Chapter 297: Knight VS Magic Beast

The white Mist is gradually expanding, and because the lighting in the Forest is insufficient, Lanisha the Knight soon cannot see the old Hunter not far beside her.

With her senses that exceed those of an ordinary person, she vaguely senses a colossal object gradually approaching from the upper layers of the large trees in the Forest.

It is an extremely peculiar feeling; she clearly knows there should be nothing there, as she cannot see anything after all, yet she herself is able to feel the approaching sensation of a huge object.

Is it the vibration caused by the weight of that Magic Beast as it approaches?

It seems not, because she gently presses her palm, which is wearing an armored Glove, against the ground and does not feel any vibration.

Is it the sound vibration caused by the possible breathing of that Magic Beast?

But it seems not; although this is her first time experiencing this Mist, she already knows that this thing can dissipate sounds within the Mist.

Then what is it?

She recalls the words her father once said to her.

"After becoming a Knight, you will sense a new world. It is a new perceptual ability that exceeds ordinary senses. It is not the eyes, nor the ears, and it is not the keen perception brought by the skin of the body. What? Is it the telepathy everyone talks about? It is not that incredible. Let's put it this way, perhaps it is the Mage's line of sight that often appears in stories. It might be that, haha, I think so. You will understand in the future."

However, her father died, and it is very difficult for her to understand what kind of perceptual ability that is.

But, at this very moment, Lanisha the Knight vaguely knows what her father was talking about. At this moment, her line of sight is blocked by the white Mist, her hearing is locked by the sound-absorbing Mist, and her body is hidden inside thick Steel Armor.

Nothing can help her anymore.

Then, that kind of perceptual ability she had always ignored after becoming a Knight seems to have suddenly manifested.

Closing her eyes, she grasps the feeling, places all her perception inside her body, and then reopens her other pair of "eyes."

Not far away, a huge existence that is continuously releasing unknown power is wandering on the trees above their heads. That existence seems to be choosing a suitable prey to bite.

Unlike other free prey, the animals prepared by the Knight and the Hunters in the clearing of the Shulin are all tied tightly with sturdy Rope. This makes this huge existence seem to fall into confusion.

Just as Lanisha the Knight is looking at the huge existence on the large tree with a face full of surprise, that huge existence pauses, then turns its body, facing its front toward Lanisha the Knight.

Immediately following, the Knight and the old Hunter beside her hear an unknown muttering sound coming from above, not knowing what it is saying.

"Discovered!" The Knight immediately realizes this point; she suddenly opens her real eyes, leaps out of the pit in one go, shakes off the dead branches and rotten leaves used to cover her outside her armor, draws the Armor-piercing Rapier from her waist, and shouts angrily: "It is time!"

The female Knight's angry shout spreads far and wide in the quiet Forest filled with white Mist; even the Mist with sound-absorbing power cannot block her voice.

Immediately after the female Knight jumps and leaps toward the surrounding trees, an old Hunter in the pit beside her also comes out shortly after, pulls the Bowstring, straightens his arm, and shoots an Arrow toward the place where the muttering sound came from.

In other surrounding places, Arrows also streak through the Mist at the same time, while other Hunters ignite the prepared Torches and quickly aim and throw the Torches onto the surrounding large trees.

Boom—flames ignite.

Several large trees nearby immediately explode with brilliant sparks, and then the entire tree burns fiercely at an extremely fast speed.

Lanisha the Knight kicks off the trunk of a large tree, her figure rising rapidly, and directly uses a few counter-kicks to borrow force, leaping beneath the body of the Magic Beast located high up.

Only after truly approaching the Magic Beast can you realize just how big the Magic Beast that rules this Forest is.

Lanisha the Knight feels that this Magic Beast might be slightly larger than half the size of the Knight's villa where she lives. That is already the size of four or five houses.

She herself is only slightly larger than one of the colorful patterns on this Magic Beast.

Following the upward momentum, Lanisha the Knight thrusts the Armor-Piercing Stiletto in her hand into the body of the Magic Beast.

Bang! Puchi.

The body of the Magic Beast has a layer of hard shell; if it were an ordinary weapon, it might be difficult to harm this Magic Beast, but as it happens, this weapon of hers is used for piercing hard armor.

With only a slight obstruction, she stabs the entire sword body into the Magic Beast's body.

Taking advantage of the Magic Beast not yet reacting, she immediately stirs the Armor-Piercing Stiletto and pulls it out, then uses her empty left-hand fingers to hold onto the wound of the Magic Beast she opened; using this as a fulcrum, she continues to exert force, and the Fine Sword in her right hand successively stabs five or six holes and wounds into the Magic Beast.

"Zhi zhi zhi zhi zhi zhi!!!!!" A terrifying loud noise erupts from all around the Magic Beast's body; it is unknown how this Magic Beast makes such an intense and huge sound without relying on its mouth.

Lanisha the Knight's mind goes into a trance, but while she is in a trance, she still sees a faint shadow sweeping over from the side; she immediately realizes this is the Magic Beast's counterattack.

Letting go and falling naturally to avoid the Magic Beast's counterattack is possible, but there is still a huge risk; her subconscious tells her she must absolutely not do this.

Because once she is in free fall, there is nothing for her body to exert force against, and if she is hit by the Magic Beast's attack, she has no other means to dodge and can only use her Shield and armor to take it head-on.

Therefore, in this extremely short time, she immediately rotates her body, and at the same time, her left hand releases the fingers holding on, and her entire body performs a 180-degree turn in place.

Within this extremely short time, the Magic Beast's attack has already rapidly approached the female Knight from far to near; she can already see with her naked eye what it is.

It is a sharp, thin Magic Beast leg as thin as a blade; the place where the luster can reflect a person must be very tough. If hit, half a life would be lost.

But Lanisha's tightly pursed lips curl up slightly; she kicks with both legs, and with a bang, her whole person falls downward at an extremely fast speed.

Swish, the Magic Beast's sharp leg hits empty air.

At the same time, the other two legs that were hidden and launched later also hit empty air one after another.

Lanisha the Knight flips in the air, and then lands on the ground with a thud, smashing a deep pit of more than thirty centimeters into the mud of the ground.

Rubbing her wrist, the Knight stands up and looks around.

The Bow and Arrow attacks and the burning of the large trees, which had stopped after the Magic Beast's body made a loud noise, also appear and launch attacks again at this moment.

Reaching back to return the Armor-piercing Rapier to the Sword Sheath at her waist, Lanisha the Knight draws the Single-handed Heavy Sword she is carrying on her back. The Fine Sword has some effect on this kind of Magic Beast with an astonishing body size, but it is not large.

It is this kind of heavy Single-handed Heavy Sword that can inflict more effective damage.

The old Hunter closest to this Magic Beast continuously draws arrows from the quiver at his waist to shoot, while relying on his ears to distinguish the situation of the fight between the Monster and the Knight.

He does not worry that these Arrows will hurt the Knight; after all, the sturdy steel armor on the Knight is no joke, and even if his Bow and Arrow accidentally hits the Knight, it will be directly deflected.

Compared to Human Knights who have armor for defense, the wild beasts living in the wilderness, including the Magic Beast above, do not have hard armor to protect themselves, and mostly can only rely on some other means to ensure their safety.

For example, this annoying Mist.

It obscures the keen eyes of the Hunters; originally they could ambush and shoot from afar, but in this situation, they have to listen to the sound and determine the position at such a dangerous distance to probabilistically shoot at the vulnerable parts of the Magic Beast's body.

Those boys around are doing well; in a short time, they have ignited all the large trees as requested.

Very good, next, when everyone gathers over, they can shoot many arrows together, and there will always be Bow and Arrow that hit the vital parts of the Magic Beast, adding help to the Knight's offensive.

This Mist is not without its benefits; at this point, Lanisha the Knight realizes this.

She usually uses the Armor-piercing Rapier popular in the south as her weapon, and the Single-handed Heavy Sword she practiced bitterly in the dark is rarely known by anyone. She does not have many opportunities to train with other Knights, which can be considered as having hidden this matter very well.

She has to do this; after all, her father died unclearly many years ago, and the murderer has not been found to this day, so how could she dare not hide an ace up her sleeve?

Now with the cover of the Mist released by the Magic Beast itself, there is no need to worry about being discovered by others.

She used the large tree to quickly approach the Magic Beast again, but the Magic Beast was already waiting for her. Sharp limbs slashed over from three directions, their speed much faster than before.

But it was useless; Lanisha held her Single-handed Heavy Sword in her hand, and unlike before, this time she dared to use her weapon to block the Magic Beast's attacks.

The clash between the weapon and the Magic Beast's limbs sent brilliant sparks flying; compared to the finely crafted weapons of Humans, the limbs that the Magic Beast grew naturally seemed to be a bit inferior. After only a few exchanges, the long, narrow, and seemingly tough and sharp parts of the Magic Beast's limbs were snapping everywhere.

Translucent liquid burst out from within.

Lanisha did not have it easy either; she could not easily find leverage in mid-air, so after every clash, she would be sent flying by the immense force of the Magic Beast. However, the residual force of these clashes could not harm her in the slightest.

She grabbed a passing tree branch to slow down before heading back up.

Seizing the opportunity, Lanisha used several more clashes to force the Magic Beast toward a large, burning tree, leaving the fire-fearing Magic Beast with nowhere to retreat.

It was impossible for the multiple limbs distributed around its body to all be used to attack the Knight; it had to keep several limbs latched onto the surrounding trees to maintain its body height and balance.

At this moment, several limbs were unable to break free, and others were forced to curl up near its body to avoid the flames; it only had one limb left to extend and attack this dangerous, metal-clad Human.

Multiple arrows were shot from below, hitting the very limb that was flailing wildly to keep the Human at bay. The surface of the limb, already covered in large cracks, was struck by these rapidly passing arrows, which burrowed into the ruptured openings.

Lanisha, at extremely close range, seized the opportunity to grab the Magic Beast's limb, which had paused for a split second in the air. She swung her body in mid-air and, in an extremely precise and daring manner, approached the base of the limb, ignoring everything else to directly stab and hack at the root of the Magic Beast's limb.

In two strikes, she broke through the Magic Beast's not-so-sturdy outer shell, severing a large portion of the body tissue inside.

Just as Lanisha severed this limb and began climbing up toward the front of the Magic Beast's body using her hands and feet, she took a look at the front of the Magic Beast's body from an extremely close distance.

This one look made her freeze.

The intelligence report had indicated that this was a Magic Beast transformed from a spider, but where the spider's eyes should have been, there were none of the many eyes Lanisha had expected.

She had originally intended to launch a surprise attack on these obvious weak points—the spider eyes.

But when she climbed onto the Magic Beast's massive body, only then, at such close range, did she see clearly what was in the position of the Magic Beast's eyes.

There were no large, scattered eyeballs as she had expected.

Instead, there were only Human Heads, each replacing an eyeball, sized appropriately to the Magic Beast's body.

Where the eyeballs should have been, Human Heads were growing out from within the Magic Beast's body. These heads did not look like dead objects; some were surprised, some were angry, and others had expressions of utter confusion on their faces.

What made Lanisha tremble all over was that she recognized three of the young Hunter subordinates among the heads that were clearly newly grown.

These three had faces full of pleading; after opening their mouths, intermittent, broken sentences emerged: "Kn-Knight, my lady."

"Don't."

"Hur-hurt."

"Me, and us."

"Every-everyone, no, doesn't want to."

"Die."

She did not recognize the other heads, but they were all similarly young faces; these heads strained to lift themselves, looking as if they wanted to squeeze their necks out from the Magic Beast's body.

They twisted strangely, emitting various odd sentences and thoughts from their mouths.

"Human, human. Join us."

"Isn't the one covered in metal a human?"

"Don't hurt me, no, us."

"You're hurting me, damn it, damn it, damn it!"

Lanisha, who had never seen such a thing, swallowed a mouthful of saliva; she felt the hair all over her body standing on end. What exactly were they hunting? Who were those humans? Were they humans that had been devoured by this Magic Beast all along?

Were they still alive? Or were they already dead? But those few Hunters recognized her, while the others did not, suggesting they might still maintain independent consciousness and souls among themselves?

Lanisha felt a moment of dizziness and actually fell from the edge of the Magic Beast's body.

When she fell through the air, her body's instinctive reaction allowed her to turn and land on her feet; other than the hard armor of her legs punching two deep holes into the ground, she suffered no injuries.

But Lanisha was still somewhat confused; she hesitated whether to retreat first and return to the city to discuss what she had just seen with the other Knights and the Baron.

Could the people devoured by the Magic Beast still be saved? If not, would their souls enter their respective destinations after truly dying?

Or was it that not only were their bodies devoured, but their souls were also consumed by the Magic Beast?

If so, was the soul of this Magic Beast human or beast? Could it communicate?

Had it been trying to talk and communicate with them all along?

These chaotic thoughts lasted until the old Hunter heard the sound of the Knight landing and came looking for her.

"Knight, my lady, I didn't hear any sounds of fighting; what is the situation now?" As soon as the old Hunter arrived, Lanisha immediately and quickly stowed her Single-handed Heavy Sword into the weapon storage box on her back.

She pulled her legs out from the deep soil and looked up at the massive Magic Beast, which was charging left and right in the Mist above, trying to break through the surrounding burning trees.

"It's nothing, nothing at all. I just cut off one of its attacking limbs; tell everyone to stop shooting for now and go ignite the surrounding trees to make this trap larger, preventing the Magic Beast from escaping. It wants to run, but we won't let it."

After the old Hunter acknowledged the order, he immediately ran quickly toward where the other Hunters were supposed to be to notify them.

Lanisha kicked the severed Magic Beast limb on the ground with her steel Boot, opened her Helmet Faceplate, and spat.

She looked at the Magic Beast above with a complex expression.

After hesitating for a moment, she took out her Single-handed Heavy Sword again, kicked off a tree, and charged up.

The Magic Beast noticed that the metal-clad Human who had hurt it was back, and it immediately let out a scream that sounded panic-stricken: "Zhi!!!!"

Its multiple limbs wanted to both latch onto the surrounding tree trunks to escape this place full of flames, and to kill and devour this troublesome Human, then run away from a lower place where there was no fire.

Although it did not like the soil-covered Forest floor, if it truly had no other choice, it would have to disregard the filth and reluctantly drag its body along the ground to escape.

But Lanisha, having already figured out the Magic Beast's attack pattern, relied on her positioning and forced clashes with the Magic Beast's limbs to keep the opponent cornered in a place surrounded by flames.

Seizing the opportunity while the Magic Beast was unable to advance or retreat, she once again severed the root of one of the Magic Beast's limbs. This left the Magic Beast with even fewer limbs to use for offense and counterattacks; it had to latch its body onto the surrounding trees, avoid the burning trees, and attack her all at the same time.

There was no chance left for this Magic Beast.

Lanisha thought that perhaps she could sever all of the Magic Beast's limbs and then find a way to bring the house-sized Magic Beast body back to Kendall City.

On one hand, it would demonstrate her valor and ability; on the other hand, perhaps those who had been devoured could still be saved?

Perhaps the Priests of the various churches would have a way, or the Kingdom Mages who would arrive upon hearing the news?

But just as Lanisha was safely sent flying after another clash with the Magic Beast and grabbed a branch to slow down, the Magic Beast, which had already lost two limbs, let out another scream and, unexpectedly, no longer stayed in the upper reaches of the trees, but descended to the Forest floor at an extremely high speed.

"Not good. Everyone! The Magic Beast has landed on the ground! Everyone hide well, be careful!" Knight Lanisha shouted the situation out loud, and then she herself no longer stayed in the tree; with a leap, she jumped from the height of over twenty meters toward where the Magic Beast was.

The Hunters heard the Knight's shout and hurriedly hid behind trees one by one, or simply crawled back into the pits they were originally hiding in.

The Magic Beast was panicked and desperate; after landing, it kicked up a large patch of dead leaves and mud, not caring that its body would be dirtied by the soil, and while crawling, it found two gaps in the traps of the flaming trees nearby.

Knight Lanisha blocked the Magic Beast once at one of the gaps, but the Magic Beast immediately fled toward the other gap and escaped.

Knight Lanisha ran with long strides and leaped to give chase, but after the person and the Magic Beast chased for a while, the Magic Beast escaped the area with flames, then climbed back up to the high branches of the Forest's trees, found a particularly tall tree, used its tail to spray something toward a certain direction in the dark sky, then stuck that thing to the top of this tree, and then used its six legs to grip this thing and slid away in a flash.

Unable to catch up, Knight Lanisha punched the tree, *bang*, driving half her arm into the solid trunk of the tree, sending wood chips flying.

Unreconciled, she followed up with an even fiercer punch, directly blasting a basin-sized hole into the root trunk of this tree.

She saw clearly the direction in which the Magic Beast fled, hurriedly made a marker indicating the direction, and then went back to reorganize the team; they had to pursue toward the south next, as that Magic Beast had fled in that direction.