The billowing white sheets of alchemical tear gas swirled violently through the trenches, but the initial phase of total blindness did not last. From the center of the camp, a desperate, frantic mercenary managed to stumble toward the watchtower, his throat raw and bleeding as he slammed his fist into the bronze alarm bell.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The heavy, metallic rings shattered the mountain silence, announcing an incoming tactical ambush. A split second later, a deep, rumbling roar echoed from the commander's tent. Vanessa Katt had reacted.
"Fools! Stand your ground! It's an airborne chemical vector!" Vanessa's voice boomed, dripping with corrupted mana.
Suddenly, a massive, pressurized jet of incendiary black tar spewed violently through the courtyard. Vanessa had channeled her unique elemental affinity, painting the surrounding air with thick, boiling streams of volatile pitch before igniting it with a spark of localized fire magic. The catastrophic inferno roared across the peak, the intense, unnatural heat instantly combusting the alchemical particles of my tear gas and forcing the suffocating white smoke to rapidly dissipate into the night sky.
As the air cleared, the surviving mercenary grunts… coughing violently, their eyes bloodshot and tearing from the residual poison… looked up into the midnight sky. Their torches illuminated my airborne silhouette, my massive, translucent blood wings beating slowly against the dark backdrop of the mountain.
"There! In the sky! It's the Crimson Phantom! Bring her down!" a vanguard scout screamed, raising a heavy crossbow.
Instantly, a chaotic barrage of steel bolts, iron-tipped arrows, and low-tier elemental spells… crackle-bursts of lightning and jagged shards of ice… erupted from the ground, tracing lethal vectors straight toward my chest.
My analytical mind didn't register fear; it calculated trajectories. I raised my single right hand, the golden Inventory Ring on my ring finger flashing with a bright, metallic glare as I reached deep into the weightless void of my arsenal.
Thwip.
With a heavy, mechanical clatter, a pristine, original pre-war model of the Death Chant Tommy gun materialized perfectly into my grip. The weapon was a masterpiece of specialized human engineering, but the moment my pale fingers wrapped around the cold iron receiver, my sixth-evolution demonic biology immediately synchronized with the weapon's inner mechanisms. The intricate silver engravings lining the barrel and drum magazine instantly flushed with a deep, pulsing crimson light.
My internal blood magic flooded the firing chamber, converting my own raw mana pool into thousands of highly pressurized, hyper-dense kinetic blood bullets. Paired directly with the newly forged Level 6 Magic Enhancement Ring resting on my middle finger, the destructive output of the firearm was multiplied by a staggering 600%. The ordinary ballistic weapon had been elevated into a portable, high-tier alchemical cannon.
Hovering mid-air, I tilted my wings downward into a steep, aggressive strafing run and pulled the trigger.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
The roar of the modified Tommy gun was deafening, the muzzle flash painting the rocky peak in a blinding, rhythmic crimson glow. The blood bullets didn't just pierce the mercenaries; they detonated upon impact. The hyper-boosted kinetic energy tore through iron breastplates, shattered wooden barricades, and systematically ripped through the ranks of the charging grunts. Mercenaries were thrown backward into the dirt, their defense spells completely bypassed by the raw, overwhelming magical amplification of my rings.
From the center of the burning courtyard, Vanessa Katt tracked my aerial movement with snarling fury. She swung her heavy vanguard staff, conjuring a massive, swirling orb of boiling, pressurized flaming tar and launching it straight at my trajectory like a meteor.
"Die, you winged freak!" she shrieked.
I snapped my blood wings shut, dropping like a stone through the sky to dodge the bulk of the blazing projectile. The massive sphere of tar flew past my head, exploding harmlessly against the rocky cliffside behind me. However, the sheer concussive blast scattered a shower of burning, sticky black pitch across the air. A heavy, golf-ball-sized globule of the flaming tar arced downward, striking me directly on the shoulder of my garment.
The pitch hissed violently as it stuck, but the flame died instantly. Olive's custom-tailored, fire-resistant crimson trench coat did its job flawlessly. The high-tier, alchemically treated fabric absorbed the intense thermal shock without singeing a single thread, keeping my underlying flesh entirely unscathed.
I snapped my wings open again, stabilizing my hover just ten feet above the burning dirt, the smoking barrel of my crimson-lined Tommy gun pointed directly at the last remaining Immoral Knight. The grunts were entirely neutralized; Vanessa Katt was now completely isolated, and the interrogation was about to begin.
With every mercenary grunt in the camp officially neutralized, the burning courtyard fell into a heavy, smoke-choked silence. Vanessa Katt stood entirely alone amidst the wreckage of her outpost, her dark-iron vanguard armor covered in soot as she panted heavily, her staff trembling in her grip.
Moving with cold, S-rank precision, I tilted the smoking barrel of my crimson-lined Death Chant Tommy gun downward. I didn't want a kill shot… I needed her alive for the infiltration data.
RAT-TAT-TAT!
A brief, highly controlled burst of hyper-boosted blood bullets ripped through the night air, targeting her lower extremities. The level 6 magic enhancement ring amplified the kinetic impact exponentially; the dense rounds shattered her leg armor and tore through her thigh muscles. Vanessa let out a sharp gasp of agony, her legs buckling beneath her as she collapsed heavily onto the blood-stained dirt.
Driven by raw survival instinct, Vanessa snarled through the pain and thrust her hand forward, unleashing a desperate, pressurized spew of black tar directly at my face while simultaneously clicking her fingers to spark her fire magic.
I anticipated the trajectory flawlessly. With a sharp snap of my translucent blood wings, I execute a tight lateral dodge, letting the column of roaring fire pass harmlessly beside my fire-resistant trench coat. Before the flames could even dissipate, I closed the distance in a fraction of a second, dropping directly onto her prone form and grabbing her right wrist with my single hand.
Activating my advanced Blood Manipulation, I forced the spilled fluids on the ground to surge upward, violently wrapping around both of her hands and instantly solidifying into a thick, unbreakable casing of hyper-dense, calcified crimson crystal. Because her hands were completely encased and immobilized, she could no longer form the somatic components or manipulate the directional vectors required to cast her volatile tar skills.
With the target successfully subdued, I opened my golden Inventory Ring, smoothly dematerializing the Tommy gun back into the weightless void and replacing it with a heavy, tactical alchemical shotgun. The cold iron of the repeating weapon rested firmly in my grip.
I stepped closer, towering over her as she writhed on the ground. With my right hand holding the shotgun, I used my mouth to pull a pre-prepared notepad sheet from the interior pocket of my coat and dropped it directly onto her chest. The bold, dark ink read:
"Immoral Knight Base. Structural layout and access codes. Now."
Vanessa stared up at my mask, her eyes wide with a mixture of pain and pure, unadulterated defiance. She spat blood onto the stone.
"No... you unholy, winged demon! I would never betray Cameron! Go to hell!"
As the words left her mouth, her internal mana flared with sudden, desperate volatility. The heat from her core began rapidly accelerating the decay of my solidified blood bindings, the crimson crystal starting to crack and melt under the strain. Sensing her hands freeing up, she frantically began generating another surge of burning tar.
I didn't give her the chance to finish the cast.
I raised the alchemical shotgun, pointed it directly at her right shoulder joint, and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The localized blast of the shotgun, re-engineered by my blood mana, completely obliterated her right arm, ripping it clean off the socket in a spray of dark blood. Vanessa unleashed a piercing, blood-curdling scream of pure agony, her remaining left hand flailing wildly as she dry-heaved into the dirt, the sheer shock of the amputation sending her system into hyperventilating panic.
Before she could even register the blood loss, I stepped on her chest, pinning her down, and racked the slide of the shotgun with my thigh with a heavy clack-clack. I pointed the massive barrel directly at her remaining left elbow, aligning the sights perfectly with the bone.
Her eyes locked onto the cold steel of the barrel. The defiance completely vanished from her face, replaced by a visceral, primitive terror as she realized I was entirely prepared to leave her a completely limbless torso in the dirt, she shrieked, tears of agony cutting lines through the soot on her face as she looked up at my unblinking jade-green eye.
"No! Please! Not my left hand! Stop! I'll talk! I'll give you the base!"