Out on the road, the Hollow Knight turned its helmet toward them almost instantly.
Then it moved.
Heavy armor crashed against stone with a deafening CLANG—CLANG—CLANG—! as the Knight burst forward in a full sprint, its acceleration so absurd that Lucien couldn’t help but curse.
Isn’t that too fast?!
The thing crossed nearly ten meters in a second, massive frame tearing down Noble’s Way with terrifying momentum.
For something that heavily armored, it should’ve been slow.
Clearly, that logic didn’t apply here.
He shoved himself fully upright alongside Ava, and the two of them immediately vaulted through the shattered window frame. Glass crunched beneath their boots as they landed outside and broke into a sprint down Noble’s Way.
Ava ran ahead of him at the start. She was definitely faster than him off acceleration, but not overwhelmingly so. Lucien managed to keep pace without falling behind too badly.
Noble’s Way stretched ahead for roughly ten meters across, lined with shattered estates, broken statues, and abandoned carriages left to rot beneath the reddish haze hanging over the district.
As expected, Hollow figures lingered along the roadside. All of them are Stage 3s.
Several still wore pieces of old city guard equipment, rusted swords hanging from their hands as they twitched toward the sudden movement.
The moment they noticed Lucien and Ava, they started closing in.
A former guard stepped directly into Ava’s path and swung its sword sideways with a guttural screech.
Ava’s expression barely changed.
Her footwork shifted suddenly into something strange and fluid, her body slipping sideways at an angle that looked unnatural. The blade passed through empty air with a sharp WHOOSH—!
At the same moment, Lucien rushed past behind her and drove a hard kick into the Hollow’s knee.
CRK—!
The creature stumbled sideways and crashed into another Hollow while Lucien kept running without even looking back.
Behind them, the Knight was getting closer.
Lucien risked a glance over his shoulder and immediately felt his stomach tighten.
The armored Hollow was tearing through the street behind them with relentless speed, greatsword dragging sparks whenever its tip scraped across the stone. The distance between them wasn’t massive anymore, and at the pace it was gaining, that gap was shrinking frighteningly quickly.
Damn it…
His breathing roughened slightly as he forced himself to think while running.
We can’t stay in the open like this.
The border to the Contested Zone was less than five hundred meters away now.
Unfortunately, that calculation didn’t include the sixty-meter open stretch with almost no cover whatsoever.
At their pace, they still needed at least another minute.
Maybe two.
The Knight definitely didn’t need that long.
Lucien’s eyes swept rapidly across the ruined district ahead while he ran, forcing himself to think past the adrenaline pounding through his chest.
There.
A larger estate stood farther ahead on the left side of Noble’s Way, noticeably more intact than the surrounding ruins. Its outer walls were damaged, but the structure itself still stood mostly whole.
Lucien recognized it.
He had passed through it a few times during previous scouting runs.
More importantly, it connected to Servants’ Alley on the eastern side—a much narrower route that ran parallel to Noble’s Way—without any presence of Hollow.
It wouldn’t stop the Knight completely.
But it might slow it down enough.
“Ava!” Lucien shouted between breaths, pointing ahead. “There is a large intact estate on your left diagonal! It connects to an alley! Go there!”
Ava glanced toward where he pointed without slowing down.
“You know this area, right?!” she called back. “Then lead!”
“You’re not gonna stab me in the back to slow the Knight down, right?!”
“I’d probably just leave you behind! Don’t hold a grudge when that happens!”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that!”
The two of them veered sharply off Noble’s Way.
Lucien reached the estate first and planted one foot against the cracked outer wall before launching himself through a shattered window. Glass crunched loudly beneath his boots as he landed inside what used to be a grand reception hall filled with overturned furniture and dust-covered portraits.
Ava came through right behind him effortlessly.
The estate blurred past around them as they tore through broken corridors and collapsed archways. Lucien shoved open a swinging kitchen door hard enough for it to slam against the wall with a loud BANG—!
Rusting cookware and shattered plates littered the room.
Neither of them slowed.
Lucien vaulted over a fallen table and hurled himself through another broken window at the back of the estate.
Cold air hit his face as he landed hard inside Servants’ Alley.
Ava dropped beside him a second later.
The alley stretched northward ahead of them, narrow and shadowed between tall estate walls. At only around three meters wide, it felt far more cramped than Noble’s Way.
Behind them came another deafening crash.
BOOOOM—!!
The Knight simply smashed through part of the estate instead of properly navigating it.
Stone exploded outward. Wooden beams snapped apart.
Lucien glanced back just long enough to see the armored Hollow forcing its way through debris like a battering ram, greatsword carving a trail through collapsed furniture and walls alike.
Weren’t you supposed to protect these buildings? Lucien thought with tired disbelief while sprinting again. At this point, what exactly are you guarding? A pile of rubble?
He shoved the thought aside and focused forward.
Servants’ Alley wasn’t narrow enough to completely trap the Knight. Even with the bulky armor, massive pauldrons, and oversized greatsword, the thing only occupied maybe a meter and a half of space at most. It could still force its way through.
But that wasn’t the real reason Lucien chose this route.
Nearly sixty percent of Servants’ Alley was clogged with debris.
Collapsed walls pushed inward from both sides, narrowing the passage in several places to barely two meters across. Rubble piles, broken carts, scattered barrels, and rotting wooden crates littered the path, while thick overgrown vegetation crawled across the stone like the district itself was slowly swallowing the alley whole.
Anything human-sized could still weave through it.
Something as massive as the Knight would either need to navigate carefully or simply bulldoze its way forward.
And the ground itself was terrible.
Displaced cobblestones shifted underfoot, potholes interrupted the path every few meters, and muddy patches made traction unreliable. For a heavily armored monster charging at full speed, that instability mattered.
At least, Lucien hoped it did.
Behind them came another violent CRASH—!
The Knight forced itself deeper into the alley, armor scraping loudly against stone walls while debris exploded aside beneath its weight.
Lucien spared a quick glance back and immediately grimaced.
It was slower now.
But not slow enough.
Damn it.
His breathing grew rougher as he kept pushing forward beside Ava.
There was also another problem.
The Knight might not be stupid.
Sooner or later, it might decide Servants’ Alley was slowing it down too much and simply circle back through Noble’s Way to intercept them from the front.
If that happens, they are doomed.
The alley suddenly opened up ahead.
Lucien and Ava burst out onto a broader residential street lined with ruined townhouses and collapsed garden walls.
“Where are we?!” Ava asked sharply without slowing.
“Rosewood Lane,” Lucien answered between breaths. He pointed northward toward the distant intersection connected to Noble’s Way. “Border’s about a hundred sixty meters that way—”
Ava’s crimson eyes quickly scanned the surroundings while running.
Ruined buildings stood everywhere around them, with enough cover to break line of sight if they moved carefully enough.
“Through the buildings or—”
CLANG. CLANG.
The heavy metallic footsteps cut her off.
Both of them instinctively glanced back.
The Knight emerged from Servants’ Alley behind them, silver-blue armor streaked with dust and fragments of broken stone. Despite the cramped terrain, it was still coming relentlessly forward, greatsword dragging sparks across the cobblestones behind it.
“No time!” he snapped. “The next hundred meters still have ruins we can use, but the last sixty near the border opens into a plaza!”
Ava clicked her tongue softly.
“Of course it does.”
The two of them immediately veered sideways through the nearest ruined townhouse instead of staying exposed on the street.
Lucien vaulted through a broken doorway while Ava slid past a collapsed bookshelf beside him almost gracefully despite the situation. Rubble crunched beneath their boots as they tore through the interiors of abandoned homes, moving from one ruined structure to another.
The debris slowed them.
But behind them, the Knight smashed straight through a partially collapsed wall with a thunderous BOOM—!
That slowed it even more.
Before long, they burst back onto the northernmost stretch of Noble’s Way, right at the edge of the plaza separating the Garden District from the Contested Zone.
Lucien's eyes locked onto the open space ahead. He glanced back, then forward again, trying to measure the distance, the timing, and the odds.
Yeah. No clue.
He clicked his tongue. "Let's run as fast as we can!"
Ava didn't need to be told twice.
"Way ahead of you!"
She accelerated before he even finished speaking. Not wanting to be left behind, Lucien immediately ran after her.
THUD—THUD—THUD—
His boots hammered against the plaza as cold air tore past his face.
He looked back.
The Knight had finally cleared the ruined section behind them and reached solid ground again.
The instant it did, it burst forward with terrifying momentum.
Its heavy armor thundered across the plaza with deafening metallic crashes, moving so fast that Lucien’s already sinking stomach felt ready to drop at any second.
We’re not making it.
Ava seemed to realize the same thing.
She started to say something, then suddenly stopped mid-breath.
Her crimson eyes widened slightly.
Lucien followed her gaze—
—and nearly stumbled himself.
Wait… it can do that?!
The Knight bent its knees.
Then the massive armored Hollow launched itself forward.
WHOOOM—!
The sheer force behind the jump cracked the stone beneath its feet as the monster soared across the plaza with impossible speed, greatsword raised high overhead while its shadow swallowed the ground beneath them.
Instinct took over immediately. He threw himself hard to the left while Ava sprang in the opposite direction almost at the same time.
BOOOOM—!!!
The Knight crashed down between them like a falling siege weapon.
Its greatsword slammed into the plaza hard enough to rupture the stone apart, cracks racing wildly across the ground while debris and shattered cobblestones blasted outward in every direction.
A shockwave hit Lucien mid-roll.
“—ghk!”
He skidded roughly across the ground before forcing himself upright again, both daggers already in his hands. Dust swirled through the air around the Knight’s massive frame while the blade remained embedded deep in the shattered plaza for half a second.
Lucien’s eyes instantly locked onto the exposed gaps between the armor plates. There were gaps in the armor, places he could strike that might actually do damage, but he held back for a split second and glanced at Ava instead.
Ava recovered almost instantly. Unlike Lucien, when she saw the Knight still adjusting from the force of its landing, she immediately lunged forward without hesitation, her rapier flashing toward the gap beneath its arm in a clean, precise thrust.
I should support her.
Lucien forced himself forward as well, circling behind the Knight. The instant Ava drew its attention, he drove one dagger toward the exposed joint behind its knee.
The Knight reacted terrifyingly fast.
Its shield slammed sideways toward Ava with brutal force.
CLAAANG—!
Ava barely caught the hit with her rapier in time. The impact forced her several steps backward, boots grinding harshly across the cracked plaza as her stance broke for a moment. At the same time, the Knight ripped its greatsword free from the ground and began raising it again for another strike.
Lucien immediately struck the side of its armor with his dagger instead.
CLANG—!
The sharp metallic noise echoed across the plaza and instantly pulled the Knight’s attention toward him.
Lucien’s expression tightened.
This is a bad idea.
He tried to dodge sideways, but the difference in speed was simply too large.
THUD—!
The Knight’s armored elbow crashed directly into him and launched him backward hard enough to lift him off his feet.
“—URK!”
Pain exploded through his upper right arm the moment he hit the ground. It felt heavy and sharp at the same time, like the bone had nearly cracked apart from the impact. He rolled twice across the stone before finally stopping near a fractured section of the plaza, teeth clenched tightly while his entire arm throbbed violently.
For a second, it went numb.
...Yeah, that definitely would’ve broken.
Lucien grimaced and forced himself upright again, instinctively flexing his fingers once to confirm the arm still worked.
Thanks for the Deflection Band, Edric.
His breathing had turned rougher now as he looked toward Ava. She was already staring back at him, crimson eyes sharp with the exact same realization forming in his head.
No words were needed.
Running wouldn’t work anymore. The Knight was faster than both of them, and the open plaza gave them nowhere to hide, nowhere to weave through debris, nowhere to break line of sight long enough to escape.
But fighting it directly wasn’t much better.
Just looking at the thing made that obvious enough. One clean hit from that monster could probably cripple either of them instantly.
Lucien exhaled through his nose, already hating the conclusion he’d reached.
“We need to hold it off while retreating.”