My first real target was another Tier 4 Anathema that had been headed straight towards the student union and the bunker underneath at the same time that I was leaving the building. The incursion must have been a higher tier than I first thought, because I hadn't been expecting to see anything higher than Tier 3 at most.

Adding to my surprise was the specific Anathema type I was now confronting. Most known Anathema types were rare, only showing up here and there or only found in very high tier incursions, and as a result most Anathema types weren't very well known. This one, however, despite being fairly uncommon, was incredibly famous.

It was a death knight.

While some uncommon, mid tier Anathema were completely obscure, or others, such as a chamelium like myself were kind of known but kind of not, Death Knights were one of the most iconic Anathema of all, even rivaling skinners, grabbers and scuttlers for what you might call 'popularity.'

This was easily attributable to two specific things. First, while all Anathema were seemingly possessed of a mindless, violently aggressive hunger to the point it was beyond self destructive, some were known to be at least a bit more intelligent and sophisticated than others.

Chameliums like myself, for instance, were known to be quite intelligent by Anathema standards, although this had seemingly little to do with my own human-level intelligence. We used deception and stealth to hunt down prey, even going so far as to wait for the right moment to strike—not something that was a concern with most other Anathema.

Similarly, death knights demonstrated something much closer to higher intelligence, at least in the context of direct combat. Wielding conjured weapons, Death Knights could react intelligently and adaptively to the immediate situation, prioritize specific targets, and even show signs of longer term planning.

But that wasn't what really made death knights so iconic. The second factor was the bigger one—basically, they were completely humanoid. That was the real reason they were so well known and 'popular' in the media and wider culture. When most Anathema looked like alien monsters, bizarre constructs, or just highly mutated animals at best, something that looked like a big guy wearing armor was bound to stand out.

I would guess that the death knight bearing down on me was at least eight feet tall, and it wasn't anything like a freakishly tall dude—rather, it was like you took a normal, if highly muscular and athletic guy, and scaled everything up.

Combined with the hulking plate armor covering every inch of its body, the figure was as comical as it was imposing.

Striding forward to meet it, I summoned my own sword, which I had to admit looked like a sharp toothpick in comparison to the fucking massive slab of metal the death knight carried.

I knew not to count on it remaining a sword, however, as one of the more useful things I knew about death knights was their tendency to freely switch weapons, reshaping and reconjuring tools of war seemingly at will.

Interestingly, I realized that the dark, semi-shiny gray metal that both the armor and sword were made of looked an awful lot like my own armor, or rather the bulk parts of it that weren't Adamantite. Is it maybe the exact same material?

I wouldn't find that terribly surprising. I wonder what's on the inside. I doubt there's an actual normal looking guy under there. I figured I would have already heard about it if there was. I would be willing to bet it was something closer to my own situation, where the 'armor' was really part of the organism itself—a particularly tough and rigid exoskeleton.

Just before the death knight reached me, I broke into a mad dash straight towards it. Even after several days of getting beaten literally into the ground by a Tier 6 Guardian who'd taken it upon himself to handle my own sword training, I knew that my own sword technique wouldn't be my most effective weapon in a fight like like this, no matter how much of an advantage my uniquely powerful sword might give me.

But what's the harm in a little practice?

Putting everything I had into my own momentum and a heavy, two handed swing, I used the momentum manipulation effect of my own sword to whip it into an impossibly fast and heavy swing, aiming right for the joint between the knight's left thigh and knee.

It was the lowest thin connection point, so I was hoping I would be able to cut it off right at the start of the fight.

But despite its immense, hulking size, the death knight was anything but slow. It brought its own sword—longer than I was tall—into a low guard faster than I had time to do anything to adjust.

It's possible someone watching might have seen me smirk for just a fleeting moment as our blades collided—or rather, as they didn't. Together with extreme momentum manipulation and the ability to summon it from any distance, my dad had also imbued the weapon with the ability to phase in and out through solid matter.

It was the trickiest of the three to use at a basic level by far, but I'd started to get the hang of it by this point. Suddenly intangible, the blade passed straight through the death knight's attempt to block without slowing down.

Getting the timing right was deceptively challenging, but I managed it. The sword regained solidity just before connecting with the massive, Tier 4 Anathema's leg joint just like I'd originally planned.

At the same time, the death knight completed a swing with its other harm, bludgeoning my side hard enough to painfully crumple armor and send me flying into a parked car thirty feet away. "Ugh. Shit."

That bastard hits hard. Staggering upright, I realized that the death knight had an incredibly evil, dark lord esque maul in its other hand. The sword, meanwhile, was now completely out of sight. Damn it.

I kind of forgot that it could just—do that.

As my 'armor' was really as much part of my own body as anything else, the dents and cracks running through one side were both really fucking painful and rapidly healing back into perfect shape.

Now that I had a few different experiences with it, I could confidently say that damage to my armor, or exoskeleton, or whatever you wanted to call it was far less painful than normal in most relatively minor cases, yet as or even more painful when the damage became severe enough.

It was kind of like a chipped tooth, except on one whole side of my entire body instead of one little piece inside of my mouth.

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Regardless, I now had a better feel for the rough strength, speed, and adaptivity of my opponent. The durability, too, as I noted that the leg had clearly been mangled but not severed by my own blow.

At the same time I was staggering away from the crushed car, the death knight was regaining its proper footing. By the time my own metal plates were grinding back together, the other armored, Tier 4 Anathema was likewise snapping everything back into its proper shape.

We really are quite similar, aren't we? I was pretty sure that the metal was the same material. If anything, the death knight was both tougher and stronger—which meant my own advantages would be flight, range, and potentially a wider range of esoteric abilities, like the ability to set off explosive blasts of air.

What I wasn't going to do was make the mistake of counting speed for one of my own advantages. 'Oh, well, actually, my speed and agility will totally mean I will win against a bigger and stronger opponent, heh heh.' That was utter bullshit and the bigger, stronger guy would always win a straight fight against an equally skilled opponent.

Likewise, a three hundred pound football linebacker could easily still outrun most people. Using someone's weight and strength against them only really worked if they weren't very good at using it themselves.

So yeah, I was pretty sure the death knight was already as fast and agile as I was, if not more.

Amusingly, the other Anathema didn't seem very interested in fighting me, immediately turning back towards the student union building—doubtlessly sensing all the tasty humans packed inside the bunker below it. I would be surprised if it took more than a minute for this Tier 4 knight to force itself inside.

But I wasn't going to allow that, was I? But like, not because I actually care about them or something. I mean if anyone watching wants to think that, sure, that's cool.

I just wanted to win.

The next thing I wanted to try was the flying sword trick I'd used to great effect on two different smashers, one much bigger and stronger than the other. Unfortunately, I'd already summoned my sword—normally, that would reduce the effectiveness of the trick, since it relied on the built up speed of the sword having flown over a great distance.

But now that I'd reached Tier 4 myself, I had some additional new tricks at my disposal.

The first idea I had was to use my metal pushing and pulling ability to send the sword flying off into the distance in order to set up the trick in the same way I'd originally used it. But while that would certainly work, it seemed pretty poor and inefficient.

In order to achieve enough distance, I would need to launch the sword pretty hard, meaning it would take at least several seconds to land, which was just a bunch of time that I'd be standing around without a weapon.

Several seconds was a pretty long time in a fight—at least it was when your opponent was actually fighting you and not just walking off looking for some regular people to eat.

Wait, do knights actually eat people?

But if I could launch it away in the first place, surely I could just cut out the middle and combine the whole thing into one efficient step.

Tossing my sword up in front of me and between myself and the death knight, I drastically lowered the mass, and in the same second, sent an arc of violet lightning blasting into it with as much force as I felt I could muster.

As always, the trick was timing. To that end, I sort of 'preloaded' my intent for the sword to ramp its momentum back up right after the violet bolt struck. I was pretty sure that it worked.

I knew that it worked when the sword smashed straight through a different parked car, continued out the other side, and then smashed through a low concrete wall. The one thing in the way it didn't smash through was the actual target.

Oh you have got to be shitting me. I missed?

The death knight stopped dead, glancing first in the direction of the sword and its path of destruction and then in the other direction at the one responsible for it—you know, me. I guess I really got it's attentionohshit!

Clearly viewing me as a proper threat now, the death knight lunged in my direction—and what a lunge it was. In what was really more of a rapid leap, the armored giant hefted its maul in preparation to smash me into scrap metal.

With barely enough time to react at all, the only thing I could manage was to fire another violet bolt sideways, yanking myself hard enough to smash into a traffic light pole half a block away hard enough to rip the main bolts partially free and send the whole thing tipping dangerously out into the currently empty intersection.

I barely even had time to roll upright and see the death knight spinning in a circle before it released its grip on the maul, sending the massive weapon hurtling straight towards me with immense speed and shockingly good aim.

While I could have tried halting it midair with more of that strange, violet not-actually-lightning, my battle instincts said that it wasn't really worth it and I just threw myself rolling to the side. Not waiting for the death knight to conjure a new weapon or close the distance, I let razor-sharp, metal wings unspool from my back, then launched myself straight up.

Flying with my somewhat skeletal, blade-adorned wings was still a bit of an odd experience, even though the mechanics of it had grown increasingly natural and automatic. Rather than generating conventional lift, a peculiar flex of abstract 'muscles' I didn't usually have would cause the blade 'feathers' to vibrate extremely rapidly.

That alone really shouldn't have done much, but some other supernatural aspect of my alien biology combined to make them stick really firmly in the air whenever they were vibrating.

Ultimately, that meant hovering was fairly easy, while direct flight was a matter of repeatedly 'kicking off,' using bursts of vibration synchronized to wing beats.

With only a few of those beats I had launched myself at least a hundred feet straight up. Now hovering, I had a great view of the whole area below me and the death knight stuck all the way back down on the ground.

With a thought, my sword returned to my hand. Now, I was ready to—wait. I squinted. While I might have ridiculous and impossible strength, speed, and regeneration, my actual eyesight wasn't anything too special. It was a bit hard to make out what exactly the knight was doing, but—ohshit!

I tried to drop out of my current hover and dodge, but I was nowhere near fast enough to completely avoid the even larger hammer that the death knight had lobbed straight up in my direction. Frankly, the fact that it could swing hard enough to throw a hundred-plus pound hammer over a hundred feet straight up and still have huge momentum was absolutely insane, let alone the additional matter of aiming it.

And while I'd reacted quickly enough that it didn't hit my main body or head or anything like that, it did clip one of my wings, painfully ripping the skeletal frame and spraying detached feather-blades outwards.

Now falling, I did the only thing I could think of, which was to slightly arrest my wild descend with my one good wing while simultaneously hauling ass in a new direction by yanking on a new violet bolt that I shot over to an electrical utility pole a block or so away at the very edge of my current range.

By the time I made it back to the ground, my wing was mostly regenerated and I'd lost sight of the death knight—but last I'd seen, it had been running off in the same direction it predicted I would land. Shit.

Having now gotten a much better taste of the power, speed, and raw skill of the enemy I'd chosen—well, I was starting to think I'd bitten off a bit more than I could properly chew.

This was nothing like any of the other Tier 4 Anathema I'd fought. Despite demonstrating no other special abilities than conjuring handled weapons, this thing was on a completely different level.

Just remember, eventually it will get bored and go look for something else to hunt—right?

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