Clash Under the Moon

Canopus walked along the small river by the manor, thick water mist enveloping him and the fully armed Sean behind him.

When the mist dispersed, a mounted knight wreathed in black currents of air appeared before them.

His features were impossible to make out, but the intense resentment radiating from him was impossible to ignore.

"Is this King Mark's resentment?" Sean asked curiously.

Canopus nodded silently and pulled a fine horse from the mist. His clothes instantly transformed into heavy armor, while a wooden sword, bow and arrows, and lance grew out of the earth.

King Mark's resentment stood quietly by the river as Canopus assumed the stance for a knightly duel.

"Tris...tan..." the resentful spirit roared, spurring his horse toward Canopus.

Canopus nocked an arrow and fired at King Mark's helmet. King Mark deftly leaned aside to evade it, then swung his lance at Canopus.

Canopus deflected the thrust with his shield and returned the strike with the wooden sword in his right hand, only for King Mark to block it with his own shield.

"His strength and speed are both formidable, Canopus. Be careful." Sean had already mounted his horse, watching the battle anxiously.

Before his words had even faded, the black aura around King Mark surged. Violent magic power gathered into his body, and the scene fell eerily silent.

"Careful! He's activated his trait. It should be a self-enhancement type, similar to Gawain's!" Sean warned at once.

He activated his trait?

Canopus fired an exploratory arrow. King Mark casually swatted it away as though he were batting aside an insect.

King Mark charged again with even greater ferocity, wielding his lance as he clashed with Canopus. His strength and speed had suddenly doubled, and after several consecutive thrusts, half of Canopus's body had gone numb.

But that was fine. What Canopus lacked least was experience fighting from a disadvantage.

Just as his shield was about to shatter, Canopus abandoned his lance and drew his sword. Enduring a hit from King Mark's lance that knocked him from his horse, he drove the wooden sword into his opponent's mount's neck.

Both men fell from their horses. The cumbersome lances were tossed aside. Canopus no longer had a shield, so he gripped his sword with both hands and continued facing off against King Mark, who wielded sword and shield.

They launched another round of attacks, leaving wounds of varying depths across each other's bodies. A faint black aura coiled around Canopus's wounds, clearly slowing their healing, while King Mark was wounded as well but seemed incapable of feeling pain.

The situation was greatly unfavorable to Canopus. King Mark continued attacking tirelessly, while Canopus's movements had begun to deform beneath his many wounds.

Sean wanted to help, but interfering in a knightly duel was an extremely grave insult. He could only stand to one side and worry helplessly.

At that moment, Canopus leaped out of the battle and caught his breath. King Mark immediately closed in, refusing to give him a chance to rest.

To his surprise, Canopus pulled his wand from his robes and cast Diffindo at the ground.

King Mark leaped backward, but the scattering stones still struck him and knocked his body askew.

"Sorry, but I'm not just a knight."

However, knights surpassed wizards in combat. Before Canopus could recite a second spell, King Mark had charged at him again like a bull.

Canopus hurriedly swung his wand. Vines shot continuously from the earth, tugging at King Mark's feet.

Canopus switched to holding his sword in one hand, using spells to hinder King Mark's movements while constantly circling and engaging him.

An ordinary wizard would have already lost his head by now, but thanks to his identity as a Druid, Canopus could control plants directly without chanting spells, allowing him to stabilize the situation.

King Mark fought Canopus while being dragged by the vines, and before long, the situation had been reversed. Canopus's hands never stopped moving as he circled constantly around King Mark. More black mist began pouring from King Mark's body, and his form slowly started to collapse.

In the end, before Canopus's magic power was completely exhausted, King Mark's resentment fell to its knees, shattered into a mass of black mist, and fused into Canopus's oak sword.

The patterns drawn by Arthur's blood on the oak sword grew somewhat dimmer. Correspondingly, its edge seemed to have become sharper.

At the same time, Canopus felt a warm current flow into his body. Every muscle in his body relaxed, as if he were soaking in a hot spring.

"Whew, that was close." Canopus dropped onto the ground, and the thick fog abruptly dispersed, returning him and Sean to the real world.

"Canopus, your magic activated so quickly!" Sean stepped forward and helped him up. "If you hadn't trapped King Mark with those vines at the end, today would have been dangerous."

"Yeah, why was King Mark so strong?" Canopus had just tried to stand when a wave of dizziness knocked him back to the ground.

"Canopus? Canopus?" Sean quickly shook him twice, but Canopus merely let out a soft snore.

Sean laughed twice, slung Canopus over his horse's back, and slowly headed toward the manor. Robert hurried out to meet them.

Canopus was groggy now, dreaming as his consciousness left his body once again.

He felt himself floating in the air, watching Tristan and Iseult meet in secret within Cornwall's palace while King Mark watched them from the side, filled with jealousy.

Compared to Tristan and Iseult in the prime of their youth, King Mark's temples had already turned gray. He was an old man through and through.

"If I were still young, Tristan wouldn't be my match."

That was what the jealous King Mark thought. He knew he was no match for Tristan, yet he blamed it all on the merciless passage of time.

"If I were still young, my queen, Iseult, wouldn't have fallen in love with Tristan either."

He did not know that Tristan and Iseult had long been in love with each other. He was the one who had stolen another's beloved in this story.

"If I were still young... why am I no longer young?"

King Mark's face twisted with envy and hatred. In Canopus's vision, clouds of black mist rose from King Mark's body, spiraling through the air before finally gathering into a younger knight with long limbs and gloomy eyes.

This was King Mark in his youth, the most powerful version of himself in his own mind.

Then, from an observer's perspective, Canopus watched the battle between himself and King Mark's resentment. In the end, the exhausted resentful spirit poured into Canopus's wooden sword, and everything calmed down.

"Canopus, thank you."

A handsome red-haired knight rode up beside Kano. Kano knew he was Tristan.

"My lord's soul entered the cycle of reincarnation long ago, yet his resentment had continued to linger near my bloodline," Tristan said with a sigh. "Thank you for allowing him to find peace."

"His resentment has faded. What about you and Iseult?" Kano could not hold back and asked.

"Heh. What resentment could Iseult and I possibly have? We were both people bound by fate. Even my lord merely failed to see through it for a time."

"We all struggled and suffered. Now that the past has gone with the wind, let this story come to its end."

Tristan took out his harp, gently plucked the strings, and began to sing an ancient ballad.

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