Lance’s hand tightened on the hilt of the Sirius Sword, and his forefinger brushed the crack along its steel like tracing an old scar on cold stone.

A prickling dread ran through Fulin like sleet on bare skin. She judged the “he” she wore couldn’t take that blow head-on.

“Jeremy, Hank, jump ship!” Lance shouted, voice cutting the spray like a thrown knife.

“Roger!” Jeremy and the others pushed off at once, bodies knifing into the water like silver fish.

Lance sprang aside as well, heart thudding like oars in a storm.

The black-armored knight hit the deck with a thunderclap, and the impact almost flipped the boat like a leaf in a gale.

Even after Lance leapt to the next boat, the wave that surged from the first rocked him hard, the planks pitching like a skiff in chop.

The black knight picked his moment like a hawk stooping. He wasn’t on Lance’s boat, yet he hurled dried corpses at him without pause, each throw like a catapult stone.

“Too close!” Lance dropped flat, breath burning like hot sand.

The withered body missed and smashed the dockhouse behind him, bones and rags bursting against brick like a sack of twigs, and the force spoke of a throw that could’ve ended Lance in one breath.

Even dodging the fast pitch left Lance in swirl and drift. The boat rolled underfoot like a drunk serpent, and his steps had no place to root.

It was the same water-slick sway for the black knight, but the brute was a bear in iron—huge frame, brutal strength, thick plates—he barely needed to dodge at all.

On shifting boards, a heavy unit blooms like a boulder on a hill; he could eat strikes and answer with hammer blows, and that alone put Lance in a hard bind.

Fulin had tricks in Lance’s skin, yet the deck wasn’t “his” ground; he had to get back to stone like a tree to earth.

“Hey! Big guy, over here.” Lance baited him with a death’s grin, then sprinted and skipped over boats, a string of flying steps like stepping stones on a river, and shot for the dock where he’d boarded.

“Lance…” The black knight answered with a sound between man and beast, a cave-wind growl that raised gooseflesh like frost, and his muscles swelled as if to split the armor before he launched in an impossible high leap.

He slammed down on the road before the dock with force that seemed to punch through tiles like a hammer through clay.

In a blink, “Lance!” He brought the greatsword down in a savage chop, a falling guillotine of iron.

Fulin caught the beat and slid low, her Lance skimming like a shadow under a wave; the chop missed, and she flowed behind him like smoke around a pillar.

“Got you!” Lance seized the opening, and the Sirius Sword reshaped into a blade like moonlight drawn thin.

The moment the edge showed, he loosed Secret Sword Blazing Fire, and blazing Battle Aura swept out like a wildfire’s tongue.

Fire licked the black knight’s back like rabid serpents. The rear plates burst open under the heat, and corpse-grey skin showed, taking searing bite-marks where the aura gnawed with flame.

“So much pain… so much pain…” The black knight rumbled, turning slow as a millstone; his face stayed a demon-mask without a flinch, and the blood-red in his eyes burned brighter like coals fanned.

No effect? The thought chilled Fulin’s gut like a swallowed stone, yet her mind cooled clear as winter water.

Secret Sword Blazing Fire hurt him, she knew, but armor blunted too much. Skin exposed, repeated strikes might tell—yet a canny brute would bait that very greed like a net.

If she were the black knight—strong as flood, slow as frost—she’d time a counter the instant a nimble foe went for the back, and turn with a chop to trade life for blood.

Because of that, Fulin kept Lance still as a coiled cat, refusing to lunge first and feed his trap.

Salvation came like a bell in fog. “It’s that monster again! Surround it!” The city guards arrived, boots drumming like rain on stone.

On the quay, they swarmed from all sides, hemming the black knight in like a ring of stakes.

“Take him!” barked the captain, voice sharp as a whip crack.

Spearheads flashed cold as frost. “Hah!” The guards thrust from three sides at once, a dozen points darting like starlings.

Some women in the crowd squeezed their eyes shut, hearts braced for a hedgehog of iron and blood, fear fluttering like trapped moths.

But seconds passed with no wet hiss of steel through meat, only a grating squeal like iron on slate.

Curiosity pried their lids open, and they saw an impossible sight painted clear as noon.

Not one spear had pierced the black knight. Every shaft had stopped short like reeds against rock.

Edges either skidded off iron plates or stuck in the seams, yet couldn’t bite the flesh beneath, the grey-white skin tough as buried stone.

“This… that’s impossible!” Several guards stepped back, faces pale as lime.

“Don’t panic! We’ve got numbers.” The captain hauled their courage like a net, then snapped another order—“Again—argh!”

The black knight smashed through the ring like a boar through brush. His left hand hoisted the captain by the throat, his right drove the sword into his chest—bright in, red out—and he tossed the body into the moat like throwing trash.

“Ahhhh!” The guards broke like dry twigs, their screams louder than their captain’s death cry, and they fled in all directions like startled quail.

“So it’s back to just you and me…” Sweat beaded on Lance’s brow like dew on blade grass.

Luck said otherwise, rolling in like a second tide. “We’ll bag the big one!” Full-fledged mercenaries from the Guild arrived at a run, breath hot, eyes hard.

They worked the scene like old hands. Two were already on a roof with heavy arbalests braced like crouching beasts. “Take the legs first!” Silver-bright bolts tore the air with a hawk’s shriek.

As expected, he didn’t guard for that. The calf without armor got skewered on impact, and blood spattered the stones like crushed berries.

His left side lost its pillar. He dropped to one knee with a clank like an anvil.

“Now!” The mercs surged, blades and maces gleaming with a temporarily silvered sheen, the pale light under cloud gilding their edges like frost.

It still didn’t take. “So annoying… so annoying!” The black knight rose when he shouldn’t, a blood-wind coiling around him like a red serpent, then funneling into his sword in a blink.

A grizzled merc saw the line and blanched. “No! That’s—”

Too late. The black knight spun, a crimson cyclone sweeping out like a scything tide, and everyone close went down like wheat before the wind.

Those farther back suffered light cuts and bruises, hit the ground, blinked hard, and scrambled away like crabs from a boot.

Those too near died ugly, bodies diced by the raging blade-wind, flesh and red ruin smeared on stone like butcher’s scraps.

The mercs didn’t bolt at once. Their last card was the Mage Association’s answer, and since the distress went out, a nearby mid-tier mage arrived at last like a tardy storm cloud.

“Cover me!” the portly mage barked, planting his staff. Mana rose around him in waves like heat-haze, and the sight stoked the mercs’ hearts like a bellows.

The black knight didn’t idle. He kept hammering at the mercs, trying to break through and gouge the mage like a boar for the red cloak.

Six seconds crawled by like years. The mid-tier’s spell finally set, a third-circle element—an Icicle Spear as cold as mountain marrow.

“Spell’s live!” The mercs peeled aside on cue, and the icy spear arced like a comet and struck the black knight, freezing him in a shell of blue glass.

“We did it! …Did we?” Hope trembled in their throats like thin ice.

The bad omen hatched. “Haa!” A roar split the air, and the black knight burst the frost like a bear from a trap. The spell failed, and the shadow of iron rushed the mage again like a storm front.

“Q-quick, cover me!” Panic cracked the red-robed mage’s voice like glass. He blinked himself seven meters back, reappearing behind a line of mercs, and began another chant with shaking lips.

The mercs couldn’t fell the knight, but they tangled feet like fishermen with nets, buying beats while the mage gathered a second spear of ice like a growing stalactite.

Then the black knight quit closing, and people thought he’d given up the mage, like a tide ebbing from a cliff.

Instead, he counted the mage’s stillness while casting, snatched up a broken paver like a slab of bone, and hurled it at the red hood’s brow like a sling-stone.

The mage never raised a guard. The stone split his skull like a ripe gourd; he crumpled on the spot, and nameless liquids and soft clumps ran across the stones like spilled stew. He looked all but gone.

The mercs saw the mage drop and terror filmed their eyes like oil. Confidence failed, and they fell back the way they came like a retreating tide.

Fulin-as-Lance hadn’t just stood idle; the fight began and ended too fast, two waves of reinforcements bled out in under two minutes, and the black knight barely marked by scratches, while guards and mercs dotted the ground like scattered offerings. The gap in power was a canyon; he crushed common men like clay jars.

From the feel of their brief exchange, he had at least a level-six charge in him, a line of power above “Lance,” and no wonder Fulin felt the strain like weight on the chest.

But that didn’t mean she lacked a way to break him. After a few rounds of battering, his motions slowed like tar in winter. He trudged toward Lance step by step, heavy feet falling into the trap like a bear into a pit.

“Now!” Lance fired the combat art Binding Flame Lock.

Searing fire coiled into a giant serpent, and the flame-snake hit the stones hissing and arrowed for the black knight like a living rope.

He didn’t respect it at first. He let it wrap him, steps trudging on like a bull through reeds, until the heat bit deeper and the coils tightened like iron bands.

His stride faltered, and both arms got pinned, the bond cinching tighter and the heat surging like a kiln stoked to white.

Only then did the black knight sense life in the fire, the serpent trying to strangle him like a constrictor in the dark.

“Ah… ah!” Unease roughened his voice like gravel. His muscles swelled again, his frame ballooning to rip the fiery cords like a bear breaking snares.

Fulin knew Binding Flame Lock wouldn’t finish him, yet binding was all she needed, a heartbeat made into a doorway.

Lance raised the Sirius Sword, and the blade drew fire until it felt like a volcano storing a thousand years of wrath, ready to swallow sky and earth.

“Let the blaze end your sins.”

He brought down the condemning flame, a Secret Sword Blazing Fire that hit like judgment, and the black knight vanished inside a tower of fire like a pyre lit to heaven.

Amid the skyward blaze, someone shouted, bright as a bell, “The Blazing Fire Knight is here!”

“That’s the legendary Blazing Fire Knight?! How incredible, how brave!” The crowd erupted, cheers leaping like sparks.

Lance barely had time to brace for praise like a wave, when a squad of fully armed knights burst from the street corner like steel pouring from a gate.

They were the Vanilla Duke’s sworn knights. They drew on Lance at once, points steady as winter stars. “We suspect you’re with them. Lance Morrison, you’re under arrest.”