The Sinner Hunting System

Behind him, a knight in full silver-white armor gripped the sword still buried in his abdomen and twisted it, working to open a wider wound.

"A second one, damn it!"

Raphael reached for the Wraith Form and found it sluggish.

With his arcane energy suppressed, the transition crawled at a fraction of its normal spee, slow enough that he’d be dead several times over before it completed.

And even if he managed it, the duration would be seconds at best.

He scrapped the idea and moved.

His claws caught the nearby wall, used it for leverage, redirected the black knight’s blundering sword strike into the stone, the blade lodged in the wall, buying a moment’s restraint.

Then he grabbed the sword still piercing his abdomen with both hands, closed his fingers around the blade despite the pain of it cutting his palms open, snapped the protruding length off, and drove his elbow backward into the white knight’s head.

Thud.

A hollow resonance, like striking an empty metal drum. The white knight’s head caved in several centimeters at the temple.

The figure staggered, unsteady on its feet, and then simply released the sword hilt, as though the impact had exceeded whatever threshold it operated on.

Raphael pulled the broken sword from his back. Different material from the black knight’s steel blade, brittle, too fragile to be useful. He dropped it, stepped on it, snapped it in half.

The brief distraction cost him. He’d lost track of the white knight.

He could feel the air moving in the corridor. It was still here, somewhere, circling.

The black knight came on in contrast, each step sending a heavy concussion through the floor, methodical and relentless.

"Strange. One has speed but ordinary strength. The other has strength but moves slowly."

Raphael jumped back hard. The steel sword came down on the spot he’d just vacated, splitting the floor cleanly, the force carrying deep into the stone and leaving a long jagged crack.

He landed with his back to the wall, keeping it behind him so the white knight couldn’t approach from that direction.

"Like a Lv6 fighter split in two, one half took the speed, the other took the strength."

A normal Lv6 should have both unified, speed and strength and reaction time all elevated together.

These two divided it between them like something had been cleaved apart.

Whoosh.

Raphael bent backward at the waist. The steel blade swept across where his chest had been and crashed into the wall, the whole corridor shaking.

The black knight yanked at the embedded blade. It was stuck.

Raphael spun back into reach and drove his claws straight through the knight’s knee, the razored tips punched through the protective plate and kept going, and he felt nothing.

No resistance. No flesh, no bone, no joint. Empty.

He kicked off the chest and put distance between them again.

The black knight pulled the blade free and advanced without any apparent awareness that its knee had just been perforated.

Raphael looked at the holes his claws had left. Light passed through them. The interior was hollow.

"An empty shell. Living armor. I don’t even know where to aim, it has no vitals."

He raised the revolver and lowered it again. Headshots and heart shots meant nothing when there was no head and no heart.

A pale shape kept appearing and disappearing along the edges of the corridor, moving fast, circling. Seeing him stand still, it began drifting toward his back.

Raphael looked up at the crystals embedded in the ceiling. A theory was forming.

Cold air brushed the back of his neck.

He turned the revolver without thinking and fired.

The .357 Magnum silver round went through the white knight’s head from behind as it closed in for the strike.

The figure recoiled, the dagger in its hand still completing its arc, the blade opened a deep line across Raphael’s throat before the momentum died.

He clutched his neck, a few drops of blood seeping from between his fingers, staining his clothes red.

The wound healed rapidly thanks to the vampire’s self-healing abilities, but just then, black knight had already arrived in front of him, brandished his steel sword and attacked again.

"Damn!"

He read the black knight’s approach, didn’t avoid it, His claws crossed, desperately blocking the black knight’s steel sword.

The black knight’s power was amplified on the sword, causing the ground beneath his feet to crack and sink a few centimeters.

The two sides were locked in a stalemate in this pure contest of strength.

Raphael was unable to break free from the steel sword’s pressure for the time being, and the Black Knight was also unable to push the steel sword any further.

Just then, a cold wind swept through the room again, and the white knight appeared behind Raphael without him noticing, raising his dagger to pierce Raphael’s heart.

Raphael also realized the attack; physical methods were no longer sufficient to change the situation. but in that moment the Wraith Form completed.

The white knight came from behind, dagger thrust forward, and buried it in the black knight’s chest.

At the same moment, the black knight’s sword found no resistance where Raphael’s body had been, the blade continued down and took the white knight’s outstretched arm off at the shoulder.

The silver-plated arm plate hit the floor and slid for several meters, the gauntlet still gripping the dagger in the posture of a hand that had forgotten it was no longer attached to anything. The inside: empty.

Raphael, weightless above them both, looked down at the mutual damage.

"Heh, a brain is a good thing, but unfortunately, neither of you has one."

Then he descended straight into the black knight’s body.

Something was wrong immediately.

"Hm?"

Not resistance, the opposite. The moment he reached for control of the hand, every part of the black knight yielded at once.

No contest, no struggle. He’d occupied an empty vessel and the vessel had nothing to push back with.

Empty shell. Of course. It’s hollow.

He moved the black knight’s waist, turned the wrist, swung the sword sideways, hit the white knight across the midsection and sent it into the wall.

Crash.

The white knight hit stone, back plate caving inward, and pulled itself upright as though nothing had happened.

"No vitals to hit, so I just have to take you apart."

He drove the black knight forward, raised the sword overhead, and brought it down.

The white knight tried to raise its remaining arm. The lighter armor buckled immediately under the steel blade’s full weight and parted down the middle, the figure split and spread open to both sides.

The steel sword cleaved the white knight in two vertically, as if splitting a watermelon.

Half a second of silence.

For only half a second, the white knight seemed to have symbolically died for a moment before starting to move again.

The two halves beginning to shift, edges beginning to draw back together.

It wasn’t the kind of self-healing adhesion that flesh and blood undergo, but rather a magnetic attraction that brought them together, restoring them to their original state.

Raphael brought the sword down through the chest plate and drove it into the floor, pinning the white knight flat against the stone.

The armor thrashed. But speed without strength meant nothing against a pin it couldn’t pull free from.

The Wraith Form was ending. He let the black knight go, crouched over the white knight, and started disassembling it by hand, arm pulled free, ankle snapped, leg separated, piece by piece until the white knight was scattered across the corridor floor in components that couldn’t reach each other.

The Wraith Form expired.

He stood with the black knight’s empty shell in front of him and had a peculiar thought.

He didn’t leave.

Instead he pulled inward, deeper, and as the Wraith Form ended he let his physical body reassert itself.

Inside the armor.

The black knight’s visor swung left. It swung right. Raphael moved with it, felt the weight of the plates, the way the joints articulated, the narrow view through the visor slit.

He was wearing it.

The black knight stood in the corridor and looked at its own gauntlets, the black knight seemed confused, unsure how to attack an enemy who had hidden inside him.