Chapter 81

The night over the Valerian Empire’s capital, Ethernom, was cold and deep as always. But that night, the darkness of the city’s most rotten innards, the ‘Leech Nest,’ carried a different scent of blood and killing intent than usual.

The first to move were the wolves of Kairos, burning with vengeance.

“‘Viper’ Calico,” leader of the royal Shadow Blade, ran silently through the filthy alleys like a rat. The fifty shadows following him moved as one, treading silently over muck and corpses mixed on the slick ground. They had a single goal: find the “secret laboratory” listed in the report and turn it into a furnace of hell.

“Spread out. Move in teams of three, eliminate everything that resists. Teach the Valerian rats a lesson.”

At Calico’s merciless command, the Shadow Blades melted into the slum’s darkness like dispersing smoke. They casually slit the throats of addicts collapsed from drugs, kicked down shacks, and slaughtered families trembling inside. There was no mercy for them; everything in this place was a sacrifice for their vengeance.

There were eyes watching their brutal “cleansing” from deeper darkness.

On a rooftop, through the gaps of broken tiles, the Valerian corpse soldiers, the Night Reapers, crouched in grotesque form. They were not alive, so they felt no emotion, no fear. Only the orders of their creator, Duke Alcard, governed their movements.

“Intruders confirmed. Begin elimination.”

A corpse soldier wielding a huge scythe, acting as the Reapers’ commander, ordered in an emotionless voice. At that moment, dozens of corpse soldiers on the roof leapt down without a sound. Their movements were unnaturally light, as if defying gravity, and their rotten claws were sharp as steel.

“Kraa!”

A Night Reaper pounced on the back of a Shadow Blade who was searching the alley. The Reaper’s sharp claws tore through lamellar armor like paper and ripped out the knight’s spine. Red blood spurted like a fountain, and the knight fell without a proper scream.

“It’s an ambush! You bastards!”

Calico roared and drew his blade. In an instant, the narrow alleys of the Leech Nest became a bloodsoaked slaughterhouse where the sharpest shadows of the two empires tore at each other’s flesh.

The Kairos Shadow Blades fought with trained coordination. While the shieldbearers held the front, those behind hurled poison-coated daggers at the corpse soldiers’ joints. But the Night Reapers felt no pain. Even when arms were cut off or legs shattered, they blindly lunged forward to tear out their opponents’ flesh.

When one corpse soldier bit through a Shadow Blade’s throat and snapped his neck, another Shadow Blade rammed a Magic bomb into the corpse’s skull and detonated it. Crushed brains and rotten flesh rained down like a storm. It was hell itself.

From atop the altar of an abandoned underground monastery, “Scream of Agony” Silas watched all the chaos with a rapt expression. Through the crystal orb at his feet, every atrocity in the alley was being broadcast vividly.

“Kuhuhu… How beautiful. Hatred aimed at one another, the terror of death, the feast of blood…! All of this will be the finest nourishment for my great garden!”

He was channeling the negative emotions and life force spilled as the two empires’ shadows killed each other into a massive fleshy cocoon behind the altar. The cocoon throbbed faster and greedier than before, preparing to awaken whatever lay within.

“Now, it’s time to welcome the guests of the feast!”

As Silas spread his arms and roared, the smoke of the drug ‘Ashen Dream’ he had lit writhed like a living serpent and slipped into the noses and mouths of the hundreds of addicts kneeling around the altar.

“Kraaaah!”

The addicts’ bodies began to convulse horribly. Their eyes rolled back and foam flowed from their mouths. Skin tore open as sharp bones protruded, and batlike wings sprang from their backs. They were no longer human—souls sold for pleasure, reborn by the power of the plague into monsters, becoming the ‘Gargoyles of Agony.’

“Go, my dear children! Bring all those foolish moths to my altar!”

Hundreds of gargoyles flapped their wings in unison and flew toward the bloodstained alley.

On the highest spire above that pandemonium.

The third shadow, Rian’s Shadow Blade, watched all of it in silence. They had perfectly hidden themselves using the Abyssal Shell’s built-in stealth function.

“Master, the target has begun to move. Hundreds of monsters have been unleashed.”

The commander reported this through the communication Magic device.

Hundreds of kilometers away at the Aster estate, Rian watched through the Eye of the Abyss as three red dots finally converged in one place.

“As expected. The feast is just now reaching its climax.”

Rian’s voice was cold as ice.

“While the dogs of the two empires fight recklessly with those flying toys, you infiltrate the altar as planned. Do not concern yourselves with anything else. You have one objective: the snake’s head.”

“We will carry out your orders.”

On the spire, the Shadow Blade commander gestured. The shadows behind him simultaneously drew hooked wires from their waists.

At the moment the two empires’ shadows danced in blood and the Apostle of the Plague opened the gates of hell.

The real hunters, from the highest point and in the utmost silence, had their blades aimed at the prey’s throats.