[Location: Dungeon—Vampire King's Castle]

"Tell me, anomaly," Alexios continued, stepping forward, his polished shoes clicking softly against fractured stone. "Does your will come from borrowed divinity… or from a delusion so deep even death pities you?"

Alexios's eyes lingered on me as though he were dissecting the concept of my existence itself.

His question was not meant to be answered.

It was meant to measure.

Silence stretched.

Dust drifted, turning the corridor into a pale, suffocating haze. My breath came shallow, every inhale clawing like broken glass, my arms heavy as though the very marrow had been leeched. The echo of Divine Departure still thundered faintly in my bones, the backlash of forcing Conqueror's Will through a body that should never have contained it screaming in protest.

I didn't reply.

Not with words.

Because anything I said would be a lie anyway.

Borrowed divinity? Delusion? Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. The truth was uglier. The truth was that this body once belonged to someone already dead — and I was the selfish parasite that refused to let it rot.

And that truth would die with me.

Alexios stepped closer, spear tilted, not in threat, but in scrutiny. The corridor's dark marble reflected his form like a cold spectre stalking its own shadow. His presence pressed down on the domain, and the Vampire King's castle responded like a living thing, acknowledging one of its sovereign enforcers.

"Fascinating," he murmured again, eyes tracing my posture, my stance, the trembling but unyielding grip on Muramasa. "Your body rejects the world, yet your will defies it. A contradiction so stark, it borders on heresy."

His gaze sharpened.

"You should be nothing."

The pressure intensified.

Not mana.

Not killing intent.

Something colder. More absolute. The sensation of being judged by a law that had never been written for me.

"And yet you persist."

He lifted the spear slightly, its tip aligning with my throat again, close enough that a careless breath would have drawn blood.

"Very well," Alexios said calmly. "Let us remove the question entirely."

The world snapped.

He vanished.

No wind. No sound. No distortion.

One moment, he was standing before me — and the next, his spear was already descending.

My Observation Grid screamed.

Time bent like molten glass as instinct clawed control back from shock. Muramasa snapped upward, Armament flaring in a black sheen as I twisted aside.

CRACK!

The impact was thunder.

Not on my body — but on the very air. A shockwave burst sideways, pulverising the marble wall beside me as fragments spiralled into darkness. My boots skidded across broken stone, sparks tearing from the ground.

Alexios reappeared five steps away, spear already rotating for another strike.

He moved again.

This time, not testing.

He came for my head.

His spear arced in a horizontal slash so precise it felt like execution itself had taken form. I ducked, Muramasa screeching as it scraped against his shaft in a desperate parry, the reverberation numbing my fingers.

He stepped through it.

A knee crashed into my ribs.

The world flashed white.

Pain roared.

I was lifted off the ground, hurled sideways, smashing into a collapsed pillar hard enough to crater stone. The air fled my lungs again, but I forced my body to move before weakness could claim it.

I rolled.

The spear stabbed down where my skull had been.

Stone exploded.

Alexios did not pursue recklessly. He stalked. Controlled. Every step measured. Every movement is precise. Like a noble butchering livestock.

"Interesting," he mused in that same maddeningly calm voice. "You dodge on instinct now. Or as if you can see from where I intend to erase you."

His gaze flicked briefly to my eyes.

"Foresight? No. Not quite." The faintest curve touched his lips. "You are reacting to inevitability itself."

He moved again.

The spear thrust came low, vicious, aimed for the hollow beneath my ribs, the perfect angle to shatter what little structure my body still possessed. I twisted, Muramasa snapping downward to deflect — and for a fraction of a second, steel met will.

The clash sang.

Not loud.

Pure.

A note that vibrated down my bones and into the aching hollow of my organs. My arms buckled, joints screaming, but I held — teeth grinding, vision swimming.

Then he disengaged.

And struck from above.

I barely saw it. The shaft came down like judgment, cleaving the space where my head had been a heartbeat earlier. I rolled again, the edge of the blow grazing my shoulder. Skin split. Blood warmed my collarbone.

My breath rattled.

My body protested.

But I stood.

Not because I was strong.

Because I refused to die like this.

The shadows responded automatically, Paimon reforming behind me with a guttural howl, the remaining infantry emerging from the fractured ground in a tide of black motion. They surged forward as one — not as soldiers, but as extensions of my defiance.

Alexios swept his spear in a graceful arc.

Three fell apart instantly.

He stepped through the rest, moving with the serenity of a man strolling through falling snow. Each movement crushed another shadow, not with rage, but inevitability. The castle corridor echoed with the hollow thunder of their reforming and breaking.

"Pathetic persistence," he observed. "Almost admirable. Almost."

He flicked the spear forward.

Paimon blocked.

The impact shattered Paimon's torso like glass.

My eyes narrowed. As my hand went into System Inventory—

[Item: Chains of Enkidu]

— Rank: Divine

— Effect: Crafted to bind and control gods, it serves as a restraint for the powerful, acting as a "lynchpin of heaven" to guide beings back to their divine creators. The more Divine a target, the stronger the binding.

— Magic Nullification: Nullifies all magic within the area it restrains.

— Limitation: Against non-divine beings, it functions only as an exceptionally durable chain.

My hand looped around the cold, weighty coils of divinity sleeping within the void of my inventory.

The Chains of Enkidu answered my grasp with a sensation like frost biting into bare skin.

Not magic.

Not aura.

Authority.

I ripped them free.

The air screamed.

Golden links burst into existence, unspooling in serpentine arcs that tore through the corridor's haze like living comets.

Good.

Because Alexios didn't recognise them.

"Chains?"

Alexios's brow creased for the first time.

Not in fear.

In curiosity.

The golden links spiralled outward, each segment etched with ancient sigils that did not belong to Hell, nor Heaven, nor any plane he would recognise. They did not radiate mana. They did not pulse with demonic energy.

They simply were.

A concept given form.

They snapped forward.

Alexios moved instantly, spear flashing as he attempted to sever the approaching restraints — but the moment his weapon struck the chain, a shock unlike any other rebounded through the corridor.

CLANG!

The sound was deafening.

Not metallic. Not arcane.

A sound like natural law being offended.

His spear slid off, sparks scattering harmlessly as the chain curved around his arm and torso in one fluid motion. Another coil shot toward his leg.

His eyes sharpened.

"Interesting."

He twisted, trying to evade — but the chains adjusted mid-flight as if anticipating his movements. One looped his wrist. Another snapped around his calf. A third sought his throat.

Alexios clicked his tongue faintly.

Power surged.

His aura flared.

His head hung for a moment, as though acknowledging a puzzle piece that should not exist inside his world.

"Divine Restraint?" Alexios murmured, voice even, but the weight behind it sharpened.

The chains tightened.

Not with force.

With verdict.

The air around them stilled, as if reality itself hesitated to intervene.

Alexios flexed.

Muscle strained beneath polished cloth. His spear pulsed with a faint silver resonance as his authority flared instinctively — and for the first time, the corridor trembled in response to him.

Yet the chains did not shatter.

They dug in.

Golden light flared, not warm, not holy — just… absolute.

"I see," he said quietly. "A relic designed to offend existence."

The chains coiled further, wrapping his torso, constricting his arms, pulling his legs together mid-motion. His spear slipped from the angle of attack and scraped the floor.

He did not panic.

He did not rage.

He merely tested.

Power surged again, a wave of oppressive dignity radiating from him, attempting to override the concept itself.

The chains responded by tightening another inch.

A thin fracture appeared along the stone beneath his heel.

My breathing burned.

My arms trembled.

I could feel it — the drain, the silent cost, the strain of activating something that did not belong to this plane, something my body had no right invoking.

But Alexios was restrained.

Even if only for seconds.

Muramasa rose slowly in my grasp.

Not triumph.

Not bravado.

Only the quiet desperation of someone gambling everything on one impossible opening.

Alexios lifted his gaze to me.

That calm, assessive stare.

"Are you attempting execution?" he asked genuinely, as if discussing the weather. "Or is this merely an experiment?"

I said nothing.

Conqueror's Will trembled within my core, unstable, agonised, but still ready to answer.

I stepped forward.

Every footfall echoed like betrayal against my own pain receptors.

The chains tightened again, responding to the surge of will leaking from my body.

Alexios narrowed his eyes slightly.

"So be it."

His aura shifted.

A pressure unlike before expanded from him, not violent, but sovereign. A declaration of existence hierarchy.

And the chains reacted.

They seared.

For the first time, faint cracks of pale gold crawled across the links.

I moved faster.

Muramasa came down in a diagonal arc, Sovereign Haki screaming into the edge as space itself curved around the descending blade.

"DIVINE DEPARTURE —"

If this fails… the castle gate becomes my tomb.

The slash cleaved reality with a whitened howl.

The corridor vanished.

The air folded.

The strike met Alexios full-on, carving a path through the domain as the shockwave roared like a dying god.

But without giving him any chance to recover—

[Unique Authority — "Genesis Core."]

[Authority Description: The right to create from nothing. The lesser echo of the Demiurge's power, bound by will, concept, and imagination. Limitless potential, infinite danger.]

[Warning: Mortal vessel integrity is insufficient. Synchronisation cap — 0.012 %.]

[Job-specific skills]

— Active skills:

• [Genesis Manifestation] — Constructs temporary reality fragments using pure Aetheric Concept. Power, form, and scale are limited only by imagination and vessel integrity.

• [Creation Reversal] — Rewrites the last five seconds of a manifested construct's existence. Cost: exponentially increases with each reversal.

• [Aether Domain] — Temporarily imposes the user's conceptual laws on a localised area. Duration scales with SPIRAL control and soul stability.

— Passive skills:

• [Conceptual Instinct] — Subconscious adaptation to metaphysical structures. Grants intuition toward reality manipulation and defensive creation.

• [Lucifer's Insight] — The eyes of rebellion. Perceive flaws, seams, and corruption in any existing structure—physical, magical, or spiritual.

The warning bled across my vision like a scar burnt into glass.

0.012%.

A fraction so obscene it bordered on mockery.

And yet my pulse answered it anyway.

The world split.

Not shattered — split.

As if an invisible hand took hold of existence and peeled it in two, revealing the pale, screaming marrow beneath. The whitened afterimage of Divine Departure still clawed through the corridor, but now something else surged with it — a pressure that was not demonic, not divine, not even aetheric.

It was… intent given architecture.

Genesis stirred.

Not like a spell.

Like a thought that realised it could carve universes.

I staggered as the signal raced through nerves that had never evolved to host such authority. My bones sang with microfractures. My skin burned as though etched from the inside with invisible knives. And still, my hand tightened around Muramasa because if I faltered now, the opening would close forever.

Alexios did not move.

Not yet.

The slash struck him squarely.

Steel met flesh.

The chains flared, screaming, every link vibrating violently as his aura clashed against the verdict of a concept older than kings. For a heartbeat, the world froze into a frame of pure impossibility:

A bound gatekeeper.

A descending blade.

A corridor unravelling.

Then the impact detonated.

White swallowed everything.

The explosion of force punched outward, pulverising stone, tearing pillars, and rupturing the castle hall into cascading debris. My feet left the ground as the shockwave rammed through me, slamming my back into the far wall with enough force to spiderweb the black marble like glass.

My vision blurred.

Blood filled my mouth.

I spat red and staggered upright, lungs burning as if lined with razor wire.

And at the epicentre...

[You have defeated—Vampire King's Right Hand Man, Alexios Payn.]

[Level up!]

[Level up!]

[Level up!]

[Level up!]

...

Notifications spammed my vision like a broken chorus trying to drown my senses in triumph.

Plop!

I rested my hands on my knees.

"Ha-ah…."

Only now could I breathe a sigh of relief.

A monster that had turned corridors into graveyards…A gatekeeper that treated kings like interruptions…Had finally fallen.

A chill crawled down his spine just from thinking about it.

'Oh, I almost forgot…. Items.'

Would there be as many rewards befitting my life-or-death struggle to bring down this monster?

After calming myself down, I reached out towards the Alexios.

Tti-ring!

[You have found the Item: Key to the Castle's Gate.]

[Take it?]

[You have found the Rune Stone: Advance Weapon Mastery.]

[Take it?]

[You have found the item: Crown Fragment: Archangel's Heart (1/3)]

[Take it?]

"One more?" I already have one inside my inventory, which makes it two down.

'Take them all.'

[Name: Crown Fragment: Archangel's Heart (2/3]

[Item Description: A piece of the original Crown of the Morningstar, once belonging to the Demiurgic Archangel Lucifer. When all three fragments are assembled, it grants access to a sealed Divine Authority.]

[Current Function:

— Passive resonance. Increases soul recovery rate by 30%. Enhances the growth rate of all Haki branches.

— Genesis Synchronisation Stability +0.003%.

Before, it was 15% soul recovery, and this synchronisation is a good surprise and a necessary one.

The fragment dissolved into pale gold motes as it slipped into the void of my inventory. A faint warmth spread through my chest, like a hesitant heartbeat remembering how to be steady.

Two down.

One more left.

Tti-ring!

[Skill Level Up!]

[Name: King's Call]

[Level: 2]

[Type: Active]

—Required Mana to activate: None

— Creates a shadow soldier by extracting Mana from the recently deceased lifeform.

— The odds of extraction failure will rise higher depending on the target's original Stat values, as well as the length of time since its death.

— Number of shadows that can be extracted: 30/150.

NOICE!!!

***

Stone me, I can take it!

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