Free Web NovelThe heavy rain had just ceased.
A gap was torn in the clouds, and cold daylight poured down from the rift, illuminating the dilapidated walls of Grey Rock Fortress.
Rainwater continuously dripped down through the cracked stone crevices, mixing with a dark red liquid and forming small streams in front of the city gate.
The steam tanks of the Red Tide Army roared as they drove into the city gate.
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The heavy steel armor crushed the ground, but the sound of the treads turning was an uncomfortable, squelching squeeze, as if the wheels were driving through an unsolidified mire.
Streets, towers, and squares were all dead silent.
There were no longer any living people here.
In the center of the square, the ground had completely lost its original color.
Furthermore, no intact corpses could be found, not even complete skeletons.
Dark red meat paste, half a foot thick, covered the entire area; rainwater fell upon it, churning slowly, still continuously emitting steam.
Traces left by explosions were visible everywhere.
Every wall had been repainted by a rain of blood, scarlet flowing down the texture of the stones like a mural that hadn't yet dried.
Every breath of air inhaled into the lungs carried a nauseating, cloying sweetness. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
The inner walls of the city gate were covered with dense impact dents, the stone surfaces charred black with lingering traces of high-temperature scorching.
Louis sat inside the command vehicle, observing all of this through the window.
Weil stood half a step behind him, his gaze also falling on the square inside the city that had been repeatedly crushed.
Even for him, who had followed Louis for many years, he had rarely seen such a sight.
"They sealed the gates shut," Weil said, his voice carrying a distinct chill. "They brought this on themselves. It was originally meant to block us from entering, but who would have thought it would end up blocking them from escaping."
Louis did not respond immediately.
When the artillery fire fell and induced the dragon blood to spiral completely out of control, the ending was already predetermined.
All the forcibly stacked power completed a chain reaction within the confined space. There was no escape route, and no room for luck.
He did not feel any pleasure from all this.
"The people inside went mad; they didn't leave themselves any way out," Louis finally spoke.
Cleanup operations were also unfolding simultaneously.
The knights of the Red Tide advanced in several columns, with shoulder-mounted flamethrowers and high-pressure water cannons activated at the same time.
Blazing tongues of fire swept across the ground, completely incinerating the unsolidified flesh, and then high-pressure water streams washed over the stone surfaces, pushing the remaining filth into the gutters.
Inside the command vehicle, Louis remained in his seat, watching the tanks and soldiers steadily advance through the city through the glass.
This was not a scene worth celebrating.
This was a hell personally concocted by the Remont Family, and also the finale he had personally detonated... The steam tank stopped in the castle's inner courtyard, the engine's residual heat not yet dissipated, the plasma under the treads being squeezed and slowly flowing back into the depressions.
Louis opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle.
Only a few people followed behind him.
Weil walked on the left, his hand never leaving the hilt of his sword.
Sako and several other guards spread out, forming a basic protective formation.
As they stepped onto the ground, a slight but clear sound was made when their boots sank into that layer of viscous material that had not yet completely cooled.
A pungent odor still lingered in the air, a mix of blood and char that made the throat instinctively tighten.
Louis did not stop, walking straight toward the shadow of the castle's main building.
The entrance to the underground was hidden behind a collapsed archway.
Stone steps extended downward, and with every step, the surrounding temperature dropped.
The heat and humid air from above were left behind, replaced by a bone-chilling cold.
The torches remaining on the walls had long since gone out, leaving only a few scattered alchemical lamps flickering, their light dim and unstable.
The further down they went, the more obvious that invisible sense of pressure became.
It didn't come from sight, but from deep within the body.
Heartbeats slowed unconsciously, and the flow of battle qi became sluggish, as if the passage itself was repelling the presence of living things.
Weil's brow gradually tightened; he could feel that some kind of extraordinary power had long existed here, and the traces it left behind had not completely dissipated even now.
He instinctively slowed his pace and whispered, "This smell... it's not just blood."
Sako walked a bit further back, his gaze scanning the unnatural marks on the walls and floor, his voice even lower: "It's something alchemical mixed with blood."
He paused, then added, "If those monsters in the city came from here, then it makes sense."
The passage continued downward, and the pressure increased accordingly.
Louis did not respond, simply continuing downward.
At the end of the stone steps was a heavy iron door violently torn apart, its hinges twisted and its edges covered with outward-curling cracks, as if it had been forcibly broken open from the inside.
Sako glanced at the door, his breathing noticeably pausing for a beat: "To be able to tear open a door like this from the inside... that's the strength of at least an Extraordinary Knight."
Louis stopped, glanced inside, and then stepped in.
The underground space was wider than imagined.
The vault was high, with the support structures exposed and thick metal beams running across them.
The alchemical equipment that should have been neatly arranged lay scattered and broken on the ground, glass containers shattered, and residual reagents dried into marks of varying depths on the floor.
The air was filled with an old, cold smell, like blood that had long since coagulated.
In the very center was a blood pool that had already dried up.
The walls of the pool were covered with scrape and impact marks, and the bottom was encrusted with a thick layer of dark residue that had long since lost its fluidity.
Beside the blood pool lay several shredded researcher robes.
The runes remaining on the fabric were blurred, and the edges showed signs of having been repeatedly pulled by claws.
Sako stopped by the blood pool, his gaze scanning back and forth between the marks on the pool walls and the floor, his Adam's apple visibly bobbing.
And as his gaze moved past the blood pool to the deeper shadows, his breath hitched in the next instant.
Behind that blood pool, a massive skeleton lay across the ground.
Even from a distance, the pressure of its sheer volume made one instinctively stop.
"This..." Sako started to speak instinctively but couldn't finish.
Weil followed his gaze, his pupils shrinking suddenly.
"You've got to be kidding me..." His voice was extremely low, as if afraid of disturbing something. "Is this... a dragon?"
There was no response in the underground space, only the prone remains.
Those were the remains of an Ancient Dragon.
The bones were massive and ancient, their surfaces covered with marks of deliberate cutting, drilling, and embedded devices.
The spine was fixed in sections, and the ribcage had been forcibly opened to connect to some complex and cruel alchemical structure.
Even having lost its life, these remains still emitted an unsettling presence.
"Such a thing really exists..." Weil whispered.
"They actually dared to..." Sako's words stopped halfway; he realized that using any words to describe the Remont Family at this moment seemed redundant.
Louis stood in place, looking at the remains, showing no emotional fluctuation.
To him, this wasn't the first time he had known of it.
In his mind, several records from the Daily Intelligence System naturally surfaced.
About the long-term dragon blood experiments conducted by the Remont Family.
About the purification of power at any cost.
About those failed samples that were repeatedly sacrificed.
This information had long been repeatedly confirmed by him in papers and text.
Now, it simply had a physical form.
Which was the source.
And also the final trump card Kyle had bet on.
Louis's gaze moved slowly between the remains and the dried blood pool, his expression calm to the point of indifference.
There was no glory here.
Only an old path that had reached its end.
From this moment on, the name of the Remont Family would no longer be mentioned as nobility.
It would only be written into footnotes as a failed experiment.
He walked forward a few steps, wanting to see more clearly.
At the moment he approached the Ancient Dragon remains, a familiar yet distinctly different chill pierced Louis's consciousness without warning.
It ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) wasn't from sight, but a pressure acting directly on the spiritual level.
Louis's footsteps stopped.
"...Again." This thought flashed through his heart.
This feeling was all too familiar to him.
Near Titus's body with the crimson mist, and on the Broodmother's remains with the purple mist, Louis had felt the same warning.
It was a crisis warning that transcended the physical body, coming from a deeper existence.
But its essence was completely different from the previous two invasions.
From the gaps in the Ancient Dragon's pale and massive bones, a wisp of nearly transparent golden mist slowly seeped out.
It was not ostentatious, nor did it have any obvious aggression.
It simply diffused there statically, looking down upon him.
A lofty gaze, as if a deity were lowering its eyes to scrutinize the dust beneath its feet, attempting to make his soul instinctively bow, kneel, and acknowledge its own insignificance.
The air in the underground space solidified along with it; it was a silent but unignorable command.
Louis's vision darkened slightly, and a violent tremor came from deep within his sea of consciousness.
The Original Meditation Technique operated at full speed in the same instant, and his consciousness boundaries closed rapidly, forcibly blocking the intent that tried to invade.
However, that golden existence did not retreat.
It still hung there, as if naturally waiting for submission.
Just then, the primal heart responded.
In the center of the sea of consciousness, a platinum starlight suddenly bloomed.
Like a slowly rotating stellar core—stable, calm, yet possessing absolute dominion.
A galaxy-like radiance spread out, allowing Louis's consciousness to stabilize once again.
Immediately after, two other tamed powers were awakened simultaneously.
Crimson mist surged at the edge of the platinum radiance, turning into Blood Vines of Wrath, the blood-colored vines emitting a low and angry vibration.
Purple shadows gathered in the light, condensing into insect shadows, dense and numerous, emitting a sickening hiss as if wanting to devour everything.
Under the dominion of the primal heart, they no longer conflicted with each other but, like tamed hounds, simultaneously locked onto the new target.
Red and purple pounced together, biting at the golden aura that attempted to usurp the host.
And the platinum starlight, like invisible shackles, forcibly bound the three powers into the same orbit.
Louis's consciousness suddenly sank, and fragments of memory flooded into his mind once again.
In a pitch-black mine, torches flickered.
A ragged old miner swung his pickaxe, and with a "clang," it struck something hard.
He brushed away the soil, revealing a section of pale dragon bone.
Just that one look.
The old miner's pupils instantly lost focus.
There was no screaming, no struggling.
He seemed to be awed by some irresistible pressure, freezing in place before slowly kneeling, his heart stopping within a very short time.
The scene before his eyes shattered and then reassembled.
An ancient tomb long buried by time.
The vault had collapsed, the stone walls were mottled, and ancient runes were faintly visible in the dust; the air was filled with the dead silence of age-old decay.
The Ancient Dragon's remains were quietly placed in the center of the burial chamber, not yet dismembered, the skeleton complete and majestic, as if merely sleeping.
There was only one figure in the burial chamber.
It was a person clad in a mage's robe.
The hood was low, obscuring the face; the patterns on the robe were ancient and strange, not matching any known alchemical system.
He walked alone to the remains, without hesitation or awe.
The radiance of a spell lit up, precise and calm.
The sternum was separated in a nearly perfect manner.
That massive heart, which had long since stopped beating yet still emitted a brilliant golden light, was removed intact.
It was sealed into a black gold box covered with ancient seals.
Before the burial chamber returned completely to darkness, a low and blurred whisper echoed in the depths of time.
"The heart returns to the master, the bone and blood return to dust."
The final scene was an even more ancient image.
A dark and damp underground altar, with pale candles forming a circle.
A young man knelt before the altar, hands held high, cupping a neatly severed human hand, his lips silently opening and closing as he recited some oath.
The illusion suddenly shattered, and Louis snapped his eyes open.
And that faint golden mist had been completely drawn into his body, suppressed into a corner of his sea of consciousness by the primal heart, becoming the third power after the crimson and purple.
But Louis clearly perceived that this trace of power was incomplete, yet it was still powerful enough.
Deep within Louis's pupils, a flicker of indifferent gold flashed past.
He could clearly feel a new passive pressure taking shape; it was a new ability brought by the golden mist—as long as he was looked at directly, low-level wills would instinctively collapse.
"...My Lord?" Weil's voice was noticeably lowered. "What's wrong?"
Louis raised his hand to press his temple, then shook his head.
Different from the previous three times, this was a brief trance, not a faint.
This gave him a sense of confirmation in his heart.
This was incomplete power, and the true primary power was that heart which had been dug out.
"It's nothing," his tone returned to its usual steadiness.
Louis looked back at the remains that had completely lost their luster and turned into mundane bones, his gaze calm.
The Remont Family thought they had dug up a treasure, but they had actually just picked up the bones others had left behind after eating.
Although there was no evidence yet, Louis instinctively felt that it might be related to the missing Emperor.
But Louis had no way to start on this either; he could only hope the Daily Intelligence System would be more helpful.
Louis withdrew his gaze: "Seal this place for now. Notify Merian and have his alchemy team come over as soon as possible.""}】,
