Chapter 387: Knight’s Banquet (Part 8)

Knight King Char and the Giant Whale Knights entered their inn room and immediately turtled up, refusing to show their faces again.

This time, he had completely lost face.

From now on, he’d probably have to keep his tail between his legs and keep a low profile.

In everyone’s eyes, Knight King Char had completely turned into “Turtle King Char.”

No knight would respect this Knight King anymore.

The only topic of gossip people talked about over meals was mocking Char and the Dilmurt family.

“Teaching a scumbag who killed his father and mother and betrayed his country, and he still has the face to come to the Knight Feast.”

“You said it. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“…”

Recently, Fabiana especially liked eating in the dining hall.

Listening to everyone brazenly belittle the Dilmurt family, even cracking hell jokes about her parents, she still showed no expression, just quietly ate her food with her head down.

Niubao sat right next to her, tasked with watching her to prevent her from losing her temper on the spot.

Though having Niubao watch Fabiana was an abstract concept in itself.

Because if a fight actually broke out, Niubao would be the first to charge in.

After all, Fabiana was one of Niubao’s earliest friends, second only to Lady Samimi.

Niubao was the type who valued loyalty above all.

Fabiana was also her sword instructor. If it really came to a fight, the cow would pick up a blade and charge in.

So in the end, it was still up to Fabiana to suppress her anger herself.

Bearing it while building up her killing intent, waiting for it all to explode at once.

Just then, the noisy dining hall suddenly fell silent.

“Holy Knight, hello.”

A powerful voice sounded beside her.

“?”

Niubao was eating happily, turned her head to look, but saw no one.

“Over here.”

The voice sounded again.

Niubao looked down and found a dwarf barely over five feet tall standing beside her.

Though short, his build was extremely broad horizontally.

His muscles bulged like rocks, full beard, messy hair shooting up. He didn’t look like a knight at all.

“Hello.”

Niubao replied simply and honestly.

“I’ve met your Grand Leader. I don’t see him taking in a stupid half-beast like you into the Knight Order.”

The bearded dwarf opened with full mockery.

“Grand Leader? Who’s the Grand Leader? I don’t know.”

Niubao looked completely confused, answering completely off-topic.

“You don’t know the Grand Leader? Are you a fake Holy Knight?”

The bearded dwarf raised an eyebrow.

“I’m a real Holy Knight.”

Niubao immediately pulled out her High-Level Saint Certificate.

“An ox’s mouth doesn’t match a horse’s leg. Half-beasts really have no brains.”

The bearded dwarf spat out a racial slur, then turned and left.

Only after he left did the dining hall get noisy again.

Earlier, everyone had been holding their breath.

Only Niubao, this beastman nun, dared to talk back to that dwarf, and even left him speechless.

“He’s the West Coast Fighting God.”

Once he was far away, Fabiana spoke in a low voice.

“He’s shorter than me.”

Niubao looked clueless, completely missing the point.

“Because he’s a dwarf.”

Fabiana explained helplessly.

“He’s actually a Forge Master hired by Count Salam, and he works as a bodyguard on the side. Strange personality, terrible temper. Mino, eat up. Let’s not provoke him.”

Too bad Samimi wasn’t there.

Otherwise, she would have ruthlessly laid into him.

Turns out, the so-called “West Coast Fighting God” was no brawler, no warrior, not even a knight.

His main job was a blacksmith.

He just took on the part-time “Fighting God” gig.

Yet a man like that, with just a casual display, could accomplish what countless knights couldn’t do in a lifetime.

People like him were the real masters.

In modern terms, he was the West Coast’s Sweeping Monk.

Unbelievably strong.

The Dwarf race, like the Elf race, were classic races in Western fantasy stories.

One or the other, never both.

But in this book, Rose Fantasy Battle , these two races weren’t major ones.

They were called races, but in reality, they were more like two small villages, with a total population of only a few hundred.

That was why these two races had absurdly high base stats.

Almost every character introduced was unreasonably strong.

The Dwarf race was even smaller than the Elf race.

So far, only this one dwarf had appeared.

And he showed up as a Fighting God.

Meanwhile, on the other side…

Samimi was still in her room, tweaking her doppelganger, Black Mi.

Lately, she’d put all her energy into magic research, picking up paper and pen again, and had rarely become diligent Mi.

She had adjusted Black Mi to be more real than the real thing.

No matter what detection method, it was hard to tell she wasn’t human, and hard to find flaws in her appearance.

But there was still one problem.

Black Mi couldn’t get hurt.

Once hurt, her nature as a magical construct would be exposed.

Because although Black Mi simulated internal organs, she didn’t simulate blood.

Of course, exposure didn’t mean she couldn’t fight.

But Samimi was quite idle lately, and she was a perfectionist.

Since she had nothing to do, she might as well keep researching.

So lately, she’d been pondering—

How to simulate liquid magic power.

This wasn’t a baseless fantasy.

Because there was a real example.

Certain monsters could disguise magic power as blood.

And in this regard, the most typical example was vampire blood magic.

So Samimi had recently dug out a large number of magic books on the Blood Clan and vampires.

These books had all been gathering dust in Niubao’s storage space before.

The other world had no internet, no phone.

Her biggest entertainment during travel to pass the time was reading.

So she actually had quite a few obscure materials like this.

The principle of blood magic wasn’t that complicated.

By highly condensing magic power and making it viscous, you could simulate a state similar to blood.

The problem was, that was a unique magic nature of vampires.

It had nothing to do with the magic structure of human mages.

How could a human mage’s fire, ice, wind, thunder, earth, and lightning ever be disguised as blood?

But Samimi was different.

She wasn’t an elemental mage.

Her Thorn Magic and Healing Light were both fundamentally soft magic powers.

Completely different from those violent natural elements.

In theory, it was entirely possible to imitate the Blood Clan’s blood magic.

And a vampire’s blood magic was essentially just a variant of healing magic.

Its biggest feature was rapid physical repair.

As for those so-called blood blade attacks, they were just compressing high-density magic power and flinging it out. They weren’t even advanced attack magic in essence.

After all, Samimi was the last demon-hunting nun of this era.

Probably the only Saint in the Church still seriously studying vampires.

She even remembered the connection witch she’d encountered before who could use Abyssal Healing Power.

All she could say was, healing magic had way too many variants.

And all these evil races, how come they could all use healing magic?

“Tsk. Pastoralists are weak because their bodies are too fragile.”

Samimi sighed as she wrote.

“If the body were tough enough, paired with healing magic, fighting while self-healing would be way better than being a stationary mage.”

This path had been tried by the Former Archbishop.

Too bad that guy’s theory was bad, talent was poor, and in the end, he turned himself into a neither-human-nor-ghost mess. Single attack pattern, poor endurance. He completely failed to bring out the potential of a self-healing system.

Thinking this, Samimi’s eyes lit up.

“I’m a magic genius.”

She suddenly had a breakthrough.

Since she was an archbishop now, she could finish the path the former archbishop couldn’t.

She just needed to mix and thicken Thorn Magic and Healing Light to simulate a red liquid similar to blood, then pump it all through Black Mi.

Disguise it as blood.

Simple and crude.

Plus, the Thorn Magic could even dye the color.

Though it was a bit darker, as long as it was red enough.

And once the magic blood was fully pumped through Black Mi, Samimi quickly discovered—

Black Mi’s physical strength started skyrocketing.

Far beyond the limits of a normal human body.

Her bones and muscles were originally made of linear magic power bindings, like some kind of mecha frame.

Now, with high-density magic blood circulation, her toughness and strength instantly exploded.

As for those simulated internal organs, they were just decorations anyway.

Except for the Book Centipede core power source, even if the other organs were destroyed, it didn’t matter.

It was only then that Samimi realized she had been limited by the “human creation” mindset.

She had been making Black Mi according to “human standards.”

Why was she so obsessed with creating an ordinary person?

Why not just make a humanoid monster?

From that moment on, the magic blood inside Black Mi began flowing through her whole body.

Her physical abilities had already far surpassed ordinary people.

The cost was a massive increase in magic power consumption and skyrocketing maintenance difficulty.

But in exchange—

Black Mi had truly become a full-fledged muscle mage.

Even things the original Samimi couldn’t do, Black Mi could do for her.

And all of this was possible only because of the legendary magic item, the Book Centipede.

Without it, this structure couldn’t be stabilized.

Otherwise, she would have already copied Fabiana and forged an army of Mis.

But even so, from this point on, the Book Centipede finally lived up to its value as a legendary magic item.

Samimi’s thinking was completely broken open.

Since making it look human was just a disguise anyway.

It was better to just flip it around.

Don’t make Black Mi more human-like.

Make her less human-like.

Strengthen power, speed, reaction, jumping, flexibility, defense.

Plus overload, overclock, berserk.

Turn her into a humanoid monster wearing a human skin.

Compared to a lifelike doppelganger, keeping a humanoid monster around was clearly more practical.

Niubao had been with her all this time, giving her so much security.

From now on, she would use her own muscle magic doppelganger to give Niubao the same security.

However, solving one problem brought a new one.

Black Mi’s physical strength was up.

But operation difficulty also skyrocketed.

The stronger the power, the harder the fine control.

Before, it was one-button combos.

Now it was manual execution.

Worse, she had to cast spells while controlling Black Mi.

Multi-tasking, multi-line operation.

A moment of distraction in combat meant full of openings.

Right now, she couldn’t have Black Mi perform complex close-combat techniques.

At most, simple punches.

Even swinging a sword or blade required care, afraid of hurting herself.

So Samimi temporarily concluded—

Even if physical strength was maxed out, for now, Black Mi was better suited as a muscle magic artillery platform.

“Can I really only be a muscle mage…”

Samimi was agonizing when there was a knock at the door.

“Bang, bang, bang.”

She got up and opened it.

Standing outside was a familiar yet unfamiliar woman.

Seeing that grassy light green, curly hair, Samimi’s eyelid twitched.

She remembered who this was.

“William Shirley.”

Not many people made Samimi remember their name. This one happened to count.

“It’s Shirley William.”

The visitor corrected with a blank expression.

“And I’m not called the Heretic Leader.”

“I’m Xia Mi. She’s my sister, Xia Lu.”

Samimi didn’t bat an eye, lying through her teeth.

“Never thought I’d see you here.”

Shirley William sneered.

“What are you doing here?”

“And what are you doing here?”

Samimi shot back.

“I’m the magic advisor hired by Count Salam.”

Shirley William shrugged.

“This noble has some skill. He posted the job directly to the Continental Magic Academy, and they sent me over. I was pretty unwilling at first, but now seeing you, this trip was worth it.”

Right.

This person was the Council President of the Wind School at the Continental Magic Academy.

The strongest wind magic user of the younger generation.

If not counting the Lion King, who had already advanced to the Tutor rank, she could even be called the strongest young mage.

“Do you know what those nobles want to do?”

Samimi asked in a deep voice.

“No, and I don’t want to.”

Shirley William sneered.

“I’m going back to the Magic Academy after this job.”

“Then what are you smiling at?”

Samimi raised an eyebrow.

“Because you being here means something’s going to happen.”

Shirley William stared at her, a smirk curling her lips.

“And when you stir up trouble, I get a chance to beat you.”

“Do you know what they’re saying at the Continental Magic Academy lately?”

“What?”

“They say you, the Healing School President, are the mysterious Heretic Leader.”

Shirley William squinted.

“If I don’t beat you, I’ll never be number one.”

Samimi’s mouth twitched.

“Which idiot first called me the Heretic Leader?”

“Rebecca.”

Shirley William replied.

“…Rebecca, huh. What a distant name.”

Samimi paused, then asked:

“Is she still at the Magic Academy?”

“In a way, and in a way not.”

Shirley William started talking in riddles.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s about to graduate.”

Shirley William said flatly.

“She’s not from a Magic Family, so she’ll probably go home soon.”

“Good.”

Samimi nodded, her eyes gradually turning cold.

“I’ve got research. No need to see you out.”

But Shirley William didn’t leave.

“One year.”

She stared at Samimi, her gaze sharp.

“I want to test. Just what level your magic has reached now.”

“There will be a chance.”

Samimi remained expressionless, then turned and closed the door, leaving her outside.