"I've been waiting for you for a long time, Knight of Dawn!" Asa's voice was steady, resonant, and laced with an antique formality, a striking contrast to the cheap vinyl seats of the economy cabin.
Zhou Yi tilted his head slightly, the motion minimal within the armor's confines, but the question was genuine.
"You seemed to anticipate my intervention, yet you deliberately exposed yourself in a vulnerable location. I find that contradiction intriguing. How did you know I would prioritize this threat over the battle below?"
Asa offered a thin, superior smile, revealing pointed canines. "You underestimate the historical reach of our lineage. We vampires have anchored ourselves within the systems of your world for centuries. Our influence is not just measured in brute strength but in deep, far-reaching alliances that span every nation and every stratum of human society."
"A human betrayer then," Zhou Yi summarized, the modulated synthetic voice of the armor betraying a flash of cold disgust. It was a tedious, consistent truth: the greatest threat to humanity often came not from the monsters who fed on them, but the humans who sold them out.
High-ranking officials, powerful merchants, and corrupted politicians, willing to trade the safety of their species for personal, temporal gain.
"And is that not the fundamental nature of your kind?" Asa pressed, savoring the hero's visible revulsion. His voice took on a mocking, educational tone.
"You are all uniformly filthy and disgusting. Hold up a single drop of true power, a solitary thread of influence, and they will swarm around you like desperate, tail-wagging curs."
"I have no interest in debating humanity's base instincts with a pawn, Asa. Your master, Damaginos, is the ultimate example of the rot you describe. You have no authority to speak on morality," Zhou Yi countered, cutting the conversation short. Time was an irreversible expense, and every moment wasted allowed the Grand Duke to secure his escape.
Zhou Yi raised his right gauntlet, the weaponized knuckles pointed directly at the servant. "I will not waste time on threats you do not believe. Confess the location of the payload Damaginos assigned you to guard. Tell me truthfully, and I will at least guarantee your demise is swift."
Asa's posture stiffened, his eyes glowing with fierce, unyielding devotion. "You mistake devotion for cowardice, Dawn Knight. I have sworn an oath to my Master. I swear on the entirety of my existence that you will not step off this aircraft before sunrise. Neither you nor I."
"Then you die here. Blame your allegiance," Zhou Yi concluded.
He had already surveyed the entire A380 with his full sensor suite. The weapon, whatever it was, had to be either microscopic or carried within the vampire's personal effects—meaning, the watch or perhaps concealed within his body as an emergency measure.
The quickest resolution was simple: vaporize the vampire and then sort through the resulting ash.
Without hesitation, Zhou Yi unleashed a sudden, concentrated beam of synthetic ultraviolet light from his palm. This was the most lethal energy source known to vampires, the surest path to instantaneous, complete dissolution.
The light struck Asa directly on his chest, where the coat was buttoned over the monitoring device. The effect was immediate, horrifying, and wholly unexpected.
The vampire servant did not instantly combust. Instead of dissolving into ash, his body began a monstrous, profound transformation.
Layers of his skin and muscle did indeed burn, smoking and searing under the intense UV energy, but the resulting damage was immediately offset by an explosive, violent surge of organic regeneration.
It was like watching a plant bloom backward—tissue spreading, swelling, and growing at an impossible, visible rate. His clothing tore away as his skeletal structure and musculature warped and expanded.
This wasn't the refined muscular growth of a powerful human; it was a grotesque, reckless proliferation of swollen, blocky organic material that ignored the constraints of standard human anatomy, wildly filling every available corner of space.
In moments, Asa's slender form was replaced by a towering, ten-foot monstrosity. His skin was ripped and fragmented, revealing thick, pulsing red tendons that snaked across the surface of his body. He was no longer a vampire servant; he was a hideous R-variant brute, mutated by the very light that should have killed him.
The change was devastating. With a casual flick of his grotesque hand, the heavy-gauge metal seat he'd been sitting on crumpled and bent like foil. His weight, now colossal, caused the entire cabin floor to creak and shudder with a sound of imminent collapse.
The handful of passengers who had been moved to the perimeter and were watching the 'magic show' instantly broke into panicked screams. Several individuals, unable to process the visceral horror, collapsed, mercifully unconscious.
"This is it, Dawn Knight! This is the success!" Asa's voice, now a throaty, rasping roar mixed with a guttural growl, thundered through the cabin. "You never considered this!"
"The Master's work is complete! The sun no longer harms us. It becomes our source of power!" The behemoth roared the terrible truth, the successful culmination of Damaginos's centuries of unethical biological research. "The vampires will finally inherit the world!"
"You will inherit nothing but the bottom of the Atlantic," Zhou Yi declared, gathering his massive reserve of strength. His mind raced, calculating the profound, terrifying implications of this new species—a sun-immune, hyper-regenerative vampire. "I will destroy you here and now."
The monster laughed—a deep, booming sound that threatened to pop the passengers' eardrums.
"Try it! We are six thousand meters above the ocean, hero! Use your supersonic attack! I dare you! Will this little tin can hold together when you unleash an internal shockwave strong enough to shatter my bones?"
Zhou Yi instantly accessed the data from Medusa. The analysis confirmed the monster's claim. A full-power, supersonic attack, even if perfectly targeted, would generate a shockwave that would instantly and catastrophically deform the pressurized aluminum fuselage. The A380 would tear itself apart, sending over 500 people plummeting to their deaths.
The monster saw the flicker of hesitation, the micro-adjustment in the Knight's stance. "You freeze! For their sake! But I am under no such constraint!"
Asa extended one of his pillar-like arms, five pale, razor-sharp claws erupting from his fingers. The tendons tightened, and with a monstrous, casual swing, he ripped a massive cluster of seats from the floor, including the aluminum track they were bolted to. He violently hurled the heavy, jagged projectile directly at Zhou Yi.
The monster's intent was clear: he didn't care if the projectile missed the Knight. The debris, the torn metal, and the explosive impact would either strike the passengers or, more likely, punch a hole clean through the side of the fuselage, leading to explosive decompression.
Zhou Yi refused to allow either catastrophe. The sheer mental effort required to contain the chaos was immense, but necessary. He extended his palm and unleashed his telekinetic power—a raw, terrifying manifestation of pure spiritual and mental force converted into kinetic energy outside the material realm. The power of the effect was always directly proportional to the strength of the user's will.
The heavy cluster of debris, hurtling through the air at high speed, instantly encountered an invisible, crushing resistance. It slowed drastically, as if plunged into thick, viscous resin, grinding to a complete halt less than a meter from the Dawn Knight's helmet.
The impossible spectacle caused a fresh wave of shouts and gasps from the periphery, several quick-thinking passengers attempting to film the seemingly magical moment.
Asa, however, was not deterred. He let out a low, predatory growl and charged. He did not believe the Knight could maintain a defensive shield while simultaneously defending against a frontal attack. His massive, thunderous footfalls shook the entire structure, turning the aisles into a chaotic demolition zone as he tore through the remaining equipment.
As the giant R-variant hurtled toward him like a charging tank, Zhou Yi mentally strained, his suit's sensors indicating the tremendous energy he was expending to hold the debris in place. He had to pivot from defense to offense without jeopardizing the cabin.
With a sudden, powerful mental exertion, Zhou Yi rapidly snapped his arms inward, crossing them over his chest. His body language mirrored the action of his telekinetic power: the heavy objects suspended in the air were violently slammed toward a central, invisible point.
All the frozen objects, along with the cluster Asa had just thrown, instantly obeyed the command. They converged, forming a gigantic, crushing construct that hurtled toward the approaching monster like a colossal, multi-ton fist.
The servant roared, swinging his pillar-like arms wildly, desperately trying to bat the collapsing debris away. The heavier remains shattered further under his powerful blows, but the fragments did not disperse.
Instead, Zhou Yi's telekinesis continued to bind them, driving the smaller, sharper pieces deep into the monster's proliferating muscle mass.
The smaller fragments pierced Asa's body like hundreds of invisible supersonic needles. The pain—a constant, agonizing sting—forced a scream of agony from the monster. But his pain was ignored; the sheer, relentless power of Zhou Yi's focus continued to propel the heavy objects forward.
Asa found his movements increasingly restricted, his path of retreat completely sealed by the incoming wave of compacted debris. He was surrounded and overwhelmed by a force that did not abide by material constraints.
He struggled desperately, punching and kicking, but his massive arms were slowly pinned by the overwhelming, concentrated weight of the telekinetically-driven scrap metal.
The space around the monster narrowed, the walls of the construct closing in. Even with tissues tougher than steel, the laws of physics—when commanded by a mind as powerful as Zhou Yi's—were absolute. Massive amounts of metal, plastic, and seat foam were squeezed into the monster's flesh.
From the passengers' limited vantage point, the colossal Asa was slowly vanishing, being consumed by a growing, hemispherical sphere of twisted cargo and crushed furniture. It looked as if tons of shipping container debris had been instantaneously dumped upon him.
The screaming intensified, then abruptly choked off. Zhou Yi held the crushing force steady, his right arm trembling slightly from the exertion. He couldn't be certain this would achieve actual death, but he maintained the pressure, compressing the rubble until the sphere could shrink no further.
Using his full-spectrum visual capability, Zhou Yi peered into the heart of the compressed orb. The R-variant had been contorted into a grotesque, impossible shape. Large sections of bone and muscle had been pulverized and mixed into a strange, fibrous powder.
A heavy, jagged piece of metal had crushed through his skull, embedding itself deep within the cranial cavity. The brain was destroyed.
Yet, the monster was not dead.
Zhou Yi watched in cold, horrified fascination as the biological tissues within the compressed remains worked furiously, contracting and expanding with a shallow, ragged rhythm.
An organic, cellular substance—a byproduct of Damaginos's terrifying successful experiment—was rapidly reorganizing the shattered remnants of the body. Though the regeneration was flawed, chaotic, and slow under the immense pressure, it was taking place.
Zhou Yi's helmeted brow furrowed in deep concern. Asa, now a perfected R-variant, was a creature of relentless, regenerative horror, just like Chadnorma—but with the added, fatal advantage of sun-immunity. The sun had become their fuel, not their killer.
The immediate crisis was contained, but the essential threat remained. Asa was immortal under these conditions, and the heart-rate monitor was still ticking on the wrist buried deep within the metal sphere. He could neither kill the creature nor disarm the device without risking the plane.
The Grand Duke had outmaneuvered him again. Zhou Yi had to secure the payload before Damaginos realized his servant was neutralized and activated a more direct kill-switch. He needed to extract the device from the crushed hand, and he needed a source of blood for Blade.