How to Live as a Knight After the Ending

Chapter 20: Scotland Yard (2)

Carl Jackson ran but he wasn’t sure exactly who his pursuer was.

The mouse familiar could only pick up signals, not the exact location or identity of the enemy.

It wasn’t a limitation of magic, but rather the limitations of Carl Jackson’s skills.

The idea that this was just a tramp that happened to be passing through the neighborhood, was dismissed with a sigh.

There was a certain kind of bastard who came to this backwater at this time of night.

He checked the reagent vials and other items in his arms and headed deeper into the alleyway.

It was killing him to run with a body that had never been used to exercise.

‘Once I get into the sewers, I can hide……!’

As Carl tried to navigate the entrance to the underground, a group of people blocked his path.

“Over there! It’s Carl Jackson!”

“Grab him!”

“Shit!”

Carl instinctively realized they were his pursuers, out to get him.

They must be from the Blossom Tier he’d fled.

“Assholes!”

Karl pulled a vial from his pocket and threw it.

The broken reagent bubbled on the floor, spreading out in a cloud of smoke.

“Get back!”

“Take cover!”

The pursuers turned pale and backed away.

They must have thought it was a poisonous fog or a disease spell.

‘Idiots.’

Carl sneered at them inwardly.

‘It’s just a smoke screen to deceive the eye and does no harm to the body.’

But the ones who don’t know about black magic think it’s a dangerous attack.

‘This is easy.’

Carl grinned at how well things were going.

Just then, another pursuer appeared from the front and he even had a sword in his hand, a rare sight these days.

“What the hell is this one?”

There was no need to use the reagent vial for one.

Black energy gathered at Carl Jackson’s outstretched fingertips and turned into arrows.

The Black Arrow was the foundation of dark magic.

It didn’t have much power, but it was enough to cut off the breath of an unprotected man like that.

Carl Jackson fired an arrow at his pursuer and what he saw was unbelievable.

As the pursuer swung the sword in his hand, the flying arrow was cut off and scattered into thin air.

“What the…….”

What did he just do, cut through magic with a sword? Is that even possible?

The reality in front of him clashed with his common sense.

Even before the fact that he’d cut through magic with a sword, there was no way in this day and age that a fool would take up a sword against a warlock in the first place.

“Do you have any other magic?”

The black-haired man, Osian, asked as he looked at Carl Jackson.

“Black arrow, the basic magic of the dark magic family. Poor power and accuracy. I think a warlock would have more than that.”

Carl gritted his teeth as the man stared at him in anticipation, as if he might show him something new.

He quickly reached into his arm and pulled out a brass-colored metal orb.

“You said you wanted it, so I’ll show you!”

Carl flung the metal sphere toward Osian.

-Kiririk.

The metal orb’s mechanical lobes spun as it flew, and then it split in half.

At that moment, the magic inside the metal sphere was activated.

-Fuhwaak!

3-star Curse Magic [Corruption Explosion]

A deep purple explosion erupted, engulfing the entire alleyway along with Osian.

The power of the explosion alone was enough to tear through thin iron like paper, and after the explosion, it was a black magic that smothered them with corruption.

‘It’s just that the capsule wasn’t meant to be used on a guy like that.’

It was a turning point for an unexpected situation later, but as someone who was being chased, he was in no position to question such things now.

Thick purple smoke billowed out and just when he thought it was over.

-Boom!

With a gust of wind, the smoke split in half, revealing an unharmed Osian.

Carl’s eyes widened in disbelief.

*

“What was that?”

Osian asked, remembering the object Carl had thrown.

The first black arrow he’d used was clearly magical but what he threw afterward wasn’t magic by any stretch of the imagination.

It was a peculiarly shaped metal sphere that snapped in half, unleashing a powerful spell of great power.

Obviously, it wasn’t in the game.

I thought, “If it triggers magic the moment you pick it up and throw it, does it store magic and then activate it?”

In terms of effect, it’s similar to [Scrolls] because of its rarity but scrolls were basically rare and very expensive.

It wasn’t something that could be used lightly in a place like this, no matter how urgent it was.

“I trust that’s not all. Show me what else you have.”

“Aaaaah!”

Carl screamed, throwing the metal sphere he’d been stockpiling in his arms.

There it was again.

Osian stared at it, waiting and as he concentrated, time began to slow.

Osian watched as the metal sphere triggered in the slow passage of time.

The thrown metal split in half as it had before, with the sound of spinning in thin air.

Inside was a transparent jelly-like substance, somewhere between solid and liquid.

The moment it emitted a faint glow, a total of three embedded spells were triggered.

[Skeletal Spear] made of solid bone that pierced through enemies.

[Black Fog], which covers enemies with pitch-black smoke and causes mental confusion.

[Red Swamp] that corrodes steel the moment it touches it.

These are two-star spells, lower than the three-star spells we saw earlier but they were powerful enough to kill people.

‘These are all familiar spells.’

Osian was slightly disappointed when he saw familiar magic instead of something new.

“You won’t stop this!”

Carl exclaimed but Osian didn’t bother to respond.

Instead, he swung his sword lightly at the incoming magic.

-Boom!

The Bone Spear that flew in exactly split in half, scattering to the left and right.

He held the sword he had swung in reverse and swung it again in the opposite direction.

The Black Mist that was about to engulf Osian was torn apart by the blade and scattered.

The Red Swamp on the ground tried to bite at his ankles, but he leapt over it with a light kick to the ground.

Osian flew through the air and landed in front of Carl.

“This better not be the end.”

Do you have anything more to show me, your magic, not this scroll?

But Carl Jackson, who stared in disbelief, showed no inclination to do anything more.

……Is this it?

That’s all a warlock can do?

‘As far as I know, no matter how weak a warlock was, they boasted skills of at least 3 stars.’

No matter how he looked at him, the guy in front of him didn’t look like he was even that good.

“Tsk. I guess I have no choice.”

“……!”

Before Carl could say anything else, Osian’s fist slammed into his abdomen.

Carl fell to the floor, drooling at the corners of his mouth.

It was a futile end for a warlock.

‘Are all warlocks this weak in this day and age?’

The warlocks he’d fought in the game were unbelievably strong.

They were incredibly powerful even when they weren’t properly defended.

In this advanced age, they should at least be stronger than they were.

But Ossian was mistaken.

Not all warlocks of the past were strong.

Only the strongest ones survived.

They had to bring in their own supplies and corpses, and they had to be careful in even the smallest things to avoid being discovered by the Templars and the Holy Order.

The warlocks who survived such harsh conditions had to be skilled and became at least five-star warlocks.

Even for Ossian, who had been playing around with such guys from the beginning, it was embarrassing to even call Carl Jackson a warlock.

‘Still, whatever it was, I managed to capture the warlock without too much trouble, so I guess the mission itself was a success.’

Osian’s gaze drifted down an alleyway.

The center of an alleyway filled with broken boards and lined with rusted pipes.

It was faintly visible through the faint steam, but Osian’s sharp eyes pierced through it.

There stood a man in black robes.

‘A warlock.’

And unlike the fallen Carl Jackson, this was a proper one.

The uninvited warlock clutched a large staff in one hand and wore a mask of goat’s bones over his face.

He was quite small in stature, but it didn’t matter much since he wasn’t fighting with his body anyway.

The warlock raised his staff at Osian’s question and pointed it at Carl Jackson.

“I’m here to pick up Carl Jackson.”

The voice rumbled from inside the bone mask, assaulting his ears but Osian narrowed his eyes at the figure.

“You don’t look like you belong to my client’s company.”

“…….”

“Well, that won’t do, I got this one first, so you’ll have to step aside.”

The warlock glared at Osian from behind his bone mask.

Osian didn’t know what kind of magic was used, but he couldn’t see the inside of the pitch-black pupil.

“I’m from the Warlock’s Union. Carl Jackson has discredited our union, so we’re going to take him in.”

“I’ll refuse.”

“If you’re the fixer, my union is willing to pay you a reasonable honorarium…….”

“I don’t think you heard me correctly.”

Osian said firmly to the warlock.

“I got him first, and there’s nothing you can do about it. So get the hell out of here. Filthy warlock.”

Osian’s tone turned sharp.

It was an unavoidable, instinctive reaction.

Even if the world recognized warlocks, Osian’s body as a wandering knight rejected them.

His mind knew that warlocks were treated well, but his body could not accept it.

It took a great deal of patience on Osian’s part to even have this conversation now.

Otherwise, he would have already drawn his sword.

Moreover, even if money was paid, the request already received could not be reversed.

Being a fixer is as much about trust as it is about money.

If you change your mind for a bigger paycheck, no one will hire you.

But despite Osian’s warnings, the warlock was stubborn, repeating the same words.

“You can’t do that. I’ll take Carl Jackson with me.”

Shameless or thoughtless.

Ossian asked, his face expressionless.

“How do you plan to take him?”

“I plan to use unavoidable force.”

“Really? Then do it.”

At the same time as he said that.

-Pow!

The warlock’s shadow wriggled, and then it became a black hand and stretched out.

Osian’s eyes lit up in surprise.

What the warlock was using now was a rank 3 Dark Magic, [Shadow Touch] and he activated it immediately without any preparation.

The total number of Shadow Touches was five.

The demonic hand, which looked like it had risen from hell, dodged Osian and tried to grab Carl Jackson, who was lying on the ground behind him.

He didn’t want to fight Osian, but he felt that retrieving Carl Jackson was his first priority.

The moment his black hand was about to reach Carl Jackson.

“I must have looked foolish.”

Osian’s sword moved.

-Pow!

There were several flashes of light in the air, and the shadow hand was severed and scattered into thin air.

It had happened in the blink of an eye.

“…….”

The warlock glared at Osian and for the first time, a ripple of emotion rippled in the calm eyes beneath his emotionless mask.