The Knight had made its decision. It summoned one of its hammers, and hit the void being coming towards it.
This decision was from a single factor. The conversation the Knight had earlier went as follows:
***
'I cannot leave without my sword.'
Mugaw flared. "You are still not sure if the humans even have it. And wouldn't it be easier to search for it as a destroyer."
'Did you feel that…?'
"Not anything in particular."
'No – it's just that ever since waking up, I have been getting this feeling like something is off – something familiar. I kept ignoring it due to the fact that I had just awoken. But even from here I can still feel it, but it's a strange feeling, one that I can't quite grasp.'
"Is it something in the darkness?"
'Couldn't be, the feeling is stronger the closer I am to the woods.'
"Can't you just ask whisper to look into it?"
'Never mind it! I guess I'll look into it later for now I'll focus on the battle ahead.' The Knight then faced towards the void territory before it.
'The guardians of humanity have proven themselves formidable. Even if I was to attack them during their weakest, I doubt I would be able to recover the sword. And don't act like you know what decision to take, after all, you do have a strained relationship with the humans. None of your advice is free of bias.'
Then as I see it. You are not deciding whether or not to look for the sword. Neither is it between humanity or the void. You decision is simple. It is about who are you willing to face first. Given the existence that is your soul. You will one day have to face each in battle. For you are the scorn of existence. The scourge of reality. The insignia of what is vile. At this moment your weapon might lay in the hands of the humans. And as I recall there is a contract that allows battle with those of another void lords' domain. The decision has already been made.
The knight had already pondered most of this, but the flash of multiple explanations coming from the whisper were quite helpful. Before the Knight could give voice to its thoughts, the whisper continued.
100 Slaughter points consumed.
'I figured as much.'
So, you see. The Knight had not favoured the humans, not at all. The Knight simply made a logical decision. A cold one, holding not even a lick of sentiment. If things had been slightly different, right then and there, the Knight would have gotten its slaughter points back, and even more. It would have butchered without mercy. After all, the vile army could make it here in a jiffy.
The Knight could not eradicate all, at most it could injure them horribly at this level, but the carnage avoided here was something to be grateful for. The Knight however knew which of the two foes posed more of a danger, the void. And just like its battalion, it would also have to give its all to survive this onslaught until daybreak.
***
The hammer shattered on impact, leaving the Knight with only one hammer. The [Undone Hammer] was gone so the Knight summoned the [Roaring Hammer]. It appeared in whisps of seething tentacles. The pulsating rotten flesh of the hammer's handles wrapped around the Knight's hands. Parasitic roots fused with the first layer of the Knights gauntlets.
The head was like a log chopped off on both hands. It had a thriving culture of decaying fleshy wood, along with the microbials.
Then the Knight gripped the handle tighter and focused.
The reason this is the roaring hammer, is that it carries the echoes of the soul. And this form was what the hammer believed to be an accurate representation of the echoes made by the Knights soul.
The Knight swung its mighty hammer over and over. But the opponent would not falter. It grabbed the hammer and tried to shatter it.
Nothing happened.
The hammer was made from the soul of a troublesome adversary the Knight faced in the dungeon. The floating blank orb known as Farah. The problem was that this monster had a skill that allowed it to become linked to the soul of the opponent. The Knight won by assassinating it, reluctantly since it wanted to make it into a follower. Its ability was not omni potent, and could not sense the unseen, unheard, and unfelt.
The ability the hammer had was different; by carrying the echoes/roar of the soul, it disrupts a soul's synchronicity. This makes the opponent temporarily freeze for a second during every hit. Thus, the Knight could unleash a whole barrage on a passive statue like it was now.
Every hit the Knight threw would destabilise the harmony between body and soul. It was more deadly, but to a void being it was an inconvenience. It was stuck receiving multiple blows, but just as the Knight had seen, these blows were still ineffective.
The Knight threw a couple of more hits, just to buy time.
'Whisper, consume 50 slaughter points and tell me, can the humans differentiate between different void territories?'
70 Slaughter points consumed… No. Only those of the void can see the imperceptible difference between void territories. This is because the difference lies in the soul it is attuned to. In the vision of those of the void different void territories look like different worlds.
'Seventy huh? Well, at least the answer was satisfactory. In any case, this means that means that I will be giving away that I possess a void territory, making me a candidate. This will make me the target of other candidates who wish to get my void."
*Reminder: Void territories can only be claimed if a being already possess some. If a being with a void territory is destroyed by one without, the void territory just comes out and waits to be claimed by one who can. The Knight could have not been able to claim the void from the abysmal dungeon if it did not already possess its mediocre territory. So, revealing the void the Knight has would make it a target for those who can claim it. These would be the ones who have taken the void lord challenge contract, those who have earned it from millennia of training or the void lord themselves. Meaning the Knight would be a target of the generals and the void lord, since its death is more valuable. *
The Knight knew that facing a void lords army, even as part of a paladin's legion. Holding back against a single grunt, like this one was more dangerous than the fight with Mugaw.
To the humans, nothing happened. But to those of the void. Within their inky void, surged the void they had never seen.
'I can't get it all out!'
The Knight had never had to fight off the pressure of another void. Usually, its void just flows out like a river tide. But this was constricted flow, losing focus would force it to all retreat back inside.
This was enough though. The Knight would absorb it into the armour while still summoning more. The armour became menacingly black, peerless to none, but those of the void.
They saw the vile void that had created a small blemish in their lord's void. And as they could see it, then their void lord could feel it. But it was so much larger that it could be confused for a power. Their void lord knew of no power than man possessed that could resist the void, but that was not to say it did not exist.
What felt more probable was the existence of a power that made the sensation of the void region there gone. Similar to the Knights own sense manipulation.
The others felt the presence of a new void territory, one that they did not recognise. Did this mean war or was it the thrashing of a new challenger. Why here? Why now?
One thing they did not have to question was its power.
The Knight put the roaring hammer back, under the strain of the void it would collapse anyway, making it only good for a single hit, including the [Impact] skill.
Clenching its fists, the tips of the finger's guards scrapped against the palm of the gauntlet. The battle monger skill activated. This improved the Knights stance. Positioning it for the ability to maximise the impact skill on every strike.
The hero skill activated, unwillingly though – as always. This was because of the Knights nearby who believed, as such the power increase was partial. Then the sense manipulation began, but this would be minimal to beings that have no physical senses. Then the Knight vanished. These skills were to increase efficiency. Even though they would only affect the precision of which the destroyers fought slightly, it was enough of a helping hand.
The Knight tried to dispatch the first one. Once the Knight hit it with a barrage of impacts, things felt different but even with all this power, the Knight did not affect the being much.
The Knight had to think admits the mayhem. It was no-longer facing monsters, these were void beings. As such the Knight had to think of which monsters caused it the most trouble and why. At faster speeds than ever imagined the Knight went through centuries of information.
Most beings have trouble remembering what they did yesterday. Even harder for them to remember things that happened over a century, if they live that long. The Knight is no human, not only that, but it also possessed knowledge stats above 200. At this level, the Knight recollected, every single memory from the past centuries of its existence, in an instance.
Battle was happening so quickly the Knight had to move fast and teleport multitudes of times, just to stay just a fraction of a millisecond faster than the opponent. The Knight was a towering monstrosity at a hundred metres.
Otherwise, the Knight would be trampling on its battalion with every step. They would most likely survive, but there has been a protocol put in place for such events. The knights, and knight commanders are to stay far away from the battles of their superiors.
In that instance of thought the Knight had gone through its memories. In the next few instances, it compiled and filtered the memories. Then it went through all of the compilations while thinking over the memories. The knight had to go through these multiple layers while solving for their purpose, with respect to the current battle.
Some paths ended in unnecessary leads. Some presented solutions which could not be solved. This much processing is the kind the Knight usually does at night, at the time when humans sleep, for it needed no sleep. It does it when trying to control the creations it makes with crimson smith, down to the atomic scale.
The Knight then finally found something on the sixth second, after countless instances. The battles that were the most prominent were the ones where the Knights soul was compromised.
The battle with the Sygiligon, since it transferred damage instead of inflicting it, the damage reached the Knights soul. The battle with Mugaw, since Mugaw could harm the soul, due to its assimilation skill. The battle with the spirit Romeo, since it could disconnect the Knights soul and its physical being. The battle with knight Banneret Vice, since she drained every morsel of energy including that which composes souls. The battle with Marshal Kiyun, more accurately Avarice, because it was a void being, a strange one, but still one. The battle with the disaster known as Red Scorch, since it could burn all, even souls, making it the most recent costly battle.
The thing is that the Knights soul was unique. It was originally a soul of the living, then due to some kind of event it became something existence had not deemed fit to be. This soul was similar to a mock soul, those of the void beings. And it also resembled the soul of the living once it has died – a fading soul.
The battles the Knight had thought over, identified that the thing that needs more focus was not the soul. Not the soul entirely anyway. The reason most of them did not cull the Knight was because they did not know how the Knights soul was composed, after all the Knight is the only being able to summon the void during the daylight. A time the thing the Knight had heard when it was being made, had banned activity of.
Being a void being it figured it could find out how to permanently take out a void being. It learned from Avarice that void beings just become nothing once defeated, going back to the main void. In a way, to destroy one, one needs to remove the part of it, that forms the nothing into a mock soul. But the Knight wanted to somehow do this more effectively. Otherwise, it could not kill a void being, only incapacitate it like Romeo had, or restrain it like Mugaw had done to one of its followers.
The Knight could probably fend of a weaker grunt night by night, being a void being itself, but it despised wasting time, as such, it wanted to find an effective way to dispose of them. This was so nostalgic, as this is the exact kind of thought the Knight had had in the dungeon – not survival -victory, even against those as powerful as soldiers of the void – who were at this point too much for even the Knight.
The thing the Knight had figured out was that the way to defeat a void being, was to destabilise the soul. All void beings have to do to destabilise the souls of the living, is to merely touch them, like a reaction between anti-atoms and atoms. But the anti-atom continues. Then the energy is used to sustain it for a little while longer.
Void beings require a pure soul about once every hundred years, but the Knight needed it about half that time due to it being a dreaded soul. This became worse the more of the void it absorbed.
When it takes the souls of the living it has to pull it out of the body once it had lost the connection. To try and do the same to a void would be futile, they are mostly void, and nothing even remotely alive. So, the Knight had come up with this unique solution...