The Paladin in the Abyss

The Aberrant Demon’s thigh slanted to the right, his shin to the left, with the knee just beside Bruto’s left hand—his swing completely missed the target.

Naturally, the enemy wouldn’t let this opportunity slip by. With a swift hack of its long-handled pincers, Bruto could only barely deflect the attack with his shield, but it still left a huge gash on his thigh.

"Damn mongrel!"

Blood filled the dwarf’s eyes as Bruto let out a furious roar. He charged again, his leg wound unnoticeable thanks to a sudden surge of adrenaline.

With a fierce lift of his shield-bearing left hand, the top edge of the shield met the enemy’s chin with what could only be described as enthusiasm. This maneuver, purely instinctual for a dwarf, was so powerful that the Aberrant Demon’s twisted fangs pierced through its own tongue, emerging from under the chin.

The unnatural strike momentarily stunned the Aberrant Demon, but the demon’s constitution allowed it to recover quickly.

But the dwarf wasn’t about to wait for that.

Bruto’s body rotated clockwise, unleashing the most fearsome and infamous combat technique of his stout race: the Low Slash.

The Warhammer, inscribed with Mithril Runes, traced a circular path and struck the Aberrant Demon’s twisted knee as desired, and Bruto finally heard the sound of the patella shattering that he had been waiting for.

"That’s more like it!"

The Dwarf roared and leaped onto the grounded Aberrant Demon.

Elsewhere, Lancelot was dominating this two-against-one battle. His speed and strength completely overwhelmed the enemies, and after a series of Horizontal Slashes, he suddenly changed tack—a heavy blow sent one enemy reeling backwards, and then his Longsword blocked the trident of the other enemy.

The enemy tried to withdraw his weapon to defend against his next attack, but Lancelot wouldn’t miss this brief opportunity for a one-on-one. His weapon didn’t rebound naturally from the collision but instead he gently guided it, while stepping forward in coordination with his Footwork Technique to quickly sidestep to his adversary’s side, with the trident’s point facing the opposite direction.

The Sword Blade, like a supple snake, slid up the trident’s shaft, severing the enemy’s wrist just above the grip. The frenzied adversary opened his mouth to bite at the Human Knight, but Lancelot had already released one hand from his sword and used his steel-clad elbow to knock the enemy to the ground.

As Bruto was smashing his hammer into his opponent’s skull, he caught sight of Lancelot standing over an Aberrant Demon, decapitating his enemy with a swing of his sword.

In less than a minute, they had dealt with three enemies; however, a burst of light flashed, and the two surviving enemies successfully summoned more demons. Suddenly, there was one more Aberrant Demon and four Coward Devils on the field—along with the existing two, they now faced seven enemies in total.

"Damn it!" Kalalin couldn’t help but curse. The demons’ ability to summon others of their kind wasn’t usually highly successful, but both these enemies had lucked out.

After the initial assault, their enemies had actually increased in number, forcing Lancelot and Bruto to adopt a defensive stance, cautious of being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.

Just then, an Aberrant Demon suddenly raised its hand, and a sphere of darkness that no light could penetrate appeared, engulfing a twenty-foot radius around Lancelot and Bruto.

This was a sphere of magical darkness, within which no light could propagate, not even the True Qi Lancelot gathered in his eyes could help him see anything around.

In the darkness, a claw swung towards Lancelot, but he timely caught the sound of the arm moving through the air.

Lancelot instinctively dodged the claw, then lunged towards the direction of the attack, unleashing a Horizontal Slash. He felt his sword strike the body of a Coward Devil, and a scream echoed from ahead. Find more to read at empire

Realizing that sound was his only cue in the darkness, Lancelot immediately gathered his True Qi at his ears, enhancing the acuity of his hearing.

In this pitch-black environment, the sounds created an entirely different image in his brain.

Each creature’s breathing and heartbeat revealed their positions and distances, and as long as they swung their arms or moved their bodies, Lancelot could discern their movements from the sound of the wind.

However, Bruto didn’t have this skill; Lancelot’s ears told him that the dwarf was wildly swinging his hammer and shield, trying through these actions to prevent enemies from getting too close in the darkness.

"Kalalin!" Bruto shouted desperately, "Do something!"

Kalalin was also scratching his head. He was familiar with this technique; it was Dark Arts, but dispelling Dark Arts required a light source created by magic of the third circle or higher, which was beyond his casting abilities.

"Don’t panic, Bruto! There are no enemies around you for now!" Lancelot thrust his longsword into the heart of a Coward Devil that had sneaked up silently, the organ making a deafening sound. "Calm down, carefully listen to their sounds!"

Lancelot’s words weren’t much help to Bruto, but they inspired Kalalin. The scholar rummaged through his pouch where he kept his scrolls and finally pulled out a rather ordinary-looking scroll.

He took a deep breath, and with a peculiar expression, he unrolled the scroll. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

A strange wind blew past, and Lancelot suddenly felt utterly delighted, making him laugh lightly.

He wasn’t the only one laughing. A ridiculous, idiotic laughter emerged from the darkness, reminiscent of a group of drooling imbeciles trying to light ants with a magnifying glass.

Another type of laughter was much more unpleasant, as if a prisoner tied to a chair was undergoing the torture of having their feet tickled with a feather, allowing one to clearly sense the pain involved.

These were the laughters of the Coward Devil and Aberrant Demon, respectively; these sounds didn’t cause any harm nor did they affect their actions, but they were enough for the dwarf in the darkness to pinpoint the enemies’ locations.

Bruto, fueled by rage from being blinded, finally found an outlet for his anger. He charged toward the nearest source of the silly laughter with his shield raised in front, ready to block any possible attacks.

The demons’ vision was unaffected. The Coward Devil instinctively tried to avoid the massive iron ball charging toward it, but the continuous stupid laughter gave away its position.

Bruto’s shield struck the side of the Coward Devil, making it lose its balance, but then the dwarf’s hammer made balance irrelevant for it ever again.

A lower body slash was just a standard horizontal slash, only that when performed by a dwarf, it was perfectly at the height of a typical humanoid creature’s knees. The move was so simple that dwarves could execute it even with their eyes closed.

The Coward Devil was flipped onto the ground, still laughing foolishly.

So the furious dwarf smashed his shield onto that mouth, again and again. The steel shield was large enough to cover the entire head of the Coward Devil, and by the sixth hit, Bruto felt like he had smashed a watermelon.

The dwarf finally snapped out of his frenzied state, realizing that his enemy was completely unable to fight back. Bruto scrambled up from the ground, raising his ears to search for the next target.

But he had spent too much time on that Coward Devil, and there were no more targets left.

With the death of the last Aberrant Demon, the effects of the Dark Arts also dissipated.

Bruto looked around; the bodies of demons lay scattered everywhere. Most had been run through with a sword, and the human knight stood in a dashing pose, flicking the blood off his sword blade.

"I’ve found that ears are better at finding demons’ weaknesses than eyes," Lancelot smiled as he noticed everyone looking at him. "After all, their hearts keep thumping loudly."