The Ruined Death Knight

"Hey, big brother Kayn! Is the bad man really underground?" A kid looking at 6 years old asked if the monster under this bed was really or not.

Being in the middle of sharpening his dagger, Kayn turned around and showed a smile.

"Yeah...he is still underground."

"Then why hasn´t he come out?" The kid said full of innocence.

With a bitter smile on his face, Kayn shook his head.

"That, I don´t know."

"Big brother Kayn, did the bad man die?" The kid said, taking Kayn by surprise.

"What? No, that man didn´t die. He just likes to stay in the basement. Yeah, that must be it..." Kayn said rather uncertainly.

"But he hasn´t come out for over a whole month! I can go without any food for a whole week before my tummy starts to hurt. The bad guy must have starved!"

Kayn opened his mouth but found no words to say since he himself didn´t have any answers.

It has been a whole month ever since the agreement with that dark knight.

Except for them being unable to go in the basement, nothing had changed in their lifestyle from before.

If not, their life became slightly better since the door that they broke when they first found the church has been replaced with a new one by a man they didn´t know.

At first, they were wary of that man, but once they realized he was called by the dark knight who was supposedly called Letum Danzel.

And though all that whole month, it was the only time they saw him again.

Once the man who replaced the door and trap door left, that man Danzel closed himself to the basement without any one of them knowing what he was doing down there.

And since he hasn´t come out, some of them were doubting if he was still alive or rotting down there.

Though Marcus and some other children suggested to try and take a look, Kayn quickly dismissed them upon remembering what the man said.

And frankly, he didn´t care about what happend to him.

Since he gave them a key for the door, they lived as he didn´t live down to the basement.

And that was about the same for Danzel.

Ever since this sudden outburst that he had, he was rather in a bad mood which made him decide to go into seclusion.

Wanting to distract himself, he focused purely on this training with the sword and runesmithing.

Sometimes he trained for days before deciding to chance to carve the new runes that he learned. Though mostly the [Rune of Uzal] since he had the material in hand.

But the other that he bought was a different story.

The other rune was called [Rune of Mana] which not only was much more difficult to carve since it was a normal rune and not an undead one, but the materiel the rune had to be carved was a tricky one.

The material needed was mana crystals.

As one would expect of the runes name, this sole purpose was to increase the amount of mana that a crystal was capable to hold.

Though in theory that sounded impressive.

For him, it was pure junk.

Or rather trash springled with gold.

Not only could he not use it, but the difficulty of carving the rune was by far the hardest.

Not because the rune letters were difficult to understand or anything of that sort.

The difficult part came with the ingredients he had to work with.

Since crystals usually weren´t flat and had many edges, carving a rune was a nightmare of a job.

Making it worse, Danzel hadn´t anything he could practice on except his shield.

Which wasn´t an option either since the crystal had many edged.

Thus, he gave up on it for now.

Even if he had managed to carve it, he would either need a skill that could use foreign mana or find himself, enchanter to put that mana into good use.

With no other choice left, he quickly carved runes on the equipment of those hammer heads or something and focused on improving the rune Uzal.

Every time he would carve the Uzal rune, the next time would be faster and more precise. Though they were many failures in that process, in a day he finally broke through the rank of the quality to the stage where he could receive XP.

And the XP he received was much more than he had expected.

A total of 8000 XP for uncommon runes of the [Good] quality.

Once he reached that stage, he went all out on carving runes with all the remaining Paper that he had left.

That resulted together with his sword training to receive an incredible amount of XP.

But once he was finally done, a similar feeling as when he was in the cave came at him.

More specifically the silence of the room.

*Tah~

Raising his head to the ceiling sounds so small that if none focus entirely, it couldn´t have been heard.

"Those guys are so loud..."

Shaking his head, he pulled all the contracts that he prepared through the span of the month and walked towards the stairs.

Using his key to open the trap door, he was greeted by the sight of children running through playing around and some working to the side to what seemed to build makeshift weapons.

One kid who was sleeping in front of the statue woke up from a sound behind him.

Turning his head to see what it was, he saw a 2-meter tall dark knight moving his sight to him.

"Hiieh!" Screaming from the top of his lungs, he rolled back out of fright until he fell from the stage.

Of course, that commotion brought the gazes of everyone at him.

"He is here!"

"He isn´t dead!

"The bad man came out!"

"..."

Staring at them silently, he couldn´t help but shake his head internally.

`How am I the bad guy if you guys are blackmailing me!? You want even to write me as dead!´

Looking around, his gaze fell upon the kid who he learned was Kayn.

"You, come here." He pointed at him.

A short chill runs through Kayn's back.

Nodding his head, Kayn made his way towards him while hiding the dagger.

"Yes?"

"Bring everyone here to sign this contract just like you did..." Letting the bag full of contract fall in front of Kayn, he seated at the half-broken statue.

Kayn stayed silent for a few seconds before nodding his head.

Although some of the smaller kids complained of having to use the needle on their finger, Kayn shortly convinced them all.

After Danzel made sure that everyone one of them did it right, he put the contracts back in the bag while he hinted for Kayn to come back to speak privately.

Nodding, he followed Danzel.

Anna and Marcus who saw that quickly made their way towards him while cautiously looking at Danzel.

Danzel only spared them a glance before shrugging it off.

Going down to the basement.

Or more specifically to the stairs, he turned around and stared at them with silence before opening his mouth.

"How long are you planning to stay here?" He said with a cold tone.

The atmosphere imminently went dense.

"..."

"..."

"..."

Looking at the silent trio, Danzel crossed his hands together.

"Let me rephrase that, why do you want to stay here? You could even ask me to give your some gold to get your own place. Why are you guys obsessed with this building?"

Kayn in response gave out a pitiful smile.

"It´s because we aren´t welcome anywhere else other than this area where the poor live..." Kayn wanted to continue but a hint of hesitation was to be seen in his eyes.

Danzel noticed that.

"Is it because you guys aren´t human?" Danzel guessed solemnly as their shocked look of the trio gave him the answer.

"You! We are human!" Marcus yelled at Danzel, even taking a step forward.

"Don´t lie to yourself kid, you guys aren´t humans" Danzel scoffed at him.

Marcus who still hadn´t enough was about to say something else, but Anna on the side gripped him by his arm.

"Marcus, please stop..." She said as she bit her lips.

Kayn who was also angry forcibly swallowed his thoughts down his throat.

"Yeah, that´s the reason why" Kayn said as he knew he couldn´t hide the fact after his performance a month ago.

`I knew it.´ Danzel nodded to himself internally.

"So? What exactly are you guys?" He asked out of curiosity.

A feeling of anger came through Kayn´s chest, as he remembered something terrible.

Even if he tried to act rationally in front of others, in the end, he was still a kid in his teens.

Griding these teeth, he pulled the pants above the ankle.

Revealing a black color similar to one's skin that becomes necrotic.

But in comparison to necrotic skin, his muscles were well refined as if they were cisseld out of a stone with blue veins going through making it look like cracks.

"We were abandoned by our own families to those mages of the Arcana kingdom to serve as their experimental lab rats."

Tightening his grip on his leg, Kayn said full of anger.

"This is the result of their,` oh so glorious magic` that they liked to call. From humans, they turned us into monsters!"