Vanessa lay panting beneath the heavy heel of my boot, her remaining left arm trembling violently against the cold mountain soil as she stared up into the featureless void of my mask.
"In the Caria mountains… There is a massive, hidden castle built into the northern gorges. That's where the main stronghold is! That's where Cameron is! I swear!" she choked out, her voice cracking with desperation.
I stood perfectly still, my single jade-green eye tracking the subtle twitch of her facial muscles. My deep, analytical appraisal of her statement took less than a millisecond to finalize.
She was obviously lying.
The entire Caria mountain range was meticulously mapped, cataloged, and heavily patrolled by the high-tier forces of the Bureau. The central government held absolute territorial sovereignty over those peaks. If a massive, fully fortified castle actually existed within those coordinates, the Bureau's scout vanguards would have investigated and locked it down months ago. Andromeda's civil wars were bloody and protracted, but if the government had a concrete fix on the Immoral Knights' primary headquarters, they would have deployed their elite legions to crush the faction in a single, decisive weekend.
More importantly, my appraisal of her profile confirmed her absolute, fanatical devotion to Cameron Gal. She was his wife; she would sooner swallow crushed glass than willingly compromise the survival of the Immoral Knights. This entire "confession" was a calculated diversion to buy time and send me flying straight into a heavily fortified government trap.
I didn't waste a single stroke of ink to call her bluff. I simply shifted the heavy, cold iron barrel of the alchemical shotgun down her left shoulder, aligning it directly with the joint.
BOOM.
The deafening roar of the close-range blast echoed off the canyon walls. Vanessa's remaining left arm was instantly severed, flying across the dirt and landing with a heavy thud in the shadows of the barricades. A piercing, inhuman shriek of pure, unadulterated agony ripped from her throat as her torso violently convulsed, her head slamming back into the stone as her body rapidly began entering profound hypovolemic shock.
But I couldn't let her die yet. Dead lips could not provide the verification codes I needed for my shapeshifting infiltration.
Before her blood pressure could bottom out and stop her heart, I raised my right hand. The newly forged Level 5 Healing Enhancement Ring on my pinky finger flashed with a brilliant, concentrated emerald luminescence, surging in perfect tandem with my internal Blood Manipulation.
Moving with clinical, agonizing speed, I commanded the pooling crimson fluids around her shoulders to violently rise. The blood warped, thickened, and rapidly calcified directly over her twin, mutilated shoulder sockets, forming a set of airtight, stone-hard crimson casings. This advanced blood-stanching technique acted as an absolute, pressurized tourniquet, completely sealing her arterial pathways and forcing her vitals to stabilize.
Vanessa's shrieks subsided into ragged, pathetic dry-heaves, her face completely pale and slick with cold sweat as she looked up at her stumped, heavily bound shoulders. She was completely trapped, stripped of her limbs, and utterly powerless.
If physical damage could not break her fanatical loyalty to Cameron, then absolute, psychological terror would have to do the work. I racked the slide of the shotgun, dropping an empty, smoking brass casing right onto her blood-stained cheek, and knelt down close enough for her to hear the faint, predatory click-hiss vibrating deep inside my broken throat.
Vanessa's eyes widened in sheer, primal horror as she realized her fanatical lies were buying her absolutely nothing. I didn't waste a single second. I pointed the heavy barrel of the Death Chant shotgun downward at her right knee.
BOOM!
The alchemical blast detonated at point-blank range, completely severing her leg from the joint. Vanessa let out a broken, choked shriek as her body violently jarred against the dirt. Moving with cold, rhythmic precision, I immediately commanded the gushing crimson fluid to rise and harden, forming another airtight, calcified blood tourniquet over the fresh stump to keep her from slipping into eternal silence.
"My leg! Oh gods, my leg! I promise! It is in the Caria mountains! I swear on my life, I'm not lying to you! Please, stop!"
Hearing the exact same government-patrolled cover story exit her mouth a second time, my patience officially hit zero. Because my left arm was gone, I dynamically pinned the hot barrel of the shotgun against the side of my thigh, using a swift, practiced motion of my right hand to rack the slide.
Clack-clack.
An empty brass casing bounced off the stone. I dropped the muzzle directly over her final remaining left thigh and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The last limb flew from her torso, leaving her a completely limbless, bleeding trunk in the center of the ruined camp. I instantly snapped my fingers, utilizing my blood manipulation to encase the final wound in a thick, pressurized crimson crystal. Vanessa's screams filled the entire mountain peak, a raw, undulating sound of pure psychological and physical breaking.
To prevent her system from shutting down completely due to the sheer, overwhelming shock of losing all four limbs, I didn't give her a moment to rest. I lunged forward, my single right hand clamping tightly onto the reinforced iron collar of her dark breastplate. With a violent, powerful snap of my massive, translucent blood wings, I kicked off the dirt and launched us both straight up into the midnight sky.
"You blood-sucking winged demon! No! Don't do this! I promise I'm telling the truth! Stop flying up!" she shrieked, the freezing alpine wind whipping violently against her pale face as her limbless torso dangled helplessly over the abyss.
I ignored her pleas completely, my wings beating with immense, demonic power as I climbed higher and higher, leaving the burning wreckage of the outpost far below. We flew until we were completely sky-high, hovering in the thin, freezing air above the second peak.
Vanessa looked down. Seeing the ground completely vanish into a distant, microscopic patchwork of shadows and jagged rocks shattered the last remaining remnants of her fanatical loyalty. Apart from the phantom agony of her missing limbs, the absolute, paralyzing terror of the altitude took over.
"Don't drop me! Please, by the gods, don't drop me! I'll be crushed! I'll tell you everything! Just don't let me fall!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, her eyes bulging with pure panic as she stared into the unblinking, jade-green eye of my Leech's Hollow Mask.
I let go.
The weight of her armored torso vanished from my grip instantly. Vanessa's terrified screech distorted immediately, transforming into a desperate, high-pitched wail that stretched and faded as gravity seized her… a literal, horrifying Doppler effect echoing through the empty mountain chasms.
She plunged straight down through the freezing night air, a helpless, limbless stone falling toward the jagged rocks of the second peak. I hovered at peak altitude for two agonizing seconds, letting the absolute certainty of her impending death sink into her psyche, before snapping my massive, translucent blood wings shut.
I dove.
Moving with explosive, S-rank vanguard speed, I cut through the atmosphere like a crimson meteor, easily outpacing her terminal velocity. Just as Vanessa was less than ten feet away from hitting the solid stone ground… at the exact millisecond before her skull would have detonated against the rocks… I extended my single right arm and caught her iron collar with a violent, bone-jarring snap.
Our downward momentum stopped instantly, the air rushing out of her lungs in a pathetic, choked gasp. I held her hovering just inches above the jagged boulders. Vanessa's face was a mask of pure, unadulterated primal horror; her eyes were bloodshot, her lips blue, and her entire body was convulsing in a state of absolute psychological collapse.
The sheer, overwhelming terror completely broke her remaining bodily control. A sudden, warm moisture rapidly soaked through the padding of her dark-iron vanguard armor, spilling over her greaves and splattering directly onto my hand and the lower hem of my fire-resistant crimson trench coat. She had completely wet herself from fear, leaving my gear reeking and piss-stained.
Beneath my mask, my jaw tightened with deep, cold disgust.
This is still not enough.
She was a hardened Immoral Knight; if I didn't break her mind completely right now, she would try to spin another lie the moment her breathing stabilized.
Without a single word, I flew over to the edge of a massive, sheer vertical cliff that dropped thousands of feet into a pitch-black rocky ravine. With a brutal, fluid motion of my single arm, I threw her body straight over the edge like a piece of unwanted garbage.
"NO! NO! PLEASE… !"
Her screams erupted all over again, echoing frantically off the canyon walls as she rolled into the terrifying, weightless abyss of the gorge.
I let her fall deeper this time, watching her tiny silhouette tumble through the shadows until she was completely engulfed by the darkness of the ravine. Then, with a powerful, singular beat of my blood wings, I streaked downward into the chasm, intercepting her tumbling torso once more and snatching her out of the air right before the darkness could swallow her whole.
I hauled her back up to the cliffside, slamming her limbless, trembling body onto the hard dirt. I stood over her, the piss-stained hem of my crimson coat catching the wind, my single jade-green eye staring down at her broken form. Her fanatical devotion to Cameron Gal was completely gone, replaced entirely by the realization that I was an inescapable, merciless phantom of death.
"The real base… Please... no more... I'll give you the real coordinates…" she wept, her voice completely ruined, shaking violently as she stared at my ring-adorned hand.
Vanessa's eyes bulged, her jaw locking as she violently spasmed against the dirt.
"The real coordinates... they are… "
Before the critical words could escape her lips, her sentence fractured into a wet, choking gasp. Thick white foam erupted from her mouth, bubbling past her lips as her chest seized violently. The relentless, catastrophic psychological torture… losing all four limbs, being repeatedly dropped from the sky, and swimming in her own terror… had pushed her human cardiovascular system past its absolute breaking point. She was having a massive, stress-induced heart attack.
"Dammit!" I snarled internally.
I folded my translucent blood wings and dove back to the ground, dropping her limbless, convulsing torso onto the stone. I immediately thrust my single right hand forward, violently channeling a massive, desperate thread of my Pain Manipulation directly into her central nervous system. I flooded her pathways, completely numbing the agonizing, crushing pressure in her chest to halt the somatic panic.
But it was a useless effort. My skill was an absolute anesthetic, not a biological restoration spell. It could freeze her agony, but it couldn't restart a ruptured, failing heart muscle. Her pupils dilated, her chest went entirely still, and the light faded from her eyes. Vanessa Katt died of profound shock right under my hands.
I stood over the corpse in the pitch-black alpine silence, the freezing mountain wind whistling through the tattered edges of my fire-resistant crimson trench coat. My jaw clenched beneath my mask. The lead was gone. My primary key to locating Cameron Gal and effortlessly bypassing the secure perimeters of the Immoral Knight base was entirely lost.
I raised my boot, preparing to kick her useless, limbless trunk off the sheer cliffside to dispose of the evidence, but a sudden, vivid memory flashed through my analytical mind.
I recalled our arrival at the 8th District plaza back in Caria… watching my little sister Evelyn stare in absolute wonder at the obsidian fortress. I remembered the chilling, awe-inspiring reality of her unique biological trait: as a high-tier entity fused with the Hive-Mind, Evelyn could consume human flesh and effortlessly absorb every single memory, tactical blueprint, and neural pathway stored within the victim's brain. The memories of the vice-captains, miners, and elite guards she had eaten over the last six years were perfectly preserved inside her skull.
Vanessa Katt had only been dead for a few seconds. Her brain cells were still structurally intact, holding the absolute truth of the Immoral Knight base layout and the identification codes. If I brought her head to Evelyn, my sister could devour it, process the data, and hand me the fortress keys on a silver platter.
Moving with cold, clinical efficiency, I hoisted my heavy Death Chant shotgun with my single right arm. I pressed the massive iron barrel directly against the base of Vanessa's neck, aligning the sights with her cervical vertebrae.
BOOM!
The alchemical blast detonated with hyper-boosted kinetic force, completely clean-decapitating her head from her torso in a heavy spray of dark blood. I reached down into the gore, my gloved fingers tangling firmly into her long, soot-stained hair. I lifted the severed head, watching the blood drip onto the mountain stone.
Tapping into the golden Inventory Ring on my ring finger, I opened the weightless void of my pocket dimension.
[Inventory Ring 14kg/25kg]
[Death Chant Shotgun 5kg
[Death Chant Tommy Gun 6kg
[Decapitated Head of Vanessa Katt 3kg]
The head vanished into the spatial rift with a faint shimmer. I tightly buttoned up my crimson trench coat, concealing my torso as I prepared for high-speed transit. My single jade-green eye locked onto the distant, glowing horizon where the massive, obsidian spires of Caria City cut into the night sky.
I needed to get back to Evelyn immediately.
With a violent, powerful snap of my massive, translucent blood wings, I launched myself into the midnight sky, leaving the ruined, smoking peak of the second mountain behind me. I soared through the freezing air at breakneck speed, tracing a direct airborne vector straight back toward the capital. The clock was still ticking, but the Crimson Phantom now had a brand-new plan.