## Chapter 844 – The Black Knight

“The necromancer is gone now! So rest assured, knight! You have been rescued!!”
“Rescued…? I am in this darkness…!”

He seems to be in a state of mental confusion.

He died and came back to life, so it’s only natural he’d be in a chaotic state of mind. Who else in the world gets to experience being brought back from the dead? So, in this kind of situation, there’s no point in trying anything fancy.

You just have to keep pushing him with questions!

“Stop talking nonsense! Who are you and where did you come from!!! Identify yourself, knight!!”
“I don’t know…! I don’t remember…! I was definitely on that battlefield…! Kagh!”
“How can you not remember the most important part, you goddamn murderous bastard!!”
“Murder!! Ughaaaaaack!!”

ㅡThump! Thump!
ㅡThump! Thump!

The Death Knight, overcome with excitement for some reason, suddenly started thrashing around, shaking his waist like crazy. It could be described as a fit of convulsions, but since he has no arms or legs, it just looks like he’s humping the air. Like this, a creature on the verge of death inevitably craves to reproduce.

Life and death are connected.

Death yearns for life, and life soon brings death. Perhaps the Death Knight appeared before me to teach me this lesson.

“Our flag!! Where is the flag!!”
“What?”

Anyway, after humping the air for a while, the Death Knight shouted something urgently.

“We were ambushed! The enemies came in from the flank!! I was going to enjoy the festival with my wife when I returned! That evil necromancer! He imprisoned us!!! Release me! We must retreat immediately!! Flank attack!!! Do not restrain me!! The flag has been captured…! We must not abandon our weapons! Ah! To that place with my wife!!”
“This crazy bastard!!”

Such distracting words.

It was a chaotic way of speaking, spewing out rambling, incoherent words typical of a madman. This guy is completely insane. Not in his right mind, his memories are unclear and jumbled up.

Is interrogation impossible?
Is there really nothing to be learned?

ㅡThwack!

Frustrated, I punched him hard in the solar plexus.

“Gwoeuuuueck!!”

He let out a sound like a goose, and then spoke slowly, in a tone that seemed to show a glimmer of reason.

“Haa… Where is this…? I can’t see anything…!”

Good! Whether it’s a household appliance or a Death Knight, you have to hit it to make it listen!

“Calm down. You’ve been rescued. Speak slowly.”
“A human voice…! Keuek…! My head…!”
“Good. Slowly. Tell me what you know. You’ve regained your senses now.”
“My senses…? Ah! I don’t have much time to stay sane…! Quickly, before that…!”
“Where did you come from?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know the location! I was trapped in an unknown place! My memories are unclear, as if I were in a black lake…! But I know this! I killed many people while escaping to this place…!! Keuheuk!”

It was a desperate confession of murder.

“Why did you kill them!! Answer me!!”
“If I don’t eat, my body will collapse…!”

This cannibalistic bastard!!

“The evil necromancer injected that instinct into me!! There were many like me there!!! I must retrieve the flag!”
“Others like you? Are there more of them!”

He spoke as if implying there were more Death Knights. Now that he mentions it, if there’s a necromancer manufacturing these things, there probably are more!

He was a strong Death Knight. It wouldn’t be strange if they were researching or experimenting to use these as a fighting force. Those guys have done that kind of thing more than once.

“I can’t understand…! The city where my wife is waiting is gone!!! I escaped! I have to go home! Taking advantage of a gap when control weakened, I killed some of them and escaped!!! But my soul is already bound…! We were ambushed on the flank and the flag was captured…! There was confusion in the command…! We must retreat immediately! If we fall, the main force will be hit! Messenger! Where is the messenger!”

His words were so insane that a proper interpretation was impossible, but if I were to extract only the main points, it felt like this knight had died in battle and somehow escaped from the necromancer.

Did the evil sorcery malfunction?
Is that why he regains his senses from time to time?

I don’t know the intermediate process. Anyway, whether they picked up the corpse of this fallen knight or summoned his soul, they were experimenting to revive him… and ended up allowing him to escape.

“I was restrained and exposed to all sorts of evil experiments and spells. I saw flesh growing from bone countless times…! The others went mad…!! You can’t mix personalities just by stitching brains together! You can’t find the soul even if you connect flesh and replace the spine! That’s why I couldn’t escape with them! It’s not my fault! The flag was captured! Give the order, General!!”
“What the hell is that flag to you…!”

He was extremely obsessed with the flag and spewed out words. Was he a standard-bearer when he was alive? Anyway, it was still hard to understand, but I could clearly see what this Death Knight had gone through in the process of being revived.

“And!!!”

ㅡFlash!

Just then, the Death Knight’s body leaped up like a freshly caught fish. The convulsions are getting worse and worse. It’s clear that both his body and his reason are collapsing.

“That skull magician!!!!!”
“What…!”

Amidst the collapse, the terrified Death Knight mentioned a skull magician…!

“He’s the one who…!!!”
“…!”

An important clue. I immediately pricked up my ears and focused on his words. No matter what kind of crazy words come out, I have to remember them properly, record them in a document, and preserve them!

“We were ambushed on the flank and the flag was captured!!”
“You son of a bitch, forget the flag, what about the skull magician!!!!”

Who the hell ambushed you on the flank!!!!

“Kagh!!”

ㅡThud.

My shout was in vain as the Death Knight, having finished his convulsions, spat out black blood and slumped down. This bastard! Are you kidding me!!!

“Agh, goddamn it!! This flag-obsessed bastard!!”

His heart isn’t beating, he’s not breathing.

Is it impossible to hear any more testimony? I immediately looked at Lysia, who, with a serious face, stretched out her finger and cast black magic again.

ㅡ…

However… the Death Knight did not move again.

Is he completely dead now? If he has no energy, it’s possible. And well, it’s not like we can revive a dead guy again. I took a deep breath, calmed my intense anger, and regained my composure.

Still, I did find out a few things.

“Goddamn it.”
“Let’s do an autopsy first.”

Yeah, we have to do an autopsy first.

If we rummage through his insides, we might find traces of evil magic. I immediately grabbed Lysia’s shoulder as she was about to squat down.

“Wait a minute. Lysia. It might explode or shoot out a curse.”
“This one knows that.”

ㅡZzzzzzz.

Lysia deployed black magic and began to cut open the Death Knight’s abdomen.

“Ugh… It’s so gruesome…!”
“What the hell was this guy fighting in a war with?”

Hilde was horrified, and Karin showed interest in that direction. Unfortunately, there were no patterns on the armor, so identification was impossible.

“Did they dig up a corpse from the battlefield or something?”
“They might have… I can’t say for sure.”

I answered heavily.
I can’t know for sure at the moment.

“Haa. Well, anyway, this is even worse than a real black person.”
“What?”
“Nothing, never mind.”
“How boring.”

The Death Knight’s madness was real.

“Anyway, Katt. You have to tell me properly when we get back, okay?”
“I know. But for now, let’s focus on what Lysia is doing.”

First, we have to watch this.

ㅡRummage, rummage.

Lysia, having completely cut open the flesh and skin of the Death Knight’s abdomen and chest, summoned a small, black hand and began to rummage through and sort out the internal organs.

“How terrible. This is what an undead is…”
“I don’t feel any life force at all.”

Liz-noona and Ari say. We were sitting around the corpse, watching what Lysia was doing.

ㅡSquish, squish.
ㅡTearrrr.

The black hand lays out the extracted black internal organs on the snowy field.

During the age of imperialism, the Belgians believed that since the Congolese had black skin, their internal organs would naturally be black as well, and in order to prove this, they killed innocent Congolese people, pulled out all their internal organs, and tried to prove it. But there’s no way a normal person’s internal organs would be black. The Belgians, proven wrong in their hypothesis, were furious, and insisted that there must be black internal organs somewhere in the world, and continued to hunt the Congolese. It is a famous story that anyone who has studied history knows that they even created a sport called `Congolese Internal Organ Extraction Competition` in this process, competing among themselves, receiving awards, and doing all sorts of evil things.

Anyway.

These extracted internal organs were all black, and rather than internal organs… they looked like artificial organs created for some kind of evil purpose. I’ve killed quite a few people, so I have thorough knowledge of internal organs and anatomy.

That’s why I dare to say that this is absolutely not normal.

“The internal organs are too strange, aren’t they?”
“Yeah… They are. What the heck are these?”

Liz-noona nodded at Karin’s words, and

“These aren’t human internal organs.”

Claudia agreed.

“It certainly doesn’t seem like normal internal organs.”
“Because he’s undead. They probably created and transplanted internal organs that fit the function as needed.”

Everyone nodded at my guess.

Undead don’t need to do `normal` eating or breathing, so it doesn’t matter if their internal organs are screwed up.

Rather, if you’re considering efficiency, it would be better to shove in internal organs customized to the necromancer’s taste. For the undead, internal organs are not living organs, but just parts.

“The muscles are also bizarre… Even the bones are very interesting. They seem to be very old bones… Hooh. To fill the inside with these things…”

Lysia was not a woman related to necromancers, but she showed great interest and continued to extract internal organs. Of course, none of us could even guess the purpose of these crazy internal organs.

It was an inhuman product born from curses and sorcery, and paranoid madness. Ordinary people like us couldn’t even imagine it.

ㅡPause.

And it was at that moment.

“This is…”
“…”
“…”

The black hand that Lysia was using began to take out strange objects from deep inside the body.

There was some kind of shining black ornament, and something like a small statue, and dice about the size of a fist with geometric patterns on them.

What are these?

“Is it an artifact? Lysia-unnie. Do you know what that is?”
“What could it be…?”
“Currently, no kind of power or magic… can be felt at all.”

Lysia couldn’t give a proper answer to Winia and Hilde’s questions.

They are suspicious objects even to me. Those are probably the Death Knight’s power source or mental restraint? And to prevent the body from collapsing? They must have put them inside his organs for that purpose. They wouldn’t have put them in for fun, so there must be a purpose.

“Maybe it’s because he used up all his power now. I had a pretty intense fight with him.”
“That’s highly likely. Anyway, it’s better to keep this…”
“Yeah, we should keep it. Can I do a little research at home and then submit it to the church?”
“You’re allowing it?”
“It’s not about allowing or not. Lysia comes first.”
“Hehehe, thank you. Then I will keep this.”

I have to write a report anyway.

I’ll let Lysia see it first and then give it to the Saintess.

And so the work continued.

The hand that Lysia summoned finally emptied the Death Knight’s stomach completely. They also cut open his skull, and inside was a black orb that I had seen once before.

As expected, it didn’t give off any magic, probably because it had run out of power.
And it was a little broken.

That’s when they had pulled everything out.

ㅡTrickle.
ㅡSizzle.

“Oh my, it’s melting?”
“…”

The Death Knight’s body began to collapse rapidly, turning into black pus. The extracted internal organs were the same. All that remained were the black armor made of inorganic material and these evil and impure items.

In this way, the Death Knight, a tormented soul, returned completely to death. He committed numerous murders. He was a guy who deserved to die.

Still, he was messed with by a necromancer… I feel sorry for him. I mentally reviewed and organized the facts I had learned while interrogating him as accurately as possible.

He appeared recently.

Then there is a high probability that he was manufactured somewhere in the Karga Kingdom. The heretics’ base must exist somewhere.

Above all… the skull magician.