Others Summon Dragons, I Summon Legendary Knights

Chapter 524: Helpless Animal

Glimmer exploded.

Adonis staggered backwards, his face slick with sweat as the twelve-foot-tall Obsidian laughed.

”How does it feel?” Torment chuckled.

Adonis squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, desperately trying to shut something off. He couldn’t. That night refused to leave his mind; His family. Their deaths. Again and again.

Soon, he could barely see the battlefield anymore. Everywhere he looked, their stone corpses surrounded him.

Torment raised his sword. Rage, another Obsidian dressed in rags and carrying a bone cleaver, leapt towards Snow and brought the weapon down. Obsession fired two arrows.

All three Monarchs came for his life.

Snow released a ring of silver glimmer. It detonated. Flames swept outwards with a deafening roar, hurling Rage backwards. Torment charged straight through the fire and swung.

This time, he caught Adonis as the blade kissed his neck. Torment cackled. ”Is that all?”

”It wasn’t a fair fight,” Adonis replied.

”When was a fight ever meant to be fair?” Torment’s gaze dropped to the ball of silver glimmer glowing within Adonis’ palm. ”I want to show you something.”

The world changed. Adonis felt as though his eyes had finally been opened to reality.

His little sister stood upon a plain of utter desolation.

She was barely more than skin stretched across bone. Her feet had been torn open countless times, and scars covered her body where stones carried by the wind had sliced through her flesh again and again.

Her eyes were gone. The stones had taken those too.

His parents suffered the same torment. His mother lay some distance away, being whipped for collapsing beneath the pain.

”ARGH!” A scream of rage tore from Adonis. He wanted to rip Jon apart.

He wanted Jon crying, begging, screaming for help. He wanted—

An arrow tore through his back. Adonis staggered forward. Another pierced him. Golden blood splattered across the ground as he dropped to his knees.

”You don’t know what you did to me!” Jon’s voice bled through Torment’s. ”I treated you like the brother I never had. I nurtured you. I chose you to become the King of Manhattan!”

Torment strode towards him.

”But you caused me pain. You took Godfrey’s side. You killed Isolde.”

He kicked Adonis. The impact hurled him a dozen feet through the air.

”We’ve only just begun.” Torment spread his arms. ”I know you can heal yourself. That black glimmer lets you manipulate reality, doesn’t it?”

His voice twisted with excitement. ”Do it. And show me your pain! Let me see how angry you are.”

Adonis coughed and pushed himself to his feet.

Torment tilted his head. There was pain in Adonis’ eyes but no madness. Only sadness, pain and pity.

”I hate you, Jon.” Adonis looked at him. ”But I hate myself more because I abandoned them.” Black glimmer crawled across his wounds and they vanished.

Blood disappeared. Torn flesh restored itself. Even his damaged clothes became whole again.

”And you...” Adonis continued. ”You never grew.”

Torment went still.

”It’s a pity. Because you could have.” Adonis looked at him with tired eyes. ”You had everything, Jon. And you threw it away. Like a fool.”

A bitter smile touched his lips. ”Like me.” Then his expression hardened. ”But I would never have killed my family.”

Within Torment, Jon’s eyes widened. ”W-what?” His voice cracked. ”What did you just say?!”

Green and black glimmer spread across the battlefield. An image formed within it. Jon’s house.

His family lay inside. Murdered. Blood covered the walls and floor. Jon stared. He had done it so they wouldn’t suffer inside his summon’s domain.

It had been mercy. It was mercy.

His eyes trembled.

”Goodbye, Jon,” Adonis said.

”You’re not going anywhere!” Torment screamed and lunged forward.

Adonis’ hair suddenly blazed with resplendent white light. His eyes became pure white. His clothes shifted into a pristine white suit. Then, almost casually, he adjusted his necktie.

”Surprised?” Snow smiled.

Jon stopped. .

Snow’s smirk widened.

”I had to step aside for a moment so you could speak to him. The others think they’ve been talking to him. I did this for you so don’t tell anyone.”

Disbelief washed through Jon. All this time, he had thought Adonis was running from him. But he hadn’t been running. Whatever spoke to him had been investigating him.

”I hear things, Jon.” Snow flexed his arms. ”My line of work makes sure information is always flowing my way.” His smile disappeared. ”And trust me...”

Coldness settled across his face. ”I’m not as forgiving as Adonis has become.”

Snow stared directly into Torment’s eyes. ”I’ll avenge his family.”

Jon’s entire body tightened. ”Bring the coward out!”

He snapped towards Snow, rage boiling through him.

’Jon!’

His mother’s scream exploded inside his head. Jon stopped. For an instant, he could almost see it again. Himself, cursing and blaming them as he killed them.

His eyes began to glisten.

’I told you. I will be waiting.’

Jon saw his old self standing on a distant rooftop, his body stained with the blood of his family. The figure was far away, yet his voice reached Jon as clearly as though he stood beside him, whispering directly into his ear.

Jon charged towards Snow and swung his sword with all his might. He wanted to kill him. God, he wanted to kill this bastard.

Rage followed closely behind while Obsession fired arrow after arrow.

Snow unleashed a fog of silver glimmer that expanded rapidly before erupting in a catastrophic explosion. Rage emerged from the blast covered in burns, but the pain only fed his fury and strengthened him further. Torment was largely unfazed apart from a few scorched wounds, while Obsession had been far enough away to avoid the explosion itself; the resulting gale merely threw him off balance.

”If this fight stretches out, I’ll lose. I know that.” Snow loosened his tie while keeping his eyes on the three summons. ”But there’s no possibility of you winning either.”

He twisted aside just as an arrow struck the ground in front of him.

Green and black glimmer gathered into a ball between Snow’s hands as he rushed towards Rage. The Obsidian brought its cleaver down with enough force to tear the street apart, opening a deep ravine through the earth while the surrounding buildings, already weakened by the battle, collapsed beneath the impact.

Rage turned towards him.

Snow threw the ball.

It scattered harmlessly against the Obsidian’s body, and Rage immediately raised its cleaver for another strike. Before it could bring the weapon down, ice burst across its skin and spread rapidly over its enormous frame, trapping the Obsidian inside a massive hill of ice.

Snow reached out and poked one of the jagged tips, then grimaced. ”That was too much mana.”

Torment shattered the wall of ice separating him from Snow.

”You’re a rampaging bull.” Snow snickered as he somersaulted over the Obsidian.

Just then, a portal tore open beside him. Fog poured through it, swallowing Snow before a bone scythe swept through the haze and severed both his legs.

He crashed to the ground, bleeding profusely as pain contorted his face. The fog slowly thinned, revealing Jon’s first summon standing on the other side.

Snow gritted his teeth. His Defence Factor had always been pitiful; despite all the power at his disposal, his body itself was remarkably vulnerable. That was why a summon far weaker than him had been able to take his legs with a single clean strike.

Torment loomed over him, madness burning within the Obsidian’s eyes as it raised its sword. The weapon came down with enough force to rip Snow in half, but before it could reach him, black glimmer spread from his body and raced through the earth.

The ground collapsed.

It was as though the entire battlefield had been built upon a ceiling that had finally given way. Snow and Torment plunged into the darkness together as enormous portions of the street broke apart around them, carrying shattered buildings and boulders into the depths.

Snow reformed his legs in midair and landed on one of the falling boulders. His white hair streamed above his head as he descended, surrounded by enormous chunks of earth tumbling through the darkness.

He poured mana into the boulder beneath his feet, coating its surface with glimmer. Its fall gradually slowed until it came to a stop, then began to ascend while everything around it continued plunging deeper into the abyss.

”Adonis!” Jon yelled.

He leapt from one falling boulder to another, desperately trying to climb after him, but the debris was descending too quickly and the darkness beneath him continued to grow.

Snow watched him from above as his own boulder carried him higher.

”A fitting end. Embrace it.” He straightened his suit. ”In Godfrey’s terms, consider this a final act of mercy.”

”You can’t escape me!”

Jon’s voice rose from the depths. He was still jumping from boulder to boulder, but there were fewer of them now, and each one carried him farther down.

Realizing he would never reach Snow that way, Jon swiftly disconnected from Torment and switched places with Obsession. The exchange returned him to the surface, and he immediately recalled both summons.

”I gave you mercy.”

Snow’s voice came from somewhere within the ruins.

Jon turned towards it, but Snow was nowhere in sight.

Black glimmer began spreading through the air around him, streaks of green weaving through the growing fog.

”You refused.”

Jon’s eyes swept across the glimmer.

Red would never have been powerful enough to turn him to stone. Snow knew that, so he had chosen something else.

Something that could kill a god.

Jon summoned Torment and fused with it. He leapt upwards, intending to escape the expanding glimmer, but the world changed before he could break through it.

He found himself in space.

The air vanished instantly.

There was no earth beneath him, no sky above, nothing close enough to touch or push against. Even movement became almost impossible. Torment could survive the emptiness, but Jon could do little except remain trapped within it and wait.

Hours trickled into days.

Eventually, even Torment’s ability to withstand the void began to fail. Layers of ice spread across the Obsidian until its entire body was frozen, and at last, its heart ceased to beat.

The emptiness vanished.

Jon found himself back on Earth.

Realizing what had happened, he immediately tore himself free from his dying summon.

A black sword punched through his back and burst from his chest.

Jon gasped as golden blood poured from the wound and ran down the blade.

”Illusions. What fascinating things.” Snow stood behind him, one hand wrapped around the sword. ”I don’t know what the mana tree was thinking when it allowed me to make illusions real, but it has made me something...”

He leaned closer.

”...you can’t defeat.”

Jon’s breathing grew ragged.

”We... don’t always get what we want,” he muttered.

Behind Snow, Obsession drew his bow.

Snow noticed.

He ripped the sword from Jon’s body and swung, severing his head in a single stroke. Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Obsession collapsed before he could release the arrow.

Snow leaned backwards with a groan as Jon’s head rolled across the ground. It continued for several feet before finally stopping beside the dead Obsidian of Torment.

For a moment, Snow simply stood there.

Then he looked down at his hands and grimaced. His body felt terribly weak, almost hollow. He had exhausted his mana so thoroughly that even the discomfort of standing was beginning to creep through his limbs.

”Argh!”

A dagger plunged into his back.

Snow’s body jerked forward, but an arm immediately wrapped around his neck and dragged him firmly against someone behind him.

Figures began emerging from the surrounding ruins.

White horned masks and Black mantles. Crusaders. Those with the ability to escape memory when they were out of sight.

Snow’s eyes widened.

He had forgotten about them.

In truth, he couldn’t have remembered them even if he had wanted to.

”Congratulations,” the Crusader holding him said. ”You won.”

Then he slit Snow’s throat.

Blood gushed down the front of Snow’s white suit as his body went limp. The Crusader released him, allowing the ancient god to collapse onto the ruined street, where he could do nothing but bleed like a helpless animal.