[Infinity Arena Final – Match 2]
[Arena: Feywood Great Forest]
[vs. AT Kelberos (Dark Knight)]

Finally, it felt like I was facing the opponent I’d been preparing for.
The ace of the renowned European team, AT. The main star of a dazzling career.
The Dark Knight, hailed as one of the world’s best, stood in my way.

After the promised initial ambush.
He charged through the deep green forest—on a black warhorse.
He seemed dead set on trampling me beneath those hooves.

I have no desire to be flattened under that huge horse.
I rolled toward the side where he held his shield, evading.
With just a slash of my dagger, the beast’s blood soaked the field.

The summoning of the warhorse was undone, and Kelberos returned his feet to the ground.

‘He went for the sword instead of the axe. He must’ve made a concession.’

Out of his two favorite weapons, Kelberos had chosen the sword.
In terms of sheer destructive power, the axe was far superior.
So, choosing the sword meant he had abandoned the thought of overpowering me with pure physicality.

Our weapons clashed for the first time.
His intensity from the start was different from the previous match.

I thought I’d managed to deny him any useful data.
But Kelberos’s defense was far more solid and unyielding than I had anticipated.
And each blow carried a heavy, almost punishing force.

It’s true that Knight classes inherently have high strength.
But this was beyond stats.
Without perfect timing and swordplay, you couldn’t generate this kind of power.

The success window for a parry is longer when my defense is higher and shorter when the incoming attack is stronger.
With this much power, the timing would be tricky to overcome.

A purple-black aura spread around him, as if dominating the surroundings.
The lush green vegetation of the forest began to wilt, gradually turning black.
The flowers that re-bloomed looked grotesque.

[You are affected by ‘Intense Malice’.]
[Each time you are hit by the Dark Knight, this effect stacks.]
[Damage increases in proportion to the stack count.]

The Dark Knight class was released as the polar opposite of the Paladin.
It has no abilities to support allies. No self-healing.
Instead, it inflicts debuffs on enemies and finishes them off with aggressive skills.

The purple-black aura and those unsightly flowers were part of his debuff arsenal.

Just being close to him put me within the range of that curse, stacking the Malice.
He typically relied on defense buffs, but this time it seemed like it was a slow debuff.
If I dragged this out too long, my mobility would suffer.

Normally, this kind of thing would drain a lot of mana.
But this arena happened to be the Feywood Great Forest. Mana was abundant here.

‘It’s a bit stifling.’

There was no visible opening to exploit.
Perhaps due to the previous match, his lower guard was solid, and there were no gaps in his rear defenses.
Even when I tried to force an exchange using skills, he didn’t take the bait easily.

I had managed to stab his sword-wielding wrist several times, but…

[You are affected by ‘Intense Malice’.]
[Damage increases in proportion to the stack count…]

[You are affected by ‘Curse of Nackt’.]
[Movement speed decreases by 3%, proportionate to the stack count.]

With the debuffs stacking, it wasn’t a profitable exchange.
I thought I had blocked the attack, but the mana explosion was delayed, causing damage.

That was one of Reaper’s specialties.
It wasn’t on par with the original, but it was still a troublesome trick to add.
He’d never used this technique in pro matches before.

‘So I wasn’t the only one with a hidden weapon?’

Kelberos drove his sword into the ground.
A sinister ripple spread from the blade, leaving the sky as my only escape.
A shadow rose from the opposite side, arcing toward Kelberos.

I thought he wouldn’t be able to see, but…
The clear ringing sound indicated he’d parried successfully.

Using the silver threads I’d set up, I moved to the branches of the Feywood.
I took refuge in the sky momentarily, then dove toward the ground.
Not even Kelberos could block this with just a guard.

[You are affected by ‘Whispers of the Black Moon’.]
[Attack power, movement speed, and counterattack judgment are boosted…]
[Certain skills are enhanced…]

I used an important buff to shatter his left shoulder guard.
As he raised his shield like a fortress following his sword block,
I grabbed the top of the shield and leaped.

In the upside-down world, I could see Kelberos’s head.

A friendly assassin would use poison and blades to show affection at times like this.
To the side of that pitch-black helmet, I hurled a dagger toward the chain mail covering his neck.
The target was skewed as I curled up, but one of the three hit the mark.

That was a satisfying exchange.
As I hid back in the branches of the Feywood, I set up more silver threads.
Setting them up early makes them useful as footholds later on.

‘This wasn’t their intended use, but…’

The advantage I held in this match was the ability to utilize the air.
He was a slow-footed Dark Knight. There was no reason to bring out the threads other than as footholds.
He wouldn’t get entangled in the threads, so it was smarter to place them above and make use of them myself.

As I threw my hidden weapons to distract him, a shadow rose behind Kelberos.
The black thorn pierced through his shoulder.
The clone that attacked from the opposite direction was crushed in his purple grip.

In that brief opening, I inflicted a wound on his side and leaped.
I used the threads I had set up to spin around.

As soon as I passed over to the other side, a dark slash struck where I had been moments earlier.
The precious thread snapped and hung limp.
A waste, but I immediately focused on targeting Kelberos’s head again.

“Annoying.”
“Assassins are supposed to be, aren’t they?”

Though I said that, the frustration on my end wasn’t resolved either.

Kelberos’s guard wasn’t invincible.
I was the one who had broken through a spearman’s shield before. No one in the world could perfectly defend against me.
But each time I overcame that sturdy wall, my own bleeding grew worse.

[‘Intense Malice’ is…]

The damn debuff continued to stack endlessly.
His attacks grew stronger, and the knight with the ironclad defense showed no sign of collapsing.
Even a rough calculation showed that the current health advantage wasn’t enough.

The enhanced slashes split into multiple directions.
Blocking them wasn’t hard. If I used both daggers, I could always successfully parry.
But if I spent time blocking this slash, it would give Kelberos an opening.

I didn’t want that.
When I moved to the rear using shadows, black rain poured down as if he’d been waiting for it.
He was reading my moves. Or rather, I was being baited.

Assuming we both played our best, I had no choice but to end up here.

‘This won’t work.’

On the surface, it looked like I had the upper hand.
I was dictating the flow in this acrobatic battle.
But the things I could use as footholds were gradually disappearing.

The branches of the Feywood were being severed.
The silver threads I laid down were also finite.
No matter how good I was, I couldn’t move through the air without a foothold.

Bit by bit… my movements were being restricted.

‘I need to take a gamble. Before it’s too late.’

The last of the threads were spent, and a chunk of mana drained away.
As I tried to hide behind the Feywood leaves, a massive chain descended from the sky.

To kill the opponent, I had to take risks myself.
I threw myself within the skill’s range along with my clone, the summoned chain narrowly missing me.
While Kelberos’s shield absorbed the chain, I closed in on his back using the shadows.

It was time to break through his guard──

“You’re quick to make decisions, as always.”

Just when I thought I’d pierced through his guard.
What I saw was a mass of energy writhing on top of Kelberos’s armor.
He’d been hiding it behind his shield all along.

I knew what it was.
It’s a skill used to control an area.
It’s more of a zoning skill to force someone out rather than to target an individual.

If he’s carrying that near his body, there’s only one reason for it.
Self-destruct. That reckless idiot was going to trust his defense and detonate it in front of me.
Kelberos threw away his sword and grabbed my arm.

“You crazy bastard…!”

Even at a glance, there wasn’t much time left on the countdown.
And it wouldn’t take much mana to accelerate it.

There was no time. I had to make use of this brief moment.

I executed the best attack I could manage.
Tearing his deltoid, I drove my dagger into the weak point in his neck armor.
As I tried to press the blade through to cut his windpipe—a massive explosion hurled me away.

The guard gauge didn’t hold up, and I was thrown, crashing into a tree trunk before I finally stopped.
When my sight returned from a brief blackout, my surroundings were blurry.

The match wasn’t over.
It seemed I’d somehow survived, but my condition was no better than that of a corpse.
My remaining health was about 3%. I couldn’t even twitch from all the fractures and external wounds.

The pain was unbearable.
I clenched my teeth to stifle a scream. It was too humiliating to cry out now.
Soon, Kelberos approached with determined strides.

He held a broken sword in his hand.
The dagger I’d gifted him was embedded near his throat, barely catching on his cervical spine.
Kelberos, sounding weary, spoke.

“Who’d have thought I’d be driven this far in such a short time. You’re quite the monster yourself.”

And then, my heart hurt, and stopped hurting.

[You were killed by AT Kelberos.]
[Due to ‘Infinity Arena’, you do not suffer any death penalties.]
[You will respawn in the ‘Arena Player Waiting Room’.]