's the same as yours. Will Manifest." Alonso blinked mid-step." Wait. It's called Will Manifest too?"" Without spoiling it for the others," Pablo continued, " we concluded that every manifestation born from a person's unique path is tagged by The Tower as Will Manifest. The core designation stays the same." Alonso absorbed that quietly. He had always assumed each person's Will would carry a completely distinct name.

Yet hearing Pablo frame it that way made sense. The name was universal. The expression was not. Interesting." So what's your Stage Progress with it?""

Just over 8. 5%," Pablo replied." Still early. Plenty of room before I catch up to you." Alonso smiled faintly." There's more," Pablo added." While the main skill shows up as Will Manifest when I invoke the helix, it triggers a secondary skill that only exists because of it. In my case, it's called Unlimited Mutations. That's what lets me sacrifice orbs and graft traits onto my summons."" I see," Alonso nodded to himself. It mirrored his own structure… in a way.

His Will Manifest empowered No-Strike and Path of Shards, enhancing what already existed. In Pablo's case, the mutation ability did not have a baseline version.

It was born directly from the Manifest itself. He made a mental note of it, though he was certain Houston was already absorbing and processing far more than he was. They kept chatting a while longer as Alonso occasionally glanced at Pablo's summon, its metal tendrils unfurling from its back in slow, unsettling arcs, like ribs of steel breathing in and out. It was eerie, almost unnatural to watch, yet brutally efficient. Even when Thralls and Drudges came in clusters, their numbers meant nothing.

The net of metallic vines tore through them, and for the few that slipped past, Imani was always there, hammer rising and falling with crushing certainty. For creatures with Power Index values of 4200 and 4900, respectively, it felt almost too easy. Thankfully, the bodies dissolved into motes shortly after falling. Otherwise, the corridor would have become a mass of piled flesh and broken limbs.

Since none of them had any interest in common stat orbs that would grant them almost no SP, they had agreed to store them for the other Climbers or simply sell them later, as they fetched a decent price. Pablo's bag was already steadily filling with them. Not long after, just beyond another twisting turn, the corridor widened. The path ahead finally changed. The suffocating walls of roots receded, giving way to a broader expanse.

Alonso stepped forward, boots pressing into dark soil that gradually hardened beneath him until the texture shifted to packed sand and cracked stone. Each step now echoed faintly. An arena. Or something shaped like one. The circular ground was ringed by towering trunks warped into natural columns, their bark blackened and veined with creeping roots. The centre remained drowned in thick, low-lying fog that devoured even EM perception, swallowing signals before they could return.

It felt wrong, like a blind spot carved into reality. As the last of them entered, the vines behind twisted violently. Thorned roots surged downward and sealed the exit with a grinding, splintering sound, locking them inside. The fog began to thin. A silhouette stood within it. Tall. Still. When the haze fully parted, the figure emerged. A knight. At first glance, nothing seemed out of place. Full plate armour, darkened steel dulled by age and grime. A longsword rested at his side, its edge notched but intact.

A broad shield hung from his left arm, surface scarred and split with old impact lines. Then the details surfaced. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. He was too tall—well over two meters—and his proportions were subtly wrong, elongated, stretched. The armour did not fit him so much as cling to him. Moss clung to the joints. Tangled roots had grown into the seams of the plate as though the forest itself had claimed him.

Around his neck, above the gorget, a torn rope hung loosely—fibres frayed, stained dark. The noose remained partially knotted, embedded into the metal collar as if it had once bitten deep into flesh. The visor of the helmet was closed, but through the narrow slit there was no glint of eyes. Only darkness. Hollow. The air around him shimmered faintly, bending in irregular pulses, as if an unseen weight pressed down upon the space itself. Sand near his boots shifted without wind.

Alonso stared at it, calmly assessing the threat. The Oath-Torn Knight Power Index: 9800 Based on numbers alone, it was the strongest creature he had seen inside a Dungeon. Even standing motionless, Alonso could feel its Will coiled tightly around it. While he was confident he could defeat it alone, he knew it would not come without a real fight. This was a creature stronger than Jack after all, and one clearly proficient in the use of Will.

Yet, for some reason, he had the distinct feeling that his intervention would not be needed here. So he remained calm and watched as Imani slowly approached it.

Imani stared at the knight ahead of him. He had not gone through every line of the Dungeon's database, but he remembered well the names of the three bosses. This was the first. The Oath-Torn Knight. Or, as the locals called him, The Hangman. A creature stronger than anything he had faced before. His pulse quickened, heavy in his ears, but he did not resist it. He let the tension sink into his stance, into his heels, into the grip of his fingers around shield and hammer. He breathed in slowly and let it anchor him.

Then he stepped forward. His boots struck stone with weight. Shield rose, angled just below his line of sight, towered in front of him like a moving wall. His hammer hung low for now, quiet, patient. He crossed an invisible threshold. The stone ahead cracked. The knight moved. One instant still. The next, gone. A distortion of air and dust marked the path as the massive figure appeared at Imani's flank, longsword carving a wide, brutal arc toward his ribs. Imani shifted on instinct.

Shield rotated, shoulder braced— BAM! The impact detonated across the arena. Stone fractured beneath his boots. The force drove through shield, through arm, into spine and hips. His teeth clenched under the helmet as the vibration rattled bone and muscle. The knight was strong. Unnaturally strong. Imani's biocapacitors flared alive in response, channels along his muscles glowing faintly as energy surged through him. He swallowed the recoil instead of yielding to it. Let it feed him. He stepped in. Hammer rose.

It came down with compressed violence, air snapping around the head of the weapon as if the strike tore a pocket through it. The knight reacted instantly. A sharp step back. Shield lifted, angled to intercept. BAM! Metal met metal. The shockwave blasted outward in a ring of dust and loose gravel. The knight slid back nearly a dozen meters, metal boots grinding twin trenches into the stone before he stabilised. Imani held his ground, chest rising heavily inside his armor. The strike had landed clean. It had weight.

And yet… Barely any damage. He had felt it in the collision. The knight had shifted at the last microsecond, converting most of the force into backward motion, bleeding off momentum with technique so refined it bordered on artistry. Imani's eyes narrowed behind the visor. The creature's physical strength was just slightly below his… but that was about the only edge he held. Its reactions were sharper. Its awareness keener. Its technique cleaner. Its combat skill felt closer to Alonso's realm than his own.

The gap between them… was not small. The knight straightened, lowering the longsword slightly, stance balanced and composed. The torn rope still hung around his neck, swaying faintly in the disturbed air. Imani understood. The first strike had been the surprise. From now on, if nothing changed, he would never land a clean hit again. Not unless… something changed. The knight stood motionless for a moment, studying him. Then its hollow gaze shifted past him, toward the others. Imani felt it. Dismissal. He was slow.

Predictable. Contained. No true threat. The creature had already begun to calculate around him. But… could he allow this? What good was a shield if it could not protect what mattered? What was strength if it was not felt? He inhaled slowly, the air heavy with damp earth and iron. He remembered the anvil. The heat. The weight of the hammer. The endless repetition. Steel did not roar when it was forged. It endured. It held. It remained until the shape was right. He had stood through blood and regret.

Through guilt and rebuilding. Through fatherhood, through loss, through The Tower itself. He had not chased glory. He had not chased brilliance. He had stayed. Others shone. Others cut. Others changed the world with flashes of insight and impossible talent. He anchored it. He bore it. He absorbed what would have broken others. The knight shifted its stance, preparing to move past him entirely. Imani's grip tightened around the hammer. If he was to stand at the front, then his presence had to be undeniable.

He did not need sharper technique. He did not need faster hands. He needed to be the one who stood. The one who holds. The one the world bends around. Something ignited from inside him. At first it was only heat, subtle and rising, like the core of a forge awakening. Then space trembled. The air thickened. The damp soil beneath his boots compressed with a low groan as if gravity itself began to tilt inward. Embracing him, a large burning star unfolded. It was light. It was weight.

A sun caught at ground level, blazing with molten gold and deep crimson, its surface rippling like a contained inferno. The arena shifted. Sand dragged toward him. Loose stones scraped and rolled across the floor. The knight's torn rope snapped taut as an invisible force pulled at it. The creature stiffened. For the first time, it felt it. Pressure. The gravity well around Imani deepened, yet it did not burden his allies. It curved around them instead, a protective current of warmth and weight.

The heat spread outward in steady waves, firming their footing, dulling the oppressive heaviness of the Dungeon. Their outlines blurred faintly in the distortion, as if the world itself shielded them behind his mass. The knight's steps slowed. Its movements, once effortless, now met resistance. The air around it thickened, every adjustment dragging through unseen force. Imani stepped forward. The burning sun moved with him. The ground cracked beneath his boot.

Stone split in branching fractures, sand skidding inward as though drawn by a hidden tide. He did not rush. He did not roar. He advanced like a tide no wall could truly ignore. His voice did not rise, yet it carried through the arena. I stand. The star flared brighter, a burning sphere of compressed radiance that distorted space itself. Its gravitational pull intensified, pressing down on the knight's shoulders, dragging dust and fragments into spiralling currents around Imani's frame. I remain.

The knight's footing began to fracture. Metal boots scraped against stone, leaving jagged furrows as its body was pulled forward inch by inch against its will. Imani lifted his hammer. I endure. The burning star roared without sound as its core condensed further, space folding faintly at its edges, the air rippling in concentric waves. I am the core that does not waver. I am the gravity that all must bear. I am the fire that forges the worthy. I am the mass that cannot be moved.

I am the sun that burns so others may stand unbroken. Will Manifest— —Guardian Star