Bear School Astartes

Chapter 941 - 923: King’s Black Hand

"I know a shortcut."

Klimte declared with absolute confidence.

"An elevator shaft that goes straight to the very top floor of the Great Library."

Lann first frowned and looked upward, mentally observing and recording every gap between the eaves and the buildings.

He finally reached a conclusion: under Losric’s architectural style, where grandeur and crampedness coexist, the buildings themselves are tall and imposing, but the gaps between them are always miserly.

Those gaps, without a doubt, should not be able to accommodate the bloated armor of the Winged Knights squeezing through and then flying up.

"An elevator..." Lann murmured, repeating the word while assessing the operational risk in his mind.

For an experienced Commander, this was already something like a reflex.

"The elevator is very narrow. That is not a space that lets a person feel at ease."

In urban warfare, elevators are practically nightmares best left untouched.

But Klimte was stubbornly shaking his head at this moment.

"If you knew what arrangements those Sages have set up in the Great Library, and what kinds of dangers are lurking inside that great library passed down from the Mythical Era, you would never turn down my proposal."

"Because by comparison of risks, taking the elevator is the rational choice."

Although Lann had in practice become the operational Commander, when it came to terrain and enemy dispositions, Klimte was without question the more familiar one.

So even though he did not feel at ease, Lann still nodded and accepted Klimte’s proposal, taking the elevator straight up to the top of the structure.

The elevator, whose principle of operation was unclear, gave off the sound of painted wood rubbing, not quite grating on the ears.

Klimte took the opportunity to describe to Lann the possible dangers inside the Great Library.

"That place is riddled with mechanisms and the terrain is treacherous."

The White Sect Archbishop clearly had a wealth of understanding regarding the Great Library. After all, it had only been enfeoffed to the Sages by Ausloes for a few decades, at most a century; before that it had always been a public resource.

"Rumor has it that the Great Library was once a part of the Divine Capital Anorlondo in the Mythical Era, the townhouse of a Duke of the Divine Race. Later, when the Divine Capital relocated to what is now the Cold Valley, this book-hoarding townhouse was settled here in Losric."

A Duke of the Divine Race... Lann sharply seized on that role.

He then connected it to the knowledge of the White Dragon in the Great Library. White Dragon Hiss was the Great King G Wen’s in-law, a Duke of the Divine Race.

Eight or nine times out of ten, this Great Library was the townhouse of White Dragon Hiss in the Mythical Era.

The private archive of a "biochemical experiment" madman... the place sounded dangerous enough just from that.

"We don’t need to say much about what kind of people the enemies in the Great Library are. But I must remind you, Lann: in that great library, the most dangerous things are not ’people’!"

Klimte lifted his head and met the Demon Hunter’s eyes, looking extremely serious.

"There, the most dangerous things are the knowledge contained in certain books!"

"Don’t think that just because you don’t look at them, the knowledge in those books can’t do anything to you. I’ll be blunt with you: that knowledge is far too ancient, far too profound. By now, it’s long since stopped being a matter of learners going to pursue the knowledge in those books..."

At this point, Klimte’s eyes unconsciously widened, as if recalling some horrific scenes and experiences.

Scenes and experiences that, even across the gulf of time, could still deliver a terrifying shock to people.

"That knowledge has already become ’alive’! It will reach arms out from the books, and like a falcon obsessively pursuing a rabbit, it will obsessively force any passerby to read it."

Knowledge vivified, hunting down learners... even with all the worlds he had personally experienced, Lann still found this situation bizarre.

However, he was still able to maintain good mental composure, keeping his adaptability and receptiveness.

"So the Sages in the Great Library cover themselves in wax just so they can stay alive beside those books?"

The Demon Hunter tried his best to maintain logical thinking amidst this pile of ghostly, supernatural nonsense.

"Exactly how does the knowledge in those books harm people? Drives them mad? Or what?"

"I don’t know."

Klimte shook his head.

"Because countermeasures already exist, that knowledge hasn’t succeeded in a very long time. But you know as well as I do that we’re fighting a civil war now, and in a combat state, those original safeguards no longer apply."

Take for example the Sages covering their heads in wax—Warriors who strive to see every enemy move clearly in close combat; would they still have any fighting capacity after doing that?

And with no fighting capacity, they’d be killed by the enemy. So they might as well not cover their heads in wax; their chances of survival are a bit higher that way.

The precautions against vivified knowledge all still worked, but under the present circumstances, they had simply become inapplicable.

Soon, the elevator reached its end.

Stepping out of the elevator led into a small room, apparently serving as the junction between two separate areas.

Beyond the small room lay the flat rooftop of the Great Library. On that rooftop sat a statue of a scholar on a chair, clearly of no low status—seemingly the Initial Sage.

Only, for reasons unknown, the sculptor had added many root-like excrescences to the statue’s body, making one doubt whether the Initial Sage was even human.

And beyond the small room there was a long bridge.

On that long bridge there had originally been solemn, dignified, masterfully crafted stone statues of the King, but now those statues had all been deliberately smashed, and the bridge deck was arranged with many guarding soldiers and Knights.

At the other end of the bridge stood the palace at the highest point in this Mountain City of Losric.

At Lann’s signal, the group lightened their footsteps again, lowered their bodies, and started moving.

There was no one on the roof of the Great Library ahead, but there were plenty of people on the long bridge behind them. It was just that, since it was far away, the people over there couldn’t easily spot their traces.

After all, even with Lann’s eyesight, he could only just barely make out a few Losric Knights in blue cloaks on the opposite side.

The Demon Hunter shot Klimte a look, and the archbishop consciously moved to take the lead.

The group passed through the small room, and only when they came out did they realize that this little room was the base of a tower.

They spiraled up the tower along the spiral staircase, and everyone unconsciously tightened their grip on their weapons.

This was going a bit too smoothly. Saint Gecide was on the top floor of the Great Library, and they had gotten here without any real danger.

"Maybe these people just don’t care about the Saintess anymore?"

Klimte whispered, as if trying to convince himself, and also everyone else.

"After all, it’s been a long time. If they wanted to know the Saintess’s secrets, they’d have figured them out ages ago."

Normally, Lann didn’t agree with this kind of wishful thinking, but if it could relax the team’s mood even a little, he didn’t object.

But what Klimte just said sounded a little too much like a FLAG.

"Do me a favor and shut up for a second, Klimte."

Lann muttered through a twitching mouth, his cat-like eyes alertly sweeping the surroundings.

And in the very next instant... the Demon Hunter’s cat pupils suddenly shrank into slits!

In the brief moment when no one else could even react, Lann directly raised his leg and kicked Klimte’s left elbow joint.

Numbed by the kick, the archbishop reflexively raised his arm. The front of that arm still had the Holy Flower Shield strapped to it, which they had taken from the supply shed.

A sharp metallic crash rang out with a ’claaang’! Along with sparks from metal grinding against metal!

An arrow so fast and so powerful that it left an afterimage, making it impossible to tell how long it actually was, scraped straight across the curved, convex surface of the Holy Flower Shield!

If Lann hadn’t suddenly lashed out with that kick just now, the arrowhead would already have punched through Klimte’s skull.

But even with Lann’s intervention, the force behind that arrow was still terrifying!

The curved convex face of the Holy Flower Shield only slightly deflected the arrow’s path, and the arrow still skimmed past Klimte’s shoulder.

And just from that one "graze", the archbishop’s tightly stitched, solidly made Holy Robe was ripped cleanly apart, a huge piece of cloth torn away!

Along with that, it opened a bloody groove on Klimte’s shoulder so deep you could see the bone!

And the arrow’s power still hadn’t run out.

The deflected arrow just happened to be heading straight for a Winged Knight.

That powerful arrow actually pierced straight through the body of a Winged Knight in that bloated armor!

"Guh-ah!"

The Winged Knight whose arm had been pierced by the arrow let out a muffled groan from inside his helmet.

And only then did the arrow that had punched through the Winged Knight’s upper arm finally stop in the wall behind him.

By the time Lann turned his head to look, only half of the arrow shaft was still sticking out of the building’s stonework. The stone around the impact point looked like it had been blasted apart!

Judging from its size, that arrow was nothing more than a normal arrow fired from an ordinary longbow!

This kind of power... that was a longbow [battle skill] powered by the Power of Soul!

And definitely used by a top-tier expert!

It was practically on par with Cassandra’s full-power [Destructive Shot]!

The entire party was thrown into chaos for a moment.

But with Mentos’s ballistic reconstruction, Lann immediately locked onto the direction the arrow had come from and looked that way.

At the very top of the tower, a man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a mixed outfit of leather and plate armor was just about to put away his longbow and reach for a small horn at his waist.

And in that moment, Lann also saw the ring on the man’s hand.

The signet on the ring showed a black profile silhouette of a man in a wide-brimmed hat!

King’s Black Hand!

Lann instantly realized what kind of character had just attacked them.

There were only three King’s Black Hand, but they were directly under the Royal Family, shadow killers who could go against and eliminate the Three Pillars of Royal Authority!

Simply put, they were the Royal Family’s black gloves, using absolute personal combat power and skill to maintain the stability of the King’s rule!

There was no time to think. Lann moved on instinct, issuing ad hoc battlefield commands.

"Get up there and butcher him! Don’t let him blow that horn!"

Lann was the first to charge in that direction, and as he passed, he slapped the three Golden Armor Feathered Knights who were standing together.

Sometimes, a bit of body language could save a lot of talking.

So without another word, the three Golden Armor Feathered Knights beat their wings, their bloated bodies lifting into the air as they crashed toward the top of that tower!