Myths Reawakened

Boom!

Shadow Nightmare moved as swiftly as lightning. Death howled, and the grey sphere it created expanded and spread, hitting everything tangible and intangible around it. Even the sacred flames that would burn all things showed signs of withering under the powerful impact.

It was strong, but not strong enough!

Wayne blocked Shadow Nightmare with his sacred lance, eyes flashing with golden light. Though the Death Knight was immensely powerful, he was far from as terrifying or invincible as Wayne had imagined.

He silently made an assessment. Forget the Headless Knight at his full strength. In terms of mastery over Death, this Death Knight even fell thirty percent behind Wayne in Death Knight mode, and he was also inferior in raw power.

There was nothing to fear!

I can’t beat the Headless Knight, but I can beat you!

Wayne’s eyes glinted fiercely as his mana surged in tides, pushing the sacred flames surrounding him to greater intensity. Using the Sacred Lance of Heaven to block Shadow Nightmare, he pushed the Death Knight forward in his charge.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Wall after wall shattered. The brick walls were loose and soft from the corrosion of Death energy. Under Wayne’s overwhelming force, they crumbled like tofu at a touch.

“I betrayed the goddess? Heh, you’re nothing even with your devotion!” Confirming that his opponent wasn’t as formidable as he had imagined, Wayne started running his mouth. “Your body’s weak, your spells crude, your mind unfocused, and your reaction slow. None of your moves is decent. You call yourself the Death Knight? Bah, I’m getting secondhand embarrassment from watching you.”

The Death Knight roared, infuriated by the taunting. The ruby on Shadow Nightmare’s hilt blazed, and a portal opened beside him.

An undead warhorse leaped out, breathing purple flames from its mouth and nostrils at Wayne.

“Et tu, Julia?”

Wayne scattered sacred flames with a wave to cast a barrier, angrily denouncing Julia’s treacherous behavior. She had promised to stay with him and to forever gallop beneath him in joy. Yet here she was, forgetting him after finding another cheater.

The horse wasn’t worth keeping!

“You’re not the Death Knight and never served the Goddess of Death. What betrayal can you speak of?” The Death Knight laughed at Wayne’s anger, commanding the warhorse to continue its assault. He swore to take Wayne’s head today.

“When I was a knight, you hadn’t even found your mother as a sperm cell!” Wayne huffed. He was far superior to the Death Knight in terms of verbal jabs.

He swung his sacred lance to sweep the Death Knight aside. Facing the undead warhorse, he didn’t dodge, but instead sidestepped and clenched his fist, making a mana-imbued punch at its head.

After a muffled noise, the horse staggered back. Wayne’s eyes twitched, shrouding his fist with holy light to dispel the bone-deep pain.

Shit, he forgot that he was facing a skeleton.

However, in that brief moment of contact, he discovered that ‘Julia’ was vastly different from the cheerful little mare he knew; this horse was lifeless and not jolly at all.

He didn’t mean lifeless in terms of being dead since they were both skeletons, but lifeless in the emotional sense. Both the Headless Knight and Wayne cherished and protected Julia, so she was carefree, innocent, and naive; she wasn’t very bright because she didn’t need to think for herself much. And because she didn’t have to think, she was happy.

This undead horse was different, radiating gloomy Death energy from within like a walking corpse with no sign of free-spirited vitality.

At first, Wayne thought that she was down and listless because she was forced to attack her former master, whom she had lingering feelings for, but when he met the horse’s eyes, he realized that this wasn’t his Julia.

He had never ridden it!

A Death Knight who had appeared out of nowhere and an undead warhorse he had never met? Wayne grew more confused the more he fought, unsure what he was even battling.

From the roof, Mona spread her wings and descended, bathed in holy radiance. Her winged feathers unfurled to rain down holy blades. Simultaneously, her voice reached Wayne telepathically, enabled by their master-servant contract.

“Master, I just encountered myself—a self burdened with negativity. If I’m not mistaken, the Death Knight you’re fighting...”

She didn’t finish. It was too presumptuous and against her faith. She believed that her master was intelligent enough to figure out the rest from that simple hint.

“!”

Wayne was surprised by the voice message. Understanding dawned on him, and he looked at the knight and horse in surprise.

Holy feathers fell in a downpour, triggering rumbling explosions and continuous tremors. The floors below collapsed from the impact.

Wreathed in Death energy, the Death Knight didn’t fear Mona’s pathetic holy light. It wasn’t even strong enough to tickle him. A portal opened beside him. He mounted his horse and formed a link with it. The snow-white blade he wielded gleamed blindingly.

Wayne knew what would happen next. Another portal would open, and the Death Knight would appear right behind him with the horse, decapitating him with Shadow Nightmare. It was a trick Wayne had practiced many times. If he was facing himself—no, he was absolutely certain that this man wasn’t him.

If Julia wasn’t Julia, and Shadow Nightmare wasn’t Shadow Nightmare...

A dark portal opened behind Wayne. The undead warhorse leaped out while breathing purple flames, and the Death Knight raised his longsword high to make a swing at Wayne’s neck.

“Master?!”

Horrified, Mona flapped her wings to descend toward the center of the battlefield at maximum speed, trying to block the strike with her own body.

Wayne drew Shadow Nightmare with greyness spilling from his eyes, spinning around to block the attack.

Boom!

His feet plowed into the ground as the tremendous attack knocked him back ten meters. When he steadied himself, his Shadow Nightmare reflected a skull covered in swirling smoke.

“Kekekeke—”

“...”

“???”

The Death Knight and the undead warhorse both stilled in confusion, while Mona, halfway down, crashed through a wall and fell into rubble from the shock. Her angel master was broken!

“I betrayed Death? Then what is this?”

Wayne swung his blade to cut open space with thick Death energy, opening a dark portal. Julia leaped out, lowering her head to nuzzle his cheek affectionately. The bone-to-bone action made Mona’s heart turn cold.

She had never gotten to nuzzle her master.

Remembering what the other Mona had said, that she would fall and become a demon if she lost everything, she felt her heart clench, the pain too great to be described with words. More than turning into a demon, she feared losing everything!

“What is that, Master?”

After nuzzling Wayne, Julia looked at the opposing knight-horse combo with surprise. It was like looking into a mirror—a dirty mirror.

“Not sure, but it should be related to the barrier I’m trapped in.” Wayne jumped onto Julia’s back, the tip of his sword angled toward the ground. “Julia, that horse just hit me while wearing your face. It broke my heart.”

How dare it!

Julia immediately went berserk, front hooves stomping and mouth and nostrils breathing out purple flames. She was ready to teach that mare a lesson. A portal flashed into existence instantly. She carried Wayne through it.

On the other side, the Death Knight also rode his undead warhorse into a portal. Clanging sounds echoed in the air, punctuated by explosions and the noises of collapsing walls and ceilings.

The dark portal flickered, unleashing grey mist that rampaged about and made everything decay with its terrible corrosive power. The ash scattered in the violent wind and permeated the space. The dark mist continued to swirl, weaving the ruined reality with the decaying illusions into a bizarre, bewildering scene.

Mona stared blankly, Wayne and Julia’s conversation still ringing in her ears. She heard clearly—Julia had called him ‘master’.

‘Master’ wasn’t an address exclusive to her. She shared the honor with a horse.