Pulling the gaze from the sky back to the ground.
The underground secret chamber.
Within ten seconds, the sickly green light of the inheritance stone pillar completed a sort of irreversible devouring. The blood source mana of the nine Ancestors scattered across the front lines of Moon Phase City was forcibly extracted, channeled through the roots of the ley line array and every pipe laid within the inheritance network over the past three thousand years, and poured entirely into this emerald stone pillar.
It was poured into Dracula's body.
Bell stood on the steps at the entrance of the secret chamber. The core cylinder of the Soul Vibration Cannon hummed continuously in his hand, but the fully charged weapon no longer had a target.
He watched as Dracula's body transformed.
That withered remnant of a body, permanently scorched by Dragon Fire, was reorganizing at a speed that defied all biological common sense. Charred scar tissue fell from his face, piece by piece, turning into ash as it hit the stone floor. Beneath it was pale, newborn skin, so smooth it lacked a single pore.
The right arm that had been evaporated three thousand years ago regrew within the sickly green light. The bones came first; the white radius and ulna extended from the stump of his shoulder, the joints clicking into place in the air. Then came the blood vessels, tendons, and muscles. Finally, the skin.
From shoulder to fingertip. A complete right arm. Ten seconds.
The hollow in his chest that Bell had personally pierced was closing as the bone fragments along the inner walls pressed together and merged, the ribs locking back into place. A heart condensed into form from nothing at the center of the cavity.
The first heartbeat.
Dull. Powerful. The air in the chamber shivered with that single thud.
Dracula stood tall.
Fragments of his red robe hung from him, revealing a complete, pale physique beneath. No scars. No burns. Even his clouded, single eye had been restored—the color of the iris was no longer dark red, but a thick, sickly green.
He was not the Vampire King from three thousand years ago. He was more terrifying. The blood source essence of nine Ancestors and all the energy from Moon Phase City's ley line array were sealed within a single body.
A sickly green mana pressure radiated from him. It was indiscriminate.
Leon's ice domain shattered inch by inch under the pressure. Cracks spread outward from beneath Dracula's feet in a radial pattern. Shards of ice bounced off Leon's boots as his feet slid back two steps, the soles scraping white marks onto the stone tiles.
Lilian was forced back four steps by the shockwave. Her back slammed into the rock wall of the chamber. Her dagger nearly slipped from her hand, her fingers gripping the hilt so tightly that fresh blood seeped from the edges of her broken nails.
Bell braced himself against the doorframe on the steps. Every vertebra in his spine was being crushed by that pressure, and his knees bent under the weight.
Valentine knelt five meters in front of the stone pillar. Her right arm had already turned to ash up to the elbow. She looked up, staring at the man who had stood up once more.
Her red pupils were trembling violently.
She recognized this body. Three thousand years ago, on the eve of the War of the Rift, this man had stood on the walls of Moon Phase City clad in armor. The silver moonlight had fallen across his profile.
The man then and the man now were two entirely different beings.
Valentine pushed herself off the ground and stood up. Her ashen right arm hung at her side, a small piece of gray skin flaking off and turning to powder as it hit the floor. Her left hand could still move, and the remnants of Desolate End at her fingertips pulsed weakly.
She pointed at Dracula.
“What exactly did you do to the inheritance?!”
Her voice cracked. There was a wet, tearing sound in her throat.
“Why has the presence of all the Ancestors outside vanished?!”
Dracula looked down at her. There was no warmth in his sickly green eyes. It wasn't coldness; it was an emptiness left behind after three thousand years had burned away every emotion.
He opened his hands. Ten complete fingers stretched within the sickly green light.
“Inheritance Reversal.”
Two words. The sickly green mist permeating the chamber froze for a moment.
“Centuries of research at the White Tower Society—my ultimate crystallization. From this day forward, the inheritance stone pillar will no longer nourish the Blood Race.”
He paused.
“Instead, all of the Blood Race—shall become a part of me.”
Valentine's body swayed. Her left foot lost its footing. Her knee buckled inward, and her entire balance nearly collapsed. She braced herself with her ashen right elbow—when it touched the stone tiles, another piece of gray skin crumbled away.
Three thousand years. She had lived under her sister's identity, guarding the inheritance stone pillar, the order of the ten Ancestors, and the lifeblood of the entire Blood Race.
“Are you insane?!”
Her left hand was shaking. It wasn't the backlash from Desolate End; it was something surging out from the deepest part of her bones.
“To sacrifice the foundation of the entire race, to turn all our kin into your nourishment—”
She bit her lower lip. Blood flowed from the crack, dripping onto her ashen right arm and seeping into the gaps of her dry, cracked skin.
“—Just to resurrect Sister?!”
When the word “Sister” was spoken, Dracula's sickly green irises flickered. It was incredibly fast. Gone in a flash.
Fanaticism. Desolation. And some sort of obsession that had been distorted by the crushing weight of too many years.
Then he shook his head.
“Individual life and death are meaningless before a true ‘Calamity.’”
Valentine's mouth remained half-open.
“I carry all this sin—” Dracula's newborn right hand slowly curled into a fist, his knuckles clicking sharply.
“—to block the end of days for the Blood Race.”
The chamber fell silent for two seconds. The remnants of Desolate End at Valentine's fingertips stopped. They no longer pulsed.
“What calamity?”
Dracula uttered a name.
“The Star Dragon King.”
Valentine froze completely. The petrification stopped. It wasn't because the pillar had let her go; it was because fear had frozen the very flow of her blood.
Three thousand years ago. When that dragon breath split the Firmament, the ground for ten miles around was melted into magma. Dracula's right arm was evaporated. Leila used her life as a fulcrum.
That was just a single breath.
“The War of the Rift three thousand years ago—” Dracula's voice was ground thin and flat by the weight of three millennia.
“—was but a trivial yawn from the Star Dragon King. When it returns, numbers, tactics, the lives of Ancestors... all will be but dust.”
He took a step forward.
“How can the Blood Race block it?”
His sickly green eyes swept over everyone in the chamber. Leon. Lilian. Valentine.
“Only by merging the strength of the entire race into one, creating a single ‘God’—do we have a slim chance at survival.”
In the back of the chamber.
Tia's barbed claws were still embedded in Cecilia's shoulders. Her Mithril perception circuit captured a highly discordant signal. Cecilia's body was vibrating.
It wasn't a struggle. It was laughter.
Laughter bubbled up from deep within Cecilia's throat. Light. Thin. Her shoulders shook. With her feet off the ground, she hung from Tia's barbed claws, her shoulders pierced by Mithril, blood still trickling down.
She was laughing. Her lips pulled back to reveal blood-stained teeth. Eventually, air puffed out of her nose in short, ragged bursts.
Tia twisted her barbed claws two degrees deeper, tearing at the wounds. Cecilia's laughter hitched for a beat, then continued.
That kind of laughter was the relaxed release one has after watching an entire play and being perfectly satisfied with how the final curtain falls.
Dracula ignored her.
He turned his head. His sickly green eyes locked onto the human boy standing on the steps, holding the Soul Vibration Cannon.
The words this human had shouted when he rushed in thirty seconds ago—“That face is fake.”
Dracula took a step. The moment his foot touched the ground, his body vanished from its original spot. Ground Shrinking. The movement technique of a king from three thousand years ago.
When he reappeared, he was ten meters in front of Bell.
A sickly green shockwave rolled out from where he stood. Cracks appeared on the steps beneath Bell's feet. Stone dust sprayed from the fissures, coating his trouser legs.
“Human.”
The word boomed through the chamber. Three fragments of the remaining rose reliefs on the stone walls were shaken loose and fell.
“You said just now that I was deceived.”
Another step. Nine meters.
“You said Leila's soul is fake.”
One more step. Eight meters.
Bell's feet did not move. He shifted the core cylinder of the Soul Vibration Cannon to his left hand, while his right hand quietly reached for the storage ring at his waist.
Pain signals in his spine and pressure signals were fighting in his nerves. The overlapping sensations caused the edges of his vision to blacken.
He held his ground.
Dracula stopped at seven meters. The sickly green pressure crushed down from the front, forcing Bell's shoulders down half an inch.
The weight of every word pressed down.
“Tell me—on what basis do you say that?”
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