Tia did not heed Cecilia's "kindness."
Her calculation circuits completed all simulations within 0.4 seconds. If Cecilia stepped aside and the three of them rushed for the stone pillar, their backs would be completely exposed. An unkillable enemy would be right behind them.
This wasn't a path; it was a trap.
Tia stepped forward. Her direction was not toward the depths of the secret chamber, but straight ahead—toward Cecilia.
Cecilia's eyebrows twitched.
Tia's Mithril body completed its form-shift the moment she surged forward. Her arms were no longer blades. Liquid Mithril spread along her forearms, restructuring into two metal claws with barbed structures. The etheric conduction lines lit up across her entire frame, and the white mana-conducting film clung tightly to her surface.
She slammed into Cecilia.
It wasn't a slash or a stab. It was a grapple.
The Mithril claws hooked into Cecilia's shoulders. The barbs embedded themselves into the muscle tissue beneath the collarbones, locking tight. Cecilia's knee drove upward, slamming into Tia's abdomen. Metal collided with bone, producing a dull, heavy thud as the kneecap shattered. The green light flared. The bone restored itself.
Tia's right leg hooked behind Cecilia's calf, her Mithril shin locking the other woman's ankle. Their bodies twisted together.
Cecilia's palm pressed against Tia's chest, a five-element fused mana orb compressing in her hand. She released it at point-blank range.
The mana sank into the Mithril surface and dissipated.
Cecilia's fingers carved five white scratches into Tia's chest. Three of her fingernails snapped. Tia's Mithril body didn't even show a dent.
Tia's barbed claws dragged downward, tearing away a large patch of flesh from Cecilia's shoulders. The green light flared. The flesh closed.
An utterly absurd scene played out in the center of the secret chamber.
One was a metal body that no magic could harm. The other was a flesh-and-blood body that could recover instantly from any wound. The two bodies were entwined, tearing and grinding against each other, every injury perfectly negated by the other's unique nature.
There was no victory or defeat. Only attrition.
But Tia didn't need a victory.
What she needed was to nail Cecilia to this spot.
Tia shouted toward Leon and Lilian.
“Leave her to me! Go stop Dracula!”
The moment Leon received the signal, his ice field contracted. The hemispherical ice surface began to shatter from the edges, all the ice mana pouring back into his fists. His right knee still throbbed with pain, but he had already shifted his center of gravity.
He glanced at Tia.
The Mithril body was entangled with Cecilia as they rolled across the ground. Cecilia's fire magic exploded against Tia only to dissipate, and wind blades left nothing but white scratches on the Mithril surface. Tia's barbed claws tore open Cecilia's abdomen, her intestines spilling out only to be stuffed back in by the green light.
An absolute shield had welded an unkillable monster firmly in place.
Leon turned.
Lilian was already running.
Her crown was crooked, her dagger held in a reverse grip. The burn on her thigh rubbed against her skirt as she ran, giving her a slight limp, but her speed was undiminished.
The two of them cut into the stone pillar's battlefield from the left and right.
Dracula's residual soul depletion had reached its limit. His red robes were mostly burned away, his withered ribs exposed to the gray aura of Desolate End. His right hand was embedded in the cracks of the stone pillar, his finger bones locked with the stone. Every second, debris fell from the point of contact.
The rose patterns of the Bloodline Aria had almost completely darkened.
Valentine's Desolate End had advanced to within twenty centimeters of him. The gray folds crushed the air, grinding oxygen molecules directly into powder. Every time Dracula took a breath, his lungs shrank inward.
Leon's ice blade slashed down from the left. He wasn't aiming for Dracula's body, but for the path of his scepter. The ice blade traced an arc in the air, creating a blockade that froze every possible angle the scepter could swing.
Dracula's scepter was pinned in a half-raised position by the ice ridges. A metallic creak came from the staff under the strain. The last of the dark red light in the rose patterns flickered under the pressure, failing to erupt.
Lilian cut in from a low angle on the right.
She didn't aim for Dracula's upper body. She didn't target his head or his arms. She slid across the stone tiles, using her momentum to sweep her dagger across the outside of Dracula's right leg.
The Mithril blade severed the popliteal nerve plexus behind the knee.
Dracula's right leg lost its support. His knee buckled. The weight of his entire body collapsed halfway. The fingers embedded in the stone pillar's cracks were forced to shift angles as he sank, and a tiny gap opened between his finger bones and the stone structure.
This was the moment Valentine had been waiting for.
The gray folds of Desolate End advanced from twenty centimeters to ten. From ten to five. The density increased to the point that the air began to crystallize and shatter.
The last bit of light in Dracula's single eye was fading.
His residual soul had burned to the very edge. His scepter was pinned by ice, his right leg was paralyzed, and his left hand was still maintaining the connection between the golden thread on his abdomen and the stone pillar.
Valentine's Desolate End broke through the final line of defense.
The gray folds crushed over Dracula's abdomen—toward that "Leila face."
It was visible now. The gray aura of death was less than three centimeters from the face. Two centimeters. One centimeter.
Leila's lips trembled slightly within the gray aura. The golden soul thread at the center of her forehead vibrated violently.
“Don't touch her—!”
A ragged scream tore from Dracula's throat.
From the direction of the chamber's broken stone doors, a set of hurried footsteps crushed the remains of the withered husks at the end of the corridor.
“Valentine, get away!”
Bell's voice smashed through the waves of blood and decay, booming into the secret chamber.
He stood on the final step, the core cylinder of the Soul Vibration Cannon humming in his hand, all the runes on its Mithril shell glowing. His eyes were bloodshot. The pain in the back of his head was still there, forced into the background by adrenaline.
“That face is a fake!!”
Valentine's movements stopped.
For 0.1 seconds.
The gray folds of Desolate End froze one centimeter in front of Dracula's abdomen. Their advance dropped to zero.
Her head tilted three degrees. Her red eyes turned from behind the gray light of Desolate End toward Bell.
Fake.
Those words crashed into her mind, triggering a violent chemical reaction with three thousand years of memories. That face. The face she had stared at for three millennia. The face she believed to be her sister's residual soul.
A fake?
A tiny gap appeared in the advance of the Desolate Realm. It wasn't large—only the width of a finger. A faint turbulence appeared at the edge of the gray folds.
It was enough.
Dracula didn't need more.
Three thousand years. He had waited three thousand years.
He had bet everything on today.
Bell said it was a fake.
The words of a human boy vs. three thousand years of faith.
There was no need to choose.
Dracula's left hand suddenly clenched. His five withered fingers pierced through his own chest.
His ribs were shattered by his fingertips. Shards flew from his sides. His fingers gripped his heart directly.
The heart gave one final beat in his palm.
He crushed it.
Deep red blood and golden mana light gushed from the hole in his chest simultaneously. The fragments of his heart turned into dark red powder, flowing backward through his blood vessels into his arm. All his blood source mana burned away in this instant, turning into a final thrust.
The golden soul thread snapped taut.
The final inch.
The tip of the thread sank into the core of the stone pillar.
The dark red light throughout the entire secret chamber froze at that exact moment.
One second.
Two seconds.
Then, a sickly green light exploded from the deepest part of the stone pillar.
It wasn't dark red. It wasn't gold. It was a nauseating, thick green that carried the putrid, sweet scent of decay.
The green light spread frantically along the ancient inscriptions on the pillar's surface. The color of the runes changed from dark red to sickly green, the transformation spreading from the bottom to the top, covering the entire pillar within three seconds.
The inheritance stone pillar let out a shriek so sharp it could pierce eardrums.
The green light poured from the base of the pillar into the ground, spreading in all directions along the roots of the ley line array. The stone tiles of the chamber changed color one by one. The gray stone was saturated with sickly green, and fine green mist rose from the cracks.
The earth trembled.
The entire Moon Phase City trembled.
Bell felt the continuous vibration beneath his feet. He grabbed the frame of the stone door for support. The charging hum of the core cylinder still vibrated in his hand, but the fully charged Soul Vibration Cannon was now meaningless.
It was too late.
The blood-colored rose reliefs on the walls—the living rose roots that had existed for three thousand years as conductors for the array throughout the Night Rose Palace—twisted violently in the sickly green light.
The red veins in the leaves turned green. The petals withered. Black spots appeared on the surface of the thorns. Then, new branches grew from the spots. They were no longer roses. They were vines with a woody decay texture, something that had never appeared in Blood Race architecture.
The three-thousand-year inheritance network. The blood source essence of generations of Vampire Kings. The entire energy foundation of the Blood Race.
In this moment, it was completely rewritten.
Dracula knelt before the stone pillar. His right hand, embedded in the cracks, still hadn't let go. Blood flowed from the hole in his chest, but there was no heart left to pump it. The dark red liquid seeped slowly from the wound by the momentum of residual mana, trickling down the curve of his ribs.
His single eye stared at the sickly green on the stone pillar's surface.
That was not Leila's color.
Valentine stood two paces behind him. Desolate End had been withdrawn. The gray folds dissipated from around her body, revealing her frame covered in blood and burns. Her short black hair clung to her temples, sweat and blood mixing as they ran down her cheekbones.
Her red eyes stared unmoving at the stone pillar.
She had heard Bell's words. A fake.
The sickly green light cast twisted reflections in the depths of her irises.
In the back of the secret chamber, the struggle between Tia and Cecilia stopped.
It wasn't that Tia let go. It was that Cecilia stopped struggling.
The moment the green light exploded, Cecilia's body relaxed. She hung from Tia's barbed claws, her feet off the ground, the wounds on her shoulders still seeping blood.
She tilted her head, looking at the sickly green light by the stone pillar.
She smiled.
Tia's barbed claws were still embedded in her shoulders. The Mithril perception circuits captured the frequency of her carotid artery pulse beneath that smile—steady, calm, and even carrying a sense of relief.
From the beginning, she hadn't expected Dracula to win.
All she needed was for Dracula to push that thread into the inheritance core.
Winning or losing didn't matter. Dracula's life didn't matter. Valentine's interference didn't matter. The desperate resistance of Tia, Leon, and Lilian—none of it mattered.
As long as that thread went in, the game was over.
Bell stood on the steps.
His gaze passed through the churning green mist in the chamber, falling on the kneeling Dracula, the frozen Valentine, and the pinned Cecilia. Finally, it rested on the inheritance stone pillar.
The last dark red rune on the pillar's surface turned sickly green before his eyes.
The entire pillar was now a solid, glowing green, emitting a heavy, putrid, sweet scent of decay. It stood amidst the ruins of the secret chamber, letting out a low, continuous hum that resonated through the ley lines.
Dracula's single eye moved from the stone pillar to Bell.
The murky iris reflected that sickly green.
His lips moved. He didn't have the strength to produce complete syllables. Air leaked from the hole in his chest, carrying blood foam.
But Bell read the shape of his mouth.
A single question.
“A lie...?”
Bell did not answer.
The sickly green light on the floor crawled up the soles of his boots, only to be blocked below his ankles by the residual runes of the Mithril core cylinder.
Outside the secret chamber, a long, heavy boom echoed over Moon Phase City. A pillar of sickly green light shot from the dome of the Night Rose Palace's main hall into the sky, piercing into the rift where the dead World Tree hung.
Rate on N.U.
