Chapter 358
While the owner of Castle Reinhardt was gone, dozens of Wilhelm Knights poured into the castle.
“Where are other Wilhelm Knights?” Kingaitu asked.
“They’re probably at the dungeon,” Atoba reported.
“Go immediately.” Kingaitu ordered.
Atoba quickly nodded. “Yes, sir.”
They always moved like this: Kingaitu, the commander, came up with a general plan, and Atoba, who was practically his aide, figured out the details.
“You’ve all heard what group you’re assigned to, right? Ten people in each group. Three groups will stay by the gate to engage possible enemies while the remaining three groups will enter the dungeon.”
“Got it!”
The Wilhelm Knights moved without hesitation. There was basically no hierarchy among Willhelm Knights since every Willhelm Knight was equal aside from Kingaitu, the commander. Atoba quickly led the knights to the dungeon, but they stopped dead in their tracks as soon as they were there.
“Mmm…”
The first thing the knights noticed was the reek. It smelled like they were in a gutter, not a prison. Countries normally worried about how others would react or think of them, so they treated war prisoners with respect. This was too much.
“A-Atoba…?”
Atoba’s eyes widened upon hearing a familiar voice. His head whipped around.
“Mayden!” he shouted.
“I-is it really you?” Mayden asked in disbelief.
“Hold on! I’ll get you out of there…!” Atoba couldn’t finish speaking when he saw the cell on his left.
The fifty-square-meter prison cell was crowded by Mayden and dozens of other adult men. Of course, Atoba knew who those men were right away.
“…Those… Hubalt sons of bitches…!” Atoba muttered under his breath.
Finding their colleagues was a miracle, but some of the men weren’t moving at all. They were near their ends—even the surviving knights’ eyes were lifeless.
After realizing his fellow knights’ state, Atoba clenched his fists; he knew exactly what they needed.
“…His Majesty has returned.” Atoba’s voice was quiet at first, but soon it quickly swelled with confidence. “His Majesty… Joshua Sanders, the real king of Reinhardt, has returned!”
The air in the dungeon changed, and even some of the dying knights raised their heads.
“Wh-what?”
“He’s fighting for us, alone. Since the Martial Emperor isn’t here… that would mean His Majesty already met him.”
“The Martial Emperor…!”
The knights’ eyes started to shine. Atoba slowly smiled; this was definitely what they needed to hear.
“Atoba! Open this door right now.”
“Me too! I’ll fight with His Majesty too!”
“His Majesty is doing that for us… Keugh!”
When the knights stood up, Atoba realized that their conditions were worse than he had thought. Some of their wounds were rotting because they had failed to receive timely treatments, but the knights didn’t care about their wounds.
“Atoba, will His Majesty be…alright?”
Atoba’s face darkened. “…Worry about yourselves.”
“What…?”
“Who do you think His Majesty is?” Atoba said with a little smirk. “He’s not just a hero. He’s the great Hero King, the man who went up against a million soldiers on his own.”
The knights were utterly silent while Atoba spoke.
“He’s the one and only king of Reinhardt.”
“His… Majesty…!”
“Yes, let’s go. I highly doubt that His Majesty is in trouble…” Atoba chuckled and cut the padlock right off the prison cell. “But we can’t trouble His Majesty with miscellaneous work, right? We should take care of small fries ourselves.”
The Wilhelm Knights stood up one by one, their eyes shining with a renewed conviction.
“Of course!”
* * *
The Martial Emperor clenched his fists as hard as he could. He couldn’t listen anymore. In many ways, Joshua was truly something—the Martial Emperor could feel his anger rising as he listened to Joshua talk.
“S-sir! Let us…!” the Hubalt knights belatedly responded.
“Don’t!” the Martial Emperor roared. “…I’ll take care of him myself.”
“Bu-but…”
“If you all step in right now, what does that make me?” the Martial Emperor growled.
That was when the Hubalt knights shut their mouths. Yes, if the knights stepped into the battle between the Martial Emperor and Joshua Sanders, it was only going to prove that Joshua was right. How ridiculous would the Martial Emperor look?
“…If you intentionally led the situation to turn out like this, you’re truly a person to be feared.” The Martial Emperor pulled out a set of gauntlets. They were one of the Ten Unique Artifacts and had been his main weapon for a long time.
“H-he’s using Ebrichim Gauntlets…?”
“Ohhhhh!!”
The Hubalt knights’ spirits soared. It was hard for them to imagine that the Martial Emperor was going to lose when he had put on those gauntlets.
The Martial Emperor’s bulky physique sprang toward Joshua. He lowered his upper body as much as possible, a classical brawler’s stance.
Joshua’s white lightning spear and the Martial Emperor’s aura-covered silver gauntlet clashed in the air. The collision between the two weapons caused an intense shockwave strong enough to wipe the area clean.
There was a wet pop! like a watermelon bursting, and bloody brain fragments were scattered everywhere. They belonged to the Hubalt knights unlucky enough to be in the vicinity of the shockwave.
“Ge-get out!”
“This isn’t a fight between two ordinary Superhumans! Get back!”
The other knights started to flee one by one; they knew that if they stayed here, they would just get slaughtered, never mind being a help to the Martial Emperor.
“How long are you just going to defend against my attacks? Or… maybe you can only deflect my attacks?” The Martial Emperor distanced himself from Joshua and beckoned him forward provokingly. “Come.”
“No, my attack is…”
However, before Joshua could finish speaking, a sound from below made the Martial Emperor freeze.
His aura-clad gauntlets burst apart.
But those gauntlets were none other than one of the Ten Unique artifacts, they were as sturdy as adamantium!
“Wh-when…?” the Martial Emperor stuttered.
“You didn’t notice?” Joshua mocked. “Not only do you have the wrong mindset, you also lack combat power.”
The Martial Emperor’s face reddened from humiliation.
“I’ll kill you!” he screamed.
The Martial Emperor took off the remaining gauntlet—it was just a burden now. Instead, he focused on his aura, making it stronger and maximizing its density.
The violent cracking that resulted was hard to think of as a sound that came from a human body. The Martial Emperor was using Aura Overlay, well-known as the most destructive form of reinforced aura. His tremendous energy shook the sky while his muscles bulged as if they were going to explode. Horrible sounds emerged from him as if the Martial Emperor’s every bone was being twisted.
His arm muscles faintly trembled, but they moved so slightly that one couldn’t be sure if they moved unless they took a close look.
However, Joshua held up his spear and stopped the Martial Emperor’s punch without hesitation. A long chain of explosions ensued.
Someone said that if someone overcame a certain limit, then they would be able to move faster than sound. And just like that, a loud sound resembling an exploding leather drum caught up with the strike.
“It’s good,” the Martial Emperor remarked with a contented smile. When he covered himself with the reinforced aura, he felt as light as a feather. In addition to that, a power as strong as an active volcano was rushing through his veins. In this state, the Martial Emperor had never lost to anyone.
“Kekeke…” The Martial Emperor chuckled quietly.
Again, he sprang toward Joshua, who still stood in the same spot as if his feet were glued down to the ground. The Martial Emperor cut through the air, throwing a punch that was as lethal as the finest sword.
His kicks were as destructive as explosion spells, but that wasn’t all. The Martial Emperor threw an incessant rain of punches and kicks at Joshua. They were no ordinary attacks. Some could never achieve the level of creating aura even if they trained for their whole lives, but the Martial Emperor mixed a significant amount of aura into every one of his attacks before he launched them, and each was aimed at Joshua’s vital points.
“Kehahahaha!” The Martial Emperor burst into manic laughter as he watched Joshua focus on deflecting his attacks.
The Hero King, feared by everyone on the continent? Ridiculous. Right now, the Martial Emperor felt like he could pulverize the Hero King’s grandfather with one strike.
“Yes, rumors are bound to be exaggerated. You talked all big, but you’re nothing!” the Martial Emperor arrogantly shouted.
Joshua’s lightning spear had completely disappeared at some point; the Martial Emperor assumed that it had dissipated after taking more damage than Joshua’s mana could withstand. The Martial Emperor leaped at the opportunity and immediately threw a punch at Joshua’s waist as it was laid open to attack.
But somehow, his punch was stopped in midair. A drop of sweat formed on his forehead and dripped down his cheek.
“What in the world…?” The Martial Emperor looked down and gaped blankly.
His silver full-plate armor belatedly became dented, little by little.
Joshua raised an eyebrow. “Your close combat technique is good, at least.”
“Good… at least?” The Martial Emperor frowned slightly.
“The people that use spears as their main weapon should also be good at close combat, so I imitated you a bit. How was I? Do you think I have the talent?” Joshua sarcastically asked.
The Martial Emperor’s lip trembled as he realized that his punch had been stopped because it had collided with Joshua’s punch. The Martial Emperor began to taste blood in his mouth.
“Wh… en…?” He bit his lip as his vision began to blur.
To be defeated in close combat, of all things, was incredibly humiliating to him.
Joshua shook his head.
“No matter what you do, you can never defeat me,” Joshua stated.
“…Ha! Hahahaha!” The Martial Emperor was so baffled that he ended up laughing.
He felt the nervousness rising from deep in his heart and had to admit that Joshua was right. He could tell that his knights were looking at him in a completely different way. If he accepted his defeat right now, the Hubalt knights would surrender immediately—they would never fight for him at the cost of their own lives. He only needed to lose once for the knights to turn their backs on him. That was how much they trusted him, just like Joshua had said.
“Shit…!” the Martial Emperor cursed.
The sourc𝗲 of this content is fre(e)webnovel