CHAPTER 122: THE KNIGHT’S WEAKNESS...

"In that case."

Xavier hurled himself downward like a falling star, silver aura trailing off him in a violent tail of light. His dagger blazed with power as he descended.

"I will force your master to come out."

There was no better way than this: break the knights, break the system, make the dungeon bleed.

He met the Silver Knights mid-fall. Their swords were already cutting through the air to intercept. Xavier twisted in the air, blocking two strikes before landing in a crouch, sliding through polished black stone.

They closed in immediately, precision footwork, expressionless death machines moving in perfect synchronization.

Xavier flickered between them like a shadow of silver light, leaning inches away from decapitating strikes and parrying heavy thrusts with terrifying calm. His dagger flashed through precise counters—not to kill, but to probe.

He slammed his palm onto the weakest point of a nearby knight.

Moon Beam.

A blast of concentrated lunar energy erupted from his palm, hitting the knight at its elbow joint. The metal smoked, glowed, and cracked open. Xavier’s eyes gleamed.

"I got you."

But then he froze.

Because the destroyed limb regenerated.

Not with flesh. Not with metal.

With mana.

Thin strands of white mana threads reconnected the shattered armor pieces, reassembling the arm in seconds as though time had reversed.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Now he understood.

These things were not animated. They were controlled. Not alive. They were assembled in real time. Everything inside them was made of pure condensed mana, held together by puppet threads of energy.

Which meant—

"Moon affinity is not enough. It burns the armor, but it does not disrupt the control system."

He pivoted and parried two more swords, his mind analyzing as fast as his body moved.

"I need something that kills mana," he said, and then he grinned as clarity struck. "And there is nothing that counters mana better—than mana itself."

He slid back, blade ringing against steel.

For the first time, he did not infuse power into an affinity. He did not shape moonlight. He did not call a spell.

He summoned mana. Raw. Untainted. Unrefined.

No element. No nature. No shape. Just existence energy in its purest destructive form.

It gathered in his palm like a miniature star, silent yet furious. The air trembled around it.

The Silver Knights moved, blades aimed for his throat and heart.

He stepped inside a slash, grabbed the knight’s arm joint.

Mana Beam.

There was no explosion this time. No flash. No dramatic burst.

Just erasure.

The beam of pure mana pierced straight through the knight’s armor joint, clean and silent, then seeped inside.

Inside, it met the white mana puppet threads—

And annihilated them instantly.

The knight did not fall.

It collapsed. Its entire armored shell crumbled into useless empty pieces that clinked against the ground. No regeneration. No puppet threads to pull it together again.

Total death.

Xavier stood there, breathing slowly. A small smile pulled at his lips.

"So that is how it works. Good."

His smile grew sharper, ferocious, almost predatory.

He blurred and vanished.

Hunt of the Silver Butcher

He reappeared inside the knight formation, dagger deflecting two swords without effort. One knight aimed for his back.

He did not even look.

Mana Beam.

Precise and undeniable, it bored through one knight’s chest joint like a sniper shot.

The puppet strings inside were severed. The armor fell dead.

Another swung from above.

He stepped aside calmly, redirected the force with his dagger, twisted, and fired a pure mana shot straight through its neck joint.

Another knight down.

He moved faster now, pure killing rhythm.

Dodge. Slash. Redirect. Mana Beam. Kill.

Block. Slide. Reposition. Mana Piercer. Kill.

Three knights attacked from opposite angles. He let their blades cross each other, trapping themselves, then simply placed his palm against one chestplate.

Mana Burst.

The raw mana bloomed inside like a silent bomb and the knight’s torso imploded.

Another lunged. He shattered its knee joint with a brutal kick and cut off its retreat path, then erased it with a point-blank mana drill through the spine.

The more they surrounded him, the more he carved through them—clean, ruthless, precise. The battle turned from resistance to massacre.

His massacre.

Their blades struck walls now. They cut empty space. He was everywhere and nowhere, flickering through formation like flowing death.

His laughter echoed, low and violent.

"Come on! Keep coming! I will erase every last one of you!"

For hours, more knights came.

For hours, he did not stop.

The silver chamber was now littered with hollow corpses of shattered armor.

Mana smoke hung in the air like ghost fog.

And Xavier still stood, breathing steady, even stronger than before. Adapting. Growing. Evolving mid-battle.

Crackles of mana danced along his arms. His understanding of raw mana manipulation had expanded into something terrifying.

He was not just fighting.

He was becoming something else.

But then—something unexpected happened.

The chamber trembled.

The sealed gate at the back of the sphere unlocked.

One lock released.

Then another.

Then a third.

A cold voice echoed through the chamber.

"Enough."

The chamber rang like a bell of war.

Silver boots hammered the obsidian floor in a cold, synchronized rhythm as yet another phalanx of Knights advanced, helms faceless, swords raised, shields etched with the same moon-pierced sigil that crowned the sealed gate. Their discipline was suffocating. Their intent absolute. No rage. No fear. No fatigue. Only execution.

Xavier rolled his shoulders once. His dagger hung low, edge drinking the dim light. The other hand flexed open and closed, gathering raw, colorless mana until the air quivered around his palm.

"Next."

They charged.

The first trio reached him together: one high cut, one low shear, one thrust to skewer. He stepped into the thrust, twisting. His dagger slid along the flat of the greatsword, stealing its line, while his forearm shouldered the high cut out of plane. The low blade hissed over polished floor where his ankle had been a breath earlier. Palm to elbow joint.

"Mana beam."

No flash. No flame. Just annihilation. The beam whispered into the Knight’s arm seam and its body slackened all at once, puppet threads severed. Armor tumbled past his hip, clattering harmlessly while he pivoted on the ball of his foot and drove his shoulder into the second Knight’s chest. It staggered. He did not waste the moment. His dagger hooked the pauldron rim and yanked, opening the seam beneath the collar, and his palm pressed once more.

"Pierce."

The second Knight collapsed in a hollow avalanche of plates. The third recovered with machine precision, blade scything for his ribs. Xavier slid inside the cut, wrist met wrist, and he let the Knight’s momentum pull the edge wide before he palmed its hip hinge with a pinprick of pure mana. The leg unspooled from within, plates falling like shed scales. He was already moving.

Four more came as one. He did not let them set their angles. A short sidestep cut the line, and he turned his Moonshield into a moving lens, curved, translucent, rippling. The beam that left his hand bent through that lens, splitting into a fan of needle-straight darts. Three joints. Three deaths. The fourth slammed its shield forward, absorbing the scatter with a dull clang.

Xavier made note. Shields could soak more than he liked. Fine.

He broke contact. Two steps back, a breath, then forward. The fourth Knight committed, shield first, sword high to punish retreat. He slid aside, heel flash-kicked the shield rim to jar the arm, and used the recoil to spin, palms together. Pure mana spiraled between his hands, two counter-currents knitting into a narrow drill.

"Bore."

He drove it into the armpit seam as the shield fell past, and the drill ate the Knight’s core threads out the far side. The shell folded in on itself.

The floor trembled. Twenty more. Then thirty. The chamber’s silver inlays pulsed and doors he had not noticed at first hissed open along the spherical wall. Knights poured from every entrance like steel rain.

Xavier’s grin sharpened.

"Good."

He ran.

The phalanx tried to box him in. He refused it. His footwork cut a broken rhythm, never landing where the formation wanted, never yielding them a clean crossfire lane. A blade speared for his spine. He angled an elbow back, took the flat on bone, and bled the force into a turn that slid between two helmets. His dagger hit one gorget with a ringing kiss, not to cut, but to lever. His body torqued, and the Knight’s own weight exposed the base of its skull. Two fingers and a needle of mana finished it.

Three blades scissored for his legs. He leapt, planted a boot on one helm, and kicked off into a rising arc. Midair, he clapped his hands and let raw mana clap between them, an invisible shock disc that ruptured puppet threads through the narrow eye slits of three helms below. They fell as he landed, already forgotten.