Chapter 403: Arthur Takes the Field

When the figure wreathed in holy light descended from the sky, everyone was dumbstruck.

The holy light was unmistakable—but had the lich just claimed that this was his paladin? A paladin in the service of a lich?

That was not a funny joke at all.

As the radiant paladin touched down, a torrent of hailstones burst from the dark canopy above and smashed into the sea. The ice magic flash-froze the churning waves into a broad, solid sheet of ice, a ready platform for the paladin to land on.

Cyril Roland strained to make out the figure's face.

His holy light was real; there was no question about it. But what sort of oath would remain unbroken even when that paladin served a lich?

Unfortunately, all he could see was a heavy helmet, nearly fully sealed.

The paladin was encased head to toe in silvery-white plate armor. If Cyril Roland wasn't mistaken, it was an extraordinarily expensive suit of mithril.

Mithril was light yet far stronger than steel, with formidable magical resistance. It was universally regarded as the finest material for high-end enchanted armor. The foremost craftsmen of mithril plate in the world had been the tiflings of the Unholy Kingdom. Now, Ambrose was the only person in the world with access to those craftsmen, and the only one who could commission a full suit of top-grade mithril heavy armor from them.

What Cyril Roland did not know was that the armor's primary purpose was not enhanced protection. It was to perfectly conceal the mechanical body beneath.

In truth, the gleaming paladin before him was not a person at all. It was a magical automaton, one that could be operated by the heroic spirit of Arthur Lyon.

Ambrose had placed the Eternal Hourglass, within which Arthur Lyon's spirit resided, at the automaton's core. He had then used the God of Alchemy's artifact to transmute the automaton's mechanical body into a material sharing the same elemental affinity as the hourglass—in effect, Ambrose had converted the entire automaton into an extension of the Eternal Hourglass itself.

This seemed like a method for mass-producing divine artifacts, but in reality, the haphazard assembly did not enhance the artifact's power in the slightest. If anything, it diminished it.

A divine artifact was a perfect, self-contained whole. Bolting on additional materials would severely undermined the original's efficacy, much like gilding the lily.

But that was of no consequence, because the Eternal Hourglass required a time dragon to operate in the first place. Even as a heroic spirit bound to the artifact, Arthur Lyon had no access to its temporal power.

Ambrose's modification therefore had only a single purpose: to give Arthur Lyon a new body.

A mechanical frame was less nimble than a human one, but vastly preferable to his heroic spirit form. At minimum, it kept him from being recognized at a glance.

There was one further reason Arthur Lyon had agreed to help.

Ambrose had told him plainly that, if he did not intervene, every one of these paladins would die. It wasn't a threat, simply a fact.

Ambrose had already resolved to make a scene spectacular enough to cement his fearsome reputation. He would not hesitate to unleash Gareth as his ultimate weapon.

If that wasn't enough, there was Aige. There was Black Rose. Half the membership of the Elegiac Society had offered their assistance.

The combined might of those undead could annihilate this entire legion without breaking a sweat.

So what Ambrose was saying was this: once he started fighting, he couldn't control himself—he could only go all out, and that meant killing everyone. But if Arthur Lyon could convince the Lyon forces to stand down, then out of respect for Arthur, Ambrose would let them walk away with their lives.

Arthur Lyon had no choice.

He had never thought of himself as the founding emperor of Lyon, but he could not stand by and watch these soldiers throw their lives away for nothing.

When Arthur looked across at Cyril Roland, the Radiant General, and saw the sword in his hand, a wave of feeling struck him. He hadn't expected his old blade to have become a divine artifact.

Arthur gripped the anti-magic longsword Ambrose had prepared for him and said to Cyril Roland, "Leave now, and no one needs to be hurt. Otherwise, I will have no choice but to draw against you."

Cyril Roland studied Arthur with open suspicion. He had no idea that the figure before him was the very man he had idolized since childhood, the holy king of Lyon. All he wanted right now was to rip off this traitor's helmet and see who was underneath.

"Which god do you serve?" Cyril Roland asked, his voice low and measured.

The Lord of Dawn was not the only deity with paladins sworn to his name. Many gods could bestow their blessing upon mortals and make them paladins in their own right. Tir, the God of Justice, for instance, had paladins that bore a strong resemblance to those of the Lord of Dawn, differing only in subtle details.

Just as Thanos could grant the blessing of the sea, holy light was not the exclusive domain of any single god.

Sariel had once done exactly that: bestowed holy light on her own followers and sent them to the mortal realm disguised as paladins of Tir, sowing discord in her name.

So even a figure blazing with holy power did not guarantee true allegiance to good.

Arthur Lyon's answer came without hesitation. "I serve the Lord of Dawn."

"Liar!" Cyril Roland said through gritted teeth. "A paladin of the Lord of Dawn serving a lich? Impossible."

Arthur smiled. "Why not? The Lord of Dawn teaches us to shun evil and resist it, but he never specified that the undead are evil by definition. This Master Megaman Tiga may be a lich, but as he himself has said, everything he has done serves justice and works toward the salvation of this world. What evidence do you have to call him evil?"

Cyril Roland had no answer, but he had decided to waste no more time on arguments.

The lich had come fully prepared and had even produced a counterfeit paladin. There would be no winning a debate here.

The lich was endlessly cunning, but one thing he had said was true: the Holy Light would bear witness to right and wrong.

A counterfeit could never become the real thing.

Cyril Roland raised the Blood of Dawn and leveled the blade at Arthur. His voice was calm. "Dispel your disguise now, and I will grant you a painless death. Continue to desecrate my faith, and I will unmake your soul with the Holy Light."

Arthur looked at the sword in his opponent's hand—his old sword—and sighed. "Very well. Let the Holy Light bear witness to this duel. You may have the first move."

As a figure from a millennium past, Arthur couldn't help but see everyone before him as children. The paladins of his own era had never been this unreasonable: these were more like small children with their hands over their ears, shouting, "I can't hear you!"

As an elder, he was more than willing to cede a little advantage.

The taunt did nothing to Cyril Roland's composure. Provocation this juvenile didn't work on him.

If that counterfeit paladin wanted to go second, so be it.

The Blood of Dawn blazed with layered golden light, which coalesced into a shimmering curtain and swept toward Arthur.

The suppression of undead senses was the Blood of Dawn's most formidable effect, and the bane of every undead. This paladin was almost certainly another one of the lich's constructs, and the effect would surely work on him.

What surprised Cyril Roland was that the curtain of light washed over Arthur with no reaction whatsoever.

A heroic spirit was indeed a soul, but its essential nature was closer to a soul that had ascended to a divine realm than to a tormented undead clinging to existence. The barrier had no effect on heroic spirits, and Arthur was entirely unaffected.

Catching the flicker of surprise in Cyril Roland's expression, Arthur moved.

His body became a column of light. In an instant, he was before Cyril Roland, the anti-magic longsword already driving toward his shoulder.

Cyril Roland lurched, instantly on the defensive. This was no easy opponent. He swung the Blood of Dawn in a parry.

Before the blades could connect, Arthur Lyon switched to another attack. The sword traced an elegant arc as it turned toward Cyril Roland's wrist, the gap at the edge of his vambrace. If that thrust were to land, Cyril Roland's sword hand would be finished.

What startled Cyril Roland even more was how familiar the technique looked. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the swordsmanship that had been passed down through Lyon for generations, that of the holy king himself, designed specifically for humanoid opponents. It was the compulsory foundation every child in Lyon learned regardless of what they grew up to become.

There were subtle differences, but this was unmistakably Lyon swordsmanship.

The more they exchanged blows, the more baffled Cyril Roland became. His power, his technique—was this man actually from Lyon? But when had Lyon produced a legendary paladin he had never heard of? That was impossible.

Even more unsettling, Cyril Roland was losing.

Arthur Lyon had spent more than a thousand years guarding the Eternal Hourglass. Not once had he let his skills lapse. On the contrary, across all those endless centuries of solitude, he had done nothing but reflect on and refine his swordsmanship, ever afraid that when the seal finally broke, it would be an army of the Cult of Dragonkind waiting on the other side.

After more than a thousand years of total immersion, Arthur Lyon's prodigious swordsmanship had transcended the mortal realm entirely.

Cyril Roland lasted only a matter of seconds before his footwork began to come apart. He found himself driven steadily backward across the ice, teetering on the edge of losing his footing altogether.

One slip, and the longsword would find the gap between his helmet and breastplate. At that point, his only recourse would be to trust in his enchanted equipment to absorb the blow. He would all but have lost the fight.

The Blacktide captured every moment of it in meticulous detail, broadcasting live to the entire world as before.

Audiences everywhere were shaken. A paladin serving a lich had just put the Radiant General on the back foot. Did the Holy Light truly favor the lich over Lyon?

As Arthur Lyon forced Cyril Roland toward the very edge of the ice sheet, the Radiant General finally abandoned any pretense of fighting fair.

No more trading sword techniques with this fraud!

The scattered motes of golden light at his flanks coalesced into dozens of miniature holy-light blades and came streaking toward Arthur Lyon.

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