The Adventures of an Overpowered Knight in Another World

Chapter 597: Chapter 597- An Unexpected Gift!

With a single thought, she could detonate them. Their lives were now entirely in her hands.

Having laid down her threats, she turned towards Giacomo and smiled sweetly.

"One of Lunaris’s Three Paragons, Sir Giacomo the Grey Blade. Your countless battles against our demonkind are truly legendary. Even I am afraid to face you head on"...

"Which is why I took my time to find all your weaknesses. Oh, brave knight, you have two options."

Duvessa’s voice was soft and mocking.

"Option one, accept this heart and become one of us. If you do, I’ll let the king and everyone here go. I’m not particularly interested in them anyway."

Saying that, she produced a pulsing black heart out of nowhere.

A demon heart!

"Option two, refuse, and I’ll kill them right here. Maybe after that... I’ll raise their corpses. Your king, his children... all of them will become my undead puppets."

"You!!"

Hearing the threat caused Giacomo to clench his fists. He barely stopped his body from acting hastily.

He couldn’t do anything because the woman had his Achilles heel. As a knight of Lunaris, he was loyal to his king and kingdom to his core, and that was also his greatest weakness.

Giacomo looked at the Ninth Heavenly King, sword in his hand, ready to strike.

He wanted to kill the demon in front of him.

However, if he moved, the royal family would die.

Just as he was contemplating in silence, the king shouted at him in panic.

"Giacomo, what are you doing? Accept the demon heart!!"

Giacomo looked at the terrified king.

"But your majesty, if I do that, I’ll be betraying humanity. I will betray the vows I swore as a knight. Everything I fought for until now will become meaningless."

He knew that this was clearly a trap, and he wanted to convince the king and find another way.

However, fear had already overwhelmed the king’s reason. His voice rose into an angry bark.

"Have you forgotten who you were before I took you in?! You were nothing but a wandering mercenary. I gave you status! I gave you a name! Now show me your loyalty. Even if you must become a demon, protect your king!"

The words struck like a blade.

Giacomo could not refute.

He was all that he was right now because of the king.

A knight served his king. Even until death.

His loyalty was unquestionable.

And so, Giacomo slowly dropped the sword in his hand and accepted the Demon Heart.

Unable to see their commander they respected do this, the knights all looked away.

"Loyalty to the crown and country. Even in silence, even in exile. The knight’s allegiance is forged in duty, not convenience."

Giacomo and Reinhardt simultaneously uttered the second rule of steel.

Giacomo smiled bitterly.

He had accepted the demon heart and implanted it in his body.

"You got what you wanted. Now let us go."

The king spoke in nervousness.

Duvessa did not spare him a glance. Her eyes from start to end were on Giacomo. Her crimson eyes glowed with amusement as if she were looking at an interesting toy.

"Good, that’s how a knight should be. As a reward, I’ll let you unleash that new power of yours."

Saying that, a sadistic smile appeared on her face.

At that moment, the Ninth Heavenly King finally revealed the full extent of her cruelty.

"Kill all the humans here."

"What?"

Giacomo’s eyes widened; to his horror, he realized that he had no control over his body. The demon heart inside his body was responding to all the orders from Duvessa.

It was as if he could not disobey.

"Kill every human in this capital. Start with your king."

He reached for his sword and drew it towards his king.

"Protect the king."

His knights stood in his way.

However, even when controlled, a hero was a hero.

He slaughtered his way through.

"Wait, why are you doing this? I just gave you Giacomo just like you wanted. You told me you would let us go."

Seeing the carnage of blood and gore strewn across the floor, the expression of the king and his children turned pale.

"That’s right, I did say that I will let you go. However, I never said anything about my pawn letting you go."

Duvessa’s smile sharpened into something monstrous as she enjoyed the despairing faces of all the humans here.

"I will give you gold! I’ll give you as much money as you want. What do you want? Status? Power? I can give you anything."

Seeing the king of Lunaris beg for his life, she revealed a disdainful smile.

Giacomo raised his sword and tried to struggle until the end.

"It’s no use. The moment you implanted my heart, you became my tool. I can control your thoughts completely and suppress your will."

There was no fighting against it.

And so, he slaughtered them all.

The king, the royal family, the palace guards.

Even the other two Paragons who had returned, wounded from their battle below.

Every human inside the capital.

All of them died by his hand.

Perhaps she was satisfied by his performance or perhaps she had other plans, but by the time the massacre ended, Duvessa was gone.

Like someone discarding a broken toy. She abandoned him inside the growing Abyss Nest. Leaving him to be devoured along with the city.

Having finished his story, Giacomo exhaled slowly.

"That’s all about it. I thought about killing myself. But before I could decide, you arrived."

His gaze shifted weakly toward the knight standing before him.

"So I thought... If I must die, then at least let me die as a knight."

Reinhardt listened calmly the entire time.

Finally, he had a full understanding of what went down in the Kingdom of Lunaris.

The truth was bitter and suffocating.

But more than that, it was a reminder to humanity how fragile the current peace was.

For a while, none of them spoke.

Then Giacomo slowly picked himself up, stumbling and bleeding heavily from his wounds.

Of course, he could easily heal from those wounds with his demon heart; after all, demons possessed absurd regeneration ability capable of regenerating from any wound.

But Giacomo did not do so because he wanted to die as a human and a knight.

Taking a slow breath, Giacomo matched gazes with Reinhardt.

"I know what you’re thinking. That we brought this upon ourselves. And truth be told... maybe we did."

There was no denial in his voice. No attempt to justify the cruelty that Lunaris inflicted on others, only a faint, weary smile.

"The Kingdom of Lunaris... had already begun rotting from within long before the demons came. We became cruel to our own people. We lost sight of what it meant to be human."

The creation of the Hollow Earth.

The policies against slavery and exploitation of humans and demi-humans.

It was one of the cruellest things humanity could do to itself.

Even if the demons orchestrated everything, it was they who allowed it to happen.

It was they who profited from it in the end.

As such, in a way, they deserved this end.

"So in a way, it’s good that Lunaris was destroyed."

The words sounded almost blasphemous.

Yet there was no hesitation in Giacomo’s voice.

"Perhaps now... those slaves in the Hollow Earth... can finally find salvation."

Reinhardt did not interrupt; his face was quite complex.

He understood those words very well. He had seen enough of Lunaris to know that Giacomo was not entirely wrong.

If this kingdom had continued down that path, then perhaps it might have become something far worse than what it was now.

A festering wound within humanity itself.

Still, even after knowing that, Reinhardt couldn’t completely cast aside the Kingdom of Lunaris.

Because it had given birth to a knight like Giacomo.

Maybe its policies rooted in its constitution were wrong.

Maybe many of its citizens were corrupt and only sought to profit themselves.

Still, it is amazing that such a nation still gave rise to three heroes and had knight orders so loyal that they fought to protect until the end.

And then there was this man standing in front of him.

A knight who had been cornered.

Manipulated... Used.

And still in the end... chose to die with dignity.

Perhaps the kingdom still had a chance of redemption.

Though it was too late.

"You’re a strange man."

Reinhardt muttered in acknowledgement.

Giacomo chuckled weakly, coughing up blood again.

"Before I die... there’s something else. I left you a gift."

A gift?

"I couldn’t let myself die while wondering what would happen if the Supreme Divine Treasure of Lunaris fell into the hands of the demons. So... before I began the evacuation, I moved it."

Reinhardt’s expression changed subtly; he understood the weight of those words very well.

Demons had laid ruin to one of the Seven Great Kingdoms.

However, if they couldn’t get their hands on its Supreme Divine Treasure, then perhaps it could be said that the demons’ plan had failed in a way.