The Knight and its unusual assortment of an army was at the place denoted on the map as Uniras.
It was a small island, and on the map was labelled as a lesser danger. This was because most of the dark knights here, had not actually completed knight training. Basically, just a group of squires, pages, and trainees calling themselves knights.
The Knight then looked at Kitrino, 'I won't be doing anything on this island.'
It had sent her the thought because upon arriving on this island, the Knight found that there was a barrier. And Guilos said that it was an invention – not one casted by a mage. It only did one thin, noting the arrival of any guests by their voices and locating them.
Then the Knight teleported elsewhere. After centuries in a dungeon, it knew that some foes need to be studied, and even thought the Knight had no intention of fighting, it wanted to make sure they weren't strong enough to take on Kitrino.
It had left the dragons on the continent with orders to stop any boats that either try to head to this island or come from it. It had sent Guilos and Cathina back, this was going to serve as a simple test for the apprentice and incomplete general.
They then teleported inside the ruins of a fortified castle, they must have liked the aesthetic because this place had a lack of protection, the Knight just strolled in easily. Now that they were inside, it was time to let them handle this by alerting the dark knights, so the Knight spoke out loud.
"Forg, you must defeat as many as you can."
It ached as it said this because all those she killed would just die, but the Knight wasn't too sure about her capabilities. The truth was that she was a test subject and the Knight wanted to check how the dark knight fair against people, and observe what exactly makes them so dangerous. Even if they had not completed the training, it should still be in them.
"Kitrino, before you head off, I want you to kill none at all. I want you to issue the orders to the vermin instead. I want to see if your general title has any such use."
She looked disappointed, but who wouldn't be, this was going to be her first time fighting like this. The Knight was wondering if she was going to kill people in cold blood or not. Her character was still strange – shifting from childish to inhuman depending on the situation, but mostly random.
They spread out. The Knight began teleporting around, but after a while it found no-one. It even convened with both its fellow raiders and the army. They then went to the nearby town to investigate. There it found bones. Their layout suggested they had been killed and not neglected or drudged up.
The Knight then took out the book, then started scratching off all their names. They had all been wiped out, actually not just them, all life on this island. Someone had actually raided them first and left nothing but bones in their path. The Knight realised from some of the bones that this was more of a fallout, the lone survivor was found on the beach.
His bones lay there in the sand. Swords wedged through its stomach.
The knight surmised that, life as dark knights was too much for them, and eventually those who wanted to have a normal life and those who wanted to continue, clashed. The knight could not tell who won, but neither since the one furthest from the carnage eventually succumbed to the wounds. The strange part was that the survivor showed no attempts to survive his injuries, suggesting they were contempt with dying here.
The bones had not tried to fetch bandages, remove the swords, or even escape the island, they just came all the way out here, sat on a rock and died, probably staring out to sea.
The Knight would go on to find similar situations, each strange, but most having one thing in common – having happened ages ago, because it took long for people like them to rot – bacteria had its work cut out.
Others had been attacked by the void and died, having lost their skill set. In the end, every single group of dark knights, throughout all of Ouran, island or continent, that had been labelled a lesser danger had either stopped being knights altogether, or faced death at some ironic situation, but none of them remained.
"Do you think it's a coincidence?"
The knight looked at the bones in this underground bunker, where they were right now.
"I am sure it wasn't. I guess getting some practice was just a pipe dream."
"You dream?"
"I used to." It was referring to when it used to be human – it was guessing it probably did have dreams, it just didn't know what they were.
"I'm surprised."
Kitrino came with something in her hand. "Look at this."
The Knight didn't recognise it, and after bringing it to Guilos – the free but limited version of whisper, it got an answer.
"It's a monster stone. They are called that because when they are on – red, not black like this one – they were known to slowly make people go mad. This one seems broken."
'I'd say someone found it and broke it, but it had already been too late.'
"Did the other dark knights do this?" – asked Forg.
"I'm sure of it. Otherwise, no-one else would know their locations so clearly. Someone must have begun a purge of dark knights – or a recruitment run. Those who refused either were killed or driven to such an end. But not all – some places had descended into madness all on their own, just look at the first place we went to, it had nothing of the sorts. Those attacked by darkness had also just been naturally wiped out, some had just abandoned their sites."
"So, what now?"
'Someone took my prey from me. Back in the dungeon I would have considered this a favour, but these are human souls, not madness infected garbage. I guess I'll have to find them instead, I can't let this go on.'
"We have to find the one responsible – They're stealing all my chances at 'glory'."
The Knight then searched the entire book, looking for a group of dark knights with this particular kind of skill set, or known to have this kind of thinking.
'They really aren't knights; they even put in their motto – hiding nothing. {Only true darkness can save us all.}. Imbeciles.'
The Knight then teleported to their base. It was designated as a dangerous area because they were known to terrorise travellers and force some if not most to join. The Knight was going to make sure to take every single one of their souls. This is why it didn't bring the apprentice along for this one.
Kitrino then summoned her armour, and her sword. The dragons set up a perimeter right around the edge of their barrier to not alarm them yet. Then it, the army, and Kitrino all teleported inside. It then gave an order usually meaning mercy, but to it and its army, this just meant let no soul escape thy grasp.
"Kill no-one."
***
"I'm coming, hold your horses – who struggles against a group of monsters and two knights – I thought I trained you rookies better."
Then he passed a hallway filled with a chilling sight he recognised. Distorted corpsed, lost colour in their whole body, looking almost like discarded failed wax statues. He didn't feel any of the usual darkness that accompanied such scenery, so he disregarded any such thoughts, but he put on his helmet and stopped speaking.
"What should we do?" asked another of the recruits.
He didn't answer and just took slow focused steps towards the ongoing battle. The head was currently away so this was all up to him, but he could still just abandon them, but he knew his boss would hunt him. And despite what he saw, no sign of darkness meant no destroyers.
Then he just collapsed on the floor, shaking, grasping his heart, and trying to breathe. He was paralysed by fear and his desires twisted. Then he activated his power and stood up.
Then he rushed into the hallway, when he saw the Knight. He smiled.
'They really don't learn do they… Dark knights are superior to them any other day.'
His sword flashed, but it got stuck inside Dsace – the green goo. But he quickly pulled it out. "Hey you, going to let your friends do all the fighting, I thought you guys were better than us…" He tried taunting the Knight.
He then moved – almost as fast as teleport in fact. He then appeared on the Knights feet, he tried to slice the Knight in two, then before his eyes, as the sword struck the knight it turned into darkness and got absorbed into the armour.
"I-impossible…"
Then a wolf behind him tried to bite his head off. But he easily dodged it, even managing to throw a decent punch to its jaw.
The Knight spoke – "I guess you can still face the unseen, unheard, unfelt. I guess in some ways you could call yourselves mediocre knights."
He then got angry and summoned his power to its full extent, even his body began bleeding, and his soul began to erode. Then the room they were in started turning into dust, then he put his hand on the surface of the Knights cold armour.
But in all that, he had not noticed the sudden embrace of what he feared most.
His power soon left him. He then tried to escape, but then a thick something radiated in his heart – his soul. He could not see, or hear, but he knew this feeling, not personally, but it was one that had made him quit being a knight after he heard his companions screams on his first time on the battle front. He had thought he escaped it!
Then he collapsed, empty, as essence of his soul collected on the Knights hand.
***
"This was a former commander – he still fought like a knight, I can't believe he fought so easily with all the fear I saturated the air with."
The void was reabsorbed and then Kitrino came back counting the souls she collected.
'I guess she's more of vermin than I thought.'
If she'd hesitated, the knight would've killed her on the spot and reabsorbed the vermin. Even if whisper did warn that this might disrupt the vermin's concept.
'She's still terrible at leading though. That general thing must mean something else – maybe I'll find out about it in the void academy. Reminds me of void lord, Blood Feind saying something about its generals being off somewhere.'
"Let's go."
"Here."
"What?"
"You can have them; I don't want them in my soul."
It took them into its inventory. As the Knight was about to leave, it felt a new presence, this one was probably going to be a bigger problem.
You have encountered a level 299 human, Former knight Bachelor Despan. Type-Knight.
"What do we have here? Leaving so soon. It took me quite some time to train them you know? Not to mention all those I had to recruit."
He then activated the power over space. One the Knight was familiar with.
Then he made a dome that kept shrinking around the Knight, this one was impressive because, it didn't even have any flaws the Knight could immediately exploit. It had a solid grip, and it would have been enough to crush it. The Knight then summoned the void, but still, it couldn't remove the shrinking distortion.
The power of the Knight stopped the use of power, it seems this shrinking space was a permanent construct, meaning the power had created a permanent space that has to shrink. He wasn't actively using the power on it, which [Daunting] couldn't stop.
Then Knight then crushed the distortion with pure strength, but then a few more layers had been made each collapsing in on itself. Then the Knight felt the space between itself and its body grow. It stopped it by using [Daunting].
The Knight then began erasing the distortion itself into the void, but it continued. Layer after layer, after layer. He didn't know the knight was a void being, but he was treating it like one, because its use of this power was to avoid being close up. Creating permanent influxes of space and pushing every bit of oneself to the limit.
Through the distortion in space, it saw something. The look it had when facing the monsters in the dungeon. Giving ones all and making sure the adversary couldn't – and even then, pushing further that it needed, leaving no room for error. The Knight was utterly trapped, in every sense of that word.
And even after facing Vice and Avarice, this was the first time the Knight realised it was facing against those who had been specially trained to stop beings like itself, because push as it could, it couldn't get out.