Chapter 40 — Skill: Challenger Activated
“She’s rattled, she’s rattled.” Lilith dipped her head, slipping under the thrust like a leaf under rain. The Black Knight personally puppeted by the Reaper Fragment moved like quicksilver, twice as nimble as the ones on Moonswallow Mist’s autopilot.
Those dull brutes only knew to charge with swords up, bullying her with armor and raw force like rolling boulders. Eternal Life fought with craft, like a needle hidden in silk.
Most obvious of all, when Lilith struck, she dodged, a shadow sliding past the blade, instead of tanking hits like those armor-trusting Knights.
So Lilith’s fully charged Ancient Ark couldn’t reach that annoying Reaper Fragment at all, like moonlight grasping at fog. The Little White Dragon had to vent the sword’s stored power as cutting wind, carving pale streaks like frost-lines across the Knight’s armor.
“Nidhogg!” Lilith locked up with Eternal Life, her voice a bell struck in mist. The Little White Dragon felt her edge stall against the defense, so she called to the Black Dragon across the room.
“Give me a heartbeat.” Nidhogg’s fist landed like thunder on a charging Black Knight, sending him skidding like a kicked log. She caught the Knight’s single-edged sword mid-swing, then reversed and stabbed another in the shoulder, booting him away like a door blown open by a storm.
Eternal Life wasn’t piloting only the one dueling Lilith; with Moonswallow Mist coiled around everything like night fog, she could, in theory, steer every Undead here. But only four Black Knights still ringed the two of them, like burnt-out torches.
Once Eternal Life switched them to manual, Nidhogg used raw speed and iron to pulp one, like a bear cracking a carcass. The Black Dragon’s brutal strength tore the Undead Knight’s proud plate like wet bark and wrecked the body before Eternal Life could twitch, dropping him to the floor to go reassemble with his fellows.
Then the Black Dragon got tied up by the remaining two, threads snagging on thorn. Under Eternal Life’s hands, the pair still couldn’t threaten Nidhogg; a canyon of power doesn’t vanish by a few parlor tricks. But Eternal Life wasn’t useless; she shielded their brittle bones when they took hits, keeping them from getting one-punched into dust.
“Got it.” Lilith nodded, breath steady as a lake at dawn. If Nidhogg was busy for a bit, the Little White Dragon would break the knot herself.
This time Lilith lunged first, a swallow darting under eaves. Even with the Knight’s boosted mobility, she couldn’t match Lilith’s quicksilver feet. The Little White Dragon kept her speed edge and seized the first beat, then read Eternal Life’s response like wind on grass.
Lilith swung Ancient Ark from a low angle at the Knight’s head, a crescent rising from the sea. It was her favorite way to kill—use speed and a small frame to slip into someone’s chest space, then end it with a feather-light up-thrust they never saw coming.
Eternal Life wasn’t taking that airy strike head-on. She caught Lilith’s blade on a single-handed sword, steel ringing like winter, then lifted her right leg for a brutal kick, a pillar sweeping the snow.
“Whoa, scary.” Lilith snapped a tentacle to the floor; with a feather’s bounce, the Little White Dragon sprang up, letting the kick cut only wind.
Midair, she looped two tentacles around Eternal Life’s wrist like vines on a boulder. She dragged the Ancient Ark’s edge aside, sliding the single-handed blade away to empty air, nowhere near her. Borrowing that coiled force, Lilith turned a half-spin in the air like a leaf in a gust, then tightened her legs and hammered a kick into the Knight’s faceplate.
She’d heard legs hit harder than hands, rumor like tavern smoke. True or not, her kick landed solid, denting the helmet a finger-width like a tin cup crushed in a fist.
The towering Black Knight staggered back, balance broken like a loose wheel. He reeled several steps, and even Eternal Life had to wrestle the weight to a standstill.
“Hey.” Lilith landed as light as ash and didn’t waste the opening. She cut a quick line across the Knight’s chest, a brushstroke on lacquer. Then she flipped her grip and sent Ancient Ark between the ribs, sliding into the seam like a knife into bark.
Lilith hopped and hung her whole weight on the blade, a kite tugging its string. She hugged the longsword tight and yanked down; the keen edge unzipped half the Undead Knight’s torso like splitting a log.
She hit ground and didn’t pause. The Undead Knight toppled back like a felled tree. Lilith snapped the sword up and, with a backward draw, laid a clean line across his neck.
“That’s for putting a blade to my throat and trying to scare me.” Lilith hissed through her teeth, grudge sharp as a thorn. Eternal Life had come to bully her when she was hurt after the fight with Zhenbai; the Little White Dragon paid back every coin with interest.
“Wait for me down there. I’ll be at your doorstep soon—within three days I’ll kill you and scatter your ashes on the wind.” She chopped the Undead Knight’s head clean off. The round, helmeted thing rolled, and she soccer-kicked it to her feet like a ball. Lilith knew Eternal Life could probably still hear, even through broken bone, so she raised the sword high and drove it down hard. “Don’t let me catch you in the dungeon. If I do, I’ll work you over and yank your Moonswallow Mist out in fistfuls.”
Lilith smashed the head Eternal Life was piloting, skull crunching like dry shell. The Undead Knight twitched twice on the floor, then went still as a snuffed candle.
On the side, Nidhogg was about done as well. The Black Dragon seized her chance, grabbed the two skull Knights by their collars, and slammed their heads together like cracking walnuts. Her sheer force blew their skulls into several pieces in a blink, shards skittering like hail, and Lilith sucked in a sharp breath.
“Are we… going a bit too hard?” Lilith asked, voice small as rain on moss.
“It’s fine. They won’t remember,” Nidhogg said, calm as night water.
