[New Quest Set Avaible!]

  [Accept?]

  Nora, who had kept silent unless absolutely necessary to avoid distracting Romeo, was now looking at the new tab avaible in front of her. In truth, she had wondered when the system would give her something like this, in most other novels that followed isekai plots the system would be giving quests every other minute.

  ‘Accept.’ She said, resolutely.

  [Name: Caliburn (Vessel), Nora (Former)

  Condition: Mended

  Rarity: Uncommon Sword (16 ATK)

  Skill(s): Spirit Vessel

  Quest 3: Sy the Goblin Knight

  -->Status: Incomplete

  -->Reward: Skill

  Quest 4: Best Grail Knight Ramsey Wells

  -->Status: Incomplete

  -->Reward: Skill (High Rarity guaranteed)

  [A 'mended' bastard sword, useful for its ability to be wielded with both hands or just one. There appears to be more to this bde than meets the eye… Currently owned by Grail Initiate Romeo.]

  Nora nodded mentally, as such an action was impossible to do while still in the form of a sword. So, the system was actively watching her journey, and hand-picking different quests for her. While it was true that the system was almost identical too the one used by pyers in ‘Hero of Orichalcum’, she had long since realised that it was different.

  Unlike hers the game system couldn’t fuse skills together, nor did it offer quests like the ones before her. This system was probably some kind of gift that that strange god had given her. It was nice of him, but at the same time he had turned her into a sword as opposed to a human being, so she wasn’t willing to let him off the hook immediately.

  Silently praying for Romeo to find it in him and best the Goblin Knight, Nora put all of her attention into meticulously managing Romeo’s mana for him. She desperately wanted a new skill.

  Meanwhile a mad, reckless feeling surged up from the marrow of the Grail Initiates bones. The Goblin Knight must've sensed it too. His steps slowed. Cautious. He raised the axe again, but this time, there was little smugness. Instead, it was repced with something akin to respect.

  The Knight struggled to spit out bits of broken common, trying to communicate. “Name? Human Name?”

  Romeo only hissed back, spitting red. "Shut up and try to kill me."

  The Goblin Knight’s third eye narrowed slightly at the response, as if measuring the strange defiance in the exhausted human before it. Then it moved again. The axe came in a brutal horizontal sweep meant to tear Romeo apart before he could regain proper footing. Romeo dragged Caliburn across his body just in time to meet the strike. Steel screamed against steel as the weapons collided, the impact forcing him to slide several inches through the dirt. The goblin followed immediately, pressing forward with another blow that came down like a falling tree. Romeo twisted his wrists and barely deflected it, the edge biting into the ground beside him and sending clods of soil flying.

  Romeo answered with a thrust toward the creature’s ribs. The bde slipped between two ptes of rough iron armour and cut deep enough to draw a spray of dark blood. The Goblin Knight grunted, but the wound barely slowed it.

  One cwed hand shot forward and seized Romeo by the colr before smming the butt of the axe into his side. The impact drove the air from his lungs and sent him staggering backward.

  Before he could recover, the goblin ripped the axe free and hacked downward. Romeo raised Caliburn instinctively. The axe smashed against the bde, the force of the collision tearing open the leather across his shoulder where the edge slid past his guard.

  Pain fred hot and immediate, but Romeo did not retreat. Instead, he lunged forward again, using the moment when the goblin’s weapon was still buried in the block. Caliburn fshed upward in a savage rising cut that tore across the Goblin Knight’s abdomen.

  The bde split mail rings and flesh alike, opening a deep wound that forced the creature to recoil with a guttural snarl. Its free hand cwed across Romeo’s chest in retaliation, talons raking through leather and skin before shoving him violently away.

  Both fighters staggered apart.

  Romeo’s breathing had turned ragged now, each inhale burning through his ribs where the earlier hammer strike had nded. Blood ran freely down his arm and across his chest, soaking into the dirt beneath his boots. Across from him the Goblin Knight stood hunched slightly, one hand pressed against the bleeding gash in its stomach while the other still gripped the axe. Its third eye remained locked on Romeo, unblinking, calcuting.

  For several seconds neither moved.

  Romeo tightened his grip on Caliburn, feeling the sticky warmth of his own blood along the hilt. Across from him the Goblin Knight straightened gradually, its cwed fingers sliding away from the wound in its abdomen as if accepting that the injury would not close. Its three eyes studied him with cold intensity. Then, without warning, both of them moved at once.

  The goblin charged first, boots tearing through the dirt as it swung its axe in a savage diagonal arc meant to cleave through Romeo’s shoulder. Romeo stepped inside the strike instead of retreating. The axe head scraped across his pauldron, biting through leather and drawing a hot line of blood across his colrbone, but Caliburn answered in the same motion.

  The bde punched forward and drove deep into the Goblin Knight’s side beneath its raised arm. The creature snarled, twisting violently even as the steel buried itself in its ribs, forcing Romeo to tear the weapon free before it could be trapped.

  The retaliation came instantly. The Goblin Knight reversed its grip and smmed the haft of the axe into Romeo’s wounded calf. The blow shattered his bance. His leg colpsed beneath him as agony fred up through his body, and the goblin seized the opportunity, swinging the axe down in a brutal overhead chop.

  Romeo dragged Caliburn upward just in time to intercept it. The impact sent a shockwave through his arms, the edge skidding along the bde and carving a deep slice across his upper arm before lodging in the ground beside him.

  Romeo did not hesitate. He surged forward despite the pain, closing the distance before the goblin could free its weapon. Caliburn fshed once in a brutal thrust aimed straight at the creature’s throat. The Goblin Knight jerked its head aside at the st instant, the bde plunging instead through the thick muscle beneath its jaw and out the back of its neck. Bck blood erupted down the steel, yet even that wound failed to drop it.

  For a moment the world seemed to fracture. The Goblin Knight’s body twisted violently around the bde lodged through its neck, yet to Romeo the motion appeared strangely deyed, as though the creature were moving through thick water instead of air. The axe began to rise again in the goblin’s grip, but the motion felt slow, almost ponderous.

  Romeo’s vision blurred and then sharpened again in sharp, painful pulses. Warm liquid trickled down from the corners of his eyes, streaking his vision red, but the battlefield in front of him had never looked clearer. Somewhere in the back of his mind a distant memory surfaced: his father ughing during a training match years ago, saying that in his prime he could watch opponents move like snails crawling through mud.

  At the time Romeo had thought it was just another boast from an old knight reliving past glories. Now, as the Goblin Knight’s next swing crept toward him with impossible sluggishness, he realized what the man had meant.

  The goblin’s axe finally began its downward descent, yet Romeo had already moved. He tore Caliburn free from the creature’s neck and shifted his weight forward before the weapon had even reached the midpoint of its swing. The world narrowed to the rhythm of his heartbeat and the steady line of the goblin’s exposed throat.

  He stepped inside the arc of the attack, ignoring the scream of protest from his ruined calf, and drove the bde forward with everything he had left. Caliburn punched cleanly through the Goblin Knight’s throat and out the back of its neck, the steel carving a brutal path that shattered vertebrae as it passed.

  The creature’s third eye widened for a single frozen instant before the strength drained from its limbs. The axe slipped from its grip, the heavy weapon thudding uselessly into the dirt as the goblin colpsed to its knees.

  Romeo wrenched the sword free and staggered backward just as the body toppled forward into the grass, its three eyes finally going dark. For several seconds he remained standing over it, chest heaving, blood still running down from his eyes while the night around him fell silent again.

  Romeo Colpsed to his knees, catching himself on Caliburn to prevent total colpse.

  “..No more,” He whispered to his magic sword, “I can’t do no more… Please, Caliburn.”

  There was a long silence from his magical bde, but eventually it spoke with a proud tone he had not yet heard from it before. Maybe it was the way the rising sun glinted off of Caliburn, but he felt as if his sword was stronger than ever.

  ‘It’s over, Romeo, a lucky early morning.’ She said, ‘You’ve done it. From dusk till dawn, the monsters are dead.’