A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 138: Chapter 138: What A Real Knight Is

His uncle hit the floor screaming.

"Get it off—" His voice broke high. "Get it off me, please, somebody, please—"

He clawed at the concrete. The wolf did not let go.

James did not move toward him. He let him scream on the open feed, on the floor, where ten minutes ago he had stepped out of a car wanting to teach a lesson.

[tower_dublin]: WAIT THATS THE GANNER CORP GUY

[grimreaper_99]: bro that’s literally the owner of Ganner Corp????

[poggers_pat]: caught in 4K LULW

[viewer_0451]: he had a woman KIDNAPPED and now he’s crying on the floor

[dub_dee]: a billionaire begging a skeleton wolf was not on my bingo card 💀💀

[skelly_andy]: that’s James’s own family doing this???

[clipper99]: CLIP EVERYTHING this is a literal crime live

Across the city, O’Shea was not watching James.

He was watching the rest of it.

"Niamh." He was already on his feet, the cracked desk glass behind him forgotten. "We’ve got minutes, not hours. Every document that touches this. Board minutes, six months back. Every procurement approval that crossed this Bureau. Every floor-access decision that got softened or delayed. Every logged meeting with a foreign delegation. Every contract Ganner Corp signed through us or anyone near us."

"Some of those are sealed under board privilege."

"Those are the ones they’ll burn first. Lock them now. Paper and digital, both."

"On it."

"And nobody leaves." His voice dropped hard. "Every name on that feed and everyone tied to them. No official, no contractor, no delegate, no corporate officer steps out of this country until they’re cleared."

Niamh looked up from her phone. "That’s bigger than the Bureau can sign alone."

"Then I’m calling the people who can."

He was already dialing. The call connected, and he did not wait for a greeting.

"National freeze. Airports, private fields, Tower gates, every diplomatic convoy permit pulled and re-checked." He paused for half a second. "Every name on that feed is a flight risk. The second one of them clears a border, all we’re left with is a clip a lawyer waves away. So none of them clear a border. Not tonight."

He hung up before they could argue.

"He’s going to keep streaming," Niamh said quietly.

"Good," O’Shea said. "Let him. Just get me the paper before the lawyers do."

In the car park, Langford watched it slip.

His people were down or pinned. The wolf had the ramp and the corridor. The Ganner man was on the floor with a leg in its jaws. The broker was wedged between a car and a pillar.

"I’m a contractor," the broker was saying, fast, to the lens and to no one. "That’s all I do. I broker. I don’t take anyone, I don’t carry, I pass messages — whatever they told you, I only made the call, I only ever made the call—"

The feed caught all of it.

The viewers had stopped asking what they were looking at. A royal aide, a corporate insider, and a paid criminal, caught together in the middle of a kidnapping, live.

So Langford stopped pretending.

He reached up and drew the glove off his right hand, one finger at a time, and let it fall.

The Tower answered him.

It started at his bare hand.

White-gold light ran up from his fingers and over his wrist, and where it passed, his coat thinned and paled and folded down into the light instead of tearing away.

The armor built itself on him a piece at a time.

The gauntlet locked over his hand first, plate closing down across each knuckle. Then the vambrace up the forearm. Then the pauldron settled onto his shoulder with a low ring of metal finding its place.

The breastplate came last, a broad sheet of white and gold that sealed over his chest and drew the rest tight.

Hummmm.

A sword formed in his open hand, long and straight, light sliding down the flat of it to the point.

The white plate caught the cold parking lights and threw them back twice as bright.

[poggers_pat]: HE TURNED INTO A PALADIN???? POG

[tower_dublin]: THE ARMOR oh my god

[grimreaper_99]: ok that went hard for like 2 seconds

[viewer_0451]: bro if you’re a holy knight why do you need KIDNAPPERS

[dub_dee]: "paladin" doing crimes in a car park LULW

[Sadge_enjoyer]: nah this is messed up. people got TAKEN for this

[clipper99]: a Paladin and he still needed a hostage. clocked 💀

Langford rolled his shoulders under the new weight.

"You don’t know what you’re looking at," he said. "I was chosen. Trained. Sworn to a kingdom that has stood for a thousand years." The sword tip lifted. "You’re an accident. A stray who fell into a class he never earned, holding a leash on something dead."

James did not answer that.

He spoke to the dead again.

"Keep the rest alive."

It was three words, and it was colder than anything Langford had said.

The Dark Knight turned away from the guards and set herself between them and the exits, sword low. The wolf kept its weight on the uncle’s leg. The broker stayed flat against the car, still talking, still on the feed.

Everyone else had just been moved into a different category. There was one man in the car park James wanted himself.

The car park narrowed to two people standing twenty feet apart.

Langford stepped forward.

The concrete cracked under his boot, a thin pale line spreading from where it came down. His aura pushed out across the level, and for a second the stream tore — the picture squared and smeared, the audio buzzed — before it caught itself and steadied.

The pressure reached James and pushed against his chest, heavy as a hand leaning into him.

James held where he was.

His hand went to his side. The cold weight of the sealed scythe pulled at him for half a beat, the one the angel had smiled to see him take. He left it where it was.

He drew his sword instead, the clean A-rank blade, and pushed a thread of mana down it until it hummed low in his grip.

Langford raised the bright sword. The light ran down the edge and over the white armor.

"You have no idea what a real knight is," Langford said.

James lifted his blade.

"Then show me."