The knight did not give a warning.

FWOOOSH!

Its old body suddenly moved, and the halberd swept low across the floor with a speed Gabriel did not expect from something that had looked half broken only moments earlier. The blade came straight for his legs with enough force to cut through both knees if it landed.

Gabriel jumped backward immediately, planted one foot against the side wall, and pushed himself away just before the weapon tore through the spot where he had been standing. The air split beneath the halberd, and the stone floor ripped open in a long, deep gouge.

BOOM!!!

Broken stone burst outward in large chunks, leaving a trench almost a foot deep across the floor. Landing several meters away, Gabriel lowered his eyes briefly to the damage before looking back at the knight.

"So you were still hiding that much," he muttered, genuinely impressed.

The knight gave no reply. Instead, it shifted its stance and dragged the halberd back with one hand, old armor grinding at the shoulder as if the joints hated every movement.

Watching that single motion, Gabriel immediately understood that while the body had weakened, the technique had not.

The knight’s timing was too clean.

Its first strike had aimed low because the chamber limited vertical movement, and the weapon had covered nearly the entire width of the room in one sweep. If Gabriel had been even half a step slower, he would have been forced to block directly, giving the knight control of the next exchange.

Without hesitation, Gabriel stepped forward.

The Twin Dragonfangs flashed in his hands as he closed the distance, and the knight answered by turning the halberd into a rising cut. Gabriel crossed both blades and redirected the strike upward, causing the weapon to slam into the side wall instead of his body.

BANG!!!

A large crack spread through the wall as loose stones fell from above. Using the opening, Gabriel stabbed toward the knight’s neck, but the ancient general tilted its helmet within a hair’s breadth of the blade before driving forward with its shoulder.

The impact forced Gabriel backward.

His boots scraped across the floor, leaving two thin marks behind him as he twisted his wrist to catch the follow-up strike with his left blade, while the right carved across the knight’s side and shaved a strip of old metal from the armor.

Again, the knight moved.

This time, the halberd spun once, heavy yet precise, forcing Gabriel to duck beneath the shaft before stepping inside its range. His knee slammed into the knight’s waist plate hard enough to bend the old armor inward slightly, but the ancient warrior refused to lose balance.

Instead, it planted the end of the halberd into the floor and used it for support.

Gabriel’s eyes flashed.

The body was old, and its joints were clearly slower than the intent behind each attack, yet every movement used structure to compensate for weakness. It was not fighting like a mindless undead, but like someone who had survived countless battlefields through experience alone.

The next exchange came faster.

Gabriel attacked from the right, and the knight answered from the left. Metal clashed three times in rapid succession, sparks scattering across the chamber while basin-sized holes exploded into the floor wherever the halberd’s redirected force landed.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The sound echoed throughout the chamber as cracks spread from the center of the floor toward the walls. Dust gathered around their feet, yet neither fighter retreated for longer than a breath.

Shifting his stance slightly, Gabriel lowered his right shoulder.

The knight reacted immediately, leading with its left side once more as the halberd came across at a familiar angle. Gabriel noticed the rhythm instantly, not because it was obvious, but because the same pattern had appeared during three earlier exchanges already.

Behind the mask, Gabriel’s expression remained calm.

He allowed the knight to believe the opening still existed and stepped in just enough to invite the strike. The halberd came down lightning fast, aiming to crush his shoulder and drive him into the ground.

Gabriel moved at the final moment.

His left blade caught the shaft near the head and pushed it outward while his right foot slid inside the knight’s reach. Before the ancient general could recover its footing, Gabriel’s second blade rose and stopped directly before the center of its chest plate.

The tip rested within a finger’s distance of the old armor.

Silence filled the chamber.

Dust drifted slowly between them, and the red glow inside the knight’s helmet flickered once. Gabriel did not push the blade forward, even though piercing through the damaged plate from that distance would have been easy.

For several seconds, the knight remained motionless.

Eventually, it lowered the halberd.

Gabriel lowered his blade slightly as well, though he did not relax completely. The knight had acknowledged the result, but acknowledgment was not the same as defeat, and he was not careless enough to forget that.

"You fight like someone who has died before," the knight said.

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed faintly.

The knight seemed to pause, and the red glow inside the helmet dimmed briefly before it spoke again.

"No. That is not right. You fight like someone who remembers the mistakes that killed him."

The words struck closer than they should have, but Gabriel’s face remained neutral. This knight had no way of knowing his past, yet experience at this level seemed capable of reading things beyond normal senses.

Resting one blade over his shoulder, Gabriel spoke calmly. "You promised knowledge."

"I did."

The knight reached beneath its chest plate with slow movements. Metal fingers pressed into a hidden gap, and after a short click, it pulled out a small shard wrapped in old black cloth.

The shard was dark red and shaped like broken crystal, while faint lines moved inside it like writing trapped beneath the surface. The moment it appeared, the air inside the chamber changed slightly.

"This contains the full formula behind the Core Suppressing Spike," the knight said. "Not the story told outside. Not the shortened record given to guides. The complete structure."

Gabriel stepped forward and took it.

The instant the shard touched his palm, his Extraction talent reacted, and a system message asking whether he wanted to extract it appeared before him.

Gabriel’s fingers closed around the crystal as realization flashed through his mind. This was not just valuable information. It was something that could be extracted later as well.

’Good.’

Without showing much interest outwardly, he placed it into his inventory.

The knight watched him do so before lowering its hand. "You should know one more thing before you leave."

Gabriel looked at it.

"The sealed god was not forced into imprisonment," the knight said. "My lord agreed to it willingly."

Gabriel’s gaze turned colder. "Why would a god agree to be buried?"

"A promise," the knight replied.

The answer was too simple, yet the way it spoke made Gabriel understand that it truly did not know more than that. It was not avoiding the question. It genuinely only knew the promise existed.

"Made by Tianlan’s ruler?" Gabriel asked.

"No."

The red glow inside the knight’s helmet flickered once again.

"It was someone else."

Turning slightly, the knight faced the deeper path behind it. "If you are going after the spike, understand this. Removing it may solve one problem and wake another. The seal still holds because the promise still holds."

Gabriel’s fingers tapped lightly against the hilt of his sword. "And if the spike fails?"

The knight’s voice became lower and darker.

"If the spike holds, yes. If it doesn’t, none of us will be anywhere."