I Aggressively Stack Steel of the Heart in the Knight Order

CRACK—!

Like glass striking steel, the Crystal Broadsword in Sipia’s hand erupted with a crisp, shattering sound. The ocean-blue blade, like a true crystal, disintegrated into a swarm of high-speed fragments that rained down on Reinhardt!

If these were ordinary crystal fragments, they wouldn’t even be able to scratch the paint on his Avenger Power Armor, let alone harm Reinhardt.

But Sipia’s Broadsword was no ordinary crystal. As an Extraordinary Armament, its very essence was manifested Knight Power, possessing its own Extraordinary Traits!

This constant gambit of intelligence and decision-making was the defining characteristic of combat between Extraordinary Knights.

In a life-or-death battle, the window for these gambits was measured in milliseconds. For both combatants, every decision was a frantic dance on the edge of death, and any misjudgment would be paid for with a terrible price—blood and death!

In that split second, cold sweat beaded on Sipia’s forehead as he watched a dark purple, living substance seep from the surface of Reinhardt’s Power Armor. It formed another Extraordinary Armament, a new layer of armor, clearly meant to withstand the assault of his Special Ability head-on.

A disdainful sneer echoed in his mind.

’Did he fall for it that easily?’

This is what a gambit is all about. Like a master before a chessboard, to win under the crushing pressure of death, every decision, every thought, must be one step ahead of your opponent!

He had laid the groundwork for this moment during his initial attack on Reinhardt.

Using the material of his Crystal Broadsword, he had been constantly feeding Reinhardt a hint: that if they fought, his Extraordinary Armament possessed a Special Ability based on lethal shrapnel.

Any Imperial Knight of decent power and experience, upon seeing Sipia’s blade, would surely prepare for such an attack.

Anticipating the enemy’s anticipation. He had killed many powerful Imperial Knights with this tactic.

It was true that his famous Extraordinary Armament, the Crystal Broadsword, had a ”fragile” Special Ability. It was also true that it could attack with fragments. But what no one knew was that this Extraordinary Armament of his had never been a Knight’s Broadsword, much less a fragile crystalline structure.

Because this Extraordinary Armament had only ever had one true form and ability: Fool’s Domination!

Or rather, no enemy who had ever witnessed the true form and power of Fool’s Domination had lived to tell the tale.

This Extraordinary Armament of his possessed only two Special Abilities: Unrestrained Mimicry and Defeated Domination!

Unrestrained Mimicry allowed it to transform into any Extraordinary Armament he had seen or touched. Of course, this mimicry was limited to shape and structure; it could not replicate the actual Special Abilities.

As for the powerful might of Defeated Domination, it required him to first win a strategic gambit in battle. Afterward, Fool’s Domination would reveal its true form and utterly dominate the enemy’s mind for half a second!

It might only be half a second, but in the hands of a Domain Level Powerhouse, an eternity of things could be accomplished in that time—including killing a terrifying foe whose raw power he could never hope to match!

Even with victory seemingly in his grasp, Sipia didn’t relax one bit.

Because the hints and warnings from his Domain Power—Optimal Solution—still lingered.

In the less than 0.3 seconds of combat that had passed, the crystal shards, like a storm of steel needles, whistled through the air and slammed into the living matter of the Morphic Armor.

No longer blocked by the Broadsword, Reinhardt’s War Axe cleaved through the air with unstoppable power, descending violently upon Sipia’s chest!

Sipia knew he had won the gambit. The Extraordinary Power of Fool’s Domination would now enact his will, forcibly seizing control of Reinhardt’s movements and bringing that absurdly oversized War Axe to a dead stop right before his face.

But the combat intuition that had allowed him to crawl from the corpse piles of grand battlefields and survive to this day screamed at him. It was a cold wind on the back of his neck that made his skin crawl, a terrifying pressure of imminent death that made him want to turn and flee.

To an outsider, the battles of Domain Level Powerhouses would be impossible to comprehend.

Every gambit, every clash, happened and concluded in an instant.

Drenched in sweat and consumed by a growing fear, Sipia watched as his Fool’s Domination struck Reinhardt’s Dark Purple Battle Armor. He saw it detach from the Real Cosmos and shift into its true form within the Spiritual Domain—a swarm of innumerable, arcane symbols too profound for him to comprehend.

As these arcane symbols ignored the barriers of the Extraordinary Armament and Power Armor to slam into Reinhardt’s body...

...Sipia—who had been wound tighter than a drum, as if racing the Death God himself—felt a wave of pure ecstasy wash over him, despite the cold sweat still pouring down his face. ’It worked—!’

’The Emperor’s Vengeful Angels?’

’Not so special after all.’

With a mere thought, Sipia commanded Reinhardt to lower the defenses of his Extraordinary Armament and shift the War Axe aside. In that same instant, a third Extraordinary Armament materialized in his own left hand: a Broadsword in the truest sense, forged from pure Knight Power.

At this moment, the killing intent in Sipia’s eyes flared to a terrifying intensity!

He knew better than to waste time with words when facing a foe of Reinhardt’s caliber. He couldn’t afford to give him any opening for a counterattack.

He would only feel safe once an enemy of this level was a corpse on the ground.

Or rather, in just a few brief exchanges, the sense of pressure and mortal threat radiating from Reinhardt surpassed that of any foe he had ever faced!

Bar none.

He tightened his grip on the Knight’s Broadsword, his gaze locking across the distance with Reinhardt’s eyes, which burned with the Eternal Flame. ’Die, Vengeful Angel!’

Perhaps it was because he was already imagining Reinhardt’s head hitting the floor, but for the first time in the entire fight, the tension coiling in his gut loosened ever so slightly.

He put his all into a single strike, the Broadsword moving so fast it created a terrifying sonic boom and left a trail of afterimages in its wake.

The next second, a strange dissonance washed over him, like audio falling out of sync with video. What his intuition screamed and what his eyes saw were in complete opposition, and every hair on his body stood on end!

It felt as if his heart had stopped beating.

’How is this possible?!’

Because before his very eyes, his most trusted and hitherto infallible Extraordinary Armament, Fool’s Domination, had not only failed to divert Reinhardt’s descending War Axe.

Worse, in that fleeting instant, the power he had sent into the Spiritual Domain seemed to encounter something utterly terrifying. It was violently ejected from Reinhardt’s body, recoiling back into his Black Arsenal.

It was in that same moment that he heard it—or perhaps it was a hallucination, the product of a mind under duress. A deep, cruel laugh, thick with malice, and mixed within it, a single, disdainful snort.

But he had no time to ponder what in the hell those phantom sounds were.

Reinhardt’s War Axe had already slammed with immense force into his Dissolving Battle Armor!

Sipia’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. He tried to summon the Raptor Flying Bag forged from his Domain Power, to evade the frontal assault, but it was too late!

’This is bad—!’