Chapter : 631

Her guards tried to re-engage, to aid their princess, but they were too far gone. They could barely lift their swords, their bodies heavy with the curse’s poison. They could only watch in horror as their leader was systematically broken down.

With a final, contemptuous flick of his wrist, the Curse Knight shattered Isabella’s guard. Her sword was torn from her grasp, spinning through the air before embedding itself in the lawn half a field away. She stood, disarmed and exhausted, her chest heaving, her body trembling with the strain.

The knight raised his dark blade, its edge humming with a malevolent energy. He was not going to kill her. That was not his mission. He was going to humiliate her, to break her, and then claim his prize. He prepared to deliver a final, contemptuous blow that would knock her unconscious, leaving his path to Airin completely clear.

In his office, Lloyd’s control finally snapped.

The time for observation was over. The time for calculation was over. The princess was defeated. The guards were neutralized. Airin was defenseless. The board was set for the final, tragic move.

And he was the only one who could stop it.

To hell with the consequences, the Major General roared in the silent chambers of his mind. To hell with the cover. To hell with being Professor Ferrum.

He closed his eyes. In the secret, hidden dimension of his Soul Farm, his second spirit, the demon king of fire, opened its burning eyes. Lloyd reached out with his will, not just inviting the power, but commanding it.

Iffrit. Awaken.

Down in the garden, as the Curse Knight’s blade began its descent toward the defeated princess, the world was consumed by fire.

It was not an explosion. It was a release. A wave of pure, incandescent crimson energy erupted from a single point in the air between the knight and his prey. It was a silent, suffocating wall of heat so intense that the very air seemed to shimmer and turn to glass. The grass in a fifty-foot radius instantly vaporized, not burning, but simply ceasing to exist, leaving behind a circle of scorched, blackened earth. The ancient rose bushes that had stood for a century were reduced to fine, white ash. The moisture in the air hissed and evaporated.

The Curse Knight was thrown back, his dark magic shield flaring violently as it was battered by a force of pure, elemental annihilation. He landed in a heap, his armor smoking, his curse aura flickering like a dying candle in a furnace.

Everyone—Isabella, her guards, the students, Captain Eva—stared in stunned, terrified silence at the source of the inferno.

A figure stood in the center of the scorched circle, seemingly untouched by the cataclysmic heat. He was cloaked and wore a featureless, blank white mask. A low, menacing aura of controlled fire radiated from him, a stark and terrifying contrast to the knight’s cold, debilitating curse. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He simply stood there, a silent, menacing judgment.

And then, behind him, the air began to tear. A rift of pure, molten heat opened, and from it, a being of nightmare and legend stepped forth. Nine feet tall, clad in armor of obsidian and magma, wielding a greatsword wreathed in roaring, untamed flame.

The White Mask had arrived. And he had brought a god of destruction with him.

The Curse Knight, a being of fear and despair, looked at the colossal fire demon and its silent, masked master, and for the first time, his mocking laughter died in his throat, replaced by the cold, metallic taste of genuine fear. He was confronting a power that felt just as dark, and infinitely more absolute, than his own.

—

The silence that fell over the Academy garden was not peaceful. It was a heavy, suffocating blanket of pure shock, the kind that follows a lightning strike so close it leaves the world devoid of sound and thought. The very air, once thick with the cloying, life-draining pressure of the Curse Knight, was now clean and sharp, smelling of ozone and the clean, searing heat of a forge. In the center of the scorched, blackened circle of earth, the White Mask stood as a figure of absolute, terrifying stillness.

Behind him, Iffrit, his demonic familiar, was a monument to the concept of annihilation. The nine-foot-tall being of magma and shadow rested its colossal, flame-wreathed zanbatō on its shoulder. The crimson flames that danced along the twelve-foot blade did not crackle with simple heat; they writhed with a hungry, sentient light, eager to consume, eager to unmake. The combined spiritual pressure of the masked man and his spirit was a physical weight, a force that crushed courage and demanded an instinctual, primal reverence.

Chapter : 632

Dozens of meters away, where he had been unceremoniously flung into the ancient stone wall, the Curse Knight stirred. A groan of tortured metal and pained breath echoed in the silence as he pushed himself up from the crater of rubble his impact had created. His magnificent, rune-etched armor, a symbol of Altamira’s dark power, was horribly dented and scored. A concave depression marred the backplate where the zanbatō had connected, and fine wisps of smoke curled from the over-stressed joints. The debilitating curse that was his primary weapon, the aura that had neutralized a dozen of the King’s elite Lion Guard, now felt like a thin, pathetic whisper, a morning mist trying to challenge the raw, oppressive heat of a volcano.

His professional training, the brutal indoctrination that had forged him into an elite weapon of the state, was at war with the primal, screaming terror that had taken root in his soul. He was a Curse Knight of the highest order. He had walked through battlefields as a living plague, his very presence enough to break the wills of heroes and scatter the resolve of armies. He had never, in all his years of service and slaughter, encountered a power like this.

The man in the white mask and his demonic partner were not warriors. They were a force of nature, an apocalypse in waiting, a localized extinction event. The power they wielded was not simply strong; it was absolute.

“Who… are you?” the Curse Knight’s voice rasped from behind the featureless black steel of his helmet. The sound was no longer the confident, mocking boom of a superior predator. It was a harsh, strained, and desperate query. It was a question born of tactical necessity—he had to identify this impossible variable for his report, should he somehow survive—but it was also a question of genuine, existential dread. He needed to know the name of the power that was about to erase him from the world.

Lloyd, hidden behind the blank, emotionless façade of the mask, did not grant him the dignity of a reply. He couldn't. His voice, even if he tried to alter it with his power, had a unique timbre, a specific cadence. Princess Isabella had heard him speak. Captain Eva had heard him speak. Too many people in this garden could potentially recognize it, and a single word could unravel the entire, fragile tapestry of secrecy he had so carefully woven. His identity as the meek Professor Ferrum, the bumbling Lord Ferrum, was his most crucial shield. He would not risk it for the sake of a dramatic retort. His silence was his armor.

For the same reason, his most insidious and unique power remained dormant. He could have ended this fight before it began with his Black Ring Eyes. A simple “Seal of Severed Perception” would have plunged the Curse Knight into a silent, sightless void, leaving him a helpless, stumbling target. But that power was a signature of the Austin bloodline, a power so rare and mythical that its use would be an irrefutable confession. His mother had wielded it in the training hall. For him to use it here would be to scream his identity to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the great noble houses. His father knew of his awakened Steel Blood. His mother knew of his awakened Eyes. But no one, except his parents, and Ken, knew he could command two Transcended spirits and wield their elemental might as his own. He was a walking paradox of secret powers, and maintaining that secrecy was the cornerstone of his survival.

So, he remained silent. His judgment would be delivered not with words, but with fire and steel.

He shifted his grip on the six-foot broadsword he held. It was a simple, unadorned practice weapon he had summoned from his personal inventory, but in his hands, it had been transformed. It was no longer a mere blade of steel; it had become a conduit for Iffrit’s very essence. The metal glowed with a deep, internal, crimson light, as if it contained a molten core. The flames that licked and coiled along its edge were not the chaotic fire of a normal blaze; they were tendrils of pure, conceptual annihilation, hungry and eager to consume.

He took a single, deliberate step forward. The sound of his boot on the scorched earth was unnaturally loud in the ringing silence. Then another step. His advance was slow, measured, each footfall a drumbeat counting down the final seconds of the Curse Knight’s existence. This was not a battle; it was a ritual. This was not a fight; it was a judgment. The White Mask was the executioner, and the court was now in session.