The Night Sentinel Knight

**Clip-clop, clip-clop—**

From within the rift, the rapid clatter of hooves rang out, growing louder with each passing second...

An instant later, Mo Fan — still recovering at a distance — spotted a black phantom horse emerging from the pale, moonlit gash in reality. The creature was tall and imposing, its entire body smothered in dense black fur that billowed and swirled like tendrils of dark mist.

A single black horn rose from the creature's brow, crackling with dark lightning.

Astride the unicorn phantom horse sat a hulking figure clad head to toe in gleaming black armor. It bore a human-like silhouette — yet the heavy, European-style plate armor housed absolutely nothing within.

"What the hell is that?" Mo Fan stared in disbelief.

They both wielded the Summoning Element, but Mo Fan's own Dimensional Summoning had only ever produced a Demon Wolf — impressive enough at the level he'd pushed it to. What he hadn't expected was that the Woman in Black Stockings, Meng'e, had conjured something far more extraordinary.

*A dark knight?*

Its overall form certainly resembled that of a mounted warrior. A crescent-bladed sword rested in its gauntlet, and strangely, whenever raindrops struck the blade, they vaporized on contact.

"A Night Sentinel Knight!"

Meng'e offered the casual explanation and then sent the imposing dark warrior charging toward the Blade-Axe Corpse General.

Mo Fan hadn't summoned the Swift Star Wolf — the creature was simply no match for the Blade-Axe Corpse General, and one wrong move could get it killed. The Night Sentinel Knight that Meng'e had summoned cut an imposing figure, but since it was a Basic-Level Dimensional Summoning, the creature couldn't be all that formidable.

*She's just buying time.*

Mo Fan's chest still heaved with roiling pain. The Mystic Serpent Armor Enchanted Gear had absorbed a tremendous amount of damage — but as the old saying went, the brunt of any physical impact still fell on the Mage himself.

Unable to act for the moment, he could only stand at a distance and watch Meng'e, hoping she could hold on until he recovered.

**Hrrreeigh—!**

The phantom horse let out a piercing whinny and reared up on its hind legs as its armored rider pulled the reins.

Mud and water sprayed in all directions as the beast crashed back down — and before the droplets even hit the ground, it transformed into a massive black arrow, trailing a furious cyclone as it hurled itself at the Blade-Axe Corpse General.

Atop the horse, the hulking knight reversed its grip on the crescent blade and leaned forward into a charging posture...

At the same moment, the Blade-Axe Corpse General raised all four of its arms and waited for this peculiar dark creature to come and die.

**Slash!!**

Knight and horse merged into one — a black bolt that sliced through the curtain of rain, there and gone in an instant.

The Blade-Axe Corpse General's arms had barely begun to swing down when, in the span of a lightning flash, the Night Sentinel Knight was already behind it.

The sword sang free of its scabbard. A long seam split the rain curtain. The Blade-Axe Corpse General hadn't even registered that its body had been run through — its massive frame twitched stiffly, and then a geyser of blood erupted from its bull-like torso.

Mo Fan sucked in a sharp breath.

The Night Sentinel Knight's speed was absurd. It had completed its entire attack in the blink of an eye.

The Swift Star Wolf was already renowned for its speed, yet it fell short of the Night Sentinel Knight by several tiers — the Blade-Axe Corpse General hadn't managed a single chop before a hole opened in its body.

"—Slash!"

The Night Sentinel Knight didn't linger to posture. After driving the blade through, the agile dark swordsman spun its mount sharply and, borrowing the phantom horse's twisting momentum, delivered a savage back-leaping slash.

**Shhhing—!**

The black crescent sang as the blade arced through the air — the slash rendered razor-sharp and unmistakable against the hammering rain.

The keen crescent blade caught one of the Blade-Axe Corpse General's arms. Flesh like stone and bone like iron met a weapon that carved through both as though they were clay — and the limb dropped clean away.

**Thud!**

The severed arm hit the ground. The creature let out a shriek — whether from pain or fury was impossible to tell — and wheeled its remaining three limbs to batter the Night Sentinel Knight.

But the Knight's sword moved like a whirlwind. Faced with three arms hammering down in brute, graceless fury, it wove a web of blade art that turned aside every blow and held the Blade-Axe Corpse General's savage assault completely at bay.

Mo Fan was speechless. The Night Sentinel Knight's power was genuinely terrifying — it had dealt two consecutive devastating blows while somehow fending off the creature's relentless attack at the same time.

"Recover as fast as you can," Meng'e called out urgently. "My cultivation isn't strong enough — the time I can keep it summoned is limited."

Hearing that, a measure of balance returned to Mo Fan's thoughts.

What Meng'e had used was clearly a Basic-Level Dimensional Summoning. If a single Basic-Level spell could conjure a creature with this kind of staggering combat power, she would have had nothing to fear from the Blade-Axe Corpse General to begin with.

*Of course.* An overpowered creature would always come with restrictions. The Night Sentinel Knight not only showed no fear against the Blade-Axe Corpse General but had dominated the encounter at every turn — which meant this must be an extraordinarily powerful summoning race in the Dimensional Plane. And races like that were notoriously difficult to control.

"Blade Burst Arcanum!"

The Night Sentinel Knight had spoken in English. Mo Fan couldn't make out the meaning, but there was no mistaking it — this summoned creature could speak in a human tongue.

After a dozen-odd furious exchanges, the Night Sentinel Knight found its opening once again through sheer agility. Its blade struck with the speed of lightning and withdrew just as fast...

The moment it pulled back, a torrent of dark energy surged through the wound it had left on the Blade-Axe Corpse General's arm. The energy detonated in a blinding flash — a thunderous dark explosion that obliterated the arm completely.

Another limb, torn apart in an instant.

The Blade-Axe Corpse General was now riddled with wounds. Just as Mo Fan dared to hope the mighty Night Sentinel Knight would finish the job — the aloof knight suddenly sheathed its blade, pulled the reins, and galloped into the darkness.

Its form dissolved steadily into the rain and the night. Though it had been close, it seemed to belong to a different dimension entirely. And before Mo Fan even realized it, the creature was gone.

Were it not for the blood pooling across the earth, the severed limbs, and the gashes scored into the ground, it would have seemed as though the Night Sentinel Knight had never appeared at all — arriving without warning, vanishing without a trace.

The appearance had been so brief.

The Night Sentinel Knight was undeniably powerful — yet its time on the battlefield had lasted less than a tenth of what the Swift Star Wolf could manage.

"It's badly wounded now," Meng'e said. "Don't give it the chance to get near us."

"On it!" Mo Fan moved without hesitation, drawing the Lightning Element Star Chart.

"Thunderbolt!!"

The Lightning Cloud surged back into being. With a moment's recovery behind him, Mo Fan was now able to Release a full Thunderbolt: Frenzied Dance.

The raw force of a Thunderbolt was more than enough to wound the Blade-Axe Corpse General. The massive thundering strike crashed down and sent the blood-soaked, hole-riddled creature staggering.