Chapter 105

Chapter 105
## Mountain Escape (3)

Harley rapidly evaluated the circumstances, suppressing the magical aura he had spun up to husband his resources.

The entity’s presence felt so colossal that Harley picked it up clearly, though it remained quite far away, and its advance wasn’t exceptionally rapid.

‘Given this pace, maybe 10 minutes? The aura feels like a standard rank for that tier. It must have a massive physical form.’

Furthermore, considering it could pinpoint the traces of combat from such a distance—breaching the disruption of their cloaking artifact—it possessed a remarkably sharp tracking capability.

Harley shifted his gaze toward his allies, who remained completely oblivious to the approaching threat.

“Phew… Phew… Man, Mr. Harley! What in the world was that? I was aware of your strength, but this is a whole new level! And that soaring battle-axe!”

“Unquestionably, his infamous reputation… rather, renown, exists for a reason. Seeing it firsthand, the rumors actually feel understated.”

“…Far beyond what I anticipated…”

They traded words of admiration, even as they fought off their fatigue and frantically patched themselves up.

“Damn it, Bordo… to perish in a place like this…”

“…It couldn’t be helped, Hans. Let’s gather his gear first.”

“My brother… I swore I’d buy you endless pints of ale once we made it back…”

The Rangers and the Dwarf stood mourning over the corpse of their fallen partner.

“Marcus, what’s our distance? Didn’t you claim we were nearly clear?”

“We ran into too many skirmishes. Delays were unavoidable. Still, we ought to clear the mountain range within twenty-four hours.”

Others were already mapping out their next steps.

Being veterans, they were executing their duties efficiently and getting ready to march the moment the clash concluded…

Yet the party’s condition was terrible for diving straight into another confrontation with a powerful foe.

He could handle the entity alone, but if the group collided with that creature right now, they would crumble in moments and face annihilation.

‘This won’t work. We require a buffer.’

It was a grim predicament, but fortunately, the party contained an individual capable of altering their fortunes.

Harley clapped his hands sharply to draw their focus and spoke with absolute gravity.

“Bwahaha—! Comrades? Regrettably, the stars aren’t aligned, so we must pick up the pace!”

…His words came out far more intense than usual due to the lingering frenzy of unleashing his madness, though that was a minor detail at the moment.

“Harley? What’s the issue now? Don’t tell me…”

Weighing the gravity of their surroundings, the group focused strictly on the meaning of his words rather than his eccentric delivery.

Not a single alert Harley had provided thus far had proven false.

The slightly relaxed mood evaporated instantly, replaced by a tense, hyper-vigilant focus.

He cleanly laid out the situation to his allies, who stood ready to bolt, eyes locked onto him.

Then, a figure stepped forward responding to Harley’s briefing…

“10 minutes? 5 minutes is plenty!”

It was the Dwarf, Zaonic, who had previously navigated the group around the monsters’ vanguard.

—

The Azeria Empire occupied the heart of the continent.

Tobea City, a prominent imperial territory neighboring the capital city of Jeron, sat a fair distance from the seat of power but thrived as a bustling trade and transit hub.

Rattle, rattle—

A carriage ground to a halt before the primary gates of a estate located in the city’s aristocratic quarter.

Rolling past the parting gates, the vehicle surged deep into the grounds, bypassing every standard security checkpoint.

It pulled up flush against the main estate building after navigating the manicured grounds, and the carriage door swung wide…

Slide—

A striking woman with shimmering, long pink hair bound elegantly in a neat style stepped gracefully onto the path.

Surveying the property with a radiant grin, she glided into the residence with measured, poised strides.

“Welcome home, My Lady.”

“It has been quite some time, Terry. Do you happen to know what Andrew is occupied with at the moment?”

“He is currently in the recreation hall. Shall I summon him for you?”

“Yes, please inform him that I shall be awaiting his presence in the second-floor library.”

“Right away, Miss.”

She casually acknowledged the domestic staff bustling through the interior corridors, making her way up to the second floor and down the private hallway.

The instant she stepped into the corridor restricted strictly to authorized individuals,

Hummmm—

A peculiar tremor and the resonance of a specialized security ward momentarily rippled over her form.

And then…

As if peeling off a mask, the warm, gentle expression on her features instantly twisted into a thick, seductive smirk.

“Heh~ It appears Olivia has initiated her gambit. This might prove rather bothersome.”

She cast a brief glance out the corridor window, whispering quietly to herself.

She had anticipated this development ever since the initial undead disturbances broke out, yet seeing it manifest still brought a flicker of annoyance.

Having operated alongside her in the past, she respected her capabilities completely.

Banshee Queen Olivia was a figure who offered immense comfort as an ally, but inspired absolute terror as a foe.

By nature, spectral undead were condensed clusters of raw, fixed concepts, and individuals past a certain threshold could usually spot them due to the murderous malice radiating from their essence.

‘Yet the phantoms under Olivia’s command operate on a different logic. She possesses the ability to temporarily strip away their active consciousness, leaving only the singular intent to gather intelligence.’

Detecting a common phantom devoid of any distinct malice or desire was an incredibly difficult task.

Granted, suppressing their consciousness degraded their independent reasoning and analytical traits, making it quite a chore to extract highly sophisticated data…

Nevertheless, that limitation highlighted Olivia’s meticulous tactical edge.

The pink-haired woman systematically sorted through her strategy as she traversed the corridor.

Her own intrinsic traits allowed her to spot them with relative ease, but very few individuals across the continent possessed the means to catch them.

‘Still, mortals aren’t entirely incapable of adapting. She won’t find things quite as effortless as during her previous run.’

Provided they reinforced their defensive barriers with care, they could completely deny entry, meaning the ruling elite who were already aware of the Immortal King’s awakening would have deployed specialized countermeasures for critical sectors.

Her own domain was no exception.

The entire estate was enveloped in defensive wards, and this particular wing she had just entered brimmed with layer upon layer of security protocols.

Click—

Pushing open a heavy door along the passage, she stepped into the library.

‘The reigning Immortal King’s ambition undoubtedly mirrors his predecessors, which means we can safely deduce Olivia is charting her course to match.’

It was practically an absolute compulsion for an Immortal King to seek the transformation of the entire continent into a realm of the dead.

They inherited unfathomable dominion by taking the Immortal King’s Heart into themselves, but that power only bred a fanatical fixation on expanding their rule, completely consuming their sanity.

‘However, the geopolitical landscape has shifted. Not only are there entrenched factions holding down various territories, but the Holy Church wields vastly superior authority now. This campaign will likely conclude with them taking devastating casualties, mirroring their prior failures.’

And that precise outcome aligned perfectly with the objectives of the ‘Oath of Heaven’s Defiance’.

It also explained her choice to remain deep in hiding rather than responding to the Immortal King’s gathering call.

‘I have absolutely no desire to march with that skeletal horde again. It is a foul, wretched existence, and there is nothing pleasing to consume.’

She had been summoned to this realm and bound to the Immortal King’s will previously, but she refused to repeat that grim experience after three centuries of freedom.

Her standing was entirely distinct from the mindless thralls bound to his service.

“Oh well, I shall simply remain out of sight for the time being. His Majesty will be entirely consumed by his grand designs for global subjugation~? Why would he waste thought on minor strays like us?”

As she let out a quiet giggle, completely misjudging the actual objective of the phantoms,

Knock, knock—

“Sister Siana, I have arrived!”

“Enter.”

A smooth, calculated man sporting messy dirty-blonde hair and sharp green eyes pushed the library door open and stepped inside.

“My— You look as breathtaking as ever, Sis! What prompted this unannounced visit, though?”

He strolled closer with a playful smirk, trailing a heavy scent of liquor and expensive cologne as though he had spent his afternoon reveling, yet Siana’s expression didn’t falter; she simply offered a sweet smile.

“Andrew~? I trust you are only relaxing because every single one of your assignments is fully completed?”

“Ah… regarding that?”

The blonde youth, Andrew Weber, offered an uneasy grin and rubbed the back of his neck beneath her sweet tone and freezing violet eyes.

“It is a certainty that leadership within the Brokoslack Clan has shifted hands, but unearthing details on the new figurehead is proving exceptionally difficult.”

“Present what you have gathered thus far.”

“Right… his moniker is Heinz. His combat output is sufficient to completely overpower a True Blood single-handedly without sustaining notable injuries, meaning he scales past standard True Bloods, though he doesn’t appear to have crossed into the Sacred Blood tier yet. He surfaced out of nowhere in Talaria roughly a month back and subjugated the entire faction in a flash… yet his history prior to that remains an absolute void.”

Securing that much intel was actually quite a feat, given that the Brokoslack Clan was entirely tethered by the mechanics of “Refined Blood Essence” and Heinz had maintained a fiercely guarded profile ever since taking over…

“Aren’t you growing far too lazy? I afforded you an abundance of time.”

Yet to Siana, who cared little for the logistical hurdles, it carried the ring of simple deflections.

“Oh, cut me some slack, Sis! My trait isn’t an omnipotent cheat code! I can run indirect surveillance now that my prowess has evolved, but I am nowhere near the level where I can lock onto and trace a True Blood directly!”

He had successfully unlocked the fourth tier of “Trajectory Observation” after amassing a hoard of Karma by playing a supporting role in the recent opening of the abyss.

‘The share of Karma I obtained was lower than hoped since I avoided the frontline chaos.’

Even so, combined with his existing reserves, it proved sufficient to push his signature trait up by a whole rank.

As a result of that breakthrough, he could indirectly ‘witness’ even monstrous figures at the True Blood tier, provided he anchored his search to a specific window of time, a coordinates point, or the individuals surrounding them.

‘But True Blood vampires don’t exactly stroll around out in the open. They vanish constantly and cross massive distances in the blink of an eye; keeping tabs on their exact movements is an absolute nightmare!’

It was a stroke of sheer fortune that he managed to catch the exact window when Heinz entered Talaria.

His trait essentially mirrored the process of reviewing security tapes.

He maintained dozens of invisible sensors scattered across the continent, allowing him to shift their coordinates and peer into past events whenever the strict parameters clicked into place…

‘Yet the burden of filtering through all that visual data falls entirely on me. Even with my enhanced cognitive capacity, the time investment is staggering!’

Still, he knew better than to offer stiff resistance while his superior was delivering a reprimand.

“Well, it’s merely a hunch… but analyzing the trajectory of his arrival in Talaria, I suspect his point of departure might have been the neighboring Raffella City…”

“Refrain from sharing half-baked assumptions. They only serve to muddy our plans.”

Andrew slumped slightly after his attempt to offer more data was shot down, while Siana drew her brows together, drifting into deep reflection.

The assets she had embedded within the Talia Kingdom following the skirmish with the Holy Church had been systematically wiped out.

Furthermore, projecting her influence had become vastly more complicated now that the Brokoslack Clan was centralizing power under this fresh leadership.

It was entirely obvious that her carefully laid arrangements had been completely thrown out of alignment.

She required a definitive shift in strategy.

“There is no avoiding it. The risk of attempting to establish contact with them again is far too high, leaving assassination as our solitary viable path.”

“Wait, truly, Sis? Did we not negotiate a pact with the vampire race?”

“Our agreement was forged with the Ufersh Clan. And given that their domestic political leverage is remarkably shallow relative to their raw martial output, it serves our interests perfectly to crush Brokoslack and hand the keys of the Talia Kingdom directly to them.”

That particular faction operated out of the heart of the Empire and held a presence across the continent—textbook vampires who managed their affairs from the shadows of major metropolitan areas.

“Hmm… I am fairly certain they house a sleeping Sacred Blood as well. Won’t the pushback incur too steep a cost?”

“Regardless, they are merely living relics of a bygone age, slumbering away until their eventual demise. Furthermore, the Ufersh Clan commands four distinct True Bloods in addition to Visque Ufersh, who fully inherited the Sacred Blood lineage, meaning they can wrap up the purge before Brokoslack’s ancient anchor even manages to awaken.”

Siana let out a wicked laugh, her purple eyes flashing with malicious delight.

“Should the scales require tipping, we can provide subtle enforcement.”

“Well, I shall leave those grand designs in your capable hands, Sis. In that case, should I return to my baseline routine and run routine checks on the movements of the upper echelons?”

“Hehehe, see to it.”

As she wore a dark, plotting expression befitting a shadow mastermind, Andrew chose his next words with immense care.

“Uh, Sis? Your… horns, they are showing…”

“…Ah? Goodness, I must have let my guard down completely. I maintain such rigid discipline when out in public that I relax my focus entirely within these walls.”

“Hahaha— Of course. Decompression is vital. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, maintaining awareness is excellent. We can never predict what variables might manifest.”

The set of wicked, sharp horns that had emerged from Siana’s brow slowly receded back beneath her skin until they vanished entirely.

“Well then, I shall take my leave?”

“Do not drown yourself in indulgence, Andrew. Unless, of course, you would prefer I join you?”

“Ah… I think I will decline, Sis… I am quite fond of breathing.”

With that quick deflection, Andrew Weber took a hurried step backward, swung the door open, and vanished into the corridor outside.

Any observer could see the sheer dread she inspired in him, but such dynamics were routine, so she gave it no mind.

Left entirely to her own devices in the quiet study was Siana—the succubus of the demonic race who had been pulled onto the continent’s stage over three centuries ago.

Reaching down, she grasped the communication artifact to initiate contact with the Ufersh Clan.