The moment Lilian stepped into the secret chamber, Valentine’s Desolate Realm suddenly expanded.
It wasn’t an outward expansion. Its density doubled.
The gray folds transformed from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. The air within the space visibly dried, cracked, and turned into powder.
This wasn’t the Desolate Realm she had shown before in the Council Chamber.
This was Valentine’s full output after shedding three thousand years of disguise—the true power of the younger sister, not the elder.
World-class skill: Desolate End.
The defensive perimeter three meters in front of the stone pillar was violently pushed back to a single meter.
The gray folds ground over the tips of Dracula’s fingers as they pressed against the stone pillar. His withered skin weathered at an accelerated rate, exposing his knuckles to the air.
His single eye moved from the stone pillar to look directly at Valentine.
Cecilia ignored the clash between Valentine and Dracula.
She turned around to face Lilian, Tia, and Leon at the entrance of the chamber.
Green spots of light flickered in rhythm with the pulse of her carotid artery.
Her gaze swept past Lilian without pausing for even a second, landing instead on Tia.
Her facial muscles tightened. A complex mixture of possessiveness and loathing pulled at the lines of her face.
“So, Brother fixed you.”
A wet, guttural sound colored her voice.
“You annoying woman.”
She raised her right hand, fingers splayed.
Mana of all attributes intertwined above her palm—fire, wind, water, earth, lightning, dark, and light. The seven-colored lights were compressed into a sphere the size of a fist.
“Then let’s see if I can break you again.”
The seven-element compressed orb shot toward Tia.
Tia did not dodge.
The etheric induction patterns on her Mithril body lit up simultaneously, forming a pure white film of mana conduction over her entire form.
The seven-element compressed orb struck the film.
And then it dissipated.
There was no explosion, no shockwave, and no energy leakage. The seven attributes of mana were completely absorbed by the Mithril body’s complete magic immunity, converted into harmless ether that scattered into the air.
Cecilia’s fingers froze in mid-air. Her eyelids twitched.
She could not understand this physical erasure. In her understanding, every defense had a threshold. But this metal body in front of her had directly severed the causality of magic.
Tia’s liquid Mithril had already finished transforming on her right arm.
Three slender silver needles shot out from between her fingers.
They flew at tricky angles, aimed at Cecilia’s throat, left ribs, and right knee.
Cecilia leaned her body back sharply.
The three needles grazed past her chin, waist, and knee.
The third needle tore through the fabric of her skirt.
She flipped back and retreated three steps, her heels grinding against the stone bricks as she stabilized herself.
She raised her left hand, and a large-scale fire domain magic instantly unfurled.
The temperature in the chamber soared above eight hundred degrees within two seconds. The stone walls began to glow red, and the air distorted.
Leon acted before her fire domain could fully take shape.
Northland Galaxy erupted from beneath his feet. A fan-shaped sheet of ice surged forward, clashing head-on with the fire domain.
Steam exploded into a white mist at the line of impact.
Lilian charged out from the white mist, clutching the Mithril dagger that had once burned her thigh.
The blade was pointed at Cecilia’s flank.
She wasn’t trying to kill her. She was trying to sever the link between Cecilia and Dracula’s positions, forcing her away from the stone pillar.
The chamber was simultaneously torn apart by three battles.
Valentine’s Desolate End and Dracula’s Blood Source Sovereignty ground against each other within a three-meter radius of the stone pillar.
Gray and dark red lights took turns swallowing each other. The ancient inscriptions on the surface of the stone pillar flickered in the gap between the two powers.
An anxious light swirled in Dracula’s single eye.
His right hand never left the stone pillar.
He wasn't fighting Valentine; he was distracted.
Most of his power was being used to maintain the connection with the stone pillar, attempting to pry open the deepest seals of the inheritance.
Valentine captured this intent.
Her attacks weren't meant to strike Dracula down. She was constantly disrupting his resonance frequency with the stone pillar.
Every time the gray folds ground over his fingers, the flow of light on the pillar’s surface would falter for a beat.
A guttural roar came from Dracula’s throat.
The base of the scepter slammed repeatedly into the floor. Waves of red light poured out from the rose patterns, trying to push back the Desolate Realm.
Valentine’s World-class skill was crushing him on a dimensional level. He had no World-class skill of his own.
Tia’s Mithril body drew one silver arc after another in the chamber.
The liquid Mithril switched seamlessly between offense and defense.
Her right arm transformed into a blade for a horizontal slash while her left arm expanded into a shield, blocking a dark-attribute curse chain that Cecilia had swung from the right.
The lines of Cecilia’s face grew increasingly rigid.
She had tried single-attribute attacks of fire, wind, lightning, dark, and light.
She had tried dual-attribute fusion blasts and triple-attribute woven sealing arrays.
All of them were useless.
Every magic that touched Tia’s Mithril body was directly absorbed and vanished, leaving not even a ripple behind.
“Why?”
True confusion and anxiety squeezed out of Cecilia’s voice.
“Why can’t I do anything against something Brother made?”
Tia did not answer her question.
Bell had never treated her as a mere creation. She was a living person. Every swing of her blade was an enactment of his promise.
Seven silver needles were fired in rapid succession from her palm.
The trajectory of each needle was precisely calculated, sealing off six of Cecilia’s evasion paths and one retreat route.
Maintaining his ice domain, Leon’s gaze pierced through the refraction of the ice to lock onto Tia’s movements.
He had seen the combat techniques of countless high-level knights, but Tia’s movements belonged to no known school.
There were no redundant preparatory stances, no use of momentum for leverage. Her logic of force violated human ergonomics.
It was a strike based entirely on the shortest path derived from geometric calculations.
Every one of Cecilia’s casting wind-ups was precisely predicted and interrupted by Tia.
In his mind, Leon re-evaluated the combat value of this Mithril body. Absolute magic immunity combined with a calculation speed surpassing carbon-based lifeforms.
Bell had created a monster.
No, what Bell had created was an absolute shield.
Cecilia’s attacks became increasingly frenzied.
The stone bricks on the floor were shredded by her wind blades. The debris was ignited in mid-air by fire mana, turning into a meteor shower that rained down on Tia.
Tia’s liquid Mithril expanded into an arched canopy above her head.
The meteor shower slammed into the canopy, producing a dense series of metallic thuds.
Cecilia’s chest heaved violently.
She could not accept this. She possessed the World Tree Heart and the combat experience accumulated over hundreds of loops.
Yet she was being held back here by a metal shell that didn't even have a soul.
“What do you think you are?”
Cecilia clenched her fists, her nails digging into her flesh.
“A pile of scrap metal. Why would Brother waste his time on you?”
Tia retracted the canopy, her right arm transforming back into a long blade.
Her voice was devoid of emotion, simply stating a fact.
“Because I am his wife.”
This sentence precisely severed Cecilia’s final line of sanity.
Green light erupted from the blood vessels in her neck.
The power of the World Tree Heart flooded into her limbs and bones.
A visible green pulse radiated outward from the center of her body, blowing the three of them back simultaneously.
The soles of Tia’s boots scraped two white friction marks onto the stone bricks.
A ring of cracks was blasted into Leon’s ice domain by the pulse.
Lilian was sent flying four meters, her back slamming into the stone wall of the chamber.
With a muffled groan, she slid to the ground.
She didn't stay down. Her knees buckled for a moment, but then she forced herself upright. The dagger was still in her hand.
Her crown was crooked, but she didn't move to fix it. She stood tall, pointing her blade forward once again.
Valentine’s Desolate End pushed to the final half-meter in front of Dracula.
The gray folds ground over the back of the hand he had pressed against the stone pillar.
His skin aged at a visible rate. The ligaments between his knuckles shriveled, and his finger joints let out a sharp creak.
A flash of agony crossed Dracula’s single eye.
It didn't come from the back of his hand.
The face on his abdomen—Leila’s face—began to writhe uneasily within the reach of the Desolate Realm.
The frequency of her lips twitching tripled.
“You’ll hurt her.”
For the first time, a hint of wavering appeared in Dracula’s raspy voice.
Valentine’s movements stopped.
It was a reflex. Hearing those words caused a 0.2-second fluctuation in the mental power she used to control the Desolate End.
Three thousand years of memories backlashed in that instant.
Dracula seized this window of opportunity.
He suddenly raised his scepter and swung it horizontally.
The rose patterns of the Bloodline Aria erupted with the full accumulation of three thousand years of light.
A pillar of dark red light shot from the scepter, striking Valentine directly in the chest.
Valentine was knocked back five steps.
The soles of her boots carved two deep gouges into the stone bricks.
The clothing on her chest was burned through, and the skin beneath showed charred scorch marks.
She glanced down at the wound.
Then she looked up.
In her red eyes, the gray light of the Desolate End did not weaken; instead, it condensed into an even denser layer of folds around the scorch marks on her chest.
“You’re using my sister to threaten me.”
Her voice was terrifyingly flat.
“Just like three thousand years ago.”
She took a step forward with her right foot.
The range of the Desolate End suddenly compressed from five meters around her body to just one.
This wasn't a weakening; it was a concentration.
All the destructive power gathered within a one-meter radius of her body, its density increasing dozens of times over.
She pressed forward, closing in on Dracula.
Under the clash of multiple powers, the chamber began to suffer structural damage.
Large stone bricks fell from the ceiling.
The inheritance stone pillar itself began to hum, the frequency rising higher and higher.
Fine cracks appeared on the surface of the pillar.
Dark red light seeped from the cracks. No longer following the established paths of the inscriptions, it began to diffuse randomly in all directions.
The stone pillar was about to reach its limit.
In a gap between her exchanges with Tia, Cecilia glanced at the state of the pillar.
She gritted her teeth.
Her voice pierced through the chaotic battlefield, shouting toward Dracula.
“It’s too late! Inject it directly!”
“Push Leila’s fragment in and open the inheritance core at the same time! Don’t wait for the full process!”
Dracula’s hand slammed back onto the surface of the stone pillar.
This time, it wasn't a touch; it was an embedding.
His withered fingers sank into the cracks of the stone pillar, his finger bones interlocking with the stone structure.
He threw open his red robe. Leila’s face on his abdomen was exposed to the dark red light.
A golden soul thread was extracted from the brow of that face.
It flowed along Dracula’s arm and surged into the interior of the stone pillar.
Valentine’s eyes instantly turned bloodshot.
“No!”
Her vocal cords tore.
The gray folds of the Desolate End lost their precise control, surging toward the stone pillar like a storm.
At that same moment...
Tia’s perception circuits jumped in the background.
A brand-new data stream forcibly cut into her etheric network.
Bell’s heartbeat came from the direction of the Library.
A stable, conscious heartbeat that was currently on the move.
He was awake.
And he was rushing toward this location.
Tia’s left arm shield gave a sudden forward shove, parrying one of Cecilia’s wind blades.
The etheric induction patterns beneath her silver faceplate erupted with unprecedented light.
Her head turned mechanically by fifteen degrees, facing the broken stone doors of the secret chamber.
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