[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 119: In Which We Fight Dead Knights

We stepped into the throne room, and the massive doors swung shut behind us with a sound that suggested they wouldn’t be opening again anytime soon.

"Wow, cool," I muttered. "Very reassuring."

The throne room was massive...high vaulted ceiling disappearing into shadows, stone pillars supporting architecture that looked like it had been standing for centuries. Torches burned along the walls with flames that gave off cold light instead of heat, which was both impressive and deeply unsettling.

Banners hung from the ceiling, tattered and faded, showing symbols I didn’t recognize from a kingdom that had probably been dead longer than I’d been alive.

The entity power was so thick in the air I could taste it, metallic and bitter on my tongue.

And there, in the center of it all, was the throne.

We moved forward cautiously, weapons ready, powers manifested.

The throne was massive...carved stone that looked ancient and battle-worn, positioned on a raised platform like an altar. The sword embedded in it glowed with that same wrong light we’d seen from the doorway, pulsing with concentrated entity energy.

We got closer, and I saw what the shadows had been hiding.

The throne wasn’t empty.

A corpse sat on it...or what remained of one. Armored, ancient, held upright by the sword that had been driven through his chest and into the stone throne behind him. The blade pinned him there like a grotesque display, keeping the dead king seated long after he should have collapsed into dust.

His face was skeletal, armor tarnished and cracked, hands resting on the throne’s armrests in a mockery of royal dignity.

"Oh," I said. "That’s significantly worse than I thought it would be."

"The sword is holding him there," Henrik observed with clinical detachment that suggested he was coping by being analytical.

"Yes, thank you, I can see that."

Void made an interested sound from my shoulder, eyes bright as it stared at the glowing blade.

"Don’t even think about it," I told the furball.

A questioning chirp.

"I said no."

The shadows around the throne moved.

Not flickering torch shadows, actual movement.

Six figures stepped forward from the darkness, arranged in a circle around the throne like they’d been waiting for us.

Elite knights in full armor, weapons drawn, moving with coordinated precision that the battlefield echoes had lacked entirely.

These weren’t mindless loop repetitions.

These were guardians, and they knew we were here.

"Of course there are guardians," I said. "Why wouldn’t there be guardians? That would be too easy."

The knights didn’t respond, just continued their advance with steady, measured steps.

"They look more aware than the battlefield echoes," Mara noted, already moving into combat stance.

"Wonderful. Intelligent undead warriors guarding a dimensional fragment. This is fine."

The lead knight raised his sword, and the others mirrored the movement with perfect synchronization.

Then they attacked.

I summoned my spectral blade immediately, warden energy flowing into the familiar weight of conjured steel, and barely got it up in time to block the first strike.

The impact rattled through my arms.

These weren’t weak echoes...they hit like actual trained warriors who’d spent lifetimes perfecting the art of killing people.

"They’re strong!" I called, ducking under a follow-up swing.

"Noticed!" Ryota responded, already engaged with two knights simultaneously.

The throne room erupted into chaos.

Azryth’s demon power manifested in full force, dark energy meeting knight blades with controlled precision. He moved like violence was an art form he’d mastered centuries ago, dispatching threats with efficient brutality.

Mara fought with hunter training and practical efficiency, using her combat skills rather than her scanner for once. She’d produced knives from somewhere and was using them to find gaps in armor with surgical accuracy.

Henrik had defensive artifacts creating barriers that deflected strikes, giving him time to analyze patterns and weaknesses while staying alive.

Ryota moved like he’d been fighting coordinated enemies his entire career, using tactical positioning to separate knights and take them down methodically.

I was mostly trying not to die while looking competent.

A knight came at me with an overhead strike that would’ve split me in half. I rolled sideways, came up with my spectral blade, and slashed at the gap between helmet and chest plate.

The blade connected, warden energy cutting through whatever was holding the armor together.

The knight staggered but didn’t fall.

"Oh, come on," I muttered, blocking another strike. "Just die already. You’re already dead!"

Apparently dead knights didn’t appreciate irony.

It came at me again, relentless and skilled, forcing me back toward one of the stone pillars.

Azryth was there before I could panic, demon power slamming into the knight with enough force to send it flying backward into a wall.

"Thanks," I gasped.

"You’re welcome," he said, already turning to face the next threat.

We fought as a unit, covering each other’s weaknesses and capitalizing on openings.

Ryota took down the first knight with precision strikes to joints and weak points.

Mara dispatched another by getting inside its guard and driving her knife up through the helmet’s eye slot.

Henrik’s barriers gave us space to breathe when we needed it.

Azryth and I worked together, his power and my spectral blade combining to overwhelm the knights’ defenses.

Void stayed on my shoulder the entire time, watching with bright interest but not engaging. Occasionally it would create a sparkle that distracted a knight long enough for someone to land a hit, but mostly it just observed like this was fascinating entertainment.

The third knight fell, then the fourth.

The remaining two seemed to realize they were losing and changed tactics, fighting more desperately, more aggressively.

One came at me with a flurry of strikes that pushed my spectral blade to its limits. I blocked, parried, dodged, felt my warden energy burning faster than I wanted.

Then Azryth’s power wrapped around the knight from behind, immobilizing it long enough for me to drive my blade through its chest.

It collapsed, armor clattering against stone.

The final knight went down under combined assault from Mara and Ryota, weapons finding weak points until the thing finally stopped moving.

Silence fell over the throne room. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

We stood there, breathing hard, weapons still raised, waiting to see if anything else was going to attack us.

Nothing did.

"Everyone alive?" I asked.

"Define alive," Mara muttered, which was becoming her standard response to that question.

"I’m going to start being more specific. Everyone still breathing and not bleeding out?"

"Yes," Henrik confirmed, checking the group with clinical assessment.

I dismissed my spectral blade and looked at the throne.

The dead king still sat there, sword through his chest, empty eye sockets staring at nothing.

"Someone has to pull the sword," I said.

"I’ll do it," Azryth said immediately.

"You sure?"

"The entity’s power is concentrated in the blade. I can handle it."

He moved toward the throne with steady purpose, power manifested around him in protective patterns.

The rest of us formed a loose perimeter, weapons ready in case pulling the sword triggered something terrible.

Azryth reached the throne and grasped the sword’s hilt.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then he pulled.

The blade came free with a sound like reality tearing, entity energy flaring bright enough to make me squint.

The dead king’s corpse collapsed immediately, armor and bones falling away into dust that scattered across the throne.

The sword gleamed in Azryth’s hands, beautiful, ancient, clearly powerful.

He examined it with sharp focus, power flowing over the blade to assess it.

His expression shifted. "The entity signature is gone."

"What?" Mara moved closer. "It was concentrated in the sword."

"It was," Azryth confirmed, still examining the blade. "I could sense it from across the battlefield, even before I pulled it, but now..." He turned the sword over. "Nothing. It’s now just a legendary weapon, powerful, but normal. The signature is gone."

"Gone to where?" Henrik asked, already scanning the room.

"I don’t know."

"Could it have dissipated when you pulled the sword?" I suggested.

"Entity fragments don’t dissipate," Azryth said. "They’re concentrated power, they relocate, they’re absorbed, they’re sealed. They don’t just disappear."

"Then... maybe it escaped when you pulled the sword?" I asked.

"Possibly," Azryth said, his expression grim. "Entity fragments are mobile. If the seal broke when I removed the blade..."

Void made a small sound from my shoulder... curious, innocent.

Mara’s scanner was active, sweeping the throne room. "I’m not detecting anything, if it escaped, it’s not here anymore."

"Could it have fled the dimension?" Ryota asked.

"Maybe," Henrik said, checking his tablet. "If it sensed the seal breaking, it might have relocated before we could contain it."

"So we came here for nothing," I muttered.

"We have the sword," Azryth said, though he didn’t sound satisfied. "And we prevented the fragment from destabilizing Switzerland further."

Azryth’s voice dropped. "But the entity escaped, it probably didn’t go far. And it definitely didn’t go harmlessly."

"That doesn’t feel like a victory," I said...!

The throne room started shaking.

Cracks appeared in the stone floor, spreading outward from where the throne stood. The walls trembled, dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.

"Is this normal?" Mara asked.

"For us? Yes," I said. "For dimensional mechanics? Probably not good."

A massive crack split the floor near the throne, revealing nothing but darkness beneath.

The entire dimension was destabilizing.

"We need to leave," Azryth said, still holding the sword. "Now."

"The doors!" Henrik pointed toward the entrance we’d come through.

We ran.

Behind us, the throne room was collapsing in earnest now. Stone breaking apart, pillars crumbling, the ceiling starting to cave in.

I grabbed Void off my shoulder and held it close as we sprinted for the doors.

Azryth was beside me, sword in hand, his other hand finding my arm to keep us together through the chaos.

We hit the doors at full speed, and they swung open like they’d been waiting for our dramatic exit.

Beyond them, the battlefield was still looping through its six-minute cycle, but now it was fragmenting too. Echoes flickering, buildings collapsing in ways that weren’t part of the pattern.

"The gate!" Ryota shouted, pointing toward where we’d entered this dimension.

It was still there, still open, showing Switzerland’s wrongness beyond it.

We ran across the fragmenting battlefield, dodging collapsing architecture and fading echoes.

The ground beneath us was cracking, falling away into nothing.

"Faster!" Mara called.

The gate was getting closer.

Behind us, the entire dimension was imploding, reality folding in on itself as whatever had been holding it together failed.

We dove through the gate just as the world behind us collapsed entirely.