Death Knights surged in from every direction. Hidden between houses, dark mages hurled spells without pause.
Boom!
A fireball drenched in dark mana hurtled toward Caron. Acid rain poured relentlessly from the skies, and the ground twisted upward, trying to ensnare his feet.
But Caron didn't flinch. He swung his sword without hesitation.
"Let there be light!" Saintess Seria shouted.
A miracle blazed forth from her hands. The radiant light parted the dark clouds and poured down upon the land, washing away the dark mana tainting the earth.
Flash!
Caron stepped onto the light-drenched soil. The radiant light clung to his black armor, and as it shimmered, it cast an almost terrifying brilliance.
Screech!
The leading Death Knights let out eerie metallic howls as they raised their swords. Dark auras burst from their blades as they tried to slice Caron's neck—but Caron moved effortlessly, sweeping his sword in an arc that conjured waves and flower petals.
Those petals spun atop the waves, forming a resilient shield of dark blue energy. The shield repelled the Death Knights' deadly strikes as if it had been waiting for them.
Clang!
Their swords were thrown skyward, and in that instant, Caron stepped in and harvested the nearest Death Knight's head without resistance.
Shhk!
The head, grotesquely mutated by dark magic, fell to the ground with pitiful ease.
Whoosh.
The dark mana surging from the Death Knight's corpse was devoured immediately by Guillotine.
"Don't hesitate and advance," Seria said firmly.
Light cleared the path ahead. Caron crushed the bodies of the fallen Death Knights beneath his boots as he charged forward.
"Start with the dark mages," Guillotine advised. "Once they fall, the Death Knights will become nothing but mindless husks."
"I was thinking the same," Caron said. "The dead aren't half as troublesome as the living."
The Death Knights could wait. The real threat was the dark mages.
Caron moved swiftly, guided by the trail of dark mana revealed by Guillotine and Pluto.
Boom.
The dark mages had hidden themselves in the surrounding homes, using innocent villagers as hostages.
But Pluto had already marked every last one of them.
Shffff.
In the blink of an eye, darkness enveloped Caron's body. The dark mages tried to track his presence, but it was useless—Pluto had already shut off their senses completely.
Boom!
Bang!
Explosions thundered across the village. Then suddenly, Caron's clones began to appear all around.
"Seria!" Caron shouted.
Seria brought her hands together once more, her voice ringing out with divine clarity. "Deliver the innocent from evil!"
This time, it was her turn. A flood of merciless, blinding light poured from the heavens, directed solely by Seria's will.
The light swept across the battlefield. Even the highest-class undead, the Death Knights, could do nothing against the overwhelming force of holy power.
Unable to resist, every unholy creature in the area froze where they stood.
Caron didn't let the moment go to waste.
"Gyaaaaah!"
"Guhh!"
The screams that rang out under the assault of sacred light didn't last long. Caron and his clones moved with brutal speed, tearing through the dark mages before they had time to react.
"...Filth like you should all just drop dead," Seria's icy voice echoed through the battlefield.
Her tone had changed a great deal from before. Caron chuckled softly at the sound, even as he reached out and grabbed a dark mage by the throat.
"You heard the Saintess," Caron said. "She said drop dead."
"Guh... S-S!" a dark mage tried to speak.
"What? You want me to kill you slowly?" Caron asked.
"No... Please... Spare me..." the dark mage managed to say.
Caron's eyes narrowed, then said, "You've got some nerve. After everything you've done, you still want to live? No. I don't think so."
Shhk!
With a cold thrust, Caron drove Guillotine into the dark mage's chest.
The man was maybe a 6th Circle dark mage at best. Completely overwhelmed, he had no chance to dodge the attack.
Whoosh.
The dark mage's blood flowed down Guillotine, and with it, his dark mana was drawn straight into Caron's body.
"I swear, the compatibility is just absurd," Caron said, then tossed the lifeless corpse aside like trash and curled his lips into a smirk.
Despite all the power he'd used—his clones, the Oceanwolf Sword Arts, and Imperial Sword Form 7 in full force—his mana hadn't run dry.
"Guillotine," Caron called.
"I'm listening," Guillotine replied.
"Let's just spare two of them," Caron suggested.
"You're going to kill them anyway, aren't you?" Guillotine asked.
"I need a few for interrogation," Caron explained.
A dreadful aura of killing intent erupted from him. And that bloodlust had only one target: The dark mages.
Boom!
The executioner strode forward with light steps, his heart filled with joy. The faintest trace of guilt didn't exist in him.
These were the kinds of people who had toyed with others' lives and meted out gruesome fates. People often spoke of human rights—even for criminals—but in this case, there was no room for such compassion.
Dark mages deserved nothing but miserable deaths. Even their corpses deserved to be desecrated.
"Seria, don't let a single one escape," Caron said.
From far away, Seria caught his intent immediately. With a graceful gesture of her hand, massive spears summoned from the heavens slammed into the earth, forming a vast cage of divine light.
Boom!
"Now, none bearing dark mana will be able to flee this place," Seria declared.
"As for the Death Knights, I'll sweep them all away in one go. Just hold the rest for a bit longer. Can you manage that?" Caron asked.
"Of course," Seria replied.
Only six dark mages were left alive now.
Caron lightly tapped his shoulder with the flat of his blade and grinned, then said, "Let's play a little game of tag—like the good old days."
Off in the distance, the battle between the mercenaries and the pirates seemed to be reaching its final phase.
"Time to wrap this up," Caron said.
Above them hung a moon—a moon dyed in ominous dark blue.
Caron raised his sword and traced its curve in the sky with the tip, then flashed a cruel smile. He said with a smirk, "To the last dark mage left standing... I have a prize for you."
Of course, that prize was torture.
Moments later, an eclipse fell across the sky.
Crack!
The shadowed moon shattered, and its shards descended like divine punishment, tearing across the battlefield below.
***
Seria let out a quiet sigh as she took in the breathtaking scene that Caron's swordsmanship had created.
O dear Light... Seria thought.
That sword was far too saturated with bloodlust to be called the blade of a Warrior. Everything Caron's mana touched had crumbled into ruin. The once-organized plaza had completely vanished beneath the destruction.
The power he wielded was overwhelmingly devastating. If that blade had been directed not at evil but at ordinary people, it would have been a tragedy—one beyond any hope of repair.
And yet, amid the carnage, several buildings remained completely untouched.
Seria quickly sensed the reason. People were sheltering inside those buildings. Caron's swordplay was shockingly precise. The very existence of those intact structures was proof that he was still human.
If he had been a madman driven by nothing but slaughter, he wouldn't have spared the innocent.
A Warrior, Seria thought.
The Light had chosen Caron Leston to carry out its will.
Within the killing intent that swept away everything in its path, there lingered—however faintly—a thread of humanity. This devastated plaza, with only fragments left standing, seemed to embody who Caron truly was.
What could he possibly be thinking? Seria wondered.
She shifted her gaze to the Death Knights that still remained.
As Caron said, he had left them there on purpose. Though many had been destroyed by the moon's shattered fragments, nearly ten were still frozen in place, paralyzed by Seria's holy power.
"Argh..."
A weak groan rang out from afar. Through the dusty haze that blanketed the plaza, Caron appeared, clutching a dark mage in each hand by the nape of the neck.
Only two had survived.
"Seria, mind lending me some holy power?" Caron asked.
To one corrupted by dark mana, nothing was more excruciating than holy power.
Seria nodded with a bitter expression, then replied, "Yes."
As she gestured, a pair of radiant spears fell from the sky and pierced both mages through. The scene resembled an execution platform.
"Hold them like that for a bit," Caron instructed quietly. Then, he turned and walked toward the Death Knights.
Perhaps it was because the necromancers had all been slaughtered, but the remaining Death Knights made no move to attack. Their masters were dead. It made sense that they had no will left to fight.
Whoosh.
Caron channeled mana into Guillotine as he approached the Death Knights. Destroying these puppet-like undead would be simple, but that wasn't his intent.
"Are you sure about this, Guillotine?" Caron asked.
"We won't know until we try," Guillotine replied.
During the massacre of the dark mages, Guillotine had awakened an intriguing new ability. And now that every dark mage was gone, Caron intended to test it.
Shhk!
With a gleam in his eyes, Caron drove Guillotine into the chest of a Death Knight. He didn't behead it because he wasn't trying to destroy it.
Whoosh.
Guillotine immediately began absorbing the Death Knight's dark mana.
"Necromancy, at its core, is the art of chaining a soul to its corpse by force," Guillotine said.
Just as it had devoured the power of a doppelganger and gained the ability to create clones, this process now followed a similar path.
The dark mages in this village had all specialized in necromancy—soul-binding magic. And in consuming their spirits, Guillotine had absorbed a piece of their craft.
More precisely, it had taken the power to control the undead.
"...Who are you?"
As soon as the dark mana binding the Death Knight's soul vanished, a voice echoed from within the armor.
"I can feel your mana... pure and powerful beyond measure."
Screech.
The Death Knight turned its head to face Caron. From beneath its helmet, there flowed not dark mana, but a dark blue light. It was proof that Guillotine had freed it from the grip of dark mana.
Caron regarded the undead knight calmly.
"You're already dead," he said. "The Mercenary King sold your corpse to the dark mages. And they brought your body back as a Death Knight."
"...I remember now. I died on the battlefield. It was the Mercenary King's blade that severed my neck. That wretched man... Did he desecrate a knight's death?"
To this, Caron simply nodded.
Even the final honor granted to a knight had been trampled underfoot. A hatred too vast to name poured from the soul before him.
But then, the Death Knight's voice calmed. "You have freed me. Will you tell me your name?"
"My name is Caron Leston," Caron said.
"Young hero of the Ducal Family of Leston... I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If it had not been for you, I would have piled on sins even in death."
The knight knelt on one knee before Caron, then bowed his head with reverence. "Will you now grant me peace?"
"If that's what you wish," Caron replied.
He raised Guillotine and pointed it toward the Death Knight's neck. Though in truth, with no dark mana remaining, calling him a Death Knight felt like an insult.
"What is your name?" Caron asked.
"Sir Ron, Knight of the Keath Kingdom."
"Sir Ron, may I offer you a proposal?" Caron asked.
At Caron's unexpected words, Ron lifted his gaze to meet him. "A proposal... for one already dead?"
"Isn't it too cruel to just fade away like this?" Caron asked.
Even in death, Ron had been manipulated and twisted. The thick hatred radiating from him told Caron exactly how deeply he had suffered.
He wondered what could be more unjust than to vanish with that fury unspent.
Caron had died once. He understood that pain better than anyone. If he hadn't been granted a second life, if he hadn't had the chance to take vengeance, the regret would have consumed him.
And so, Caron suggested, "Choose. You can pass on peacefully... or you can seek revenge on those who did this to you. Either way, I'll honor your choice."
Caron reached out his hand to the dead.
And perhaps, as expected, the soul awakened from the chains of dark mana offered Caron its hatred without hesitation.
"...I want revenge."
In that moment, the most horrific weapon forged by the Mercenary King and the dark mages fell into Caron's hands.
Caron smiled faintly and nodded, then said, "That's the answer I wanted to hear."
The dead were hungry for vengeance.
The Avenger had risen.