The people including the adventures woke up, a whole ten months later.
All of them tucked into bed – including those who had been outside when it started. Even those that were underwater had been placed into their underwater homes.
They woke up in the blinding sunlight.
All of them walked outside, feeling healthy and refreshed.
Strangely – for a couple of hours, their minds wondered aimlessly in this peace-like state, until eventually they remembered something was supposed to be wrong.
"The town is in tip top shape…" – said one of the adventures leaving their room, looking at the person next to him with the same dazed expression as him.
"Yeah – weren't there dark knights there just yesterday?" – she pointed to the now empty wall.
The People would have found the whole thing perplexing, for it not one glaring piece of evidence. On that same night, when everyone finally decided to go inside, they found a note saying –
The Dark Hunter has cleared your city of its plague – enjoy the peace.
Many would have been sceptical of this, undeniably so – but the major difference, was that they had this feeling in them that it was true – something they could not explain that made them want to believe in it.
The only thing that made them doubt, was the sheer absurdity of the forces, this hunter, was claiming to have dealt with. No-one liked the dark knights, but everyone was sure of their strengths, and this claim was just too absurd to take at face value.
'The entire force, it took us ages to even keep them at bay…'
'It is hard to deny this feeling in me, but how am I supposed to accept this…'
Even ignoring the fact, they had seen none of it – the ten months of missing thoughts – It still did not explain how a force as large and prominent as that been wiped out in less than a year.
"Did you read the note?"
"I did – but it's kind of hard to wrap my head around it. The last thing I remember was a sword right about to slice my neck clean off, when a massive wave of darkness washed over us all. Oh, right, the darkness, you saw it too…?"
"I was there – I was not that far from the gates of death myself. But we all saw it. For this entire week, the darkness has not appeared… but you can't expect me to believe they managed to clear such a force and also defend against the darkness as well – keeping every single last one of us alive!?"
She looked down. Her eyes blurred the sweet tea in her hands, looking all the way to the floor, straight into her own shadow.
"It sounds even more ridiculous when you say it – but… both the dark knights and the darkness are gone, aren't they? And without a single casualty! And no other knight was here – otherwise we would have seen the oceanic darkness approach from south."
"I feel you." – he then leaned onto a pole losing himself deep in thought.
Multiple conversations, similar to this one, occurred. Everyone filled with this confusing feeling that something that should not be true was true. Even if they thought it was a mass hallucination – there was no denying the fact the dark knight – who had murdered so many of their fellow adventures in cold blood for a decade – were gone.
"You can feel it too, can't you?" She said this as she drank generously from her cup.
"I can – this skill. There is no denying that the dark hunter – that strange and creepy hero, was here. In the time that all of us were gone, the dark knights had been handled? Not to mention the incredible revitalised states of our bodies."
He was referring to the fact that the sick had been restored the injured healed – some of the veterans of battle had even lost their badges of honour – their scars. The note they got cleared up some of the fog in their minds – it was just hard to accept.
Amongst these, was the explanation that the dark hunter had to transfer its energy to keep them alive. They had been moved inside using teleport and fortified their houses.
"Okay – let's say for a minute there – we take all of this at face value."
"Yes…" – she looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"who is this hero? Left us with questions, a skill, and a note – no face, excluding the people who remember seeing a mysterious looking knight creepy armour and two girls, roaming around – which were the only accounts of their appearance."
They thought some more.
For the entire first weeks, the town spent trying to grasp the reality of what had happened.
Soon, after, they worked hard to restore the passage and send messages to the neighbouring cities. Travel resumed within a month. This city had been built to quickly recover from ruin, as so did all before them and after. They told many travellers a mouthful tale, of a preposterous proportions, their own guesses about the dark hunter. None believed them.
Another month later, when the knight for supplies came back, they regaled him of these tales. Unlike the travellers, instead of calling them out on their lies, he just laughed.
After all the laughing, having attracted a crowd around himself, he stopped and said – "So, he did it, didn't he?"
They all sat there listening to the stories that he had heard from the Home continent, that he had been sceptical about himself, but after hearing about this, he was more inclined to believe them. They all also started to believe it – the other tales sounded just as impossible.
"Pushed away the darkness as just a knight Commander?"
"A divine what?"
"The Red Scorches entire legion? That explains the dragon sitings…"
"Again, with the removing of darkness…?"
The Knight truly was garnering honour – just the crazy absurd kind.
At that moment, even the knight who had just come for supplies became a believer.
***
The Knight waved in the air, as if chasing away a fly – but there was nothing there.
This was just the annoying sensation of receiving new believers.
It gazed at the compass and the map.
'That might have taken longer, but due to them banding together like that, I got to scratch off more names that I should have been able to. But as always – I might have saved time, but it just goes to show some things don't change – as it stands now, I'm still a little over schedule even after saving time – dungeon life…'
The Knight then turned and heard Mugaw – still without a body.
"I just realised something – that book of yours is turning out to be less like a catalogue and more like a morgue list."
He then laughed his iconic laugh – it was this proud, rough, and annoying noise, that randomly changed gears mid crack.
The Knight thought about the strength of its party – and realised, things would have gone faster if Forg and Cathina could be made to see in the void – but not only did they not have interesting skills to tempt a vermin to consume them, but that might just kill them or leave them mentally digressed like Kitrino – so it pushed that idea out of mind.
They had not been completely useless. Forg had kept them rejuvenated, and Cathina froze their hearts to a cryogenic state. The Knight had made them less resistant to the decrease in their temperatures, but it was more like it made them long to be frozen.
'whisper?'
…Insufficient request?
'Insufficient request? Calling my question senseless and unclear before I even ask it – this is why I usually just ask Mugaw, oh right, Guilos now.'
It was about to ask of a way to make those two more like the void.
The Knight might have been thinking this, but it knew only whisper could help with such. And considering its reluctance to assist, the Knight shifted its resources elsewhere.
There were five categorisations of dark knights in the catalogue. This was based on an estimation of their potential damage at the time this was last updated, which was over half a century ago.
There were lesser danger, dangerous, highly dangerous, extremely dangerous, and incredibly dangerous.
The lesser dangers had all been dealt with by chance and foul play before even the Knight began the hunt. The dangerous one were few and far in between, and the Knight had almost cleared all of them. The highly dangerous were harder to deal with but the Knight could manage them with just the army.
Then were the extremely dangerous, the kind the Knight could barely handle them without having to catch them off guard. It had only two encounters with those on this level. It was Soo, who had died on his own, and his troubling darkness elemental required the true power of the dragon. The other was the group at Revel Arc port city.
Neither of these had been possible without a dragged-out effort of some kind.
And as it had told Kitrino – they could not face off against Incredibly Dangerous just yet.
But… the Knights compass, at this precise moment was pointing in one direction. Towards the nearest and only Incredibly dangerous on the entire continent of Nhoils, the only one the Knight had been able to track down through all the outdated data.
The Knight did not have an overconfident ego after defeating the dark knights at Revel Arc. It was just that Kiyun had gotten into its head. It was thinking like a knight, and how it had existed inside the abysmal dungeon – ready to defeat any opponent above ones league. Nothing was to be gained from facing this foe, so the Knight had to focus elsewhere again.
The Knight then thought back to the call it had received back at Elleria. The one from Arduo and her new friend, requesting a merc job. As the Knight flipped through the catalogue, it recognised one of the names described there.
Former knight Bachelor Ixui. He had quite the menacing photo. And his last recorded sighting was in Nhoils. The compass was pointing towards her direction, but it was in the opposite direction then they were headed.
'A detour…'
The Knight then looked at Cathina.
"Is there something you want to say."
'…Oh right, you can tell what I'm thinking.' – she remembered.
She then voiced out the rest of the conversation.
"we found the next kni… sorry I mean dark knight."
Forg then petted the spirit dog she had summoned. It tapped its feet wildly in the air.
"My dog here, said the dark knight was found sleeping in a well, using his swords to block the way down. He had a squadron with him, but the dog didn't find them."
The compass told the Knight where to find someone – not their state and condition. This was what these two handled. They were far less conspicuous in their siting, and far more forgettable. They handled reconnaissance.
"Let's pass in town first, we have to make sure I was sighted."
There was no point to aimless rumours.
As they passed through town, heading to the well, to face yet another extremely dangerous foe – a stranger falling out tipsy from the bar fell on the ground before them, and hickuped Cathina's name.
"I knew it was you… it's me, Lief…"
Cathina had not gone out of her way to seek revenge, even going as far to stop thinking about Guilos presence when she was near. Her neck itched as flashes of her being strangled flashed through her mind. Being smacked around on repeat.
She was not having an episode though, her heart calm and unbothered.
After being in the Knights presence for so long, such things just didn't affect her. Her eyes still cold. This Buffoon in front her, was the one who had actually given her the shy attitude she had acquired when she first met the Knight. But unlike then – she knew what true fear felt like – so nothing much shook her anymore.
In her state she could have even taken him on, even if he was on a higher level than her, which he was not. The Knight was slowly conditioning her to fight stronger opponents. But this was not such a case. Due to the Knight, she had progressed faster and had grown way much, she was sure he was still stuck on level 250.
She didn't even have to lift a finger to dispose of him – so she didn't. But her presence being extremely cold – exceedingly so, any being nearby thinking ill of her, would freeze.
She didn't even look at him, neither did the Knight or Forg. They were not ignoring him, and it was not like they had not heard him – all of them had become in sync, only reacting to what mattered.
Kitrino's usually insatiable curiosity was also only directed at things she found interesting and this was not one of them.
He got up, trying to force himself to be sober – but it seems the one who had made that poison was extremely gifted, he was not sobering up. He then prepared to speak something foolish – probably trying to remind Cathina who was boss. Or maybe remind her that he could still rain her in and send her to the guild anytime.
But just as his mouth opened, merely thinking about Cathina in such a manner in her presence, instantly froze his heart solid. In the same instance, the rest of his body followed – forming a crystallised drunkard sculpture.
He then fell to the ground which had also frozen over, and as hard and hard crashed into each other – they scattered shards of each other everywhere – not even spilling a drop of blood.
***
Elsewhere…
"Jump into the sea – we'll hold it off…"
"But captain…" She looked at them, just as bloody as she.
"Nonsense – It was I who said we should venture out this pathway – I who said that I could get you to the shores… I might not be able to deliver you myself, but I could make sure you have a chance. Don't worry about us, the sea itself has its own dangers – you make sure to watch over your men and I, over mine."
Lady Mavi turned around and all of them jumped in following her lead.