Chapter 353: The Knight Suit
"What the hell did I walk into here, some sword-fighting dojo? Mount and Blade? Cold steel proficiency grinding, is that what this is?"
Kian grumbled, pulling the adamantium shield off his back.
Shield in his left hand, sword in his right, he planted himself at the summit and braced for the mass of attackers closing in.
Nearly a hundred of them swarmed him, faces twisted in fury, screaming, weapons swinging from every angle.
Kian's sword swept left and right. These melee troops had nothing that could touch him, and he cut through them like paper.
A minute or so into the fight, bodies were piling up around him, organs strewn across the ground.
A man who could go blade to blade with an Aeldari Howling Banshee was already an outlier on the stat sheet. These mortals were never a real threat to him.
A red-cloaked warrior charged in, two-handed sword swinging down at his skull. Kian cut him apart with a single swing, barely looking.
To his left, a warrior wielding a war hammer in both hands brought it down at his flank. Kian caught it on his shield, then thrust his sword forward and up.
The blade punched clean through the man's breastplate and into his chest. Kian twisted his wrist down, then pulled the blade back up, splitting him clean in two.
One man used the moment Kian's attention was elsewhere to lunge in and grab his leg, trying to pin him down.
Kian didn't even look at him. He just slammed the shield down.
The man's iron helmet crumpled like it had been run over by a truck, his skull crushed flat, blood and brain matter squeezing out through the seams.
Kian tore through the crowd like an unstoppable force, and the nearly hundred attackers who'd rushed him were wiped out in moments.
But the commotion up on the summit had already drawn the attention of far more red warriors down on the plain below.
These devotees lived their entire lives drawn to death, fascinated by it.
The thick stench of death rolling off the mountaintop pulled their focus instantly, and a wave of red-cloaked warriors began surging up the slope.
A few hundred at first, then close to a thousand, a swarming mass of them.
Kian kept fighting, kept killing, and realized there was simply no end to them.
He looked down and saw the entire battlefield below turning to converge on him, red figures rolling up the mountainside like waves, one after another.
"Your head is mine!"
A powerfully built Khornate mortal warrior charged him, double-handed axe swinging down hard.
Kian caught it on his shield with his left hand, thrust his sword forward with his right, and ended the man's life.
That was when he noticed something wrong. He glanced down at his shield, right where the axe had struck, and saw a faint, barely visible scratch.
Kian froze. This shield was adamantium-reinforced. There was no way an ordinary mortal's weapon should be able to mark it at all.
"Damn it. Khorne's influence."
Khorne generally granted his mortal followers a stacking buff, the longer the fight went on, the stronger they got.
The more Kian killed here, the more his enemies understood how strong he was, and the more they kept throwing themselves at him regardless, exactly the kind of behavior that pleased Khorne to no end.
Given that ranged and powered weapons were already failing on this entire world, Khorne's influence here was clearly enormous, which meant his blessings would be stacking that much faster too.
He couldn't afford to keep grinding through this crowd. Keep this up much longer and these guys would be strong enough to gut him with a pitchfork.
While Kian had been tangled up with the cultists, their buffs had been climbing the whole time, hitting harder with every passing second.
"See you later!"
Kian let loose one final sweeping strike, cutting down four more men in a single arc, cleared a path in front of him, then turned and ran.
His armour redlined its output, and in an instant he was sprinting back the way he'd come, down the mountain and out toward the golden wheat fields beyond.
The Khornate warriors cursed and gave chase, a tidal wave of bodies pouring down off the mountain after him.
Their physical performance clearly showed signs of the god's blessing, running and leaping with terrifying speed, fast enough to make an Olympic sprinter look like he was standing still.
Fortunately, Kian was faster still. Within moments he'd put four or five kilometers between himself and the pursuit, vanishing into the depths of the golden wheat, leaving them nothing but a clean getaway to curse at.
The cultists couldn't keep up. They stopped, cursing loudly, and gave up the chase.
Kian kept running for over an hour straight. He had no idea how large the battlefield behind him actually was, or whether the enemy had cavalry, so he just kept moving at full speed without stopping.
It wasn't until he felt a faint wave of dizziness hit him that he finally slowed down.
He pulled up his system display and checked. Satiety: 2. Hydration: 3. He was on the verge of starving.
The nutrient gel he'd taken three days ago had finally released everything it had, and he'd dropped into a hunger state.
The system half-gauged his body's condition, and while hunger was a real status now, it wasn't going to actually kill him the way it might in some survival game. He wasn't some fragile PMC grunt who dropped dead after one missed meal.
But hunger would throttle his body into a low-power state, no fast sprints, no burst output, and he needed to eat soon to get his stamina back.
Kian stopped running and took stock of his surroundings.
After over an hour of sprinting, he'd left the golden wheat fields behind and reached the edge of a forest.
The trees here were some kind of alien pine, every single one over sixty meters tall, trunks thick as bridge pylons, the kind that would take dozens of people linking arms to circle.
He was hoping to find some game to hunt in here, or he really was going to starve.
He pushed into the forest and switched on his auspex, trying to scan for large animals.
But Khorne's influence held here too, and even the auspex refused to function. Absurd.
No other choice, then. He'd have to rely on his own superhuman hearing and eyesight.
He wandered through the forest for a good while without spotting a single trace of prey.
Then, suddenly, his nose caught it, a whiff of smoke. Someone had lit a fire.
He went on guard immediately, shield and sword ready, and crept slowly toward the source.
As he moved closer, he picked up music, faint at first.
He listened carefully. A flute. Someone was playing a flute.
He crept forward with even more caution now, unsure whether whoever was ahead was an ordinary local or another Khornate cultist. Best to approach carefully either way.
After a short distance, he pushed through a stand of trees and brush and found a small clearing up ahead. There was the flute player.
A man sat beside a campfire, dressed in ornate white armour, a half-sword hanging at his hip, long golden hair, an air of refined elegance about him.
A fire burned in front of him, a few servant-looking attendants roasting game over it, while the man played his flute in quiet contentment.
Kian's gaze lingered on him for less than a second before losing interest entirely, because standing quietly not far behind the man was a Knight suit, easily over ten meters tall.
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you