Condel needed some time to understand what Zich was saying. It wasn’t because he lacked comprehension skills, but because it was something he hated accepting. That was how infuriating Zich’s statement was to him.
“You bastaaaard!”
Crash!
Condel pushed his opponent Glen back briefly with a huge attack before hurriedly chasing after Zich. To him, his lover’s corpse was more important than his own life. He couldn’t allow even a scratch on her body.
Perhaps it was because Condel was inside his own territory, but his physical abilities were far superior to the time Zich had been chasing after him, and he caught up to Zich in an instant.
“Dieeee!” Condel cried. Zich had inflamed his anger to the highest degree. Condel mustered all his rage and struck at Zich’s back. He saw Zich move Windur, but it was already too late. Even if Zich reacted right now, he wouldn’t be able to avoid a critical wound. An exuberant smile formed on Condel’s face.
However, that smile disappeared as quickly as it had formed. Zich didn’t even attempt to block Condel’s attack. As if he weren’t even thinking about it, he didn’t turn around. Strong energy exuded out of Windur as he aimed for his target: Sia Ruebrent.
“Urgh!” A strange groan escaped out of Condel’s mouth. His body felt a great burden, as he tried to halt the attack he had poured all the rage and anger he’d accumulated from Zich into. Nevertheless, in a display of superhuman strength, he stopped his attack and rushed in front of Sia Ruebrent.
Crash!
Condel aggressively struck away the blasts of sword energy, scattering them. Then, he quickly inspected Sia’s corpse. Thankfully, she didn’t appear to be injured anywhere.
“Ah, how pitiful. I missed her by a hair’s breadth.”
Condel heard the voice he loathed, and glared at Zich with a force strong enough to kill. But of course, it had no effect on Zich. Condell yelled, “Hey, you bastard!”
“Yeah, you think the same too, right? If I’d had just one more second, that corpse would have been split in two. You should’ve just continued to attack me. What did you run over here for?” Zich said, smirking. “Isn’t that just a piece of meat belonging to someone who croaked a long time ago?”
Condel’s eyes rolled up. The shadows blanketing him writhed as if they were expressing his emotions, then rushed toward Zich. A long shadow stretched out from his arm and changed into a sharp spear. It didn’t matter whether it was the head, the neck, or the heart; Condel planned to make a very large hole in Zich’s body.
Unfortunately for Condel, Zich used very cheap tactics, taking one big leap to the side. It wasn’t to evade Condel’s attack. He simply wanted to move away from Condel so he could stand in front of Sia’s corpse with no other obstacles in the way.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Three sword blasts flew out this time. With Zich’s fantastic mana control, one stream of sword energy flew straight, and two others twisted in midair to create a formation. Condel gritted his teeth. He blocked the sword blast coming straight toward him, and struck the other two with his shadows.
“Dieeee!” Zich struck down at Condel with the mana-saturated Windur.
Crash!
Fortunately for him, Condel blocked Zich’s attack; but since he had made his move hurriedly, his body wavered. Despite that, Condel didn’t feel threatened. His shadow armor was sharp, hard, and flexible. After regaining his balance, he planned to land a critical hit against Zich.
However, his attempts ended in failure once again. “Ehh!” With gritted teeth, Condel was forced to back away in order to strike down the attacks targeting Sia’s corpse.
“Yeah, you should work hard! If you’re even a bit late, your precious princess will be injured! Or is it actually a piece of meat who used to be a princess?” Zich yelled. On top of the continuous attacks, he spat out mockery whenever he could, in order to wear down Condel’s mental state.
Although an unexpected opportunity had given Condel enormous power and skill, he didn’t have many first-hand battle experiences. Even while kidnapping lovers, he had ordered his shadows to do the work and gained no opportunity to build up proper combat experience. In the first place, his goal was to resurrect Sia Ruebrent, and he hadn’t planned to live a life where he would need such experience.
All these factors had resulted in Condel’s current situation, where he was floundering around due to a mere few words and actions from Zich. However, this didn’t mean that Zich could remain at ease.
Crash!
A long shadow limb struck down on a spot where Zich had been just moments before. It pierced a hole through the hard floor with astounding strength. If Zich had been careless, he would have been critically injured. Of course, Zich didn’t intend to let his guard down or fight Condel head-to-head.
Crash!
Tornium flew aggressively toward Condel, but he blocked it. Glen was also someone Condel wanted to kill. But right now, he didn’t have the time to be concerned with a small grudge like that.
“Move!” Condel barked as he roughly shoved Glen aside.
Crash!
As soon as Glen distracted Condel, Zich rushed toward Sia’s corpse. As he did this, Zich seemed to be enjoying himself so much that Condel felt as if his head would erupt. Windur dropped toward Sia’s neck, but Condel barely managed to intervene and block the attack.
A loud ding rang throughout the surroundings again. As soon as his attack was blocked, Zich didn’t hesitate to run backward. Then, he poured out mana and shot out attacks.
“What are you doing! Not blocking my attacks!? If you’re even a bit late, your precious lover will be injured. That’s right, good job! Yeah, just like that, keep blocking! Protect your lovely lover!”
“How dare you! Stop!”
“What kind of idiot would stop just because somebody told him to!? And why would I stop doing such a fun thing?”
Although Zich was the Karuwiman Honorary Knight who had been hired by the city to subdue Condel Siede—the villain who kidnapped and murdered people—the current situation seemed to indicate the opposite. To onlookers, Condel looked like a romantic man who was trying his best to protect his lover, and Zich looked like a villain who was torturing him.
In the end, Glen shouted, “Mr. Zich, please stop! What are you doing!?”
However, Zich was calm. He’d expected that Glen would say something like this to keep up his good guy act. He replied, “What do you mean? Can’t you see I’m trying to defeat Condel Siede, an evil and vicious villain?”
But while Zich said these words, he continued to attack Sia Rubrent’s corpse. Then he said, “I should be asking you that. Why aren’t you immediately attacking Condel Siede?”
“How can you say that!? Aren’t you the one being evil and vicious!?”
‘So that’s how he wants to act.’ Zich snorted. “I have no desire to argue about our differences of perspective! If you want to join, join, and if you don’t want to, leave!”
Then, Zich ignored Glen and thoroughly attacked Condel—no, Sia Rubrent’s corpse. His skilled attacks came pouring out; they were all very weak attacks, so it was easy to defend against them. However, they were still enough to rip apart a corpse, so Condel had no choice but to put all his focus into defending all of Zich’s attacks. Moreover, Zich continued to use the openings Condel left while he was defending Sia Rubrent’s corpse.
Glen watched the sight in front of him anxiously. ‘Damn it!’
What kind of choice did he have right now? What he wanted was fame. If everything had gone according to plan, he should have been the one to identify the culprit and defeat him. However, because of the disgusting variable called Zich, his whole plan had been ruined.
Fortunately, he had found the main evidence against Condel Siede, but since Zich was the one who had named Condel Siede as the main suspect, Zich’s achievements were about equal to his own. Thus, Glen needed to make the final move and end Condel, but the current situation was making it hard for him to carry out his plans.
Glen’s original plan had been to point out the faults in Condel’s plans and make Condel lose his will to fight. However, his plan had been completely crushed. Therefore, he needed to at least kill Condel, but Condel’s skills were formidable. Moreover, Zich was targeting Condel’s weak points and slowly pushing him back. If he stood still and just watched on, Zich might steal all the spotlight from him.
‘It can’t be helped!’ In the end, Glen couldn’t help but join Zich and also rush toward Condel.
“Hah! In the end, you agreed with me!” Zich exclaimed before shouting brightly, “Well, let’s combine our strengths and punish that evil villain! Ah, but you don’t need to do anything unpleasant!”
Zich furtively redirected Condel’s attacks to Glen, forcing Glen to fight Condel directly. And while Glen was occupied with Condel’s attacks, Zich ran toward Sia’s corpse, adding, “Because I’ll be doing the fun… no, dirty work!”
Condel shouted, “Stop right there!” However, he couldn’t maneuver as well as he had before. Glen persistently moved closer to him and targeted his life. In the end, Condel missed one of Zich’s swings.
Condel screamed, “Noooooooo!” Fortunately, Zich’s attack this time only lightly scratched the corpse’s forearm. However, the most important thing to him was that an injury had appeared on Sia Rubrent’s corpse.
“Protect Sia!” Condel gave an order to his underlings.
However, this was also difficult. He had been calling his underlings for a while, but they were being completely blocked by Zich’s companions and Lara Browning. A few of them tried to force their way out, but Lyla targeted their defenseless backs with powerful magic, and they were decimated. In the end, Condel only wasted his forces by calling them to his side. At that moment, Zich’s sword cut Sia Rubrent’s wrist; the damage this time was quite severe.
“You bastards! How can you call yourselves Karuwiman Honorary Knights!?” Condel shouted.
Zich snorted and didn’t reply. Glen also did the same; since the situation had turned out like this, he needed to defeat Condel with his own hands at all costs.
Condel gritted his teeth. If things progressed like this, it would just end up with his complete loss. In other words, his grand plan would come to naught, and it would also mean the true depth of his love.
‘I can’t let that happen!’ Condel thought. Just when Glen rushed toward him again and Zich made another swing at Sia’s corpse—
Condel’s shadow began twisting again.
Crasssh!
“Ugh!” Glen took a huge leap back. Zich also quickly blocked the sudden attack that had emerged next to him with Windur.
Thud!
Zich took several steps back and identified what had attacked him. ‘It’s Sia Rubrent’s shadow human.’
He had seen this shadow human when Joachim and Evelyn were ambushed, and it was exceptionally strong compared to other shadow humans. And it was also the shadow human that had helped identify Condel as the main suspect.
‘Yeah, it was weird that he wasn’t using Sia’s shadow human.’ Zich had wondered if Condel couldn’t use Sia Rubrent’s shadow human anymore because it had decreased in strength after receiving a critical injury. However, the shadow in front of him had no injuries at all. Moreover, judging by the attack just now, it didn’t seem as if its strength had decreased.
‘Then, he must not have used it due to personal emotions,’ Zich thought. And his prediction was completely right.
Condel thought to himself, ‘I didn’t want to use Sia!’
The number of shadows he could control was limited outside this space. For that reason, when he had ambushed those who were investigating him, he had no choice but to send out Sia’s shadow human, which was the strongest of his underlings. However, Sia’s shadow human had received a serious injury from that ambush, and Condel was horrified; he’d had no choice but to quickly retreat. Afterward, he had planned never to use her shadow human again.
However, this was now an inevitable situation.
‘It’s not as much as I wanted, but…’ Condel stared at Sia’s shadow human for a bit. He had wanted to gather just a little more shadow.
‘But it’s okay,’ Condel consoled himself. ‘I did my best! And Sia will definitely respond to me! Because our love is absolute!’
Sia’s shadow human moved toward Sia Rubrent’s corpse. Condel stood in front of the shadow human as if he were protecting its back.