Imperial Throne

Chapter 3: Bloodline Knight

"Knight!"

Hearing this title, Yam couldn’t help but shudder, a wave of fear and dread rising in his heart.

Since childhood, he had listened to his father speak of those powerful figures, and he knew well that these “bloodline nobles” were worlds apart from commoners like them.

So, he dared not delay and quickly went to the hut to find his younger brother, then came out to rejoin his parents.

The four of them didn’t even dare descend the mountain by the main path, instead slipping into the nearby forest, attempting to descend through the dense woods.

Ion frequently looked back at the firelight on the mountain, his expression filled with deep sorrow.

He had once served in the military, and from the number of soldiers alone, he estimated that there were at least over fifty men climbing the mountain.

That was already a quarter of Gem City's military force. And for such a deployment, there would certainly be a knight leading the unit. That was precisely why Ion didn’t even dare to think about rescue, he could only flee with his family.

If it had been merely fifty ordinary soldiers, with the current strength and scale of the Iron Wolf Mercenary Group, they could have handled it even if caught in a surprise night raid.

But with a knight leading them, the situation was completely different.

This was a cross-class difference in power!

In the current world, to enter the ranks of the nobility, even as the lowest-ranked “Knight” one had to activate their own bloodline.

It was exactly for this reason that the term “bloodline noble” existed, because every noble possessed a bloodline. The only distinction lay in the quality of the bloodline.

Back when Ion joined the Royal Army, he had naturally received training techniques to stimulate the bloodline. However, from enlistment to retirement, he ultimately failed to activate his own. Later, he pinned his hopes on his children, but it wasn’t until his eldest son died a few years ago that he realized, without the special secret potions distributed in the military, the stimulation techniques alone were not enough to activate a bloodline.

Although the bloodline couldn’t be activated, military combat skills were still very real.

Ion’s three children had trained from a young age, becoming highly proficient in military swordsmanship, lacking only real combat experience.

The soldiers of Gem City served both as city guards and the lord’s private troops.

They were conscripted from various villages in Gem Territory, and their training naturally couldn’t compare with the regular Royal Army.

If not for their superior equipment, they might not even be able to defeat local militia or self-defense squads.

That was why the soldier from earlier had been cut down by the hot-blooded Yam in just one strike.

But while Yam was caught up in adrenaline, Ion remained very clear-headed.

Even if the Iron Wolf Mercenary Group was gaining some renown, they couldn’t compare to a true knight.

Without a knight who had activated their bloodline, even gathering hundreds or thousands of mercenaries would still only amount to a small-time group.

The four of them dared not linger and hurried through the dense forest, soon arriving near the foot of the mountain.

But just before stepping out of the forest, Ion’s whole body tensed up, his hair standing on end, and he froze in place.

He stared ahead in horror.

Not far in front of them stood a man.

A middle-aged man, just over thirty, who didn’t appear aged. His hair was short and grey, and he exuded a cold, sinister aura.

He wore no armor, just a coarse hemp robe, but held a chopping blade in his right hand.

The blade shimmered like a spring of jade, chillingly cold under the moonlight.

“Father!” Yam was no fool. Seeing only one person blocking their way but sensing his father’s fear, he immediately understood. “Let’s fight!”

“Give me the sword!”

Ion didn’t respond. He reached out and snatched the longsword from Yam’s hand.

He knew his second son had never seen a bloodline noble in action and didn’t understand how powerful knights truly were.

But he had seen it firsthand during his military service and knew that even if it were the entire Iron Wolf Mercenary Group along with those fifty soldiers on the mountain, they wouldn’t be a match for this knight.

“I’ll hold him off. You take your brother and your mother and run!”

“Father?” Yam looked at Ion in horror.

But Ion didn’t turn to look at his second son. He continued, “As long as you leave Gem Territory, you’ll be safe.”

“Father!”

“Run!”

“None of you are going anywhere,” said the middle-aged man with the blade, his voice deep and cold. “The Baron has given the order, all you mountain bandits must die tonight.”

“Nonsense!” Yam shouted, youthful and full of fire. “We’re a mercenary group, not bandits!”

But the knight only sneered mockingly, saying nothing more as he suddenly charged toward Ion.

“Go!” Ion roared, then raised the rusty sword and rushed forward to meet him.

He could see things far more clearly than his son, he understood that the recent growth of the Iron Wolf Mercenary Group had gradually drawn many villagers who could no longer bear the heavy taxes, and that had completely enraged the Baron of Gem Territory. That was the true cause of tonight’s disaster.

But even with such clarity, Ion still felt both grief and helplessness. He knew that since the Baron had sent a knight to block their path, there was no chance of escape for any of them.

What he was doing now was merely buying a little more time for his son and wife to flee.

With strength in his hand, he swung the rusty sword at the knight’s chopping blade.

Seeing the rust-covered sword, the knight’s gaze grew even more disdainful and mocking.

Although Gem Territory was plagued by harsh governance, the Baron understood well what his authority relied on.

Therefore, he was generous toward his soldiers and knights.

This knight’s weapon was not an ordinary iron blade, but rather a refined foreign-metal weapon, even superior to the elite arms issued to the Baron’s private troops.

Such a weapon could not only shatter a rusty sword, but could even pierce the armor worn by Gem Territory’s officers.

Yet in the next instant, the knight’s mocking expression turned to one of utter shock.

His chopping blade had been broken, cleaved by that rusty sword!

What was meant to be a decapitating strike, blade and head severed in one motion, was abruptly thwarted.

Caught off guard and stunned, the knight was too slow to react.

Forced into a hasty retreat by Ion’s full-force thrust, he barely tilted his head back in time to avoid being pierced through the throat.

Even so, the blade still grazed him, breaking the skin and drawing a bead of blood.

…

Robin didn’t know how long he had been asleep.

But he knew he had been awakened by a foul stench.

The first thing he saw upon opening his eyes was his own blade cleaving through a foreign-metal chopping blade and then the tip of the sword drawing a bead of blood from the opponent’s neck.

The foul stench was coming from that very droplet of blood!

“What the hell is this?” Robin muttered. “And what era is it now? Just how long did I sleep?”

He knew nothing about what had happened during his slumber.

But he quickly noticed that his current surroundings were completely different from before.

He remembered that when he first regained awareness in the past, his environment had been cramped and suffocating.

He couldn’t even turn around, and the slightest movement would be deemed the Demon Sword going berserk.

After the first “holder” in his memory died, he had been sealed away no one dared use him again.

But now…

Robin discovered that he was in a vast, white space with no visible boundaries in sight.

He couldn’t directly observe the outside world like before. Now, he had to spiritually reach out to the wielder’s soul to perceive the ten meters around them.

At the moment, suspended in front of him was the bead of blood from the knight.

The droplet emitted waves of foul odor that made Robin gag.

With just a glance, his mind was flooded with information about the blood.

“A drop of mongrel blood, mixed with at least a dozen different bloodlines, no wonder it stinks so badly.”

He then sensed the soul of the current sword wielder, and a strange expression appeared on his face.

“Not only is the bloodline mixed, but it’s also extremely thin. What the hell happened to this world? Didn’t they once overthrow the Gods and establish the so-called ‘Universal Bloodline Power’? How did it end up like this?”

As he looked at the foul-smelling blood droplet, a thought stirred within Robin. He waved his hand and shot it into Ion’s body.

…

Inside the sword, Robin processed everything in an instant, then sent the blood droplet through Ion’s soul into his bloodstream. In the outside world, not even a single breath had passed.

A strange expression appeared on Ion’s face, quickly replaced by a flash of joy in his eyes.

The knight, already stung by his earlier misstep, saw the joy on Ion’s face and instantly assumed that Ion was secretly rejoicing at having wounded him.

Enraged, he shouted, “You treacherous scum! You dare trick me? I had no intention of using my bloodline power, but since you’re so shameless, don’t blame me for being ruthless!”

As he shouted, flames suddenly erupted from the knight’s body.

His coarse robe was instantly reduced to ashes, and the broken blade in his hand was likewise engulfed in fire.

But this was no ordinary fire, when it fused with the blade, it transformed into a ghostly blue flame, eerie and terrifying.

The next moment, the knight, now a man ablaze, charged at Ion with even greater speed.

Though his blade was broken, two-thirds of it remained, and the ghostly blue flame roared along the blade with power several times greater than before.

But Ion showed no fear. On the contrary, his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

He gripped the longsword tightly and, with a roar of his own, charged to meet the blow.

At that moment, flames also erupted from his sword.

But unlike the knight’s ghostly blue, these flames were pitch black, like the abyss itself.

Under the black fire’s scorching heat, the rust on the sword dissolved completely.

In Ion’s hands, the blade no longer resembled a sword at all. It looked as though he were wielding the abyss itself.

“Wha—” the knight let out a strangled cry of shock.

Before he could finish his words, Ion’s sword had pierced his heart, crushing it completely.

In that instant, the flames on the knight’s body vanished without a trace, without lingering even for a second.

Though Ion had never activated his bloodline, he was a veteran of the regular army.

One of the most frequently repeated lessons was that when surrounding and killing an enemy knight, the heart must be destroyed immediately, because the heart was the source of power for bloodline nobles below the sixth tier.

Once the heart was destroyed, even the noblest bloodline would vanish in an instant. That was why Ion had aimed directly for the heart.

The knight, who had grown increasingly overconfident, was caught completely unprepared, and was slain by Ion without resistance.

Only in the final moment, as his consciousness faded into darkness, did he suddenly realize: since the enemy wielded a divine weapon of foreign metal, how could he not be a bloodline noble too?