Chapter 132: The Fall of the Sky and the Massacre of the Valois (Part 4)
The sunset in Emerald Valley brought no longed-for, peaceful cool of the night, but rather a red, oppressive, and suffocating silence.
The air in the mountain basin continued to vibrate densely, distorted by the immense residual heat of the battle, saturated to the point of nausea with the strong metallic scent of evaporated human blood and the pungent, static ozone of thousands of broken arrays and spells. The imposing white marble mansions, which only hours before stood as the supreme symbol of the opulence and aristocratic invincibility of the millennial Valois Family, were now nothing more than grotesque black skeletons, smoking and gutted, their charred beams pointing toward the darkened sky like amputated, accusing fingers.
There were no cries of pain. No stifled prayers, nor cowardly sobs begging for mercy. The silence was absolute, sepulchral, and final—simply because in the entire valley, there was absolutely no one left alive with an intact throat to break it.
In the center of the immense main courtyard, now transformed into an abyssal crater of vitrified stone and molten glass, Kael Morningstar sat heavily upon the decapitated torso of a colossal bronze statue of the First Valois Patriarch.
His colossal sword, the Magma Fang, rested propped against the debris at his feet. The infernal steel was cooling slowly, emitting small, rhythmic, sharp thermal clicks—tick, tick, tick—that echoed in the crater as if they were the hands of a cosmic clock counting the irrefutable end of a continental era.
Kael stared fixedly at his own hands. They were stained with dried human blood, thick as tar, and covered in thick gray ash up to his elbows. His crimson scales had stopped pulsing with magmatic intensity, but the heat in his chest did not subside.
"Killing spirit beasts is different..." Kael murmured, his voice raspy and hoarse, the gaze of his golden eyes lost in the smoldering horizon. "Beasts are honest. Beasts don't cry to you. They don't beg 'please.' Beasts don't try to bribe you by offering dirty money and land before they die, and they definitely... don't call for their mother while you're cutting their throat."
Behind him, the soft crunch of boots on broken glass was heard. Violeta approached, walking with an impeccable and lethal elegance amidst the rubble and charred corpses. She held her blue crystal rapier in one hand and, with the other, delicately wiped the frozen blood from the blade using an expensive gold-embroidered silk handkerchief she had torn from a decapitated noble's neck minutes prior.
The young assassin's face was extremely pale, her skin appearing almost translucent under the dying, faint light of dusk, but in her heterochromia—one violet eye and the other diamond blue—there was not the slightest shadow of remorse, pity, or doubt.
"They were enemies, Kael. They were a cancer," Violeta declared, her voice firm, cutting, and unshakeable, dissecting her foster brother's sudden philosophical melancholy. "Do not allow the cowardice of their end to soil the fact that they started this. Think logically. If things had gone wrong, if they had won the war today, our heads would be nailed and rotting on the pikes of that very marble wall right now for the delight of their nobles."
Violeta sheathed her rapier in a fluid motion, and her eyes flashed with an almost homicidal protective instinct.
"And more importantly," she continued, lowering her voice to a lethal whisper, "think of little Celeste."
The mere mention of the name caused the atmosphere around them to turn heavy.
Celeste. The baby of barely two months, the crown princess of the Morningstar Empire, the beloved biological daughter of their Sovereign Samael and Empress Seraphina.
"Celeste is just a baby, Kael," Violeta said, her voice laced with a dark affection she rarely showed. "Her skin is so fragile and delicate that mere exposure to the desert sun requires special ointments, lotions, and constant pampering. She requires an environment of peace that we must guarantee with blood. If the Valois had crushed us... do you think they would have had mercy on our Sovereign's daughter? She would not have been raised as a person. She would have been enslaved. She would have been dissected on a cold altar and used as a cursed war trophy for their disgusting bloodline extraction experiments. They would have drunk Samael and Seraphina's blood directly from the veins of a baby."
Violeta's words acted like a bucket of lava over Kael's mind. Tension seized every muscle in his body. His jaw tightened until his teeth ground together, and the slight trace of pity or melancholy was instantly purged and eradicated from his nervous system. The pure, absolute predator took control once more deep within his vertical pupils.
Kael spat a thick glob of blood mixed with ash directly onto the broken shield of a Valois guard.
"You're right," Kael roared, his voice vibrating with renewed fury. "Fuck every last one of them. Let them rot and burn for all of eternity. I'd dig them up myself just to kill them again."
About ten meters away from the siblings, a mournful and silent figure moved through the mountain of corpses with the absolute and disturbing tranquility of a ghost in its own cemetery.
Altair (Sequence 10). The Lord of Entropy was not looting the pockets of the fallen or searching for treasures. He was simply... present, reveling in his element.
His Inevitable Aging Aura flowed naturally, causing the tall grass—previously soaked in green and red blood—to lose its color, dry up, and wither instantly at the mere touch of his boots.
Altair stopped languidly before the disgusting, gutted remains of Patriarch Alaric Valois. He touched the two halves of the corpse with the sharp, dark, rusted tip of his immense scythe.
"Dust to dust... and to dust we shall all return," Altair whispered, his voice sounding like the rubbing of two ancient gravestones.
Under the influence of his weapon and his Law, the Patriarch's dead flesh—which, due to his Stage 5 Saint cultivation, should have remained incorruptible and taken decades to decompose—dried up instantly. In barely three seconds, the flesh turned into fine gray ash that collapsed upon itself. Only pristine white bones remained, and, rolling with a crystalline jingle onto the stone, a thick and priceless Spatial Ring carved from pure jade.
Altair picked up the brilliant ring with the tips of his pale, gray fingers. Without even bothering to check its contents, he tossed it back over his shoulder.
Cedric (Sequence 4) caught it in mid-air, the metal of his immense gauntlets making a sharp click.
The Emperor of Arrays had completely abandoned his role as a siege warrior. He was now in his mode as Strategic Commander and supreme administrator, standing atop the broken battlements, feverishly coordinating the three hundred elite disciples of the inner circle who had descended en masse from the Floating Citadel to execute the sacred "Harvest Phase."
"Alpha Team, move toward the east wing of the residence!" Cedric shouted, his cold, metallic voice amplified by small sonic arrays in his throat to resonate throughout the valley. "I want every single panel of pure spirit jade dismantled from the fucking walls! Carefully, but fast!"
"Beta Team, descend to the lower armory! Apply the Rule of the Crow: if it shines, it's ours! If it's a book or a cursed scroll, into the dimensional bag! If it's food, wine, or live beasts of burden, straight to our Citadel's warehouses! Work, you scum! I don't want you to leave behind even the iron nails of the doors—rip them out! When the spies of those fucking Cryons and the Purple Light Sect arrive here in a couple of days, I want them to find only scorched earth and not a single copper coin to weep over!"
Far beneath the chaos of the looting on the surface, in the telluric depths of the mountains, Samael Morningstar walked with the calm of a king through the dark, frigid subterranean corridors of the main mansion.
Runic witchfire torches ignited automatically, illuminating his path with a bluish, ghostly light. A few centimeters from his cloak, walking in absolute silence, he was accompanied by little Elara. The assassin girl merged and separated from the dense shadows projected on the wall with every step, her terrifying Fangs of Non-Existence held firmly in her hands, ready to sever souls—though in this lower level, there was absolutely no one left alive to slit their throat.
They finally arrived before the financial heart of the dynasty: the Great Central Vault of the Valois.
The obstacle was no small matter. It was a monstrous double door forged entirely of pure adamantite, three meters thick. It was hermetically sealed by a millennial Blood and Soul Array, a biometric and spiritual lock that demanded the direct DNA, vital signature, and specific Qi of Alaric's bloodline to even consider opening. A normal intruder would have taken weeks to decipher the runic puzzle or would have needed the combined power of ten Saints to attempt to melt it.
"What a sovereign annoyance," Samael murmured, looking at his fingernails.
Samael didn't even summon an array core. He raised his right hand toward his waist.
"Odachi. Work."
The hilt of Kurohime vibrated frantically in response. The immense and disturbing golden reptile eye embedded in the metal blinked and dilated, distilling a fierce hunger. Samael unsheathed and did not seek the lock, nor did he analyze the defensive runes. He simply injected a thread of his Void Law into the black and red edge and launched a swift, casual, and flawless diagonal slash across the center of the monumental door.
ZIIIIING.
The sound was a whisper of zero friction. The three-meter-thick door of unbreakable adamantite did not screech. There were no sparks, no magical alarms. Simply, and silently, it separated into two geometrically perfect halves. The edges of the cut were so ridiculously smooth they reflected light like polished titanium mirrors. The array was severed at a conceptual level. The immense tons of metal fell inward with a heavy, cavernous thud that shook the mountain.
Samael and Elara crossed the threshold.
The internal glow blinded them for a fraction of a second. The sight was obscene. Entire mountains—literally gigantic dunes—of Medium and High Grade Spirit Stones were piled on the floor, shining with a blue and white light that saturated the air with liquid Qi. Along immense walls, endless shelves overflowed with Technique Codices, artifacts from the Purple Light Sect, and gleaming armor. To the right, immense pallets supported hundreds of heavy ingots of Black Gold and Stellar Silver.
It was the incalculable, overwhelming, and insulting wealth accumulated, stolen, extorted, and amassed during three hundred uninterrupted years of brutal imperial taxes, underworld corruption, and illegal slave trade by the Valois.
"The citadel will not suffer a shortage of funds for a century," Samael said, his voice echoing, as his spatial ring began to glow, sucking in tons of wealth per second into his inventory.
But his dragon eyes did not stop at the vulgar gold. Samael walked directly toward the center of the immense hall, where a showcase heavily reinforced with dozens of runic crystal chains stood atop a velvet pedestal.
Inside the showcase, floating in the air through levitation magic, rested an irregular stone the size of a human heart, of a deep, abyssal blue. It pulsed rhythmically. It emitted a cold so overwhelmingly dense that it had literally frozen the oxygen atoms inside the sealed showcase, creating a frigid vacuum around it.
[IMPERIAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS]
[Object Identified:] Millennial Ice Heart.
[Purity Grade:] Saint (Medium Level).
[Description and Use:] Supreme evolutionary material for extreme Yin-type bloodlines or those akin to Ice. Stabilizes the flow of frozen Qi and prevents the crystallization of the user's own meridians.
Samael did not look for the key. He simply shattered the runic crystal with a direct punch, ignoring the alarms, and took the stone directly with his bare hand.
In the instant of contact, the immense millennial cold tried to bite and necrose his fingers, attempting to turn his bones into brittle ice, but the boiling and destructive tyranny of his Primordial Dragon blood ignited and devoured the frigid energy, subduing the artifact immediately.
"Violeta," Samael called mentally through the unbreakable telepathic network of the Patriarch's Link.
Barely thirty seconds later, the air at the vault entrance tore open. Violeta appeared breathing heavily, her elegant armor still stained with black soot and dried blood from the executions, her white hair slightly disheveled.
"You called me, elder brother?" the assassin asked, bowing respectfully.
Samael didn't say a word. He simply tossed the heavy, glowing blue stone to her through the air.
"Catch it. It's yours."
Violeta caught the immense pulsing sapphire with both hands. The weight of the artifact surprised her, but her biological reaction was instantaneous.
"Your recent transformation and awakening as a Winter Void Dragon is unstable," Samael explained, staring into her mismatched eyes. "Your affinity for absolute ice is too violent, too pure for the current density of your muscles and meridians. If you don't control it, you will freeze yourself from the inside. This Millennial Ice Heart will act as your biological anchor. Absorb its energy. Use it to stabilize and calm your veins; do not make the mistake of using it to force a rank advancement. Control is power, Violeta."
Upon clutching the stone, the chaotic, cold aura leaking uncontrollably from Violeta's body calmed. The thin layer of lethal frost that formed involuntarily on her eyelashes and shoulders vanished at once, being absorbed and regulated by the artifact. The throbbing headache she had been ignoring out of pride ceased.
"It feels... like peace," Violeta whispered, her eyes filling with a rare vulnerability as she pressed the cold, hard stone against her chest. "Thank you, brother. I will not fail you."
In that precise and exact moment, the world seemed to stop entirely for Samael Morningstar. Time froze.
A flash of pure gold and crimson red exploded within his own mind. The cosmic trumpets of the Imperial System blared, announcing an incalculable statistical miracle.
[DING! ATTENTION: SYSTEM. ABSOLUTE LAW OF CRITICAL REIMBURSEMENT ACTIVATED.]
[Investment Registered / Gift Delivered:] Millennial Ice Heart (Medium Saint Grade Artifact).
[Link Recipient:] Violeta Morningstar (Direct Heiress of Primordial Bloodline).
[Special Conditions Detected:] Extreme Critical Probability reached (Synergy from First Absolute Victory of War of Annihilation + Recipient Loyalty and Submission Level at 100%).
[Karmic Retribution Roll:] Massive Return Multiplier applied: x500.
[ALCHEMICAL MIRACLE: SUPREME REIMBURSEMENT OBTAINED!]
[New Item Generated in Inventory:] TEAR OF THE WINTER GODDESS.
[Conceptual Grade:] INCOMPLETE DIVINE (SEMI-DIVINE).
[Absolute Description:] A tiny, perfect physical drop, crystallized from the very essence of Primordial Absolute Zero. It contains within it the residual and fragmented heritage of an Ancient Deity of the frozen void. If this object is consumed by a compatible vessel, it guarantees the immediate genetic and conceptual awakening of the legendary Eternal Ice Empress Physique.
A tiny, dazzling jewel, perfectly molded in the shape of a tear, appeared floating silently within the sub-space of Samael's personal Inventory. It was so beautiful it hurt to look at. Examining it with his System Eye, it seemed to contain, slowly swirling in its millimetric interior, an entire blue spiral galaxy, alive and pulsing.
Samael analyzed it mentally for several seconds, his breathing slowing down. Then, he looked down at Violeta, who was looking at him confused by his sudden silence.
Samael weighed the decision with the cold and ruthless logic of a cosmic chess player.
"If I immediately hand this Semi-Divine Tear to Violeta, her ice affinity will skyrocket toward the realm of pure divinity... but that immense static power would end up crushing and devouring her fine and lethal affinity for spatial laws. She is an assassin who slides along the edges of reality, not a damn heavy artillery mage or a summoner of static glaciers. If I grant her the Empress Physique, I would break her lethal martial path."
Samael's mind left his sister and flew irrepressibly toward the warm, deep, and absolute memories he shared with Seraphina.
He remembered his woman. His first wife, his companion through countless days and nights. The woman who had endured exile with him, the one with whom he had grown to give shape to an indestructible love. He remembered her body, the legendary Supreme Yin Lotus Body, an overwhelming physique that remained dormant, her heritage and ancestral bloodline marked eternally in the System as "Unknown," locked away awaiting a trigger capable of crossing the border between mortality and divinity.
Samael tightened his fist mentally, closing the inventory.
"This Tear is not for you, Violeta. This jewel is the fucking crown of my Queen. This is the key to triggering the rebirth of my Empress."
Samael had made his choice. Violeta had the stabilizer her assassin's path required; Seraphina would receive, at the right time, the ignition of her forgotten divinity.
"Keep that heart and show it to no one, Vio," Samael ordered, returning to the reality of the vault. "Now, I want you to help Cedric and the looting teams empty every last speck of dust from this place. We have less than an hour."
As Violeta nodded and the hundreds of outer disciples began frantically filling dimensional sacks with mountains of spirit stones and ingots, the System vibrated violently again, injecting letters of fire into Samael's mind, officially confirming the end of the extermination.
[SYSTEM ALERT: HIDDEN MISSION COMPLETED!]
[Campaign Name:] "THE DRAGON'S REVENGE."
[Main Objective:] Exterminate the Valois Family, eliminating both their branches and their root (All members with the bloodline).
[Execution Status:] Perfect Success (0 Biological Survivors. 0 Spiritual Leaks).
[Unexpected Additional Feat:] Individual assassination of a Monarch (Stage 9 Apex Saint) in less than 10 seconds.
[Final Tactical Evaluation:] Rank SSS (Brutality, Efficiency, and Maximum Psychological Impact).
[GENERATING HIGH-LEVEL IMPERIAL REWARDS...]
[New Title Acquired:] The Butcher of Nobles. (Passive Effect: Grants immense and dark psychological pressure. Increases the index of Fear, Panic, and Demoralization in enemy armies or high-born aristocratic rivals by a massive 50% through your visual presence alone on the battlefield).
[Special Growth Resource:] Seed of the World Tree (Living Fragment). (Effect: A legendary object. When planted in the central core of a fortress or in the Star Tree, it will force the evolution of the entire structure to a higher stage, allowing it to break its geographic chains and access "Dimensional Jump." Grants the ability to teleport the entire landmass of the citadel thousands of kilometers away in an instant).
[Ancient War Codex:] The Art of War of the Tyrant Dragon. (Description: A mass cultivation technique, designed exclusively for armies. Superior to Divine Grade. This codex is the tool that forges immortal legions).
Samael hurriedly read the abyssal implications of the Ancient Codex.
This was not a technique for an individual to become strong. It was the "Universal Dantian." It would merge the seas of spiritual energy of the 3,000 low-ranking clan disciples into a single infinite ocean under the Sovereign's command. A simple mortal-rank soldier could, in the midst of battle, draw Qi from that immense communal reserve to cast offensive spells with the raw power of a Saint Realm cultivator.
Furthermore, it granted the Body of Eternal Scales: any massive damage received by a single soldier in the vanguard would be instantly diluted and shared among the thousands of practitioners. A divine attack designed to vaporize a general would become a simple annoyance or a superficial scratch thanks to the army's damage mitigation network. To kill a single member of the Morningstar legion, the enemy would now need to exert a force capable of annihilating three thousand men in a single simultaneous blow.
It was the ultimate tool, the birth of an invincible army capable of besieging and massacring continents for decades without fatigue.
Samael's heart beat with overwhelming force. Riches didn't matter. The World Tree Seed and the Legion Codex were the only two things that mattered. With that Seed, his impregnable but slow Floating Citadel would cease to be a fixed target; it would become a tactical nightmare—a gigantic ghost island capable of appearing over the sky of any enemy imperial capital, unleashing hell, and disappearing without a trace before armies could respond to the siege.
"Everything is falling into place," Samael whispered, the Demon King smiling in the depths of the empty vault.
Thirty minutes later. Back in the surface ruins of the Valois mansion.
Samael stood immovable, arms crossed behind his back, inside what had previously been the ultra-fortified and inviolable Private Communications Room of the dead Patriarch. Around him, the opulent decoration lay destroyed, but before him, intact and held by heavy basalt supports, stood an enormous Spiritual Jade Transmission Mirror, the size of a double door, glowing with long-distance communication runes.
"Is it active and purged?" Samael asked, his voice lacking an echo in the large room.
To his right, Cedric, typing furiously over the base runes with his heavy Siege Gauntlets, looked up.
"The signal is strong and stable, Boss. I've hacked Alaric's confidentiality seals and forced a routing. It's connected directly to the ultra-secret and private frequency of the imperial family allied with the Valois. This isn't a public call to a secretary or a border guard post; this line will pierce their shields and appear directly in their central war room."
Samael nodded, pleased. He used the back of his bare hand to wipe a thick smudge of clotted blood from his cheek, but deliberately and theatrically, he decided not to hide the marks of his bloodline. He kept his violet supernova eyes active and let his colossal black obsidian horns—the residual remnant of his Dragon transformation—project long, terrifying demonic shadows against the wall behind him.
Samael wanted the enemy to see exactly the monster that had toppled their southern pillar.
"Turn it on," he ordered.
ZUMMM.
The immense surface of green jade shone with a blinding white light, and the visual and auditory static of the long distance cleared quickly, giving way to a high-resolution image of a place very far and different.
On the other side of the mirror appeared an immense, luxurious, and disturbing hall, whose architecture was forged entirely from blocks of translucent blue ice and immense ribs of prehistoric whale bone. It did not look like the throne room of a traditional cultivator, but rather the operating room of a madman.
In the exact center of the hall, standing before a massive crystal operating table, surrounded by Qi screens and cylindrical containers where biological monstrosities floated, was the infamous leader of the rival dynasty.
Lord Viktor Cryon, "The Surgeon of the Abyss." (Patriarch of the Cryon Family, and the Fifth Sword of the Central Empire).
Viktor was a Dantesque visual spectacle. At first glance, he barely looked human, let alone a classic cultivator focused on the Dao. He wore an impeccable, sterile, long white coat that flowed over heavy, completely airtight tactical armor. However, the left half of his face and his entire original torso had been violently amputated and replaced by complex and terrifying biological prosthetics of Stellar Steel and glowing crystal conduits that pumped dense, bluish liquid Qi directly into his nervous system.
Viktor was not a spiritual master guided by martial philosophy; he was an absolute transhumanist clinical psychopath. A frigid tyrant who saw cultivators, humans, and ancestral beasts the same way: as expendable "spare parts" in his obsessive quest for artificial genetic perfection.
At that moment, oblivious to the intrusion on his line, Viktor was shouting irately at a panel of military commanders kneeling before him, blue frost falling from his lips with every word. He was visibly livid following the disastrous military failure of Boreas and his own son, Krow—the two useless pieces of trash who had not only cost him invaluable resources and chimeric beasts bred for years in ice laboratories but, worse yet, had caused the Patriarchs of the other four Great Families of the central empire to begin openly mocking his house for the incompetence of being unable to subdue a wretched and unknown clan that, to top it off, had emerged from nowhere overnight in the far, arid lands of the south.
"...I said to immediately contact the damned and useless trash Alaric Valois!" Viktor roared, slamming his metal surgical table and denting the stellar steel. "Notify that useless dog that I have a tracking job for them in the desert! They have to justify the blood we gave them! I want those heretics of the Morning—!"
The Cryon Patriarch stopped dead. His cybernetic voice cut out.
One of the main screens in the war room notified him that the mirror had been forcibly activated. But when Viktor turned his head, he did not see the cowardly and fawning face of Alaric Valois at all.
In the huge projection of the mirror, he saw a frighteningly calm young man. He had dark hair, two demonic horns poking from his temples, and disturbing, hypnotic violet eyes. The intruder was sitting nonchalantly, sprawling with crossed legs and reclined back, directly upon the legendary shattered Jade Throne of the Valois, with the smoke from the fires and the starry night sky visible through the rubble of what was once the hall's marble roof.
Patriarch Viktor Cryon slowly narrowed his organic eye and adjusted the focal lens of his prosthetic steel eye. He did not shout, he did not demand to know the intruder's name, nor did he command his guards to attack the projection. His analytical brain deduced it in microseconds. He knew.
"You..." Viktor hissed. His livid expression vanished, replaced by a terrifyingly cold, cynical, and expressionless gaze, his metallic voice dropping to a guttural, sadistic, and deeply dangerous tone that resonated through the mirror. "I suppose you are the walking disaster that destroys my people. The small, arrogant, and noisy trash from the southern desert. The leader of the clan that my most disgusting and useless generals, Krow and Boreas, could not defeat. You gave my precious chimeric beasts, bred with such effort and cost, a grand death..."
Viktor smiled. A lopsided, cold, and malicious smile that stretched the metal cables embedded in his cheek, showing a sickly glee for the massacre.
"But tell me, boy... How about you save yourself all this absurd theatrical spectacle, come to the north yourself on your knees, and voluntarily hand over your interesting severed head and your entire peculiar clan of mutants as specimens for my laboratory? I promise to embalm you in very pretty jars."
Samael listened to the cyborg's monologue with unshakeable calm. When Viktor finished, Samael sketched a frigid smile. It was an extremely slow smile, sharp as a butcher's knife opening cold meat, devoid of any hint of terror.
"Hello," Samael replied, his deep, emotionless voice rising over the background noise. "I imagine you are Viktor, the famous and respected Patriarch of the Cryons. The owner, leash in hand, of those pathetic and mangy dogs that came to bark rabidly at my front door. I see my fame precedes me and that you already know of my existence. How fast information travels among scum nowadays, doesn't it?"
Samael shifted his posture on the throne, resting his elbows on his knees.
"And it's a real shame..."
Samael slowly lifted a heavy, spherical object with his left hand, carefully wrapped in a fine, stained purple velvet cloth that had rested on the floor beside the throne leg, and let it fall carelessly onto the immense obsidian table in front of the communication mirror.
TUMP. The dull thud echoed dismally. The heavy purple cloth slipped and opened.
What rolled onto the table, stopping right in front of the mirror's lens, was the perfectly severed, mummified, and grotesque head of the Great Valois Ancestor (the Stage 9 Apex Saint). The millennial elder's dried eyes were wide open, bloodshot with dead blood, his jaw dislocated and his features eternally frozen in a silent scream of pure and absolute terror—the same terror he felt upon being devoured by the Void Law.
Samael rested his chin upon his knuckles, coldly observing the reaction on the other side of the screen.
The silence in the immense and imposing war room of the Cryons was so dense and absolute that it could have been cut with a razor. The twelve hardened ice generals accompanying Viktor held their breath, their faces paling drastically until they were white as paper, unable to believe that the millennial relic and strategic pillar of the east had just been decapitated and exposed as a repulsive, disgusting hunting trophy by a young man.
"Tch," was the only sound Viktor emitted, clicking his metallic tongue with evident disgust and repulsion—though not for Samael, but for the head on the table. "What useless and pathetic trash. So much time, effort, and incalculable resources invested by my family protecting that fucking sham of a clan, giving them mines and lands, only for them to end up exterminated and humiliated in this way by a child. Despicable."
"As I was saying," Samael continued, ignoring the Patriarch's bluster, his tone turning slightly sarcastic, "it's an immense shame that I cannot show you the dessicated corpses of your beloved and failed generals, Boreas and Krow, nor the remains of your disgusting genetic pets to adorn this table. You see, it turns out my siblings and I reduced them to ashes, melted them to such a degree that literally absolutely nothing remained of even their disgusting bones to send to you in a pretty box with a bow."
Samael smiled sadistically.
"But hey, looking on the bright side, I want to take this call to thank you from the bottom of my heart. The biological and siege materials they left behind, which your useless dogs failed to protect, now serve a much nobler and more productive purpose for my people. Immense thanks for that generous gift, you piece of junk. I assure you that in the south, we appreciate it very much."
That was the straw that broke the camel's back of clinical diplomacy.
Upon hearing the insolence and the blatant defiance of this unknown brat, referring to his valuable Saint Grade experiments as "gifts" and to him as "junk," Viktor Cryon's immense and sickly patience finally snapped in half. The cables in the Patriarch's prosthetic neck glowed warning-red. And then, he let out the beast.
Viktor released his restrained aura.
A brutal explosion, physical and psychic—an overwhelming power corresponding to a Stage 8 Saint King (an apex of absolute power that was entire leagues above any enemy Samael had ever faced)—flooded the ice hall on the other side of the screen.
Viktor's colossal willpower and the density of his frigid Qi caused his entire massive laboratory to shake violently like an extreme-magnitude earthquake. Flasks shattered, operating tables went flying, and most terrifyingly: the very three-dimensional space around the Patriarch's robotic figure began to visibly tear with hundreds of black micro-fissures, unable to contain the enormous and crushing gravitational pressure of his immense cultivation.
Through the long-distance communication array, the suffocating pressure and terrifying cold leaked toward Samael's room, pushing heavily against his shoulders.
"You... small and insolent desert rat," Viktor hissed, his voice dropping an octave until it became a sonic roar that threatened to burst the mirror's crystal. "You, insignificant Samael Morningstar! Do not believe you are some great divine thing nor inflate yourself like a balloon just because you killed four useless, stupid, and rusted old men from the south. Do not be so dangerously arrogant in my presence, boy! I am not a fucking decrepit old man tied to a dead valley! I warn you once: do not believe too much in front of a true god, or I will rip out your lungs while you are still breathing."
From the other side of the pond, Samael received the impact of the Cryon Patriarch's demonstration of tyrannical and brute force.
Instead of recoiling, cowering, offering diplomatic apologies, or showing the slightest hint of concern at the irrefutable confirmation that he had just enraged a Stage 8 Saint King, Samael was astonished. His violet eyes widened, shining with a strange light.
The Imperial System on Samael's retina flickered frantically, scanning the immense flow of energy data that Viktor, in his arrogance, had just released and displayed gratuitously before the camera, immediately deploying the detailed analysis of his lethal cultivation base and threat level.
"So... this is a fucking Saint King," Samael thought, feeling the cold sweat and the overwhelming spatial pressure grazing his own dragon skin. The difference in the magnitude of energy between the dead Great Ancestor and Viktor was the same as between a flickering candle and the rising sun.
But looking Viktor in the eyes, and hearing the hollow and arrogant threats coming from the Patriarch's metallic mouth, something dark clicked within the young leader's fractured psyche. A deeply sadistic, undeniably manic, dark, and primitive side surfaced. The Primordial Dragon blood boiling through his veins flatly refused—by sheer biological dictate and evolutionary design—to bow its head or feel fear before a human, no matter how many heavenly realms separated them on the stupid cultivation scale.
Samael did not recoil. He defied the gravity imposed by the hologram, leaned aggressively forward, pressing his face dangerously close to the surface of the giant mirror, filling the entirety of Viktor's visual projection with his immense and menacing presence bathed in the shadows of his obsidian horns.
"You listen to me very well, you damned cyborg, Patriarch Cryon, or whatever the fuck you call yourself, because I don't care about your name or absolutely anything about your pathetic and rotten mechanized existence," Samael hissed, his voice distilling a frigid cruelty and a pure, visceral hatred that silenced the generals in Viktor's room. "A few weeks ago, you crossed an unpardonable line. You sent your son Krow, your other sham of a general, and four of your fucking genetic abominations to knock on my front door."
Samael's eyes ignited like violet coals burning in the dark.
"And today... I have come through this mirror solely to tell you, to your face, to get ready. Prepare and polish that damned junk neck you have, because I swear by the Void itself that I will come for it personally. I want you to be ready, Cryon. Because you attacked MY family, and you don't touch my family, you son of a thousand whores, without paying the price in blood."
Samael raised a finger, listing the debts collected, the cold and calculating arrogance of the Demon King taking absolute control of the negotiation.
"Those immense Spirit Crystal mines and the deposits the Valois obediently guarded in their southern territory as loyal vassals of your empire... they are mine now."
"All their continental trade routes, their caravans, and their mercantile monopoly... they are mine now."
"And your fucking family in the north..."
Samael lowered his right hand and gently caressed, with a disturbing intimacy, the immense, black and red hilt of his heavy weapon. The Saint Grade sword, Kurohime, feeling the extreme hostility directed at its master, reacted instantly. The golden eye in the metal opened wide, and the sword emitted a loud, guttural, and deeply terrifying purr of sadistic hunger that was perfectly audible through the jade's magic transmission, making the hair of those present stand on end.
"Your pathetic and disgusting family... is next on the slaughterhouse list."
Patriarch Viktor Cryon observed the entire spectacle of defiance with absolute coldness, his immense and monstrous Saint King aura held at its peak, which was causing his own laboratory, valued at millions, to be an absolute chaos of broken glass and frigid hurricane wind.
Viktor's generals expected their leader to order a long-distance execution or explode in uncontrollable destructive rage, but the psychopath's reaction was infinitely worse.
Viktor let out a deep, artificial, screeching laugh, devoid of all human warmth.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The immense mechanical laugh bounced and resonated within the frigid confines of the ice palace. "You, a nobody, a tiny and stupid desert rat, a brat playing at being a warlord, you dare look me in the eye and threaten me with death to my face!"
Viktor stopped the laugh dead. His only human eye fixed on Samael with the lethal precision of a military laser about to fire.
"Listen to me very well, Morningstar... Fine! Agreed! I accept your fucking challenge! I like that twisted boldness of yours! I expect you here, in the very Imperial Capital of the North! Come up with your troops from the pit of shit you live in, come to my gates if you have the guts, and I promise I will show you personally, and with extreme slowness, who truly commands on this fucking continent! I promise I will dissect you while you are still conscious!"
Viktor leaned toward the camera, frost emanating from his bionic lungs.
"You have killed my southern vassals. You have ruined decades of my strategic planning. You have openly insulted and threatened my ancient and illustrious family with death. If in your small and tiny macaque brain you truly believe this will stay like this, or that I'm going to give you time to assemble a disgusting army of rats in the sand..."
"I don't believe absolutely anything," Samael interrupted sharply, raising his hand to stop the Patriarch's verbal diarrhea, denoting infinite weariness and contempt. "I know exactly what you will do next."
Samael raised his obsidian-armored index finger and pointed threateningly, imperatively, and directly at the mirror's central camera.
"Come, Cryon. Come for us. Mobilize the full weight of your military trash and bring your famous and invincible Winter Fleet toward my territory. Bring your legendary and impregnable Heaven Grade battleships that you boast of so much. Send your immortal generals south..."
Samael's violet eyes shone with the intensity of a thousand dying suns, and his voice distilled a promise of absolute and relentless carnage.
"I'm hungry, Viktor. And I assure you my fucking sword is, too."
CRACK!
Samael didn't wait to hear a retort, an insult, or a tantrum from the proud Patriarch. He, the young desert leader, dictated the end of the conversation. Samael raised his bare hand and struck the polished crystal of the mirror with the concentrated force of a single finger. The immense jade communication panel cracked in the shape of a spiderweb, the complex and expensive long-distance magic array collapsed instantly, and the video and audio transmission cut off abruptly in a shower of noisy, brilliant white static, until it went completely dark.
Thousands upon thousands of kilometers away toward the cold north, in the command and operations room of the immense and inviolable Ice Palace of the Cryon Family, silent panic reigned.
The huge main mirror was completely black and silent, reflecting only the destruction. The biology and command laboratory was, in effect, completely trashed. Glass and test tubes were pulverized on the floor due to the colossal shockwave of the Saint King who had just released his power in anger.
Patriarch Viktor Cryon remained absolutely static, standing in silence, staring fixedly and with psychopathic intensity at the cold and inert dark reflection of the destroyed crystal. His heavy and furious breathing came out in rhythmic clouds of dense, toxic white vapor, and the steel gears of his jaw ground audibly from the tension.
"Fine... fine..." Viktor murmured, a monstrous and sadistic smile slowly forming on what remained of his biological face, stretching the synthetic skin until it almost tore. "I truly hope you entertain me, little and insolent Samael Morningstar. I'll love to experiment on you and rip open your fucking entrails to see what shit you're made of! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
The sound of Viktor's brutal mechanical laugh was so massive and unstable that the acoustic force of the Qi it carried caused the ceiling of the great hall, already severely damaged by his previous aura, to collapse further, sending blocks of blue ice the size of boulders crashing down onto the strategy tables, crushing maps in a deafening din.
Without losing his macabre smile, Viktor spun violently on his armored heels and fixed his cyclopean gaze on one of the Chief Directors of the Imperial Army, an extremely hardened and pale man whose own cultivation was also in the intimidating rank of Saint King.
"Immediately activate the damned Protocol Zero!" Viktor bellowed, the absolute and irrefutable order bouncing off the frigid walls of the room.
The army Director stood physically stunned, eyes wide from the impact of such a directive, and the blood drained from his weathered face. A chill of atavistic terror ran down his spine, hardened by decades of uninterrupted combat.
"S-Sir?" the General stammered, unable to control his surprise. "We speak of Protocol Zero? Against a simple clan that just rose in the desert? Sir, that protocol implies the—"
"I said the fucking Protocol Zero, you scum!" Viktor roared, grabbing the General by the collar of his heavy armor and lifting him a meter into the air with one of his cybernetic hands, his eyes shining with homicidal fury and absolute madness. "Mobilize the Five Heaven Grade Battleships right now! Go to the subterranean crypts and awaken the Three Ice Judges from their deep cryogenic lethargy! And prepare the damned 'Leviathan' for deployment!"
Viktor released the choking General, letting him fall to the ice floor to catch his breath, and strode furiously toward the immense Gothic window of his command palace. He stared at the dark starry sky, and then cast his sickly and calculating gaze thousands of kilometers directly toward the distant south, as if his prosthetic eyes with integrated thermal sensors could pierce the planet's curvature and physically see those irritating rats scurrying through the sands of the far desert—toward that cursed region where, in some inexplicable way, the night constellations seemed to shine with a disturbing and sinister tint of crimson blood-red tonight.
"We are going to erase that disgusting, hot desert from the fucking map, and we are going to flatten their mountains into fine crystal dust," Viktor Cryon sentenced, slamming his heavy and brutal stellar steel hand into the unbreakable ice frame of the large window, causing deep fissures. "I don't want clean sieges. I don't want to conquer or annex their stupid territories. I want you to go there, grind their city, and bring me the fucking frozen corpses of the main family for my biological dissection. If by some miracle you cannot capture and immobilize them alive for torture, tear them apart, but I warn you: I want those cursed bodies! Have I explained myself with lethal clarity, General?!"
The General, sweating despite the sub-zero degrees of the room, scrambled hurriedly from his knees, swallowing the panic at the apocalyptic magnitude of the annihilation fleet that had just been requested. He put his right fist over his armored chest and performed an impeccable, tense, and quick martial salute.
"Yes, sir! Loud and clear, my lord! The propulsion arrays are being ignited right now! The Winter Fleet of Death will be armed and supplied! They will set sail toward the southern desert in three days with the first light of dawn!"
"Good... go to hell and bring me their heads," Viktor whispered. The General nodded rigidly, spun on his heels, and ran out through the ice corridor to immediately carry out the apocalyptic and destructive orders of Protocol Zero, which would shake the foundations of the entire continent.
The Birth of the Dimensional Kingdom
Back in the burning climate of the far south, over the Emerald Valley basin.
Deep, silent, and starry night had finally fallen completely over the blood-stained lands, hiding beneath a thick and inscrutable black veil the ghastly and inhuman butcheries and atrocities that had been committed on the marble floor.
High above the ruined valley, crowning the dark sky like a silent deity, the majestic and lethal Morningstar Citadel shone with a faint and intimidating violet light. Through immense dimensional portals and gigantic reverse-gravity elevators, the disciplined and exhausted logistics teams were hurriedly and with military precision loading the last immense crates filled with the colossal Valois booty, storing every last piece of gold and codex within the inexhaustible and secure dimensional holds of the flying fortress.
In the heart of the stone beast, Samael Morningstar stood, solitary and contemplative, in the center of the vast, serene, and immaculate central Zen garden of the Floating Citadel. Before him stood, immense, majestic, and ancient, the colossal Star Tree, whose massive bark shone rhythmically with a faint, relaxing, and pulsing starlight that bathed the lawn and calmed the agitated spirits of the warriors after the war of extermination.
Samael raised his right hand and, with a fluid movement, took out the invaluable divine reward the System had granted him upon culminating the extermination of the Valois: the [World Tree Seed].
It was no ordinary oak seed. It was a botanic miracle encapsulated. A perfect sphere, the size of a man's fist, woven with solid emerald green and deep brilliant gold light. The sphere was not an inert object; it throbbed heavily, with the steady, warm, and vital rhythm of an immortal biological heart. It emitted a vibratory melody—a subtle, beautiful, and ancient conceptual song that was not heard with physical ears, but resonated pure and directly in the deepest part of the soul of those nearby, transmitting an infinite promise of eternal life and unmeasurable cosmic expansion.
"Seraphina. Elowen. And you too, Elder Livia," Samael called, his deep and relaxed voice crossing the silent garden.
The three women approached quickly and in absolute silence from the shadows of the surrounding arcades, recognizing the importance of the moment.
Elowen (The Root of Life), being a Semi-Dragon absolutely akin to the Law of Wood and possessing green elixir blood running through her veins, was the first to react. Her biological instinct was so uncontrollable and overwhelming that she fell to her knees on the damp grass in front of Samael. Thick tears of intense, genuine, and pure emotion began to roll down her cheeks as she felt the unfathomable and peaceful purity of the creative energy emanating from the small object floating in her Master's hand.
"What... what is that you hold, Master?" Elowen asked, her voice breaking with pure wonder and mystic reverence as she extended her trembling hands toward the green light, like a devotee before her god. "It feels... it feels as if it were the very spark of creation... as if I were seeing the immaculate origin of all life blooming before me."
Samael stared at the pulsing sphere and sketched a slight smile.
"It is not just the origin, my little Elowen," Samael said, his voice serene and pregnant with cosmic meaning. "It is the unshakeable and mobile future of our empire."
With a solemnity worthy of a sacred foundational rite, Samael walked two steps forward and, without pronouncing unnecessary incantations, kneeling on the dark earth, he gently and with his own bare hands planted the brilliant and immaculate seed directly into the dense and nourished soil at the very base of the immense main root of the ancient Star Tree.
There was no gigantic noisy explosion, nor destructive flashes, nor violent earthquakes that fractured the ground. The birth was a silent and peaceful symphony of pure vital expansion. The dazzling seed simply sank into the soft earth like a raindrop falling into a calm ocean. And a second later, the titanic and colossal Star Tree shuddered deeply from its core to its last and highest leaf.
A metamorphic change of monumental proportions began to brew. Its immense and beautiful translucent crystal leaves, which previously only possessed a pale stellar blue color, began to change pigmentation on a large scale, quickly becoming a deep, lush, vital, and exotic green, adorned with intricate and immense gold veins that throbbed and seemed to trace complex, functional, and interconnected star maps and three-dimensional interplanetary coordinates in their physical interior.
But the most drastic, miraculous, and overwhelming change did not occur on the visible surface. It occurred in the bowels of the rock.
The titanic and thick roots of obsidian and crystal of the immense flying citadel, which until that moment hung inert and massive in the cold void hundreds of meters below the base of the floating landmass, suddenly began to shine with an overwhelming golden radiance. As if they were alive and guided by a superior consciousness, these gigantic roots began to lengthen, untangle, and move in the air. They did not seek to anchor themselves or cling desperately to the firm and physical ground of the planet to gain sustenance; they were weaving themselves, hooking, grabbing, and connecting conceptually and intricately with the very malleable quantum fabric of space itself. They were anchoring the citadel to the Void dimension.
The technological, biological, and magical miracle was sealed immediately by the System.
[IMPERIAL SYSTEM REPORTS: MASSIVE STRUCTURAL EVOLUTION OF CITADEL INITIATED SUCCESSFULLY.]
[Processing:] Integrating the World Tree Seed into the primary stellar core...
[Estimated Total Transition Time:] 7 Uninterrupted Days.
[Projected Structural Result:] The base will pass from being a [Geo-Stationary Floating Fortress of Imperial Grade] -----> to becoming an [Autonomous Dimensional Mobile Kingdom].
[New Capabilities Acquired:] The tactical capability of [Direct Spatial Jump] will be enabled. Allows for the relocation of the total mass and the massive cloaking of the city at any continental coordinate in zero time.
Samael closed the System information panels with a slight thought, satisfied with the definitive acquisition of total mobility power. He stood up, gently brushed the fertile earth from his dark leather gloves, and looked closely at his family gathered in the garden.
Each and every one of them, from Kael to Eris—who lay on a nearby stretcher resting—were visibly exhausted, with dark circles marked by the extreme use of Saint Grade Qi. They were stained with black soot from fires, stank of enemy clotted blood, and cellular fatigue weighed on their shoulders. But most importantly: they were alive, whole, and they looked at their Sovereign with the unshakeable devotion and fierceness of soldiers who had just annihilated an imperial myth.
"The work is done for today. The carnage has been fruitful and the family has eaten well. Let's go home, to our true beds," Samael said, his voice deep, reassuring, and warm—the tone of a true patriarch caring for his pack. "We have seven long days of grace and absolute rest before the seed hatches and the city finishes evolving completely. Rest and eat well."
Samael slowly turned his body and raised his cold, analytical, and calculating gaze toward the dark, infinite, and unexplored firmament of the far North—toward the Imperial Capital hiding behind the snowy mountains and glaciers.
Using his precarious but instinctive incipient understanding of the invisible and thin threads of fate, Samael knew in the deepest part of his dark soul that his time of peace, celebration, and rest would be neither long nor peaceful.
The proud and furious Cryons, blinded by humiliation, would definitely send more people south. They would send more immense armies, generals a thousand times stronger, and flying siege battleships with firepower designed to subdue entire kingdoms. Samael deduced, knowing aristocratic stupidity, that those arrogant idiots of the north who considered themselves true gods for having armies still did not understand what they were facing. Even after the complete and instantaneous annihilation of the legendary House Valois, those blind ones in their ice palaces erroneously believed in the bottom of their rotten hearts that the Morningstars were simply a small, annoying, and overprotected group of lucky rebels who had just risen violently in the sand; an ephemeral plague of mercenaries that needed to be quickly annihilated before it caused more stir.
Samael smiled softly and darkly at that suicidal thought. And that smile was not that of a defiant or cocky youth; it was, in all its sadistic and majestic nuances, the authentic, cruel, and sovereign smile of the inexpugnable and true Primordial Demon King—a sovereign who has left the gates of his slaughterhouse wide open.
"When they finally arrive at our sands, armed with their pathetic pride and their ridiculous stellar battleships, seeking blood and glory..." Samael whispered to himself, the night breeze stirring his black hair, "...they will discover the hard way, and at an incalculable price in blood, that we are not a simple, passing, and annoying peasant rebellion begging for attention. They will discover with horror, in their last moments of life... that we are the fucking silent abyss that comes to devour their sun."
Samael raised his right hand and, with a sharp, mental, precise, and definitive movement of his fingers, activated the final command of the defensive system.
[Tactical Command Confirmed: Activating the [Mantle of the Void].]
The Patriarch's immense Active and Control Skills went into maximum function. In a microsecond, a colossal, silent, and frigid dome of thick, sticky, and translucent darkness descended from the stratosphere and protectively and absolutely enveloped the entirety of the Floating Citadel's gigantic geological mass.
The immense island of black stone did not simply and crudely become invisible to eyes through optical refraction camouflage. The technique operated at an incomprehensibly superior level: the citadel became physically non-existent, an absent concept for the outer material world.
The absolutist effect of the Mantle of the Void granted cosmic intangibility and the coveted, legendary, and supreme state of [Undetectable to the Fate of the Greater Laws]. Absolutely no one—neither the most powerful oracles of mystic divination of the western monarchs, nor the complex magic thermal detection satellites of the empire, nor even the sharp and divine eyes of the unreachable Great Emperors or the demigods stationed at the edges of the sky—could find the slightest trace of Qi, heat, shadow, or magic resonance to track them.
The supreme-grade technique turned the burgeoning, violent, and brutal Morningstar Empire into the largest and most dangerous ghost hunter of the entire immense continent.
The immense and lethal Obsidian Floating Citadel turned slowly, silently, and menacingly on its own geological axis in the thin air of the great altitude. Its titanic and newly forged blue gravitational motors, driven by the divine arrays and the strength of the Star Tree, roared dully, emitting a subatomic hum that did not disturb the silence of the night.
With a dizzying acceleration that defied the laws of inertia, the beast of dark stone and gold suddenly accelerated toward the vast northern horizon. It disappeared without leaving the slightest trace in the frigid and silent starry night, heading at extremely high speed toward the tactical safety of the lethal southern desert.
Everything that the young and invincible Morningstar Clan, led by its tyrannical Sovereign, left behind in its apocalyptic trail of death was nothing more than the blackened, shattered, and silent ruins of the Valois mansion, burning slowly in the darkness like a sinister and gigantic warning, irremediably written with fire, ice, and ash, for the ignorant and stupid world that was about to be devoured in the coming war.
(End of Chapter)