Ector, along with the noble rankers and the royal rankers of the Adventurer Society, ventured down into the yawning abyss. The plunge felt never-ending. Within the depths of the pit, spatial distortion was taking place on a magnum opus level, bending the geography into impossible dimensions. But it wasn't just space that buckled—time distortion was actively warping the descent. One full hour spent exploring the interior of the pit hole equated to barely a single second in the outside world. Because of this temporal dilation, the expedition could safely map the abyss without burning away the vital, limited time needed for their primary campaign.
Ector, Rickard, and Madam Diva traveled down into the darkness atop a dense, localized cloud structure created by Rickard. Ector technically possessed the capacity to manifest a cloud vehicle just like this one, but he completely lacked the refined skill, structural output, and mana efficiency of the seasoned Royal Ranker. The ancient technique bore various complex titles in historical archives, but across the realms of Eternia, its users simply called it the Flying Nimbus.
Spanning out around them, the twenty noble rankers of the Silverwing Knights, Vincent Motsari, and Seraphina kept pace. Leading the entire vanguard at the very front of the formation was the captain of the Silverwings, Greg Vivan.
Greg traveled down into the dark abyss utilizing a high-tier magical artifact that allowed its user to forge functional wings directly out of their core's unique affinity. Since Greg possessed the Core of the Nets, his manifested wings were woven entirely from translucent, overlapping mesh netting. While it was by no means an ideal or aerodynamically elegant aesthetic for flight, his absolute mastery over his core's fundamental concept allowed him to handle the descent fairly well.
The Sanguine Sword maintained his position at the absolute rear of the formation, flanked by Seraphina. Neither of them seemed particularly interested in the mysteries of the hole; they simply tagged along as a passive escort, having nothing better to do while the flagship's mages recovered their mana.
"Just how deep does this chasm go?" Ector called out as they descended further and further, the ambient sunlight rapidly dying out until the surrounding atmospheric mana grew cold and stagnant.
"I cannot say for certain, Your Highness," Rickard answered, his eyes fixed on the black void beneath them. "This abyss is a completely new structural addition to the Soulless Forest. I do not possess the necessary geographical data to accurately determine its absolute depth."
Ector shifted his weight on the Nimbus, looking back at the silent figure of their benefactor. "Tell me, Rickard... who truly is the Sanguine Sword? My father and my grandfather praise this man without end. They look at him as if he were the second coming of His Imperial Majesty, Deodas Clamore Devanti Skati. Why? Why is a single Emperor Ranker consistently compared to an absolute Almighty?"
"The Sanguine Sword is the current sole wielder of the Core of Blood, which serves as the supreme Relic Core of the Sanguine Church," Rickard explained quietly, ensuring his voice didn't carry across the wind. "The legends say his manifested Aura Beast is the Sanguine entity itself, though that remains entirely unverified—even by the Church of Scholars, who actively feed fuel to the rumors."
"Relic Core users are regarded with immense reverence across the continents, I know that much," Ector countered, frowning. "But comparing a mortal ranker to an Almighty? That just doesn't sound right."
"True Relic Core wielders are exceptionally rare, Your Highness," Rickard clarified. "There are barely four dozen of them active across the entirety of existence at any given time. Certain conceptual cores—the Core of Hegemon or the Core of Mortality, for example—are widely considered to be entirely mythical. It is only because an anomaly recently awakened the Core of Hegemon near Daro that the world has received definitive confirmation that the core exists in reality."
"I asked what the fuck the Sanguine Sword actually did to be held in such terrifyingly high regard, Rickard," Ector said with a flash of mild mockery. "I didn't ask for a historical documentary on the nature of Relic Cores."
"Yes, Your Highness," Rickard conceded with a smooth bow of his head. "The Sanguine Sword—or Vincent Motsari, to use the name I am comfortable with—has achieved many impossible feats throughout his ascension. A few of his actions are things even veteran Divine Rankers would never dare to attempt."
"What did he d—"
Ector was cut off mid-sentence as Vincent Motsari's voice suddenly cut through the abyss like a razor blade, delivering a single, absolute command:
"Teleport."
The word instantly alerted the vanguard. Those who were fully comfortable with their localized spatial and teleportation abilities moved in a synchronized blur, executing the Emperor Ranker's order without a fraction of a second's hesitation. In the next heartbeat, the entire expedition vanished from the depths, re-materializing at a safe, elevated distance outside the boundary of the pit hole.
They waited in tense silence for a brief second. Seraphina drifted up out of the hole next, followed five seconds later by Vincent Motsari.
Then, the ground beneath the ancient ruins violently shattered.
Hundreds of gargantuan, pulsing leeches—each measuring at least a meter in thickness and extending for a full, horrific kilometer in length—came crawling out of the abyss in a synchronized, writhing mass. An absolute, heavy silence enveloped the clearing.
These were not the mindless, soulless beasts that usually infested the warped spaces. These were natural, primordial creatures of Terra that had emerged, survived, and evolved alongside humans and their allied kin over generations. This meant their bodies possessed true souls and defensive resistances; the only individuals in the vanguard capable of efficiently slaughtering them were the high-tier Sun Kingdom generals, Rickard, Madam Diva, Seraphina, and Vincent Motsari. Luckily for the expedition, the initial wave of leeches sat at the Low Royal Rank, meaning the strongest of the High Noble Rankers, like Greg and the Draken vice-captain, could still actively damage them.
Vincent Motsari remained suspended in mid-air, looking down at the erupting horde with a cold, blank eye. Acting instantly, Rickard and Madam Diva erected an overlapping, multi-layered kinetic shield completely around Ector, securing the prince before they threw themselves into the vanguard.
The leeches proved to be a thoroughly nasty species of monster. Standard blade attacks and conventional physical projectiles did little to nothing against their rubbery, hyper-regenerative hide. And while specialized mana skills tailored to draining blood or drying out biological tissue did an excellent job of bypassing their defenses, arcanists with those specific affinities were exceptionally rare within the imperial military.
To rub salt into the wound, the Royal-ranking generals representing the Sun Kingdom's regular forces immediately began taking sloppy, avoidable casualties. Out of the thirty or so Royal Rankers deployed by the capital, barely ten possessed a proper, fundamental understanding of how to efficiently utilize their core affinities under pressure. The rest were merely soulless core users—the spoiled, pampered heirs of popular counties and wealthy duchies who barely understood the true weight of the tragedy that had occurred in Daro. They had only volunteered for this campaign to secure political proximity with Ector, the future king of the Sun Kingdom, pushed into the vanguard by their respective patriarchs.
The leeches were profoundly numerous, constituting the largest concentrated gathering of Royal-rank soul beasts ever recorded in the modern history of the Sun Kingdom. Hundreds of the writhing monsters continued to pour from the earth. The seasoned Royal Rankers systematically butchered them, while the elite Noble Rankers carefully coordinated their skills to secure one or two isolated kills.
Yet, through all the bloodshed, the Sanguine Sword never moved. Vincent remained suspended in the sky, his blank expression slowly morphing into a look of genuine interest—perhaps even mild amusement.
"Your Highness, pull back to our flagship immediately if possible, or fly up and hold your position in the high atmosphere until we conclude this engagement," Madam Diva shouted over the roar of battle, her hands glowing with green mana. "The beasts are actively growing stronger as we kill their kin!"
Ector didn't hesitate. Driving his Flying Nimbus upward, he soared nearly twenty kilometers into the sky, safely out of the immediate splash zone. He immediately activated his sight skill, peering down through the clouds to monitor the battlefield.
Nearly a hundred and fifty Royal-rank leeches had been slaughtered, but fifteen of the Sun Kingdom's Royal-ranking generals lay dead across the roots, their hubris costing them their lives. Roughly a hundred beasts were still actively thrashing below. Now that Ector was safely out of range, Rickard fully unleashed his power, casting his devastating Cloud Blast ability back-to-back, single-handedly vaporizing a massive chunk of the remaining horde. Beside him, Seraphina flash-froze entire clusters of the monsters, allowing Madam Diva's emerald mana shards and sweeping sword slashes to shatter the frozen statues into dust.
Ector adjusted his focus, trying to locate the Sanguine Sword. Vincent was still floating ten kilometers above the ground, but suddenly, the Emperor Ranker shot skyward, passing directly by Ector until he reached an altitude of nearly forty kilometers into the stratosphere.
The sky and the earth violently shook. Below, the remaining Royal-rank leeches instantly froze, either giving up their lives willingly as their bodies collapsed, or turning in a frantic, absolute panic to slither back into the safety of the dark hole.
In the next moment, a monstrous, titan-class leech sprung from the abyss into the sky. Measuring nearly two kilometers in width—with a length so massive its tail remained buried deep within the planet—the leviathan shot past Ector, rising to the exact same atmospheric level as Vincent Motsari. It looked like a god-like, apocalyptic version of the lesser Royal ranks, but its hide was made of a hard, trunk-like skin covered entirely in a shimmering, thin layer of condensed blood. The leviathan was actively oozing this blood outward as a absolute conceptual shield. Even with his low Soldier-rank perception, Ector could tell that the flowing blood possessed a dense coating of Divine Rank Armament Mana. It was an utterly magnificent and terrifying sight.
Ector's eyes snapped toward Vincent Motsari. He realized with a jolt of shock that the man had predicted this exact sequence of events. He had known this Divine Rank beast would appear, predicting its exact arrival down to the precise altitude it would reach upon breaching the hole. The portion of the monster currently exposed to the sky extended for at least fifty kilometers, its true scale unknown.
But the Sanguine Sword was smiling. It was the look of a warrior greeting an old, familiar nemesis.
"How interesting," Vincent's voice echoed across the stratosphere.
The sound was no longer his typical deep rumble; it was a dual, overlapping resonance—a mixture of two distinct, powerful voices speaking as one.
Slowly, the bright light of the sun was eclipsed, covered entirely by the manifestation of a massive, bloody planet that painted the entire sky in a deep, apocalyptic crimson. A beam of pure, blood-red conceptual energy shot down from the celestial manifestation, engulfing the Emperor Ranker. When the light faded, Vincent's namesake—the legendary armor of the Sanguine Sword—had materialized around his frame.
He looked at the towering Divine-rank leviathan and simply lifted his left hand.
The world obeyed.
Every single drop of spilled blood across the continent—from the fallen foes, the dead generals, and now the Divine-rank beast itself—flew toward him like a roaring river. Initially, the leviathan didn't seem to care about the missing blood; it was, after all, only a few hundred liters compared to its massive volume. But within seconds, the rate of depletion accelerated exponentially, climbing from thousands of liters to tens of thousands, and finally to hundreds of thousands of liters. Realizing its life force was being violently unanchored, the Divine-rank monster turned in absolute terror, attempting to flee back into the crust of the planet.
"Too late, buddy," the Sanguine Sword murmured.
He clenched his fist hard.
The blood pull spiked instantly, tearing millions of liters of vital fluid straight through the leviathan's hardened trunk-skin. After three agonizing seconds of the blood eclipse, the gargantuan leech was milked completely dry of its life force, leaving nothing behind but a hollow, shriveled husk of its once magnificent self.
Vincent plunged his greatsword directly into the center of the swirling, floating mass of fluid—which now resembled a literal water-planet composed entirely of condensed blood. The conceptual blade drank the offering hungrily, drawing in every single drop until the sky was clear. The bloody eclipse receded, the crimson armor dissolved back into light, and Vincent stood comfortably in his simple tunic once more.
It was, in all likelihood, the very first time anyone present on that battlefield had ever witnessed a true Divine Rank beast, let alone observed a lower-ranking entity execute it with a single, effortless movement. The nobility knew the Sanguine Sword had killed Divine Rank beasts in the past, but those had been soulless, mindless creatures bred within the systems of the warped spaces. But this leech? It was a natural beast with an evolved soul—a true, living Divine Ranker. Yet, it had taken the man a single casting of his core ability to completely squeeze it dry.
Ector slowly drifted back down on his Nimbus, his eyes wide as he looked at Rickard. The old butler returned the gaze, his expression professional but heavy with a silent, defining truth:
That is exactly what the Sanguine Sword is capable of.
***