Chapter 368: The Black-Armored Reaper

Luke rolled across the bridge, his body scraping against the stone as the cold wind sliced through the air. Behind him, the wyvern crashed down in a deafening impact, its guttural roar echoing through the distance. One of its wings bent at an unnatural angle, bone snapping with a wet crack.

He hit the frozen ground at the edge of the forest, the fall knocking the breath from his lungs. His bow slipped from his grasp and skidded a few feet away. Luke forced himself upright, heart hammering, and looked up, straight into the creature’s face. The wyvern’s eyes burned with hatred, its breath rolling over him in waves of heat thick as molten iron.

“Hey, human,” Franky said from somewhere under his cloak, his tone caught between sarcasm and panic. “Pretty sure you’ve really pissed him off now.”

Luke summoned his kukris into his hands. The wyvern roared again, the wounds along its neck and chest glowing with pulsing light, the unmistakable warning that the next blast was coming. A second later, fire erupted not just from its jaws but from the cracks torn open across its body.

The heat hit like a wall. Luke saw the torrent racing toward him, a living tide of flame. Instead of retreating, he bolted sideways toward the fallen bow, the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose. He triggered a dash, skimming the edge of the inferno, snatched the weapon from the snow, and shoved it into his storage item. But before he could move again, the flames were already upon him.

The air trembled with heat. The fire roared closer. He was out of time, and he knew it.

Then,

“Not on my watch!”

The voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. Silver threads whipped through the air, wrapping around the wyvern’s throat and yanking it violently aside. The stream of fire veered off course, scorching empty ground.

From above, a figure dropped through the smoke with perfect, lethal grace. Erza Grimhart.

Luke barely had time to process what he saw. The scythe sliced upward in a clean arc, driving deep through the wound in the wyvern’s neck. The strike was so precise, so fast, that the beast didn’t even have the chance to scream.

A heartbeat later, its head came free, torn off by the tension of the threads. Fire spewed from the ragged stump as the headless body staggered, then collapsed in a heap that shook the earth.

A notification flickered into Luke’s vision:

[The Midnight Lord has been defeated! The path to the castle is now open.]

He exhaled hard and dropped to the ground, the weight of exhaustion finally catching up. His chest heaved, every breath thick and uneven, but for the first time since the battle began, he felt it. The raw, unfamiliar weight of victory.

Then another message appeared.

[Doom Explosion Activated]

Charlie had left her auto-trigger skill on.

“It’s going to explode!” Luke shouted, leaping to his feet.

Erza reacted instantly, darting back with a swift step. She’d dealt with Charlie’s quirks before. A sharp crack split the air, followed by a dull thud. The wyvern’s corpse convulsed once, a fissure ripping open across its torso before a small internal explosion burst outward. The fire sputtered briefly, contained to a flicker.

“Guess it’s not that effective on something this size,” Luke muttered, watching the smoke drift upward.

“Or on something too powerful to care,” Erza replied, twirling her scythe before resting it against her shoulder.

Footsteps echoed from the forest. Luke turned back toward the trees and saw Princess Charlie emerging from between them, Jack close beside her. The moment she spotted Luke, she grabbed Jack by the arm and pointed toward him — the gesture sharp and commanding, an unspoken order to heal him immediately.

“I’m fine,” Luke said, already trying to push himself back to his feet.

“Barely,” Artemis replied, her voice crackling from the pendant, laced with that familiar note of disapproval.

Luke touched the charm, exhaling with a mix of relief and irritation. For a fleeting moment, he thought about how close he’d come to losing his Midnight Bow. Jack raised his wand toward him, and a green aura bloomed around it. The warmth spread through Luke’s body, vibrant and pulsing. The pain faded little by little, replaced by a tingling comfort that almost felt like strength returning.

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Looking past the wyvern’s broken corpse, he could finally admit it—part of the plan had worked. The creature had been powerful, the fight brutal, and time wasn’t on their side. His plan A had been simple: tear one of its wings apart and destroy it while it hovered above the abyss. A clean kill, no drawn-out battle. But that damn double jump had ruined everything.

Footsteps crunched in the snow behind him. Allison and Evangeline emerged from the fog, their expressions tense, the wind howling louder between them.

“He’s really dead,” Allison said, her voice caught somewhere between disbelief and relief.

Erza stood nearby, resting her scythe on her shoulder, her gaze fixed on the castle at the far end of the bridge. “Then that just leaves the Witch and the damned King.”

She took a single step forward—and the air around her ignited. Flames wrapped around her form, spiraling upward in a bright inferno. When the fire faded, a new armor gleamed beneath it: a black draconic cuirass had replaced her battle dress, every plate shaped like polished scales. A faint crown of dark metal now rested on her brow.

“I think I like my new outfit,” she said with a quick, satisfied laugh.

The reward for slaying the Midnight Lord.