Elias stared at me across the shifting red sand, his eyes turning to absolute flint. The raw, protective fury of a father had frozen over into the clinical, deadpan precision of a master assassin.
"You've done enough, you demon,"
Elias said, his smooth, measured voice carrying a terrifyingly low, resonant vibration. He raised his Death Chant Revolver, the dark mana pooling around his leather gloves like liquid ink as he began to mock me, completely unaware that the faceless anomaly he was hunting was his own flesh and blood.
"You crawl out of the dark, slaughter a vanguard division, and then hunt down my people? You think that mask and those wings make you a god out here in the wastes? You're just a cornered beast, and I am the handler."
I stayed completely silent behind the narrow slit of my blood mask, my mismatched jade-green and crimson eyes tracking his every micro-movement.
Mock me all you want, big brother. I am ending this engagement before you get yourself killed.
Suddenly, the sand beneath my boots vibrated violently.
SHFT-THUD!
Without warning, a massive, jagged spike composed of hyper-condensed dark magic violently erupted from the loose dunes directly beneath my feet. I flared my crimson wings, executing a sharp, reactionary side-step to dodge the lethal, piercing apex. In a seamless continuation of motion, I leveled Means of Communication and fired a high-caliber slug, shattering the dark magic construct into harmless, smoking fragments.
But Elias had already used that split-second distraction to align his sights.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three hyper-dense, spatial-piercing rounds ripped through the air in perfect, rapid-fire succession. At this distance, the trajectory was unavoidable. The penetrating bullets tore straight through my chest cavity, leaving three fresh, ragged holes that sprayed my volatile fluid onto the sand.
The dark-magic matrix inside the rounds violently convulsed within my chest, threatening to collapse my respiratory baseline. I immediately cast Pain Manipulation, shutting down my neural grid and forcing the searing agony to a deadpan zero.
"Catherine is unconscious. He has no continuous healing support matrix left."
Recognizing the exact operational window, my left hand blurred to my waist bandolier. I unhooked my fifth and final sphere of weaponized mustard gas and whipped it with maximum physical leverage straight at his face.
But Elias's marksmanship was legendary. Tracking the trajectory of the glass sphere mid-air, he casually tilted his wrist and pulled the trigger.
PING!
The revolver bullet struck the sphere perfectly in mid-flight, shattering the glass ten meters away from him. The yellowish-green cloud of caustic gas erupted harmlessly into the empty space between us, the desert wind rapidly carrying the blistering vapor away into the night.
"Predictable," Elias muttered, his eyes narrowing.
Left with no more chemical payloads, I abandoned all long-range tactical doctrine. Snapping my massive crimson blood wings wide, I unleashed a concussive burst of kinetic mana that launched my 5'5" frame forward at absolute velocity. I became a red blur cutting through the dark magic mist.
I breached his personal space in a microsecond. Sweeping Means of Communication upward, I drove the permanently welded, violet-sheened under-barrel bayonet straight into his shoulder matrix. The phased mist-attribute of the Fallen Angel's alloy completely ignored his enchanted leather armor and dark magic barriers, sliding smoothly through his flesh to deliver the localized Lifeline curse.
"AGHH!"
Elias grunted, his teeth grinding together as the anti-heal mist began to seep from the wound, temporarily deadening the neural signals to his left side.
But he didn't drop his weapon. Driven by pure, unyielding survival instincts, Elias violently slammed the muzzle of his Death Chant Revolver directly against my reconstructed chest plate.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
He fanned the hammer at point-blank range, unleashing a catastrophic volley of dark magic ordnance directly into my vitals. The sheer, concentrated impact at zero distance was too much for my pain manipulation to entirely filter out. I let out a sharp, audible scream of raw agony as the spatial energy tore through my interior tissue.
Refusing to let him fire another round, I wrapped my arms around his torso, locked my blood wings tightly around both of our bodies, and used my entire physical density to drive him violently downward.
CRASH!
We slammed together into the hard desert ground, kicking up a massive plume of red sand as I pinned my older brother flat onto his back, both of our breathing ragged under the midnight sky.
Elias gritted his teeth, his breathing heavy and ragged as the violet-tinted mist of the Lifeline curse seeped from his shoulder wound, actively choking out his body's natural mana recovery. Yet, true to his reputation as the Shadow Walker, his expression remained entirely cold and unyielding.
"You winged demon… You think that pathetic mist blade of yours will stand against me? You're a long way from home if you think a single scratch is enough to put me in the dirt." Elias hissed, a dark, mocking chuckle escaping his throat as he glared up at my blood mask.
I didn't answer. I simply pushed myself off him and stood up straight on the loose sand. The ambient crimson energy from my Phase 5 vampiric core flared, and the lingering Lifesteal Effect I had siphoned from Catherine finally completed its cycle. In a horrific display of biological acceleration, the six ragged, penetrating holes Elias had carved into my chest began to violently knit themselves back together, sealing the tissue and skin until my torso was a flawless baseline once more.
Elias's eyes narrowed slightly at the sight, but he didn't waste a microsecond marveling at my regeneration. Before I could stabilize my footing, he slammed his palm directly into the sand.
"Solidify," he commanded.
VWUMP!
The shadows directly beneath my boots violently expanded, morphing into a hyper-dense, pitch-black bubble of solidified dark magic that completely encased my lower body up to my waist. The structural density of the sphere was immense, locking my 5'5" frame in place like quick-drying concrete.
"Now... sink," Elias growled, snapping his fingers as he activated his Shadow Vault right beneath the dark magic bubble.
The spatial jaws of his personal pocket dimension opened wide, the crushing gravitational pull dragging both me and the solidified bubble downward into the subterranean void. He was trying to bury me alive in his domain.
I forced my Phase 5 mana to its absolute absolute limits, my crimson blood wings flaring with an explosive, concussive burst of energy.
CRACK!
The sheer kinetic shockwave shattered the solidified dark magic bubble into a thousand smoking fragments. Fighting the immense downward drag, I violently propelled myself upward, breaking free from the threshold of the Shadow Vault at the absolute last microsecond.
I took to the air, flying straight toward Elias at maximum-velocity trajectory to end the engagement.
But Elias had already set his ultimate counter-measure. High above the cloud bank, the three Shadow Crows from earlier… their forehead crystals flashing with a blinding, synchronized dark-magic light… suddenly locked onto my thermal signature.
BOOM!
They didn't just fly; they launched themselves down like advanced, homing military missiles. The mana-constructed drones cut through the upper atmosphere, seamlessly breaking the sound barrier with a deafening sonic boom. They reached the speed of sound in an instant, leaving a trail of distorted air in their wake as they zeroed in on my chest cavity.
I didn't even have time to raise Means of Communication to parry.
SPLAAAT!
The sonic homing strike hit me with catastrophic, localized kinetic force. The sheer impact tore a massive, gaping hole completely through the right side of my chest, shattering my reconstructed ribs and sending a violent spray of my volatile crimson fluid across the moonlit sky. The momentum sent my body spiraling backward through the air.
As I stabilized my trajectory, my wings beating frantically to keep me airborne, a singular, deadpan thought echoed in my mind through the haze of my pain manipulation:
My big brother is unbelievably strong.
Even without a frontline party to support him, the Shadow Walker's information warfare, precision marksmanship, and raw dark magic utility made him an absolute tactical nightmare.
I forced my body to halt its mid-air spiral, my right wing violently snapping against the wind to stabilize my descent. The gaping hole in the right side of my chest pulsed with a sickening heat, but I refused to let my processing cycle drop.
Leveling Means of Communication with my remaining steady hand, I squeezed the trigger, unleashing a high-caliber kinetic slug straight at Elias's position.
BOOM!
The shot tore through the desert air, but Elias didn't even flinch. With a fluid flick of his wrist, he summoned a massive, hyper-dense wall of dark magic directly in front of him. The solid slug slammed into the black barrier, dissipating into a shower of harmless sparks. Because he had completely blocked the kinetic impact, I didn't get a single chance to trigger my lifesteal effect. My vital reserves remained dangerously low.
Before I could chamber another round, a sharp, high-frequency hum echoed from the upper cloud layer.
BOOM!
Another hidden Shadow Crow initiated a sound-barrier-breaking homing strike, diving from my absolute blind spot. I registered the trajectory a microsecond too late. The mana-constructed drone slammed directly into my left arm with the force of a military railgun.
SPLAAAAT!
The sheer, catastrophic kinetic energy completely mutilated my left arm, tearing it away cleanly from the elbow down. A violent torrent of my volatile, high-tier crimson fluid sprayed across the red sand dunes.
"AGHHH!"
A sharp, unfiltered scream of raw, agonizing pain ripped from my throat, temporarily shattering my pain manipulation baseline. Driven by pure, unbridled survival instinct, my right hand blurred. I fanned the mechanisms of my firearms, unleashing a frantic, rapid-fire sequence of high-velocity tracking shots into the sky.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
My bullets locked onto the remaining drone vectors, tearing through the obsidian feathers and forehead crystals of the incoming Shadow Crows one by one until the sky was completely clear. The final constructs dissipated into harmless wisps of dark mana.
I dropped heavily onto the sand, my breathing shallow and ragged. The gaping hole in my right chest cavity began to hum with a blinding, bright light as the latent magic of my Healing Enhancement Ring aggressively synchronized with my biological core. Within seconds, the internal organs, shattered ribs, and skin tissue knitted back together, sealing the thoracic trauma to a flawless baseline.
But as the light faded, I looked down at my left side.
My left arm remained a brutal, smoking stump, severed completely at the elbow. The bone and flesh had cauterized under the sheer friction of the dark magic impact, completely halting any standard cellular growth. My advanced vampiric biology and the enhancement ring could repair severe structural wounds, but they were mathematically incapable of regrowing an entire complex limb from absolute zero.
Unless I could secure high-tier divine regeneration magic, the limb was permanently gone.
I stood alone on the shifting dune, balancing my 5'5" frame as the desert wind whipped around my hardened blood mask, my right hand gripping the heavy iron frame of my shotgun. Elias stood fifty meters away, his trench coat billowing, his revolver leveled straight at my core as the final echoes of the skirmish died into the midnight chill.
I dropped heavily to my knees, my 5'5" frame buckling under the sheer, asymmetric weight of my missing limb. I groaned in raw pain, the desert sand scratching against the raw, cauterized tissue of my stump. Channeling a massive, desperate surge of mana into my neural pathways, I aggressively cast Pain Manipulation directly at the mutilated arm, forcing the agonizing, white-hot signals to go deadpan.
But my tactical baseline was entirely fractured. I was bleeding out, asymmetric, and operating on low vital reserves. Looking across the red dunes, I saw Elias step forward, his eyes cold, calculating, and entirely intent on executing the anomaly before him.
"I have to neutralize him right now, or we both die out here."
Spurred by pure survival instinct, I forced my body off the sand. I violently flapped my massive crimson blood wings, launching myself forward in a final, reckless aerial trajectory. I gripped Means of Communication with my sole remaining right hand, driving the permanently welded, violet-sheened mist blade straight toward his defensive perimeter.
But Elias's processing speed was flawless. Seeing my direct linear approach, his hands blurred with a sudden, massive manifestation of dark magic.
"Scatter!" he commanded.
A fresh swarm of Shadow Crows materialized instantly from his palms, their forehead crystals flashing with a blinding, synchronized light. They didn't scout… they launched forward as a high-velocity, point-blank homing strike. I tried to pivot my wings to dodge, but my missing left arm completely ruined my aerodynamic balance.
SPLAAAAT!
The mana-constructed drones tore directly through the left side of my midsection. The catastrophic kinetic force didn't just pierce me; it completely ripped away a massive chunk of flesh from the side of my torso.
"AAAAAGHHH!"
An absolute, ear-piercing scream of suffocating agony ripped from my throat as my pain manipulation completely ruptured under the sheer scale of the trauma. The structural damage was total. My balance failed entirely, and I collapsed violently to the ground, tumbling into the loose sand. I lay paralyzed on my side, my hands instinctively trying to hold my midsection together as my intestines began leaking out into the cold desert earth. My Phase 5 biology sparkled frantically, but the sheer volume of missing tissue was overriding my baseline regeneration loops.
The crunch of heavy boots echoed through the quiet of the oasis.
Elias stepped over my mangled, twitching form, looking down at me through the drifting smoke of the skirmish. The dark, cold precision in his eyes was absolute. He raised his signature Death Chant Revolver, aligning the heavy iron muzzle directly between my eyes.
"What's the matter, demon? Can't fight with only one arm? Pathetic. You cut down a branch of Luminous Knights, but you crumble the moment someone pushes back? Let's see what kind of face is hiding behind that mask before I collect the ledger." Elias said, his smooth voice dripping with a freezing, deadpan mockery.
He didn't hesitate. With perfect, legendary marksmanship, Elias squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
A hyper-dense, dark magic bullet struck the exact center of my face. The kinetic impact completely shattered my hardened blood mask, sending the solidified crimson fragments flying into the wind like broken glass.
The mask dissolved into harmless dust, completely revealing my face to the midnight air.
Elias's finger froze on the hammer of his revolver. His breath hitched violently, his entire calculated, cold-blooded posture instantly fracturing as his dark magic aura flickered and died. He stared down into the sand, his eyes wide with an absolute, paralyzing horror as he looked at the blood-stained, pale face, and the unmistakable features of the person he had just systematically dismantled.
It was his little sister. Eirene.