The sudden, blinding combustion of the R-variant species beneath the concentrated ultraviolet light failed to elicit any emotional response from the Dawn Knight. He felt no pity for the mutated creatures reduced to ash, nor did he mourn the vampires they had consumed.
To Zhou Yi, observing from his silent aerie, the escalating brutality merely optimized the spectacle.
The R-variants had demonstrated a terrifying, unchecked power against an enemy caught unprepared. Their ability to rapidly breach perimeter defenses threatened to overwhelm the established balance of power, a condition that was wholly unacceptable.
If Damaginos had been allowed to fall too easily, the resulting chaos might have spilled into the civilian world.
This unexpected UV defense, however, introduced a perfect, devastating equilibrium. Chadnorma had lost the majority of his frontal assault force, but he retained hundreds of Xenomorph soldiers strategically positioned.
Meanwhile, the vampires were now galvanized and armed with the correct anti-mutant arsenal: heavy-caliber weapons designed to pierce the fused ribcages, and, critically, readily available UV dispersal units.
The only thing separating these two forces from a mutually destructive, open conflict was the fortress's heavily secured final door.
This defense was Damaginos's lifeline; if it held until sunrise, Chadnorma would be forced to retreat, his entire campaign evaporating into the coming daylight. The extensively prepared vampires would then be free to hunt the weakened remnants of the Xenomorphs at their leisure.
Chadnorma, driven by an obsessive need for immediate vengeance, knew the temporal constraints better than anyone. Dawn was a hard deadline. His opportunity for retribution—the single goal for which he had sacrificed his humanity—would be extinguished forever once the Dawn Knight initiated his inevitable, final purge.
He had committed everything to this single, crucial night. Rather than accept the grinding stalemate, Chadnorma made a desperate, high-stakes gamble: he called out to the silent observer he knew was watching.
"Dawn Knight! I know you are there!" his voice roared, amplified by his mutated lungs, carrying not only across the ruined factory floor but directly into Damaginos's surveillance system. "Show yourself! Help me tear this kingdom down! You'll get the clean slate you crave!"
In the deep command center, Damaginos watched the screen, his face contorted into a mask of pure, purple rage.
"Damn the humans! Their arrogance knows no bounds!" he spat, his teeth grinding at the audacity of the intervention. He watched, horrified, as a shadow detached from the sky—a figure wreathed in the stylized armor of the Daywalker's most terrifying foe—descended toward the besieged fortress.
Zhou Yi's decision was instantaneous. He did not need Chadnorma's permission, nor did he require his explicit promise. He fully grasped the emotional core of the prince's vendetta; had Damaginos maintained even a shred of the noble mystique ascribed to ancient vampire lore, Zhou Yi might have allowed him to survive.
But the Duke's reign was one of corruption, biological monstrosities, and reckless endangerment of the human world. To side with Chadnorma was simply the most efficient path to the eradication of the true threat: the tyrant. The more intensely the fire of their internal hatred burned, the less effort Zhou Yi would have to expend.
He accepted the plea not as an agreement, but as an operational directive.
Without hesitation or communication, the Dawn Knight moved. His purpose was precisely defined: clear the final path, shatter the defensive deadlock, and ensure both sides met in an open, terminal confrontation.
He landed near the massive, reinforced steel door—the final barrier to the underground citadel. The steel was meters thick, capable of resisting sustained armor-piercing fire, but it offered no resistance to a force that operated outside conventional physics.
With a single, targeted impact, Zhou Yi's powered gauntlet punched clean through the dense metal, and he plunged into the structural void of the elevator shaft.
His goal was immediate, total demolition of the castle's complex, integrated defenses. Activating his enhanced vision, he saw the snaking web of integrated circuits, hydraulic lines, and fiber optics that controlled the inner defenses, locking mechanisms, and automated weapons.
He unleashed a focused, needle-thin beam of heat energy from his visor, systematically severing every critical connection.
The weakness of modern, over-engineered fortifications lies in their reliance on complex automation. Deprived of power, hydraulics, and central processing, the castle's high-tech defenses—the automated turrets, the magnetic seals, the emergency floodgates—became instantly useless. They were nothing more than inert scrap metal.
Chadnorma, witnessing the Dawn Knight's efficient, brutal sabotage, let out a triumphant roar. He waved his remaining forces toward the gaping hole in the elevator shaft.
Yet, his advance was slower than before. The recent, terrifying loss to the UV light had instilled a painful, necessary caution. He was now forced to expend energy navigating the vertical shaft, moving with the measured, creeping tactic of a predator who has learned the hard way that arrogance is fatal.
Zhou Yi ignored the horde behind him. His path was straight down, destroying infrastructure until he reached the true threshold—the final, heavily reinforced doorway leading directly into the vampire's stronghold. He paused there, the dense barrier separating him from the entrenched, heavily armed vampire guards. His role as the arbiter was complete. The fighting now belonged to them.
It was the sudden flicker of his suit's internal sensors that arrested his attention at the base of the shaft. Hidden in a side chamber, behind a camouflaged, thick wall, his diagnostic systems picked up an anomalous, massive life-sign—a life sign that was rapidly approaching extinction.
Zhou Yi circled, breaching the wall with a calculated, surgical burst of energy. What he found confirmed his fear: Blade, the Daywalker, was captured.
Blade was secured to a pristine, white operating table in a pose reminiscent of a demonic crucifixion. Massive, silver-tipped spikes were driven deep into his wrists and ankles, perforating the major arteries.
His unique, powerful hybrid blood—the very substance that gave him strength—was being efficiently siphoned away, flowing directly onto the table's surface and into a chilling array of specialized collection tubes.
The scene was one of cold, clinical brutality, focused entirely on harvesting the essence of the Daywalker for Damaginos's ultimate, terrifying research.
Zhou Yi's onboard AI—codenamed Medusa—ran an immediate, grim diagnostic scan. The results were stark: Blade had suffered a catastrophic blood loss, the levels plummeting far below what any human, or even most vampires, could sustain.
The possibility of conventional medical intervention restoring him was effectively zero. The report was a death certificate.
A flicker of genuine regret—a rare emotion for the Knight—crossed Zhou Yi's face. He still owed the man a car, and he couldn't allow a warrior of Blade's caliber to simply bleed out as a test subject. He gently touched the Daywalker's sweat-soaked brow.
"Friend," Zhou Yi murmured, leaning close, "I am told your condition is fatal. Do you have any final commitments? I will endeavor to honor them."
Blade was too weak to fully process the words, his consciousness fading in and out of the deep physiological shock. He heard the metallic, synthesized voice and forced his failing mind to focus. His situation was dire, but he was a creature of immense self-healing potential—he only lacked the fuel.
"Blood… I need blood," Blade rasped, the words thin and strained, the most humiliating demand a hunter could make. He could not save himself, and relying on the assistance of an armored titan was a bitter pill.
"Blood," Zhou Yi repeated, understanding immediately. It was a factory, and factories existed to process raw materials.
"Well, I suppose that makes perfect, dark sense. You are a creature of blood, and you require the source." He gently secured the unconscious Daywalker's body, realizing the urgency. "You have my word. I made a promise, and I will repay the debt."
He knew the vampire complex would have massive, industrial-grade blood repositories. Leaving Blade secured for the moment, Zhou Yi pivoted and moved toward the factory's raw materials zone—the Blood Bank.
Above, Chadnorma had finally guided his remaining forces to the sealed door at the end of the shaft. He didn't bother with strategy; his fury demanded pure, unadulterated force.
"Father, I'm here! Do not hide from your punishment!" he screamed, and then lunged.
The blow was that of a locomotive slamming into a reinforced wall. The massive, thick steel door shuddered violently, dust and debris exploding from the surrounding ancient masonry. But the door, designed to hold against geological stress, held firm.
Unbothered, Chadnorma retreated, then charged again. Behind him, mutant after mutant, filled with the same desperate, viral rage, followed their leader's lead, slamming their mutated bodies against the barrier. The rhythmic, earth-shaking impacts became a battering ram of living flesh.
The hydraulic and mechanical locking mechanisms, already sabotaged by Zhou Yi's energy blast, began to fail under the impossible, relentless stress. With a series of grinding, screeching noises, the steel door, inch by agonizing inch, began to buckle, tear, and finally give way.
The mutant tide surged through the opening.
The moment the door yielded, the chamber beyond exploded into lethal noise. The alerted vampire guards, armed with high-caliber, high-muzzle velocity weapons and supported by portable UV emitters, opened fire with relentless, sustained barrages.
The two sides were locked in an immediate, chaotic death struggle. Bodies fell on both sides, the air filling with the metallic tang of ozone, spent brass, and the sickening, fresh stench of blood.
Damaginos, watching the feed of his men being torn apart, felt the last vestiges of his ancient composure dissolve into pure, ignoble terror.
He saw Chadnorma's maddened, inhuman face leading the charge, and he knew the fight was lost. He had to escape, regroup, and survive to hunt his son another day.
He gave one final, clipped order to Yukio, who stood silently outside the main elevator. The Grand Duke then stepped quickly into the private lift, his daughter Nisha trailing behind him. Her expression was utterly unreadable, yet her eyes held a silent, simmering suspicion directed not at the attacker, but at the father who was abandoning his soldiers.
Yukio, the paragon of samurai loyalty, stood immobile, his sword sheathed, prepared to hold the line at the elevator entrance, offering his life as the ultimate sacrifice for his Lord.
Meanwhile, Chadnorma, tearing through the initial line of resistance, realized with a primal scream that his father was not present. The sight of the closing elevator doors, the knowledge that the object of his revenge was escaping, drove him into a frenzy that transcended mere battle lust.
"NO! YOU WILL NOT HIDE!"
He moved like a demon unleashed. Bullets that struck his thick, armored hide barely registered. He plunged into the enemy ranks, tearing through armor, snapping spines, and drinking the warm, crimson life from their throats.
Under this concentrated, insane assault, the vampire ranks began to collapse. Their losses rapidly exceeded those of the now-hardened Xenomorphs.
Reihart, his face pale with horror, realized the extinction was imminent. He screamed into his tactical communicator, trying to call the reserve teams and his remaining trusted comrades to reinforce the central battle line.
"Chubba! Vilian! Light Axe! I need support at the main gate! I need you now!"
Only static and the cacophony of distant slaughter answered him. Frantic, he checked the feeds for the secondary storage rooms—the ammunition depot where his comrades were meant to be securing supplies.
The feed was a blurry, horrific snapshot.
The depot, intended to be a secure vault of firepower, was soaked in fresh, viscous blood. A massive, grotesque Xenomorph creature was hunched over the remains of what looked like Chubba, whose torso had been ripped apart by some immense, internal force.
Nearby, Vilian lay trapped, her legs covered in blood, her face a silent scream of utter despair, desperately attempting to crawl free.
The massive Xenomorph creature, alerted by the distant shouts, rose slowly, its features now recognizable in the dim, blood-soaked light. It bore an undeniable, hideous resemblance to the late Light Axe.
He was no longer a loyal comrade. He was now just The Monster.