'If it has reached level 200, that means its skill has evolved, and it has gotten stronger, meaning this might be harder than the established parameters of the quest.'
The growth of skills. These happen at turning points in power, usually, every ten levels. The Knight knew how much harder it was to deal with a level 150, than it was to deal with a level 149. This is why the fact that this monster is now a level 200 was bad news, it means that its skill must have improved, being a summoning skill, it means that the spirit is going to have more autonomy.
It being less reliant on the monster makes it more dangerous. It will be able to make decisions on its own, it might abandon its fight to help its summoner if things get dicey. And its master is now more of a terrifying foe; the Knight will have to end it quicker than planned.
With that assessed, they jumped to handle the monster. The Knight took the lead, having absorbed some of the void to strengthen itself, it barrelled towards the monster with a compact fist, hoping to destroy it immediately if possible. The monster did not exactly survive the punch, but when its soul was about to be ripped from its body it activated its skill. Juliet was a five-metre-high furless ram?
It had massive horns that shone with the darkness of a gloomy ink pool. It had hands instead of hooves, now that the Knight was looking at it properly it noticed that it was more like a massive humanoid figure, on all fours, with massive horns, not a ram. It had thin white silk robes flowing over the whole body. Its hind legs must have been mutilated; they ended with the stumps of the knees.
Right before death, the soul surged and started splitting. It was like watching mitosis in action. But instead of two identical daughter cells, one became a fully healed mother cell, as if it had not been struck by the Knight, the other was the summoned spirit. It was as huge as the summoner, it was not on its hind legs, instead it was just towering at twenty metres.
It did not have the swirling horns, instead it had a tail ending with a spike, twisted legs, and no face, just the skin moving like worms underneath, making expressions not even close enough to be labelled as such. It had eyes falling off of its fingers, a gaping hole in the centre, with a flowing waterfall of black blood.
The Knight knew how summoning worked; it was one of the ways a spirit could cross over from the realms to the world of the living. By using the soul of the summoner as a doorway. The book of souls, also included that there needs to be an agreement between the summoner and summoned, once broken or fulfilled the spirit or creature leaves.
Finding out what this contract might be done through a set of skills or tools. The people with these skills and knowledge on how to interpret this equipment were the ones missing from the guild, off on their quests, so breaking the contracts was on the table. So, the Knight had to use a method it extrapolated from the book of souls - destroying it as a void creature.
Usually, if a spirit is defeated, if possible, it will just be brought back as long as the summoner lives. And as seen right before death it splits its soul, this is a soul restoration technique. When summoning through one's soul, the soul is healed, bring them back from the brink of death, even healing the most egregious wounds, that is why now the summoner was not crawling on all fours like a ram, but now was standing fully upright. Its legs had been restored, making it tower at fifteen metres.
Now the Knight knew, this thing had gotten its legs severed at the knees by something more horrifying. This is why it had been crawling on the knee stumps and legs and seeing that its trail is not filled with blood, this must have happened long before now. This also meant that those injuries had been dealt after it had summoned the spirit the last time, meaning the assailant who had cut off its legs at the knee, had been killed or escaped.
This summoner had not summoned the spirit soon after to use its side effect to heal itself, this could mean that it is hesitant to summon the spirit or it's just draining to keep it summoned. This is bad, because, if it was just waiting until the next attacker, it could keep re-summoning the spirit once its banished, this would bring back the spirit restored and restore itself in the process, meaning this cannot be a battle of attrition.
The spirit would not come back when defeated by the Knight though, it would be sent to oblivion, thus the monster will not be able to re-summon it, and there won't be enough time to establish a new contract. This is why the Knight was dealing with the summon, it is also usually the stronger of the pair.
With it gone, the summoner will not be able to use the perks of summoning to avoid death. Looking at the pair, one a giant beastly temptress, which could not be confused with a ram now that it was restored, the other is a similarly giant creature, way horrifying, disturbing to even look at, making one want to look away, making these two one odd pair.
The Knight and its squad had come during night to sneak up on the monster, this had another added benefit, as long as they did not fully focus on the Knight, they would not notice the void layer of augmentation around it, and how much darker the armour had gotten. The Knight knew that this spirit probably had a power it still knew how to use, considering that it has kept its soul shape in death. The Knight jumped towards the spirit, to make the fight less concentrated.
Good thing the Knight still had Sirus's skill, the ability to touch souls, and in this case spirits. The Knight threw a heavy punch, the spirit did not even flinch, it rose its hand and caught the fist, even with the speed of the Knight factored in, this thing had to be fast, at least the Knight had managed to separate it from its summoner, and without even wasting a breath the whisper of darkness resounded.
You have encountered a level ??? spirit, Romeo. Type-Divine.
'Looks like its level is not computable, and what's wrong with the description. I have met monsters' type-spirit, but this thing is a natural spirit, not those things that refused to go to the realms after death eventually becoming monsters. This is a genuine spirit from the realms, and it has kept its identity as a divine being, must be an angel.'
The Knight now understood their naming, 'One is the devil, and the other an angel. Their story must be interesting, considering that one died and the other became a monster.'
There was no time to wonder about such because right then it threw a punch towards the Knight. This hit brought the Knight to life. It reverberated through its soul.
'I guess that must be its strange power.'
The spirit dropped the limp body of the Knight and started moving towards the fight between the squadron and the devil. The Knight was not gonna fall so easily, but that one hit was so debilitating that the Knight could not move its body. It seems its soul had been disconnected from its vessel, which would be death for the living, but the Knight was neither dead nor alive, it was an existence null in void. Meaning in time it would reconnect, but the squad would be eradicated by then.
'Damn it! This is more troublesome than I thought, a power to disconnect the soul and the body? It has not even used its skill if its skill is even still useable. What should I do?'
The Knight could call the army to handle this, but it would be strange, monsters helping people? There were a few options still open, but only one had the chance to save the squad in time, and the Knight could still fight. A disconnected soul could not use its skills by the looks of things, the only way the Knight could do this, is to use its powers.
The Knight thought for a bit, and with its capabilities that was quite a lot of thoughts. Eventually the Knight decided that winning the fight at the cost of its squad is less advantageous for the future than incurring a little suspicion from them. Well, the more the Knight thought about it, all it had to do to avoid suspicion is make sure, to look like an observer and not the purveyor of the destruction.
It is true that the knights could manoeuvre through the void, but they were not able to see clearly enough to discern the figures inside, otherwise they would still not think that void creatures and monsters were the same thing. The Knight teleported Tyun to its position, being humanoid in figure, and its skill, it could pose as the Knight, should one of the knights wonder.
Tyun arrived, and the Knight sighed, a habit it had regained after being with humans for so long, 'Your souls are mine Romeo and Juliet.'
Then something shifted, for the first time in three decades, the void covering the area around the conquered abysmal dungeon moved. All of it swirled, converging on a single location. The half of the city cleared up, leaving those patrolling inside the void, both in and out of the south side of the city were stunned and alarmed.
They were looking at it with horror and… readiness? Seems like this might be a strange turn of events but it is what they have been preparing for. But that's the thing the darkness was moving away, and nothing was immerging from it, the fact that this was like good news is what made it eerily foreboding.
The squadron felt the shift, but did not heed it, even if they wanted to, being distracted now would mean death, and they have trained for this for a long while. None shifted their gaze, they felt the horrifying presence, but none dared face it. They then all focused on one of the rules of the Knight code; Always finish what you set out to accomplish.
It was simple rule to follow, and most simple of all is that its real purpose is to warn against deserters in battle, because those who run have already died. Their task was to face this opponent, that way if they defeat it, and are killed by the emerging presence then the knighthood would have one less foe to contend with.
This came from the faith that their Bannerets could handle it, so before their deaths, it would be prudent of them to eliminate this thing first. In any case, the presence seems to be in the Commander's direction, them abandoning this foe means that they would be fighting a battle on both sides, and their Commander would give them hell for it if they survived.
The Knight was liking this feeling, unlike the divine spirit, because right then, it turned around, coming back to fight this new foe, who would pose a danger to its summoner, this was a decision made because it had more freedom to act, a lower-level summoners summon would retreat to protect the endangered summoner.
After all the summoning skill of Juliet was high enough to allow it to make rational decisions; if it left this danger alone, it would endanger both of them, in that respect it was thinking like the knights. So, it decided to handle the Knight first.
The Knight slowly looked at its arms, and clenched them into fists, absorbing this much of the void had altered its size. Maybe even the miniature territory it once had made it bigger, but in all honesty, the change was so small the Knight had not noticed it, maybe this would explain why the Knight is usually larger than the average human, due to the small territory always within the Knight.
The Knight was now towering at a couple of kilometres, then with a bit of effort, it compressed itself more and more until it was about twenty metres, to be at the height of the spirit. The Knight felt a truly astonishing amount of power coursing through its soul. It felt the power to demolish mountains, flatten plains, and topple cities – unguarded cities.
Then the Knight let a small bit of it snake out and cover the Knight and the spirit. It was a dense cloud swirling around them. The Knight had already activated the dreaded power, this is how the Knight reconnected its soul to the body, however now that Romeo had been covered, it looked at its arms and felt it, well it did not look, more like it raised its arms and the eyes at the fingertips twitched in confusion.
Even in life it had not met a power that nulls all others, it would have to rely on its skills for this battle. The spirit moved, letting it slip that it could still see clearly in the void, as expected, it is just a soul glowing bright blue, even though the void was smothering most of the light, with autonomy to boot, it was a truly adapt opponent.
Then their clash began, the spirit kept throwing punch after punch, and a small twitch of confusion every time the hit failed to disconnect the soul, it was still coming to terms with losing its power in this fight. A feeling of dread kept creeping into it, filling it with the unease of facing an insurmountable foe. With that feeling, another entered the fray, fear. For a spirit, a divine one, fear was unnatural, but with each punch from the Knight, the more of it felt, it kept growing and growing, until it snapped.
There was a bright flash of heavenly blue, and a blade manifested out of thin air.
'Trying to make me jealous, are we?'