The Third Progenitor, Duke Rasheal, faced that blinding sun.
The expression on his face shifted from initial shock to fury and indignation.
Without giving Rasheal a moment to react, the four Great Demons seized the opportunity and launched their assault.
Silvery-white mists swirled within Pranay's eyes. Seeing through the source and trajectory of every single spell Rasheal attempted, he anticipated each move and directed the Great Demons in precise counterstrikes.
Sinora's counter-magic wound around Rasheal's half-formed spells like spiderwebs, unraveling them one after another.
Rasheal's casting speed ground to a shuddering crawl, his mana wavering erratically.
"Please, have a seat. Leave the rest to us."
Antanas stayed right by Lanqi's side, weaving a translucent chair for him out of mana.
"Antanas, you really are a useful demon," Lanqi praised.
"Eheheh."
Though Antanas had no idea why Lanqi was praising her, she still rubbed the back of her head happily.
She bent down and lightly touched the ground. A barrier unfolded across the Blood King Palace square, blocking out all the shockwaves.
Under her protection, Lanqi sat as securely as if nestled within an impregnable fortress.
The strongest among the four Great Demons, the Ice Snow Witch, saw her pupils turn entirely ice-blue, gleaming like a pair of cold stars. Thousands upon thousands of ice crystals condensed around her before hurtling toward Rasheal like a storm of steel needles.
Countless ice-blue beams cut through the sky, sinking accurately into the space around Rasheal.
"Despicable cowards!"
Duke Rasheal gritted his teeth. The blood mist surrounding him swelled instantly, forming a cocoon-shaped orb of energy that enveloped him.
The instant most of the icy storm struck Rasheal's defenses, it shattered as if hitting an invisible wall, turning into a sky full of crystalline sparks. Yet a small portion still found its mark, piercing his vitals and drawing a roar of pain from him.
At the same time, the Ice Snow Witch's mana flowed into Sinora and Pranay, continuously healing them as they operated as the vanguard and midfield.
Facing the onslaught of four Great Demons with his strength diminished to a tenth—leaving him with only roughly Tier 8 combat capability—Rasheal began to struggle.
Although the Ice Snow Witch felt that ganging up on him was somewhat unchivalrous, strictly speaking, all four of them were currently summons. Thus, technically, this counted as a fair one-on-one duel.
"Think you can hurt me with pathetic attacks like these? You're far from worthy!"
As a Tier 9 Blood Clan mental mage, Rasheal was well-versed in warfare, his manipulation of mana refined to perfection.
He knew full well that to turn the tables, his top priority was to destroy that sun.
As long as that solar summon remained, he would never regain the height of his power.
Thus, he focused all his mental fortitude, attempting to manipulate the surrounding blood mist into sharp arrows to pierce Lanqi behind the Great Demons' guard.
The pitch-black vapor churned around Rasheal, writhing like a living entity.
It gathered, growing thicker and darker, finally solidifying into sharp black arrows that spiraled in the air.
Rasheal's eyes were bloodshot, veins bulging across his forehead.
Finally, under his magical control, countless black arrows shot upward at speeds so blinding they left only afterimages.
Bearing all of Rasheal's hatred and resolve, they swore to pierce that sun straight through.
"Too obvious."
Yet the four Great Demons had long anticipated his intention. Antanas and the Ice Snow Witch deployed their barrier shields in advance, shielding the sun completely.
No matter what Rasheal tried, he couldn't shake it in the slightest.
Rasheal's pupils shrank as he watched his black arrows crumble into disarray before the light.
He clenched his teeth and gathered the blood mist again, forming a denser barrage of arrows to launch a second assault against the sun.
The result was just as bitterly disappointing.
Every single attack was effortlessly dismantled by the two defense-specialist Great Demons, without exception.
Rasheal's expression grew increasingly grim, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead.
What kind of beast ran four supports protecting each other, with two of them being dedicated healers?!
It felt as if every single strike he made was utterly futile.
The four of them were regenerating faster than he could deal damage!
"Master Rasheal, talk about tickle damage."
Lanqi stood quietly to the side. Beneath his silver-white mask, his emerald eyes were as still as water.
He seemed to hold the entire situation in the palm of his hand, quietly awaiting the final outcome.
"Lanclos!"
Rasheal endured Lanqi's taunts without being able to touch a hair on his head.
As the battle reached a fever pitch, the entire square was reduced to ruins.
The ground was riddled with craters and fissures, some cracks plunging so deep they seemed to reach into the abyss itself.
The surrounding architecture fared no better.
Stone pillars collapsed and walls crumbled, as though devastated by a massive earthquake.
The air was choked with pungent smoke and dust. Radiant Virtue shone through the haze, casting Blood Moon City in a somber, dim amber glow.
Lightning flared and thunder rumbled across the night sky amid howling gales.
Bolts of crimson lightning streaked overhead, twisting like massive serpents.
Thunder boomed like war drums, as though the gods themselves were roaring.
Rasheal's long-range mental interference magic, meant to bypass barriers, produced no effect whatsoever on the Pope.
Even after unleashing the killing move that was supposed to detonate the Pope's mental trauma, the Pope merely looked back at him with an innocent gaze, as if watching a fool.
Just as he had claimed, the Pope truly had become a different person.
Whenever Rasheal tried to predict Lanqi's next move, he found that the mechanics of his own magic had already been completely unraveled.
This sensation of being thoroughly puppeteered brought Rasheal an unprecedented sense of humiliation and defeat.
Almis manipulated ice crystals to spread a layer of frost beneath Rasheal's feet, unsettling his footing and steadily shrinking his range of movement.
The moment Duke Rasheal attempted to cast, Sinora's counter-calculations interrupted him, making it impossible to concentrate his mind.
Antanas possessed an even more mischievous streak, conjuring transparent barrier walls that penned Rasheal in.
Whenever he tried to break through, he was ricocheted right back, left in a thoroughly battered state.
"Sinora, you're the main damage dealer. Keep your focus and don't let Antanas distract you."
Pranay watched coldly from the sidelines, directing them like a strict homeroom teacher. He could read every psychological shift within Rasheal.
"Almis, I apologize for the disgraceful display," he offered.
"It's fine."
A century ago, Almis had rarely coordinated with these Great Demons.
Yet she was long accustomed to their eccentricities.
Whenever Rasheal harbored a shred of false hope or slipped toward despair, Pranay promptly warned the others, allowing them to apply the exact countermeasure and extinguish any lingering ideas.
The four Great Demons toyed with Rasheal at their leisure. Perfectly balanced between offense and defense, they ran circles around him.
Rasheal finally faced reality.
If he failed to shatter the sun the very moment it was unleashed, he would never have another chance to touch it.
This bunch of demon ministers couldn't scrape together a single pure damage carry among them; instead, they were all utility specialists armed with flashy tricks. Weakened as he was, any spell he cast was predicted, countered, and blocked by a dual layer of shields. Hitting the sun was an absolute impossibility.
Gradually, Rasheal's composure began to shatter.
"Lanclos! You spineless wretch with no pride as a mage!" Duke Rasheal roared hoarsely.
He was covered in wounds, his robes ragged and scorched.
"Put away those damn summons!"
Rasheal's face was as pale as paper, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth, his eyes veined with crimson.
Fighting like this reminded him of only one being from ancient legend: the Tier 9 Great Demon Satia of Hopelessness.
Before that monster, only two outcomes existed: either you had a zero percent chance of winning, or you had a one hundred percent chance. There was no middle ground!
And right now, he was feeling that exact suffocating oppression—beaten to a standstill by summons.
"Clearly, I am the summoner with the greatest summoner's pride of all," Lanqi replied with crisp logic.
He had told Rasheal from the very beginning that he was not Lanclos.
Rasheal had no right to define his class.
Meanwhile, the four Great Demons looked utterly relaxed, their attire pristine, their lips curved into playful smirks.
"Man, this feels great. Even I can beat up a Tier 9 now."
They seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the battle, relishing Rasheal's agony and despair.
From the moment Lanqi summoned that brilliant sun, Duke Rasheal had been reduced to a declawed beast trapped in a cage, struggling pointlessly against their siege.
"Almis, we'll rely on you to seal him in a moment."
"No problem."
Under Pranay's command, countless shimmering ice crystals orbited the Ice Snow Witch.
The shards of ice gleamed with an eerie blue light, radiating bone-chilling frost.
As Rasheal's blood mist surged forward, Almis commanded the ice and snow, turning them into sharp arrows to strike him head-on.
Ice crystals clashed against blood mist, producing a harsh hissing screech like tens of thousands of beasts tearing at one another.
Just as the clash stalled in a deadlock, Lord of Spellbreaking Sinora stepped into the fray.
She swung her scythe with effortless grace, anti-magic brilliance flickering at her fingertips. The blood mist that had coalesced into arrows began to disintegrate, dissolving into specks of dark ash and fading into the air.
Rasheal's expression twisted. He could clearly feel his assault being dismantled piece by piece by this anti-mage.
Left with no choice, Rasheal turned his attention directly toward Lanqi, hoping that attacking would force a defense and buy him a moment to breathe.
Gathering the remnants of his blood mist, he shaped them into dozens of giant claws and lunged toward the rear of the formation.
Yet Guardian Lord Antanas was already prepared.
Her mana wove into a shield in midair. The crimson claws slammed into the barrier of light with an earthshaking crash. Blood mist splattered from the talons, pushed back in its entirety.
Time and again, Rasheal's offensives were neutralized by the seamless cooperation of the four Great Demons.
Lacking any support from his fellow Blood Clan Progenitors, he was left to face their united might alone.
"Lanclos!!"
Rasheal felt his strength draining away, his mind and body pushed to the brink of collapse.
His attacks grew weaker, the blood mist thinner.
His face remained bloodless, crimson staining his chin, his eyes shot through with red veins.
Even so, he clenched his teeth, refusing to concede defeat.
In his eyes, falling to a mere quartet of civilian demon ministers was a disgrace beyond words for a Progenitor Duke of the Blood Clan.
"Keep dragging this out all you want! You still can't seal me! Lanclos, you've already lost the power to seal me away!" Rasheal bellowed, his voice rasping terribly.
"Do you truly think the game isn't over yet?"
Lanqi paid Rasheal no mind, smiling faintly as he looked at the magic card engraved with a floral crest in his hand.
It was about time.
This could indeed come to an end.
At this moment, Lanqi's smile did not seem to stem from finally concluding the long, arduous Shadow World quest or cornering the ultimate foe, the Third Progenitor Rasheal.
He simply felt happy looking at his natal card.
"Allow me to show you the most beautiful flower fairy in the world."
Lanqi raised his palm. His calm gaze held neither hostility nor bloodlust as he gently granted freedom to the orange epic card, like tossing a flower petal.
His final familiar, and Lanqi's only true natal demon.
It was the most turbulent moment on the Blood Moon City square.
As though the clouds were parting to reveal the sun, the Blood King Palace was bathed in ripples of light cast by Radiant Virtue.
Where the sunlight focused, orange wings drifted down, and a demon girl stepped onto the square.
It was a prolonged instant that felt like an eternity descending.
Her dress fluttered like falling white rose petals, carrying a soul-stirring fragrance as she manifested within the Blood King Palace.
"The legendary magical girl, the Poet of Great Love, Lanfu, makes her debut!"
The Demon King of Mad Love's voice rang across the square like an explosive hum, setting time back in motion.
Pinching her throat, she mimicked the Poet of Great Love's pitch and unleashed a demonic sonic wave.
At Lanqi's request, having devoured the Poet of Great Love, she was to channel the Poet's voice to control the field for him.
Yet Talia was terrified that her old companions would discover she had become Lanqi's soul-linked natal familiar. She chose to commit fully to the charade, disguising herself entirely as an alternate-art skin of the Poet of Great Love.
"Pfft."
Lanqi clapped a hand tightly over his mouth.
His shoulders trembled violently as he fought with everything he had to suppress his laughter.
He truly hadn't expected Talia to actually go through with it.
"Lanqi, don't you dare laugh!!" Talia transmitted her thought, flustered and aggrieved, her ears burning red.
"A salute to the legendary voice actress, Talia. Truly the epitome of youth."
Even Lanqi's mental voice shook, laughing so hard his chest ached.
"I'm going to kill you, Lanqi!"
On the surface, Talia maintained her performance with desperate effort, playing the Poet of Great Love with a coquettish smile at Lanqi's side. In truth, her soul was on the verge of leaving her body, itching to grab Lanqi by the throat and shake him senseless.
As her demonic tone washed over the Blood King Palace square, an unimaginable storm began to brew, as though the boundary between dream and reality were about to flip upside down!
Duke Rasheal instantly fell into madness. His consciousness blurred, his vision flickering between light and dark. It felt as though he had slammed headfirst into a wall, stars bursting before his eyes, teetering on the verge of fainting without being able to pull his senses back together.
After enduring repeated mental breakdowns, an ordinary being would have long crossed the execution threshold of the Demon King of Mad Love.
Yet even as a Tier 9 existence who had stepped into the divine realm, no matter how high Rasheal's mental magic resistance was, he could not withstand the interference of the Demon King of Mad Love.
Pinning Rasheal down for just a brief moment was all it took to seal his defeat.
In that single breath, the four Great Demons severed Duke Rasheal into upper and lower halves.
"No, no...!"
When Duke Rasheal regained his senses, he struggled frantically on the ground to merge his severed halves, only for the frost to slow him down further and further, until he was nearly buried beneath the ocean of light.
"Rasheal, do you know how the Fourth Progenitor, Duke Eduardo, was sealed back then?" Pranay asked, gazing down at the fallen duke.
With that, he turned toward Lanqi, who was standing quietly nearby.
"...?!"
Rasheal's pupils contracted sharply against the ground, his struggles pausing momentarily.
He couldn't fathom what was happening, only feeling an inexplicable dread seize his heart.
This fake Lanclos possessed methods remarkably similar to Lanclos, yet with a few fatal differences.
If his signature sealing arts were not Mosaic Injunction and Immortal Damnation...
Did he possess another sealing art? The very sealing technique used to seal Marquis Eduardo in this timeline?
Duke Rasheal had reached the end of the road.
His blood mist was obliterated, his strength gone, temporarily frozen and pinned to the earth.
Lanqi stepped forward slowly.
From his pocket, he produced a syringe bearing the Trinity Holy Radiance and the forbidden crest of the Naicalis Research Institute.
Uncapping it, Lanqi gently pressed the plunger, watching the droplet bead at the needle's tip.
"Care to guess what research findings True Night Lord and I left behind at the secret research institute on Naica Island all those years ago?" he asked Duke Rasheal, his tone completely flat.
"True Night Lord? That dead demon woman?!"
Rasheal's pupils dilated, terror flashing across his features.
He tried to retreat, to flee, but ice pillars pinned his body to the ground, rendering him unable to move.
"She was no ordinary demon. She was a true genius of our race. Had she lived just a little longer, your demonic transformation toxin wouldn't have amounted to anything."
Lanqi plunged the needle into Rasheal's neck, sending an icy chill coursing through the duke's throat.
"Wh-What is this?!"
Hearing Lanqi utter the words "demonic transformation toxin," Rasheal's heart sank like lead.
Endless images and memories flashed across Rasheal's trembling eyes.
Gradually, completely, he understood.
Why Lanclos had wreaked havoc in the Holy Polant Theocracy.
Why it was Saintess Xigelei, second only to him, who had betrayed him.
Why he had feigned madness to indiscriminately slaughter the provinces of the Horning Empire before coming here.
To everything, there was only one answer: Rasheal had been played like a fiddle in the palm of Lanclos's hand from the very start.
Lanclos had known everything all along!
"It's something similar to what you dosed the people of Horning with. Only this is of a much higher grade, capable of mutating a vampire in a short time and forcing a demonic transformation," Lanqi explained calmly, describing the reagent's effect.
Duke Rasheal froze in stunned silence.
Turn him into a mutated familiar?
And then... use internal demonic methods to modify him further?
In that instant, he suddenly grasped the link between Pranay's question and Lanqi's words.
When the Fourth Progenitor, Eduardo, vanished, the Polant Empire had once brandished an unprecedented bomb that shook them all to the core.
Fortunately, it was later proven to be nothing more than a bluff by the Polant Empire.
Could such a bomb truly be manufactured?
And was its crucial ingredient... a Progenitor of the Blood Clan?!
"You can't do this! I am the Third Progenitor of the Blood Clan! You can't fucking do this to me!!"
Locked within the ice crystals, Rasheal's eyes filled with blood, veins standing out across his skin. He fought with every ounce of his remaining strength, bloody foam bubbling from his lips.
Yet no matter how loudly Duke Rasheal raged, he could not alter the predetermined outcome.
The mere thought of being turned into fuel to blow up masses of demonkin filled Rasheal with suffocating, insurmountable humiliation!
"Join the glorious evolution. The end of the Blood Clan's evolutionary path is the suicide bomber."
Lanqi injected the reagent straight into Rasheal's neck.
"No... pull this vile filth out of my body..."
Rasheal's voice grew increasingly slurred, his speech barely intelligible.
His demonic transformation began. Cracks appeared across his skin as though he were about to be torn apart, an ominous deep purple glow seeping from the fractures. Rasheal's fingertips elongated into sharp claws, and his ears began to stretch.
As the cursed aura rolled out, Rasheal's hair fell into wild disarray.
Lanqi tossed the syringe aside, retrieved a small mirror from his pocket, and held it before Rasheal to let him see his reflection. Rasheal's voice choked instantly.
He could hardly believe he had become so hideous.
"And here I thought you were fond of biochemical modification."
Lanqi deftly unrolled the specialized contract scroll left by True Night Lord at the institute back then, contracting the incapacitated Rasheal.
The crimson light in Rasheal's eyes grew hollow before dying out completely.
"In the end, it always falls to you to finish things off on high heat."
Lanqi looked down at the final translucent card in his hand. The entire card appeared ethereal, hovering between solid and spectral. Patterns pulsed across its surface like a beating heart, shimmering with unstable luster. It trembled faintly, vibrating at a frequency different from this world.
"End this ruined world of the blood moon, Wolf."
Lanqi let go.
The magic card flared with blinding radiance. Unlike ordinary magic cards, it resembled interlocking spirals radiating mysterious majesty.
As the unleashed card unraveled, the spirals separated. Light around the vortex was bent, drawn in, and torn apart until it stabilized. A fissure was carved through the center of the vortex, finally revealing its true form—a colossal wolf.
Crimson runes drifted like fractured dimensions, circulating across its dark, profound body.
In the dim abyss of the shattered Blood Moon City, it flared with world-splitting red patterns. Every single marking pulsed and breathed, a rift leading to another dimension.
The wolf brought its massive paw down, gradually sealing Duke Rasheal into a twisted, blood-red magic card that crackled with lightning.
Lanqi casually tossed the sealed Third Progenitor backward. The leaping giant wolf caught the card in its jaws and swallowed it whole.
"Master, help me carry the wolf up to the surface."
Lanqi called out in his mind, glancing toward the pure-white form of the Poet of Great Love.
As a soul contractor who could likewise trigger the Nuclear Fusion Wolf for him, having her detonate it would grant the wolf an extra boost from the Original Slate of Fire.
"Understood."
The flush on Talia's face had cooled significantly.
Using telekinesis, she lifted the Nuclear Fusion Wolf into the air and soared toward the skies above Blood Moon City.
"Oh, right. Take Boss Cat with you."
Lanqi bent down, fished the little black cat out of his shadow, and tossed it toward Talia in midair.
In case Talia couldn't retreat back into Blood Moon City in time, Boss Cat could protect her with an immunity field for a while, ensuring she made it back safely.
"Thank you, Lanqi."
Talia caught the little soot sprite steadily, raised a hand to her brow in a salute, and thanked Lanqi in a sweet voice against her conscience.
Although she and the Poet of Great Love were immortal, they still felt pain.
It seemed Lanqi had remembered her words.
Of course, it was also possible Lanqi simply hadn't dared to hurt her or let her die from the start.
"So you really can play the cute girl after all."
Lanqi slipped one hand into his pocket, waving with a smile toward the pure-white Poet of Great Love.
Under normal circumstances, watching Talia speak like that might have felt a little nauseating, but today she seemed surprisingly girlish.
...
A long time later.
The moment Duke Rasheal vanished, all of Blood Moon City felt an unprecedented tremor.
The ground above Blood Moon City, in Sentrick, suddenly began to shake violently, as if an enormous hand were violently rattling the entire city.
Hidden deep underground, Blood Moon City was not spared from the catastrophe.
Rumbles erupted like muffled thunder, deafening to the ears.
The sound carried a terrifying fury and violence.
The earth roared, howling as though ready to swallow everything whole.
In the Hall of Annihilation to the south of Blood Moon City, Marquis Somerset and the two civil Great Demons stumbled, nearly falling to the ground.
They were forced to halt their clash and fight to keep their balance.
The stone pillars within the arena swayed precariously, debris raining down from the ceiling and crashing onto the floor with sharp cracks.
"Wh-What is going on?!" Marquis Somerset shouted in terror, his voice sounding faint amidst the violent tremors. "Rasheal's presence... has vanished?!"
Lord of Quicksilver Mishio and Lord of Bones Demongate exchanged stunned glances, both visibly shaken.
They didn't know what had happened either, but they gathered that victory was theirs. They could only steady themselves and dodge the falling rubble.
In the Hall of Bitter Cold to the east of Blood Moon City.
The Seventh Progenitor, Marquis Heretier, and Lord of Blasphemy Melogas encountered the exact same phenomenon.
The ice beneath their feet began to fracture, cracks spreading like spiderwebs.
The entire hall of crimson frost shuddered. Icicles tumbled from the walls and ceiling, turning into sharp blades of ice that flew in every direction.
Covered in wounds, Marquis Heretier shrieked, barely avoiding being clipped by an ice blade.
Lord of Blasphemy Melogas appeared far calmer, using her scorpion tail to anchor herself to the ground and support her body.
She crossed her arms, proudly puffing out her chest as she gazed toward the Blood King Palace.
The situation in the Hall of Souls was even worse.
The altar swayed in the earthquake, and countless undead poured from the fractures in the walls and floor, letting out piercing wails.
Terrorized by the sudden upheaval, they could only circle the hall in panic.
The Ninth Progenitor, Marquis Bernhard, turned pale, his lips trembling as if trying to speak, yet no sound came out.
His newly reassembled body was once again slashed to pieces by the dragon-like sword strikes of the Lord of Ten Thousand Might.
...
In the Blood King Palace square, Lanqi stood quietly, looking at the four Great Demons before him.
He had not dismissed Radiant Virtue.
In this vast open terrain, its light wasn't quite as piercing anymore; instead, it made the Blood King Palace square considerably warmer.
"So this is what it's like to ride the baby bus...?" the Ice Snow Witch muttered with a slight frown.
She had initially thought Antanas was exaggerating.
Last time in Ikerite, watching the recorded fragments of Lanqi and Hyperion's Tier 7 Shadow World, she had seen Lanqi look utterly mediocre—starting off on the wrong foot, falling into bitter struggles, losing the upper hand, making continuous blunders, facing certain defeat, and then delivering an acceptance speech.
He truly was the man who could handle Princess Talia, a one-in-a-million leader.
"Teacher Almis, thank you for your help," Lanqi offered his gratitude to the Ice Snow Witch.
The other three Great Demons were already familiar friends, but he and the Ice Snow Witch, Almis, had met for the first time in the Demon King's Capital.
To Lanqi, she was Hyperion's teacher, which made her his elder.
Seniority among demons was tricky. He might be peers with Antanas, and Antanas was peers with the Ice Snow Witch, yet the Ice Snow Witch was a generation above him.
"No need to be so formal. Just call me Almis. Your friends and I are of the same generation."
At first, the Ice Snow Witch hadn't believed the gossip Antanas shared about Lanqi and Talia, but now she was starting to.
Suddenly, another thought struck her.
If she was of the same generation as Lanqi, that would effectively demote Hyperion by a generation.
"Of course, if you wish to consider me on the same tier as your teacher, you may call me Miss Almis. I don't mind," she added.
For Hyperion's sake, she was willing to bump herself up a generation.
The Ice Snow Witch was never one to care for gossip, but she had grown genuinely curious about how intense things would get at Boss Cat Restaurant in the future.
"Miss Almis, I truly remain deeply grateful for your care toward Hyperion," Lanqi replied, still using honorifics.
While they were conversing, Antanas was already crying out beside them.
"It's over! I got an assist in this Shadow World! What am I going to do next time?!" Antanas clutched her head and wailed.
Her account was ruined.
"Look on the bright side. Leeching an assist on defeating a Tier 9 powerhouse might net you an epic reward," Sinora consoled her, patting her shoulder helplessly.
That was far better than settling for the bare minimum clear rewards.
"That's true..." Antanas beamed again after giving it some thought.
"Though, in the end, I still haven't figured out who the nine challengers were."
Antanas counted on her fingers.
The four of them on vacation from the Demon King's Capital, plus Hyperion, Lanqi, and Boss Cat—that was only seven challengers.
Who were the remaining two?
Pranay remained silent, pretending he had already returned to the mortal realm.
"..."
Lanqi thought for a moment, simply shaking his head and sighing.
The others likely shared the same question.
The remaining two were Talia and Sigrid.
Yet from Talia and Sigrid's perspectives, there were also only eight challengers, because each had mistaken the other for the native Shadow World figures Caliera and Xigelei.
"Lanqi, did you know? We prepared a super big surprise for you!"
Antanas skipped excitedly over to Lanqi, clasping her hands before her chest.
Now that business was concluded, they could finally chat.
"What kind of surprise could there be?" Lanqi asked, puzzled.
Antanas always possessed this boundless energy.
Usually, anything she hyped up turned out to be nothing major; she loved blowing small things out of proportion.
"The four of us and darling Hy—"
Before Antanas could finish her sentence, the figures of the four Great Demons faded from the Blood King Palace square as the Shadow World dissolved.
Lanqi saw that the Shadow World countdown timer had reached zero.
"Ah, looks like there's no need to go looking for Master."
He stood in place, shaking his head with a sigh.
Challengers who entered from different entrances would return to different points upon completion.
He, Talia, and Boss Cat would return to the same temporary settlement space, while Antanas, Hyperion, and the others, having entered through a different Void Gate, would end up in another settlement space.
The sun suspended high above the Blood King Palace had finally fulfilled its mission.
Its radiance gradually waned, slowly closing its eyes like an elder at dusk. In its place, countless stars opened their eyes across the firmament for the very first time, like newborn babes.
They flickered with the light of hope, illuminating this land long shrouded in darkness, as if heralding—
A brand-new era of infinite possibilities had arrived.
Gentle brilliance diffused through the misty haze, and the architecture of Blood Moon City dissolved like foam.
A faint glimmer of dawn stole softly and delicately into the central square through the dispersing walls.
The Blood Moon Ruined World series of Shadow Worlds to date...
Had now arrived at the hour of settlement.
Chapter 802