Eugene wasn’t able to give a reply to her casual greeting. Although he had blocked it with his sword, Carmen’s foot was incredibly heavy, sending Eugene’s body plummeting downward.

‘As expected,’ Eugene hummed in thought.

He wasn’t panicked by this. This was Carmen Lionheart after all, the Captain of the Third Division of the Knights of the Black Lion. She was Gilead’s aunt, and one of the oldest knights that Eugene had ever met. Since Carmen had been born to the direct line, she had to have learned the White Flame Formula, so if Carmen hadn’t been as strong as she had just shown herself to be, Eugene would have instead felt disappointed.

Bang!

The wind whirling around Eugene spooled out in a wide circle, arresting his fall. As Eugene gently landed on the ground, he glanced down at his stiff arms.

‘My strength falls below hers by quite a bit,’ he noted.

A stone that Carmen had just picked up casually and thrown at him had almost pierced right through his Cloak of Darkness. Even the Death Knight that he had met in Nahama hadn’t been as strong as Carmen.

This fact slightly touched on Eugene’s self-esteem. Of course, the Death Knight he had met there was just a poor example of a Death Knight. Next to the Death Knights that Eugene had seen in his previous life, especially those controlled by Belial, otherwise known as the Demon King of Incarceration’s Staff, Amelia Merwin’s Death Knight was so crudely constructed that it couldn’t even stand in comparison.

Eugene darkly thought to himself, ‘To think that she fucked up the Death Knight made from my corpse to that extent….’

Making a Death Knight from his corpse was already more than enough to make him tremble in rage, but the fact that his Death Knight had been so weak only further annoyed Eugene and made him even angrier. Eugene tried not to think about it as much as he could help it, but recalling those unpleasant memories in such a situation made him grind his teeth in anger.

“...Was my greeting too harsh?” Carmen asked as she slowly fell towards him, having spotted how twisted Eugene’s expression had become.

While straightening the coat flapping around her shoulders, Carmen eyed Eugene.

“It seems to have made you very angry,” she commented.

“I wasn’t angered because of you, Lady Carmen,” Eugene replied, as he calmed himself by releasing his rage in an exhale.

Above, the knights on their wyverns were still flying over. It wasn’t just in the sky either. The knights who had been spread throughout the forest were also gathering at this location.

“Aren’t you focussing a bit too much effort on encircling me?” Eugene asked as he saw this happen.

“It’s because you’re a lot more capable than we had expected. After all, Cyan still hasn’t been able to shake off the illusion of his fears,” Carmen replied with an aloof expression...